Tagged: karinbean

11
Jul
2022

TRAVEL BUG

We had a visitor this weekend, one of my mom’s cousin’s granddaughters, who is the same age as Karin (or at least the same age as Karin will be on Wednesday). Her name is Cassy and she’s my second cousin once removed. (She and Karin are third cousins). She emailed me a couple of weeks ago out of the blue and explained who she was and that she was backpacking around Europe and was wondering if we would be up for hosting her for a couple of days. She had gotten my name and contact info from her aunt Kim,...

21
Jan
2022

ME AGAIN

Why can’t I seem to remember about this blog until the weekend? I am completely consumed by work during the week, apparently. It’s not like I have a lot to talk about, right now, as I’m back to working from home full time, but I don’t want to lose the habit. Is writing once a week enough for me? I guess it’s better than nothing! Karin finally caught the covid. She was up in Sälen skiing last week and she and one of her friends tested positive while they were there. We heard that they were having to shut down...

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...

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