Angel School

As you may or may not be aware, Norway's Princess Märtha Louise has opened an "angel school". She claims that she can help people learn to be sensitive enough to the presence of angels by using her psychic powers. Not surprisingly, Yahoo's Odd News section thought the story was funny enough to put on their homepage about a week ago.

Of course, when I read about this in the Norwegian newspapers, I didn't quite get it. I thought "Engleskole" was surely a metaphor for something and couldn't possibly be taken literally. It was only after the local press, the foreign press, the layman and the academic started to criticize her in earnest did I realize that this was for real. (The Swedish foreign press mocking Märtha Louise is especially ironic. Their King Carl XVI Gustaf is one of the last of the surviving wingnuts from the hay day of inbred-monarchies. He's harmless, though he keeps the PR secretaries in whirl trying to tone down his antics.)

A great headline regarding the princess' antics was "Finally! Märtha Louise Will Turn Norway into a Republic!" The author was referring to the debate on whether or not Norway should do away with the monarchy all together. The media has tackled every angle of this absurdity and they have very nearly done with a straight face. I started laughing every time I saw a commentator's lips twitching when announcing the lead up to yet another "Engleskole" segment.

Märtha Louise has been a real trooper, speaking out in the press on behalf of her school. One of her lines of defense is that she "doesn't understand how we can teach our children not to mock one another when the adults behave as they do." Which, of course, left me in breathless hysterics.

The Plan Came Together

Today was a surprisingly good day where all kinds of small schemes came together very, very nicely.

The first was that Anders and I remembered our anniversary all by ourselves - the first time in four years. We thankfully had several people remind us of the day just the same.

After two weeks of encouraging Theo (his name is officially Theo now) to eat every 2 to 3 hours instead of every 1 to 2 hours, we hit a comfortable rhythm for the first time. Without too much fuss, I was able to change his diaper, and have him eat and sleep within a reasonable time. If this continues, I just might survive next week when Anders goes back to work.

Lastly, I was totally surprised that I managed to squeeze my postpartum ass into a pair of pre-pregnancy jeans. I read over and over again that a new mom must be patient with her body after delivery. It was best summed up as "9 months up, 9 months down". I took the advice to heart and I have been relaxing and not stressing about the new, odd shape of my body. What I didn't count on was how fast little Theo would be sucking the life out of me while breastfeeding. Most pre-pregnancy clothes still do not fit me on account of the newly acquired canteens on my chest, but the jeans were a pleasant surprise.

While riding high on all of these small achievements, Anders and I decided to go to Ikea with Theo in tow. The chaos of it all shattered his two week old nerves and the poor thing first sobbed, then retreated into shell-shocked silence after we got to the check out line. With our nerves equally shot, we left the store with not much more than a guilty conscious. Uff! I don't think we're gonna repeat than experiment again for a while.