The American Adventure - Vol 29

1 - 31 October 99

If you want to go straight to Vol 30, you may do so now!

...

Thankfully, the first event of the month has now faded into the distant past. Although maybe only because of the accumulated stresses of the rest of the month (oh, and the fact that this chapter has been so long in coming!)

Someone in the Swedish School organisation thought that it would be a good idea to use a weekend when the classrooms of George Mason High would not be available to take a trip to Philadelphia. In Philadelphia there is the Swedish American Museum which celebrates a short-lived colony of Swedes early in American history. There is also the Old Swede's Church, which is a living remnant of that history.

Sounds great and very appropriate, given the nature of the school. There are a host of problems though. Firstly, the Swedish School (for children) comprises mostly of kids under ten. The Museum is not really kid friendly, they make an effort to give the kids something to do while the parents ooh and aah over deadly boring stuff like bits of broken glass and paintings of old fat people, but your average six-year-old wouldn't want to stay in the museum for more than, say, ten minutes. Needless to say, Swedish School planned to be there for a good hour or so.

When we finally got out of the museum, we headed off for the Old Swede's Church. This was originally built for the Swedish colonial community but has since broken links with the Swedish church and got into bed (figuratively) with the Episcalopians (sp?). So, while there are some interesting architectural features and some well weathered gravestones (hint for people who want to be remembered for a long time, don't skimp on the headstone, buy granite or marble and not sandstone), the church is no longer particularly Swedish. And, again, not particularly interesting for your average six-year-old.

In addition to this, Philadelphia is not exactly close to Washington. It's about two and a half hours away by bus. So that meant that we had to get up ridiculously early to get there at a reasonable time. This certainly did not put Tim in a good frame of mind, noting that he hates to get up at any time of the day that has a 5 or a 6 in it (he's really not that keen on 7s either).

Naturally, Kajsa was working that evening and had promised that she would get back in the region by about 5pm or so and would get into work at 6pm at the latest. The problem with this, of course, is that if you are on a bus, you are totally dependant on the reliability of the bus and/or the bus' operators. And, of course, if you are two and a half hours from home, Murphy would determine this to be a perfect time to have one of the buses breakdown. Throw into this disastrous situation the utter and complete inability of the Swedish School hierarchy to make a decision and you have a recipé for Kajsa totally missing work that day. As it was, they only got themselves sorted out when the short-fused Vice President finally got annoyed enough to take over. Kajsa went up and told them what they needed to do, namely to put everyone on the one working bus and go back to the museum (after being shuttled to the church) and then see which people had a more urgent requirement to be back in Washington.

As it was, the broken bus was fixed by the time we got back to the museum and we ended up getting home no more than an hour and a half late.

The next day was Johan and Jesper's combined birthday party. Tim stayed at home and pottered around the house enjoying some time by himself while Kajsa took the kids. Eventually they came home and we went over to Jill and David to meet their new dog (a little terrier that must have a name but which, for the purposes of the American Adventure, shall be called, the little-licky-dog).

As we were having a roast that night and Jill and David had not yet committed to making (or ordering) dinner, we had them come over and share a bottle of wine over a meal. Tim was a little bemused (to say the least) when he was obliged to partake in the saying of grace. David even put a little special bit in there for Tim's sake, requesting a conversion (no sign of it happening yet). Perhaps that will be enough to save Tim from a dunking in the deepest end of Brimstone Lake. We had a pretty relaxed meal, largely because the kids ate first and the adults were able to eat in relative peace.

While on the topic of food, Taltarni had taken up a rather strange diet during the weekend. Tim had tromped some mud into the house and, although he did try to clean it all up (so he wouldn't get into trouble), he wasn't able to get it all. The next day, Taltarni was in the bedroom with Tim, when she stopped, bent down, picked something up, said "Cookie! Yum yum!" and popped a bit of dried mud in her mouth. It took a few seconds for the pieces to fall into place in Tim's mind (remember that it had been a day since the mud incident) but then he picked Taltarni up and proceeded to wash her mouth out. Mud! Yuk!

