List of To Do's is Shrinking

Finally managed to drive to the social security office and apply for a social security number. Check!
And here I thought authorities were unfriendly world wide, how wrong was I. Nice as pie and hardly any wait at all.

Also made it to homeland security where I caused a little confusion. I received my work permit last week, and I also received a letter with a scheduled appointment for this morning. I showed up - the office is in Santa Ana, right among the $ 1 dollar taco trucks, immigration lawyers and homeless people - and they were a little confused why I was there to have my finger prints captured when I already had received the card. Normally you don't get the card without the finger prints FIRST. Security leak! Haha, I was placed in a special queue (OMG, I nearly wrote LINE) and then they had the finger prints and photos taken andthe whole thing was quiteted down. Check again! Now it is only the driver's license left where I am learning English all over again. What happened to indicate and reverse? It is all about signal and back up in study material. Lost in translation completely.


Baked some super nice bread last night with some home made carrot soup. Bread turned out fantastic if I may say so myself, nice and crispy but gosh did it take long. Around 3 hours in total!

New Cleaners

Just had a Mexican couple over to look at the flat, they were recommended by a friend of mine and they seem really, really nice.  I only expected the wife to come (and to be late a la Hispanic style , guess if I was surprised to find a whole Mexican family 20 minutes too early outside my doorstep! They will start cleaning next week. Let's see how it goes.

Weather is still absolutely gorgeous, around 20 degrees C and no clouds.  We have put up the Christmas tree so tonight we will have to turn on the air con, light some candles and pretend it is chilly outside. Luckily, it gets really dark here at night so at least we don't have the sun spoiling the fun.

Bad news regarding the consignment. It is still in England, it will most likely be shipped this Friday and reach the US port on 5 January. It is an understatement to say that I lost my temper a little yesterday. Another reason why you should not read mails at 6 am in the morning, it ruins your whole morning LOL.  Now I definitely need to do some shopping before Christmas. Big sigh.

Healthy Living

When most people think of the US they think of unhealthy food and overweight people. Sure, we are surrounded by fast food here, and I have seen some HUMONGOUS people BUT here in California I think most people are quite slim and people seem to live quite a healthy lifestyle. All you need is some discipline. I'd even go so far and say it is easier to eat healthy here than in e.g. England, Sweden and Germany. Germans love their pork, bread, fried potatoes and cake. And what about those kebab places everywhere, and the beer. Swedes and their simple home cooking and all the sauces..England, well go to one of the large supermarkets and you'll find they like most things pre-made.


Here you often see products labelled with "fat free", "zero calories", "no carbs", "trans-fat free". People seem to like it. I will not comment on if these products actually are healthy or good but it seems to be a good way of making money. I prefer "normal" ingredients and rather eat leass, but those "normal" products can be quite hard to find. The good thing about the supermarkets we have around where we live (I would give ANYTHING to have a wholefoods in Europe, pricey, yes, but such a great quality) are some of the choices they offer:

• lean beef and the availability of organic meat
  
• fruit and vegetables - I am stunned everyt time I go shopping
• low fat milk, some great dairy products (compared  to Germany...)
• fresh fish and seafood

With some discipline and ignoring those greasy temptations, I think we can do pretty well here in terms of healthy living. I do wonder though, with all those skinny people in CA, who actually does eat at the fast food joints? And it is a little contradictionary people are buying all those products with no calories, it is e.g. hard to find normal butter but on the other hand people constantly chewing on or drinking something, and then all those fast food places... Burgers are nearly always on the menu here but on the other hand raw food is becoming very popular, people drink tons of soda but the new bestseller is coconut or aleo vera water.

Exercise is big here but that can't be it right? Must be another trick or is everyone on Atkins or LCHF? Just wondering :)

Anyway, we are back cooking at home,smoothies for breakfast, sallads sallads and sallads for tea. Better use all that veggie and fruit before it goes off.

Sugar Rush and Kick Counts

Here the OB/gyn asks you to do kick counts on a regular basis. If you notice a decrease, you should call the office (any time) and they will send you to the hospital for fetal movement monitoring. Average kick count once you have had food and sat down should be around 10 kicks within the following two hours. We never had a problem counting those kicks, normally we get them withing 10 minutes :) In Germany I was never asked to track them, not sure about Sweden,  perhaps because the gyn hook you up to the fetal movement monitor (CTG) every two weeks during the last weeks of the pregnancy to check the kicks and the contractions.
There is, however, a little trick to get those kicks going. Like a jump start. We were semi worried last night since we couldn't feel anything so Gavin off the sofa and poured me a glass of coke and got me some lovely Twizzlers.  5 minutes later we could feel some disco dancing going on inside the belly and she is still being pretty active. Why do the doctors never tell you about those tips and tricks? Needless to say, I had problems falling asleep last night and didn't sleep well at all. Hubby, who used to be such a sensitive sleeper, has adjusted (maybe a little too well) to my rough sleeping pattern where it feels like a hippo is rocking the bed everytime I have to turn around (which is pretty often) and would most likely sleep through an earthquake now.

As you can see, no other baby news yet. And the new healthy lifestyle is yet again postponed for a few days. I know we could start today but supposedly I need those carbs to squeeze the little one out :)

We had the regular Monday check up this afternoon, I now have three new appointments this week: fetal movement, another check up with the ob and one ultrasound. All at different offices and on the same day. Crazy.

And oh, I have been chewing those turkish pepper sweets all day, very yummy. But I'd trade them for some Glühwein at the Cologne Christmas market any time. That would be a real treat.

