puttingwordstogether – Page 4

10

Jul

2018

REAPING THE WHORLWIND

Last week at work, while making the corrections to a case study layout, one of the markups was to change a section headline about fingerprint scanners which are used for security at a school, from “Making a whorl of difference” to “Making a world of difference”. Now, I had thought that headline was quite clever when I was first copying in the content, and it made me smile. But the request to change it set me off. What?! I fired off an email to the colleague in the US office who is responsible for the case studies to ask if...

24

Jan

2018

ADULT POINTS

My teammate brought in a half-eaten box of Aladdin chocolates today, one of the chocolate box staples that Swedes tend to grab off the grocery store shelves and give as a hostess gift. She brought it in because her family only eats the milk chocolate candies, which is approximately half of the box of 50 chocolates. “Oh yum!” I said, and made a beeline for my two favorites: dark chocolate with strawberry cream and dark chocolate with lime cream. “I love dark chocolate! Don’t you guys eat it at all?” She said she’s never learned to like it and neither...

21

Nov

2017

GHOST TOWNS

Wherever we go, the older we get, the more we are living in the past. Everything around us reminds us of it, whether we realize it or not. Every house you pass, every building, every street you drive down, or road you take is a path, a place, a memory of something from your former self, your former life. And when you live somewhere for a long time, it’s even more true. Every rock, fence, tree, garden, has a history imprinted upon you. That’s the house the twins lived in, Martin’s former best friends, when he was young. And that...

09

Sep

2017

SODDEN SATURDAY SPECULATIONS

It seems as though lately it’s always about to rain, raining, or wet from having just rained. It falls in sheets, in a steady frizzling drizzle, in bursts with the leaves turned sideways and inside-out, showing off their silver undersides. The ground is dark with water, rivulets run from every rooftop edge and corner. If waterdrops were diamonds, I’d be a rich woman…they’re hanging from every leaf and faded summer bloom. And yet, it’s a gentle (if annoying) constant patter of water against our lives. Nothing like the thundering gales that are battering other parts of the world. We have...

12

Jan

2017

WHERE AND WHY AND WHO

I’ve been very much enjoying the return of several “old” friends to Livejournal lately, as I just mentioned to one of them in a comment. She talked about returning to online journaling and why, and her thoughts about Facebook prompted me to think about how I feel about social media in general and Facebook specifically. I suspect many people feel the same way as I do: Facebook is not the place to share anything substantial. It was fun and trendy and rather like walking into a party where all the people you haven’t seen in awhile were gathering, in the...

31

Dec

2016

RETROSPECTIVE

he last day of 2016, hurrah! Normally, I would be a bit sad about the end of the year, but I am really hoping that, despite the orange-frosted muffin going into office in my native country, things will get better *pastes bright smile into place* instead of getting worse. After all, things are going well for me and my family, so despite the debacle of the US election, and the loss of so many people I admired: Gene Wilder, Carrie Fisher, Alan Rickman, David Bowie, Harper Lee, Richard Adams, George Michael, Anton Yelchin, Prince,…(oof) among many many others, I am...

11

Sep

2016

WHEN IN DOUBT, POST ROSES

I’ve started to write a post twice but was stopped by a sense of futility: faced with blankness, my mind was blank, too. This is my third attempt and I figured it was easier to just start typing and see what happens. Sometimes, words flow better if you open the valve without looking at what you are doing; let them pour from between your fingers, between the keys of the keyboard, gush from the wellspring of a mind that sometimes needs to be tricked into thinking. The sun shone all weekend; the sky a flawless blue. In the early mornings...

03

Sep

2016

A MATTER OF TIME

All the spiders are coming inside, it must be fall. All the skeeter-eaters, too. And the flies come in, but they’re so slow and lethargic that it’s easy to swat them or blow them back outside. Everything looks yellow-tinged, insect-eaten, wilty. The storks are in the harvested fields, eating worms, every morning in the fog. The leaves aren’t falling yet but it feels like just a matter of time. Everything boils down to a matter of time, doesn’t it? It’s September already. Whether or not it’s officially fall, September heralds the beginning of the end of the year. Out of...

15

Jun

2016

CATLESS

We had the perfect cat. She belonged to the neighbors and they found her as a stray, took her in, fed her and cleaned her litter box, and took her to the vet when necessary, and kept her in at night, so she’d be safe. For us, she was a sometimes cat, a loaner cat, a daily visitor who brightened our days. She was curious and friendly and social. She followed behind her owner Jessika, trotting down the street, when she was taking their two dogs for a walk. She came over nearly every single day (that wasn’t snowing or...

11

Nov

2015