On the first Tuesday of the month, there was a bit of a scheduling conflict. There were two important events. There was the Annual Australian Naval Attaché's reception (widely regarded as one of the best functions on the Washington social calendar) and the Town and Country Pre-School and Pre-K Harvest Potluck dinner. We ended up with a form of compromise. Kajsa would not have been forgiven for not attending Taltarni's special dinner - at least not by herself - and would hence do the Potluck. Tim would not have been forgiven by the Naval Attaché for not going to the Reception and therefore spent the evening doing his bit for his country.

Naturally Tim was careful to represent Kajsa's absence in the most favourable light. "So, Kajsa couldn't make it!?" - Ah, well, Kajsa's in a bit of a delicate stage in her twelve step program. "You mean she's pregnant?" - Ah, no, not quite. She's at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

The best response was from Di Morton, the NA's wife. She kept her face absolutely immobile while she processed the information but her eyes revealed that she was thinking something along the lines of "Omigod, what do I say?" An understandable quandary. Tim relented after a few seconds and admitted that he was joking. Still, she was far from the only person to have believed Tim's story. Only Julie Colclough was totally disbelieving. These people obviously have not yet learnt to be careful about taking Tim at his word.

Still, the best reaction that Tim got the whole night was when he actually answered with the truth. Although the question was slightly different. One guy who doesn't know really know us that well politely asked "So, where is Mrs Pyatt?"

Tim answered drily with: - She's dead.

A moment of total silence followed by a choking little splutter. Then Tim took on an expression of realisation: - Oh, you mean my wife!

He is still giggling about this one.

Apart from that the evening was pleasant but uneventful. Just the normal chit-chat.

Later in the weekend Tim started the extra long weekend from hell. He took the Friday off to look after Taltarni who was sick and had the Monday off because it was a public holiday. Kajsa worked three of those days.

Usually you can look forward to such a long weekend, but because of Taltarni's illness, her basically abysmal behaviour and Kajsa's working schedule, Tim dreaded each day.

The most memorable event of the weekend was Taltarni's unscheduled rearrangement of the bathroom. Tim was downstairs and believe it or not he wasn't playing on the computer this time. He was checking on her regularly, partly because Taltarni had been so badly behaved in recent times that you could not leave her alone for more than a few minutes before she was destroying something. We had got into the habit of locking all the doors upstairs when she was having a "nap" but you can't lock all the doors and there is plenty that she could have got access to anyway. As it happens, we could have locked one additional door but, in retrospect, locking the bathroom door may have led to worse things happening.

At some stage, about a quarter of an hour after last checking Taltarni, Tim heard a strange sound and went upstairs to investigate. Sure enough, Taltarni was in the bathroom. She was in the middle of taking a bottle out of the cupboard under the basin, which almost the last item in there. Just about everything else had been taken out, opened and spilled onto the floor. Shampoo, nail polish remover, foundation powder, toothpaste and mouthwash plus a whole swag of stuff that is completely unidentifiable to the average male (and apparently absolutely essential to the average female). The stuff was not only all over the floor, it was also all over Taltarni.

Now this sort of thing is funny the first time. It is slightly less so the next time. By the time that it is a regular occurrence, and the perpetrator seems to ignore all the times she is told never to take things out of the cupboard, etc etc etc, it becomes very annoying.

Tim picked up the towel and was just about to wipe Taltarni with it when he noticed what she had got up for. And what she had used to wipe her bottom with, obviously she had had need of the bathroom. (This, incidentally, solved another long-standing mystery about the origin of the strangely stained towel.) Although it was not one of his finest moments, Tim has to admit that he got a little angry about this. He picked Taltarni up, put her into the bath and started filling it (okay, he admits it, there was a fair amount of yelling as well). He drew the shower-curtain, so that he would not have to look at her (if you can't guess, he was actually a teensy-weensy bit more than a little angry).

Then Tim started to tidy up the bathroom, the first thing he wanted to do was get the window curtain , which Taltarni had managed to pull it down, out of the way.

Somehow, Kajsa had managed to get these stupid curtains up in the first place. The rails she used to do so seem to have no real use, they certainly are useless as curtain rails. So, despite his best efforts, Tim could not get the stupid things to stay up. Numerous times, it seemed that he was close to getting the rail to stay up when the whole arrangement fell down on his head.

As you might guess, this didn't help his temper at all.

