Tagged: karinbean

28
Dec
2021

EASE ON DOWN THE ROAD

One of my goals for 2021 was to walk a 5K every month in addition to the nearly daily walking I was already doing. My usual routes are either a double-helix around the neighborhood (approx. 1 kilometer), or a 1.5K zigzagging up the neighborhood and then over and around and down below the school, or a 2.5K which goes around the school, over into the village and all the way down the goats and back. It’s harder to keep up the commitment in the winter when the roads are icy, and they stay icy in our neighborhood for a really...

26
Dec
2021

POST-HOLIDAY BLISS

It’s the day after Christmas, at the end of 2021. It was a good Christmas in many ways…the four of us back together and everything ready in plenty of time so no one was stressed. I had most of my shopping done by the end of November, almost all of it done online, and the last of the things I ordered arrived well in advance. Karin helped Anders with ordering stuff for me, so he wasn’t stressed out either, at least not that I could tell. 🙂 We did a big grocery shop for both Christmas eve and Christmas day...

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...

02
Jul
2021

HOLES AND HOPES

I find myself checking my head constantly, without thinking about it. My hands in my hair, sifting through the strands, feeling the lumps and landscape of my skull like an amateur phrenologist. I am trying unconsciously to tell if there is more damage from my fall than I thought, or maybe I’m trying to smooth it out, to make sure there are no actual holes in my skull, as if my fingers could softly and carefully rub the bone back together. There are 22 bones in the human skull, 14 of which make up your face. The bones of the...

22
May
2021

SHOTS, SHOOTS & SONGS

Yesterday, Anders saw on the news that hospitalizations of patients with COVID, who have received their first vaccination shot (here in Sweden, at least), were on the rise. Maybe no one told them that 1) it takes 3 weeks for the first shot to reach full effectiveness and 2) it takes TWO SHOTS (for most of us) and a couple more weeks after that to be fully covered. I get that people are increasingly willing to take risks because they are so tired of the restrictions of the past year and a half, but HOLD OUT. Anders got his first...

06
Jan
2021

EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN

Karin was just over 3 years old when we moved into this house. As I’ve mentioned before, we had the house built to “painting-ready” and once we got the keys, Anders did everything else in the house: flooring, painting, trims, wallpapering, tiling,…everything. With two little kids under 5, we had our hands full, and some parts of the house weren’t done when we moved in (the important parts were) so there was a lot of box shuffling and moving things around. We had a lot of fun choosing the decor for the kids’ department which consisted of their two bedrooms...

03
Jan
2021

GET GOING

Karin is moving into a new place today, and it feels a little more permanent than the other apartments she’s had. She and her girlfriend Nelly, and Anders moved all her furniture from the apartment she had been sharing in Malmö for a couple of months, this morning and then this afternoon, she and I took another carload of stuff. For a 21-year-old, she sure had a lot of baggage already! It’s the second floor apartment in a quite big standalone building that has 3 other flats in it. It used to be part of an area that contained a...

02
Dec
2020

MONKEY SEE MONKEY DO, MONKEY PROUD

Karin made dinner for us tonight: potato soup with carrots, leek and chicken dogs (cut-up). It’s a soup that she and her classmates made once, on an expedition to Skrylle, which is a nature reserve not too far from the school. She was about 14 at the time, and they made the soup over an open fire and she clearly remembers me asking her, when she got home, if she’d been smoking, because she smelled like smoke, and being upset with me for EVEN ASKING, GOD MOM. It was yummy, and Anders made garlic toast in the oven to go...

22
Nov
2020

CINEMANIA

We’re working on getting into the holiday spirit around here. Karin came home this afternoon; it’s the first time we’ve seen her for any amount of time in nearly 3 weeks as she’s been quarantining…two COVID tests, both negative, thank goodness. I’ve been getting Christmas shopping done…have my sister and her family sorted, and my mom, and my brother’s family except for him. I have Martin nearly done, and Karin and Anders started. Pretty good work for a couple of days. Karin and I went grocery shopping, and then brought all the Christmas decoration boxes into the house and got...

29
Aug
2020

DOWN TO 2, UP TO 7

We’re officially a 2-person household again as Karin is in the process of moving out from under her parent’s roof and into another (temporary) apartment with a friend, this time in Malmö. Since she is working at Flyinge school, which is literally less than a 5-minute walk from our door, and will have to pay an alarmingly high amount in rent each month, plus deal with parking there, when she could continue to live here for free, I am a bit boggled by her choice, but she’s young and cool and ready to be on her own. And since she...

April 2024
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