Tagged: goodthings

12
Aug
2012

GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN

OMG halfway through August and where have I been? Busy busy busy and obviously not writing. I haven’t even been online that much though I have tried to keep up with reading as much as I can. Kicking back into work routine has consumed most of my mental energy and what hasn’t been occupied with that has been eaten by Lego. No, still not done. I will never be done. Last night, Martin and I went out with sweatshirts and mittens and blankets to lie on the trampoline and watch for shooting stars. It was super clear as I drove...

01
Jul
2012

WHERE THE HEART IS

There are some times when I fervently wish that I lived closer to my first family. My brother lives in southern Germany, my sister in the middle of Illinois and my mom in the thumb of Michigan. And no one gets me the way they do. A look, a shared sense of humor, a laugh, a dig at someone else’s well-honed defenses…there’s just nothing like the connection between you, your parents and your siblings. Last week, my brother and his wife and their almost-one-year old son drove up from the bottom end of Germany to the top end, bringing along...

15
Jun
2012

THE SMALLEST THING ABOUT SUMMER THAT MAKES ME HAPPY

One of my best blog friends, who I sadly have not (YET) met in real life has also been kinda stuck with writing lately, so when she posted not too long ago and lamented this fact, I gave her a writing assignment. I asked her: What is the smallest thing about summer that makes you happy? And she wrote a lovely long post about the small things of summer that make her happy, that kept turning out to be pretty darn big things. That’s the thing about summer. It’s too big in all its beauty to be boiled down to...

20
May
2012

PERFECT REFRESHMENT

The last time I had a 4-day weekend I was super-productive. This time, I’ve been a total slug. A super slug! I HAVE done laundry, because you pretty much can’t NOT do laundry when you’re a family of four, but otherwise? I’ve read and read and read and slept in and watched all of season 3 of The Big Bang Theory and gone for walks and sat on the porch and sat on the trampoline and done nothing much of note. Sometimes the slug just beats the bee. It seems to be harder and harder to find things to write...

17
Apr
2012

A PIEDI

I started walking again, officially yesterday, even though I walked all weekend because we were in ITALY. I mean: going for a walk. One of the really great things about Martin, who is pretty great in lots of ways, is that he always says yes if I ask him to go for a walk. And then we get to talk and laugh and have really great discussions to boot. Honestly, it’s crazy that I don’t do it every day; that’s how rewarding it is. In the midst of all our talk, Martin was telling me Things His Classmates Don’t Know...

09
Mar
2012

EAT. PIE. LOVE.

At the last AWC board meeting, we were discussing the seeming apathy of our club members who aren’t signing up for or participating in many of the activities that are being up on the calendar by our hard-working activities officers. It’s hard organizing activities; it’s a total crapshoot. You never know what’s going to work and what isn’t…some years things get a great turn-out and the next year the same thing has to be cancelled. There are so many factors: time of year, day of week, whether the activity costs money, whether it falls after payday, whatever. You just try...

12
Jan
2012

THE WEEK OF GOOD IDEAS

I don’t know if it’s the mental stimulation of getting back to regular routine after what seems AGES of being discombobulated by first major illness and then seemingly endless holidays, but I have been a font of great ideas this week. It’s a fun feeling, I have to say…especially when they come all in a bunch. Every year at work, we publish our Strategic Outlook for the year. I’ve been doing the creative layout for several years, getting the content from the CEO and CTO and various other management team VPs and putting it together into an 8-page brochure that...

05
Jan
2012

SOFT START

The Swedes have a saying about getting a “soft start” on something (mjukstart), which means to ease in gradually. Right now we are having a mjukstart to the year, which we have every year here due to the fact that January 6 is a National Holiday. It’s Epiphany, which is a religious holiday in a very non-religious country. In fact, the calendar year is full of national holidays based on the old religious celebrations, though they did take away Whitsun a few years ago, or rather traded it for Sweden’s National Day (June 6). Last year, after January 6 we...

30
Dec
2011

RETROSPECTIVE

n just over a week, I will have been in Sweden for 15 years. It’s hard to believe that much time has gone by, because mostly, it seems to have happened in the blink of an eye. Didn’t I just move here? Can I really speak Swedish? Are my kids really this tall? This has been a good year for us, and it has also zoomed by almost too fast for me to keep track of. I’ve managed to slow down to an almost dead stop this week though, and have found (rather to my surprise), that I really NEEDED...

17
Dec
2011

DAMSEL IN DISTRESS

Being sick and bedridden for a week and a half does not make for exciting blog fodder. Disgusting blog fodder, maybe, but who wants to hear about that? I have not weighed myself to see how much weight I have lost in the past 8 days of not eating anything because today I ate. Actually I ate yesterday, too, but it was pretty minimal, and it was MEDICINAL and also, full of love vitamins: Anders made me chicken soup from scratch. Wasn’t that nice? There is a little bit left, and since there was also leftover macaroni from yesterday, I’m...

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