Chapter 11.1 - March 2023 - The grass is always greener.. / Enjoy the silence

Spring hadn't arrived fully yet, as snow began to fall the night when february turned to march. The calendar also says that next month will be another birthday celebration, a double celebration even, as there are a couple of twins who will enter a new stage of their life...



Because of this, we will leave Cliffon Street behind and move across to the more rural part of town and this house by the end of Southfield Road. It's the old Frumpenheimer house (most houses in town are pretty old...) where the Rasmussen/Jensen family lives.



The parents Solvej Rasmussen and Patrik C. Jensen haven't gotten much sleep for the past 11 months or so, as their two twin daughters Lillian and Silvia have done their best to keep them awake at various times of the day...



It's not always that amusing, perhaps especially for Patrik, who isn't the most family oriented guy.



Though the parents may be tired and a little grumpy, the son of the house Rune wakes up with a good mood this morning.



It is indeed a beautiful morning as the sun rises in the east to shine it's first warming rays over the town as a sign that spring is getting a little closer eventually...



Rune grabs a simple juice for breakfast before heading to school, while Solvej prepares waffles for herself and Patrik (who is still asleep in their bedroom downstairs). Solvej and Patrik doesn't have to leave anywhere just yet, as Solvej works as a gardener now, her job is in her greenhouse right next to her home. Patrik is the captain of the local football team, the Sprottenham Totspurs, and so his job doesn't start until the afternoon.



Patrik and Solvej have been a couple for quite some years now and have so far proved everyone in town wrong when they said their relationship wouldn't last very long, because, well.. Patrik wasn't excactly known to be faithful... So as she stands there with something in the oven, she starts to think that maybe it's time they took the final step and actually got married...



When Rune enters the school I see Edny Sævik just about to walk in through the doors. She is Bodils friend whom she never got to visit yesterday because they were away. Looks like they are back again now from their visit down south..

Prison life...

Location: Sunset Valley Prison, B-wing.                                         Lacuna Coil - Enjoy the silence (Depeche Mode Cover) This is inmate #256 Oda Sævik. She is serving an 8 year sentence for being an accomplice in money laundering, kidnapping and human trafficking. She is also Ednys mother... Prison life isn't all that. The walls are grey like concrete, the days are long and there isn't much to do but play chess and spend your time thinking. Prison allows for plenty of time to think and reflect... sometimes perhaps a little to much.. Then there's always the odd inmate that tries to weird everyone out.. ..but most of all, prison is a very lonely and isolated experience.. when you're far away from your family and loved ones, and some days all you want to do is sleep... Holidays are the worst... This is how Oda spent her christmas eve... Location: Sunset Valley Prison, Family Visiting Room, February 2023 ..but every now and then, if Oda has behaved nicely, she is allowed to have a visit from her family. That's something to look forward to, something to keep her.. going... Young baby Gøran probably doesn't understand to much of what's going on.. Toddler Kolbjørn knows his mom has done something really bad and has gone to a place far away.. Edny understands a lot more... and is very excited to meet her mom again when she hears her voice.. look behind you! It's mom! "Oh mom... I missed you so much..." Words like violence Break the silence Come crashing in Into my little world Painful to me Pierce right through me Can't you understand Oh, my little girl All I ever wanted All I ever needed Is here In my arms Words are very Unnecessary They can only do harm Time is short when you have to catch up with several months of "what happened in school", and Edny has plenty of stories to tell.. about everything she has learned, all the homework she has to do, and how she is best friends with Bodil... She doesn't want to tell mom though about how the other kids sometimes haze her for having a mom in prison.. Oda knows not everything is as great as Edny says, because she has talked with her husband Vetle on the phone a few times about it already, and how he has been in meetings with the school administration about it, and how they have "promised to deal with it", because of course they have a "zero tolerance for bullying at their school", but so far not much has happened.... The middle child Kolbjørn gets some attention too. In three years time he will be old enough to have his first day at school, a moment she is very likely to miss out on... but for now, "Here comes the claw!" ...and then there's the youngest one, Gøran. To him for a long time, mom will be a far away figure living half way across the country.. and she will probably miss out on his first day of school, too.. Eight years doesn't look like much on paper maybe, but it's a long time when you have a family... It's heartbreaking, so Oda has to spend the time she gets to be visited by her family wisely and effectively.. These are the moments she gets with her family... she better saviour them, because... ..afterwards it will be back to the grey stone walls again, weird inmates, the same daily routine of getting up at the same time, being served breakfast, chess, workout, dinner, lights out, go to sleep for another day... Parental skills are still intact.. and soon the family has to go back to the hotel they're staying at, and Oda has to go back to her cell, but first... ..Edny wanted to hear a good night story from mom. Nobody tells a good night story like mom.. and yes, the visiting area has a bed. Not because people are allowed to sleep over, because they're not... that bed is there for other.. reasons.. though, since Oda got visited by both her husband and her kids, using it for the.. intended purpose in the time she got with them, wasn't necessarily a priority.. That's prison life... Enjoy the silence.. ..now, back to reality outside...

After finishing her breakfast, Solvej wants to read a book about gardening, so she gets into her purple car to head to the library. She also wants to find a seed and harvest a wild plant, but winter time isn't the best time of year to look for seeds on the ground or harvest plants, so a quiet day at the library will have to do. ;)



Anne-Gerd Jørgensen and Leya Chitrakaar-Bråheim are also seen at the library doing some slightly lighter reading purely for entertainment reasons. :P



Patrik then gets a change of mind regarding his career, so he calls a baby sitter for the twins before he heads to the police station to start a new career fighting crime (or maybe it's because he just likes women in uniforms, I don't know. :P ) Patriks new boss is Glenn Hoddelås, Bodils father.



