Author: lizardek

14
Jan
2023

BACKWARDS AND FORWARDS, OR BOTH

I keep thinking that maybe I should keep a journal or notation somewhere of medical issues so that I have a record of things that are wrong with me, when I’m sick, when I’ve had to go to the doctor and for what, but somehow I never get around to starting it. Is it because I don’t REALLY want to admit that medical issues are a thing, even though I seem to be dealing with one thing after another, constantly. I don’t know if it’s just because I’m aging, or just having a run of bad luck, medically speaking, or...

10
Jan
2023

HALF MY LIFE

26 years ago today, I boarded a plane and left the US for Sweden. I arrived the next morning (January 11) and went straight to the hospital with Anders to see his sister, whose oldest child Henrik was born the day before I arrived. Everything about it was pretty much a blur, though I remember being impressed with the “patient hotel” that Maria was roomed in. I never got to stay in a patient hotel myself, when my kids were born, since they were both C-section babies, and major abdominal surgery requires that you stay in the ward. We already...

07
Jan
2023

TYPHOID MARY STARTS THE YEAR

Not a super great start to the new year, I have to say. We had a lovely New Year’s evening at our friends Mats and Annelotte’s and left their home around 1 am, but had to drive all the way to Lund to pick up Martin who had been at a party with friends in Malmö. I was super tired at that point, and starting to not feel well, and by the time we got him and got home at close to 3 am, I was coughing, feverish, and sick. 4 days completely flattened, with every possible cold and flu...

30
Dec
2022

RETROSPECTIVE

urprisingly, 2022 did not totally suck like the two years before it. Even though COVID finally visited us twice, no one was very ill, and Martin missed it completely. We had a couple of big milestone birthdays, with Anders turning 60 and Martin turning 25, and 2 big, very fun trips, to Rome, and to Bornholm. Mostly, life continues with the usual bumps and ups and downs. I’ve taken 2 weeks of vacation, here at the end of the year, and today is the last day if you don’t count the New Year’s weekend. I start back to work on...

27
Dec
2022

ART EVERY MONTH

My new year’s resolution for 2022 was to do art every month, and I just finished drawing my last one for December. My idea was to kickstart doing art again, which I think I definitely succeeded in doing, and I hope that I will continue to pull out the sketchpad and the watercolors and make art more frequently than I had been doing before 2022. I did 4 pencil drawings/sketches (5 if you count my self-portrait for work, which I didn’t include in my 2022 art posts), 2 watercolor paintings, 1 acrylic painting, 2 pastel drawings, 8 pages in my...

23
Dec
2022

EK FAMILY CHRISTMAS LETTER 2022

This was the first year that started to feel like the pandemic might, just might, be over. Until Anders tested positive for COVID…twice (!) in the space of 2 months. He had no symptoms at all the first time, and nearly none the second. Karin also managed to get it twice, and Liz is pretty sure she also had it the second go-round. Good thing we all got our boosters! In between bouts of COVID, Anders and Karin managed to fit in a week of skiing, up north in Sweden, and Karin went up again a couple of times to...

17
Dec
2022

READY SET GO

Today is my first day of a 2-week vacation, if you count weekends as part of vacation. I’m off work until January 2, a whole new year. So it’s the start of something, and the end of something: another year. I’ve been counting down the days at work until vacation started and this last couple of weeks nearly did me in. I don’t think I’ve ever been so close to hitting the wall before. Add medical issues on top of work stress, and other things, and it’s been a LOT, this year. So, I’m not sad to see the end...

13
Dec
2022

SOME SHORT STUFF AND THEN COMPLETE IDIOCY

My hands are freezing whenever I’m at home because we turned the heat down several degrees. It’s been well below zero every day this past week, so my hands are even colder than usual. We have the tree half-decorated. All the bigger stuff went on last night. Tonight, when Martin gets home we’ll do the rest (all the small stuff). I can’t wait for 2 weeks of vacation. Or rather, just 2 weeks of NOT WORKING. Everyone is on the edge of burnout, and I really hope that when I go back to work the first week of January, that...

04
Dec
2022

TO-DO TO-DO DOBIDO

I probably shouldn’t be sitting down to write anything here, since I’m not really in the mood, and don’t know what I want to write about. It’s a kind of blah day, partly because I woke up with a headache, got up and took a pill, and went back to bed, and didn’t wake up until SUPER late. It’s gray and rainy and I don’t have any plans until later this afternoon, apart from finishing my book. At 4 I’m calling my mom and sister to plan my trip for the spring. I started working on the flight booking last...

27
Nov
2022

IT’S BEGINNING

Martin and I decorated the house today. That was 3 boxes and 3 huge paper bags worth of indoor decorations. We still have two huge boxes full of decorations just for the tree. I went through all the Christmas decorations a few years ago and got rid of an entire moving box full of stuff (some of it was Martin and Karin’s things), but it kind of feels like I should do it again. Then again, we do live in a big house, and it’s very mysig to have it all decorated for the holidays. And I only decorate the...

January 2026
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