12.30.09
Posted in News at 22:00 by nikki
I was going to write a bunch about some things going on here but for now I think I’ll just say HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Here are a few photos from a walk that Rúnar took the dogs on yesterday, unfortunately he didn’t get any photos today it was so cold -12.5 Celsius which for us is extremely cold because of the wind chill factor. Even yesterday when he brought the camera in it was almost frozen. He took Hófi with him as well today so it’s too bad that we don’t have any photos of her in the snow with the gang, but she had a great time just like the other ones. Little Frigg was alone at home with me since I had a bit of a sore throat. I’m trying to take care since we are going out to dinner at a friend’s tomorrow and also going to do a P.A.T. (puppy temperament test) and P.A.W.S. (working dog test) test on a litter of 5 Puli puppies on New Year’s day. Looking forward to that, it’s always fun to see different breeds as puppies.
I do want to mention a great litter though, born and living in Holland out of a grandpuppy of mine. A wonderful combination with rare bloodlines. Please check out this beautiful litter at frá Fuglatorgi kennel. Unfortunately some of my links are not working from my links page on the right and I will have to try when I get some time to make a new links page for my puppies and grandpuppies since I can’t go in and change the old website that these links are from. So please use the link above.
There is some serious stuff going on at the Parliament and more demonstrations are in the making it looks like. We are watching it live on the the state TV station.
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12.26.09
Posted in News at 21:19 by nikki
First of all, thank you all for your lovely condolences as well as your greetings for Christmas. We didn’t send many cards this year at all and I still haven’t figured out it’s Christmas really. There is no snow and it’s just been a bit “unreal” for me for some reason. We did try to send an email card to those we know and hopefully if I forgot anyone you got the greeting here. Still wishing everyone a great holiday!
Wow, it seems there is so much going on on chat lists lately that I feel like I’d like to send my 2 cents worth but I just can’t find the time to write emails or posts. I used to spend almost all my time answering letters and posts on chat lists and took time from other letter writing, or other things that desperately needed to be done around the house or with my dogs. I hardly got any feedback (although I was always greatful to the few souls who sent me privately thank you notes) or got my words twisted and heard rumours of things I’d said or written and decided that my time was better spent keeping my foot out of my mouth. Hehe
Maybe I should just let sleeping dogs lie and allow people to discuss things between themselves, my opinions can get me in trouble sometimes. Hehe. 
Not much new, we had a very relaxing Christmas alone at home with the dogs. I took a bunch of photos of our Xmas but it seems the order is not going to come out right, it’s right in the file but when it gets put together in the album they get all mixed up. Oh well, can’t fix it so whatever, but you can see a photo of the pond in Hafnarfjördur where we walked downtown on the 22nd with Birta and Klói, it was beautiful, cold with very loud Christmas music and booths selling all kinds of stuff as well as Christmas trees decorated and fires going with a nice smell of Christmas. I unfortunately didn’t get any photos of the Christmas village itself because I had Klói and it was a bit too dark so the photos I got of Rúnar with both outside the village didn’t turn out. 
More photos you can see are on Christmas eve. Klói very interested in the presents that we brought out to the couch to open, then they wanted to see what Rúnar got in one package. Klói with a toy on the couch but so much more interested in the toy that Skella had because that was the toy he “picked out” at the outside market in Hafnarfjördur that we went to the other day. He and Birta came with us and so he knew about that toy and has been waiting for it since. He got to play with it later in the evening and he had a ball jumping all over the bed with it throwing it up in the air and then chewing on it a bit. He can be such a goof ball and so cute you just want to hug him silly sometimes!