In fact, this was about the only time that he can remember actually throwing a real wobbly (certainly as an adult). There was a fair amount of swearing, in English, which is very unusual (hopefully Kalle wasn't listening). A real temper tantrum. Including violence. Not against Taltarni, of course, but let's just say that the curtain rail is now little bent out of shape. Shortly following that, there was some enthusiastic banging with a hammer and eventually the curtains stayed up. Taltarni was cleaned up and, amazingly enough, she obediently went back to bed (where she actually went back to sleep). Then Tim ensured that the bathroom was cleaned up.

After that, Tim went downstairs to see if Kalle was okay. He had come up during the tantrum and has obviously heard the seriousness in Tim's voice when he said "Kalle, this is not a good time, go back downstairs. Now!" Kalle turned tail and left straightaway. (The only good bit about the tantrum, other than the unusual obedience by Taltarni, was the response of a telephone caller. Tim got a call from a telemarketer. He picked up the phone and spat out "WHAT DO YOU WANT?" Hello this is blahdiblah and I was ... "This is NOT a good time." CLICK. Oh to be able to do that every time there is a telemarketer on the line!)

Anyway, Kalle was okay. He didn't even ask whether Taltarni had survived her ordeal.

Later in the weekend, Tim and Kajsa took the evening off to see a movie and go to dinner. Initially we were going to go to Doug and Ann's for dinner that night but Doug was ill so they called it off. As we had booked a baby-sitter, we took the opportunity to get a night out by ourselves. We went to Bennigans, a lovely little Irish pub (by American standards) and then went to see "Three Kings", a movie which is about the Gulf War in more ways than one. It was a morality play, sort of, on the issue of the Gulf War - what was the war really all about - set just after the end of the Gulf War. It was a great, uncompromising movie until the end, at which point it departed from its fresh, unusual style and followed Hollywood tradition. To be fair, no ending would have been fully satisfying in this movie, but at least the non-Hollywood ending would have been closer to what happened after the Gulf War. (Watch it and you might understand this better.)

Then, on Monday which was a public holiday, the kids had no school. Tim stayed at home while Kajsa went to work. By the time Tuesday rolled around, Tim was soooooooo glad to go back to work!

Actually he didn't even manage to escape the kids that long by going to work. Kajsa had Tuesday off and she brought the kids in to do some sight seeing. First she stopped at the Embassy to pick Tim up and then we all set off to the Children's Museum. This is a great place to visit if you want to kill a few hours (preferably if you have a kid, or a partner who has a young mind). There are whole bunch of hands-on, educational exhibits and we spent the afternoon wandering around learning stuff.

Then, in the evening, after a visit to McDonalds, we had a special tour of the White House. Tim had made contact with a sergeant in the Secret Service who works with the Embassies. We had arranged to meet him at the North West gate at 7 pm. Unlike normal, we were on time.

When we got to the gate we were told that the sergeant had been called away at the last moment but that he had arranged for another officer to take his place. Oh and by the way, would you mind coming back in half an hour, when things have quietened down. We found out later that one of the guests at a dinner party that was going on had got a little too drunk and had to be escorted out. Very embarrassing. But then at least he wasn't under the table playing "hide the cigar"!

Anyway, we also got told at that time that we were allowed to take photos, something we hadn't even considered, so we used the half an hour to go back to the car and get the camera.

Finally, all was quiet and we were let into the grounds of the White House. We got a great tour, just us and the kids and Sergeant Joe.

At first we just wandered around the back yard because we were still early for the opening of the West Wing. Then Joe took us into the White House briefing room, he even let us stand behind the podium as if we were briefing the Press. Then we checked out the Presidential Galley (which was in operation due to the dinner party in progress). We were shown a doorway which still shows scorch marks from when the English tried to burn down the White House when they took Washington during the War.

Finally we were taken into the West Wing. We saw a lot of important artwork (which might have impressed us mightily if only we were American). We saw some impressive architecture and we saw the Press Secretary (Joe Lockhard) as well as his office. And, of course, we got to look into the Oval Office and got a run down on everything in there. We weren't allowed to go in but we did get a good look at the room and were given a good description of the layout of the interconnecting offices. Actually, there was one of our party who went in. Kalle was leaning against the velvet "don't go in there" ropes and, technically, he was in the Oval Office. So, for all those who aspire to reach the Oval Office, our son has been there and it isn't that great!

