Five Hail Marys and Two Hello Dollys
I just came back from the playground. How wonderful it is.
Almost overwhelming. When I got there all six kids where running around. I felt like I had to do a cartoon-style wipe of my eyes and then throw away my whiskey bottle and swear never to drink again. If only I’d had a whiskey bottle.
But it is a load of fun. Mathilde’s kids are, what, a week and a half old? They’re so big and independent. Running around, getting their noses in everything. And developing their own unique personalities. Nougat is the jumper. She jumps in the air as if she’s so happy that gravity itself cannot contain her. Vanilje is more of a climber. When she jumps up on you then she keeps both of her hind legs on the ground. And her front legs up on your body. And 3B? As I mentioned he is the orally active one. Always biting, chewing and licking. He damn near chewed my face off while I was holding him. And it’s just SO adorable.
Magnethe’s are just a couple of days old. So they are mostly sleepy and yelping for their mother. And adorably small and stumbling around, discovering their world. I think Mathilde’s kids are kinda happy that the attention has shifted a little. But all six are loved. By everyone. Except Mads. He tries desperately to stay in control and be the big strong man. Which is hard when you have six little troublemakers sprinting around your legs.
As far as I know they haven’t been named yet. Kurt did ask me yesterday, but we didn’t really get to talk about it. I won’t see him again before Monday, late in the day. So by then it’s quite possible that they have been named by others, and that would be fair enough. I loved the suggestions you guys have made! Some of them don’t really work so well in Danish unfortunately. And I want to keep it Danish. Brownie would have been so perfect for the brown one. But I don’t think we really have brownies in Denmark, not by that name anyway. And the same goes for Twinkie. And Line is a girl’s name in Danish so it wouldn’t work for the one with the line, cause he’s a boy. And I couldn’t possibly name one after myself. As great as that would be I just couldn’t. I would feel like I was some kind of rockstar with an inflated ego who names all his furniture and all his pets after himself and has his own name on his vanity license plates. No no. Maybe when I DO become a rockstar. But not yet. Marzipan is great, I like that. And Milla for the girl would be lovely. Those are prime candidates. I thought of naming the brown one Punktum too. Punktum means a full stop or a period or whatever the proper English term is. Because we had something called Det Brune Punktum. The Brown Full Stop. Hmm yes. I like the idea a lot, it makes sense if you’re Danish. But Punktum just isn’t very pretty on it’s own there, so I guess not.
But I have a couple more days to think about it. And like I said, they might be named by the time I get there. And even if they’re not then I still feel sort of weird about it. Like I don’t have the “right” to name them. I’m not sure what that’s all about. Part of it is the social phobia, the fear of rejection. The life rule that whatever I do it won’t be good enough. But there’s also something else, some feeling. I can’t really put a finger on it. I have this feeling that if I give them names then those names won’t be real. They won’t count.
I know it’s silly, because I’m pretty sure that I’m the person in the world who has spent the most time with them, and will do so the next days. Even the people who take care of the animals don’t sit around and just hold them for hours. They’re not crazy like me. So why wouldn’t I have the right, when they even ask me to name them? Odd.
On my way home from the playground I met Bodil, with her empirical dog Lulu. I was on my bike. I stopped and talked to her. Asked her if she had seen the new ones. Meaning the new kids, of course. She said no. So I told her all about it. That’s a good example of what the playground brings me. I actually know an adult person who I can talk to and who likes me and so on. And when I see her I don’t think “oh no, dangerous social contact. I must run away and hide”. I think “Oh there’s Bodil, how nice. I wonder if she’s seen the new kids. She’ll love them no doubt”. She may not be a person that I’ll go clubbing with or who will be my closest friend. But it’s all about rewiring my brain. After so many years of avoiding other people and avoiding conversations it is a godsend to find people I feel comfortable with. And talking to her will help me progress so I will be able to talk to others and hopefully create meaningful relationships. Outside the playground too.
And it makes me happy. If you haven’t known me for that long then you may not realise what an incredible thing that is. The fact that talking to another person makes me happy. I have spent all my life avoiding talking to others. And I still find it hard. But the fact I can find happiness in it, that means that there is hope for me yet.
While I was talking to Bodil, her dog was jumping up on my legs and examining me closely. And Bodil said “if you had horns then Lasse would like you so much, you’re just like a little goat”. Hehe. It’s a clever little dog yes. Mischievous. And I love how Bodil loves to talk about her dog. Animals are not only happiness, they are also a great topic of conversation.
Well, that’s all for today. A fairly long entry and yet no goat pictures? Indeed. I am still processing the latest batch. With all Magnethe’s kids. I start with something like 500 pictures. My theory is that if you haven’t maxed out your camera’s memory card then you haven’t had a full day… Then I delete the very worst ones. The ones where I have somehow gotten a shot of someone’s finger or Mads’s butt or where the flash went off right in Vanilje’s face or something like that. Or the ones where the lighting is so horrible that they can’t be saved. Then I’m left with a big bunch of okay pictures. So I go through them and again weed out the worst shots. Then I’m left with a big bunch of pictures that I want to keep. But when there’s an occasion like the new kids arriving then I still have so many pictures that I can’t really post them all. So then I go through them and pick the very best ones, or the ones where I have a little anecdote to or story to go with them. And then finally I’m left with the pictures I want to post in my blog. But most of them still need some editing and they all need to be resized at least. The original resolution is 2048×1535. Way too big to post. Although some of them look so yummy on my new 19 inch flatscreen. Wow. But yes, I resize them to 800×600 for fullsize and then I make another copy in 400×300 for the blog. This is all very interesting isn’t it? You know what, instead of talking about what I do I think I’ll go and do it. So you all can get extremely cute pictures real soon.
April 22nd, 2006 at 14:23
What?? There’s something wrong with sitting in a goat pen for hours talking to your goats? My husband and I have done it! Had to get our boys used to us a year ago when we first got them. We had both baby goats in a dog pen kennel till we got their barn area ready. So there I was sitting on a bucket in a dog pen talking to goats who were very scared, didn’t want to listen to me, and turned their heads away from us, so all we saw were their rears. How cruel to be rejected by goats! There is no rejection like “goat rear” rejection!
But they finally came around and now they like seeing us and listening to us talk, and we see their heads and faces now, NOT their rear ends. They even like to do tricks for us. They baaaaa now because they’re happy to see us instead of, “Oh no, here they come again to talk to us!”
April 23rd, 2006 at 16:22
hey lasse can we talk?