"This is my turf, you go get your photos elsewhere!"
Well, excuse me ladies...
The family is having their dreams. Walter (now age 6) looks up to his father and wants a job in the military, but that could change many times over before he finally grows up. ;)
Marriage and being faithful to your partner is important for Sofie.. her dreams this night is much more pleasant than the dreams she had before Walters birthday.. will she wake up in a good mood this morning, or will she still be sad and grumpy?
Eivind dreams about planes.. or anything that's high up in the sky, where his job is. ;) Eivind still remembers the moment when he was very young and a meteor crashed in their backyard... And since then he's been unable to let go of the thought of learning about space, and finally becoming an astronaut... His mother Eirin still has that meteor on their back balcony, and she sometimes walks out there to have conversations with it.. maybe there's alien life on it?
Kleopatra dreams of her school trip to the mausoleum. Otto kept flirting with her in the mausoleum, so maybe love is in the air? ..but then she saw a ghost, and that was much more fun, so maybe not... does a flower have an odd or even number of petals? :P
Eivind is, as usual, the first one to get up and eat breakfast among the smelly leftovers from yestermonths birthday party...
..before he goes from computer to computer to post inappropriate things on internet forums.. He has gone to the computer in their bedroom when Sofie wakes up, and yep, this morning she's in a good mood. She's still thinking about fishing trips, and making the bed... Sofie has gotten more of a perfectionist with age, another thing she has inherited from her dad, so she can't leave the bed unfinished..
That is what she ends up doing though, as her husband, as soon as she wakes up, starts to feel romantic and ditches the pointless forum trolling for something much more worthwhile. ;) He goes in for a romantic hug and a kiss, and Sofies response is to talk about her fear of heartbreak... She doesn't say it outright, but she would be absolutely devastated if Eivind should decide to leave her..
Kleopatra wakes up next and a little grumpily, she decides to do the homework she didn't have the time to do yesterday.. Eivind walks upstairs to talk to her about Walters birthday party being an awesome event, to which Kleopatra has a snarky remark about the leftovers that nobody seems interested in cleaning up...
"Well, I don't have time for that, I gotta go to work..."
It's not until Walter wakes up to get ready for his first day of school someone takes responsibility to clean up the dishes... Well, this should make mom and dad happy, shouldn't it?
After he has hopped on the schoolbus, Sofie saves and then quits her computer game downstairs to do some much needed laundry. Sofie has from an early age decided that when she got married, she would do whatever it takes to make sure the marriage stays and doesn't fall apart. That has always been very important to her.. in good days as well as during the bad ones... why else would one make that promise?
Speaking of promises and marriages.. There is one important person Sofie wants to talk to, but didn't find the time to during the birthday party – her father. So she hops into her fast green car to drive the short, but long, drive up to her old childhood home...
Sofie has to stop on the sidewalk for a while.. The house looks excactly like it did when she moved out, the way it always has for as far back as she can remember. They have still kept the sickly green colour on the walls, inside and out... She finds it hard to imagine that this house was once nothing but a small shack, though she has seen old photos of it... of the way it looked when her mom and dad first moved here as newlyweds in the late 1970s... A marriage that was 11 months away from making it to its tin anniversary..
Sofie walks her way to the front door to ring the doorbell, before she takes a step back waiting for someone to open.. Her father always likes to take his time, so she is left waiting for a while. She can hear the sound of his flip flops moving lazily across the floor, before he finally opens the door. She mutters a few words before he walks up to give her a formal greeting and invite her inside.
Sofie initiates the conversation by complaining about how hard it is to do dishes and to get them clean enough, and they both rediscover that they share the grumpy and the perfectionist trait.. This is largely where Sofies grumpiness comes from.
There are always four sides to every story, and Asgeir, though he was always faithful, wasn't always the easiest man to share a roof with. Due to his grumpy mood, he often had his off days where almost everything seemed wrong, and of course, the next thing he does is to launch into an argument with Sofie about a piece of classical music.. I believe classical music to be his favorite music. It has to be, because it's pretty much always playing in this house. :P
Sofie however, didn't come there to argue and she doesn't really have to strong feelings neither for nor against classical music, so she pretends to agree with whatever he said, and they continue a conversation about music in general that is much more relaxed.