Eventually we went home, very happy that we did the good tour of the White House, not the one that all the plebs have to do! We were even offered an opportunity to join a Congressional Tour of the White House proper. These tours are longer and in smaller groups than the standard tours. Plus, you don't have to stand in line. Of course we want to go, we just have to find the time to get on one!

Now, as has been mentioned before, Taltarni had been sick. She had also been behaving very very badly. She was not progressing very well at school, her speech and comprehension seemed to be way behind and the teachers were concerned about her. Kajsa had got to the point where she thought that we might need to take her out of pre-school.

The only time she was really happy was when, in the evenings, we checked her ears. She loved it when Tim went up with his maglite torch and used it to look in her ears. We started looking in there because she had a huge build up of wax that the doctor found when she was ill the previous week. We had been told that we should put some oil in there each evening to soften the wax and let it drain out. So we had an evening ceremony in which we would answer Taltarni's demands - "ears, check my ears"- and sit there looking in her ears for a quarter of an hour while her earwax soaked in oil.

One day, when she was looking in Taltarni's ears, Kajsa noticed that they were smelly. At first she thought that Taltarni had bad breath but it soon became apparent that it was the ears themselves which smelled. So, we took her off to the doctor again and, lo and behold, found out that she had an ear infection. Well, not just an ear infection. She had a really bad ear infection that had led to her having a ruptured eardrum. Not good.

One of the first questions the doctor asked was "How has she been behaving?" - Terrible. "Yes, no surprise really. How well does she seem to hear?" - Um, not well.

It seems that all Taltarni's problems (or rather our problems with her) stemmed from an ear infection. Later on, when Taltarni finished her course of antibiotics, she went back to the doctor for a check up and they dragged a huge lump of wax from her ear. Kajsa, who was there, was surprised that Taltarni could hear anything with that huge thing blocking up the ear passages. Since then Taltarni has improved immensely. She talks better (although she talks altogether too much). She understands better. She behaves better. She is like another little girl, one that is just as cute but much easier to put up with.

The weekend following the discovery of Taltarni's ear infection was quiet weekend. Tim took the kids for a very short walk to the lake to see some frogs and the nice fall foliage. In truth he only took Taltarni, he planned to take both but Kalle was being silly and refused to come. He spent the time sitting in the front yard instead. On the way back, Tim and Taltarni saw a dead squirrel on the road. It must have been knocked by a car, not run over because it was perfectly intact. Kalle eventually got up from his position on the front yard and came to have a look. They spent almost a whole half hour squatting in the middle of the road just looking at the squirrel and pointing out its characteristics while Taltarni kept saying "Shhh! Squirwel sleeping!"

The next week we all went to Kalle's Harvest pot-luck dinner. This was a huge shmozzle (note the pseudo-local lingo). We got there a little late and a huge queue had already developed for the food which had been laid out on a table that took up 90% of the width of the corridor. With normal American anarchy (aka free market forces and the rights of the individual), they were all trying to gorge themselves simultaneously rather than follow the civilised Swedish tradition of standing around politely and waiting for everyone else to go first. With the extremely restricted space, no-one could move and no-one was willing to make an individual sacrifice in order to make it better for everyone else. No fights broke out but Kajsa did need to be physically restrained.

On top of that, Kalle disappeared as soon as we got there and was not seen until an hour later when we had finally got some food. We made the assumption that if he had managed to run out onto Route 7, we would have heard somehting and steadfastly refused to worry about it. When we finally got something to eat and found a seat, Kalle was already there with a plate piled high with chocolate cake, he naturally refused to eat the slightly more healthy food that we had got for him. Then the region that we were seated in (in one of the classrooms) turned into a battle zone with kids throwing wooden blocks all over the place. A few children were dragged off and we managed to survive the rest of the evening in relative peace (no UN intervention required). Of course, Kalle thoroughly enjoyed himself.

One of the most important events of the week was the commencement of planning for the triumphant return to Australia. Tim went down to the Embassy travel people to find out how much it would cost make the trip he had discussed with Kajsa. At first Tim had thought that it would be nice to take the train across the country. Go to Chicago, maybe go across the top of the US and then down the West Coast or, alternatively, go across the Rockies. That way we would have the adventure of a train trip and we would also get to see a bit of the country.

No, said Kajsa, I don't want to take the train and I don't like Chicago. Let's fly.

