Author: lizardek

I loved living alone. There was something so satisfying about having my own space, my own things around me, everything just how I wanted it. I’ve only lived alone once and for a rather short time, in Chicago. It was between 1993 and 1995, 2 years before I met Anders and during the point when I was fed up with boyfriends and the whole dating scene. After having had roommates continually from 1982 when I started college until then, I figured it was a good time to try living alone. I didn’t know it would create a need in me...

Anders and the kids are leaving extremely early tomorrow for their annual father-kid ski trip up north in the mountains of Sweden. They’re picking up Anders’ best friend Mats, along with his son Viktor, on the way and they’ll be gone for 8 days. It’s going to be SO QUIET around these parts. What will I do without Karin jumping up and down on my head, wrestling me to the ground, giving me backrubs and telling me I’m the best? What will I do without Martin reading me terrible jokes from his new 2001 Jokes & Riddles book that my...

Sometimes, when I don’t know what to write about, I just start typing and the words flow, at least to a certain extent, often with stops and starts and deletes and re-writes, but at least I end up with a journal entry. Sometimes, when I don’t know what to write about I think back over the day and remember something amusing that happened or something funny someone said, or something beautiful that I saw and that is enough to get me started. Sometimes, especially when I’m not feeling well, nothing works, and I’m left staring at the screen, thinking, “I...

I feel a bit at loose ends, which is really stupid, because honestly, I had enough upheaval in my life just 5 months ago and god knows that was stressful enough and I certainly don’t want to have that ulcer-inducing time back. It’s not that I want to take on any new projects or uproot myself or anything, so why the restless feeling? Is it my military brat blood wooshing back and forth marking the fact that I’m past the halfway point for moving on? Since we usually moved every 3 years when I was growing up we adjusted to...

The sun is shining as hard as it can between the jet trails. It bums me out that I have to draw the curtains at work when I have such a short time to enjoy the sunshine to begin with. I want to fling the curtains wide, open the window and lean out, breathing deeply of the crisp, cold air. I want to watch my breath curl and smoke and pretend I’m a dragon. The other day as I was driving to work up the hill to Lund I saw a huge flock of birds, black against the lavender-blue* sky...

8 years. I wonder if somewhere deep down inside myself I knew when I stepped on that plane that I might never be coming “home” again, at least not to live. I don’t remember thinking about it, really, other than being excited about going back at last. It had been a dream of mine for 14 years to return to Europe, and finally it was coming true. It’s not that I have anything against moving back to the States, it’s just that I feel I belong here. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVED Chicago and love it still and miss...

For us, the holidays are officially over. The tree is coming down, joining the rest of the Christmas decorations up in the freezing cold attic to wait through another year. Tomorrow we are back to our regularly scheduled lives, work and school and daycare sequeing into extracurricular activities and our usually full social calendar without any real jarring or sense of dislocation. I, for one, will be glad to get the kids back on schedule, to have them go to bed on time and sleep through the night. I’m looking forward to a long stretch of flexing my creative muscles...

Oh the wind is lashing lusterly And the trees are thrashing thrusterly And the leaves are rustling gusterly I’m having flashbacks to December 1999 when hurricane-force winds ripped through Sweden, tore the roof off our porch, downed trees for miles around and left people without electricity for days. 3 people have already died tonight and 280,000 homes are without electricity. We have so far only lost it for about 5 minutes earlier this evening, but the wolfwinds are still howling around the house. **** I come from a game-playing family. While we were growing up and moving around, we played...

On the packaging of the frozen salmon and shrimp quiche I had for lunch today I received the following advice: “The best way to get rid of temptation is to fall for it.” I may have to adopt that philosophy for awhile, even though experience has taught me that falling for a temptation doesn’t necessarily mean you won’t be tempted by the same thing again 2 minutes later…at least that’s not how it works with M&Ms. Temptation is such a strange thing. Temptation plus willpower equals decision. Why does it seem that we are always tempted by things that are...