Tagged: goodthings

31
Oct
2021

PUMPKIN TO TALK ABOUT

There’s no knowing when you will do something for the last time. I suppose this is why we cling so to tradition. It’s a continuation in an uncertain world. All those years of holiday celebrations, dressing up for Halloween, coloring eggs for Easter, cooking turkeys for Thanksgiving, filling stockings for Christmas; they’re all ways to hold on to what we have, and what we want to remember and most of all what we want to pay forward into our lives. Yesterday, I went and bought Halloween candy and filled our biggest bowl in anticipation of trick-or-treaters tonight. Last year, trick-or-treating...

22
Sep
2021

FLEXIBLE AND FORWARD-MOVING

Today is the autumnal solstice. It’s been a week of really cold temps, steady winds, rain, and cloud cover, but today was lovely. Warm and sunny and just what I needed. Today’s the last day this week working from home, and my shoulders are up around my ears. Work is intense as always and we’re already feeling the fall crunch and that’s before we’ve really gotten started on monster project season. Last night, I prepped dinner, chopping all the veggies, pressing garlic and setting the table. Anders was out in the garage getting Karin’s car prepped as he was going...

28
Aug
2021

AUTUMNAL PREMEDITATIONS

Hello from rainy Skåne! We had a few nice days at the beginning of last week but it’s back to rain and grey and solid cloud cover. I was really hoping for a nice weekend, but it’s not looking like I’ll get my wish. Tonight we are going (with Karin) to the annual crayfish party, hosted and attended by friends we haven’t seen since the start of the pandemic (with the exception of 1 couple). It will be weird but nice, I’m sure. Everyone is fully vaccinated, but crowds of people make me nervous these days, so we shall see....

22
Aug
2021

THE END AND THE BEGINNING

Sunday night and we’re nearing the end of August, the end of summer, the end of vacation. Tomorrow I actually have to get up early because the furnace people are coming to replace something in our furnace. But that’s good because I need to start resetting my inner clock…I’ve moved my work start date up and will be starting on Thursday this week instead of Monday next week. I talked to my manager about it, and told her that I felt like I was wasting my vacation days…home, doing nothing, no plans, etc. I’d rather be working, honestly. I had...

31
Jul
2021

WHAT TIME IS IT? VACATION TIME!

It’s the last day of July and the first day of my summer vacation. I have 4 full weeks stretching out in front of me. There are already several things booked on the calendar (next week is pretty full) and my to-do list is quite long, though at least half of it is actually for Anders to do. 😀 Last year I took 3 weeks off in August but I worked an entire week’s worth of it anyway, as there was so much to do. I’m going to try very hard NOT to do that again. I learned my lesson,...

21
Jul
2021

WALKING IN SUNSHINE

Only 1.5 more weeks to vacation and I’m getting a little antsy. I want to stop setting an alarm for more than the two days of the weekend. I want to have long, unstructured days where I can do whatever I want, or nothing. I want to spend time anywhere but in front of a computer for 8 hours at a stretch. I want my shoulders to go down to where they belong and stop being hunched up around my ears. I want to read a book a day. Or play games, or read or watch TV or do things...

08
Jul
2021

GROWING THINGS, GOOD THINGS

Every evening, through the spring and summer, I go out and water in the garden. I’m not a gardener, not really. I put pansies in the pots in the spring and swap them out for pelargoniums in the summer; those that don’t have year-round succulents. I’m partial to plants and flowers that are low-maintenance, that come up year after year, with the minimum of attention: water every evening, some weeding when it gets to the point I can’t ignore them anymore, and sunshine. In the front garden, we have a circle of yellow-veined hostas, interspersed with some leafy plants that...

26
Jun
2021

GOTLAND, PART THE SECOND: HEADING NORTH

On Tuesday morning, we ate breakfast outside the door of our cottage, and then headed north of Visby to Lummelunda. It’s a nature reserve that is most famous for the Lummelunda cave, one of the longest caves in Sweden (at 4.5 km). Then entrance to the cave, a natural cavern carved out of the limestone by water, was known for centuries; Carl Linneaus visited it in 1741 and the entrance is named after him. No one got very far into the cave, despite attempts in the mid-1920s, as the passage leading in was too narrow, in one place only as...

06
Jun
2021

FOUR-LEAF CLOVERS*

As long as I can remember, I’ve been blessed with best friends. Before we moved to Europe, and I started 7th grade, my memory is hazy regarding friends. I suspect I mostly played with my brother and sister (when we weren’t fighting). Though I do remember riding bikes with a girl named Judy when we lived in Nebraska, I don’t remember what she looked like or anything else about her. The year before we moved to Belgium, we lived for a year in Montgomery, Alabama and my sister was best friends with Jackie, another girl that lived in the same...

28
May
2021

LITTLE GOOD THINGS

I keep feeling like the accumulation of stress, worry, and bad news is going to bury me, and yet, I keep getting up in the morning: to work, to walk, to eat, to read. I keep going, despite the blows that come mentally, emotionally, physically. It makes me wonder where my breaking point is. What if I don’t have one? That’s an interesting thought. Sometimes I get teary-eyed and bust out crying from the stress of it all, and sometimes I just go sit outside on the deck, in the sunshine and I lean my head back and close my...

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