Besides us going to the Christmas village we also went into Reykjavík almost all day on the 23rd. Driving gifts to family, so we had a nice visit with Rúnar’s grandparents with Frigg and Hófi. We went to David’s and stopped for a short chat, Rúnar’s mother’s and Rúnar’s sister’s but the dogs stayed in the car, we decided to take them into the garden store for a bit of a peek at all the stuff in there. They thought that was strange to be able to come into a store and we bought a stuffed Scrooge there for them as one of the toys they got for Christmas together. We got a new bed for Frigg and Hófi’s cage…a few days earlier, think I already mentioned that but maybe just on Facebook. I’m getting to be such a scatter brain never remember if I mention things here, on the phone or on Facebook. :-Þ Anyway, it was on one of our dogless trips to Reykjavík for Xmas shopping and we stopped at Beggi’s uncle and aunt’s pet store, always love to see them, they are wonderful. Their store was closed but they were filling shelves and stuff and let us in so we didn’t have to go to the mall and try to find a parking spot. We were pretty much in Reykjavík every day for a week it feels like, luckily not too much ice or snow on the mountain (don’t know what it’s like today but I believe there is a bit now). In any case I’m really tired from all the driving or should I say from sitting in the “backseat driver’s seat”.
Rúnar is at his Mom’s house in Reykjavík tonight for some Xmas dinner probably traditional Icelandic dishes. I don’t eat the smoked or salted lamb anymore…had chest pains from it quite a few years ago (we used to eat it every year) and haven’t had the longing to try it again since. Many people end up in hospital each year because of that tradition of “hangikjöt” (smoked lamb) although it is quite good it’s obviously not good for everyone. I am alone with the dogs eating homemade turkey (leftovers of course) soup with garlic because I’ve eaten way too much sugar lately and woke up this morning with a sore throat and have been starting to cough a little, it’s is SO COLD outside it’s ridiculous. Must be that and also from hugging all the relatives and being in the stores. I haven’t been sick this year yet…knock on wood and I know many have already had the flu or have gone for the vaccination (which I will NOT do) and no doubt in such a populated place like Reykjavík many that are sick but don’t know it yet. Gotta fight off any bacteria before it gets a hold on me so lots of honey, garlic and cinnamon. I thought the dogs have been alone at home so much lately and I’m thinking it’s not so good for Skella and Hófi being pregnant and being alone too much too long at a time because both of them get stressed alone especially Skella, she HATES being alone at home and doesn’t seem to be able to relax until we come home. The trips into Reykjavík take so many hours because of the drive so even though we don’t intend to stay away too long it always ends up being at least 4-5 hours when we hurry! I wanted to stay home with them a bit and decided to use a bit of the time writing an update because it’s been awhile.
I gave in and was going to be a good housewife and baked one type of cookies for Rúnar that I used to make all the time. Chocolate crinkles one of my favourites from the old days when I didn’t eat gluten free. It was hard work and the recipe made way too much (I’d forgotten how much it made) and needless to say he’s been too busy chomping on chocolates and too much food to want any of my cookies and I can’t eat them or pawn them off on anyone else. Oh well, I guess I’m not going to be baking next year.
Our stupid dishwasher decided it was going to give up for good on Christmas eve! I tell you it’s a good thing there is just the two of us here using dishes or that would really suck big time. I did get used to using it I can’t lie but at least we don’t have an army to clean for. Rúnar spent most of Christmas day trying to fix it and ended up having to declare it unfixable, it’s over 19 years old so can’t say it didn’t have a good run just not at our house. Hehe
I hope everyone had a good Christmas with friends and family, we still have a dinner with his grandparents left to go to tomorrow and we’re probably going to be a bit busy in Reykjavík too for a few more days during the holidays. Huh! It’s strange to not see Rúnar’s father at Xmas and Rúnar hasn’t been able to catch him on Skype either. I’ve been lucky enough to be able to talk to most my family on MSN.
Rúnar was his usual awesome self and his Christmas gift to me like every year was to totally do all the work of cooking, cleaning, decorating and I got to sit and relax and watch movies or be online. I wasn’t allowed to be in “his” kitchen while he was making the feast of turkey with stuffing and all the trimmings. He even insisted I watch TV while he did the dishes on his own. I just love him to bits…he knows exactly how to make my Christmas perfect!
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12.24.09
Posted in News at 02:52 by nikki
You can click my photo to see a bigger version.
