My sister and her family left a few minutes ago to return to Virginia. They’ll be back again in 10 days. The house is definitely quieter with the removal of 1 dog and 2 kids, but not nearly as much fun. We don’t have any plans today, so maybe we’ll go shopping. We’ve already been here a week! Man, time flies!! Last night we gave my mom her birthday presents (her birthday is Wednesday) and Sarah baked a banana cream pie covered with fresh blueberries, raspberries and blackberries. YUM! During the day we took the kids to the mall and...

Cribbage count is 10-3 (me). Yesterday while we were playing and I was struggling to add some simple math to figure out my points, I looked up at my sister’s resigned face and said, “This must be really painful for you to watch.” She waved at the scoreboard where my little red peg was lording it over hers and said, “You have no idea.” Trying to play a game that involves a lot of addition isn’t easy. I keep having to climb over that math blocking wall. Anders is in Ohio, watching a Superbike race. He took the digital camera...

Ready to Leave This Morning For The Art Fair: Liz: We’re leaving now, hey, honey, give me all your cash. Anders: *goes into the house, returns and hands me a 20 and a 1-dollar bill* Anders: We owe your mom 20 for the pharmacy. Liz: *looks at the dollar* That doesn’t leave much for buying art. Anders: Spend it wisely. Ain’t Really Complaining: Christ, it was bloody hella hot today. My sister and I are playing cutthroat cribbage. Last night, after we both had a reminder of the rules from Mom, who is the Queen of Cutthroat card games, I...

Man, having TWO high-speed connections in Sweden, one at work and one at home, plus nearly unlimited internet access has spoiled me rotten. Trying to keep up with the 42 million blogs I love, friends entries, the news, etc. on a slow dial-up is giving new heights to the amount of impatience I thought I was capable of. Which was A LOT.

My sister’s son, Bryce, who is 2 years old, has a wild mop of bright orange curls on his head and bright blue eyes. Driving around Detroit yesterday, every time he saw a car he recognized he would call out its name until someone acknowledged him by repeating it. So the ride was punctuated by his chirpy voice, “PT Cruiser! PT Cruiser! Mini Cooper! Buggy Car! (Beetle)” Our new digital camera is scrumptious. It has so many nice features and takes such wonderful pictures! It’s driving me crazy already that I can’t post them from here. As we pulled into...

My mom’s computer is so old and slow, plus she’s on a modem that just checking my email takes FOREVER, and I’m afraid that keeping up with my Friends list and blogroll is going to be next to impossible for the month that we’re here, although I’ll do my valiant best. Just don’t be surprised if I’m not commenting as much as normally would, since we’re living in a technohole this month. Our new digital camera was waiting for us, with the wrong memory cards unfortunately, so Anders is calling Abe’s (in Maine) to get it dealt with. I’ve already...

Traveling went well, even though it took forever, and we are now on the other side of the pond, safely ensconced at mom’s, and I’m about to collapse so goodnight everyzzzzzzzzzzz

Today is the day I thought we’d be leaving for the States. I had the wrong date in my head for 3 months, because I’m stupid about numbers that way. I had the day we RETURN mixed up with the day we LEAVE. Anyway, we are NOT leaving today, we are leaving tomorrow, and while I’m feeling good about the state of readiness we’re in, I’m getting that little extra frisson of jumpiness that makes me want to leave NOW. The laundry is all done and folded but not put away. Martin and Emily were here last night until MIDNIGHT,...

There’s a very strange phenomenon going on outside the window. I noticed it this morning, in fact, I noticed it last night, but I thought I was hallucinating or overtired or something and convinced that it wouldn’t last longer than a couple of hours, I blew it off and went to bed. So, when I woke up this morning (to the delicious sight of my freshly showered and shaved husband in a freshly ironed white dress shirt and boxers, yum) and saw it again out the window, I thought I’d better not acknowledge what was going on in the hopes...

I’m in anticipatory slo-mo-speed-freak mode. It always happens right before a big trip. It’s all ohmigodwehavesomuchtodo and not enough time and how are we going to get everything we need to get done done before we leave and at the same time it feels as if t i m e s l o w s d o w n and our departure date will N E V E R A R R I V E. Or maybe it’s just me. My friend, whom I was going to have lunch with on Monday, changed our lunch date successively to Tuesday, then...