Unintended consequences

When I started this blog, I definitely didn't think through its consequences. I just jumped right in and started typing and adding photos and saying silly things ...

Never once did I think I'd make any kind of meaningful connection with people.

To be honest, I actually didn't like 'blogging' after I started. I felt like a superficial fraud commenting on strangers' blogs. I felt blogs were all a bit 'cliquey' or 'crafty' or narcissistic. I was going to give it up, but I kept going because I made myself laugh.

Never once did I think people would come across my blog, and read it, and then comment on it ... but somehow they found it. They commented, and then I commented back, and so on. And I particularly remember a Norwegian woman, coming out of the Aurora, saying how I amused her melancholy-self.

And, then this arrived yesterday. 

Thank goodness, really. Because its Aurorial sender was very concerned about it! She told me her 'tracking' advice informed her it'd 'fallen off the back of a truck' and she imagined all sorts of unauthorised marsupials jumping all over it, and perusing its contents with their little pesky-paws and pecky-beaks and floppy-flippers.

So I was excited, and relieved, to have it here. I informed my 'Four' that it came from 'Lilli in Norway'. And 1/4 exclaimed, "The one with the baby who looks like Martha?" and another 1/4 responded with, "The one with the naked doll?"

"Yes," I said. To both.

So we all looked at the very large box, and I emailed Lilli and told her it'd arrived, and informed her it didn't look like it'd been tampered with by wallabies or emus or walruses, and asked what she wanted me to do with it.

I carried it upstairs ... and pondered its size and thought this is 'way-too-big-a-box for someone, from a tiny town in Norway, to be sending to someone in Australia they really didn't know'. And then I thought of Deb in Canada, who did precisely the same thing. And I shook my head.

So I grabbed a Stanley knife and surgically opened the brown paper and hoped, in doing so, we wouldn't ruin the surprise without getting the go-ahead from its donor.

We all pulled everything out. It was all beautifully wrapped and secured and padded. 

The brown box was the most exciting ...

and then Child One remembered someone had given her a Whoopee cushion to celebrate the last day of school. Sorry to steal the limelight Lilli, but it was a WHOOPEE CUSHION!

And the presents then sat enticingly on the table. So while everyone else was making fart noises and laughing like galoots, I smelt the presents! They smelt like Norway. Smokey. Like a warming fire. I guess they smelt like Norway because that's where they'd come from.

I would have been happy just with the card. It's beautiful. Handmade and its illustration is a remarkable representation of our house - there's Child Two and Child Three fighting, and Martha's pulling the pet's fur and Child One is angsting-on, and someone's spilt a liquid, and I'm in the liquor cabinet and the husband's in the corner playing with the Whoopee cushion!

It's a magical, smokey-smelling card. And it explains the presents ...  so I really didn't have to open them. I was told each one represents a different Scandinavian country.

There's a beautiful dress from Denmark; an illustrated book from Sweden; a Swedish toy; some modern Norwegian porcelain ...

Maternally, I decided I wouldn't open them until Christmas and, though I was dying to open them immediately, I thought I'd savour their wrapped specialness until Christmas day.

But the word from Norway was 'Go! Go! Go! Open them now!'

So we did ...

Delightful Brio pull-along Noodle who, unlike the real Noodle, doesn't wee on the Christmas Tree (not the Danish one!)

Precious Swedish book (written in Norwegian which is okay because we're Scandinavian bi-lingual now) and plate ...

 

Traditional, charming, scrumptious Norwegian chocolate which will definitely wait 'til Christmas.

Exquisite Norwegian porcelain which I'm afraid is going to be the impetus of some sort of personal obsession.

I didn't photograph the Danish dress because I did it no justice.

I've never had a gift from Norway; quite possibly because I've never known anyone from Norway. Now, I do. Somehow we've had an effect on a little family in Norway who is kind enough to go to the trouble, and expense, of posting a package to a very ordinary, noisy family in Australia.

I never started this blog to get presents from people.

We have all we need.

I never started the blog to gain friends in Norway or Canada or America or England or Melbourne, or find people I connect with and suddenly see into parts of their lives and then have them share aspects of ours.

That was never my intention.

I never contemplated that ever happening in my life. But I'm thankful for the unintended consequences because they've turned out to be the best.