He must have a good eyesight, which could probably come in handy also for his new career, as he somehow manages to spot a lizard in the snow outside. At the same time he is passed by Agathi Jiggens on the sidewalk on her daily stroll with Ruben.. she's probably heading to the park again for the third time in a row now. ;)



Patrik hasn't given up on sports completely though, as the next thing he does is to head to the gym hoping to find someone who might be interested in having him as their personal trainer...



"Hmm, there are a couple of guys standing over there, maybe one of them will do.."



The guys are Edgar Kyllingstad, an already acquaintance of him and Agnar Bergersen, a chef at the local seafood restaurant and certified hater of art. :P



Since Edgar is already there in his sports outfit, Patrik thinks he would probably be the most interested in a good workout. Besides, he doesn't really know Agnar all that well, so asking Edgar is probably the best choice.



Edgar is more than happy to be coached by the now former captain of the local football team and Patrik is more than happy to be his coach, so the interest is mutual. Agnar probably wouldn't have been to interested as he has to run off to go to work...



Edgar was doing pretty well on the treadmill, so after a while Patrik decides to get a solid workout for himself too. :P



Outside the school Rune leaves with his friend Tatiana Maria Vanderfjert to go home to her place. Tatiana Maria is the daughter of Gabriela (nee Bedoya) and Ramger Vanderfjert, both colleagues of Leya. Ramger is, like Patrik now, a former football player of the local football team, before he switched careers to music.



At the library Solvejs reading has paid off, and she is now at level 8 in the gardening skill. She also feels the effects of lack of sleep and decides to put the book down to go home and get some rest...



Roberts new boss is of course an excellent police officer, as he even on the way home from work decided to stop by the Klinemann household to do some investigation and uh.. acquire some stolen goods after a visit to their bathroom... well, those goods are certainly stolen now! The Supersalg-Simen ("The supersale Sim") is one of the cheaper toilet types (Bargain John in english).



Rune was doing homework with Tatiana Maria in their kitchen, but wasn't to happy about it... "School sucks.. Not only do we have to sit still inside school all day, but afterwards when we get home we even have to do homework! That shouldn't be allowed! We should force adults to do homework too..."



Solvej didn't get much of her needed rest when she came home, because the baby sitter had done a pretty terrible job with the twins.. If she could have, she would have given him the boot, but of course, he was much to quick to run out the door after she paid him and by the time she noticed what a lazy bum he had been, it was to late...



"Hey... will join me in skipping school tomorrow?" Rune still wasn't very happy about school...

"No..." Tatiana said... "I kind of like school, you know.. and I don't want to get in trouble with mom and dad. Don't you?"

"Nah, I think it'll be alright. Mom didn't go to school when she was a kid."

"What?" Tatiana was surprised. "Why not? How could your mom not go to school?"

"Mom was taught at home by her parents" Rune explained. "That's how they used to do it where mom is from."

"That's weird..." Tatiana said. "Parents aren't meant to be teachers, that's the teachers job."



If Solvej had raised Rune all on her own, she might have chosen to do homeschooling for him, to better instill in him the correct values of taking care of nature and spreading love and peace to the world.. however, Patrik also had a say in this, and he was of a different opinion, so she had accepted to have Rune enrolled in school for now. Also, with taking care of the twins lately there wouldn't have been much time or energy left to make sure Rune learnt what he needed to anyway...



After the kids have finished their homework, Tatiana sits down in the living room to watch tv, while Rune walks upstairs to check under her bed to see if there are monsters...



"Hmm.. oh, yikes!" .. and there were! He suspected there were, when he heard them hissing and breathing as soon as he opened the door to her bedroom, but he didn't think they would be this terrifying! With red glowing eyes and skin like rotting meat!



He thought he could almost smell them from underneath the bed (or maybe all this means that it just hasn't been cleaned there for a while.. so remember to always clean under your bed to prevent monsters from growing! :P )



"That certainly isn't a good place to sleep...." he thought after he had ran out of the room and heard footsteps behind him.. but the footsteps weren't anything dangerous. It was Tatianas mom Gabriela that had just come home from her job at the theatre and wanted to tell him a funny story about a guy at work that brushed his teeth so much he almost had no teeth left!



That was of course the funniest thing Rune has ever heard. ;)



The mental image he got of a man sitting at his workdesk without a single tooth in his mouth was to much to handle... :P



Gabriela was funny and nice, he though, so he wanted her to read him a bedtime story.. in their bedroom, not Tatianas bedroom, because of the monsters...



Gabriela then wanted to play a goodnight lullaby for him, but that was a little to much...



At the gym Patrik had finished his workout and was approached by a paparazzi that wanted to dance with him. Of course, Patrik didn't decline. ;)



Solvej was near the brink of exhaustion at home, as she was doing her best to get naps and take care of the babies...



Tatianas father Ramger was home as well, and was reading Tatiana a bedtime story.



Rune had decided to brave it and ask Gabriela for another bedtime story, this time in Tatianas bed..



They must not like sleep in this household though, because after finishing the bedtime story Ramger did excactly the same thing as his wife and started playing the guitar for Tatiana. ;)



It was way past curfew for Rune, and if he were to get any sleep he couldn't stay there so he had to hop on his bike and get back home..



"I hope mom and dad won't be mad at me for getting home this late..."



Well, he was lucky there. Patrik hadn't even noticed he was out as he went straight to bed after returning from the gym and Solvej was much to exhausted from taking care of the twins and was out like a light when she finally could go to sleep..



So it was no problem for Rune to sneak inside the house to his room and go to bed....



Goodnight. ;)

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