I’ve lost count of how many beautiful days we have had this past week. I don’t remember EVER having this many days of this kind of weather in a row before; not here in Sweden, anyway. And the forecast I looked at earlier just showed more of the same: sunny, sunny, partly sunny, sunny. Whee! Sweden, when you get Spring up your nose, you really get Spring up your nose!
Spring is sproinging out all over. Everything that blossoms has suddenly exploded. The bird cherry across the ditch in the backyard blew up like a giant Jiffy Pop yesterday (without the foil cover!). The cherry tree has white flowers all over it, and even the huge spindly thornbush that ate a bush I like and that I keep threatening to dig up and get rid of was wearing tiny white 4-petaled flowers all over itself tonight when I went out to water. I gave it a couple of squirts because of the flowers, when usually I just throw it hateful glances.
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We had an ergonom come to work today. She walked around the floor and checked everyone’s desk heights and chair settings and screen heights and mouse/keyboard positions. I told her it was impossible to figure out the right height on the adjustable desk when I raise and lower it (I’m trying to stand a minimum of 2 hours a day) because there are no walls to mark it against in the open landscaping, and it’s not programmable. And all of us complained about our inability to control the lighting in the open landscaping. She’s bringing me a different wrist support, but otherwise I already had everything that should help keep shoulder/neck & back pain to a minimum. Too bad none of it helps with stress or open-landscaping-hate.
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Martin and I thought of another tongue twister the other day, while walking: Shoulder Soldier. Try and say it 5x fast!
It’s almost as good as Irish Wristwatch. That one’s impossible.
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Did I tell you that Karin is on her second boyfriend? Yep. The boy that asked her out (by SMS) in March broke up with her (by SMS) one month and 11 days (her count) later. At first I was appalled that he had broken up with her by SMS, but upon consideration, the vast majority of their romance was ALL conducted via SMS and MSN (what? no NSMS? It’s enough to make me want to call the NIMH!) and it’s how she communicates with ALL her friends, and how they all communicate with each other, so really, it shouldn’t have been a surprise.
She was completely devastated, however. As heartbroken as a drama-prone adolescent can be, though it was genuine. She really couldn’t understand how he could be fine one day and the next be telling her that he didn’t want to be together anymore. She cried for 3 days straight. Part of what upset me was the seemingly callous way he handled it, telling her that she was still “3rd on his list” and that he’d had 14 girlfriends this year already and “needed a break” only to turn around and say yes THE NEXT DAY to another one her teammate friends who grabbed the chance to ask him out as soon as she heard he’d dumped Karin.
If these kids were 18 or 20 or so, I think I would have had a much harder time understanding it, but watching the drama-go-round this past week, it seems to me that this is all in the spirit of experiment and trying on behavior and romance and relationships. Apparently, half the girls on her soccer team have “gone steady” with half the boys on his team, and it’s anybody’s guess who will be with whom each week. I don’t remember this degree of casuality when I was a pre-teen, but then we started several years later.
Anyway, whew! That was a lot of backstory to get to the point, which was that a mere week after all this went down, Karin has already spent the night at her friend’s house, the same one that is now going steady with her former boyfriend, and the day after that the 3 of them hung out together for the afternoon with 2 other boys and girls from the teams to play soccer together, and the rest of the week was spent madly SMSing with one of those boys who, after several days, risked the question and asked Karin out. So! I have a sneaking suspicion that this might turn out to be a pattern…time will tell.
I confess, I don’t even remember my first experience with this kind of thing. I remember having crushes when I was about 13, but nothing ever came of them until high school. I’m bracing myself for the next several years. Martin, so far, hasn’t shown much interest in this direction, though he did have an SMS flirtation last year with a girl in the grade above him. 🙂
White-Petaled Blossoming Belated Birthday Wishes to blue_eyed_girl, jackiejj and Meg Fowler!