Tagged: goodthings

01
Aug
2026

I WOULD JUST LIKE TO SAY

Rabbit rabbit! It’s the first of August and 9 days from my birthday, which isn’t a big one, even if the number is bigger than I’d like it to be. I’m on vacation now, for 2 weeks, and although I don’t have any travel, I have a very long list of things to do: mostly involving cleaning out and purging in every cabinet, closet, drawer, and shelf in the house. But there are fun things lined up too. I have a massage scheduled, and we are all going (all 4 of us, plus Theo and Essie) to see The Odyssey...

28
Jul
2026

ALWAYS THE GOOD THINGS

Last week of July, and it’s already starting to feel a littly autumny, mostly because it’s cooled down, there’s a lot of rain and cloud cover, and the leaves are all falling from the trees (probably due to the heat we had and the drought). I would like it to stay sunny a bit longer, please. Today is my mom’s birthday. She’s turned 85. I’m calling as soon as I get done writing this because that will, I hope, have given everyone enough time to get up and dressed and all. Though it IS 1:39 pm there, so it oughtn’t...

18
Jul
2026

SOMEDAY TODAY WILL BE LONG AGO

I met Debbie and Camilla today down in Falsterbo at the Photo/Art Museum. We walked through 2 of the smaller exhibits (Kristian Schuller and Agneta Gynning) and then had lunch in their bistro cafe. We sat for a long time afterwards just talking. It hurts my heart to see how sad Debbie is, and nothing we can say or do really helps. Especially with something that will never stop making her sad, and never stop feeling unfair. I brought both of them bags of potatoes, carrots, and onions from our garden, which Anders dug up for me this morning, and...

13
Jul
2026

ONE DAY, THEN THE NEXT

It’s Karin’s birthday today. She’s turned 27. Isn’t that crazy? We spent yesterday celebrating her, and driving around southern Skåne. Anders and I picked her up with Martin and Theo at Malmö C at 11 pm and then we drove out to Kivik and had lunch at Bhures Fisk, which is a well-known seafood restaurant. It was sunny and quite warm but by the coast there was a rather chilly breeze blowing, and I actually wrapped myself up in a blanket as our table was outside and since we weren’t in the sun, I actually got cold. Karin didn’t want...

06
Jul
2026

PARTIES AND PROVISIONS

And suddenly half the year is gone. That means the light is receding as well now, and the days are growing shorter, but la la la la I can’t hear you. Unfortunately it doesn’t matter if it’s always cloudy anyway, and we’re back to cool temperatures and lots of rain. We actually got SO lucky this past Saturday for the 4th of July because the entire week had been forecast as rain, and as we got closer to the day (and the big party we were hosting for the AIC), we were watching the weather changing while biting our nails....

30
Jun
2026

GOING GOING GROW!

Our garden is going gangbusters this time of year, and some things are doing better than we’ve ever had it. The potatoes (3 rows of 3 different kinds) are nearly as tall as I am, and they are all blooming right now, which means potatoes soon. They weren’t ready for midsummer since we were so late planting them. The new snap pea seeds that Anders planted after about half of the first planting didn’t show, are all sprouting out of the ground now. The feathery tops of the carrots are a foot high, and the onions (white and red) have...

19
Jun
2026

GLAD MIDSOMMAR!

It’s midsummer eve and a public holiday here in Sweden. Midsummer is celebrated across Northern Europe and the Baltic countries, but I think Sweden is the only one that celebrates the eve of it, per typical Swedish custom of celebrating holidays the day before. The actual solstice isn’t until Sunday. After weeks of pretty cold temperatures and lots of rain last week, today arrived HOT and sunny, nearly 30C, which is too hot for me, given that there isn’t much of a breeze either. I slept in, while Anders went early to a fish store in Landskrona where he got...

18
Jun
2026

AND BACK AGAIN

We left The Netherlands behind and drove on the autobahn most of the day through Northern Germany to Lübeck. The autobahn is both scary and thrilling. For most of it there is no speed limit (it slows down to 120 kph near the cities and sometimes slower in construction zones, of which there are many). Anders set the cruise control and was clipping along at 130 kph most of the time, and there were still cars constantly whipping past us in the left lane. They must have been going well over 200. CRAZY. At one point, as we were nearing...

16
Jun
2026

GOLD BEACH, MULBERRY HARBORS, AND LESSONS IN HISTORY

I was a military brat, and as such, most of what I learned about WW2 in high school was from an American perspective. I knew the name of Omaha Beach, but very little else about the D-Day landings or the military operations of the war. I read a lot of books about the resistance, the holocaust, and the lives of ordinary people living through the war, and as an adult have educated myself much further with movies, books, documentaries, and other sources of historical information. I’ve been to Berlin when it was still behind the wall, and I’ve been to...

15
Jun
2026

NORTH TO NORMANDY

The day we left Saint-Malo and headed north to Mont-Saint-Michel was quite cloudy, but no rain was forecast. We arrived at the parking lot on the mainland just before noon, which was later than I would have liked, but we weren’t in any hurry. We knew there would be a lot of people on the island, but were hoping that because it was off-season that it wouldn’t be TOO crowded. You can either walk across the bridge that leads from the tourist center and the parking lots or take the free shuttle that runs every 12 minutes. It takes about...