Every day when I come into work, one of my colleagues greets me and then says what day it is. I don’t know if this is a Swedish thing, but I find it very strange. EVERY DAY. I suspect he is saying it for confirmation because he must understand that I KNOW what day it is.
So, in case you weren’t aware or don’t have access to a calendar or are on vacation and not paying attention: today is Monday.
One of my other colleagues is gone on a business trip this week, so we’re short one person, which means that I wasn’t able to concentrate on a big presentation I’m working on but kept getting sidetracked by other things that were coming in with URGENT all over them, and questions from people and I really, really hope I can spend a good chunk of concentration time on it tomorrow or I will be completely stressed out by WEDNESDAY.
Today was the AWC meeting and the cookie exchange, which went well, except for the fact that one woman in the nuts group signed up for 2 people (because she was bringing her daughter to the meeting) but only made cookies for herself, so that whole group was expecting cookies from 6 people and only got them from 5. And one person in no-nuts group only put 5 cookies in her sets instead of 6. They WERE big cookies but, still.
We got a new furnace today and it’s LOUD. It’s humming like a great big loud cat out in the laundry room and it looks rather like a Star Trek beam-me-up machine. The old furnace wasn’t working correctly so even though 11 years doesn’t seem all that long for a furnace to last, it had to be replaced. Why is it that replacing things is so often cheaper than fixing them??
The guest speaker at our meeting was a life coach who works primarily with expats. He’s an American who followed his spouse here after living in Spain for some time. He handed out an exercise on paper that consisted of a wheel divided into sections labeled
Fun & Recreation
Personal Growth
Significant Other / Romance
Money
Career
Family
Friends
Physical Environment
Health
The center of the wheel where all the wedges met was 1 (least happy) and the outside circle was 10 (most happy) and we were supposed to draw a line or fill in or indicate where our happiness level was for each of the wedges.
Overall, I am pretty happy with my life here in Sweden. One of my dreams was to live in Europe, and I’m doing that. Another one was to have a job I love and I have that. Almost all of my wedges were an 8 or a 9, because even though things are pretty great, there is some room for improvement, of course, in all of them. But the one that got the lowest number was FAMILY. Not because I’m not happy with my family; quite the contrary. I have a great family…great kids and a great husband; it’s my first family that is bothering me. And not because I’m not happy with them, either, but because they are TOO FAR AWAY.
After nearly 17 years in Sweden, I really miss my family. I hate that I only see my mom once, maybe twice a year if I’m lucky, and that I see my brother less and my sister even less. It makes me sad, but I don’t really know what to do about it. It’s not like I can just fly to the States or down to Germany whenever I feel like it, and the same goes for them.
I hear other people say that they live in the same town or quite close to their siblings or parents and never see them either, but that wouldn’t be the case if I had my druthers. Where are my druthers? What CAN I do about this? We DO call each other, and we DO write emails and they all read this blog and comment, but still. It’s not enough. *sigh*
Anyway, I did get some online shopping done today and I’m now feeling pretty good about my to-do list. And my mom IS coming soon, so there’s that. Also: COOKIES.