A Life in Progress

A washer and dryer, or at least a place to hook them up, was on the top of my “must have” list when we hunted apartments in Stockholm. You see, I have always had bum luck with communal laundry facilities starting with my first laundry room experience shortly after KA and I married.

I had stuffed our clothes into a dryer that had just been vacated by the laundry of our neighbor, the one who was six feet tall, weighed 130 pounds, and had hips like a snake. Later that evening, I carefully folded my husband’s freshly-laundered underwear and placed them in a drawer. The next morning, after less than two weeks of marriage, I had to come up with a plausible explanation for how skivvies that were four sizes too small ended up nestled neatly in my husband’s underwear drawer like some kind of undercover agent trying to blend in with his surroundings.

I put laundry room hassles behind me for the next 14 years when we moved from an apartment to a house in the suburbs of San Diego. Then we moved to Sweden.

My laundry room experiences here in Sweden, starting with our place in Sätra, included hauling dirty clothes outside through darkness and snow to the laundry room three buildings away, having my wet clothes held hostage by a mean little electronic box that controlled laundry room access as if it were guarding Fort Knox, and then, in Östermalm, schlepping laundry up and down treacherous basement stairs to a laundry room that surely must have been a dungeon at some point in the building’s history.

After all of this suffering in the name of clean clothes, I was sooo ready to have my own appliances again! But when we bought our place in Södermalm, there was just one problem: In the bathroom, in the spot where there should have been a normal-sized bathtub and a washer/dryer unit, there was a white abomination plugged into the very outlet where the washer and dryer should be: A humongous, six-jet jacuzzi tub. I think that’s what sold the place for KA. I, on the other hand, was not amused.

“As soon as we move in, that thing’s moving out as soon as possible!” I proclaimed.

“Aw, come on! At least try it out before you decide to chuck it. Didn’t you check out the laundry room here? It’s really nice—it’s in the same building, no stairs, no crazy access routines. . .”

“No more laundry rooms! I’m getting my own washer and dryer as soon as we can swing it after we fix the place up and that’s final!”

And with that, the subject was put to rest as we fixed and freshened and furnitured. In the meantime, my laundry room luck didn’t change. During my first visit, I misread the sign-up board and took someone else’s time, which is the last capital offense left here in Sweden.

I then managed to get my key stuck in the door and had to stand there while every male in the building walked by and tried to pull it out with their bare hands as if they were Arthur pulling the sword out of the stone. The women were smart enough to know that wouldn’t work and didn’t even try. KA ended the ridiculous drama with some pliers. On the upside, I met most of my neighbors that evening. On the downside, they learned that I’m inept. These little debaucles only made my resolve to jilt the Jacuzzi even stronger.

That explains why during the entire two months that elapsed while we fixed up our apartment, I refused to try it out, no matter how tired and sore my muscles were after a day of scraping off wall paper, painting, sanding floors, or moving furniture.

KA, true to his hedonistic nature, headed straight for the tub the first day we moved in as if he were a duck that hadn’t seen water in a year. He proceeded to use it so often I feared he would grow webbing between his fingers and toes or turn himself into a giant prune.

One of our conversations during one of his extended soaks went something like this:

“Ahhhh,” He sighed in tune with the hum of the tub’s motor. “This is wonderful! Oooooh! Like sitting in a big pool of hot champagne. Why don’t you join me? You’ll love it! It’s soooo relaxing.”

“Hot champagne? Now, that’s just gross! And no way am I getting in there. I told you, that tub’s history as soon as we’re done fixing up!”

“Just throw the laundry in here with me! This baby agitates like crazy! And look! I can adjust the intensity of the bubbles with this knob!”

I turned on my heel and walked out through the fog without so much as looking at the knob or the bubbles it adjusted. “Hey, can you at least bring me a beer?” He called after me. “Why? Isn’t ‘hot champagne’ good enough for you?” I said, slamming the bathroom door behind me.

