I’ve lived in 29 places in my lifetime. That’s a lot of places to remember. The reason I’m thinking about this is because some days I wonder if the home we have now will be my last one. That is, will we ever move again? I would assume that at SOME POINT, if we stay in this house, which I grow to love more each day, the kids will move out and it will be too big for just the two of us, and we’ll consider moving to an apartment or a place that is, at least, lower maintenance. We...

The first thing one notices is how everything is gray or green. Puddles shine their reflections of the sky, a sadly admiring mirror. Moon-pale mushrooms glow wetly in the grass, some as big as saucers. Mottled and moist, the sycamores are studded with snails. A crabapple tree has littered a circle of unripe fruit, scattering largess to the slugs. Pale purple thistle heads crown the meadow edges. Clouds tower, a sky duvet, backlit by high behind sunshine. The spongy ground is swollen, everything’s damp and mossy. I grabbed a half-hour window of opportunity, taking a brisk walk through a wet-washed...

Note to Self: Next time we have 13 kids over for a birthday party, NO NOISEMAKERS.

At the dinner table, conversation the first: Liz: Daddy makes the best spaghetti sauce in the whole world. Martin: I don’t think so. I like the sauce they have in the cafeteria at school. Liz: No way, josé! I’ve eaten WAY more spaghetti sauces than you and daddy’s is definitely the best. Martin: I’m allowed to think differently. At the dinner table, conversation the second: Karin: Daddy is not the best! Liz: *indignantly* He is, too! Anders: *raises eyebrows, looks at Karin* Liz: Who’s the best, then? Martin: *pause* Lena Philipsson *It hurts

The sky is bloated with rain, the fat white underbelly of the clouds straining to… eh, never mind, do over. Rain splats, it chitters and chats, it crackles on the windshield, a lacy wash of upwardly mobile raindrops racing, spitter splat. Much better. 😛 I’m so tired of rain. You would think that after living for 7.5 years in Sweden, I’d be used to it, but no, hope springs eternal. Apparently, so do rain clouds. I keep leaving my umbrella in the car, to make things wetter. I checked with my mom, and it appears that the weather in Michigan...

It’s so nice to be loved. My family rocks. I e-mailed my mom yesterday to ask her to schedule a couple of sessions for me with her massage therapist while we’re in the States and this morning she e-mailed me back to tell me that she had already done so before she even got my e-mail. And yesterday in the package of birthday presents that my brother sent Karin, he included 3 CDs for me. Dido’s Life For Rent, Amanda Marshall and The Best of REM. Life is good. I ran a bunch of errands yesterday, so my to-do list...

Evening Blessings: singing in 2-part harmony a song I have heard only in my head for 25 years 2-week old kittens and their blue, blue eyes pale evening sunshine like a benediction on the fields 13 para-sailers swooping and soaring over Lomma beach stopping to let a large family of baby geese cross the road Lund won the prize for the worst weather in Sweden for the month of June, snatching the sunless crown from Växjö who usually wears it. Out of the entire month we only had 184 hours of sunshine, 51 less sun-hours than normal. Gothenburg had 301...

Do you know how many things I could be doing if I didn’t have to be at work doing nothing?! LOTS, that’s how many. I have a list a mile long. I have a lot of lists. I’m listy that way. Actually, I’m knocking things off my list like a marksman, thwak! pow! zing! Of course, each time I cross something off I add something else. It’s an obsession. It’s never-ending. Why don’t men have the list gene? Or do they start out with it and then slowly crush it until all the breath has gone out of it and...

One of our cars is sloshing. It’s the old Nissan and I wouldn’t put anything past it at this point. We’ve had nothing but rain here for weeks on end, and on Saturday night while I was at the movie with Camilla, it poured, leaving a very puddly, worm-happy world when we left the theater. We both really liked the movie, and I thought it was far and beyond the best of the 3 Harry Potter films. We didn’t puddle-stomp our way back to the car, but we could have if we hadn’t been talking so much. We got to...