Deep End Drama

John is determined come hell or high water to get the water back in "his" pool. He doesn't swim in it. He gazes at it...at night. He finds it very relaxing, and I'll give him that...it is relaxing. Right now he must be as uptight as a cat on a Cracker Barrel veranda. There is no sign of water in the pool. He wasn't satisfied with my attempts to get Lars to empty out the rest of the water, so he took matters into his own hands and worked out a deal.

On Monday night, Lars and John worked together to get the rest of the water out. John's contribution to the effort was to bring home a fancy pump from work that took care of it in a couple of hours. While John's pump was pumping, Lars started scraping. He then came back on Tuesday to prime the spots he painted. So it looked like the pool was going to get a fresh coat after all. What I didn't know, since he didn't want to tell me, was we were going to be paying for it.

Even though I had been harping on the fact that, given Lars' financial circumstances, we were going be stuck paying for the paint.....John kept insisting he wasn't. And "Um....yeah...sure"... was how we left that conversation. I found out that we were picking up the tab as we drove to the ATM machine to get the cash to give Lars. John fessed up quietly under his breath when I asked him why we needed to get money. Here's how John found out he was paying.....

Lars called the pool guy to price paint and was told 4,000 kroner. He called John at work and passed this on, but John said he had to think about it. Lars called back 10 minutes later to see if John had thought about it yet. Lars is such a funny guy!! He tells John he can't afford to buy this very expensive paint. John tells him that he doesn't want to spend that kind of money on his pool, either. A little while later, Lars' calls back. He has found cheaper paint at 1,300 kroner, and he'll order that. It has to be white though, because to get this paint in blue costs double. At this point John hasn't told Lars that we are not going to pay for the paint....mostly because in the back of his mind, John knows he will pay for the paint if it means it gets his water feature back in the yard. And John can be kind of stubborn about something when he gets it in his head. He'll find a way to make it happen.

After Lars ordered the paint, he asks John if he can come by and collect the 1,300 kroner to pay for the paint. It's at this part of the story I began to laugh and instead of "I told you so", I ran with a chorus of "I knew it"s.

Lars was supposed to be here on Thursday but the paint was a day late getting here.
When I came home from the store this morning, Lars was already here...standing in the pool, roller and paint brush in hand. He's wearing a mask with a couple of filters in it over his face, so I figure the stuff must be really smelly.

Fifteen minutes later Lars is out of the pool tapping at the front door. He doesn't feel so good. The fumes from the paint are getting to him. He has a headache, is sweating, feels dizzy, and his throat feels funny. Jeez Louise! He doesn't think he can paint anymore....gosh, ya think so?

He spends some time in the bathroom trying to shake off the effects of the paint. And it takes some time before he feels like he can drive again. When he starts to feel better, he packs up the paint and the rollers and brushes, and says he'll come back another day to take it to the recycling center. One of the cans isn't open yet but, since it was a special order, it's not returnable. He is sure he cannot use the paint anymore and I don't blame him. Forget the paint, let's just fill that sucker and be done with it!

During his recovery phase, Lars informs me that the pool guy told him he would have to use a respirator when he used this paint. He didn't rent out respirators but he could buy one for 10,000 kroner. I tried to find out if he was told this after he ordered the paint or before because if he told him after, then he damn well ought to take the paint back. John could make sure that he did because he's determined that way. But, I was unable to come to a conclusion on the timing...just that the guy told him he needed it. But.....not so lucky for Lars, some other guy, told him he might be able to get away with the kind of mask he tried to use today. You gotta love the wisdom of the amazing "some other guy".

When Lars left here, he went directly to the pool guy's store to find out if he had suffered permanent neurological damage. He called later to say he was coming back tomorrow with a long pole and his mask. Someone suggested that he might be able to do it if he put the roller on the end of a pole and stood outside the pool where the air mix was better. Okay then....

Exhausted from my ordeal and the near death of Lars in the empty pool, I fell asleep on the couch halfway through "Say Yes To The Dress". An hour later there is more tapping at the front door....I grumbled and stumbled my way to the door and there he is....he's got a long pole in his hand and he's ready to tackle the painting again....from the pool deck. Fine.

I go to the kitchen to make some tea and when I come out, there's Lars, roller attached to the end of his long pole, standing and painting....in the pool!! Seriously....what part of "this is bad for you" don't you understand?

I gave up. I sat with my tea to watch "What Not To Wear" taking an occasional peek over my shoulder to see if he was still standing up. I think Lars spent about 20 minutes in the pool then he quit for the day. His new plan of attack is to paint really fast, and get out after 20 minutes. He thinks he can finish the job spending 20 more minutes in there tomorrow. He also said that the paint has to dry for a week, then we can start filling it....a fact that conflicts with John's version of events in which Lars told him you could fill it within a day.

Yes, we have one more week of empty pool. Lars told me he asked the pool guy what he would charge to paint it and he told him 40,000 kroner. WOW! Lars thought it was more money than he could pay but reasonable considering it was a dangerous job and the respirator cost 10,000 kroner. I dunno...the pool guy should have one already. I tried to ask Lars if there weren't any rent-all places here for things like this but he just kept shaking his head, "No". I'm not convinced there isn't. They have internet after all, and cable TV. Why not rent-it places.

I'm getting really bored with the pool saga now. I want it to be over. John has reassured me that he only loaned Lars the money for the paint and that Lars is paying him back. I wonder if that will be before or after his trip to Thailand in July. Say what??? Thailand??? You have no money.

But he does have his girl back...in a couple of weeks Lars, his girl, and his brother are jetting off to Thailand for the "Dane's three week holiday abroad"....bestowed upon all Danish people by divine right....etc. etc. etc. Try boarding a dog in the summer here!

I'm still scratching my head. I sort of suggested that he might now want his mail redirected back to where he lays his head at night. But, no, he was fine with having it come here. He could pick it up every Friday (except he rarely shows up on Fridays anymore). So....does he not want his "girl" to see what's coming in the mail? I think we need to discuss the mail thing one more time or else I can have John set up a dialogue about it. We could probably make it happen if we agreed to pay the Post Office redirect fee.

***After we moved out of the house, John's company had to go chasing Lars for the return of the 3 month's rent damage deposit they had put up when we moved in. He took a while to track down and when they did catch up with him he said.......he didn't think he should have to return it because we had caused damage to his pool by repainting it and used the wrong paint. They nerve of some people!***

How Do You Make an Empty Pool Look Pretty?

I'm looking for ideas.


It's not looking so good out there right now. The pool is still a gaping turquoise hole in the backyard and pool month in Denmark is fast approaching. I guess there are actually 2 pool months, July and August, but I'm going to be in Nova Scotia for the second one, so it doesn't count.

John was so confident that we would be able to start filling it this weekend, he was ready to send out invitations to this gigantic pool party he wants to have on July 3rd.....I gave him the hairy eyeball...the one that says "down boy". Big parties are stressful enough without having the main focus of the party out of commission and beyond your control.

We got some nice weather and the pool guy did show up on Tuesday and Wednesday. He was out there for about 5 minutes (tops) each time but I have no idea what he did since his English is about as good as my Danish. Nothing appears to have changed.

It became apparent this week that something hinky was going on with Lars. After not showing up on Friday, he texted Sunday night to say he would be there on Monday but he no showed again. Not a word from him until Wednesday when he magically appeared out of the blue. When I asked him where he had been he told he is very busy....okay....

He told me he lost his job. I handed him his stack of bills. He shrugged and said he was getting almost as much money from the government. But how much bad luck can one dude get? Would it be really the last straw if his tenants moved out? Does he remember that I told him the roof is leaking?

Anyway, he did have news on the pool when he came. The pool guy told him that it was going to cost 11,000 kroner (about 2k) to fix the light in the pool, and since he doesn't have that kind of money, he is just going to seal around the edges with silicone. Then when the silicone is nice and dry we can refill the pool. Sweet! Except, he doesn't want to bail out the rest of the water from the deep end. He said he's going to add chemicals to clean it up.

This isn't exactly how the plan goes. He's supposed to take out the rest of the water, clean out the sludge of leaves that's accumulated below it and then scrub the rest of the pool. I'll sacrifice my brand new to mop to the cause. There's also the matter of the chipping paint that needs to be removed along the sides. But, I tried 5 times to get this across with no luck. He just kept shaking his head and said he would treat it with the chemicals. Arrggggghhhh!!!!!!

Last summer the shocking process took a long time, and it took us a few weeks of skimming and dragging with the net to get all of the crap out of it. He didn't seem to get that taking out the last bit of water was going to be a whole lot faster. It makes me wonder if he cares anymore. He used to be interested in what was going on with his pool, and his yard, but now he is barely paying attention to it. Maybe it IS going back to the bank soon. In his shoes, I wouldn't be doing much either.

Sprucing Up The Joint

What's a girl gonna do when she wakes up at 7:00 on a Saturday morning? I'm all caught up on everything for the week. I've weeded through my email, and picked out the 5 real ones out of the 40 that came from concert halls and arenas all across America, the 50 that came from hotels and hotel reward plans, and the 20 I got with offers from plus size clothing shops. Ah.....the remnants of tours past.

