Tagged: beinglizardek

09
Mar
2010

HEALTH IS MERELY THE SLOWEST POSSIBLE RATE AT WHICH ONE CAN DIE

We take so much of ourselves for granted. The way our bodies work, our senses, the fact that we can reason and think and feel. In fact, we rarely give any consideration to how well things go until something goes wrong, stops functioning, changes gradually or abruptly. We don’t even catalog the amazing powers of this skin we live in until it’s suddenly sliced open by an errant edge of paper or a mis-timed knife and our attention is yanked ferociously to a heightened awareness of pain. We often don’t even realize what muscles we have until we feel them...

06
Mar
2010

WEEKEND ROUNDUP

It’s not like I had anything particularly much to do this week, other than the usual, and yet the last 5 days have sped by in a blur. It’s been sunny nearly every day and the snow on the ground has that rotten lacy look to it, though it’s clinging for dear life. Hard to believe there was 2 feet outside our windows only 2 weeks ago…it’s down to inches in most places, though the big pile-ups from shoveling and plowing will take longer to disappear. This morning, the spring-cleaning bug bit me hard in the butt and I cleared...

10
Feb
2010

NOT RAISING THE BAR, JUST HOLDING IT UP AND LOOKING PAST IT

Are you getting what you want out of life? Do you even know what you want to be when you grow up? Have you settled? When you were a child and the future was open wide, did you fix your dreaming eye upon a goal and never waver? There were so many choices then, so many things we could become, so many things we could do, so many places we could go. What items do you add to your list when you’ve crossed off the ones you scrawled in crayon once upon a time? Some people seem to know instinctively...

25
Jan
2010

THINGS TO DO IN A QUIET HOUSE WHEN YOU’RE ALONE

Sing out loud. Warble. Yodel a little bit. Talk to yourself. Wander through the rooms and touch things. Pet an old teddy bear on the head. Make note of things that need to be done, now that you suddenly have the chance to SEE things around you without any whirling chattering children filling up your senses. Read for uninterrupted hours. Watch a movie that doesn’t have any superheroes or superpowers or animation in it. Lie on the couch and stare out the window. Get messy with craft stuff at the art table. Organize a cabinet or a closet. Put things...

22
Jan
2010

MEH, BEGONE!

When I left work today, on time for once, at 4 p.m., it was still light out. The sky was cloudy but it was high and white and light. There’s a lot of snow still on the ground, so everything has this grey frozen sheen to it, and with the reflective cloud cover, it feels much like being in a cold steel box. BUT! It’s a cold steel box that is getting lighter inside. Even though we’ve had a decidedly cold winter so far, it’s still not THAT cold. I walk around with my coat open all the time. A...

17
Jan
2010

OH HECK, IT’S UP TO MY NECK

Messy mush of conflicting feelings; the usual state of affairs in my head these days. I don’t seem to have any level days, it’s up and down, a constant motion. If life were a boat, I’d be hanging over the side, green in the gills, heaving. Last week, the first official week back at work had me with my head down, pounding through a monster list of projects and requests and emails with barely a chance to come up for air. If I hadn’t worked during my last week of vacation, I’m positive my head would have exploded by Friday....

16
Jan
2010

15 MINUTES OF FAME

American Liz – “You never want to say that you are the best, even when you are!” ————————- Then & why I came here: My dad was in the military and our family lived quite awhile in Europe when I was a teenager. I longed to go back. Luckily, I fell in love with a European, a Swedish man. We met in Chicago, USA and in 1997 decided to move to Sweden. ————————- One of the first things I learned when I came to Sweden was the word “fika”. I’ve never met a people with such a love of cookies...

10
Jan
2010

NO ONE NEEDS A VACATION MORE THAN THE PERSON WHO JUST HAD ONE

The wind has been scouring Skåne for days now. It’s blown all the frozen snow away from every surface and left the fields bare. Driving at night, you could see the wind pouring like water across the surface of the asphalt, only better because it was blowing snow along with it: white wind, white water. Today, mom and I went to the grocery store and as we got in the car, I looked down at the blown-up drifts around the driveway and thought, hmmm…that’s weird, the snow looks kind of…beige. And as we drove out of the neighborhood, it got...

02
Jan
2010

YOU KNOW JUST WHAT I WAS THERE FOR

It’s the New Year, time of resolutions and retrospectives and goal-setting. Everyone’s so motivated. Me, I’m just howling at the moon. Literally, and loudly, to my children’s embarrassment. But it’s so FULL! And bright! A blue moon. What a way to end a year! And what a way to start one. It’s fun to be starting off the year with something that happens so seldom. We’ve had unbelievably cold temperatures all this past week and it is COLD. I just looked at the thermometer and it’s minus 9 Celsius. That’s 15.8 Fahrenheit. Brrrr! We left an hour early for the...

12
Dec
2009

DEPTH RESISTANCE & BOOK BOUNTY

Sometimes I feel like I’m living on the surface; skimming surely over the top without ever managing to puncture through and end up submerged. I can go for long periods of time living up here, skating along. It makes it hard to write. It makes it hard to come up with a true story; no description is deep enough for veracity. Maybe it’s the wintertime, the darkness, the sluggish response to everything. Maybe it’s the way my eyes slide along the surface, too. I don’t see things or I don’t stop for them, the way I do in the spring...