Hearing that (another) friend has been diagnosed with cancer has put quite the damper on my weekend, even though I think, given today’s medical advances, that she can beat this, it’s still a horrible experience for her and her family to go through. The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about. I’m not thinking about what it would mean to ME to receive such a diagnosis; my mind skitters and leaps about it, looking distractedly in the other direction, pulling my sleeve and pointing, not letting me dwell on any of those grotesque and overwhelmingly awful scenarios.
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Martin and I took the recyclables in, went grocery-shopping and then went for a walk. The sun had disappeared, unfortunately, but it was still bright out and he had a treasure hunt list in his hand to do. I was a bit too optimistic with the first item, Easter feathers, because I saw them at the store and even, nearly, bought some myself, but I guess it’s still too early for anyone to be decorating even if they are selling egg-coloring kits and small fluffy chenille pipe-cleaner chicks. We saw crocus in a pastel palette of different colors, snowdrop clumps by the dozens, and gardens covered in the small yellow spring flower whose name I can never remember…yellow anemone? We saw baby pussywillows and tiny, tight lilac buds.
One of the items on his list was “3 different birds” and I thought, since Sweden is full of over-sized fowl, that he’d most likely see crows or jackdaws or magpies or rooks, and that if nothing else, there were always the ducks and geese in the farmyard behind our house, or the odd cocky pheasant walking through our backyard. But he saw a giant wood pigeon up in a tree, and then we found a blåmes (blue tit) and then a flock of talgoxe (great tit), and then a lilac hedge filled with LBJ’s (little brown jobs).
We bought roast chicken and potato salad for dinner, and tonight is the final Melodifestivalen competition, and we have baked brie and crackers to enjoy with it. At the post office counter, we picked up 2 boxes that we’d received slips for yesterday and one was Karin’s dragon wallpaper mural, and the other was a box from my mom: a care package of American items I’d requested, plus perfect cup-size tupperware containers for fruit and PEEPS…the yellow chick kind.
PEEPS! Now I KNOW Spring is on the way! Thanks, mom!