Monthly Archive: August 2010

31
Aug
2010

YES, BUT THEN WHAT?

Conversations in the Car: Seasons in the Sun comes on the radio just as we’re picking up Frida, Martin’s classmate. Liz: Happy Monday, Frida! Frida: Unnnh Liz: *laughs* I feel the same way but at least we have good music to make up for it! *giggles madly and turns up the volume* Martin: You crack yourself up, don’t you? Liz: *still laughing* Yep! If I relied on everyone else to supply humor I would be a sad, sad puppy. *** Why didn’t I go walking today? What is stopping me? Fatigue, grumps, The Busy. Whatever, my excuses are wearing thin....

28
Aug
2010

VERGE

One more week to get through without my husband…can I do it? This past week needs to be reeled up, stuffed into a time canister and shot to the moon: I never want to see it again. There WERE good things that happened in it, don’t get me wrong; it wasn’t ALL bad, but man alive! I feel like my brain is spinning in circles. On Wednesday, after work, I drove home, grabbed the kids and we took off for Malmöfestivalen to eat festival food: langos and churros and mini-smörgåstårtas. We met up with Cate’s oldest daughter Paige who was...

24
Aug
2010

IN WHICH BAD THINGS ARE MADE UP FOR BY GOOD THINGS

This has been kind of a stressful week…it’s week 2 of 3 of Anders being gone. So far, I’ve had to deal with my son’s Xtreme After-Party Vomit Splatterpalooza in the middle of the night on Saturday (too much cake & excitement, apparently, as I know he wasn’t sneaking the Slushie Margaritas) and my daughter’s spillage of Compound W ALL OVER THE MIDDLE of the living room chair. AAGH. On the plus side I’m inordinately proud of myself: first because I didn’t throw up as well during the horrendous clean-up aftermath and second because I didn’t strangle Karin, especially since...

21
Aug
2010

PASSING TIME

Darkening days, rainy & grey, a most-welcome burst of sunshine at the end of the week…suddenly it’s been a handful since I’ve posted, a week, more. Time flows like a snapping ribbon, winding me along with it and even during the dragging moments it moves as fast as I blink. Blink! Another one gone. Each day a precious snapshot of time now past that wasn’t captured or appreciated nearly as much as I would have liked. I sleep a more solid sleep when Anders is gone: I’m not half-awake for hours waiting for him to come to bed and I...

17
Aug
2010

IT IS NOT ONLY FINE FEATHERS THAT MAKE FINE BIRDS*

I’ve always been a collector, especially of small things. I’ve had shadowboxes to corral them in since I was a girl. Other than being wee, there wasn’t always a unifying theme to the things I collected, though small animal figurines keep showing up in every grouping. Some of them were outgrown as I got tired of them or lost interest: the dogs I adored as a child, the cow-themed things I had for awhile after college, the thankfully short pink flamingo phase. The only real collection in my house that is worthy of the name is in the moose bathroom,...

14
Aug
2010

STARS & (ZIGZAGGY) STRIPES

Two days ago we had a rattle-bang thunderstorm come and sit on our heads right as evening was falling. Karin is scared of thunder, though I think part of it is just attention-getting, and I keep trying to coax her out of it, because thunderstorms are, mostly, awesome (in the true sense of the word), even when they’re frightening. The thunder kept rumbling and the lightning kept flashing up around the house like an enormous strobe light. Karin and I got blankets and went out on the porch. We moved the two chairs together, facing each other, and then she...

10
Aug
2010

AND ONE TO GROW ON!

So, THAT was a good birthday! Woken to roses, singing, hugs and presents: everything I wished for and then some! Martin got me a silver book bead for my Pandora bracelet. Karin gave me the latest Katie Melua CD, and together they gave me an ACTUAL box of rocks, which cracked me up completely because whenever one of the kids EVER, in all their lives, asks what they’re getting for their birthday/christmas/gift-receiving-holiday, the answer I invariably give them is “a box of rocks.” They even made the box themselves! My kids are great. And Anders? Even greater. He took my...

08
Aug
2010

NOT WATCHING, BUT NOTICING*

It’s been raining most of the day. On and off, harder and softer as if it can’t make up its mind or its intensity, but it doesn’t stop for long. In the street the raindrops make small white circles for a split second as they smack into the asphalt. It’s like watching an animation: vertical white streaks, then small sudden circles. The street is shiny and black except where the rain lands. Sometimes it rains so hard it bounces, even off the grass—the impact makes a mist rise and hover off the ground. On the back deck, which is slick...

07
Aug
2010

BOUQUET BREAK

Despite being late in the summer, things are still blooming around here, both inside and outside. I have pelargoniums in the pots outside, most of them extravagantly fuchsia, some red, and the roses keep popping up and blowing open with beauty. The lavender is almost done but the bees don’t seem to have gotten the message. We don’t have a lot of flowering plants otherwise in our yard/garden…mostly I subscribe to greenery that comes back every year and except for the lungwort and the stonecrop I haven’t had a lot of luck with flowering perennials. I fill the pots in...

05
Aug
2010

THE KIDS OF SUMMER

Martin’s eyes squinch up when he smiles so that they nearly disappear; mine do the same thing. I must have taken a dozen shots of them from one side and the other and I couldn’t get any of him with his eyes open and smiling simultaneously. This is the summer when Martin suddenly shot up and caught up to me in height; he’ll have passed me before the equinox. This is the summer when my feet became the smallest in the family. The summer when Martin’s voice dropped an octave and Karin started putting her hair up with barrettes and...

August 2010
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