Smitten with Smittska-Udden

I woke up this morning, appropriately enough, with Lykke Li for skull music. I mean, it's cool enough that I simply woke up (because, my dear Watson, it neccesarily follows that I was sleeping), but to have "Little Bit" swimming around in my head when I got there was icing.




Since I've become an exhaustively experienced world traveler I have certain quotient of pretentiousness I need to meet, so I've decided to say you really just can't "get" Lykke Li until you've been to that particular corner on Närkesgatan in Stockholm.

Disclaimer: Really, all you need to get Lykke Li is a internet connection or a reasonably competent record store employee.

So, Thursday evening we went to the beach at Smittska-Udden to have a picnic and watch the sun set. (Jesper's idea. Genius, really, as ideas go.) I won't lie (I will lie, actually, but just not in this instance). I would have loved to have had the rain and clouds I had when I first came to this place, but the fact that so much of my family could come with, plus we could roast varmkorv and have some of Josef's beach-made chili more than made up for the horribly sunny weather. We roasted marshmallows, too (this is not part of my efforts to become more pretentious, I promise, but Swedish marshmallows are SO much better than their American counterparts. I'm sorry, it's just the way it is.) and did this crazy thing where you sliced open a banana, slipped some chocolate inside it, wrapped the whole thing in tinfoil and threw it on the coals.

Swedes are crazy! Crazy delicious!

Aidan was jumping around like a mountain goat hopped up on goofballs and took a fair amount of tumbles, but the little guy just kept on going despite his spills ("It's a good thing I'm taking karate! I just used my skills to put my hands out!" Oh, my sweet little Napolean Dynamite, you're too much like me for your own good).

Chloe wandered off to explore and have a little "me-time". I think she's a little like me, too, in that it seems it takes her a pretty decent amount of alone to decompress and compile. Still, I was (and am) a little amazed at how social she's been during this whole outting. I guess I don't really get to see her too much outside of the Richardson Cave so I've never really known how she'd react amongst the normals. Still, our relatives here don't really count as normals, as they have been superlatively kind and welcoming, which seems to put them on the lee side of the bell curve in "normal human reactions".

Jesper rode his bike to Smittska-Udden, by the way, after riding his bike to the gym. To work out for, like 73 hours and leg press the entire Stena-line fleet, I'm assuming.

Seriously, these guys are superheroes who really suck at the whole "secret-identity thing".

I took some pictures but I'm almost loathe to post them because they do nothing to translate the beauty and scope of the little peninsula we were on. I've loved Sweden since forever, and my family here couldn't be more wonderful, but the first time I went to Smittska-Udden it seemed to settle into my bones and I can honestly say I've never felt more like I just belonged somewhere.

That is until we passed the naked guys jumping into the 0°C ocean. Way to ruin Sweden, naked guys.

Now I have to go apologize to Goblin Valley.


Britt and Sofie in a very well lit pic. Go, awesome photographer!


Honestly, could this crack be any more appropriate? I looked around for Mjolnir but couldn't find it any where. BTW, there's no real sense of scale here, but I could've fit into that fissure.

I'm just sayin'.


I love this place


Josef, Tony, Hilda och Sofie


Prometheus and his attendant (sorry Hilda!) bring fire to man.


I love this place! And hate my camera!


About a fourth of Britt, most of Aidan, a good deal of Kajsa, some of Charlotte and pretty much all of Tony.


Charlotte, Kajsa, Britt and Josef's back! Rock on!

Sömnlöshet

So, I don't know how all this sleeping stuff is supposed to work anymore, apparently. My body and mind feel like they're incredibly tired, but I close my eyes and lay back (the normal modus operandi when it comes to "sleeping") and all I get is horizontal mixed with a lack of seeing things. Goteborg, 3:37, and the dire and ever-circling wolves of disrupted circadian rhythms howl at my threshold.

Thank you, William Gibson.

Still, it's been a lovely trip thus far. The flight this time around went better than any of the previous iterations by, like, a zillion times. Outside of a bump to first-class seating, I couldn't have asked for a better experience. A special prayer of gratitude is spoken in for Nadine, the woman who took us around the back doors of the byzantine workings of the O'Hare airport with the grace and aplomb of a seasoned diplomat. She was so nice to my mom I wanted to hug her, but behold the power of my emotional resolve. A tip was given in the place of any invasion of personal boundries, and I think we both dodged a bullet, there. Still, the meagre remuneration I was able to offer was pittance compared to the largesse of courtesy demonstrated by the woman in question.

And that right there is good reason not to write when I'm mentally exhausted, obviously.

Chloe was kind of adorable on the plane, BTW. The poor kid was shaking like a leaf when we were gearing up for take-off on the tarmacadam in SLC. She was as anxious as I've ever seen her, and I was honestly concerned we were going to have to stop the aircraft and turn around (I wonder what the airline's policy is for dealing with a hysterical 14 year-old with a stevedore's vocabulary? Kinda glad I didn't have to find out.), but by the end of the flight to Chicago she had gone from begging me to pull up the plastic shade to the window to begging me to change seats so she could watch the storm clouds pass under us. It was so much fun to watch her switch from fear to wonder in just a few minute's time. I really wish Sofia could have been there to see her little girl face her fears so well. Proud and happy uncle moments for everyone.

Charlotte and Sofie picked us up at the airport, and it was almost heart-breaking how good they looked. (Tony and Lennart, you are beautiful, too!) I'm a little jealous that the only real manifestion of the Bjorklund blood in my life has been the ability to spin profound guilt from straw coupled with a body that has a penchant for snapping in two in a stiff breeze.

But I digress.

For those of you in the know, I will tell you that Jesper and Josef are giants. Giants! If they weren't so darned good looking I'd think that maybe they got a little troll* blood in them. Josef is a little taller than I am at 16 and Jesper stands a good 4 or 5 inches over my 6' blah. They both rock climb, so they're of course built like, well, like rock climbers, and both play guitar excellent well (Josef flamenco style). Their English is immaculate and almost a match for their kindness and generosity of spirit.

Hilda is reaching Aesir stature as well, and has taken to the drums and sewing for her creative outlets. I hope I don't sound creepy when I say this, but she's a beautiful young woman. Kajsa is about as delightfully charming a tomte as one could hope to encounter in the Swedish countryside, and my Swedish has increased tenfold because of her tutelage (that's right, kids, I now know ten Swedish words!).

For those of you not in the know, let me just say that my cousins' children come correct, as the kids up to so recently used to say.

Film at eleven.

*I apologize to any trolls reading this, it's just that, to a majority of the folk of the Midgard, you just really ain't getting the job done, looks-wise. Sorry.