I grind my teeth. My parents called me Lisa until I was 5 years old. My fingernails are really strong. I’m an alto. I can type 90 words a minute, approximately. I’m left-handed. Bug legs give me the heebie-jeebies. I’m a Monday’s child. I’ve moved 29 times in my life…so far. I didn’t get my first driver’s license until after I had graduated from college. During an average 7-day week, I eat salmon at least 4 times. I’ve never been drunk. Your turn!
I’ve started to write a post twice but was stopped by a sense of futility: faced with blankness, my mind was blank, too. This is my third attempt and I figured it was easier to just start typing and see what happens. Sometimes, words flow better if you open the valve without looking at what you are doing; let them pour from between your fingers, between the keys of the keyboard, gush from the wellspring of a mind that sometimes needs to be tricked into thinking. The sun shone all weekend; the sky a flawless blue. In the early mornings...
Trundling along. The weeks zip by and I zip with them. Zippidee doo dah, that’s me. At least not zippidee dodo, eh? haha! On Monday morning, when I was driving to work, I made the turn from our big roundabout onto the highway entrance ramp and immediately regretted it. Traffic was backed up onto the ramp, and the highway was dead stop, packed. GAH! No way to turn around. And once you are on the highway, you can’t get off until you’re all the way to the first exit in Lund. Some idiot several cars ahead of me was stopped...
All the spiders are coming inside, it must be fall. All the skeeter-eaters, too. And the flies come in, but they’re so slow and lethargic that it’s easy to swat them or blow them back outside. Everything looks yellow-tinged, insect-eaten, wilty. The storks are in the harvested fields, eating worms, every morning in the fog. The leaves aren’t falling yet but it feels like just a matter of time. Everything boils down to a matter of time, doesn’t it? It’s September already. Whether or not it’s officially fall, September heralds the beginning of the end of the year. Out of...
Good day at work. Lovely choir practice for our concert tomorrow. Still: tired and grumpy and headachy now Everyone driving in front of me is stupid and slow. All our money is practically gone and it’s the FIRST OF THE MONTH. WTH. We have plans every day this weekend…no downtime at all: URGH. That is all, I remove my grumpiness forthwith. Carry on. *Bitch moan complain
My dinner went really well, though as usual, I had a hard time with patience…I didn’t want to wait long enough between courses and there wasn’t a decent interval between the first three. 🙂 Impatience really is one of my besetting sins. Especially when it comes to planning a dinner apparently! Anyway, I’m recording the menu here, for posterity, because I was really pleased with it! Creamy Garlic & Broccoli Soup, served with sourdough bread and butter and pumpkin seed knäckebröd flats Delicious Chicken with Gorgonzola Topping Steamed & Lightly Sautéed Zucchini, Asparagus & Kohlrabi Strips Small Wedge of Brie...
Martin actually updated his resume, printed it out and went around knocking on doors and talking to managers all over Lund, looking for another job today. Very happy about his initiative! He and his friends bought the plane tickets to Peru yesterday, so apparently this trip is really happening…EEK. Now he just has to get shots, order an international health insurance card, get blood tests, make an appointment with the driving school, get his driver’s license, figure out what he wants to study and where, write college entrance essays, apply for college, graduate with honors, get a fantastic job, meet...
It’s been a nice, pretty quiet weekend with the kids mostly away and me mostly puttering about the house…shades of what’s to come, I guess. Martin is working and Karin was gone Friday for a soccer match in Växjö and a sleepover last night. I’ve cleaned house, worked on my recipe book, read, and relaxed. The weather has been up and down, but today is mostly sunny though I can see a lot of cloud cover from the window. Anders and I are going to fika with his mom this afternoon, sans kids, since Martin works until 6 and Karin...
Dammit, I ran out of photos and then I forgot to post and here it is a week later and I’ve got nothing. Getting back into the swing of things in my real life (as opposed to my vacation life) has taken all my energy…literally. I come home from work so tired that I can hardly see straight. Some days I take a nap and some days I manage not to. Napping is brutal…you’d think it would help but it just makes things worse. Even when I set the alarm so I don’t sleep more than an hour…oof: total zombie....
When you live this far apart from your loved ones, time together is never long enough, even when some days together it feels like it. I would like another couple of weeks together just to RELAX, without plans, without parties, without anything but time to sit together, talk more deeply about our lives, get to know my niece and nephews better, give my children more time with their grandma, their uncle, their aunt, their cousins. Time to do all the family things together that we so rarely get to do with each other: play games, go shopping, eat meals, hang...