So, we discussed it all and came to the conclusion that the places that we wanted to see were Minneapolis, Denver and Las Vegas (and from there the Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam and Death Valley). The travel people looked stunned at Tim when he described his proposed itinery and said that that would be very expensive, had he considered taking the train because it was a convenient way to get across the country - it was less expensive, you would have the adventure of a train trip and you would also get to see a bit of the country.

No way, Kajsa doesn't want to take the train.

"Hm," said the travel people. "Where do you want to go?"

Tim told them. They muttered under their breath and tapped on the computer. "That would cost more than $6000. After the Commonwealth's obligation, it would cost you, personally, around $4000."

Tim gasped. - Um, just for comparison's sake, how much would it cost to do it on the train?

First they had to sort out a new itinery, which presented a problem. Because of the layout of the trainlines, a side trip to Minneapolis would take quite a lot of time (a full day there and back, during waking hours). "How about cutting out Minneapolis and staying in Chicago? Chicago's nice?!"

- No way. Kajsa doesn't like Chicago.

"Oh." It wasn't said, but you could see that the words were being thought. "Another difficult wife."

- How about we try two intineries, one with Minneapolis and one with Chicago?

After some mucking about, with a few date changes it came out that training across the country would cost us about $200, after the Navy paid its fair share. We would get first class seats all the way, with three nights in sleeper cars (Washington-Chicago, Chicago-Denver and Flagstaff AZ-Los Angeles). We'd add a few hundred for tickets to Las Vegas, but those three nights in sleepers were effectively free accommodation. - Thanks, said Tim. I'll take this home and see what Kajsa says.

"That sounds great!" is what Kajsa said.

Tim was somewhat bemused. - But you said that you didn't want to take the train?

"Oh, but if we take most of the trips at night then going by train doesn't really use up many days so that's alright. And I'm sure that Chicago would be nice enough. Why don't we stay there two days? We can always visit Minneapolis another time."

Tim crept back into the travel office the next day, admitting humbly that he didn't really know that long-haired person in his house very well and that, yes, Kajsa was happy to travel by train and that, yes, she was happy to stay in Chicago. Over the next couple of day, he sorted out the final details and made the bookings (which were all notional, luckily because a few things have changed since).

One of the last things he did about the train trip that month was to put together a map of the trip wtih Kalle. Coincidentally enough, the topic for the month for Town and Country First Graders was maps. Kalle's assigned project was to make a map of his bedroom but he also got to take in a map of our planned train trip, which almost perfectly bisects the "Lower 48". For anyone who is interested, the final route is:

Washington to Chicago, Illinois (overnight)

Chicago to Denver, Colorado (overnight)

Denver to Colorado Springs, Colorado (by bus)

Colorado Springs to Santa Fe, New Mexico (by bus, train and bus again, during the day)

Santa Fe to Albuquerque, New Mexico (by bus and train, during the day)

Albuquerque to Flagstaff, Arizona (train during the day and evening - Flagstaff is close to the Grand Canyon)

Flagstaff to LA (overnight)

LA to Las Vegas (and return all by plane)

LA to Auckland

Auckand to Melbourne

Melbourne to Sydney (plane)

Sydney to Canberra (by rental car)

We had an absolutely horrible night's sleep with Taltarni lying awake from about 4am onward on Wednesday morning. She had woken up a few times before and was crying all the time so neither of us got much sleep. Why she chose that particular night to get a dose of whingy insomnia, we'll never know. What Tim knows is that it was terrible timing because he had to get up early in the morning to play golf.

It was a terrible day. It started off badly and just got worse. He is embarrassed to say it, but there were times when Tim honestly wished that he was at the office rather than playing golf. It basically poured solidly for the first fourteen holes. (And there were a few thoughts about how much work had to be done and how little time there was left to do it. Guilty thoughts like that don't improve your golf swing.) He was wet, cold and playing even worse than usual, that is completely ghastly, rather than somewhat ghastly. He whacked too many balls into the water, he lost balls in the forest, he bounced balls off trees, he almost hit his companions with a wild shot - they were positioned dangerously ahead of him, just in range of a viscious hook, so didn't need to feel too bad about that.

