Monthly Archive: May 2006

24
May
2006

LEAVE OF ABSENCE AND A CONTEST!

I don’t know about you guys, but I get twitchy when I’m without computer access for an extended period…and that is what is looming up in my face RIGHT NOW. We are leaving at o’hell early in the morning to fly to Germany to celebrate my baby brother’s nuptials with the whole fam damily. Wish me luck singing! studiozoe and her Tobey are housesitting for us, for which favor I am very grateful. 🙂 And I will wish YOU luck with a contest that I have devised to keep you occupied (and get comments, lots and lots of pretty, pretty...

22
May
2006

LIFE IS A LONG PREPARATION FOR SOMETHING THAT NEVER HAPPENS*

Before a trip, my brain kicks into overdrive months in advance. I start with mental lists of things to remember, sticking little virtual post-it notes all over my gray matter. One of the ones I stuck up more than 8 months ago for the trip we’re leaving on this week read “Get Karin’s passport renewed” and the little post-it note was only JUST wadded up and thrown away a couple of days ago. I start early doing this because it gives me plenty of time to prioritize and remember things: get prescriptions filled, register to have the mail held, buy...

21
May
2006

PROBABLY IN THE SAME CATEGORY: ASKING QUESTIONS OF YOUR READERS

The rapeseed is blooming! There’s a huge swath of neon-yellow in the field behind our house and when you crest the hill from Lund you can see a green and brown and yellow patchwork quilt spread out in front of you, with rapeseed glowing in giant yellow squares and skinny pointy windmills turning slowing in the breeze. If you start counting quickly, just as you go over the top, you can count 22 of them before you reach the bottom. I am very glad that the Eurovison Song Contest is over for another year. What a frightshow. I must apologize...

20
May
2006

AN ADDENDUM

As regards my last post: or…hrm…I could just be completely addicted and in denial about it. bwahahahaa! Blindingly Bright and Bouncy Birthday Wishes to geniealisa!

19
May
2006

BY CHANCE MET, BY CHOICE FRIENDS

My friend Marilyn over at California Fever, wrote a very insightful post today about why people blog, how blogging affects the people who do it, and how the blogosphere has changed in the past few years, both for the better and for the worse. I found myself nodding along with her assessments, for the most part. There seems to be a lot of reflection going on out there among my virtual friends these days and many of us have experienced the cyclical ups and downs of online writing, online journaling, online blogging, or whatever the hell you want to call...

18
May
2006

POETRY THURSDAY

First, I listened, twining hair about my hand, perhaps sucking on my thumb, my legs stuck out straight in front of me, my head resting in the crook of my mother’s arm. Then I pored over the pictures, turning pages slowly, matching up images on each leaf with the images the words raised in my mind. There, Georgie Porgie with the weeping girls running from him, and there a cow jumping over the moon. I learned the ways of rhyme and tone, I sang them back with a singsong voice, repeating them until they were a part of me. The...

16
May
2006

FREEZING FEET AND BLOOMING BRAIN

It is 8 degrees Celsius (46F) out right now. Do you know how cold that is for the 3rd week in May? Colder than a witch’s Springy tit, that’s what. I just checked the 2-week forecast and it’s all BLOW and COLD and GREY and SUCK. There are no numbers anywhere in sight above the middle 50s except for the ones that give percentage chances of precipitation. Those? Are in the 90s. Overnight, it seems we have gone from spring to fall. Summer, we hardly knew ye! I just went out and watered the garden and the trees, fully expecting...

15
May
2006

IN OUR EMBERS IS SOMETHING THAT DOTH LIVE

A child’s toothbrush, a pair of sunglasses snatched off the hall table, and the pajamas they were wearing. That’s what our neighbors saved from their burning house. I think of all their history, their shared memories, the scrapbooks, the photo albums, their daughter’s crayoned scribbles melted to the charred husk of the refrigerator. It’s all just stuff, isn’t it? But it’s YOUR stuff. If it went up in flame and ashes, do you think you would feel freed? That you were winnowed and lightweight and had a free hand to start over; a clean slate? Or would you perpetually be...

14
May
2006

KEEPING HOUSE

Did you play House when you were a child? I did. I don’t remember it as well as playing School, though. THAT was fun. Gathering pencils and papers and rulers and making little exercise pages for my sister and brother to do, and throwing chalk at them when they misbehaved (not really, the chalk part, I mean). My sister and I had Dawn dolls and Barbies, and while we played with them, even the bendable Barbie whose leg had been chewed halfway up by Thumper, Sarah’s black and white rabbit, so that the bendy white plastic part stuck out from...

13
May
2006

OMGWTFPINESOL

What is wrong with this picture? Anders and the kids left this morning for overnight scout camp. It is sunny, blue-skied and breezy out. I can hear birds singing from all directions because all the windows are open. Loud and cheerful music is playing on my stereo. I am inside: deep spring cleaning. *** I shall stop soon and go for a walk. I may also, at some point, feel the urge to make a bullet-point list of my cleaning accomplishments here because that way I increase the chances of getting some applause for a job well-done, which I will...

May 2006
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