Monthly Archive: October 2009

30
Oct
2009

DOWN & UP

Is anyone else boggled by the fact that tomorrow is the last day of October? Already it feels as dark in the early evenings as if it were January, and we are still 2 months away from the equinox. What an down and up day this was…what down and up WEEK, for that matter. At the beginning of it, one of my colleagues, another American who is also a friend, sent out an email to all the Americans in our department, asking if we would be interested in helping to organize a Thanksgiving dinner for our entire department. There are...

28
Oct
2009

WHEN BLACK CATS PROWL & PUMPKINS GLEAM

I had an unexpected phone call at work this morning from a radio personality that had gotten my name from one of our neighbors who works for a broadcasting company in Malmö. The man who called me works for Sverige’s Radio and had been told that I was a “Halloween expert”. Haa! I guess being an American in Sweden qualifies me as a Halloween expert, if anyone is! He asked me several questions about Halloween: when it was, what you were supposed to do, did you have to dress up, what were the rules for trick-or-treating, etc. I answered him...

26
Oct
2009

VICIOUS CYCLE

I can’t seem to stop eating. I don’t know if it’s for comfort or just a general bear-like impulse to bulk up the winter stores before hibernation, thanks to the descending darkness and general gloom of the season. It’s hard to get out of bed in the mornings. It’s hard not to go back to it when the sun never shows it’s face and it rains for 3 days straight. It’s relatively warm or all this rain would be snow. Anyway, I can’t seem to stop. I hate when I get like this; it feels like it takes a gargantuan...

25
Oct
2009

CHOPPING SCOOPING CARVING LIGHTING

It’s been a cold, grey, rainy weekend, with not a lot of plans and a lot of dozing, reading, desultory house-cleaning and laundry. Yesterday we decorated the foyer with cobwebs and spiders, glow-in-the-dark ghosties and disembodied hands. We brought in the waiting pumpkins and chopped holes in their heads, scooped out their insides and carved up their faces. They don’t look too sad about it, though, do they?

22
Oct
2009

I SHOULDN’T HAVE TO TELL YOU

Why, when we want something to change in the way someone else behaves, are we often too cautious or afraid of hurting their feelings, that we never actually do anything about it, when doing so would give us such relief and so often make things better? I often think that people should be able to READ MY MIND because I am thinking so fiercely at them. It happens a lot when I get a massage. You can practically see the steam rising off my head, I am thinking so hard and so concentrated: NO! NOT THERE, OVER THERE! NO! THERE!!...

20
Oct
2009

STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS: CLUBS & FORTS & RECEPTACLES

I have work to do and yet I am not doing it. Not yet. Soon. I thought I needed to write something here instead. Something not very profound, something just tossed out there to the wind and the weather and the mental receptacles of anyone who might be reading. It’s not work for work, though; club stuff. Club stuff. It feels corny to say I belong to a club. A women’s club. Even though it’s not all women anymore. And even though I never go to lunches (anymore) or teas or knitting circles or whatever. Still. I wish we had...

16
Oct
2009

I DON’T KNOW WHERE I’M GOING BUT I’M ON MY WAY*

It’s Friday night. It’s 10 p.m. I have nothing in particular to say, but I’m sure if I just keep typing long enough I will find at the end that enough words have unreeled from my brain to my fingers to warrant the title of post. I keep thinking about that Lizardek’s Worldview-forming Booklist that I mentioned offhand a few posts back and which a few people then said they would like to see. But not yet enough to put it together. I think I need to do some more digging in my book-memory to be able to come up...

14
Oct
2009

IN ME, AN INVINCIBLE SUMMER*

Mia gave me a good dose of motivation the other day. She is trying to list three delights every day. This reminds me of the reason why the blog One Good Thing was baptized thusly. Even in the worst day, there is always at least one good thing. Most days, there are many. And too many days, we ignore them. Maybe we notice them, but we let the bad things take precedence. We push aside the things that matter for the things that also matter, and that often take priority. No matter what there will alway be both, so maybe...

10
Oct
2009

MIND GAMES

Martin and I were leaving the house to go for a walk this afternoon, after I got home early from work. We stepped outside the door, and as I was locking it, with my back to the backyard, I said to him, “Martin, go close the playhouse door.” His eyes got all huge and he said, “How did you know the playhouse door was open?? You’re not even looking at it!!” as he started running away behind me, toward the playhouse (aaah, the never-ending pleasure of instant obedience). “I’m a mom! I have eyes in the back of my head!”...

October 2009
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