Yes, I was hell-bent on my having my very own washer/dryer, but that’s not to say I had no contact at all with the detested tub. I did have to stand in it every day to take a shower, and I did have to clean it. It was during one of these cleaning sessions that it happened. There’s no good explanation for it. It certainly wasn’t planned. Maybe all of the physical strain of moving and fixing just got to me, made me tired, and affected my judgement. I don’t know, and I’m not offering any excuses--but we all have weak moments, don't we? OK--I’ll tell you what happened.

“Hello! I’m home!” And then, after a pause, “Where are you?…Hey! I hear the tub!” By now KA had entered the bathroom. The shower curtain was drawn, and he respectfully left it closed as he laughed at me from the other side.

“AH HA! You did it! You finally broke down and tried it out! HA!” I heard him slap his leg in glee.

"I did no such thing!" I said indignantly. Lying is always the first best defense, right?

"Come on! I'd tell you to 'come clean,' but that would be a really bad pun. I know you're in there with bubbles up to your neck!"

“Uh, I’m scrubbing the stupid thing,” I said, though not very convincingly. “Now get out and let me finish.”

“Scrubbing it? Then why are your clothes in a pile on the floor? Since when do you clean house in the nude?”

“Uh…well, you see, I don’t normally, but I saw this talk show once where these women were saying how great it was and I just thought maybe I should try it.” I winced at how lame that sounded.

“Yeah, right. And the motor? You don’t need to fill it up and run it to clean the surface.”

I sunk a little deeper into the frothy bubbles.

“Yeah, well, I. . .You know, there’s always a puddle on the floor after you get out, and I wanted to make sure it wasn’t cracked or something, so I. . .”

“Bullhocky! Your clothes are on the other side of the room, the motor’s on, the water’s bubbling, and you’re busted! Tell me you don’t love it! Come on! Tell me!”

“I’m not telling you anything!” I retorted, utterly embarrassed by my weakness for this little piece of private paradise right here in my own bathroom. He didn't hear a word I said. His one-man celebration was already in full swing.

“Yippee! We’re keeping the tub! You can’t possibly scrap it now after you’ve tried it!” I could see him silhouetted through the shower curtain doing a victory dance I was sure the neighbors could hear all the way to the ground floor.

“Yeah, yeah, We’re keeping the tub,” I said in a resigned voice. “Could you just be quiet now and bring me some hot champagne…uh, I mean, a beer?”

Just when I thought my husband and I had escaped this winter’s flu season unscathed, I read in the paper while en route to work that there is a second wave of the illness flooding through Sweden; the veracity of the story confirmed by several sickly co-workers. When I arrived at work, I scrubbed my hands like Lady Macbeth rubbing out that damned spot. No way was I getting the flu. No siree! Not after what happened last flu season.

That day last year had started like any other, but by noon, my boss had driven me to the station and put me on the train back to Stockholm. I rocked along the rails uneasily, grimly determined to show the conducted only my train pass, and not what I had for breakfast that morning.

Despite my queasiness, I was comforted by the fact that once I made it home, I could curl up in bed and let my husband, KA, take care of everything as soon as he got home from work. He would bring me flat 7-Up, just like my mom did when I was a kid, and make me some dry toast when I felt I could nibble on something. I wouldn’t have to do anything but rest—and how often does that happen?

When I finally dragged in, I was surprised to find my husband already home and curled up on the sofa. “Hey, honey. Whatcha doing home so early,” he asked. I asked him the same question. Turns out we had both caught the bug!

Like most couples, we take care of each other during illnesses—didn’t our marriage vows say in sickness and in health? Well, there is nothing in that contract that covers simultaneous sickness. We needed an ad hoc solution, and we both thought of it at the same time, although neither of us expressed it verbally. We had to determine which one of us was sicker, which in turn would determine who had to play nurse for the next few days, or possibly the whole week, depending on how long the unwelcome germ-guests decided to stay.