The only thing that made the whole day worthwhile was that on the second to last hole, he hit the ball perfectly and it landed on the green. This was the hole on which they had the competition for closest to the pin. Tim's shot put his ball closer than all the previous players had managed! Even the good players! As a result, he won a prize of 12 rather nice golf balls. (Which made up for the fact that, although he was very close to the pin with his tee shot, he was still able to miss the birdy putt. He did get a par though, which is rare enough in itself to be remarkable.)

The pace of our rather busy and pretty highly stressed month slowed down a little on the weekend when we had Doug and Ann over for dinner. Instead of having our normal six to eight guests we made it just us four. It was very pleasant and ,unlike during a normal dinner party, we actually had time to talk to Doug and Ann. Also unlike a normal dinner party, we were still sitting there in the early hours of the morning, sipping port.

As said, apart from that, the weekend was relatively quiet. There was Swedish School on Saturday morning, during which Kajsa and the kids set up a scarecrow on the front step. On the way back from soccer, Tim and Kalle went to pick up Kalle's friend Elias to come over to have lunch and play.

The was a little moment of concern about lunch when as Tim realised that Kajsa had given Elias a sandwich with turkey and cheese. He started up a little nonchalant discussion that went along the lines of: oh, hey, Elias, um - does your family eat kosher?

Tim had noted that Elias' family was Jewish and had thought nothing about it until he noticed that the rule about not eating meat and milk products simultaneously was being broken. He had visions about taking him home and saying "Look I'm sorry, but I think we made your son 'unclean'!" and then seeing Elias dragged into the house screaming "No no no, not the dungeon again!" (To all our Jewish friends, this is a joke, we have very little idea about how you clean the 'unclean'. We suspect that the procedure includes a rabbi, some water, some praying and maybe some incense.)

So Tim was there making polite small talk: - So, what do you think of cheese-burgers? "Oh, I like cheese-burgers!" - So you're allowed to eat cheese-burgers? "Yeah. But my uncle, he doesn't eat cheese-burgers. They're not kosher." - You don't say? (Phew, no dungeon then!)

While Elias was here, he went with Kajsa and Kalle to buy a Pokémon video. Kalle had saved up his pocket money for weeks to buy this video and had been really looking forward to buying it. They were both very excited when they got back and they sat down for the first of Kalle's three viewings that day. He would have watched it three more times on Sunday if only Tim had let him. (What a mean father!)

Later in the afternoon, after Elias had gone home, we went over to visit some newish neighbours, Amy, Mario, Mary Claire and Melanie (who live on the other side of Jill and David). Amy and Mario had recently had a new baby (Melanie) and Kajsa had yet to see her. After a suitable period of cooing and saying "Isn't she cute?" we started to head home for dinner. Mary-Claire, who is a bit younger than Taltarni but much bigger, wanted Taltarni to stay with her and play. Taltarni liked the idea until she realised that we weren't planning to stay with her. Despite our assurances that it would only be for a half hour, Taltarni refused to stay. Poor Mary-Claire, she had been so happy to see Taltarni.

On Sunday, we set up the front of the house for Halloween. First, before she went to work, Kajsa helped make some spiders. Then Tim spread some artificial silk spider web all over the bushes in the front yard. Then in the afternoon Kalle and Tim made a little hanging arrangement with four bats flying underneath a crescent moon. Despite much cajoling from Tim, Kalle was convinced that this had to be hung outside, he absolutely would not accept having it hang in a window.

Mary-Claire stopped in for a short while later that afternoon. It all started when she and Mario walked past with their dog, Ranger. Kalle, who had been playing outside, rushed inside, grabbed Taltarni and dragged her outside to wait for Mary-Claire and her father to to come back. Tim went out to see what was going on and found Taltarni standing by the postbox, with her shoes and her coat on, both of which Kalle had thoughtfully provided because it was a little chilly that day. But she had no trousers and no underwear. When Mary-Claire came back (after Tim had managed to get Taltarni correctly dressed) she came in to play for a half hour or so which made both girls very happy.

By far the biggest and most important event of the month was Tim's involvement in the Annual Interservice Golf tournament. The Commodore, who detests golf almost as much as he detests golfers, must have scared off all the good Navy golfers because, although there was a lot of advertising, only four Navy people volunteered to play for the Interservice competition. Tim, the brave chap, was one of them. As he constantly proclaimed, he was more than happy to bring his huge handicap to the event, even if he would not be likely to assist in the actual playing.