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12.18.09
Posted in News at 00:51 by nikki
First things first: HAPPY BIRTHDAY KAT!
Well, I’ve let the website (the blog) go without updating for a bit…gotta get back to “normal”. I’ve been a bit out of sorts of course I’m sure people understand. Yesterday was my Nana’s funeral and I had sent a poem I wrote about her, I don’t know if people want to read it or not. No doubt I can post it if anyone wants to read it but it’s just my thoughts, memories of my grandmother and don’t know if it will make so much sense to others. My Dad said they used it as the eulogy so I’m a bit happy that it turned out well enough that they wanted to read it out loud. My Dad actually told me yesterday that he thought I had a talent for writing and for those who know my Dad that is the greatest thing I could have ever heard from him, he never has been one to give compliments or say he’s proud of anyone so it brought a tear to my eye to hear that from him. Maybe he’s just getting softer in his old age.
My cousin flew to Cambridge for the funeral with her family and I both envy her and at the same time a bit relieved I didn’t have to be there as I know I wouldn’t have stopped crying with all the family in one spot. My brother Chris (lives in Vancouver) talked on MSN the night before the funeral and I know he was really down as well. It was great to hear from him, hardly ever do. Also remarkably caught my sister on MSN just as she walked in to my Dad’s to get ready to drive back to her house so I had a great couple evenings with a few friends talking to me on Facebook chat as well as my brother and then last night talked to my Mom, my Dad and my sister. I’ve heard from everyone how much they loved my cousin’s little family and how happy they were that they were there. 
We went to the store and bought a candle holder with a saucer for oil and a bottle of lavender scented essential oil. We burned a candle for my Nana with the smell of lavender which was her “scent” and one of her favourite flowers. The best we could do but our hearts were there.
Yesterday I went to get my hearing checked in the morning and it took an hour and afterwards he showed me the chart and said that I was below normal, had some obvious hearing loss but not enough for the government to pay for a rebate on a hearing aid. He said he had a couple types that might help with the constant ringing too but that the ringing would come back as soon as I took it out again so wouldn’t help me at night. I asked the price and when he showed me I said I’d be just fine without one thank you!!! Kr.300.000,- or the equivalent to about $2.500,- . He did tell me to make an appointment with an ear and throat specialist though and maybe he can help me to figure out what is causing it.
What else have we done lately? We’ve held our course or should I say Rúnar went last Sunday on his own and I stayed home. We then went to see what people were doing in the clicker training group that meets once every two weeks. They decided to meet on Tuesday at 6 p.m. so since Rúnar is off we decided to take the trip to town to see. Well it ended up that a couple people there want to come to our next course, and speaking of courses Rúnar is starting to put together a new slide show for the future courses so we don’t have to use my old one because it was way too long, designed for an 8 hour seminar and we have to do all the talking in about 3 hours in the new courses. From what we heard from our friend and one student after the clicker group meeting is that there are a bunch of people waiting for the next course that she has heard from and we haven’t even advertised anything yet. We want to put together a couple different types of courses, have I talked about this before? Well, probably but we’re spending some time over the holidays to organize and get things ready for that.
Decided to change the look of the blog because this particular setup allows for “pages” and that way I can put up new pages when I feel like it. At the moment I have the litter plans and it’s good to finally have that in an obvious place where people can just click on and look instead of having to read the blog to find something about it. Still miss the look and ease of a real website and I’m sure people might visit more if I had the website the way it was, I used to be able to see how many visitors came to the site but I can’t do that anymore and let’s just say for me (who inherited my Nana’s curiosity) it sucks to not be able to find out how many visit anymore.
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12.11.09
Posted in News at 05:26 by nikki
My dear Nana passed away tonight, she was 91 so she lived a good life. Many of the last years she has been in a retirement home with Alzheimer’s and hasn’t known any of the family when we visited. It was a blessing in disguise given the many times my mother has been in hospital and couldn’t visit and also couldn’t tell her what was wrong, and at the same time with the whole family living dispersed over the whole country and abroad it made visits few and far between and we can only say that it was a good thing that she didn’t have a sense of time to miss us all because we were all so extremely close back when we were young and all lived in the same country. Nana was our rock and the glue that kept us all together, she was a very strong personality that we have missed for many years already.
