Monthly Archive: March 2004

I’d chew off a limb if I thought it would get me out of this class.

Things that still crack me up even though my kids only thought they were funny once: In the car, going somewhere, the kids are haranguing me for something using the time-honored phrase, “please please mama please” only they’re doing it in Swedish, which is “snälla, snälla, snälla* mamma” at which point I stop them dead and say, Did you just call me a snail?! Singing Pop Goes the Weasel really loud as the kids are finishing dinner, and just as I get frozen desserts on sticks out of the freezer, I end the chorus with POPSICLE WEASEL! Karin tells me...

Stuck in a database course with two other people. I type about a million times faster than they do. Which means, I’m sitting waiting while they finish the assignments that took me a quarter of the time. Plus the teacher has a habit of standing behind the 3 of us while we work (or rather while the other 2 students work) which means I can’t play on the internet as I would normally in a situation like this. sigh.

Good Bits If nothing is coming in, nothing will be going out. Real Live Preacher Just kill him already! A Girl Named Bob Some of us are just searching for our daughters. World According to Chuck This is the time of year when winter and spring have a kind of shoving contest. Pamela Dean Making Over Mona (link via One Good Thing) Better Bits: connecting with Becky on the phone yesterday The brown-eyed stare and fierce hug Karin gave me last night Martin’s happiness upon finally wiggling out baby tooth #2 Anders vacuuming and mopping the kitchen floor A book...

When I was 13, I met someone who would be one of my best friends for the rest of my life. I mean best friends in the Anne and Diana sense. Becky and I spent three years tying our hearts around each other. All of my best friends, and there are only 4 of them, and 2 of them have slid into the ether of busy lives, were made in 3-year bursts of intensity. The first 2 were caused by my father’s Air Force move schedule, the 3rd by the vagaries of college life, and the last by the expat...

Cracked me up last night: My daughter replying “Aye aye captain” and firing off a salute when I asked her to carry the popcorn bowl back to the kitchen. The kids were up at 6:30 this morning, laughing, talking, slamming doors. I called “Martin!” but they didn’t hear me over the sounds of their own voices. “Martin!” No response. Drag myself out of bed, stumble to the door, glare blearily at them. They’ve got that deer in the headlights look, you can almost hear them thinking oops. I growl, “Be quiet! It’s still really early!” and collapse back into bed....

When I left work today, the moon surprised me. It looked so…otherworldly. The sky was a uniform shade of medium blue, and the moon looked see-through, all its darker parts the exact same blue as the sky behind it. It looked like a white potato print on the sky. Or a perfectly round cirrus cloud with blue bits showing through. Flat and two dimensional, did someone really scuff the dust up there? Coming down the hill from Lund, the sun behind me lit up the fields in a glowing quilt of beige, brown, sage, green. The nails in the winter...

Because I was sick most of the week, I didn’t go to choir and we had no other plans and I’ve been home EVERY SINGLE WEEKNIGHT and guess what? We don’t have any plans for the weekend either! Hmmm….very strange. Very, very strange. But nice, in a confusing sort of non-social way. I can’t remember the last time I was home every single weeknight in a week. Actually, I shouldn’t say we don’t have plans for the weekend, but the plans we do have involve going as a family to the mall and perhaps to see Brother Bear. They don’t...

Just sick enough to be lame-o, but not sick enough to be pathetic, if you know what I mean. It’s been a down day, low-volume, muffled, tucked in. I’ve read through nearly the entire trilogy of Pamela Dean’s Secret Country books. Had chicken soup and dragonfruit Festis. No gargling with whisky though, sorry John. Not even the kids coming home and ringing the front doorbell endlessly really broke through my headcold fog. There’s a large triangular patch of snow in the far corner of our backyard that is hanging stubbornly on. The horses and ponies were out today, wandering somewhat...

Still bleah. Home again. Getting a really good gravelly voice, as a prelude to losing it.