Author: lizardek

10
Mar
2025

DON’T GET ME STARTED

Why is it that every time I tell someone, almost always someone who is NOT American, that I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT, they just keep on trying to talk about it? Trying to get me to engage in a conversation in which they want me to explain, defend, or continuously agree or react in shock about the batshit crazy takeover of the American government right now. I DON’T FUCKING WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT. Because you don’t want to get me started. The whole situation enrages me and fills me with despair and disgust and disbelief. I can’t...

09
Mar
2025

SO MUCH EFFORT, BUT THE PAYOFF IS PIE

We ended up being 34 people for Pie Night yesterday, which was perfectly manageable. We have a party palace of a home. I was bummed about a couple of the people who dropped off the list, as I was hoping to see them, but one was sick and the other couple had something come up. We didn’t even have to borrow chairs from Lisel, as I was an idiot and completely forgot about the fact that we have 6 chairs on the porch and a further 2 cafe chairs from the swing patio. Anders spent the majority of Saturday morning...

05
Mar
2025

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE QUIZZY

I write a good things post every day on Facebook, usually in the evening between 8 and 10 pm. Sometimes, during the course of the day, I jot down good things in my Notes app on my phone so I don’t forget about them. Some of the good things are small stuff, like a hug from someone or the sight of spring flowers. Some are big things, of course: an event or an experience, or something I did. Some are silly, some are just notice of something yummy I ate. I’ve found that it’s not hard to find good things...

03
Mar
2025

READY FOR PIE AND SPRING AND BED

Anders being gone all the time is getting kind of old. This is his 4th week in a row away for business, and even though I like having quiet evenings, it’s nicer to have quiet evenings WITH him. He says I’ll be sick of him always being around when he retires but that’s at least 2 years away, and right now, I’m tired of being alone all the time. It’s really amazing how much sunshine makes a difference. We had several grey days again last week but yesterday was sunny all day long and even though it was still quite...

24
Feb
2025

SPECTACULAR!

Two compliments today, how nice! One was for the second presention I fixed up for an American colleague. She was equally ebullient about the first one, but this one (which was only 15 slides, an easy-peasy one for me) she called “spectacular”! 😀 And tonight I called to activate a new member of the AIC, an older (than me) man who moved here a year ago to be with his long-distance Swedish girlfriend. He told me I did a great job of giving him info and thought it was awesome that someone called him and talked to him so well...

22
Feb
2025

CHECK CHECK CHECK!

It’s simultaneously so weird and so cool to see my children at their work, at their places of employment, while they’re working. We haven’t been to the restaurant Karin is working at in Denmark yet, but we’ve seen her in action at Beachgarden last summer, and I worked directly and indirectly with her at Axis for 5 years. We’ve been to all the restaurants here in Sweden that Martin has worked at, and it gives me such a feeling of pride to see them working. Not because I had anything to do with the super cool adults they’ve grown into,...

19
Feb
2025

STOP DOING MY HEAD IN

Typically, nowadays, I wake up 2-3 times a night to go to the bathroom. The diabetes medicine I am on makes me have to pee about once every hour or so, all day, and all night. Sigh. I’ve written about this before, it’s not news. Anyway, last night, I was awakened by my bladder around 5-something and after going to the bathroom and stumbling my way back to bed in the dark, I accidentally saw the time on Anders’ clock. My clock face is turned off at night, partly because it’s too bright, and partly because I don’t want to...

16
Feb
2025

THE SHORT LISTS

Things that satisfy me: cars getting out of my way when I’m driving, making lists, crossing things OFF lists, purging unused stuff from my house, finding something perfect at an antique store, reading a new book by a favorite author, RE-reading books by my favorite authors, discovering a great new author, understanding jokes and puns in Swedish, knowing the answers to questions on PÃ¥ SpÃ¥ret, reading new books with unpredictable endings, the clear signs that spring is on the way, rosebush explosions in our garden, a bumper crop of snap peas and cherries, remembering the exact right word for something,...

15
Feb
2025

MY MEMORY HAS JUST BEEN SOLD

Right now I’m listening to Spotify’s Discover Weekly from this past Monday, but I haven’t yet put anything on my playlist. I added several songs earlier today just from listening to the radio which I only ever do when I’m riding in Anders’ car. Otherwise I’m always listening to my own playlist. Music has been on my mind a lot lately because of the record albums. I piled all of our albums on the dining room table and went through them to see if there was anything I really wanted to keep, despite the fact that we don’t have a...

10
Feb
2025

YOU SPIN ME RIGHT ROUND

During the process of cleaning and sorting out everything in Anders’ uncle’s house, we filled 4 large paper bags with old record albums. Since vinyl is making a comeback these days, we thought there might be a possibility that there was something of worth in them, even though a quick flip-through showed that it was mostly old dansband and trumpet music. Anders decided it was best to take them to a huge used record store in Malmö that has apparently been around forever, to see if there was anything of worth. We went on a Saturday afternoon, lugging the VERY...