Tagged: holidaze

25
Nov
2006

ANTICIPATION

I’m just waiting for the guests to arrive. Everything is done and in its place. Karin and Martin helped clean the house and picked up their rooms with dispatch. Karin went beyond the call of 7-year-old duty afterwards by dusting, windexing and wiping lightswitches and doorsills. I zoomed off to the grocery store for the last-minute items and when I returned I vacuumed and set both tables…after taking an hour’s rest to lie down and finish my book. Anders finished the other turkey a moment ago, the house is redolent with good smells. Potatoes are peeled and in the pot...

23
Nov
2006

GRATITUDE IS THE BEST ATTITUDE

It’s Thanksgiving in America, but here in Sweden it was just another regular work day. Except for all my American colleagues who wished me a Happy Thanksgiving and the thanks-filled posts I saw online and an elevated mood on my part (defiantly ignoring the rain), there wasn’t much different about the day. We had our annual wreath-making workshop tonight and despite the fact that half the people who were signed up bailed, the 4 of us who were there had a great time and lots of laughs, while the rain pounded futilely on the corrugated roof. Haha! we said, you...

20
Nov
2006

SPINNING RIGHT ROUND BABY RIGHT ROUND

I am rocking the Christmas present buying all over town! Go me! woo hoo! Yeah. That’s what I spent my evening doing and now I am officially half done. Well, maybe more like 2/3’s done, but still. Much closer to done than I was this afternoon. Work is killing me with the busyness. Life is killing me with the busyness. I am so busy that it feels as if my hair is a-crackle. As if my neck vertebrae are not up to par, since they are squinchy and tight. As if my head would spin round if it could, but...

31
Oct
2006

COUNTING MINUTES BY SENSATION MAKES EACH MOMENT A DAY*

Hallowinners: The weather today was miserable, raggedly grey and rainy drizzle. Around lunchtime I began to despair, thinking that the kids would be wet bedraggled rats during the evening festivities, but then, just as I was leaving work, it cleared up COMPLETELY and the sun spread like butter across a washed out blue sky. There were maybe a handful of houses or so that didn’t participate, one with a sick child, and a few who weren’t home, but otherwise we had an excellent turnout for our first Platanvägen trick-or-treating Halloween, with around 30 kids and some parents who tagged along...

28
Oct
2006

SPOOKTACULAR

Well, that was fun, but I am totally wiped out now! We had the big AWC Halloween costume party tonight, and wow, what a difference it makes with activity coordinators who are committed and hard-working and most of all, THERE. The kids and I got there at 4 p.m. to help set up the table decorations, which we brought with us: dried maple leaves in yellow, orange and red, dried rowan berries and papery orange japanese lantern seedpods. The rest of the decorating and setup committee had been at the restaurant the evening before setting up halloweeny stuff all over...

26
Oct
2006

PUMPKINING!

Karin has a misplaced faith in my ability to carve pumpkin masterpieces after I did a Bionicle Mask of Light (under duress) for her 2 years ago…this year I narrowly escaped having to figure out how to carve a Darth Vader pumpkin. May the Gourd be with you! With the help of our first ever pumpkin carving kit pattern, Karin instead chose to go with a Flaming Skull, while Martin and I opted for more traditional jack o’lanterns, after I realized that the darn things were nearly 2 INCHES THICK. They have to last until Tuesday so they’re sleeping in...

23
Oct
2006

AMERICAN DERRING-DO

I think I need a Pandora intervention. I listen to pandora.com in the evenings when I’m on the computer, working on web stuff, or editing or reading blogs or writing journal entries. It’s gotten so that the majority of the songs they play are ones that I give a thumbs up to. Pandora has a feature, however, whereby you can bookmark songs you especially like for future reference and I only bookmark songs I’ve never heard before or that are by artists that are new to me. I suppose the idea is that I should eventually go back and BUY...

15
Oct
2006

LIFE IS UNCERTAIN. EAT DESSERT FIRST.

Sometimes I think time is moving too quickly, other times I realize, like today, that it is ME that is zooming through the days, barely able to slow down enough to turn my head and realize the sun is shining, the sky is that crisp sharp autumn azure that seems unreal. The air is full of bite and breath and yet you don’t need a sweater. We pulled the wooden wagon behind us to the plant nursery in search of pumpkins; alas, there were none. Or rather there were, but they were either too small to work for our-style jack-o-lanterns...

05
Oct
2006

GETTING INTO THE SPIRIT

I am suddenly craving a Slurpee right now so bad I could cry. Or one of those plastic flat tubes of Freezer Pop popsicles. Grape flavor. WAAH! Anders is going to the States this month for a WEEK and I am not. I am alternately resigned and crazy insane with envy. And yes, I know I am going to Paris on Monday! but I haven’t been home to the States in 2.5 years (going on 3, going on 3.5, going on WAAH!) and he’ll even be there for Halloween and we WON’T. *eats a mini-Tootsie Roll from the American candy...

02
Jul
2006

DON’T WISH IT AWAY, DON’T LOOK AT IT LIKE IT’S FOREVER

For the most part, penultimate summer lives only in our memories, a childhood haze of endless sunny days with no school spent poolside, our limbs sealy and brown, slick with water. Mother’s voice, calling distant, while the lightning bugs gather and flash and the streetlamps buzz and strengthen as we skip along the hedgerow, with the sun still lighting our way home despite the hour. 3 days and counting: Perfect summer in Sweden. This is when the tourist board rushes out to photograph the countryside, sunlight and warmth lighting up the red wooden houses and blue and gold crossed flags...

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