Tops on the List of Things I REALLY Didn’t Need to Deal With Right Now: Finding out that the bottle of blackstrap molasses which resides on the top wire basket shelf of the pantry has fallen over and dripped molasses down through THREE wire baskets full of food, ending in a HUGE thick puddle in which several cans and bottles are completely stuck fast.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr is the sound of my head spinning around with the busyness.* The house is cleaned, the christmas cards are written, stuffed, sealed, stamped and ready to mail, the concert program is designed and sent to print, the christmas tree has been chopped down and borne triumphantly home, the groceries are purchased, and Anders is making dinner. We bought a big tree for the living room, and a little one for the playroom (*evil grin,* thanks whoever made that suggestion!) and all the milliions and millions of kindergarten and pre-school ornaments that the kids are producing. The in-laws just arrived...

My company has a tradition of hazing the newcomers. I was hearing rumors of the impending horror right after I started but I laughed it off as just simple ribbing of the newbie. Turns out it wasn’t just a joke. Everyone who was hired in the last 2 years has to provide the Lucia entertainment on Lucia Day, which, this year, is Monday. We have to write parodies of traditional Swedish Christmas carols, dress up, promenade into the lunchroom, and sing. I have been coerced into singing a solo. Thank god I don’t have to be Lucia, at least. I’m...

Hey! I can’t send you a Christmas card if I don’t have your name and address,* now can I?? That goes for you non-LJ friends, too! 😀 *comments are screened so that no one can stalk you except me. 🙂

Whoa, another “free” evening at home! I’ve come to treasure these weekday evenings when I have no plans to go anywhere. It’s not that I have less to do, but it’s an opportunity to plough (plow?*) through some of the items on my to-do list that can only be done at home, plus kid time, husband time, cleaning up, sitting at the computer for short stretches. It feels good to spend time like this. This evening my to-do list consist of the following: use up leftovers for dinner, pitch the rest address and stuff Christmas cards install new software copy...

I’m really pleased with my work today! The last couple of weeks have been going really well with fun and interesting projects and positive feedback from my boss, my colleagues and my “customers.” I’ve done 3 advertisement layouts and am working on a flyer today. It’s nice to feel that I made the right choice! The sun can’t seem to make up its mind. It’s very wishy-washy. If it was running for President, the media would be all over the flip-flopping. The clouds are flying by and the wind is relentless and pushy. A high white sky with a hint...

“The baby’s getting stressed…the toxicity levels are too high.” That was the gist of what the nurse said after doing a quick test involving a needle in the baby’s scalp. Within 5 minutes, I had been whisked out of the delivery ward, into the elevator, up to the operating room and was prepped and under, while Anders was left standing alone in the center of the delivery room we had been in for the last 19 hours, stunned by the speed with which the staff had reacted to the emergency. I don’t remember much after that, until coming to and...

I was going to write a nice, decent length post and include some descriptions about the season and the weather, a pithy comment or two on my day, some reflections on family life, a funny comment one of my kids said… but Long day at work, long and productive meeting afterwards with the woman I am hoping will take over as AWC Editor for me next year, dinner and another in a depressingly increasing string of trite and pathetic episodes of West Wing without Aaron Sorkin, so I got nothing, except these: Don’t Know Where to Find That Perfect Gift...

I’m stuffed to the gills on Christmas music. *burps up a little holly* Martin had his annual Lucia-slash-Christmas family service this morning where his music play group gathered with their fondly smiling parents and various siblings and relatives at the village congregation house. He opted for the stylish gingerbread man outfit, complete with floppy hat, and along with a group of mostly girls dressed in white with red ribbon sashes about their waists and plastic battery-driven candle crowns on their heads, plus a couple of boys dressed as Santa, they proceeded up the aisle singing “Sankta Lucia” and arranged themselves...

I don’t watch TV. People react very strangely to that statement. They look at me as if I’ve just said I have a contagious debilitating disease, one that they can’t relate to and hope they can’t catch. Sometimes they back away slowly. Sometimes they don’t believe me. Oh, I don’t mean that I NEVER watch TV. I watch The West Wing, and sometimes a few minutes of David Letterman or Conan, but it’s extremely rare for me to sit in front of the TV for more than 10 minutes. And this is in a country where you don’t get a...