Memorial weekend bargain hunting

At the beginning of the week I got an email from IKEA announcing a Memorial Day sale. This classic modern chair, designed by Noburu Nakamura some 20 years ago (?) was on sale today only, for a super bargain price of $39 each. I could not resist... for both practical and sentimental reasons.

Practical: before I left for Puerto Rico I left my bedroom, guest room/study and dining room furniture in storage, but sold practically all my living room ones - and left furniture I had in Puerto Rico there, so, once I moved into my new place I would have nowhere to sit, unless I bought something new, so a couple of those chairs, especially at this unbeatable price seemed like a perfect solution.


A street in Ystad, a well preserved medieval town

Sentimental: I owned a couple of those - with pale blue cushions - some 15 years ago, when I worked in Poland, but had a seaside apartment in Ystad, in southern Sweden.

Lodz

Poland at that time was still in its early post communist period, and was certainly a fascinating place to work in, but utterly uncomfortable to live in, so every month I worked for about 24 days straight, workdays and weekends, just to be able to escape to my tranquil Swedish seaside paradise for one week, breathe some fresh air ( I worked in Lodz, at that time a heavily polluted industrial city of almost one million inhabitants squeezed like sardines in tiny - and mostly dilapidated - communist era apartments, or crumbling - and equally dilapidated - early industrial ones),

walk on practically empty, miles long beaches, flanked by wild rose hedges,

heather filled meadows and pine forests....

I loved it there... but work - and new adventures took me elsewhere... so now I had to have at least those armchairs again!

On Thursday Disa and I went to IKEA for lunch ( Swedish meatballs with lingonberries!) to preview the various options before today's mad dash, and there, while testing the different types of cushions for style and comfort, I got engaged in an animated conversation with an interesting guy... and made a new friend :-)

To buy.... or not to buy. That is the question

very suitable for the days of after Christmas shopping madness.

No, I do not participate in the general shopping madness - but am pondering a question whether to buy furniture. If I want to move to the unfurnished apartment I need to either buy new furniture (which seem rather ugly here: the preferred furniture color here seems to be all the "lovely" shades of poo: from beige to brown. Brr... And the shapes are either too countryish crude or too twisted ornamental - definitively not me. I am afraid I would have constant nighmares surrounded by this type of furniture) .. or get my remaining ones shipped.

Yet - less than three months ago - I promised "kids" who help me with my countless moves, that there would be no more moves with furniture and stuff. And I sold and gave away most of my Finnish and Swedish well loved arctic birch pieces, my white Italian leather sofa and armchair. And now I am dreaming of IKEA - something light, simple, unassuming, unpretential, unserious even - something that would function perfectly as furniture but did not feel confining.

Uh, huh, why oh why IKEA aren't you here? Shopping would be so easy - and so enjoyable.

Without you I have to wander among many small local furniture stores with really, really heavy, dark and ugly pieces, almost crying... yet I can't move to the apartment I like and sit, eat and sleep on its pristine white ceramic floors!!!

Crayfish party and bacon pancakes

Friday night Daughter and I went to the SACC/SWEA ( Swedish-American Chamber of Commerce, Swedish Women Educational Association) sponsored typical Swedish crayfish party held at the IKEA store in midtown Atlanta.

We were squeezed too tight (table rows were too close together, round tables in rows only added to sitting an moving discomfort) but the party was a typical kraeftskiva (crayfish party in Swedish) : noisy, rowdy, fun! An opportunity to meet local Swedes, speak Swedish, and sing Swedish “snaps-visor” (=alcohol praising songs) while eating tons of crayfish cooked in a dill-spiced water.

Eating whole crayfish without proper crayfish utensils is pretty difficult, but Daughter had a stroke of genius and initiated use of a heavy water glass to smash crayfish claws with in order to get to the meat inside them. Found followers soon, since it beats risking your teeth: less troublesome and a lot less expensive, should a crayfish prove too tough for either teeth or glass.

It was already a second crayfish party this year for me. Last weekend we had a “family” crayfish party on the huge balcony of my mountain place. “Family” and not family, since the “crowd” was a tad dysfunctional (?) or at least unusual: Daughter, me and my Ex-son-in-law. Yet we had a good time. It is always nice when a divorced couple can be friends and socialize with each other.

We ate crayfish (purchased from IKEA), with good Swedish cheese and even better - not Swedish - red wine (but we also had Swedish Elderberry Aquavit for the sake of tradition. I usually avoid such strong alcohol in an undiluted form, but Elderberry Aquavit tastes surprisingly mild, so I had a whole shot), watched a beautiful sunset over the lake, and later the fireworks from a couple of marinas around it - since it happened to be the Labor Day weekend. Very festive.

The Jake-o- Lantern, in Sweden called a full moon lantern and used to lit crayfish parties is still hanging over my terrace table. I wonder what my American neighbors are thinking seeing it hanging there at the beginning of September, since for them it is a Halloween decoration. They might think, that I, an immigrant, somehow got the American traditions wrong.

Yesterday, after getting up late ( at Daughter’s condo in Atlanta) after the crayfish party, we scrambled to make our reserved time for breakfast at the Original Pancake House.

Daughter wanted me to try the southern specialty of bacon pancakes. We have both been living - off and on - in the US for the last 25 years and always avoided the combination of bacon or sausage with pancakes, eating - if we indulged in a typical American breakfast - separately eggs and bacon and then pancakes. But a few months ago Daughter went for a retreat and there the only available breakfast food was bacon pancakes, so she decided to brave it… and fell for them. I do have to admit: surprisingly good, too good in fact, so I am lucky I am moving away in a month's time to a place where, hopefully, no one will serve them, so I might avoid gaining a ton of weight. ;-) To tell the full truth, we weren’t brave enough to smear our pancakes with eggs before pouring maple syrup over them, so - smart as we are ;-) - we ordered those pancakes without eggs.

I am moving in a month, sort of overseas, and, anyway, to an island, which poses a special sort of challenges, you might think, so what am I doing starting a blog and blogging about crayfish and bacon pancakes? Ah, well, today I was supposed to sort my study - things to take, things to throw away, things to leave with Daughter…. so I decided to distract myself from that mundane and oh so boring duty by starting a blog… until it was time to go see Benjamin Franklin exhibition at Atlanta History Museum