The Army and Air Force, who don't have golf hating bosses, produced two and three teams respectively.

The day was beautiful. The course was beautiful. The result was beautiful. (Tim's golf was not quite so beautiful but it certainly wasn't his normal hideous standard.)

During the lunch at the end of the game, the Army body responsible for checking the scores spent the whole time going over the figures, trying different combinations of handicaps and even eliminating handicaps. No matter what he tried, in every single configuration the Navy came out as the winners. That's impossible, only one person on the team can play golf!

It was a moment of immense pride to think that that, for once in his golfing career, Tim had shared a cart with someone who was almost singlehandedly responsible for winning a golf tournament.

In reality the most important event of the month occurred later that same week when Birgitta, Uffe, Jenny and Agnes arrived for a ten day visit. Kajsa managed to get a lot of time off but Tim was assigned the duty of picking them up from BWI Airport, which is about an hour's drive north, in good traffic, and about two hours when it is bad. Just to be safe, Tim drove up very early and, because he got a dream run, he had an hour and a half to just sit around. He was somewhat less than depressed about the opportunity to do nothing for a while!

When they got back to the house, Kajsa had got back from work and it was time for the grand exchange of gifts. They must have had a whole suitcase dedicated to clothes and prezzies. After we plied them with champagne and a quick meal they were more than ready to collapse into bed.

We spent the following few days doing Halloween things. This was important because Halloween was the central driving force behind the timing the Ohlsson Wevel visit.

First there was a visit to Jill and David's Country Club (where they play tennis). Each year the Club has a big Halloween bash in which they set up a Haunted House and have games, entertainment, dinner and, of course, candy. When we first arrived there was a guy out the front dressed up as Death who managed to scare the bejesus out of Kalle and Taltarni ("too scary"). It was a real trial to get in the Clubhouse. Neither of the kids wanted to get anywhere close to the monster and he was right in front of the doors. Eventually, shielded from the horror with Tim's body (talk about fighting fire with fire!), we managed to get the kids inside where they promptly ran riot.

The most interesting thing for Taltarni that night had to be the magic show. She sat there totally entranced during the whole event. Jenny and Agnes spent the evening suffering from a mixture of total exhaustion (still being jet-lagged) and complete amazement at the over-the-top American kids. Kalle was just completely overexcited. Halloween seems to do that to kids.

Later in the evening, after dinner, we tried to take the kids through the Haunted House, which was really more of a Haunted Tunnel. Neither seriously wanted to go through but Kajsa eventually persuaded Taltarni to have a go. Kalle was another story. He did want to go through, but he was really freaked out about it. He lined up a couple of times, just to pull out of the queue at the last moment. Just as the Haunted House was about to close, Kalle plucked up the courage to go through (with repeated assurances that there were no monsters, that there were just people dressed up and that it wasn't scary). When he finally came out, he was so proud that he had done it. But not so much that he wanted to go through again!

The next day was set aside for the buying and setting up of pumpkins. There was certainly some competitive spirit during the carving of the pumpkins with Uffe and Birgitta coming way ahead in the speed department and Tim demolishing all comers as far as style was concerned. Kalle demanded that Tim carve out a scene entailing a full moon with two bats flying silhouetted against it. Fortunately, noting Tim's poor artistic skills, there was a template that he could use and, although it took ages, he managed to produce a very nice looking pumpkin that Kalle was inordinately proud of.

Then Halloween day came. The actual day could have been really busy, as we had been planning a party (on the evening before, as Kajsa will be quick to point out). Kajsa had been talking about it for a while, noting that the only way that we could attend a Halloween party this year would be if we were to host it. Anyway, as these things happen, Kajsa talked and talked and just as we were about to actually do something about it, we received an invitation in the mail to another party. Frank and Lee Ockwell had been really well organised and got their invites out almost a month in advance. Bugger. We quickly realised that we couldn't really hold a competing party (not now that we knew the other party was on), even if there were a sizable bunch of potential guest who wouldn't have been invited to the Ockwells.

We decided at the time that we would just stay at home with the family and have a nice Halloween together. Then Tim got a call at work from Tony Halberg who said that he might be going to ask a rude question but did he get an invitation to a party from Frank Ockwell?

