Meet the Smith Family

“Meet the Parents” came out, then “Meet the Fockers”, now sit back, relax and get ready for “Meet the Smith Family”.

Fede came to the Lake for Christmas – his first time in the US, and more importantly his first time to meet my family. However, I must stop here and note that it was NOT his first time to interact with my family. He and my mom had been emailing almost daily for the past few months – which will come into play very soon in this “feature film”.

I had warned Fede that in the States its less common for boyfriends-girlfriends to share rooms in the parents house. So having heard this, he emailed my mom asking if there were any house rules. She responded with the usual Lake rules:

• No shoes in the house
• No boogers on the wall
• No Italian Hair in the bathroom
• No eating on the couch

He responded “great, Glad to hear you are so liberal and sharing a room is not a problem for you”. And thus started the beginning of the great series of “tests” that Fede would encounter. Also note at this point that my mom has always had a theoretical test up her sleeve for potential boyfriends. Her plan was - once they were at the Lake, she would go loosen a washer on the toilet or sink. Then a bit later complain of a leaking faucet. If the potential boyfriend said “Mrs. Smith let me go take a look” and then came back saying “oh, I tightened everything up, all should be ok”, then….thumbs up. If he said “you should call a plumber” then…thumbs down.

Back to the bed sharing. So after the series of emails my mom started to plan. The first of the plans involved a pillow case. She bought a pack of those iron on-print-off sheets that you can use to iron on a picture to a t-shirt. She found a picture of me sleeping, hair crazy, and drool dripping, and printed it. Then she ironed it onto a Pillow case, so that when Fede arrived, he would pull back the covers and find Laura seemingly with him in the bed. (note she found this so amusing that she carried the pillow case in her purse with her for weeks showing everyone)

Fede finally arrived the 18^th of December and there in the Bedroom was the pillow case, but also a warning. My mom had placed SPEARS on the ceiling fan above his bed. She informed him that should she need to, a quick door slam would easily bring them all down… luckily he laughed and noted that he would removed them before going to sleep.

And that was just the beginning. There was no leaky faucet, but the snow blower did break and luckily Fede fixed it (or knew what needed replacing) within minutes. He also got coerced into putting the (live) tree into the Christmas tree stand. After the third attempt at a straight fall-free tree, Fede exasperated, proclaimed with his head poking out from the tree “this is harder than sailing across the Atlantic alone (which he did a few years back)”.

On Christmas Eve, Eve my mother had a "Meet the Fede Party". I thought the name was just a joke and it was really just a chance for some family friends to come over before Christmas. However, I asked my mom about her planning and she said the whole get together started when my former piano teacher made a comment about wanting to meet Fede. Solution: throw a party and invite 10-14 guests!

Other tests around the house included playing the family card game “oh Hell” with the same consequences of losing as the rest of the family – cleaning the dishes. He not only did well, but WON 2 of the games. He also easily and happily played the whole gamut of Smith games, and did so with a smile.

And yes. He passed all of the tests. Two thumbs up from Mom. He fit in wonderfully with the Smith family. All those at the "Meet the Fede Party" also gave a thumbs up. The door never had to slam to drop the spears and he took the pillow case home to show his family. And he was even invited back.

High's and Low's

It’s a common tradition on Outdoor Action trips to reflect on the day or a trip with “highs and Lows”. Its’ been a while since I’ve blogged, so I’ll do a “highs and lows” of my past few months.

High:
Going home for Christmas. I had been out of the US for 13 months. Everyone came home for the snow that dumped on the East Coast this year: Tesia flying from Japan, I flying from India, and Federico, my Argentinian boyfriend also flying from India. All forms of winter were enjoyed – skating, sledding, downhill skiing, cross country skiing, a sleigh ride on Christmas eve. Fantastic. However Christmas deserves more of a description, so I promise to write more in a later post. It was Fede’s first time to meet the Family and I swear a movie could have been made about the 8 days he was there – I promise to expand…

Low:
My whole Fall. Well not the whole fall, but much of October and the beginning of November. I was somewhat forced to go early into the office and push going to Japan to the second half of my break. Somehow I’ve managed to become the ONLY person who can test our acquisition software. After a week of isolated testing, I had to help move our lab & equipment to our new building. This involved working 12 hour days in the basement of a building where no one else was working yet. So needless to say, I saw none of my friends. This may sound petty, but since I’m not around that much, people don’t know I’m in Oslo unless they see me, so this means, no one invites me on hiking trips, or picnics, or dinners. Its rough sometimes. The night before I left Oslo, I broke down crying and weeping that “I have no friends”. I even had to work one weekend. The Japan trip that was supposed to be 2-2.5 weeks was reduced to 5 days since I had been PROACTIVE and had actually gotten my Indian visa. So I had to return to the boat 9 days early.

High:
Last trip I officially became certified as a coxswain on the boats. For some reason this seems to mean a lot to me. I’m pretty proud of being a coxswain. Why I’m not sure – perhaps because not too many girls are? Perhaps because when I first joined I decided this was something that I wanted to do / achieve? However, I was certified at the end of the trip so it was only 5 days ago that I went out on my own for the first time. Trial by fire. Our first job of the day was to go back to a cable to investigate fishing gear. We had the cable in the arms of our work boat and I was dropping back along the cable. The crew was cutting off ropes and fishing gear. The next thing I hear is “we have a dolphin, we have a dolphin in the fishing gear”. Aye aye aye. I shout back “is it dead or alive?”. The respond “dead, very dead”. After 30 seconds or a minute, they managed to cut the ropes and it dropped off into the blue of the ocean. (note having a dead dolphin was NOT a high)

I also took out the Fast Rescue boat (FRB) for my first personnel transfer. Its usually the damsel in distress that gets rescued, but ha, here it’s the other way around!. Fede had had to go over to our supply boat to advise their captain when he came alongside our boat for bunkering of fuel and provisioning. Once the supply boat had been cast off, Fede needed to be brought back to our boat. So I was sent off on my first personnel transfer and I went to Pick up Fede!!! I just keep reminding him that I rescued him…