I crawled into my pyjamas and tottered out to the living room, where KA was already curled up on one end of the sofa under a blanket. I took the other end of both sofa and blanket. No sooner had I settled in, KA asked me for a glass of water. “But I just sat down!” I moaned. “Sorry,” he said, as he tore a banner from a partially unfurled roll of toilet paper sitting on the coffee table. He honked his nose loudly.

The toilet paper’s a nice touch, I thought. “OK, I’ll get us some water,” I said. I returned a few moments later with the water, as well as a plastic bag, which I ceremoniously opened, rolling down the edges with care to form a suitable emergency receptacle, thereby upping the ante a bit: KA had a runny nose, but my plastic bag was a harbinger of something far more unpleasant, not to mention messier.

“Oh,” he said casually. “You been ‘talking to Ralph on the big white phone’ today?”

“No, I have not ‘talked to Ralph’ today” I said, irritated by his juvenile reference to throwing up. “I’m just afraid that I might have to. How about you fix us some tea?” I said. “I’m real dizzy,” he replied. “The room’s spinning. I’m thinking about having a conversation with ol’ Ralph myself.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” I said. We were getting nowhere with this. We regarded each other with feverish, bloodshot eyes. “Look,” I said, “I’m going to try to get some sleep. We’ll see how we both feel in the morning.” “I’ll be there in a bit, as soon as I can see straight,” KA said.

I eased myself off of the sofa and went to the kitchen, where I poured myself a glass of water to sip on during the night. I then removed my contact lenses, which was normally no big deal; it had been a part of my nightly ritual for several years now. But that night, because of my compromised condition, the unnatural act of touching my eyes had the same affect as clicking “shut down” on a computer. Suddenly, all systems began closing down. I had only a few seconds to get to the bed, the softest place in the house to land.

Without saying a word, I grabbed the glass of water and lurched off toward the bedroom. With only five or six more steps to go, the shut down sequence finished. I collapsed in the hall, smacking my head on the door frame on the way down, which began the reboot sequence. I was awake in time to hear the bottom of the water glass strike the tile floor at the same time I did. Water splashed everywhere, but the glass somehow remained unbroken in my hand. My face pressed against the door frame, and my legs tangled under me as if I were a dead bug. KA’s slippers shuffled behind me.

“What happened?” he asked. “I passed out.” I informed him from my contorted position on the floor.

“No way!”

It occurred to me that he had never seen me pass out before, so maybe he was in denial. Or maybe he just didn’t want to lose. I just may have played the winning ace. “Yes, I passed out,” I said almost a little too cheerily, turning a red eye to look up at him through damp strands of stringy hair.

“No, you must have tripped on something.” He wasn’t going to give up easily. I could hear him shuffling around behind me, looking for the offending shoe or backpack, both of which commonly inhabited the hallway. “No, I passed out. Really.” I insisted. “You know…as in fade to black.”

“Are you sure?”

He placed his hands on his hips and studied the scene. He made no attempt to move me, as if I were a dead body at a crime scene and he was waiting for the lab boys to come and collect evidence before the cadaver car hauled me away.

“Yes, I’m absolutely sure. It was only for a couple of seconds, but I did, indeed, unequivocally, lose consciousness,” I reaffirmed patiently. I wasn’t about to let him poke holes in my air-tight story.

“Passed out? Now what am I supposed to do about that?” he wondered. This certainly wasn’t what he had expected. “Well, you could start by taking this glass and mopping up the water,” I suggested, stirring for the first time since my crash landing. In his mind, he was thumbing through our unwritten rule book and coming to the realization that he had lost this round.

Pulling myself slowly to my feet, I plodded the last few steps to the bed, smiling smugly, rubbing my sore forehead, and savoring victory—I’d be the one getting dry toast and tea on a tray in bed the next morning!

. . .Continued from April 3, 2006

After what seemed like our hundredth 15-minute viewing, we had finally found an apartment we wanted--a cozy two-bedroom place with an open floor plan and a balcony, close to everything worth being close to. Never mind the fact that I had spent more time picking out a pair of shoes than we had spent picking out this apartment--It was time to bid.

