Category: general

21
Mar
2010

FAR-AWAY HEART

Feeling torn, feeling worn, wanting to write here but feeling as if my heart and head are elsewhere. Would I had the money and time to fly across the ocean even if just to BE there, to do what I could to help, even knowing that nothing I could do will help. Thank you all for your kind words. And thank you, thinkum for a really concrete way to BE there for my friend. I’ve spent the weekend staring at my children, hugging them a little too hard, talking to my mom, my husband, my brother and sister, writing letters...

18
Mar
2010

:(

My best and oldest friend’s son died yesterday. Just over 20 and gone. She called me today to tell me and I was so shocked and horrified I barely knew what to say to her. She told me a story once, when I was visiting them, and he was still a child, about how she had given him a hug and he had said to her, “Mommy, when you hug me, hearts fly around my head!” I can’t imagine what she’s going through. I can’t imagine anything that will help her or ease the pain or make any difference to...

15
Mar
2010

WINNING FOR LOSERS

The kids and I bought the first season of Glee on DVD on Friday night and it consists of 13 episodes and we have already watched 9 of them. Way to ration ourselves, eh? It’s been a really long time since I’ve gotten hooked on a TV show like this. I don’t think Mythbusters and Dirty Jobs count, exactly. They’re not the same kind of show. We missed the showing of the season on Swedish TV (which runs about 6 months behind the States) except for the last couple of episodes. I think the last TV show I was hooked...

12
Mar
2010

GOOD STUFF

Such clear skies tonight: frosty & chill and full of stars. The longer you stand on the frozen lawn looking up, the more stars appear in your vision. As if they’re multiplying. As if they never end. “Mom,” Martin asked me, just as we were walking back out the door after getting home, to enjoy the heavenly display for a few minutes longer, “when are the shooting stars again?” “August and November,” I answered. We still had our coats on, as we stepped from the door to the back yard. Just as we lifted our heads to the sky, all...

09
Mar
2010

HEALTH IS MERELY THE SLOWEST POSSIBLE RATE AT WHICH ONE CAN DIE

We take so much of ourselves for granted. The way our bodies work, our senses, the fact that we can reason and think and feel. In fact, we rarely give any consideration to how well things go until something goes wrong, stops functioning, changes gradually or abruptly. We don’t even catalog the amazing powers of this skin we live in until it’s suddenly sliced open by an errant edge of paper or a mis-timed knife and our attention is yanked ferociously to a heightened awareness of pain. We often don’t even realize what muscles we have until we feel them...

08
Mar
2010

SPRING IS WHEN YOU FEEL LIKE WHISTLING EVEN WITH A SHOE FULL OF SLUSH*

Martin told me I looked like a toddler today. It was because I was kicking snow and hollering “take that!” at it. It’s melting, but there’s so much of it, it’s taking forever. And it’s melting from underneath in places so that it’s hanging in lacy little ledges, tempting little wedges of rotten, diamond-bright, icy snow. If you kick it just right, with a roundhouse sort of swing to your leg, it sprays up and out in a glittering arc. Ha ha! Take that, snow! Your time is UP! He did clarify that I would look more like a toddler...

06
Mar
2010

WEEKEND ROUNDUP

It’s not like I had anything particularly much to do this week, other than the usual, and yet the last 5 days have sped by in a blur. It’s been sunny nearly every day and the snow on the ground has that rotten lacy look to it, though it’s clinging for dear life. Hard to believe there was 2 feet outside our windows only 2 weeks ago…it’s down to inches in most places, though the big pile-ups from shoveling and plowing will take longer to disappear. This morning, the spring-cleaning bug bit me hard in the butt and I cleared...

02
Mar
2010

WORDS ARE THE VOICE OF THE HEART*

Do you think that what you have to say is less important because it’s on the Internet? Would it have more value, ring truer, be BETTER if it were between the covers of a book, printed on newspaper, glossy in a quarterly? Would it be more impressive, or more importantly, carry more weight? My words fly out into the ether here, roll around on the front page of this journal for a couple of days and then are scrolled under. Soon they’re a click away, then two clicks away, then three klicks and suddenly we’re talking the distance of kilometers—gone....

28
Feb
2010

FIVE DAY DOG

It’s no secret that we would love to have a pet with fur. And no secret that we, sadly, can’t; at least not of the dog or cat variety (and the other choices aren’t palatable or preferred). So we dog- and cat-sit whenever we have a chance, with the caveat that it can’t be for more than week, which is approximately how long it takes for Anders to break out the inhaler or my eyes to start itching like crazy. I’m a confirmed cat-person and my willingness to dog-sit is mostly done for the sake of my children, even though...

25
Feb
2010

THIS OLD HOUSE

How much I love my space, love making it mine, love surrounding myself with ephemera and the pleasing shapes of furniture and items that speak to me in some way. Ever since I had my first own room, I’ve loved making my space mine. Choosing the colors around me, which paintings to hang where, which items to set out for admiration. Arranging books on shelves, picking out pillows for sofas, rearranging things until they are just so. My first own room was in Belgium, in the house we rented for 3 years in the little village of Overpelt. Isn’t that...

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