Christmas Fair

We made it to the Swedish Christmas Fair just in time before Lucia started. I was really amazed how many people were at the fair organised by SWEA, I guess I didn´t realise how many Swedes actually live in Orange county. There were definitely a couple of hundred people there and it was pretty crowded. Nice!  Also took the opportunity to join SWEA at the fair. Never joined in Cologne because we organised a lot of events with Swedish people anyway but I think it will be a good way of networking and meeting new people here since I am not working.

The Swedish school had a small Lucia and some handmaidens and starboys, it was quite sweet. This was probably the first time in 17 (?) years I had seen Lucia.

There were a lot of stuff on sale, some Swedish crafts and arts and of course some food and glögg. We bought 1,5 l of SWEAs own homemade glögg and some Christmas decorations, e.g. this candle stick for $ 25, which I was about to order oneline for 40. That was definitely my black Friday bargain! Finally some Christmas atmosphere in the flat!

 and another tomte, I have a huge collection of "tomtar" (santas) but since this is one of my weaknesses it was really hard to resist not buying it, plus, the great collection is still being shipped. When it comes to Christmas, more is definitely better.

I am not a huge fan of sweets but since I realised there is not a great selection here, I really miss no chocolate sweets and have ordered some from sockerbit.com, in the meanwhile I will enjoy thse which I bought at the fair. The feeling you get when you chew on them and the pepper explodes in your mouth..ahh sooo nice! Unfortunately the noise drives Gavin absolutely nuts so I will have to chew on them during the day :)

It turned out to be another sunny and hot day today so after the fair I googled for Italian ice cream cafes in the area and we found one down at Fashion Island which is a cute outdoor shopping complex. 13 minutes later we were enjoying some ice cream in the sun even though it was not quite what I had expected. Anyone who has been to one of those cafes in Germany will picure a huge ice cream cup with fresh berries, cream and some topping and that is the picture I had in mind when driving there...well, we are yet to find such an ice cream cafe here.

On our way home we decided to stop off at Pier I Imports to look at a sideboard and looking turned into buying...we are all set now. No more furniture shopping needed!

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Thanksgiving/Black Friday

We survived both!

We took a walk in the afternoon down Newport Beach to burn off some calories and make some space before heading down to Laguna Beach for Thanksgiving dinner, which was absolutely delicious. We were still in a food coma Friday morning. Initially we had no plans to do any  shopping but since we were so stuffed from the night before we had to get out of the house for a while. Started off at the Spectrum which is an outdoor mall with a lots of restaurants, outdoor ice-skating, merry-go-rounds etc. Kind of nice to just walk around there on a nice sunny day.

Walked around for a while, hubby did some shopping, had lunch and headed to South Coast Plaza (really hard to stay away from that place, I know!). Must say, we expected more deals and it to be far more crowded...Most shops had some kind of discounts, but you get them every couple of weeks anyway. I guess the bargains were to be made in electronics. A lot of the big shops such as Best Buy opened Friday morning at midnight already and had people queuing during the night. Just as crazy as when the Brits start queuing outside NExt at 5 am on Boxing day! Even apple had some discounts and the first apple shop we passed we couldn't even get into, that's how busy it was. Later on we did mangage to get this stylish mouse though which I had been looking at for quite some time. I know..the apple syndrom where you are willing to pay more for something just because it is apple.

We finished off the evening buy having a meal at a Thai restaurant nearby. I think I need to do some more research and find better places to eat out at. Food was ok, but it still felt like a fast food joint even if we had "real" plates. Surely there must be better options around here (I drive past them all the time but then forget about where they were).

Something I couldn't find on Saturday were Christmas decorations, other to hang in the Christmas tree, so for the first time ever I think, we have no Christmas decorations up on first of advent. I know people don't celebrate it here, but I didn't quite expect not to find ANYTHING to buy. Ah, I do have a somewhat Christmassy tablecloth bought at Target. The ONLY tablecloth we have right now, until the consignment arrives.


This afternoon I am hoping to get a little Christmas feeling (we currently have 26 degrees C outside..phew) at the SWEA Christmas fair. There will even be a Lucia!

Long Weekend

Thought I'd be smart and do some food shopping yesterday before the craziness starts. How wrong was I. It has already started. Manage to pick up some bits and bobs (thankfully, we are invited to Rosemary and John's tonight, and we are so looking forward to it) and then escape home again. Absolutely crazy out there. They say thanksgiving is bigger than Christmas here, well, I cannot compare but we are pretty sure we won't go anywhere near the shops on Black Friday. Nice to have hubby home for four days in a row. We started the long weekend yesterday by going to Tokyo table for some Japansese food. Yum!

People always seem to think Americans get no time off, well, not sure about that, I think there are constantly bank holidays here, perhaps because they are spread out a little more than in e.g. Germany and Sweden. Though Germany is pretty hard to beat, but I think Hong Kong is the record holder. They still have the British and also get the Chinese holidays (which are not so modest, either). However, many shops here, including dry cleaners, are open 7 days a week and after living in Germany where literally everything apart from petrol stations and some bakeries are closed on Sundays and bank holidays, it is such a blessing to be able to go shopping any day you want. The stress we used to feel Friday afternoons or Saturday mornings is completely gone and we have learnt to appreciate this quickly. It was always a stryggle to make it to the dry cleaner, butcher etc. in Cologne, whereas they close between 6 and 6.30 pm on weekdays, they would only be open between either 9 am and 1 pm. Add post office and some smaller shops outside the city too. Always such a race against time.

Just received my work permit! That must be a new record in efficiency! Not even a week since I posted the requested "evidence" such as marriage certificate etc. to the Homeland Security. Also got an appointment to capture my biometrics next week. Now let's see if that needs to be postponed:) So, like an ashamed dog I take all my complaints back about people being rather slow here.