Monthly Archive: October 2003

I’m at Hotel Tylösand, on the west coast of Sweden, relaxing. We had a work event during the day, a conference at which we discussed our company culture, which has come to us top down, from the management team, who has decided what our core values will be. They are passion respect responsibility No one agrees with “passion,” and we’ve suggested several alternatives: enthusiasm, motivation, engagement, commitment…but they keep insisting that passion is the right word for what they want their employees to feel for their work, their products, the company and our customers. Umm. Had an hour long massage...

Seen in an online article today: “I hope I have peaked your interest…” AAAAGH! Swenglish/Svengelska in use at our house: pricky korv Anders’ additions to the grocery list after I asked him to email me the things he wanted: meatballs rökt korv tomatoes red ducati 999R In other news, one of my very good friends here in Sweden told me today that she’s pregnant. 🙂 She was just bursting with happiness and mood swings. We were pregnant at the same time (me with Karin) in 1999, and we were both the most miserable pregnant women that ever existed on the...

I gotta get me some o’ that!

One of the things that arrived in the several packages that we’ve gotten recently from my mom is a CD of American patriotic songs, which I asked her to find. I wanted it for my kids because otherwise, there are hardly any occasions here in Sweden where they will actually hear these songs as they grow up. I just put it in the CD player to listen to while I check email tonight and by god, it’s stirring! 🙂 Okay, well, maybe not stirring, but as a military brat, it does give me a certain frisson of patriotic emotion that...

Halloween cards for the kids (hey, where’s MINE?!) came in the mail yesterday from my mom, and since they were full of stickers, the kids were thrilled. Martin had a card with pumpkins and the stickers were the parts needed to make jack-o-lanterns out of them. Apparently, they’ve been talking about ghosts and goblins for 2 weeks at school, and now Martin is scared of the dark. He freaked out on a walk around the block a couple of nights ago with Anders and Karin, and Anders said he was literally shaking. This was WITH his father and sister, on...

22nd: Choir 23rd: Grocery shopping, laundry, work on AWC website/newsletter 24th: Overnight work event 25th: Martin to birthday party, finish AWC website/newsletter 26th: Martin to birthday party, carve pumpkins 27th: AWC monthly meeting 28th: Surprise birthday party for a friend, Anders leaves for 3-day trip to England 29th: Choir 30th: Haircut/color, make Halloween desserts, gather Halloween decorations for Saturday 31st: Halloween party & trick-or-treating 1st: AWC Halloween party

work: competent, helpful, fast, busy home: impatient, tired, silly, happy, busy club: generous, energetic, friendly, busy

Yesterday morning, and after we got home from Helsingborg, Martin spent several hours engaged in putting together a godisjakt (candy hunt) for Anders and Karin to do. He worked really hard on it, and the whole thing was his own idea. They’ve been practicing following complicated instructions at school, so I’m guessing this is an offshoot of that. He came to me early in the morning and asked me to spell a few things for him, and spent about an hour cutting out letters and drawing little faces on them. Anders told me later how it went. First they had...

The lemurs were loose. The tamarins were, too (and some had babies!). So were the iguanas. The Tropikariet was great, and the kids loved it. First, we drove to Helsingborg and had a very American Sunday brunch at a place called O’Leary’s. There is a new owner who turned out to be quite the asshole, as he apparently gave Neitha a huge headache when she called to reserve our tables by telling her that they didn’t do the buffet anymore. She held him to the promises the previous owner had made her, and he was rude to all of us,...

That’s what I’ve got. They’re huge. I hate them. Today I’m wearing a brand new bra that my mother got for me, and unfortunately, I feel like I ought to be wearing an 1800’s decolletage gown that pushes up my bosom, at a ball, with a lacy fan in front of me, my hair up in sweeping curls and a beauty mark on my cheek. Whoa. Our house is getting to the point of being so clean that if the sun was shining, it would sparkle. 3 more rooms done today and the floors in the entire house except the...