Yearly Archive: 2014

07
Feb
2014

EVERYTHING WAS FUNNY TONIGHT

Conversation at the dinner table Martin: We had a test in French class today Liz. Oh? On what? Martin: Useful words Liz: Aren’t all words useful? Martin: Well, paraplegic is less useful than inside, for example Liz: *giggles madly* true Then the three of us, Anders, Martin and I (Karin is spending the night at a friend’s house), had a long, drawn-out conversation starting from the fact that Martin asked me if I knew what longer word the Swedish word kompis was from. Kompis means friend. “No, I don’t,” I answered. “It’s from kompanjon,” he told me. Adding an “is”...

05
Feb
2014

INSIDE OUTSIDE UPSIDE DOWN

It has started out as a very very bad week. I got the news Monday morning that our graphic designer in the US quit. In addition, one of the freelancers that we really rely on is seriously ill and doesn’t know when she’ll be able to start working again. Work was insane to begin with and all this just pushes my team and I to the brink. URGH. I had planned to take a week of vacation in 2 weeks because I have 6 days that I have to use or lose by April 1st and now, I honestly don’t...

02
Feb
2014

ALL THE NEWS THAT’S FIT TO PRINT

A friend of mine recently told me that she started the Couch25K program and couldn’t understand what had happened in her brain to even make her want to TRY it. This morning, a Sunday morning, a Sunday morning with NO PLANS and a rather late night last night, I woke up at 7:30 a.m. I managed to doze off again, but then I reawoke just before 9 and all I could think about was getting up and getting on the treadmill. WTH? So I did. I speed-walked for 30 minutes, for a total of 2K. Before 10:30 a.m. on a...

27
Jan
2014

WATCHING, WALKING, WORKING

A long week, a busy weekend and here it’s nearly the end of January. Time flies, whether you are having fun or not. I haven’t been online much lately, not least because our connection is so slow right now. I’ve been walking nearly every day, at least 25 minutes, a daily Watch&Walk, while we plow through 10 seasons of Friends. But now we’ve had to take a break and start watching Downton Abbey Season 4 because when we went to start season 6, we discovered that the first disc was missing from the box set. And we won’t be able...

19
Jan
2014

KEEPING IT REAL OR JUST KEEPING IT

Someone saw one of my project pictures and accused me of being a hoarder. Even though the point of most of these projects is PURGING. What’s the difference between being a saver and a packrat and a hoarder? Are they all just degrees of tendency? Mine seems to go in waves, in that case. Plus though I’d sometimes LIKE to, I can’t just throw away stuff in the house that belongs to one of the three other people who live here. I can only gently encourage… Does saving stuff at all make you a hoarder at some point? Or is...

15
Jan
2014

PROJECTILE

I’ve been in project mode since before vacation ended. I have a big long list of things to get done. Some of them have already been crossed off, but the list is long enough to keep me busy for a good long time if I only manage to do one of them a week. So far, I’ve done four of the big ones: Cable organization Putting away Christmas Inventorying and organizing DVDs Pantry clean-out I’m up to October in my 2013 blog book formatting and there are a bunch of other small projects that I’ve already crossed off, too. I’m...

11
Jan
2014

SEVENTEEN

17 years in Sweden, today. 17 years of lagom and fika and myskväll. 17 years of eating mazariner and semlor and kassler and köttbullar. 17 years of taking my shoes off when I come in the house. 17 years of speaking and thinking in and dreaming in Swedish. 17 years of trying not to complain about the weather and being glad every time I see the sun. 17 years of meters and liters and celsius. 17 years of missing family and friends from the States, but 17 years of making new ones here, both friends and family. 17 years of...

10
Jan
2014

THREE STRIKES YOU’RE OUT

Today was my day for what Martin so amusingly terms my “spelunking procedure” or in other words, the hospital visit to have my IUD retrieved and replaced. I got a call from the nurse on Wednesday to tell me my operation time was at 10:00 a.m. and that I was not to eat anything after midnight the night before, and that I could only drink water or “clear liquids” up to 2 hours beforehand. Does vodka count as a clear liquid? Inquiring mind wanna know. Last night I was kind of freaking out about the whole thing and I couldn’t...

09
Jan
2014

A LONG TIME AGO

When I was a kid, we often went on road trips. I suspect this was because, as a military family, we never lived in the same state as our grandparents or other relatives and had to travel to see them, which we did a lot. We drove to Michigan to visit my mom’s parents and see all our cousins and aunts and uncles and we drove to Chicago to see my dad’s mother. There were three of us kids in the back seat of the station wagon… the big boat of a brown station wagon with wood side panels. Often...

06
Jan
2014

ERIN GO BRAGH!

Today was a holiday (Twelfth Night/Epiphany) and I had hoped to get outside for a bit but it was pouring down rain most of the day, so I stayed inside and worked on projects instead. Anders removed the lights from the trees and took them apart. You should have seen the circle of green needles on the floor in the playroom! An inch deep! It took me nearly all day to pack up the tree ornaments, but I finally got it done, and then promptly covered the dining room table again with DVDs. I want to inventory what we have,...

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