Author: lizardek

09
May
2012

MILLIONS, MEANDERING, MEMORABLES

I wonder if anyone has ever counted how many greens there are in spring? 20? a hundred? MILLIONS? Every tree that CAN flower, is. Fields of grass are blowing in the wind, like wavy green oceans. Even the grasses alongside the roads are long enough to dance in the breeze. Anders ripped up and re-did the “vegetable garden” which, most years, grows an untidy tangle of weeds for us, and re-planted 2 of the raspberry bushes, 2 wild strawberries and EIGHTEEN baby strawberry plants from our neighbor. If they all fruit and the cherry tree does well, I will be...

08
May
2012

XO

It’s Anders’ birthday today. As far as I can tell, he really liked his presents, which makes me glad because I worked really hard to get good ones that he would be happy about. I’m the luckiest woman in the world to have this man in my life. I hope you know that, honey. And I hope you had a good day, despite having to work 🙂 XOXO

01
May
2012

SPRING FLING

It’s the first of May! Here in Europe and in a large part of the world, that means Labor Day. However, since it’s a day off, and yesterday, being a “pinch day” was also a day off, in fact for us it was a NON-labor day. It’s been a nice long weekend, with lots of sunshine and walking the loaner-dog. I had a to-do list of about 20 things that I divided up over the 4 days, which meant nothing was stressful and it included things that I’ve been meaning to do for ages, like iron those 3 tablecloths from...

28
Apr
2012

APRIL IS A PROMISE THAT MAY IS BOUND TO KEEP*

Another long weekend; April is replete with them! I’m both glad about it, because aaaaah: long weekend! And stressed because we have so much to do at work and aaah! short week! Ah well, it’s not like I’d get done with the work. It just keeps coming in, anyway. It was raining this morning so I made a long list of household chores and things to get done and have been steadily whacking away at the list, while watching episodes of The Big Bang Theory on DVD inbetween. The sun came out a couple of hours ago, and I just...

22
Apr
2012

WATER WATER EVERYWHERE

What happens to a place like Venice when there is no one left but the tourists? Anders read an article about Venice recently that said people were moving out of the city in droves; that they couldn’t afford the price of groceries and that there is no business left there except tourism. I wonder how many of the buildings along the canals are empty; abandoned. There are only 60,000 people residing in the city, though the total population including all 118 islands that make up Venice is 272,000. That’s not very many considering the amount of tourists averages 50,000 A...

17
Apr
2012

A PIEDI

I started walking again, officially yesterday, even though I walked all weekend because we were in ITALY. I mean: going for a walk. One of the really great things about Martin, who is pretty great in lots of ways, is that he always says yes if I ask him to go for a walk. And then we get to talk and laugh and have really great discussions to boot. Honestly, it’s crazy that I don’t do it every day; that’s how rewarding it is. In the midst of all our talk, Martin was telling me Things His Classmates Don’t Know...

12
Apr
2012

AT LEAST I DON’T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT GIVING THE BIRDS & BEES TALK

We have been watching Season 1 of Game of Thrones on Swedish TV, and it’s on at 10 p.m. on Wednesday nights. I read all the books (except the latest, which I JUST got) ages ago, and remembered very sketchily what happens. I was all excited to watch it and I figured the kids would like it too, because well, the books were really good and they both like fantasy stories and it’s quite engaging what with all the interesting characters and what not…and why in the world would they put this acclaimed series on at 10 p.m.?! Crazy. It’s...

09
Apr
2012

RELAXING, WITH EGGS

I had a half-day on Thursday, Friday off, and today as well. A 4.5-day weekend: JUST what I needed. The only bummer is that I am tired and in bed by 10:30 p.m. and awake around 8 a.m. What gives? I used to be the queen of sleeping in. I can’t even get BACK to sleep. *suck* Easter was sort of perfunctory around here, I’m sorry to say. We did color eggs, which I’m happy about. Karin had a 2-day soccer camp overnight yesterday and today, so the kids got their Easter baskets and lame-o egg hunt a day early....

04
Apr
2012

SKILLZ

There’s a new book out that I just saw going by as I was skimming my RSS feed. It’s titled You Are Good at Things. I didn’t stop to read anything more about it because it sounds suspiciously like a self-help book and I can’t be bothered. I have never been interested in self-help books; mostly they strike me as a bunch of glurge aimed at ridding your gullible pocket of several dollars that you could have saved by using your head. Self-help snob, much? Anyway, in that split second that it took the title to register in my brain,...

03
Apr
2012

THIS IS JUST TO SAY

Sweden had the last word on April Fool’s jokes with a full-fledged blizzard a day late. Thankfully, it didn’t stick, but it is COLD out there. FREEZY BREEZY cold. I will come back and write some more soon, most likely about pie night, because I just realized I never wrote about pie night! but I have to go pick up Karin from soccer practice and then, possibly, go to bed early. Why am I so tired? I am REALLY tired. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz