Author: lizardek

Hey! Guess what I’m eating right now?! *bounces off the walls and carooms across the room* CHOCOLATE-COVERED RAISINS! Sent to me by a very nice woman who lives in Ohio and who participated in GISBE! Along with books and some other candy that I didn’t really see very well because my nose was deep in the chocolate-covered raisin bag. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Thank you, Heather! My poor partner is still waiting for hers, but it was mailed today, so it’s finally on its way.

I’ve stopped and started this journal entry about 5 times now. Everything I start to write sounds trite. I’m making myself yawn. yaaa-a-a-a-wn. The sun shone all weekend. What a gift of sunny days we’ve had this winter, even WITH the snowstorms and Siberian Express and usual quota of grey, rainy days. There is so much snow on the ground and it’s so cold that despite the sunshine, the snow doesn’t seem to be melting very fast, even though the edges are looking acid-dipped, sun-chewed, exhaust-browned. The other day I meant to write about my morning ride to work, after...

I think I might have broken my social interaction mechanism. Or else I just overdid it and need to sit with it elevated for awhile. I’m discovering more and more that I need more downtime in my life than I tend to allow for. Or else I’m just getting boring old. I suspect part of it is less tolerance for living outside my comfort zone. After 3 evenings of social events in various settings, the following things were once again reinforced for me: Once you stop working with someone, if you have no other common context, the conversation really tends...

I can’t keep up this week. Cracking Me Up: On a Lighter Note… Can’t Stop Staring: Cold Water

Anders is watching Jägarna,* a Swedish movie starring Rolf Lassgård and Helena Bergström, whom I normally really like when they’re together in movies. It’s on Swedish TV regularly, but after watching a short portion of it once and finding it extremely distasteful, I’ve never bothered to watch the whole thing. So when I realized what movie it was, I asked Anders just now, “oh, is that the movie with the hunters and the horrible things and the mean people and the killing and ickiness?” and Anders gave me this sort of very patient guy look and said, “well, yes, I...

My mother-in-law fell badly yesterday, the 2nd time it’s happened. The first was 2 Christmases ago, right as we arrived to celebrate her birthday with dinner, when she slipped on the kitchen rug and fell, hitting her head severely. This time it happened while she was walking to the building where she weaves. She doesn’t remember tripping over anything and it wasn’t ice or snow at that point, but regardless she fell, hit her head again, and sprained her wrist, lying there on the sidewalk for some time before managing to get up and get to the weavery. She and...

My father’s: a lion-headed meerschaum pipe, tinged a warm golden brown, nestled in the velvet lining of a worn black leather pipe-shaped case. His father’s: a photo of himself as a small child in a white smock sitting astride a tall black ostrich, reins in hand, one small foot dangling. His mother’s: a snub-footed footstool, rounded in beige plush, a needlepoint bouquet in muted colors centered for resting feet. Her mother’s: a large tarnished silver brooch, its circled edge framing a standing waterbird with one wing raised, a smaller bird crouching beneath. My mother’s: a doll-sized china teapot, teacup and...

My son is a snaggletooth boy these days. His adult teeth are coming in with a vengeance, both top and bottom, pushing his tiny, pearly baby teeth willy-nilly about in his mouth. They lean drunkenly against each other, waggling at the touch of a tongue or a probing finger, the gaps between them widening and narrowing with each wiggled test. He actually brushed one out the other night, while preparing for bed, but wasn’t fast enough to prevent it washing down the drain of the sink, so the tooth fairy was forced to go home empty-handed after dropping her bright...

Next year, do not go on vacation the week before the biggest trade show of the year and the week before 4 major publications need to go to print. 11-hour day today. I am totally beat. Expat Bloggers in the News! Blogging’s Cure For the Expat Blues (thanks for the link studiozoe…can I say I knew you when?)

I have now had a mountain fix. Mountains AND snow to be exact. The snow in Bavaria is so SNOWY. It’s 2 feet, nay, 3 feet deep and white white white WHITE. It’s fluffinated, caked on candy coating, sugar puff loveliness. And there are fairytale castles there, and mountains. O mountains! covered in conifers and frost-blasted, fog-sweatered trees. We spent the last day of our vacation frantically whisking ourselves around and about because 4 days of foot-pain-induced relative immobility gets old SO damn fast and I was determined to get out of the house at least one day and see...