Hm, thought Tim, perhaps Tony and Shosh haven't been invited and they are trying to find out if they are the only ones being snubbed. He decided on a route of blunt truthfulness.

- Ye-e-es ... why do you ask?

"Bugger, we are going to have a party that day along with the neighbours and we were going to invite a few other people. What do you think, would it be rude to send out competing invites?"

Tim laughed and explained that on the weekend before he and Kajsa had gone through the same conversation. Tim and Tony came to the conclusion that, as a fair number of the people who we would have invited would already have been invited to Frank and Lee's, it would be rude to send out another set of invitations. (After all, we would all be pissed off if someone did something similar to us.) The most annoying bit was that, because of other commitments, we couldn't go to any other party. A real pity because Frank and Lee's party was a really good one from all reports.

Anyway, with the cancellation of our party plans, Halloween shrank down to manageable proportions. We didn't have to spend the morning recovering from the night before and went swimming instead. Then, in the afternoon, we participated in the second Annual Vernon Drive Halloween Parade. The actual parade was a wonder of disorganisation. No-one would obey instructions. Everyone was standing around waiting for enough people to be doing something before acting themselves and, since everyone was therefore standing around doing nothing, they all stood around doing nothing. Tim had somehow ended up with the duty of dragging a stereo around in the bike trailer. When it came to the appointed time, he was told to turn on the music and start walking up the road, which seemed fair enough, but no-one followed him. Kajsa, in normal form, yelled out something to the effect of "Stop, we haven't finished standing around doing nothing yet!" God forbid that a lefty like Kajsa would support someone striking out on his own in the hope that the sheep would follow him.

Uffe was standing on the side of the road, shaking his head in amazement. Tim wandered over and said, as an aside. "And these people put an man on the Moon! Scary, don't you think?" Uffe, agreed and pointed out, from his experience, the other visitors to the Moon are no better. He deals with Russians regularly in his job at Skavska airport. Apparently it is really scary when the Russians fly in. When the control tower gives its ground conditions report, the pilot is supposed to confirm that it was understood by reading the report back. Not the Russians. A cheery "Roger!" is all they ever say and, when they land, it obvious that none of them understands a word of English (the international language of flight).

Eventually, enough of the paraders randomly milled towards where Tim was standing and the parade spontaneously started.

After walking up the hill, down another hill, turning around and heading back up the hill again, we all descended on Jill and David's house for pizza. (Please note that we only descended on the house, not on Jill and the house.) Our contribution, as usual was an icebox filled with Australian beer, which quickly disappeared.

After a couple of hours, when people started drifting away, we went home to rest up for the evening's exertions.

In the early evening, as it started to get dark, we set the house up for trick-or-treaters. Basically this meant that we filled a bucket with candy (yes, we know this is very American but we are in the US so we'll call it candy), put on Adagio by Albinoni, lit candles in the pumpkins and turned off the house lights. Then Kajsa and Birgitta took the kids on a candy seeking odyssey while Tim and Uffe stayed in the front yard, hiding in the shadows, ready to scare any kids who came along. This year, they managed to scare quite a few kids, but not to the point of tears. They left that up to David who was sitting at his front door dressed up as an alien. He managed to totally petrify some small kiddie and probably left him with psychological scars for life.

Once the kids had filled their baskets, Kajsa brought them all home and, after a quick meal, we set off for the excellent Halloween House in Vienna (the one that we had managed to miss last year). It was another good performance, although there was no big shock like in 1997, when the scarecrow came alive. There was scary music, scary lighting and a very scary ghoul in a wedding dress. "That doesn't look that scary," was all that Kalle said. Ah, the innocence of the young!

- Kalle, when you see a woman dressed up like that, you should be afraid. Very afraid.

This year, the Vienna Halloween House (as we have come to know it) had serious competition from a neighbour. This house had set up some gory scenes, there were three witches cooking a steaming broth with various body parts and they had put out spider webs all over the shop. After you got your candy, there was a boy who was hiding the bushes, having a great old time scaring all the punters on their way out. Very uncivilised. We'd never do that! (Tim and Uffe scared them on the way in!)

A couple of hours later, after a bottle of wine, the month was over and a new month had begun.

During the month Kalle's (and Tim's) swimming improved markedly. He is really confident in the water now and was very proud at being able to swim where it was 12 feet deep. Kalle is too.