It’s raining again, and the lacy tracery of spring leaves against the branches of the trees is filling out into that one-color summer green already. At least I haven’t had to water the pansies but once since I planted them. I’m home early for a long weekend, though I was home sick all day yesterday, so it turned out to be an even shorter week than I anticipated. Tomorrow is Ascension Day which we have a holiday for in Sweden and my company gives us half-days off before holidays as well as the “pinch” day for Friday. Nice!
Martin: *because neither of us wants to get up to change the DVD* should I just turn this off then?
Liz: if you’re not gonna change it
Martin: okay fine *turns off the TV*
Liz: lazy sack of poo
Martin: learned from the best
Liz: *proudly* my job here is done
Martin: you can’t just Peace out as a parent
Liz: *giggles madly*
I keep thinking about writing & posting but not doing it. I keep thinking about a lot of things but not doing them. Pot calling the kettle black up there where I called Martin a “lazy sack of poo”. Today with the afternoon off? I shall think of things but probably not do them. Except reading, and playing games, and going for a walk if the sun comes out. It’s peeping out right now, but I don’t trust it.
I seem to be in the middle of a non-fiction bubble. I finished Diane Ackerman’s An Alchemy of Mind a couple of days ago and then gulped down Mary Roach’s Stiff (which is for book group next week) and now I’m reading Driving Over Lemons by Chris Stewart about an Englishman that uproots his life when he buys a farm in Andalucia, Spain. Do you go in spurts like this? I don’t think I usually read this much non-fiction at once, and even though I picked up Lemons, I was actually kind of craving some good lose-yourself-in-another-world fiction. It’s okay, though, I have another Anthony Doerr book already downloaded for when I’m done with Lemons.
Stiff was fascinating, if rather exceptionally icky. I’ve now read all her books and every one of them is excellent. This one is about death… or rather, about cadavers and what happens to us after we die, and the various ways corpses have contributed to our society and culture. I’m not a super-squeamish person but I have to admit, I grossed myself out, as I sat down to eat a bowl of chicken and rice for lunch yesterday RIGHT as she was describing the decomposition process of the body and started talking about maggots. I did manage to eat the rice, though…I just had to keep thinking NOT MAGGOTS NOT MAGGOTS to myself. Haha!
I’ve always thought that I would prefer to be cremated. Being buried in a coffin has never been appealing. But one of the last chapters of the book was about new options in after-death, ah, …disposal, especially a SWEDISH one that is called an ecological burial. Basically you’re reduced to fertilizer and can be deposited in the ground with a memorial tree or bush or something to grow above you. I like that idea! Trust the Swedes to take recycling to its logical extreme. 🙂
The cloud cover is slowly breaking up and there is much more blue sky showing now then there was half an hour ago. I hope we’re in for some nice weather this weekend. I would like to sit in the sun and watch the birds and listen to the song of the lawnmowers.