Author: lizardek

Stayed up super late, but crossed a major to-do off my list. Slept in until I woke naturally this morning, talked with a couple of good friends on the phone while snuggled under the covers and then got up when I damn well felt like it. 🙂 Laundry and dishes are being washed and I plan to putz around the house at my own pace, work a bit, cross some more things off, stop and read, listen to MY music as loud as I like. Tonight is Thai food with the AWC, a fun group of people are signed up....

2 minutes ago, if they left on time, my husband and children drove away from the house with a giant camping cooler full of food, way more suitcases and duffels than one would think 3 people, 2 of them pint-size, would need for a week away, and various snow activity equipment including skis, snowboards and plastic sleds. Karin had a slight fever this morning but was in good spirits. Ain’t nothing going to stop her and Martin from going to ski school, no sir. They’ll be gone until NEXT Saturday night. My boss, upon hearing this, said 3 days. A...

The sky was streaked all pink and blue this morning like a parade of newborns was on the way. It’s blue now, mixed with grey. Indecisive sky! Sunny? Not sunny? We’ll wait and see if the sun makes up its mind or not. Mosaic Minds is up and running thanks to the efforts of a great team. I can’t make any claim to it this issue as I didn’t do much, which I have mixed feelings about. But I’m happy that my brother’s great photography was highlighted in the Changing the Scenery section. He’s got a natural eye and takes...

I can’t decide if the perpetual chill in my body is a sign of impending age, poor circulation or a problem with the heating system. No one seems to be as cold as I am in my own house. The children run around barefoot and one can practically see the heatwaves of mirage arising from their little furnace torsos. I’ve always liked the cold, welcomed it, hated being too hot. You can always put on another layer when it’s cold, but when it’s hot there’s only so much you can take off and your skin won’t peel away to bring...

Just had a scheduled 15-minutes-with-the-boss, with Johan, our department manager, and told him exactly how I’ve been feeling about my job, our company culture, the upcoming move, and all. He was very sympathetic and agreed with me on several points and offered alternate solutions and promised to take action on several of the most important things that are bothering me. Too bad he can’t do anything about the open landscape shit, but at least he agreed that it IS shit, even if we have to make the best of it. I’ve gotten involved with the trivselkommitteén for the move to...

Everything is flocked in sparkling white velvet. The smack of wet, sudden splotches on the windshield immediately swiped away, and repeat. Snow hyperspaces and dazzles. The slither and crunch of well-mixed packsnow rattles in the wheel wells. Sliding rubber grabs and fails, clutching only at my panicked heart. Recover, and drive on in the wet, woolly, pillowfought world. The half hour slow slide from our house to the nearest exit where I could turn around and retreat, which usually takes 7 minutes, convinced me that driving to Malmö in a blizzard for dinner qualified as a bad idea. Even in...

I wonder if it would take just some sunshine to make things seem brighter when it comes to my job and my work environment? Everything seems grey and squashed right now. We are moving in about a month to new offices, only there won’t be any OFFICES, we’ll be sitting in an open landscape, not even in cubicles. I’m getting very depressed about the whole thing and have been walking around with a frowny face all morning. We went up to look at the site so we could get an idea of where we will be sitting and hopefully choose...

I can no longer resist the call of the crowd, the longing for the leap. I’ve achieved lemminghood. I’m creating an Amazon wishlist. Happy dance for packages: 3 books came today, thanks Mom! I’m almost done with my current read, so this was perfect timing. They’re going to televise the trial of Anna Lindh’s murderer on Swedish TV. They’ve been airing commercials for it all evening, like it was a newly released prime-time reality show. This bothers me. Quite a lot. Yesterday evening, before we went to bed, I caught a few minutes of some documentary on TV that was...

I’ve never been much of a one for make-up and major beauty routines in the morning and lived with pretty much the same hairstyle for long periods of my life. Before I had children and moved to Sweden (Land of Personal Poodle-Hair), my morning routine with hair was much longer and more involved. Big round brushes, blowdrying and curling iron, etc. Long periods spent getting each wave and curl to behave and stay in place before setting out. Nowadays, it’s mostly wash-scrunch-capture-and-go. I’ve gone down from a shower-dress-face-hair routine of 1 hour to about 20 minutes, max. It always seems...

Karin is currently vacuuming the dining room and singing as she goes, dressed in her outside fleece sweater, snowpants and spiderman woolen hat. Perhaps child labor is the answer to all our problems. Just got the hall closet partly cleaned out and keep wondering, where do we get all this STUFF from? Every nook, cranny, cupboard, drawer and closet in this house is STUFFED with stuff. It’s as if when you move to a bigger space, your stuff automatically expands wwwwwhhhhuuump! to fill the space so you gain nothing by moving if more space was one of your reasons for...