Sorting, Painting and Baking (and cats!!)

This week has been full of sorting and semi packing. We learned that we needed to have our living/dining room ceiling painted. We installed a light fixture and the landlady asked us to remove it- we did and tried to patch and paint. We went to the hardware store and as I expected there is one ceiling paint - no color options, no matte or gloss but just one paint. But of course the ceiling has not been painted in 10+ years so the white paint was too white. SO we had to paint the whole stinking thing. In theory we could have hired someone or paid the landlady to have it done but we expect that would have cost at least $500. We did learn that if we ever return to Norway we will pack an extra suitcase of blue painters tape to sell on the black market. One roll was $36 - say what! Luckily we had enough half finished rolls at home to avoid shelling out for that. The painting took us three evenings to complete and looks pretty good. Unexpectedly, the landlady paid for our paint and supplies after the fact (should have bought that tape!) so that made the ridiculous task slightly easier to swallow.

Almost forgot the funny story. We painted the room in two sections so we could move the furniture accordingly. Last night we were moving it all back. The ottoman seemed much heavier then I remembered and after we put it down and turned to get the next thing I saw a huge black cat out of the corner of my eye. I screamed and we tried to chase it but it was gone... somewhere in our house. After searching for 20 minutes we finally found it under a table in our TV room. After a sealing off all escape routes and opening the front door I attempted to "shoo" it out- it was having none of that. It was unhappy that I found it and was bothering it. After a few attempts it finally ran out of the house. I guess it snuck in our back door which I leave open and found a nice napping spot while we painted. Dopler and Stretch would have made quick work of finding that cat....it was lucky.

In better news - we sold our car! Thank god! The couple we sold it to are great- they are being really flexible with the pick up date and are transferring the money into our bank account in advance. What? That would never happen in the US. We also learned this week that we have been driving on the expired car title for oh 2 years. Nobody told us we had to transfer the title to us or how to do that. We actually didn't even know we needed to have the title in the car at all times it just happened to be there. Car title is a good Norwegian word- it literally translates as "wagon card".

We have also started saying good-byes. It is weird to think we will most likely never be back to Trondheim or even Norway. We have meet some really nice people and learned a lot from them- they will be missed. We have started to plan our final week of packing, loading, cleaning and dinners out. I have baked my last item in Norway. Today was M&M cookies since we have about 40 packs of M&M's left. Here is the recipe - I made them much smaller then the recipe calls for and cooked them for only 10 minutes to get the best consistency. But sadly I used the last of the sugar and vanilla so baking is over for now. Only 8 days left.