a word

I try to keep up my Danish by reading news on the computer, and mostly I am doing well, that is till today when I stumbled over a word in a headline.

Now the Danes like to make long words of what in English would be two or three or more separate words.

Where I ran into trouble was the word  "skovejere" which I divided into "sko" ( shoes) and "vejere" ( people who weigh things) which made the word "people who weigh shoes".

That did not make any sense at all. So I Looked at the word again, and little, very little lights went off.

When I divided the word differently I came up with "skov" ( forest ) "ejere" "owners' and that made a lot mores sense since the article dealt with the damage some storm had done to trees.

I had the good grace to laugh at myself and my, albeit momentary, mad leap into 'people who weigh shoes'.

It must be really hard on new people to learn this language.

lost

At my age you worry when you don't hear from friends for a while, so I was a tad concerned since I had not had a call from Jane for a long time.

Jane, who is not so mobile anymore, used to call and chat about once a week or two.

And then I had my problems with the phone going belly-up and telephone lines being down and a host of other disruptions and I realized, one day, that I had not not had my call from Jane for a long time.

 I started to worry a bit, enough to send out smoke signals to people we knew in common to see if they had information, and I went on a mad search for a phone number as the one I had just sent me to a voice mail collector.  Most stressful.

I finally got a response from a friend of Jane's whose email I had found on a mail Jane sent to a bunch of folks when she took a trip to Alaska in 2008.

Hallelujah.  Jane hs uprooted herself ( again ) and is now living in Indiana where her youngest son lives. 

Now all I have to do is to call. That is a major part. But I will.
At my age you try to hold on to your friends and your health and your mind.

Sunday

And so it is Sunday, and Sunday is different from all the other days of the week because..........

well I don't really know.

Somehow one is brought up to thinking that Sunday is special and surely it was special as a child when someone, many times father, would go to the local bakery and bring back a bag of all kinds of different breads and rolls and pastry for breakfast;  but only on Sundays.

Which begs the question....what makes Sundays special for an old geezer such as I, who is not spending this late part of his life working nine to five and hence no real reason to welcome Sunday as a day of rest and worship.  What ?   But it still is special and I ofttimes I make something different to break the fast, this one day of the week.  

Maybe one does something special to celebrate the end of a small cycle, the week, or, more likely, one just remembers the good old times as a child when dad would go to the bakery and come back with all kinds of wonderful stuff but only this once a week time, Sunday.

Whatever the reason, it is Sunday and I am looking forwards to yet another week.

rain

It is raining here in Mismaloya.   It is not supposed to be raining here in Mismalaoya.
The rainy season, well defined, is from 15 June to 15 October, give and take a few days but, most assuredly, not in December or January.

And so I am looking for someone or something to blame for this mess, for surely someone/thing is to blame.

I have decided that most likely the blame for this lies with the fat governor of New Jersey and the 'Holier-than-thou' governor of Utah.

One for suspending traffic on the busiest bridge in the country out of miffedness with a mayor who did not endorse him and the other for refusing to recognize more than a thousand same sex marriages all performed in a window of legitimacy due to a ruling by a federal judge and inadequacy of state legal coucil.

Surely the smallmindedness and meanspiritedness of these two guys--and their minions--is the reason many good and decent folks are hurt and that we, here in Mismaloya, have unseasonable rains.

What else could it be ?  Climate change ?  Bad luck ?

I prefer to blame those two guys. It makes me feel a bit better.

The Match

'I am calling you from Malmo', Jeff said the other day. ' I am watching a hockey match on Millie'.
Millie is his sweet, overweight black Cocker Spaniel.

I admitted to being confused. Only a day ago he had called me from his condo here in Puerto Vallarta and never mentioned a word about going to watch a match in Malmo.

It turned out that he was watching a game that took place in Malmo; the 'on Millie ' part I never quite understood. The closest I got to getting it was that he was taking Millie for some exercise which consisted of him sitting on a chair watching the game on his smart phone whilst Millie was roaming around in the flowerbeds of the condo green area.

'Malmo is in Sweden'  he told me.
I assured him I was aware of that fact.

'It is close to the whatchamacallit...Koppenhaken' he said.
Again I assured him that I knew it was close to Copenhagen.

'I can't remember if I have been there' he said and this time, through gritted teeth, I told him he would have remembered if he had ever been there.

'Anyway' he said, ' I just wanted you to know that Canada is playing against the US'.

And this left me one big gaping question mark. I do not care for sports and the sports I care less than less for must be hockey for its brutality and cricket for its absolutely non understandable rules, so I have no idea why he thought he had to share this little bit of hockey information with me, aside from the lesson about Malmo .

But I am a good person so listened till I had a very sudden and very urgent thing to do and hastily bid him a good day and then, drew several deep breaths to restore my inner calm. Sort of. Till next time he calls to tell something I have very little interest in.

And I will listen again because maybe one day I will be the person in need of a friendly ear and then it will be payback time.

I, of course, can always vent my spleen on my blog.  Like now.  And it works fine.

Nasty stuff

Some years ago I had what turned out to be an attack of dengue fever. 
Apparently just a mild attack; the doctor I checked with was not that impressed and assured me that in a week--seven days--all would be well. In the meantime to drink lots of fluids and take tablets for the headaches.

And not to be too disturbed by the rashes that would appear at the end of the time.

All went as the doctor predicted, even the rashes, and I forgot all about it
till last night when I had an occurrence of what felt very much like the first attack of the dengue.

Yikes and double yikes.

The shakes and the sweats and the headaches and the not being able to get warm
all that

The only solution I could think of was to put a lot of blankets on my bed and try and get some sleep.
And the shakes did stop until I had to get up and pee. Yowsi but that was awkward.  I was shaking so badly that I was peeing all over the place. Good thing I was outside. 

And now, after a miserable night with stupid, repetitive dreams and thunderous headaches, I found a couple of Advils ( I take very few pills ) and eventually got rid of the headaches.

Now I worry if I will have another attack tonight because I have no more Advils.

Well, I shall think positive thoughts and hope that will not happen.

So what makes a man a man ?

The second part of Royal Jewels dealt with the Russians and the British.
Of the Russians one family was pointed out to be even richer than the Romanovs, the ruling family, namely the Yusopovs.

The last of the Yusopovs, Felix, heir to endless wealth, went to school in the UK and France. He liked to dress in female clothing and in Paris even went to the opera in drag.

He is discreetly described as bi-sexual, a term that did not exist when he was young.

He, and some friends of his, were the young officers who took upon themselves to kill the peasant faith healer Rasputin who, according to many, had gained an enormous influence over the Tsarina and hence the Tsar.

He, the poofter who dressed up in women's clothing, did rid Russia of a scourge. It did not last long as the revolution came and other scourges, even worse, befell Russia.

It is intriguing to look at Russia today where the kind of person who so bravely tried to save her, is now deemed a criminal and can be put in jail for showing affection for a person of the same sex.

Maybe Putin, of peasant stock himself, regrets the killing of the peasant faith healer by one of 'them'.

Who knows.