oh the disapointment

Yesterday morning I lay in bed in that semi-wakened state, just before you open your eyes for the first time. You know where you try to ignore the fact that you are, in effect, awake, and try as hard as you can to cling to the sleepy haze by not yet opening your eyes?

I lay there, listening to the rain and the cars swishing by in the wet road, thinking "Thank God the snow is done and melted and I can start going for walks again." So nice to think that spring is getting here and the white is being replaced by green. Even if it is still cold.

And then I opened my eyes and saw, everything was white. It snowed all night and was still doing so. Wet sloppy snow.

DAMMIT!

We have a guest coming to visit. My friend Kristin, who has been working out on an island in the very far north arctic called Jan Mayen, is back from her 6 month stint and will be here for a few days, checking on her flat, doing job interviews, etc. In honor of her visit, we finally got around to buying that blow up mattress we have been needing (don't have storage or space for a full bed, but I think those blow up ones are comfy and this one is 19 inches thick!). So now we can actually have people spend the night, or, as is more likely, have a place for people to pass out after a night of partying. (And of course, as a place for a bedroom-banished 'in the doghouse' Richard to go in times of marital strife.)
The whole time I was trying to find a suitable mattress, I was cursing the Norwegian system of specialized shops (kitchenware shops don't sell housewares, housewares shops don't sell anything electric, knick knack shops don't sell anything useful at all) and wishing I just had a damned Target to go to where everything was under one roof and I didn't have to go to five different stores to find the damned thing. Once I found the right store, they had a decent selection, and it was a snap, but finding the store is the problem. (FYI, if you ever need an air mattress in Norway, you need to go to a sports store or a store that sells outdoor furniture, I ended up at one called Jysk.)

I sometimes think that when I get homesick, missing Target factors in to that homesickness by about 35%. So nice to just go there and know they have what you want!