We took the recyclables in today and stopped at the grocery store and the whole way there and back in the car I sang rain songs. It’s been raining non-stop all day, the dreary leaf-loosening autumn rain that bodes ill for a snowy winter. It’s the kind of rain that seems as if it will never stop, and when you’ve lived in Sweden for long enough, the very real prospect of just that thing is too overwhelming to contemplate for long, hence the loud choruses of Rain, Rain Go Away and It’s Raining, it’s Pouring, etc. The kids sang along with me, also at the top of their lungs, so hopefully our quasi-rain-dance mojo will blow these wet, full clouds on past and we’ll have some more sunshiney autumn days of the type we like best, where we can revel in the crab-colored beech leaves that scuttle across the road as if they were alive, and the dizzy descent of golden birch leaves like spinning coins or mad yellow butterflies.
Cracking Me Up
A Swedish attempt at Halloween marketing in the produce section of the grocery store today: packages of 3 orange bell peppers plastic-wrapped on styrofoam trays with a “Happy Halloween!” sticker plopped on the top. Hey, they’re orange, right? That counts!
We cut out and painted the first coat of paint on Karin’s surfboard this evening. It’s yellow since we didn’t have any white paint and now I have to draw Chinese tattoo-type designs and Chinese characters on one side and a Chinese dragon on the other, for her to fill in and color. She has her costume all ready to go. Martin was much harder…he had no ideas himself and rejected out of hand everything we suggested until Anders hit on the brilliant idea of his being one of the Mythbusters. So, he decided to be Jamie Hyneman, because we have a fake mustache and a pair of Anders’ old glasses and I have a real French beret, purchased in France, and he has a white button-down shirt…but alas, when I pulled out the real French beret, Martin declared that it wasn’t the right KIND and about-faced on his acceptance of the costume idea. Back to square one. So, now he’s decided he’ll be a viking, using one of the costumes I made several years ago, which we have thankfully kept.
We were going to carve pumpkins today but time got away from us, mostly because of my 2-hour nap in the middle of the afternoon. Rain + cramps + 4 loads of laundry doth a tired and crabby Lizardek make. Pumpkin carving is now scheduled for tomorrow, no excuses, since I have the AWC meeting on Tuesday and choir on Wednesday and Anders and the kids are going swimming on Thursday, and Friday is HALLOWEEN. We did manage to get the Halloween trick-or-treating letters passed out to the neighborhood yesterday and I bought candy today, so I actually feel pretty on top of things.
Really Great Writing Out There Right Now Which is Also Cracking Me Up: So, What’d You Do Today?