Author: lizardek

31
May
2023

NO GOOD MOVIE IS TOO LONG AND NO BAD MOVIE IS SHORT ENOUGH*

Karin and I sat down to watch The Notebook a couple of weeks ago, but we only made it halfway before we stopped because of either it being too late in the evening to continue, or something came up, or Karin had to leave, or whatever it was. I knew already then that I wasn’t really interested in watching the rest of it, partly because they basically give the entire plot away at the beginning, and partly because I didn’t particularly care about ANY of the characters, most of whom were cardboard throwaways, OR what was going to happen to...

29
May
2023

ALONELIER

How much time do you spend alone? Are you lonely when you’re alone? I don’t know why I’m even asking YOU, the hypothetical reader, when I know it’s basically 3 people who sporadically read this blog, and while asking a direct question might elicit a comment, my question is mostly rhetorical. I’m alone a LOT. Martin has moved out, Anders is traveling all the time for work, Karin is home occasionally, but not every night, not by a long shot, even though she technically lives here, and while I am out some evenings and have plans and do things, I’m...

18
May
2023

COUNTER PRODUCTIVE

It all started with the chairs. When the old IKEA chairs we’d had for ages kept collapsing, it was time. Anders and I did some online searching, which wasn’t fun because I couldn’t find anything I liked, and then we couldn’t find anything we agreed upon. We went to IKEA, MIO, Leander & Persson, and finally, Svenska Hem, where we found the ones we ended up with, almost exactly a year ago. They are a sort of smooth lovely avocado-ey green. And getting the chairs kickstarted the kitchen renovation project. Over the course of the year that followed, we got...

16
May
2023

UNREASONABLE EXPECTATIONS

Work is crazy right now. Which makes me laugh, because when is work ever not crazy? Work is ALWAYS crazy. The stream of incoming work is always equal to or bigger than the stream of finished, closed work each day. Even though I truly love my job, and what I do, sometimes it’s a lot. Sometimes you just want to take a breath and sit back for a minute. Sometimes you just want to be able to really concentrate on designing something excellent, instead of putting out fires and scrambling to get things done as quickly as possible because you’ve...

14
May
2023

MEDICALLY SPEAKING

We’ve had better weeks. I’m hoping tomorrow starts off a new week with more positive things in it than negative. Even though I don’t write much about the negative things, especially on FB where I write daily good things lists, there are still sometimes unpleasant or bad things happening in my life that color everything else. Even if I can always find good things each day, that doesn’t mean that an accumulation of non-good things doesn’t sometimes take its toll. On Wednesday, I saw the diabetes nurse, and my blood sugar levels were up again. No surprise, considering they were...

02
May
2023

FILLING UP

May and June and July calendars are rapidly filling up. I’m still boggling over the fact that it’s already May. So much going on right now that it makes my head spin, and since it’s full-blown allergy season right now, that’s not necessarily a good thing. We just had our first long weekend, kicking off the long weekend season. It’s the first holiday since Easter, which was the the beginning of April, and itself the first holiday of the year after January 6th. It’s a long way between January 6 and April 7 (Good Friday this year). You’d think they’d...

25
Apr
2023

THIS TIME EVERY YEAR

I suppose bitching about the US government and their continuing insistence upon forcing their citizens to file taxes every year, even if they live and work in a foreign country and pay taxes there, is not a smart thing to do, but ARGH GAH $^$££$&*(!!! EVERY year, I have to file tax reports for the US and use their stupid, overly complicated forms that change EVERY year, that I can’t even file online because it’s so complicated and the forms I need are difficult to enter in an online way. EVERY year, I have to figure everything out myself, with...

22
Apr
2023

GONE TOO LONG

I put together a list of things that struck me as weird while I was in the States. I dictated it to my sister during our road trip, because it had been taking up space in my brain for the first 3 weeks I was “home” but I hadn’t yet written it down or, really, formulated, what was so weird about these things. Some of these things are maybe specific to the Carolinas, or the South, but both of those things are just smaller subsets of things that struck me about being back in the USA after such a long...

16
Apr
2023

BORTA BRA MEN HEMMA BÄST

Back in Sweden after an entire 4 weeks in the US, which wasn’t going fast at first, but sped up amazingly by the fourth week, and now I can’t believe it’s already over and I’m home. Karin arrived home from Italy as well, on Friday, and I flew in early Saturday morning, so we are all home together again…aside from the fact that Martin moved out a week ago, to an apartment in Malmö, and Karin has already disappeared off with friends somewhere in Malmö or Lund, who knows. 😀 I had a GREAT time, and it was so worth...

30
Mar
2023

HOME-ISH

I’ve been in the US for nearly 2 weeks, and it’s mostly weird to be here. I don’t know if that’s because I’m in the Carolinas instead of Michigan or because I’ve been away from the US for so long. I’ve read that it only takes about 5 years for someone who has moved abroad to find things have changed so much in their home country that when they return it’s like coming to a foreign country. One that SHOULD feel like home, SHOULD smell like home, SHOULD behave like home, but doesn’t. I’ve not been back for 4.5 years,...

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