Jet Lag

3:00 AM, Sondag den 8.Juli, Vato, Sverige

I seem to be the one in the family having the hardest time with jet lag. We arrived at Jan and Kirsi’s summer home midnight Friday evening. I stayed up until almost 6 AM in the morning and ended up getting about 2 ½ hours of sleep. Justin came out of his bedroom at 5 AM with wide eyes, thinking it was normal since it was already light outside. I fed him Nutella toast breakfast – for him an excellent culinary start to living in Europe – and he declared, ‘I don’t have jet lag daddy!’ whereupon he fell back asleep and we had a hard time waking him up again at 10 AM.

Tonight after only about 4 hours of sleep I am awake again. Everyone else is sleeping fine. It does not help that it is light outside. Jan said if I am up I should take his dog for a walk, which I will do after I finish writing this, and hopefully I can get back to sleep.

We have had a great start to our trip.  Jan and Kirsi have 3 daughters – Linda, Anna, and Stina. Anna is Jordan’s age and Stina is Justin’s age. These 4 are already having a great time together jumping on the trampoline, riding bikes to the nearby pond to swim, and playing “Prince of Persia” on PlayStation. All of that in the first day.

We are out ‘poa Landet’ at Jan and

Kirsi’s summer house. A word to describe the environment would be ‘fecund’ – green, green, green; everything slightly damp from rain; wild strawberries and blueberries ripening in the sunny places; mosses, ferns, lots of small flowering plants and even miniature wild orchids; and of course mosquitoes.

Gigi and I are staying in the ‘Being John Malkovich’ suite. It is a pine plank room in the attic accessed through the living room ceiling by a pull down ladder. Two single bed foam mattresses and a one foot square window. It is actually very cozy and comfortable. I wish I was up there asleep right now, but I guess instead I will take the dog out for a 3:30 AM stroll…no flashlight needed.