Yearly Archive: 2006

25
Nov
2006

ANTICIPATION

I’m just waiting for the guests to arrive. Everything is done and in its place. Karin and Martin helped clean the house and picked up their rooms with dispatch. Karin went beyond the call of 7-year-old duty afterwards by dusting, windexing and wiping lightswitches and doorsills. I zoomed off to the grocery store for the last-minute items and when I returned I vacuumed and set both tables…after taking an hour’s rest to lie down and finish my book. Anders finished the other turkey a moment ago, the house is redolent with good smells. Potatoes are peeled and in the pot...

23
Nov
2006

GRATITUDE IS THE BEST ATTITUDE

It’s Thanksgiving in America, but here in Sweden it was just another regular work day. Except for all my American colleagues who wished me a Happy Thanksgiving and the thanks-filled posts I saw online and an elevated mood on my part (defiantly ignoring the rain), there wasn’t much different about the day. We had our annual wreath-making workshop tonight and despite the fact that half the people who were signed up bailed, the 4 of us who were there had a great time and lots of laughs, while the rain pounded futilely on the corrugated roof. Haha! we said, you...

21
Nov
2006

WRITING IS THINKING WITH YOUR FINGERS

My days are sandwiched in darkness. Every morning shines a damp and lambent greeting from a rain-streaked windowpane. The street outside glows wetly, it brightens slowly with the cloud cover as the sun comes up and pales everything to a lighter shade. As I drive to work, quietly humming to the split-splat of water on the windshield and the swish-swish as the silver ribbons are wiped and renewed from the glass, the streetlights are just turning off. I’ve been barely taking 15 or at the most 20 minutes for lunch lately, it’s been so busy and with the clouds hunkered...

20
Nov
2006

SPINNING RIGHT ROUND BABY RIGHT ROUND

I am rocking the Christmas present buying all over town! Go me! woo hoo! Yeah. That’s what I spent my evening doing and now I am officially half done. Well, maybe more like 2/3’s done, but still. Much closer to done than I was this afternoon. Work is killing me with the busyness. Life is killing me with the busyness. I am so busy that it feels as if my hair is a-crackle. As if my neck vertebrae are not up to par, since they are squinchy and tight. As if my head would spin round if it could, but...

19
Nov
2006

THERE’S SO MUCH THAT WE SHARE, THAT IT’S TIME WE’RE AWARE

On Friday, Anders and Karin accompanied me to dinner with the AWC at a Thai restaurant in Malmö (Martin was at a birthday party). There were 13 people signed up for the dinner, but after 20 minutes only 7 had showed up so one of the other girls and I proceeded to make a few phone calls to the missing people to make sure they hadn’t forgotten the event. I called Katie and when she answered the phone, said brightly, “Hey! Did you forget it was Thai Night?” only to hear her catch her breath and try to stop a...

18
Nov
2006

PARTY PRETENDERS

We’ve been invited to a black tie cocktail party tonight, hosted by a colleague. We only had a week’s notice on the invitation because Francois knew I don’t drink so he thought I wouldn’t be interested in attending a cocktail party but my other colleague Barbara told him he should extend the invitation and let me make up my own mind whether or not we wanted to come. The biggest problem with this invitation wasn’t at all the drinks issue, it was the BLACK TIE. We are just not black tie kind of people. We don’t have any clothing that...

17
Nov
2006

ABOGGLE

OJ’s book has me completely flabbergasted. Also, grammatically speaking, shouldn’t it be If I Had Done It? If there’s humor to be found in this, it’s here: “If I Did It” by John Wilkes Booth

14
Nov
2006

HOW TO TURN YOUR FROWN UPSIDE DOWN

For some reason, my mood, never the best in the early morning when I stumble blearily and resentfully from bed 10 minutes after smacking the snooze button again, ended up on a rapidly declining downward spiral that escalated as the day wore on. Don’t ask ME how that metaphor works, but it was true. My bad mood went from bad to worse and by the end of the day, as big fat raindrops began smacking the glass of my window while my back was turned, I was pretty sure that I had metamorphosed, sprouted a snout and fangs, a wiry...

13
Nov
2006

SOMETHING YOU CAN’T GIVE WITHOUT TAKING OR TAKE WITHOUT GIVING

I just finished the book that we are reading for book group, which meets in a couple of weeks, and hopefully by then I will not have forgotten the plot, the characters, the things I liked and did not like about the author’s writing style. I am already pretty sure that I will show up at the wrong place since it has changed and even though I KNOW THIS I seem to still have the original address firmly parked in my brainpan where it appears to have taken root. The book, Black Swan Green by David Mitchell, was very good...

12
Nov
2006

LIZARD THE GROUCH

Recently travelertrish had a post where she found a whole bunch of phrases using Google to describe how busy she was. Busier than a one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest was my favorite. Today I was damn grouchy.* I was a total grumpbucket. I was crabby, cranky, cross, bad-tempered and a thorough crosspatch. But what was I grouchier THAN? *Never mind why. I’ll get over it.

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