If we were doing this deal in the States, we would summon our realtor, who would arrive with his fancy car filled with a forest-worth of paper that would cost us an evening of quality Discovery Channel viewing to fill out. Although we would have already secured a pre-approved loan from the bank for the full asking price, we would bid between 5 to 10 % under that figure. Our realtor would then don a support belt to avoid rupturing a disk and deliver the weighty matter along with a sizeable check from us to show the depth of our sincerity to the seller’s realtor. After a few days, our realtor would show up again with a counteroffer, and eventually we’d have a deal. . . .or not. In this slow and cumbersome process, patience is the key.

To my husband and me, the bidding ritual in the States seemed like a long, sincere courtship, one where you had time to think things through, to plan your next move—or discretely break it off. The same process in Sweden felt like “wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am,” a whirlwind of a round-robin auction where the asking price is just a starting point for a process that could easily spiral out of control. In this game, patience is less important than having nerves of steel. Since my nerves are more like aluminium, my steely-nerved husband got to handle the bidding.

We had put our name on a list of those interested in the Södermalm apartment. A few days later, KA got a call from the realtor asking if we were interested in placing a bid. KA bid 10,000 SEK over the most recent bid, then called me at work to inform me.

I felt my aluminum nerves warping already. Despite the fact that we had worked out what we could afford, I felt as if we were really out of our league bidding in five figure increments, knowing that we were going to end up paying six figures if we landed the place. Somehow, placing bids in Swedish crowns with their exchange rate of approximately 10 to 1 made me feel uncomfortable--as if we were buying a mansion we couldn’t afford instead of an apartment. I swigged down the last of my watered-down version of Swedish coffee and told him to keep me informed.

An hour later, he called back. “OK—we've bid another 80,000 over our last bid.”

A co-worker who happened to be in my office almost got a face-full of coffee. “Geez!” I choked, struggling to get my breath as my frightened co-worker fled for the safety of the hallway. “How many others are we bidding against?” I asked as I tried to remember the others at the viewing, wondering if they were better prepared to spend millions than we were. “There’s six right now,” he said. "The realtor will collect bids from each bidder until all but one has dropped out."

“How do we know that the realtor or the seller’s friends aren’t in there running up the bid?” I asked. “We don’t,” said KA. “Thanks. That’s certainly a load off my mind. Keep me posted,” I said, making no attempt to hide my anxiety.

Sensing my growing hysteria, my husband wisely decided to leave me out of the next couple rounds. By the time he called again, he had pledged another 50,000 over our last bid. Here I am, sitting at work while my husband throws our money around like a drunken sailor. I felt the color draining rapidly from my face, just like the money in our bank account. “That’s about it, isn’t it? I mean, we can’t go much higher, can we?” I asked. He told me there were only three bidders left in the running. “You’re right. We’re about done here, but don't give up yet—maybe the others will drop out now.”

It was over later that afternoon. My phone buzzed and danced with excitement on the conference table as I sat in a meeting, and I scooped it up and darted out to the hall. “Well? We’re out, right?” I asked, always the optimist. I grabbed the door frame for support when he answered my question. We won! We were the last bidders left standing, and the apartment was ours…for 1,720,000 Swedish crowns!

1.7 million!--Just a hair under the maximum we could afford. KA did fine, but I still couldn’t handle the “million” thing. I stood there in the hallway repeating the reality silently to myself: We spent almost TWO MILLION. Two million-jillion. A veritable crap-load of money. Megabucks. Beaucoup Bucks. Two Freak’n Million. A lot of dough. Dough. Food. A sudden irrational thought: We’ve spent so much on this damn place, we’ll be eating baloney the rest of our lives. I wondered how many different ways one can you fix baloney. Aside from the pedestrian baloney sandwich, I knew for sure you could fry it. One of KA’s cousins in Missouri fixed us fried baloney one time when we were visiting…Wait! What the heck am I thinking?

