Tagged: goodthings

06
Apr
2010

PUT ONE WORD IN FRONT OF THE OTHER AND SOON YOU’LL BE WRITING OUT THE DOOR

Quit’cher bellyachin’ and write! is what my inner author keeps yelling at me. All day I’ve been ignoring it, trying to cover it over with one part of my mental mantle. If you want to write, just write. Put your (figurative) pen to (virtual) paper and let come what may. As a wise commenter said (short of slapping me and yelling “Snap out of it!”): Words are never wasted. There were these things today, things I noticed: the way the water cleared and cleaned the pot I made soup in, the scarlet strip of sunset out across the fields. Pheasants...

29
Mar
2010

WHAT’S NEXT, I ASK YOU?

Trip-planning, like party-planning, gives me hives, a headache and a bad attitude. I suppose I should be thrilled at how quickly the Internet and its myriad trip-planning sites can digest the information I give it (dates, places, price requirements) and spit it back out in the form of quickly scanned multiple choice format; nothing could really be easier. However, it’s taken me 3 days and numerous howls for help to my husband and my mom to figure out the best possible combination of departures and arrivals and layovers and airlines and prices. And that was only for 3 of us;...

12
Mar
2010

GOOD STUFF

Such clear skies tonight: frosty & chill and full of stars. The longer you stand on the frozen lawn looking up, the more stars appear in your vision. As if they’re multiplying. As if they never end. “Mom,” Martin asked me, just as we were walking back out the door after getting home, to enjoy the heavenly display for a few minutes longer, “when are the shooting stars again?” “August and November,” I answered. We still had our coats on, as we stepped from the door to the back yard. Just as we lifted our heads to the sky, all...

25
Feb
2010

THIS OLD HOUSE

How much I love my space, love making it mine, love surrounding myself with ephemera and the pleasing shapes of furniture and items that speak to me in some way. Ever since I had my first own room, I’ve loved making my space mine. Choosing the colors around me, which paintings to hang where, which items to set out for admiration. Arranging books on shelves, picking out pillows for sofas, rearranging things until they are just so. My first own room was in Belgium, in the house we rented for 3 years in the little village of Overpelt. Isn’t that...

04
Feb
2010

KINDNESS IS LIKE SNOW: IT BEAUTIFIES EVERYTHING IT COVERS

Two nights ago it was snowing again, kramsnö this time as the Swedes call it. Kram means hug. Hug snow! The kind that sticks, the kind that you lift your face up for and stick your tongue out to. The kind that mashes down just right in your mittened hands to form a perfect snowball; the kind that you can roll about the yard in serpentine trails that lead to a snowman’s body and torso and head. We’ve had an awful lot of the powder snow, the light glittery kind that sifts and blows and shines like diamonds in any...

28
Jan
2010

SNOW SHOVELING & MENU PLANNING

I don’t feel much like writing. Listening to myself think all the time is dull. I already know what I’m going to say. It snowed sideways yesterday, for most of the day; the blizzard we had been promised. Indeed, it lived up to its fanfare, dumping nearly a foot of snow over the course of the day. It wasn’t very wet snow, despite the speed with which it stuck, and when I went out in the still chill evening after the storm had passed, to shovel the drive and the walkway, it was a double-puff duvet of white sparkling beauty....

01
Jan
2010

RETROSPECTIVE

A houseful of visitors, a couple of months worth of parties, and a massive head cold left me with little time to update the past few days. I didn’t get my usual year retrospective up before the year actually turned, but that seems to be par for the course for how 2009 went for me. Last night, around the table with our good friends, we each recounted the low point and the high point that the passing year had held for us. One friend recounted the fear and helplessness of watching her best friend’s pregnancy head into complications. One talked...

29
Dec
2009

REPLETE

I’ve been filling up. Filling up with lovely days and family goodness and the stupified silence of children stunned by the awesomeness of their Christmas presents. Filling up with cookies and turkey sandwiches and clementines and love. Too busy to sit down and write, too busy to take a moment because all the moments are taken: real life, days present and future and full. Friday is a full moon, but it’s nearly there now. Last night it was shining clear and crystal down on the sugar frosting sifted across the grass, the hedge, the yard. I’ve not slept well the...

20
Dec
2009

IN THE LANE SNOW IS GLISTENING

Look what happens when someone leaves the snow on overnight! 24 hours plus of snowfall and we have over a foot. I threw the kids outside with a camera and told them to take photos. “Of what?” they asked. DUH! Of things covered in snow! When I got the camera back, they had taken pictures of both the cars and the mailbox and some blobs of snow on the side of the house. Anders is out shoveling, the kids are out sledding and I, in a hilarious twist of irony, am about to DEFROST THE FREEZER. Hahahahahaha!! ABOMINABLE! Clifford the...

29
Nov
2009

MERRY CRANBERRY!

It’s official! The holidays are here! We started decorating the house today, went to a glögg party and I “baked” the first cookies of the season. Using the term “baked” very, very loosely. My friend Debbie served these at a book group this past year and I’ve been badgering her for the recipe ever since. I decided they would be the cookie I’d take to the AWC Holiday Cookie Exchange, and when I called her a couple of weeks ago to remind her, she said, “Darn! I was hoping you’d forgotten about them, because I was going to make you...

May 2024
S M T W T F S
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
262728293031  

Archives