Swimming in our own soup

For the last little while, Freya has been worrying her ear. A vigorous scratch with a paw here, a shake of the head there, as if something was living in there, buzzing around, nibbling, being generally annoying. She has also started biting her feet. It was time to take her to a vet to find out what the problem was.

There’s a vet in Trosa. She actually practices in Södertälje but spends time in Trosa, not far from the ICA. I found her after contacting the vet surgery in Gnesta. Anyway, I made contact and today was the appointment. We figured it would be good to have her check Emma’s eyes as well.

It wasn’t our only task today. I also had an appointment in Vagnhärad with Alexandra at the SFI school. SFI is Swedish for Immigrants and is exactly that. Nicoline had set me the challenge of signing up for and attending classes. And today was the initial interview.

The biggest surprise was walking into the building and being greeted by Christina’s mum who gushed about the girls. Christina is the young woman who looks after the girls sometimes. Her mum teaches at the SFI school. As she said, when you live in a small town like Trosa, you are destined to run into people in the most unlikeliest of places.

Anyway, I had my interview which included reading some Swedish from a book, attempting to translate the text. And, truth be told, I was quite amazed at how much I could understand. Though, my pronunciation was shit. When she stopped me I apologised for the pain I’d put her through.

Anyway, the upshot was that I will begin classes next week for a fortnight, starting at B1 level. Alexandra said it would not be long before I was in B2. We shall see. Obviously, her English was excellent. As was Christina’s mum’s.

At the house, Harald was saying how, in Germany, they were only ever taught German. Some people studied English because they really wanted to. He said “We are swimming in our own soup.” Which sounded delightfully descriptive and somewhat gross.

Afterwards, we drove into Trosa for a morning coffee. The day, as usual, was beautiful.

I also popped into the library to find out how I go about joining. I was in there for about ten minutes during which time, the chap at the counter joined me up. I needed a library card, so I could borrow the text book I’ll need for language classes.

Unlike a lot of things we’ve tried to do, joining the library was incredibly simple. As was visiting the vet this afternoon.

Of course, Freya hated and shivered through every minute while Emma was perfectly well behaved. The vet kept assuring Freya that she wasn’t going to touch her few remaining teeth, but it was all to no avail. Freya clung to me like a possessive barnacle on a boat.

There was nothing terrible about Freya’s ears. It was probably the combination of the warm weather, pollen and her excessively hairy ears, the vet said. She prescribed a lotion for us to rub into her ear when she scratched it.

Emma had her eyes tested for moisture content. It was pretty low, so I was instructed to put the miracle gel into her eyes twice a day rather than just at lunchtime. The vet also said she’d have an eye specialist contact us so they could examine her properly.

We walked home afterwards to find that Harald had finished for the day.

Adventures in Decking – Day 2

All the beams are in, the little cut away section is finished and the ramp has been started. There was a lot of progress today after Mirinda made a few changes.

I think it’s well on course for an end of the week completion.