Lizardek

16
Jun
2010

DON’T KNOW WHEN I’LL BE BACK AGAIN

Tomorrow is Martin’s last day of school. He’s had a really good first half year at his new school and seems to be thriving from all accounts. He had his piano recital today and hours later his piano teacher called to tell me how much he seems to have blossomed the past few months; she thinks it’s on account of the new school. Tomorrow morning first thing is his end-of-school “ceremony” with recitals and music and afterwards a cake party. Everyone is supposed to bring a cake: Anders is in the kitchen right now, frosting a cake shaped like a...

13
Jun
2010

COUNTING DOWN

Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping into the future. I love that line. It’s such a perfect way to think about the fact that the present is so fleeting and time moves so fast and the future is so very, very hard to grasp, because it’s always transformed into the present just as we get it in our hot little hands. The weekend has slipped into the past, now it’s after 10 p.m. on Sunday. It slipped away in a welter of snapshot images from the lenses of my eyes: Karin playing soccer, the swirly clouds, a beautiful sunset after...

09
Jun
2010

PREFERABLY NOT A CAREER PROPHESY

Every year Flyinge school hosts Tokiga Dagen a couple of days before classes are out for the summer. Tokiga Dagen means “the Crazy Day” and the kids dress up in all kinds of silly costumes and have a parade and winners are picked for best outfit and they have different stations to go to and play at all during the day. One year she wore Anders’ much-too-big-for-her suit & dress shoes. Last year she was a hobo. This year? She was a hotdog stand. It was all her own idea. Anders helped with getting a box down from the attic...

07
Jun
2010

WAITING FOR RAINBOWS

Today, it rained. Relentlessly. The only time it stopped was during the half hour in which my son and his classmate had to walk up to my office after school. I had told him that if it was still raining “like this” that morning, that he could call me and I would come pick them up. So, he was grumpy when he arrived. There was no inspiration on tap for making dinner when we arrived home. Frankly, I’m out of ideas and back to recycling meals and sick of everything I can come up with. My kids answer SUSHI to...

04
Jun
2010

WAY TO GO

When I came home from work on this third of a string of three gorgeous blue-sky-sunshine days it was to find my daughter lying on the trampoline in the sunshine with a friend, my son writing diligently on some extremely involved project he’s working on that mostly consists of lists of clans and names and monsters (much reading of the D&D Monster Manual going on right now, even though he’s never actually played a game), my husband outside in the front yard ripping moss from the lawn with a moss ripper, my father-in-law cosily ensconced in the living room watching...

31
May
2010

OUT OF FOCUS

Mostly my focus isn’t here. It’s at work or within. It’s on the cloud cover and the chilly temps, on the tiny hard green cherries on the cherry tree and on whether or not the baby rosebushes are thriving. It’s on Eurovision or was, this past weekend; therefore on bad costume choices and bad Balkan pop and stage crashers and a surprising amount of decent songs and how much more relaxing it was to watch the show without worrying about how Sweden was doing since they didn’t make it the Final this year anyway. I feel a little disconnected, mostly...

26
May
2010

UNDER ATTACK

I don’t know, it’s one of those weeks. A woeful week, in which I have had sort of sad, or at least shaking, news from a friend and, with another friend, flailed helplessly in the face of her grief, though trying my darndest to avoid the chin-chucking and it-will-be-fining, because in her case it WON’T and all I can do is try and hear what she is saying and keep reiterating that sometimes horrible things happen and it’s not your fault. It’s a week of work-drowning, where the waves keep pulling me under and I keep trying to bob up...

20
May
2010

WHERE WE ARE

Spring has been sneaking up on us. We had a beautiful April until the volcano blew and for nearly three weeks we’ve been shivering and turning up our collars and sneaking betrayed looks at the cloud cover. Today: glorious summer! Though I was at work, head bent to my PC, frantically pounding out task after task, trying to keep abreast of the mountain of work that threatens to slide and consume, so I couldn’t really enjoy it properly. Karin called around 3 p.m. asking if she could get the sprinkler out to play with. They put it under the trampoline...

18
May
2010

GOLDEN AGE

Warming temps and sunny skies have lightened my mood considerably. Though yesterday I was so tired when I came home from work that I went to lie down “for half an hour” at 7 p.m. and awoke, completely groggy and disoriented, at 9:37 p.m., just in time to say good night to the kids and cast myself back upon the shores of sleep. Behind our house: a glowing ocean of golden gorgeousness; the rapeseed is in bloom. It’s not all the way blown, as I discovered when I walked out to the edge of the field. Each blossom is topped...

16
May
2010

SO THEN WHAT HAPPENED?

It’s hard to unwind and relax into a long weekend when you’re as used to go-go-going all the time as I am. I had to deliberately stop myself from checking work email. I had to force myself to stop, drop and go back to my book instead of latching onto a project. But it wasn’t as hard after the first day as I thought it would be. Even with a dog in the house, I managed to sleep in. It actually helped that it was such crappy weather all weekend long: chilly drizzly cloudiness. My hair has been barking all...