1. Two turkeys is probably enough, unless we actually have 12 adults. 2. Find something other than green bean casserole for a veggie dish…there’s always TONS of it leftover and no one really likes it that much. 3. Have Kelly do the pumpkin pies every year. MMMMMMMMMMM 4. Maybe move the TV into the playroom for the evening. Or else think up better responses to the frequently asked question about why we adults talk so loudly and laugh so much.
Nice things about walking on a dark, chilly, wet night (when it’s not actually raining): Dragonbreath No sweatbands required Streetlights make everything sparkly! That Halloweeny-evening feeling Increased chance of frog sightings Things that have run out in front of my car in the past few days: Female pheasant with a death wish Village cat MAN. ON THE HIGHWAY. NO REFLECTORS. Idjit. Things that were big and round in the sky this morning: Gigantic shiny silver full moon hovering above the horizon ahead of me Great glowing globe of fire hovering above the horizon behind me Things I am thinking an...
My costume idea was so excellent, but I think it left something to be desired in the execution since no one even asked me what I was supposed to be. When I told people what I was, they laughed their heads off, though, so I give myself points for that. I was a piece of salt licorice, the Swedish candy that makes people around the world shake their heads and say, “EWWW!” I wore a sparkly black shirt and then I spray-painted my top half and my hair black (not my face) and then sprayed glitter all over that. Let...
One of the biggest problems we’ve encountered with Halloween every year is that Karin wants to have different costumes for each Halloween-related event. It’s hard enough to come up with costume ideas for the four of us ONCE, but when she starts wanting a different costume for the school party, the neighborhood trick-or-treating and the big AWC party, it’s enough to make me grind my teeth. Today she attended a party at the after-school daycare (for once, they got the date right) and because it was cold and rainy, she opted not to wear her surfer costume that is slotted...
This year, because ozswede was so kind as to send us a pumpkin carving kit for the kids, I made them do their own dirty work, though I did cut the holes in the tops of the pumpkins and scoop-scraped out the insides (though I had help from Anders on one of them). Usually I have to wield the knife (*evil laugh*) so they draw their pumpkin designs and I execute (HA!) them. Even though they got a packet of ready-made designs in the package they elected to go with traditional jack-o-lantern faces this year, though both of them wanted...
We took the recyclables in today and stopped at the grocery store and the whole way there and back in the car I sang rain songs. It’s been raining non-stop all day, the dreary leaf-loosening autumn rain that bodes ill for a snowy winter. It’s the kind of rain that seems as if it will never stop, and when you’ve lived in Sweden for long enough, the very real prospect of just that thing is too overwhelming to contemplate for long, hence the loud choruses of Rain, Rain Go Away and It’s Raining, it’s Pouring, etc. The kids sang along...
What can I say? I feel like a fool for getting my (our) hopes up about the cat. Anders is reacting now, after 5 days, and truth be told, so am I, though in a very minor way. I had some correspondence with the breeder and she did make me feel slightly better by telling me that she had some other customers react to Doc as well, who then DIDN’T react to a different Siberian, and that it can be very much the allergens borne by any indivdual cat…but we can’t test every cat in Sweden, especially since it’s hard...
The company I work for is an international one, with offices in more than 20 countries. It also has a very diverse demographic, hiring people from all over the world to work in those offices. Though we are headquartered in Sweden, non-natives make up a significant portion of the employee list. On the floor where I work, which comprises 3 different departments, there are 2 Germans, 5 Americans, 1 Canadian, 1 French, 1 Mexican, 1 Brit, 1 Malaysian, 1 Indian, 1 Dane and 1 Norwegian. That’s a quarter of the total number of people on our floor alone. The Frenchwoman...
One of the things that we wanted to do in Paris was to climb the South Tower of Notre Dame to see the “gargoyle viewing platform”, Galerie des Chimères, that is atop a climb of some 380-plus steps. The word gargoyle comes from the French word gargouille which means “throat” or “gullet” and that is exactly what gargoyles do: they function as drainpipes to carry rain from the roof of cathedrals, thereby preventing water damage to the masonry, and not incidentally, frightening away evil spirits while doing so. In architectural parlance, if a gargoyle is purely decorative, in other words,...
As anyone who has been to a Disneyland park knows, the parades are of paramount importance to the kids who stake out places an hour in advance along the parade route, roosting on the curbs and any available surface: benches, garbage cans, parent’s shoulders. Eventually the crowd is 3-4 people deep, and during the parade itself, the spectators are constantly shooed back against the edges by perimeter guards, making it impossible for an adult photographer to get a shot of anything but the heads in front of him unless he wants to risk the wrath of the wee set by...