Lizardek

21
Jan
2023

IT’S NOT HOW OLD YOU ARE. IT’S HOW YOU ARE OLD.*

I had a funny comment from fellow blogger John the other day, saying that he had only just realized, upon reading one of my recent posts, that I was not as young as he had been thinking I was. So, I’ve updated my bio (ABOUT) page slightly, because it started with me meeting Anders and I was already 30 when that happened. It’s beginning to show, my age, as I’ve quite suddenly developed huge wrinkles under my eyes, in conjunction with a super dry skin condition on my cheeks and chin. The weird thing about the wrinkles is that they...

15
Jan
2023

MOOSE ON THE LOOSE

We left home just before 5 pm yesterday, dropping off Martin at the bus stop in Gårdstånga on our way to Klippan for Mats’ surprise birthday party. It was, of course, already dark, and, of course, raining. It’s been raining every day for at least a couple of weeks, and due to the cloud cover, it gets very dark early. No feeling of lightening at all, even though we passed the solstice several weeks ago. It takes about 45 minutes to drive to Mats and Annelott’s house outside of Ljungbyhed, but the party took place at Norrehus, on the north...

14
Jan
2023

BACKWARDS AND FORWARDS, OR BOTH

I keep thinking that maybe I should keep a journal or notation somewhere of medical issues so that I have a record of things that are wrong with me, when I’m sick, when I’ve had to go to the doctor and for what, but somehow I never get around to starting it. Is it because I don’t REALLY want to admit that medical issues are a thing, even though I seem to be dealing with one thing after another, constantly. I don’t know if it’s just because I’m aging, or just having a run of bad luck, medically speaking, or...

10
Jan
2023

HALF MY LIFE

26 years ago today, I boarded a plane and left the US for Sweden. I arrived the next morning (January 11) and went straight to the hospital with Anders to see his sister, whose oldest child Henrik was born the day before I arrived. Everything about it was pretty much a blur, though I remember being impressed with the “patient hotel” that Maria was roomed in. I never got to stay in a patient hotel myself, when my kids were born, since they were both C-section babies, and major abdominal surgery requires that you stay in the ward. We already...

07
Jan
2023

TYPHOID MARY STARTS THE YEAR

Not a super great start to the new year, I have to say. We had a lovely New Year’s evening at our friends Mats and Annelotte’s and left their home around 1 am, but had to drive all the way to Lund to pick up Martin who had been at a party with friends in Malmö. I was super tired at that point, and starting to not feel well, and by the time we got him and got home at close to 3 am, I was coughing, feverish, and sick. 4 days completely flattened, with every possible cold and flu...

30
Dec
2022

RETROSPECTIVE

urprisingly, 2022 did not totally suck like the two years before it. Even though COVID finally visited us twice, no one was very ill, and Martin missed it completely. We had a couple of big milestone birthdays, with Anders turning 60 and Martin turning 25, and 2 big, very fun trips, to Rome, and to Bornholm. Mostly, life continues with the usual bumps and ups and downs. I’ve taken 2 weeks of vacation, here at the end of the year, and today is the last day if you don’t count the New Year’s weekend. I start back to work on...

27
Dec
2022

ART EVERY MONTH

My new year’s resolution for 2022 was to do art every month, and I just finished drawing my last one for December. My idea was to kickstart doing art again, which I think I definitely succeeded in doing, and I hope that I will continue to pull out the sketchpad and the watercolors and make art more frequently than I had been doing before 2022. I did 4 pencil drawings/sketches (5 if you count my self-portrait for work, which I didn’t include in my 2022 art posts), 2 watercolor paintings, 1 acrylic painting, 2 pastel drawings, 8 pages in my...

23
Dec
2022

EK FAMILY CHRISTMAS LETTER 2022

This was the first year that started to feel like the pandemic might, just might, be over. Until Anders tested positive for COVID…twice (!) in the space of 2 months. He had no symptoms at all the first time, and nearly none the second. Karin also managed to get it twice, and Liz is pretty sure she also had it the second go-round. Good thing we all got our boosters! In between bouts of COVID, Anders and Karin managed to fit in a week of skiing, up north in Sweden, and Karin went up again a couple of times to...

17
Dec
2022

READY SET GO

Today is my first day of a 2-week vacation, if you count weekends as part of vacation. I’m off work until January 2, a whole new year. So it’s the start of something, and the end of something: another year. I’ve been counting down the days at work until vacation started and this last couple of weeks nearly did me in. I don’t think I’ve ever been so close to hitting the wall before. Add medical issues on top of work stress, and other things, and it’s been a LOT, this year. So, I’m not sad to see the end...

13
Dec
2022

SOME SHORT STUFF AND THEN COMPLETE IDIOCY

My hands are freezing whenever I’m at home because we turned the heat down several degrees. It’s been well below zero every day this past week, so my hands are even colder than usual. We have the tree half-decorated. All the bigger stuff went on last night. Tonight, when Martin gets home we’ll do the rest (all the small stuff). I can’t wait for 2 weeks of vacation. Or rather, just 2 weeks of NOT WORKING. Everyone is on the edge of burnout, and I really hope that when I go back to work the first week of January, that...

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