After I regained my composure, I returned to the meeting, not hearing a single word until the moderator asked me something about a documentation project. Instead of getting a coherent status report, he got a barely audible, “I just bought an apartment.” “Congratulations!” the moderator said, and the group smiled and nodded in agreement. “Aren’t you happy,” he asked, looking with concern at my shell-shocked expression. “Me? Yeah, of course I am,” I said, turning my glazed eyes toward him. The group began talking about how I'd be spending my time for the next few months: painting, fixing, visits to IKEA. They must have been a little surprised when I stirred from my stupor and asked, “Do you know if they sell baloney in the grocery stores here?”

. . .Continued from April 1, 2006

12:10 Saturday morning. We land at the first apartment viewing of the day with our reconnaissance mission clear in our minds—Invade, scout it out, and move on to the next target as swiftly as possible. A rag-tag army of young couples, families with kids, some singles, and several elderly couples are already jamming the elevator, with the overflow storming the stairs. Before we join the march, KA grabs my arm:

“Remember, these people are not your friends. They’re your competition—the enemy. If you see something you like, you’ll be bidding against at least some of these people. So don’t act like you like anything, no matter what. If you can, you want to scare them off by acting like there could be something wrong with the place.”

“Scare them off? Should I growl at them?”

“That shouldn’t be necessary, but don’t rule it out. Ready?”

“Ready!”

!2:15. We’re now just in front of the door of the target apartment. It’s a mine field of unoccupied footgear of all varieties. We kick off ours and tiptoe awkwardly through the obstacle course to the entryway, where we’re greeted by a smartly dressed realtor standing in the doorway like an MP, passing out info sheets. KA gives me a discrete nod that’s code for, “You take the kitchen and living room, I’ll take the bedroom and bath—and for heaven’s sake, don’t get all excited and jump up and down like a ninny if you like the place.” I touch my earring in acknowledgement and head off to carry out my assigned mission, ever careful to exude an air of studied distain as I examine the newly renovated kitchen, its sleek appliances looking more modern than the stealth bomber.

12:25. After executing a room-to-room search, KA adds our name to the realtor’s list as a potentially interested party. We meet outside, slip into our shoes, and are back on the street, jogging to the next viewing scheduled to start in five minutes three blocks away. We take the opportunity to assess the first viewing, and decide the place could be our next home. I ask why someone left a compass on the coffee table—the floor plan was not as open as I would have liked, but it certainly wasn’t that hard to navigate. KA informs me that the compass wasn’t for navigational purposes, but instead to indicate from which direction sunlight could be expected to strike the balcony. This makes perfect sense. Seeing that Sweden doesn’t get all that much sunshine, it’s good to have intelligence about the trajectory of any potential incoming.

12:30. We arrive slightly breathless at the next viewing, only to find that the realtor is AWOL. We join the restless company assembling outside on the street. A few stragglers from the viewing we just left show up to round out the group. Everyone is on edge and getting increasingly restless. Those who have cigs take the lull in the action as an opportunity to light up.

!2:35. The realtor pushes his way to the front of the crowd, mumbling his apologies for being detained. We notice it is the same realtor from the viewing we had just left.

12:55. We follow our standard operating procedure. When we meet outside this time, we compare intelligence gathered on our competition. KA observes that the pimply-faced couple who looked as if they were barely out of high school probably could not afford this place. He says that another couple, who looked to be about our age, could be providing financing. He bases his assessment on the fact that the older couple had what appeared to be dog hair from a German Shepard on their clothes, and the woman definitely had garden dirt under her nails. They were certainly “house and yard” people and would not likely be interested in a small apartment in town for themselves, and besides, the older and younger man both had the same cowlick, proving inarguably the older man’s paternity. He asks me what I think. I tell him I didn’t notice all of that, but ask if the fact that the two couples left in the same vehicle could mean anything.

20.00, four weeks later. This “house-hunting offensive” seems to have gone on forever. Worn down by the battle, we were beginning to wonder if we’d ever have peace. Then, after yet another 10-minute viewing, we scored a direct hit! We found the place for us! Now it is time to prepare for another type of war. . .the bidding war!

