Ha Det Bra (a perspective from the first mate)

First mate log entry number 2:  28-March-2014  

Spectacular scenery, close friends, adventurer’s playground, meeting my husband…so what is not to miss about my life in Norway?  Seeing as how I lived there for 5.5 years with hundreds of wonderful memories, saying goodbye to Stavanger would naturally be a significant and emotional life event.  And it WAS although there wasn’t much time to reflect on what was actually happening.  Emotions would just have to wait until that brief microsecond when my soul could have its opportunity to attention.  And like any reliable volcano, as I was giving my last hugs and cobbling together an impromptu “ha det” speech (means goodbye in Norwegian) my inner poet had its public tearful eruption in front of all my office colleagues.  Up until that moment all my mental CPU had to focus on fitting together all the pieces of this chaotic jigsaw that is moving on a boat with 2 cats and sailing around the world.  I mean did Frodo Baggins have time for emotions when he was told to rescue middle earth?  I was neither excited, joyful or sad…just busy.  At the last minute I was busy organizing boat documentation with the USA, insurance, import papers for the cats into Australia which involved multiple vet visits to a specially approved FDA vet in Norway.  Oh and mind you, I still had to show up for work every day during this process and fast track multiple projects and handovers which would normally take months into a few days.  I apologize ahead of time to my coworkers if my reports still contain things like <insert content here>. 

Moving out of a large house with lots of furniture and other useless odds and ends acquired when my husband and I merged our belongings into an unharmonious collection required the daunting task of getting rid of all of it.  A weekend project included cataloging all our things and decide if they had enough practical uses to come on the boat.  Everything allowed on the boat must have at least 2 uses, if not they were either sold, put in storage of my Dutch aunt’s house (keep in mind, houses in Europe don’t have that much space for stuff like American ones), or “decommissioned”.  Photographing your belongings, putting them up for sale, and marketing them to potential buyers was as enjoyable as banging my head against a brick wall… only slightly worse.  Those items that didn’t sell were miraculously appearing in dumpsters around Stavanger since ours were full to the brim..I have no idea how that happenedJ  After that experience I swore of buying anything ever again my entire life.   

The interlude between those chaotic days was a cheerful reunion with my sister in Amsterdam while attending my brother-in-law’s wedding.  As the sensible sister she sent me on my way with some great advice….”you don’t need to see the whole staircase, just the first step”.  As it turns out I would need her to keep reminding me of that in the days to come.