The news wasn’t surprising but at the same time heartbreaking, she always said she’d outlive us all and promised us she’d live to be 100. We truly thought she was going to stick by that promise because Nana never ever broke a promise…but the tears and feelings of sadness have been mixed with feelings of relief tonight that she could go in a peaceful way and that she is at last reunited with her beloved husband who she lost way back in I think my mom said 1958. It’s so easy to be selfish and wish family could stay forever but when their life is physically or mentally not their own anymore and filled with more hardship than joy than you have to feel their happiness to be released.
Truth be told the past years have been a bit of a burden on my poor sick mother, it’s been heartbreaking for her to see her mother like that and to visit every chance she got and her own mother didn’t recognize her. My Mom’s health problems have not been easy on her and with the extra worry of my Nana’s boughts of sickness through the years, sometimes serious problems, other times just common colds or slight sickness but with her age it was always quite worrying. My Mom went regularly to sing for the residents and to bake for them and always around the holidays there was more things she helped them with and last week she baked some Christmas cakes with them all. It’s no doubt going to be a very strange thing for my Mom to get used to and I so wish I could be there to help her through it.
I couldn’t sleep last night, felt unexplainable pains in my abdomen yesterday, last night and a little bit less this morning. I was complaining to Rúnar and was laying in the couch feeling like I was getting sick. What also took me by surprise but I was thinking was because of the time of year was that I was being comforted by my beloved departed Freyja in my sleep. It was so real, I could see her and feel her with me. She was visiting me it seemed and I thought maybe it was because my Dad is also a bit sick at the moment. However I relived many memories of my Nana the past couple days that would pop up off and on, my mind would wonder and the memories would flood in. She was so much a part of our lives as kids and we were often more with her than we were at home because my parents worked so much when we were young. I thought I was just thinking about how sad it was that she had Alzheimer’s and didn’t remember us and that Rúnar never got to meet her as she was. I always get a bit nostalgic and miss my family around Christmas. I wasn’t reading the signs of the past few days or was refusing to see the connection until I got the call from my Mom tonight and she said Nana probably wouldn’t live through the night. I realized that I’d known she was leaving us for a few days and her energy was with me, then I got a very strange feeling tonight, an sudden urge to call my Mom back but my phone battery needed recharging. Then I got a tingling in my head followed by feeling that the pain and heaviness I was feeling all day was gone. I finally gave in to the urge and called around 9-9:30 (their time) but my step-father answered and said my Mom was at the retirement home and that he had some bad news. My Nana had died about 8:00.
I won’t be able to say goodbye to her, so I’m counting on the fact that she too would have felt the energy I was sending her through my thoughts of her lately and especially today. I know my Mom gave her a hug and said goodbye for all of us. Like my other family members who have passed on during the years I never get to be at their funerals or to hug my family in these times of mutual sorrow. I often feel their sorrow is deeper than mine because I’ve missed so many years of the lives of my loved ones but much of my sorrow is exactly because of the years I’ve lost. Regrets that can’t be erased. My life situation always seems to be that finances and distance cannot be overcome, no matter how I wish they could. My thoughts will be with my loved ones and I think I will sit down and write my dear Nana a poem tomorrow. I’ve always done that for the loved ones I lose, it’s the only way I can tell them how much I loved them and how much they meant to me. I hope I get one finished before she is laid to rest.
I talked to my Mom on MSN tonight after she got home and I could see from her comments that she was happy for her Mom to finally be at peace, she reminded me that there are others meeting her at the rainbow bridge including my little Tryggvi. I thought how wonderful it is that my mother has her faith to help her through and it will help me to not worry so much about her. She made it a point to be positive and to tease me with the little nudges and silly characters that we often send to each other on MSN, she made me smile and I will continue to smile whenever I think of my Nana now. Rest in peace Nana, I love you more than words can say.
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