Tagged: martinbean

13
Jun
2013

ANOTHER (SCHOOL) YEAR GONE

I can’t even look at my children sometimes without boggling. They’re both taller than I am and it’s happened so fast. Martin will be 16 in December. I just asked him how old he was and when he gave me a very sarcastic, “I’m FIFTEEN”, I said, “That can’t be right.” Time flies, yes, it does. They both had their last day of school yesterday and when I said I was probably going to go to Martin’s if they were at the same time, Karin got all upset and said no one loved her. So I was relieved to find...

09
Dec
2012

BIRTHDAY BOY

Friday was Martin’s birthday…his fifteenth. Normally I don’t think of 15 as being any sort of “special” birthday…it’s just another year past 14. It’s not the first time he’s in double digits or the first teen or a legal milestone like 18 or 21. But here in Sweden it’s both the age of consent and the age of criminal responsibility, meaning that 15-year-olds are old enough to have sex and also to be punished for any crimes they might commit, though I’m not sure if the punishments are equal in severity to what a legal adult might receive. Martin called...

09
Nov
2012

LON-DONE

Trying to wrangle 30 people, over half of whom are teenagers, through across over and around a major city is a lot like herding cats. A HERD of cats, in fact. Sometimes I was reminded of a spastic octopus wherein legs and tangents shoot out in all directions and have to be reeled in. At other times, I was reminded of a very lethargic amoeba who was plasticly and constantly stretching out and smooshing back together, as we stretched and smooshed our slow way from block to block. Usually I was either far in the front of the majority, frustratedly...

24
Oct
2012

PARTS & PIECES

I’m down to the last few things to do with the diminished boxes of Lego left on the dining room table, but I have to admit I’ve been a little obsessed fascinated with trying to figure out what sets the pieces we have left might belong to. Several of our pieces are really old, from the 60s and 70s and a few are only inventoried in a couple of esoteric sets that neither Anders nor I remember having had, so we can’t figure out where they came from to begin with. Martin picked up at least 3 or 4 bags...

04
Oct
2012

COMING UP AND GOING DOWN

Anders comes home tonight, and I am SO glad. Single parenting is HARD. I don’t feel like I’ve had a moment to relax or slow down for the entire 2 weeks he’s been gone, but we’ve managed nearly everything and the house hasn’t fallen apart and the kids haven’t died of starvation or anything, so, Yay me! I was at Martin’s school tonight for a parent meeting. The first half was about the trip to London that Martin’s class won. They are going the first week of November, for 3 days, and I get to go, too! I haven’t been...

18
Sep
2012

HIT ME WITH TECHNOLOGY

Another sign I’m getting old…oh hell, who am I kidding…just one of many in the seemingly endless rank of signs that I am getting old: When we arrived in Boston and took the shuttle over to the car rental place, after completing the paperwork, I was handed my contract and told that my car was in space B18 with the keys in it. We found the car, a compact little Ford Fiesta in bright blue and threw our suitcases into the truck. But upon getting into the car, we discovered the “keys”, which it took us a moment to find,...

24
Jul
2012

JUST BECAUSE YOU’RE PARANOID DOESN’T MEAN THEY’RE NOT OUT TO GET YOU

When we were in northern Germany, we stayed in a 2-bedroom apartment up a steep flight of stairs. There was no living room, just a small dining area, a long skinny kitchen and a dinky bathroom. Anders and I got the big master bedroom, while Mom had a twin bed in the kids’ room: they shared a bunkbed, Martin on top. I don’t know if the room was actually ever a child’s room but there were mice & mushrooms painted on the window in that special translucent paint for glass and a small bookshelf with some careworn and obviously discarded...

26
Feb
2012

THE BOOK OF MARTIN & KARIN

One of the perfect present projects that I did for this past Christmas involved going through hundreds of digital photos on the many, many DVDs we have. I was collecting the best photos of Martin and Karin through the years to produce a photo book that would be printed and bound for the 2 grandmothers. The problem was that my kids are so darn cute it was nearly impossible to edit down the giant folder full of photos I ended up with. And that wasn’t even counting baby photos, which I didn’t include at all. The photos ranged from about...

30
Nov
2011

OUR MOM

Someone suggested that Martin and Karin write an Our Mom post like the ones I did about them. I will plan on doing one about Anders sometime, but he’s a lot more private than I am so I have to check with him first. 🙂 So, here is My Martin and My Karin about ME! —– Our mom is very weird 🙂 Our mom is veeery *cough* funny 🙂 Our mom embarrasses us by singing when our friends are here. Our mom is loving and caring, most of the time… 😉 Our mom wishes Karin would play Wordfeud with her...

25
Nov
2011

KICKING ASS & TAKING NAMES

I got the rhythm. I am rocking the joint. I am powering through my to-do lists like a champion productivity QUEEN. I am getting things done. As Megsie said, I AM ON FIRE. Yee-ha! In front of me on the desk are 5 little slips of paper. One is the list of people coming tomorrow and what they are bringing. One is the list of people signed up for the cookie exchange on Monday. One is a nearly done to-do list of things that needed to be taken care of this past week: 2 things are not yet crossed off...

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