Tagged: thewaywewere

11
Jan
2009

A YEAR IN THE LIFE, ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF

I moved to Sweden twelve years ago today. In total I’ve lived 18 years of my life abroad, all of it in Europe. Strangely enough, however, I don’t feel European. But, nor do I feel totally American. I seem to be sitting somewhere on the great expat divide, neither fish nor fowl. Maybe that is how global citizens should feel. It would be nice, I think, to be considered a citizen of Earth, rather than having to adhere to one particular nationality or country. Twelve years! The first year was so strange, like a little mini adventure. We were newly...

15
Nov
2008

BEATEN, BUT UNBOWED

I know I’ve lamented before about the fact that my family does not play games together the way my first family did when I was growing up. I miss playing games and remember very fondly the evenings of marathon Monopoly games where we played with several versions set together (you had to exchange money at the current exchange rate when you went from the American to the German version or vice versa) and Risk challenges where my sister and I attempted world domination over each other. My parents taught us to play just about every card game under the sun,...

12
May
2008

TAKING THE PLUNGE

Hey! Who turned off the heat? The temperature plunged today, in half, and the wind is blowing cold. The pansies are happy about it, though, if no one else is, since they were beginning to wilt. I was afraid it was too good to last, and though I’m very hopeful that the last week and a half of absolutely perfect weather won’t be the last we’ll see all summer, I’ve lived in Sweden far too long to be sanguine about our chances. So, hold your thumbs that Swedish summer has not come and gone already in May! It’s exceptionally poor...

23
Jul
2007

MERRY GO ROUND

When I opened the side door and stepped out, I was surprised to see a rather large hedgehog snuffling around right there, practically under my feet. He seemed taken aback as well and waffled first one way and then the other. I didn’t want to scare him so I just chuckled a quiet hello and went for a walk in the lovely evening sunshine, made even lovelier by its contrast with the 24-hour pouring buckets of rain we had yesterday. A grasshopper string section played a buzzing, frenzied sarabande as I strode past a meadow overflowing with golden feathered tall...

26
Jun
2007

DOWN IN THE MOUTH

I’m not sure where it came from originally…some John Hughes pre-brat pack movie possibly, like Pretty in Pink, but do you know that totally teenager response to something someone says that starts like this only in a really sarcastic tone with a slight head-tilt/shake and an roll of the eyes thrown in for good measure?: Hell-o It looks pretty innocuous there in black and white type on the computer screen, doesn’t? Hello. 2 short syllables. Only in this context it’s no greeting, but a smart alecky wake-up jolt designed to denigrate the recipient’s intelligence and call their ancestry into question,...

23
May
2007

IT’S NOT HOW MUCH YOU GIVE THAT MATTERS, IT’S HOW MUCH YOU KEEP FOR YOURSELF

Call me selfish, if you will; I freely admit to it. The thought of something happening to my mother makes my blood run cold. It makes me feel like I might faint. It makes my heart miss a beat and then begin again, tha-dump. If something happened to my mother, it would mean losing a huge part of myself. I can’t imagine not having my mom to call and talk to whenever I want to, whenever I NEED to. It’s not just my mother I would lose, you see. It’s my past. My childhood. The memory of my birth, the...

24
Feb
2007

WHAT WE REMEMBER FROM CHILDHOOD WE REMEMBER FOREVER

When I was in high school, my dad made an art portfolio for me to keep all the pieces I was bringing home from my art classes. I was already planning on majoring in art when I got to college and I took a lot of art electives during my years in high school and wasted a LOT of paper. I still have several of the callligraphy pieces I did, a woodcut, an etching, copies of the pen and ink drawings I sold at the base bazaar, ink renderings of Linda K. Powell animals (which are pretty good if I...

09
Jan
2007

GEEK ALERT

Eye update: totally normal today. Stupid eyes, with the freaking me out. They’re playing meyendgames with me, I just know it. I don’t watch TV much, if ever, nowadays, but when I was a kid I did. I have very fond memories of Ultraman and H.R. Pufnstuf and The Muppet Show and The Smothers Brothers, among others. I watched Land of the Lost (ssss! sleestacks!), Lost in Space, The Electric Company and Sesame Street and Zoom, and I was totally in love with Michael Landon and Bill Bixby. And I am totally dating myself with this paragraph, aren’t I? Hrm....

21
Dec
2006

I’LL TAKE ANY RISK TO TIE BACK THE HANDS OF TIME

I got such a “good” response to the photo of me in my home-made camouflage uniform homecoming dress the other day that I just went hunting through photo albums to find a picture of the other home-made dress that I wore to Senior Prom a few years later. My mom made it, I don’t think I sewed a stitch. It had a darling little half-jacket and a gold belt. At least it started out with a gold belt, since that is what I was wearing in the pre-party photo taken at home, although it’s missing here. Unlike the homecoming dance...

18
Dec
2006

KEEPING YOU IN STITCHES

Gah. I hate sewing. It goes all the way back to when I was 13 or 14, taking home ec in junior high. Even though all my girlfriends were in the class with me, and it was only for a term (we alternated to woodshop, which was okay…I made the cutest mouse-shaped cheeseboard for my mom which she still has, and then cooking class, which I also hated, but mostly because the teacher was so awful. She stood over your freshly baked and just-removed-from-the-oven brownies and scratched her dandruffy head RIGHT OVER THEM. *shudder*) My sewing skills are only what...

May 2024
S M T W T F S
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
262728293031  

Archives