When I awoke this morning it was to the wolves of the wind, snapping around the house, howling with hunger, trying to find their way in. Trees are bent, branches and greenery swaying in the horizontal waltzing of the wind. There are little blue dimples in the puffy cheeks of the clouds, and the open regard of the sun as an eye opens is pale and watery. There seems to be some sort of full-moon weirdness going on in my life when it comes to organizations. I have kerfluffles happening in two separate spheres which are a little unsettling, and...

I just received headphones at work that are supposed to help cut down on noise and allow us to listen to music while working. Drawback: I can’t hear my phone if it rings until it gets really loud and I can still hear everything else, it’s just muffled. And when I lower the headphones around my neck so that I can talk to someone I look exactly like a whiplash accident victim. But I can listen to music again!

Back to monotone grayness. The air is so full of moisture that everything looks blurry. Driving up the big hill to Lund, you’d swear the sky and earth are seeping, all the grey tones running together like a watercolor wash. Now, however, the sun is making a valiant attempt to cut through the bullshit and shine, baby, shine! I have to stop going to bed after 11 on school nights because I’m not asleep until after midnight. The alarm at 6:30 is SUCH a shock. I need more than 6.5 hours of sleep a night. More like 9. Okay, 10....

St. Patrick’s Day: Niceness: Tickets from the Pub for 1 free Irish Stew appetizer, 1 free pint of Guinness and 1 free shot of Irish whisky for everyone in our party (23) Disappointment: Didn’t get to hear The Unicorn Song or Danny Boy. Joke: An Irish palm pilot consisting of a string with a pen, tied around the wrist, and on the palm of the hand the written words Buy Beer. Aggravation: a 2-hour wait to get our food and a horrible singer in a Crocodile Dundee wannabe outfit singing such gems songs as Pink Floyd’s The Wall and Bryan...

I recently realized that one of the patterns that Anders and I unconsciously fall into when dealing with Karin is Good Cop Bad Cop. Guess who’s the Bad Cop? The thing that bothers me about that is that I don’t want to, consciously or unconsciously, turn it into Bad MOM. Mean Mom, I can live with. Strict Mom, even, to a certain extent. Yesterday evening was bath night and I managed to turn Martin into my co-conspirator without any suspicion on Karin’s part. When it was bathtime, I just called Martin and we made the bathroom all mysig* with only...

Just my luck. This is the second time in recent months that Anders has been away on a business trip in Italy (and Switzerland!!) and I’ve been stuck at home with a barfy kid. sigh I think I’m getting somewhat better at dealing with it though since I’ve had SO MUCH PRACTICE, lately. I feel like we’ve had a real run of sickness lately. Either us or the kids, someone’s always feeling poorly. Hope it’s just the nearly-spring blues and we’ll be done with this round of the icklies soon. So. Yeah. That’s all for the moment. Edited to add:...

College pranks were so much fun. At Michigan State, we called it pimping someone, for linguistic reasons that now escape me. Once while the RA, Ann, was in a 4-hour meeting, all of the girls on my freshman dorm floor, with the help of Ann’s suitemate, removed EVERYTHING from her room, and set it up in the Study Lounge exactly as it had been in her room, down to the Passout game under the bed. Another time Julie and I made a mess of a particular brother floor room by supergluing a penny over the keyhole, using a blowdryer to...

A full choir weekend with 26 singers, a Flamenco dancer, excellent feasty meals and gulsippor* blooming. The best thing about choir retreats is being around people who break into song at any given moment and who spontaneously harmonize with you when YOU break into song. My friend Debbie is the only other non-Swede in the choir and during the evening when people were all sitting around playing singing games, she was the only one with a North American background to be able to catch and return all my musical cultural references. One of the singing games we played was hilarious....

Show me the way to go home! I’m tired and I want to go to bed I had a drink about an hour ago and it went straight to my head Wherever you may roam, over land or sea or foam Whenever you hear me singing this song, show me the way to go home! OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH! Show me the way to my habitual abode I’m fatigued and I wanna retire I had a beverage sixty minutes ago and it went straight to my cerebellum! Wherever you may perambulate, over land or sea or atmospheric density Whenever you hear this melodious...

I cannot be sick. 🙁 I’ve been feeling like crud since yesterday…well, actually, I don’t think I’ve felt 100% since I was sick 2 weeks ago. I’m beginning to wonder if I shouldn’t go in and check whether or not I’ve got walking pneumonia again. That happened a couple of years ago after a cold that wouldn’t quit for several weeks. I was flabbergasted when the doctor told me what I had. ugh If I was a cat, I’d be hacking up this hairball. As it is, I seem to be stuck with it. *gack, hurk, ick* Really interesting article...