Category: general

19
Oct
2006

BLEURGH

Beaten up by the gigantic never-ending everything-is-urgent to-do list this quarter month week day morning at work. Felt like death warmed over, fever-style, after lunch, which made it harder and harder to concentrate. Gave up at 4 and went home after I realized I had my head down on the keyboard and was massaging my temples…for the 4th time. Stopped to pick up milk, bread, apples and the kids. Forgot to buy toilet paper. Oy! Urgent! Tried to nap for an hour but it didn’t work. Ate chicken soup for dinner in a feeble attempt to stave off the inevitable....

17
Oct
2006

GOOD IMBECILE CAN’T BE FAR BEHIND

What do you say when you come into the office and see your colleagues for the first time each day? You say, “Good morning!” am I right? Sometimes you say it in a chirpy, perky voice (if you are not me) and sometimes you say it in a “wannamakesomethingofit” way and sometimes you slur your way through it, and sometimes you just abbreviate it: “Morn” as you walk by, open the door to your room or turn into your cubicle or hang up your jacket and turn your monitor on. In Swedish, “good morning” is God morgon but when it...

15
Oct
2006

LIFE IS UNCERTAIN. EAT DESSERT FIRST.

Sometimes I think time is moving too quickly, other times I realize, like today, that it is ME that is zooming through the days, barely able to slow down enough to turn my head and realize the sun is shining, the sky is that crisp sharp autumn azure that seems unreal. The air is full of bite and breath and yet you don’t need a sweater. We pulled the wooden wagon behind us to the plant nursery in search of pumpkins; alas, there were none. Or rather there were, but they were either too small to work for our-style jack-o-lanterns...

14
Oct
2006

EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT!

Newsflash! Manic fireflies swarm Eiffel Tower at night! Sitting outside a café on the corner of the Boulevard de Grenelle at a tiny table with drinks in front of us, as the endless streams of Parisians eddied and swirled past, it made me smile to see how many people in Paris actually DO walk home from work with a baguette clutched tight in one hand as they pull pieces from it to nibble on with the other. It made me smile to see the flower shops open until 9 at night, their wares overflowing from inside the shop to cover...

08
Oct
2006

HELP ME, INTERNETS-KENOBI, YOU’RE MY ONLY HOPE

Tomorrow I am working half a day and then taking a flight to Charles de Gaulle airport for an off-site meeting Tuesday and Wednesday in Paris. We arrive around 6 p.m. in the evening on Monday and will also hopefully have some time Tuesday evening to do some sightseeing or enjoy the city. I’ve been to Paris, once, with my family when I was 15. We didn’t have the best experience while traveling there because someone tried to steal my mom’s purse as we were boarding the Metro with all our suitcases, and also because on the train (and I...

07
Oct
2006

PUTTING PEACE IN MY POCKET

A quiet morning, spent doing nothing much. Anders and the kids left early this morning for a weekend Scout trip, they’ll be back tomorrow afternoon. I went back to bed after they left and after finishing my visit with an old childhood friend, Pippi Longstocking, I feel asleep for a couple of hours. A quiet lunch, a quiet afternoon, spent listening to Hayley Westenra, reading, editing, solitaire. Then it was time to head out the door into the early evening and the windy weather as our choir was singing for Lomma Village’s Culture Night. They are building and renovating in...

05
Oct
2006

GETTING INTO THE SPIRIT

I am suddenly craving a Slurpee right now so bad I could cry. Or one of those plastic flat tubes of Freezer Pop popsicles. Grape flavor. WAAH! Anders is going to the States this month for a WEEK and I am not. I am alternately resigned and crazy insane with envy. And yes, I know I am going to Paris on Monday! but I haven’t been home to the States in 2.5 years (going on 3, going on 3.5, going on WAAH!) and he’ll even be there for Halloween and we WON’T. *eats a mini-Tootsie Roll from the American candy...

03
Oct
2006

ONE WAY OR ANOTHER

Ways today was not so great: having my colleague burst into tears on the phone due to the personal stress she’s been under lately, with added work stress and jetlag on top worked until 7 p.m. having a really sore neck for the 2nd week in a row. Let GO, cryk!! not having time to go for a walk not having time to edit my book unable to stop thinking about all the truly frightening facts in the book I just finished: An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore Ways today was pretty damn great: FINALLY got my hair cut and...

01
Oct
2006

YOU’RE IT

It will make me sad when my kids won’t hold hands with me anymore. We went for a walk this afternoon, in the soft-as-summer sunshine, or rather, Martin and I walked, and Karin rollerbladed in a teetery, half-confident way. One or the other of them was holding one or the other of my hands nearly the whole way. It’s hard to stride along when you are holding the hand of a child. It slows you down, it makes you match paces and it gives you more time to talk and to see things and point them out to each other...

30
Sep
2006

IT WAS EITHER THIS OR A MEME

It’s been thundering and lightning all evening. And writing that sentence just made me realize that whenever we say that, we are using the word lightning as a VERB, just because it has an ing on the end. Really, it should be lightninging, which I just sat here and said several times out loud to see how it sounded, prompting my husband to say, “what?” in a confused tone from the living room. Last night I had dinner with my oldest girlfriends in Sweden, the women I became friends with first after I moved here, that is…it’s nothing to do...

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