Monthly Archive: February 2025

24
Feb
2025

SPECTACULAR!

Two compliments today, how nice! One was for the second presention I fixed up for an American colleague. She was equally ebullient about the first one, but this one (which was only 15 slides, an easy-peasy one for me) she called “spectacular”! 😀 And tonight I called to activate a new member of the AIC, an older (than me) man who moved here a year ago to be with his long-distance Swedish girlfriend. He told me I did a great job of giving him info and thought it was awesome that someone called him and talked to him so well...

22
Feb
2025

CHECK CHECK CHECK!

It’s simultaneously so weird and so cool to see my children at their work, at their places of employment, while they’re working. We haven’t been to the restaurant Karin is working at in Denmark yet, but we’ve seen her in action at Beachgarden last summer, and I worked directly and indirectly with her at Axis for 5 years. We’ve been to all the restaurants here in Sweden that Martin has worked at, and it gives me such a feeling of pride to see them working. Not because I had anything to do with the super cool adults they’ve grown into,...

19
Feb
2025

STOP DOING MY HEAD IN

Typically, nowadays, I wake up 2-3 times a night to go to the bathroom. The diabetes medicine I am on makes me have to pee about once every hour or so, all day, and all night. Sigh. I’ve written about this before, it’s not news. Anyway, last night, I was awakened by my bladder around 5-something and after going to the bathroom and stumbling my way back to bed in the dark, I accidentally saw the time on Anders’ clock. My clock face is turned off at night, partly because it’s too bright, and partly because I don’t want to...

16
Feb
2025

THE SHORT LISTS

Things that satisfy me: cars getting out of my way when I’m driving, making lists, crossing things OFF lists, purging unused stuff from my house, finding something perfect at an antique store, reading a new book by a favorite author, RE-reading books by my favorite authors, discovering a great new author, understanding jokes and puns in Swedish, knowing the answers to questions on PÃ¥ SpÃ¥ret, reading new books with unpredictable endings, the clear signs that spring is on the way, rosebush explosions in our garden, a bumper crop of snap peas and cherries, remembering the exact right word for something,...

15
Feb
2025

MY MEMORY HAS JUST BEEN SOLD

Right now I’m listening to Spotify’s Discover Weekly from this past Monday, but I haven’t yet put anything on my playlist. I added several songs earlier today just from listening to the radio which I only ever do when I’m riding in Anders’ car. Otherwise I’m always listening to my own playlist. Music has been on my mind a lot lately because of the record albums. I piled all of our albums on the dining room table and went through them to see if there was anything I really wanted to keep, despite the fact that we don’t have a...

10
Feb
2025

YOU SPIN ME RIGHT ROUND

During the process of cleaning and sorting out everything in Anders’ uncle’s house, we filled 4 large paper bags with old record albums. Since vinyl is making a comeback these days, we thought there might be a possibility that there was something of worth in them, even though a quick flip-through showed that it was mostly old dansband and trumpet music. Anders decided it was best to take them to a huge used record store in Malmö that has apparently been around forever, to see if there was anything of worth. We went on a Saturday afternoon, lugging the VERY...

03
Feb
2025

I SOMETIMES WORRY ABOUT MY SHORT ATTENTION SPAN BUT NOT FOR LONG*

You know, since the advent/addiction to screens and social media, my concentration span has been for shit. I used to be able to spend HOURS reading. Now I read a chapter or two, then I have to check emails or scroll through Instagram for a bit, or play a round or two of Two Dots. Then I can go back and read a few more chapters. And this is even with books I’m very engaged in and enjoying. It’s way worse with books that are just so-so (or some of the book group books that I don’t enjoy at all…though...