Monthly Archive: August 2009

27
Aug
2009

GOOD THINGS

This week has been full. Stuffed full. Crammed full. Proppmätt, as they say in Swedish, though that usually has to do with your stomach and not your calendar. Life is ALWAYS full, it seems. Remember those long, lovely, boring days of summer when you were a child and there was nothing to dooooooooooo? Yeah, I dont either. Early Saturday morning I’m flying to Boston via Amsterdam (with only a 1.5 hour layover, eek!) for 2 weeks of working at our US office. If I wasn’t able to take this trip for work, it would have been over 3 years since...

23
Aug
2009

OH YES

Today’s Treadmill: 43 minutes/3.3km/103 cal…I seem to be caught in work-out-OCD. I planned to walk 40 minutes, but couldn’t stop because I was just under 3 kilometers AND just under 100 calories AND the song I was listening to was still playing when I hit 40 minutes, so I had to round everything off. Later, walked into the kitchen and found FIVE wasps in various states of upset against the kitchen windows. I am the catch-and-release queen. My nephew is ill in the hospital with an acute kidney infection AND the flu. Feel awful for the little guy. They are...

20
Aug
2009

LOOK! UP IN THE SKY!

There’s no way to capture the blue that the sky was today. It shifted through a spectrum of blue from power to powder to cobalt. The blue of a sky like today’s sky settles in my skin and warps around all the contours and makes itself a part of me. What is so compelling about a cloud-devoid heaven? Is it the forever falling upwards, the lift of your head, the endless eye? There is another moth inside the house on the wall. I don’t know what kind it is, but there have been several of this particular kind in the...

17
Aug
2009

ARE WE PEOPLE THAT YOU WANT TO KNOW?

Do you always remember a face? Even if you say you never remember names, I bet you remember faces. We have such an amazing ability to scan incredible amounts of faces and register them as known or unknown in the blink of a synapse. I read an interesting blog entry today by the artist James Gurney, written some time ago, that talked about this and it got me thinking. You get off a plane and as you come out into the arrivals hall, you are already scanning for the person who is meeting you. Your glance skims over dozens of...

15
Aug
2009

FESTIVAL MOOD

Busy morning after rising late: showered, dressed, made bed, ordered the kids around, cleaned up, laundry in, dishes loaded and washed, recyclables packed up, made rice krispie treats and 40 deviled eggs, finished my book and am ready to start another, uploaded activity changes to AWC site, answered emails, caught up on blog reading, updated book & CD wish lists, cleaned out old emails. We have a BBQ party to go to tonight, but I suspect since the weather is cold and rainy that we’ll be migrating indoors instead. It’s a potluck (hence the treats and eggs) with friends, though...

13
Aug
2009

STELLAR HYPNAGOGIA

Thwarted! Two out of three times the clouds have thwarted our shooting-star-watching plans. Clouds do that to you here in Sweden. They thwart you. Frequently. In fact, there’s no use moaning about it, it’s just the way things are and you’d better either get used to it or move on through. I don’t mind too much…most of the time. Because most of the time, it’s like it was today: if you don’t like the weather in Sweden, just wait 5 minutes. We had grey, then rain, then light, then bright, then grey, then rain,…wash, rinse and repeat: LITERALLY! hahaha! Last...

11
Aug
2009

THOSE WHO WISH TO SING ALWAYS FIND A SONG*

Eyelids like lead weights, anchored with grit and sand, pressing down, down. Hard to keep from closing. Scritchy itchy eyes. I am SO tired. I’ve been tired all evening. I was tired when I got home, but managed not to lie down and nap on the sofa. I got some things done and fixed dinner for the kids and read a few chapters and dragged the kids out for a walk (sunshine! not to be missed! Get it while the getting’s good!). THEN I collapsed on the sofa and my eyelids dragged their heavy way down to meet my cheeks,...

10
Aug
2009

AND ONE TO GROW ON!

I felt totally showered with love and affection all day today. An early morning birthday wake-up from my family with song and hugs and lots of lovely presents including the perfect watch chosen by Anders based on my fairly vague description. Pots of flowers both at home and at work and a colleague singing happy birthday in French to me. A lunch with good friends, cooked just for me with some of my favorite foods: salmon! snap peas! CAKE! that had me away from work for an unprecedented 2.5 hours (!) and a good day at work to boot. And...

09
Aug
2009

CREATIVITY IS THE POWER TO CONNECT THE SEEMINGLY UNCONNECTED*

How often should you post, when you blog? Should you post every day? Every couple of days, every week, once a month? I know that when some of my favorite writers are posting daily it feels like Christmas every day to me. But, sometimes it seems that if I post too often people don’t have time to read it all or that they miss things, and only see the latest. How much is too much? Does it even really matter? I suppose it is the writing urge that should steer and not the desire for validation or comments. I don’t...

07
Aug
2009

SPEEDING UP

Each time I think maybe there isn’t anything more to write about, the sky is the blue that it was today and I realize all over again that one can never have enough of it. If the sky is a wonder and a joy each time it’s that blue, that cloudless, endless blue, then why not everything? Even the things I’ve written about before suddenly strike me as relevant, as fresh, as interesting they did the first time. This time we twist them, we come at them from another angle. We open them up, unfold them like a flower, and...