Anyway, I had a look at this blog and decided it was desperately boring in appearance. Time for a redo, and redo I did. Voila! The brand new Sally's is up and running with some sidebar sprucing to come if I happen to wake up at 7 again tomorrow. If that doesn't happen my short attention span, may mean it stays as it is. So far, I'm liking it!

When Houseboys Go A.W.O.L.

Where is he?? The dirt is beginning to show on the light wood floors and I bought him a brand new broom last week! Man, there's even fresh Ajax and Bang waiting in the closet. Lars has disappeared. He didn't make it on Friday. Then Sunday night he called and said he was coming Monday at 16:00. No show again. It's now 19:00 on Tuesday and no Lars....no text message. The last time he was here to clean the house he didn't clean the house, he cleaned some of the pool and mowed the grass. Cleaning the pool cost me both of the scrubbing brooms that he uses on the floors. Hence, the new one.

My spidey senses are telling me foreclosure is imminent and he's done doing anything with this house. I wouldn't put another nickel in it if the bank was taking it from me, so why should he? No sign of the pool guy who was supposed to finish what he started two weeks ago. I'm guessing Lars is hanging back in typical non-confrontational Danish style. John's going to have to ask the legal guys to call him up to find out what gives pretty soon. I sure hope he's keeping up his payments on the flat screen TV.

While all of this house drama is going on, John is planning (or recruiting me to plan) a party for his department at work. Depending on how wide a sweep of it he makes, we're talking about 30 to 60 people who would expect a pool with water in it. I wonder if we could ask each of them to bring us 20 gallons of water with them. Probably not....I asked and was told that pot-luck isn't done over here.

I can't say I'm too comfortable inviting people to a barbecue with the backyard looking like an open pit mine. There is still a hole in the patio that I`m trying to hide with a big slab of cardboard and a lavender plant.

Just for Shits & Giggles

Ever wonder where I go when I disappear for long periods of unaccounted for time? I do, too....

I took 2 online classes this winter...neither of them Danish language. These ones we a lot of fun!! Danish language classes wouldn't be near as much fun as this. The assignment, in Flash, was to create an animated interpretation of a movie. I think I covered all the high points.

In another class, Adobe Illustrator, things were humming along pretty smoothly until the instructor slapped us with a last minute final exam. That resulted in this....which turned out much better than I expected. I guess I learned something.



Reason for choosing to illustrate a butterfly....you only have to draw half of it, then you can mirror image the other half....using your noodle counts too, you know.

Using Our Oyster Cards

A few months ago I decided it would be a good idea to drag John away from work for one of the many May long weekends we get, here, in Denmark. Two days after I booked and paid for a trip to London the $#*&(@@(&$^&$%^@*&##(&*%%$) volcano in Iceland started to spew ash and I became a little concerned that we might not get away after all. But the beast calmed and (knock on wood) seems to remain calm and we got there....and bonus! We got back!

The trip was great! But man, there were a lot of people. We used our Oyster cards to get around on the tube and the buses and despite John having a little trouble tapping his mollusk at first, it was a super way to get places.


The weather was hot and sunny....we burnt our foreheads on the bus tour, and I came home with a head cold since a person can only hold so many loops and rails on public transportation without becoming ridden with microbes. The London underground also throws in lots of escalator and staircase railings to sweeten the mix. I knew at first glance I was being offered a free souvenir.

Luckily, the full blown snorgies waited until I got home and a good time was had by all. The new camera performed superbly. John only drifted off to sleep at the beginning of 'Les Miserables' and I only had to poke him up until the 'Master of the House' number. He seemed to rouse after that. He stayed fully awake for all of 'Jersey Boys'.....maybe because I sold it to him as 'The Sopranos, the Musical'...dunno but he liked it better.


One of my favorite things, since I love architecture, was the Natural History Museum. What a beautiful building!

We missed the London Eye because we saved it for our last day and got lazy.

After touring the museum we decided to sit in the bar at the hotel until it was time to go to the airport. Since 3 days doesn't even scratch the surface in London, we have to go back. And I need to do some more shopping there...it was amazing!

Not sure where we're going on our next little jaunt. We've decided that we really HAVE to get out and see more while we are here. Our second year of a 2 year contract has begun and weekends are a wasting. So far on the table for consideration are Budapest, Vienna (which lost out to London by a hair this last time), Greece (friends have a house there), and Paris (since we can use the Marriott timeshare right outside of the city). The thing is though, you can drive to Germany in a short time from here...Berlin is only 7 hours away by car and that sounds awfully interesting, too.