Asgeirs life has revolved around books and painting, so Sofie picks her conversational topics with care. It's important for Sofie to stay on good terms with her dad, and after she has fulfilled her wish of talking to him, she wants to hand him a gift.
Luckily, she already has a book in her inventory to give him, and even though the book turned out to be a childrens book, he was still happy about the gift. :P
Sofie then wants to brighten her fathers day by telling him a true sunshine story, but he's not up for it and it just bores him..
"Why is dad so hard to please? I just want us all to hang out and stay together.. like a family..." Sofie thinks to her self, disheartened once more, as she walks over to the juice station for a drink and to watch the romance channel.. At least the people on the tv live a happy, perfect life...
While she was having a few drinks, her father had followed the sound of someone playing guitar and walked into one of the rooms at the end of the hallway. The room that he walked into used to serve as his office, where he wrote all his books and painted most of his paintings.
Sofie decides to follow the sound of the guitar too, after getting a little buzzed from the juice. And to address the teddy bear in the room, I have no idea what it's doing there. It could be a left over from Jonathan and Sofies childhood, or maybe something they own in case their grandchildren wanted to come over and play. :P
The sound of the guitar comes from Sofies mom, Lucie. They are divorced, but they still live in the same house that they have more or less built together. Before Lucie could move back in, Asgeir had built a seperate apartment for her with her own entrance. They had agreed in the beginining that her apartment would be off limits to him, since they didn't still didn't want to see each other.. or couldn't see each other, without a literal fight erupting.. they have since reconciled and every room of the house is now open to both of them. They decided to live like this, not for themselves, but for the sake of their grandchildren, so that they could come over and visit and have both grandma and grandpa present at the same time..
Lucie notices she's got a pair of onlookers and tucks the guitar away, to engage in a group conversation. It's not to often mom, dad and daughter are all in the same room. The conversation is good for a while, but Asgeir has to ruin the mood by launching into an argument about politics with Lucie.. He has always been a difficult man, but his tendency to argue tripled after he learnt she was cheating on him, and thought it has cooled down considerably, the hurt is still there..
Lucie scowls and immediately clenches her fists in response with a face of someone that could probably kill a man... Sofie looks at her father "Was that really necessary?"
Asgeir realizes he's made a fool of himself, and decides to leave the room with Lucie hurling an insult to go at him... This wasn't how Sofie wanted the visit to turn out, though it was kind of what she had expected...
"See you later, mom..." Sofie says as she leaves the room thinking her parents could need some time seperate to cool off again..
Sofie decides to kill some time having a few more drinks by the juice bar again until she gets hungry. That's when she thinks she'll give it another go for them to do something together as a family, and wants to take them out dining..
She decides to take them out to the Corsican Bistro, because she knows the food there is excellent. She wrote the menu herself. ;) Sofie has already decided to go for a quick burger, and Lucie isn't all that hungry she quickly picks out a simple sandwich, but Asgeir...? He takes his time.. and they wait.. and they wait.. before he finally shows up with a simple hot dog and mashed potato meal..
When they decide on their seating, Lucie immediately goes for the table with three chairs, but Asgeir doesn't follow her there and neither does Sofie, as she sits down with her father. She asks him why he took so long to decide and still ended up with a meal from the kids menu... "You should've tried our chicken legs instead, they're ace."
Lucie is saddened that they didn't want to sit at her table and she had to eat alone.. but at least Asgeir and Sofie had a nice meal together, before Sofie had to run back inside the restaurant to start her evening shift...
------
Like mother, like daughter.. Kleopatra is home from school and has sat down to watch the cooking channel on tv.. She also wants to make friends with her aunt Helene after the birthday party, so she decides to give her a call to discuss the latest celebrity gossip and the importance of smoke detectors..
"You have to be careful when cooking, so you won't accidentally set fire to your kitchen" Helene says, hoping that the teenager will avoid the same mistake Helenes own absent minded mom once did...
Walter, when he came come home from school, went directly to his sisters bedroom to start a gigantic painting.. The easel there was Kleopatras birthday gift when she became a teenager. A bit of failed gift, because Kleopatra has never shown any interest in painting...
