Author: lizardek

15
Jul
2021

INTERLUDE

Dang. I try to be better about writing and then another week slips by, with all the posts still unwritten and in my head. I’ve been very conscientious about posting my daily good things on Facebook but then I don’t get back online, seated in front of the PC at the desk to write here. I’m home alone at the moment. Anders left early Wednesday morning with a friend, on motorcycles, heading up the west coast of Sweden for several days. It’s their 4th annual trip and they spend it searching for and going to as many little weird museums...

08
Jul
2021

GROWING THINGS, GOOD THINGS

Every evening, through the spring and summer, I go out and water in the garden. I’m not a gardener, not really. I put pansies in the pots in the spring and swap them out for pelargoniums in the summer; those that don’t have year-round succulents. I’m partial to plants and flowers that are low-maintenance, that come up year after year, with the minimum of attention: water every evening, some weeding when it gets to the point I can’t ignore them anymore, and sunshine. In the front garden, we have a circle of yellow-veined hostas, interspersed with some leafy plants that...

02
Jul
2021

HOLES AND HOPES

I find myself checking my head constantly, without thinking about it. My hands in my hair, sifting through the strands, feeling the lumps and landscape of my skull like an amateur phrenologist. I am trying unconsciously to tell if there is more damage from my fall than I thought, or maybe I’m trying to smooth it out, to make sure there are no actual holes in my skull, as if my fingers could softly and carefully rub the bone back together. There are 22 bones in the human skull, 14 of which make up your face. The bones of the...

30
Jun
2021

SIX MONTHS, A SECOND SHOT, SOCCER, AND A SHOW

How is it already the last day of June? Why do we let the time fly by without making sure we savor it…it goes so fast. Another year, half down. I got my second vaccination shot yesterday. Camilla had given me a tip, given to her by a friend who knows a doctor: take 2 Alvedon (equivalent to Tylenol) before your second shot and 2 after to avoid the side effects. It worked for me! I took 2 tablets half an hour before my shot and 2 again half an hour after. My arm was slightly tender and “heavy/blocky” feeling...

27
Jun
2021

GOTLAND, PART THE THIRD: IN WHICH ROCKS PLAY TOO MUCH A PART

Our last day on Gotland, we decided to head south. When we were there years ago, we stayed in a camping village just south of Visby that includes Villa Villekulla, the original house set from the Pippi Longstocking films done in the 60s. It also had a water park and amusement rides and was a great place to stay with small kids, but that was as far south as we got. Anders and I drove about 1.5 hours, south along the coast, to our destination: Hoburgen, another rauk area in the nature and bird reserve of the southern tip of...

26
Jun
2021

GOTLAND, PART THE SECOND: HEADING NORTH

On Tuesday morning, we ate breakfast outside the door of our cottage, and then headed north of Visby to Lummelunda. It’s a nature reserve that is most famous for the Lummelunda cave, one of the longest caves in Sweden (at 4.5 km). Then entrance to the cave, a natural cavern carved out of the limestone by water, was known for centuries; Carl Linneaus visited it in 1741 and the entrance is named after him. No one got very far into the cave, despite attempts in the mid-1920s, as the passage leading in was too narrow, in one place only as...

25
Jun
2021

GOTLAND, PART THE FIRST: VISBY

It’s been a very long time since we went on vacation, just the two of us. For our 25th anniversary, because Anders had to work that week, we planned a week away for midsummer week instead, and due to the pandemic, we stayed fairly close to home, heading up to Gotland, the large island off the east coast of Sweden. We’ve been there before, when the kids were young, with my mom, but I remember almost nothing from that trip. I must have spent most of it wrangling kids. Gotland isn’t super big; it takes about 3.5 hours to drive...

06
Jun
2021

SORRY NOT SORRY

Don’t apologize. You don’t have to say you’re sorry for not writing. Don’t think people are checking in every day to see if you’ve bothered to write (and thereby entertain them). No one is waiting on the sidelines for your words, your thoughts, your random scribblings. You just write when the muse strikes. When the timing and the motivation line up and the stars align as well. When Mercury isn’t in retrograde (Mercury’s always in retrograde) (Don’t worry about stupid Mercury, it has no bearing on this). It’s not an assignment. There’s no deadline. There are so many moments when...

06
Jun
2021

FOUR-LEAF CLOVERS*

As long as I can remember, I’ve been blessed with best friends. Before we moved to Europe, and I started 7th grade, my memory is hazy regarding friends. I suspect I mostly played with my brother and sister (when we weren’t fighting). Though I do remember riding bikes with a girl named Judy when we lived in Nebraska, I don’t remember what she looked like or anything else about her. The year before we moved to Belgium, we lived for a year in Montgomery, Alabama and my sister was best friends with Jackie, another girl that lived in the same...

28
May
2021

LITTLE GOOD THINGS

I keep feeling like the accumulation of stress, worry, and bad news is going to bury me, and yet, I keep getting up in the morning: to work, to walk, to eat, to read. I keep going, despite the blows that come mentally, emotionally, physically. It makes me wonder where my breaking point is. What if I don’t have one? That’s an interesting thought. Sometimes I get teary-eyed and bust out crying from the stress of it all, and sometimes I just go sit outside on the deck, in the sunshine and I lean my head back and close my...

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