. . .to be continued.

House hunting back in the States is cushy business. You stroll into a realtor’s office, tell them what you’re looking for, and then you sit back, relax, and let the nice realtor take care of all those boring little details, such as picking out houses that could potentially be your home for the next 20 years. With a list of candidate properties in hand, the flawlessly groomed realtor shows up at your present residence in a large American luxury car and opens the passenger door for you.

You sink into the soft, genuine leather seats and check out suburban scenery as you are chauffeured from one property to another, a private tour awaiting you at each stop. The realtor chats amiably about each property, talking up the good points and hoping for a sale. It’s a bit of lavish treatment that you come to remember fondly when you finally do buy a place and realize you don’t have a lot of money left over to do anything else but stay at home.

When we moved to Sweden, we lived for the first few years in different apartments “second hand,” that is, we rented from renters who were absent for a while, basically living like nomads in other people’s apartments with furniture, appliances, and utensils that were not our own. This arrangement grew tiresome, and I asked my husband, KA, if he knew of a realtor that we could contact. He explained that it didn’t work that way here—we’d have to find places on the Internet to go see on our own.

“You’ve been searching the Internet for hours. Haven’t you found anything yet?” I asked on a Wednesday evening.

“Yeah, of course! Finding something isn’t the problem. It’s coming up with a strategy for how to make it from one viewing to the next to get maximum. . .viewage,” he said. “Don’t worry—I’ll have it figured out by this Saturday.”

I was all for maximum “viewage,” so I left him to his task, even though he seemed a tad stressed. What was all this noise about “strategy?” Wouldn’t each apartment be open for viewing all day, like in the States?

On Friday evening, KA was leaning over the coffee table with a map of Stockholm spread out before him. Tiny colored stickers dotted an area of Södermalm. He had been at this now for two evenings straight and sported red, puffy eyes to prove it.

“OK. Listen up. I think I’ve got a plan of attack,” he said. “We’re going to cover this quadrant here,” he said, drawing an imaginary circle on the map with his pen.

“But you said last night there was something interesting over here,” I said, pointing to a street several blocks from where he had outlined.

“Nix that, it’s outside of the perimeter, and besides there’s another viewing going on here,” he said, tapping his pen on another street nearby. “That place is too expensive for us, but those folks will surely go from that viewing to the one you want to go to that’s outside of the zone.

“So?”

“So, those people will flank us, overrun our position, and we won’t have time to get to the other viewings!. It’s just too risky. In order to secure the whole area, we need to stay on target and keep to the time plan.”

We could get flanked? Our position could be overrun? What on earth was he talking about? He was clearly taking this planning thing too seriously. He had never even been in the military, and suddenly he was sounding like General Patton. We were supposed to be looking for apartments, not planning an assault on Baghdad. He tapped his pen on the map to regain my attention, and proceeded to explain the time schedule.

“We leave our place at 12:00 sharp, take the subway to Medborgarplatsen, and then…,”

And then, we were to march from viewing to viewing at approximately 15 minute intervals. Fifteen minutes? We were supposed to pick out a place to live after seeing it for 15 minutes or less?

Noticing my surprise, KA said, “You did know, didn’t you, that each viewing lasts only thirty minutes each?”

“What? You’re joking, right?”

“No, I’m not.”

“In that case, I’ll prepare enough provisions so we won’t have to take a break. Make sure you wear shoes you can get in an out of quickly so we don’t get delayed with laces and such as we run in and out of each place, and…could you hand me the dictionary, please?”

“What for?”

“I want to look up the words for “mold,” “leak,” and “broken” in Swedish. We can use them when we look under sinks and stuff. Maybe it will scare off other potential buyers if they think we see something they don’t.”

“Oooh, that’s my girl! Now you’re talking!”

“Hey, this ain’t gonna be no wimpy sightseeing day. This is war!”