- I’ve never been a big fan of dried fruit, but O! dried pineapple chunks are SO GOOD. They’re better than candy. They’re like MAGIC candy!
- 30 days hath September…so far 12 of them are still blank on our calendar. eep!
- My brother reminded my family and I that it’s time to start the familiy Christmas wish lists so that everyone has time to get started. Little does he know I started months ago. muahaha!
- Massage tomorrow…mmmmm! thank goodness because my neck really, REALLY needs it.
The woman who offered to coordinate our annual pumpkin patch field trip for the AWC couldn’t find any listing for the place we visited last year and I couldn’t find the number in my files, or get ahold of the woman who had arranged it last fall…so I started hunting online for pumpa självplock (pumpkins you-pick) until I found another vegetable farm in the same area. I called and talked to the lady who answered, wondering if they had pumpkins (no) and did she know anything about the place nearby where we had been last year? Yes! She did, but there’s no business listing, the old man who runs the place does it privately and you have to call his private number. She very kindly gave me his name and the info and I thanked her and I called him right up to ask him if they still grew pumpkins and if the club could book a date to come out.
“Sven-Åke,” he answered gruffly after a couple of rings. “Hej!” I answered, “Jag heter Liz och jag ringer från American Women’s Club…”
“Jag är inte intresserad,” he said, *click*
*stupified silence*
Then I laughed my head off and called him back to explain that I wasn’t SELLING anything, we wanted to BUY pumpkins!
(Hi! My name is Liz and I’m calling from the American Women’s Club…—I’m not interested.)
***
Our dryer went on the fritz over a week ago. The door latch stopped working and Anders switched it out by turning the door around but after that every time he tried to run it, it caused a power outage in the entire house. So he promptly hauled it off to the repair shop, where they promised to check it out and call us back as soon as they knew what it was. *looks at watch, sighs*
Since laundry doesn’t stop just because we don’t have a dryer, I have been forced to resort to the dreaded drying cabinet which all the Swedes and probably all Europeans love with a passion that escapes me. I like having it on hand to hang things that need to hang-dry and to capture dripping raingear and stinky hockey equipment, but actually DRY anything in it? Har! Don’t make me laugh. It’s been pure torture this week, folding crinkly crunchy underwear and my usually fluffy soft and puffy towels have had the consistency of sandpapered cardboard. bleah!
***
I found myself deliberately not thinking much about 9/11 this week, not reading about it, not watching anything on TV, not wanting to remember. Since Anders is gone, I fixed leftovers for dinner for the kids and myself and we sat down to eat. After some general conversation about their day, Karin informed me that 5 years ago a terrible thing happened in America and they had talked about it in school today and did I know about it? Karin had just turned 2 a few months before and Martin had not yet turned 4 so they had not been at all aware of what was happening that day 5 years ago.
So I started to tell them about it, in the simplest terms I could find, and found myself struggling not to tear up, because behind the basic facts that I was relating was all the horror and helplessness I remember from that day. Watching it unfold, not being able to reach my mother or my sister on the phone (who were nowhere near any of it), hearing the stories about those trapped, the last phone calls, the people jumping, the people dying.
It might be scarred over, but I don’t know if it will ever really heal. I can’t imagine what the people who survived or the people who lost someone go through this time each year.