Kleopatra has, since Walters birthday party, gotten the idea that she wants to make as many friends as possible, so before she sits down at the kitchen table to do her homework, she gives a call to Robert whom she is almost friends with, to invite him over to hang out. She is very excited that he agreed to come over. ;)
Kleopatra puts away her homework as he walks up the stairs and welcomes him to the house, and Robert is happy to be invited. Then through the window, I see a familiar shape standing on the grass below the Art Associations building...
It's Lise Veronica just standing there. Maybe she just watched the flowers, maybe she is contemplating picking them and giving them to Kristina as a sign of affection.. or maybe she's just being weird, I don't know.. :P
Kleopatra and Robert quickly moves to the sofa in the living room area where they discuss summer and vacation plans among other things. Eivind eventually comes home from work to join them, and both Robert and Kleopatra is a bit flabbergasted when he once again threatens Kleopatra with being grounded if she doesn't behave, even though she hasn't really had the time to do any mischief since before the birthday party.. Robert comments that his mother Ranveig isn't as strict, and that she trusts him more to do mostly do what he wants, and that maybe Eivind should be the same way. Kleopatra agrees and this fulfills her wish of becoming friends with Robert. ;)
Sofie is finished with her shift at work and receives a message from her boss, Iliana Langerak, on her phone. She has one of those modern type of phones where you can enlarge the screen beyond the size of the phone. Amazing what modern technology can do. ;) Sofie is excited about the message, since Iliana hosts a party and wants Sofie to come. Of course, Sofie replies yes and is just about to go, but quickly changes her mind..
..because Sofie knows that Iliana can be a bit erratic. It seems Sofie is right, because I find a crowd outside Hogans Diner scratching their heads and laughing at Iliana, wondering what she is doing there in her swimsuit...
So instead of going to the party (or going home), Sofie decides to walk a round circling the restaurant where she stops by the back door to gaze at a little rodent. A rat of all things.. Sofie finds the rat cute, but I don't.. There's a rat by the backdoor of your restaurant, Sofie.. if I were you, I would start laying out traps and poison.. because if there are rats outside, there are probably rats inside too! Not cute... :P
Then another rat shows up as Petter Lande was also on a late night stroll around the restaurant..Now the he found Sofie alone without her husband, he's got a confession to make, and promptly invites her home to his place after work for "just a bottle of wine..."
Sofie is offended and wants none of that! That's the stupidest thing she has heard – in a good while! Sofie will do almost anything for love, true and steady love, but she won't do that! No way, not at all! Sofie has already seen what such a thing can lead too and has since long concluded that it's not at all worth it....
..so she leaves the good for nothing moron behind and heads back to her own family, where Robert is still there discussing school with Kleopatra, even though he said he had to be off for work while they were still on the couch.. but hanging out with cousin Kleopatra isn't half bad, and it sure beats going to work...
..but all fun things come to an end, if only temporary, as Kleopatra gets tired and wants to go to bed. She wishes him a good night and says they could hang out together again some other time, before she goes down to her room to find her brother there still painting on her easel..
I smell a future painter here. It looks like Walter is very keen on following in the footsteps of his grandfather, also a well known painter. Walter has been so caught up in painting, he even forget to eat and do his homework... and when Kleopatra tells him to leave the room so she can go to bed, he still has discuss his favorite colours with her. ;)
Kleopatra goes to bed and quickly falls asleep as he leaves the room to go upstairs and finally get himself a meal. The fridge still has plenty of leftovers from his birthday, so finding something good to eat isn't that hard.. and his homework? Well, it can wait....A painter has no need to learn mathematics or rehearse grammar rules... that is, if a painter is what he'll end up becoming..
Good night. ;)
New homes and house expansions...
Now if you remember how last year ended and this year started with Amena looking for a new home for her and George, and buying the empty lot on 180 Redwood Parkway.. I want to go there and take a look at how it has been doing since last time..
Evolution of 180 Redwood Parkway since Amena bought it in january. It's starting to look like something. I'm sure it will be a nice house for Amena and George when it gets finished. ;)
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