I've got to figure out a way to pay for all this traveling and a week of touring in August...hmmm...details. A couple of weeks ago John said he was going to take the 'Business Closed' sign off the door since it had been a while since any customers had shown up here. I told him that as long as I was living in this house, that sign was staying on the door. I'm glad it's still there because the very next day, at 4 pm, a customer came up the drive, read the sign and left.

Those 2 ideas in the previous paragraph are totally unrelated. Here's a few shots from London.

Picadilly Circus

Lost in Leicester Square

Blackpool vs. Leeds

St.Paul's Cathedral

Buckingham Palace

Along the Thames

That's us flying home. No sign of nasty ash anywhere.....one of these days I have to write about living with Mt. Redoubt when it decided to mess up our nice pristine Alaskan winter.

The rest of the London pix are here...

Sally's London Smugmug Gallery

The Further Adventures of Lars & The Little Woman

When Lars came by to clean a few weeks ago, he sheepishly asked if he could have his mail sent here. He said he didn't have his apartment anymore, he had split with 'his girl' and is living at his parent's house. It seemed a little strange that his mail couldn't go to Mom & Dad's but he told me there wouldn't be much, and so feeling sorry for the guy, I agreed.

It's been about 20 days that his mail has been coming here and a conservative estimate would put the volume of mail at 30 pieces.....almost all of them from banks, card companies, the mortgage company, and collection agencies. I wonder if I need to be checking into the rights of tenants in a foreclosure in Denmark. Will I come home someday to find a bailiff's padlock on the door? The Danes put a great amount of importance on addresses. This is a country where your bank automatically sends your account information to the tax authorities every year at tax time. Funny that Oprah didn't point that out when she did her show from Copenhagen last fall. Did she mention the drinking age is 16? But I digress.....

It's been quite a few months since we've started to suspect that Lars was having financial problems. Every time that we mentioned some work that needed to be done around the house, he put us off....saying he had no money. A broke landlord is not the best thing to have when the big burner on the cooktop has only one setting left and thats 'high'. What's he going to say when I tell him the roof is leaking? I guess buckets are cheap enough.

Our biggest immediate concern is the pool, or as it is in its present state, the big cement hole in the back yard. The pool guy has been out to investigate. He claims the leak is fixed though he didn't actually DO anything. Lars dug up part of the patio so he could fix the light that doesn't work,but apparently that wasn't necessary. He wanted the rest of the water out of the pool so he could do the electrical work without toasting his underwear. The water is out...except for a small mosquito breeding pond in the deep end....and if it ever stops raining pool guy might come back to finish. There is some question about who is going to pay for last year's chemicals though. It seems we didn't pay a bill we didn't get. The pool guy couldn't remember how much was owed, just that he wasn't coming back here until he got his money.

Now, we have to refill the pool and how is 'Lars of No Money' going to pay for it, should it come out of the rent? The lease says (and we told him when we took the place) we weren't going to pay to maintain his pool) If only he'd fixed it when we first told him about it! But, we pay for the water so why bother....hmmmm....since his address is here now, I could probably call the kommune and switch it back over to his name. I suppse that means some day our water will be shut off for non-payment.

Yesterday, Lars sent me a text that said he was on his way over to clean the house. He comes once a week and does the floors, the kitchen, the bathroom, and the lawn mowing....um yeah...the light yard work. But, he didn't show up. He didn't answer when I texted him back a few hours later wondering if he was still coming. Something must have happened in the half hour it usually takes him to get here after he texts. I dunno. I don't get him just not showing up. He sent a message he was on his way and Lord knows he seems to need the money. It's hard not to feel sorry for the guy. He's still fairly young and he must feel like his life is in the crapper right now. My gut is telling me that his 'girl' got the 5 years in Denmark she needed to stay here without him, and said "See ya' later."

I'm also going to guess that she wasn't happy with her new digs, considering she had this nice house with a pool to look forward to when she moved here. And it's probably damn near impossible to run a business from a 2 room apartment with 3 people living there. Something had to give.

As Lars problems mount, those of Lena, my housekeeper in Baku, are over. I found out last week that she succumbed to her cancer a couple of months ago. She was 47 years old.

I'll stop whining about my house now and be grateful the Danish government sent me a note in January to tell me it was time to come in for a mammogram. With all this moving around I had been very very bad and missed quite a few years. I really thought about blowing off my summons to Bjipsberg Hospital on the morning of January 19th, but I went. They send you a letter with your results, in Danish of course....most nerve wracking Google translate ever....but all was okay. See you in 2 years (even better).

I was told that Lena remained feisty and fought her cancer hard right up until the end. The last time I saw her she was so angry and it was heartbreaking. I hope she eventually found some peace in her final months. R.I.P. Lena.....