Lizardek

01
Jan
2008

WALKING AND TALKING

Best way to end a year: enjoying the first sunny day in WEEKS, then driving under a clear crystal-studded sky to spend an evening with good friends, including some not met in far too long. Handing lit sparklers to a wide-eyed child as champagne glasses clinked and kisses were exchanged with dragon breath and chilled cheeks. Cheering as fireworks exploded overhead and all around you in the distance. Sitting around the table telling your most vivid memory moments from the past year. Loving your mate in the wee hours of the morning. Best way to start a year: sleeping in...

30
Dec
2007

TURN TURN TURN

I read 118 books in 2007, an average of 9.8 books per month. I’ve increased the total number of books every year since I started keeping track, from 104 to 110 to 113 in the past three years. I don’t know if I’m getting faster at speed-reading or if the books are smaller. Though some of the books I read this year could totally be used in house-building as bricks, so I don’t think that’s it. Best books of 2007 (in no particular order and including no re-reads): The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield...

28
Dec
2007

SO WRONG

I just had a bite of an exotic chocolate bar with a very bizarre ingredient in it. Anders likes chocolate with chili and during her last visit my mom gave him a couple of bars from Vosges. I took one bite and thought my lips were going up in flames (cue misschili laughing her head off). She had also brought a bar with wasabi and one with curry. I thought the wasabi one was pretty okay but the curry bar was nothing to write home about. This year, in addition to a couple more chocolate-chili bars, she gave him one...

26
Dec
2007

WHAT EVERY WELL-ROUNDED LIBRARY NEEDS

I realize this is really bad timing, judging from the tumbleweeds currently blowing through my own wallet, but I can finally make mention here, since I’ve just verified that all my family members have received and unwrapped their Christmas presents. Remember all that editing I was so mysteriously working on over the course of the past year? It was this: lizardek’s obiter dictum — best of 2003-2006 And if there is anyone who just can’t get enough (and my jaw will permanently dislocate if so), there is also The Complete Works (to date). I know these are not really of...

25
Dec
2007

LET NOTHING YOU DISMAY

Carols playing on the stereo, cookies on a platter, stockings lying rumpled and flattened on the floor, surrounded by scraps and strewings of wrapping paper. Cards from friends and family around the world pinned to the felt snowman strip that hangs in the hallway. The aroma of roasting turkey wafts through the house overriding the knowledge that after the holidays it’s going to be time to get back on that treadmill and get some pounds off again. Lights on the tree glow on the red and golden and multi-colored ornaments, each with its own story to tell. Mistletoe lurks above...

23
Dec
2007

IT’S GOING TO TAKE SOME TIME THIS TIME

Behind the darkness it is pleasing beyond measure to know that the season has turned; the solstice come and bringing with it the promise of the resurgence and upwelling of light. Winter here is a dark, damp thing: sodden and murky. Something to be endured under the cloud cover, through long days of watching the propellers of the wind machines turn in the lightless air. The fields have been winter-plowed, the short growth of autumn grass turned under, exposing the clay-rich valrhona chocolate of the earth to the sky, if not yet to the light. 10,000 synapses snap and sparkle...

22
Dec
2007

GATHER NEAR TO US ONCE MORE

You know, I love living overseas. I’ve lived overseas for 17 years, give or take a few weeks. 17 years! Not all at once, and not all in the same place but still, that’s a significant portion of my life…especially considering I’m…only 29. I like living in Europe. I like living in Sweden. There isn’t much I dislike about it (and even less I’d admit to in public). But the thing I dislike MOST about living overseas? Living so far away from my family. And the hardest? Putting my mom on the train and waving goodbye as she leaves for...

19
Dec
2007

DIGGING DEEP

Everything I start to type sounds stupid. Backspace, delete once more. I have conversations with you in my head. With you and you and you. I read your posts and I answer back, sometimes in writing, but often in my head where you can’t hear me but whole conversations take place there in the ether of my brain, where I fondly imagine that since we have a connection, you hear me anyway, or at least your ears are burning. This whole internet friendship things is so strange and marvelous. It makes me marvel. Even with those of you whom I...

18
Dec
2007

WHAT A BRIGHT TIME, IT’S THE RIGHT TIME

I confess to being a tad envious of those of you who have snow. We have no snow and no snow in sight. We had no snow at all last winter, to speak of, and so, though one always wants to be done with it already come February, right now a little snow would be nice. Mom keeps asking me really hard crossword puzzle questions. It’s getting rarer that I know the answers offhand and it makes me feel alzheimery and dumb. It also makes me suspect my Trivial Pursuit crown would be in total jeopardy if I had anyone...

15
Dec
2007

COOOOOOKIES!

We baked up a frenzy today and yesterday…the plan was 7 different kinds of cookies, which is a Swedish Christmas tradition (although none of our cookies were traditional Swedish ones) but one cookie sort didn’t get baked, though the dough is chilling in the fridge…we just ran out of time, after spending the morning cleaning, the afternoon baking and the evening decorating the trees. After dinner Karin and Anders made knäck (toffee) which is a Swedish Christmas candy, but without nuts because Karin doesn’t like them. Plate o’ cookies: (clockwise from lower left corner) Rice Krispie Holly Bars, Almond Paste...

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