Author: lizardek

Me: I will sleep in my own bed all night. Karin: Jag ska sova i min egen säng hela natten. Thanks for all the sympathy and advice. Some of it is being put into prompt action. Our dinner date was cancelled tonight due to a sick kid (theirs, not ours) so we had a relaxed evening, doing nothing much. I finished my new Smithsonian, which had a fascinating article about famous inventions that came about as a result of an accident (matches! Post-It Notes! vulcanized rubber! penicillin! popsicles! microwave ovens! Teflon!). I actually worked on my collage book for a...

I’m ready to brain my daughter. She’s been a problem sleeper since the day she was born and we’ve jumped through all kinds of parenting hoops trying to work with and around it. She regularly wakes up in the middle of the night and comes into our bed. However, since she’s getting pretty big, it’s much more of a problem than it used to be, and I’m about at my wit’s end. 🙁 We have an antique American double bed, which is barely big enough for the 2 of us, and exremely crowded if you add another body, especially one...

Thanks, Mom! 🙂 Bahahahahhaahaa!!!

After picking up the kids from skagis (our family word for “skola & dagis”), we headed out into the bush looking for autumn finery to deck our Halloween party tables. First stop, a red-ivy covered house (permission received earlier) where we bagged leaves. Next stop, our babysitter’s house, where a giant chestnut tree has covered the ground with nuts and chestnut casings. Chestnut jackpot! Then it was off to our traditional stop, where we get more red ivy (a different leaf) and those orange papery chinese lanterns. Here was where disappointment struck. No lanterns. Not a one…wait! here’s one! and...

How come no one ever told me about this when I lived in the States? Word of mouth from a friend is that it’s SUPER cheap and you get TONS of stuff in every “lot” you buy. Great source for party supplies, costume accessories, novelties, craft supplies (basic, but still), etc. etc: Oriental Trading Company We expats have to send orders to someone in the States, however, to avoid extra tax and customs charges getting slapped on.

People with too much time on their hands

Just got confirmation from my mom that she is coming for Christmas! Hurray!!!

Large Straight: a double rainbow over Flyinge as I drove home yesterday Small Straight: the Festis juice bottles in my refrigerator: green, yellow, orange, red I’m in the middle (yes, still) of reading A Jest of God by Margaret Laurence, and I’m really having to force myself to finish. We read one of her books in book group some months ago and afterwards I borrowed several more of her books from a friend and devoured them. The only one she didn’t have was this one, so I put it on my “books to buy” list and my mother found it...

After doing all this: getting up at 6:30 a.m. fixing breakfast for the kids, dressing them, getting their teeth brushed getting out the door, dropping them off at daycare and school working 8+ hours (with a break for a yummy oriental AWC lunch in the middle) picking up the kids from daycare and school driving to the grocery store, shopping, driving home again fixing dinner for the kids (plockmat) and me (salmon pirogi) putting a load of laundry in filling the dishwasher giving the kids a bath, getting pajamas on, reading bedtime stories picking up answering emails fixing some AWC...

The other day at work I was asked to proofread a page that included instructions on how our company is trying to create a common company culture. The person who wrote it originally does not have the best English skills and there were a lot of things that had been translated literally from Swedish, so it was more work than I expected. One phrase that had been used was “find new ways” (hitta nya vägar), and it sounded very Swenglish to me in the context that was wanted (finding AND making) so I changed it to “forge new paths” instead....