Yearly Archive: 2007

08
Aug
2007

SEE AND SAY AND…EW!

My brother arrived yesterday and after we picked him up, brought him home, fed him, and got things settled, Karin decided it would be the ideal time to start his Swedish lessons. She climbed into his lap in the big chair with her Barnens engelska ordbok A-Z (Children’s English Wordbook) and proceeded to go through the words with him, one by one, laughing and grimacing at his pronunciations. The books is divided into chapters by letters and consists of page after page of pictures with the English word under it and the Swedish translation written beneath that. There are about...

05
Aug
2007

PASSING THROUGH SUMMER

I don’t really have anything to say at the moment, but it probably doesn’t matter since I get the feeling not many people are reading lately. The whole blogosphere seems to be sitting on the back porch with their feet up on the chaise longue, sweating in the sunshine; a tall cool glass of something or other by their side. The internets are wearing floppy straw hats and big black sunglasses! They’re reading beach books and wearing SPF 20. The blogosphere is tanner than I am. I’ve been reliably informed by my children that I am “vampire white.” My purpose...

04
Aug
2007

REBOOTING

It’s only after a week plus of vacation that I can feel how much my body needed this: leisure time. Time to spend doing things around the house that I never get to, time to finish projects and go shopping in the middle of the day. Time to read new books and re-read old favorites without having to put them down and turn off the light because the alarm will be going off before I know it. Even though I have been busy, it’s been at my own pace, with no schedule, no real plans and the wonder of not...

01
Aug
2007

IF I WAS REALLY SUPER, I’D BE ABLE TO ADD

I’m lying in the big chair, hand on chin, thinking. Anders is typing away at something in the computer room. I suddenly think, “Good lord, it’s the first of August. I have a birthday coming up soon.” Then I make my brain hurt with trying to remember how old I actually am, which birthday is this, how old will I be in 10 days? The answer I come up with doesn’t seem to be right. I count in my head from the last big one, adding for each year since then: one, two, three? Is that right? Three? “Anders,” I...

30
Jul
2007

DAMN RIGHT I’VE GOT THE BLUES

Karin *attempting evil laugh* MOOHAHAHA! Liz *giggles madly* It’s MUAHAHAHA! You’re not a mad cow! Karin *glares* I’m nearly done painting the porch furniture. Yesterday, Anders laid plastic down to cover the porch floor…did I mention that we now have a porch?? Before we had a deck that went under the back of the roof on one side. Anders has enclosed it with sliding glass doors and 2 screen ones. He’s not quite finished with the paneling on the inside but it’s nearly done and I can stand inside and mock the flies: HA!, I say, Nah nah nah nah...

29
Jul
2007

NOT HOW MUCH YOU DO BUT HOW MUCH LOVE YOU PUT IN THE DOING

Sleeping in and walking up at leisure. Rainshower sunbursts with the pounding rumble of a sudden downpour. The smell of paint and turpentine, a heady bouquet. Vacuuming the house and folding the clean, soft, fresh-scented laundry. The white globes of the new hanging lamp in the dining room glowing in the light of the full moon as I pad across the house in the darkness. Good news from my sister, chatty telephone conversations with my brother. An evening over at friends, stuffed full of good dinner and great dessert: baked green apple crisp with vanilla bean ice cream. A positive-sounding...

27
Jul
2007

THE OLD MAN IS DROWNING, APPARENTLY

Freaky ass weather. The sun is shining and it’s POURING rain. It’s been freaky pouring rain showers on and off all day, along with hail, lightning, thunder and sunshine. If you don’t like the weather in Sweden, just wait 5 minutes.

26
Jul
2007

WOULDN’T YOU KNOW IT

My eyes were blurry again all day today, and nothing seems to help. Not my new glasses, not eyedrops with antihistimine, not washing them out with water, not even leaving work early and resting them for an hour, though that did seem to help a little. I’m going to have to make an appointment with an eye doctor and see if they can figure out what is causing this and how to stop it. At least I know it isn’t diabetes since I had tests done last month to check. This has been happening, on and off, with no apparent...

23
Jul
2007

MERRY GO ROUND

When I opened the side door and stepped out, I was surprised to see a rather large hedgehog snuffling around right there, practically under my feet. He seemed taken aback as well and waffled first one way and then the other. I didn’t want to scare him so I just chuckled a quiet hello and went for a walk in the lovely evening sunshine, made even lovelier by its contrast with the 24-hour pouring buckets of rain we had yesterday. A grasshopper string section played a buzzing, frenzied sarabande as I strode past a meadow overflowing with golden feathered tall...

20
Jul
2007

THE ROAD TO ENLIGHTENMENT

Lately, when we’ve been going on our walks and martinek has actually deigned to accompany me, he’s done a lot of mysterious dodging and hopping about behind my back as we go. “What the heck are you doing?” I asked and was treated to a long discourse on the different values assigned to different designs on manhole covers in the streets. The ones with A are “bad luck”…the ones with V are good luck because they stand for vänskap (friendship) meaning you’ll get more friends the more you step on them, and the ones with “K” are good luck because...

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