Tagged: thisisjusttosay

21
May
2020

SQUEEZY

You’d think with all this extra time on my hands that I’d write more. Our vegetable garden is sprouting! The potatoes are shooting up and the snap peas have made an appearance. The two artichoke plants are hanging in there but I am not sure if they are thriving. We’ve had unseasonably cold weather all week and lots of drizzly mist-rain but it cleared up yesterday and got nice and today is summer-hot. It’s not even noon and the thermometer says 18.6 C. I’m planning to get the kohlrabi, carrots and tomatoes into the ground/pots by tomorrow. Today is a...

10
May
2020

FALLING DOWN IN SPRING WHEN EVERYTHING ELSE IS RISING UP

It’s Mother’s day in America, but not here. Though Karin did remember and said happy mother’s day to me this morning, which was nice. She also weeded the front garden beds and went with me to the garden nursery where a ridiculous amount of people were unclear on the concept of social distancing. We bought some pretty-leafed plants to add/replace ones in the front. One had been smothered by grass and then eaten by dandelions and the others were to fill the spaces between hostas which are taking a long time to fill the spaces themselves. Anders has been outside...

03
May
2020

OH HAI

Someone is reading this blog and gently reminded me of that fact, letting me know that she checks in daily and to my horror but no real surprise I see that I haven’t posted anything since the middle of April. And now it’s the beginning of May. My will to write has been sapped by reality: I’m not really DOING anything other than working and laying around the house and cleaning and laundry and reading, and apparently I am no Emily Dickinson. I’m not even watching anything right now, as I finished the series I was watching and have yet...

12
Apr
2020

LONG WEEKEND UPDATE

It’s an extra-long weekend thanks to Easter holidays here in Sweden. We had a half-day on Thursday and Friday off, plus tomorrow. It’s been sunny and warm and very Springy. Anders and I went to the nursery yesterday and bought a lilac tree to replace the dead bush in the front yard next to Clifford the big, red rock, and he planted it yesterday. Now he’s finishing up the rock border at the front of the house. I’ve washed all the outside windows and done laundry and, I think, my US taxes. (I think, because the forms are all new...

04
Apr
2020

A LITTLE BIT OF ORK

I haven’t written a thing, though I think about writing. Everything I could possibly write about seems trite in the face of what the world is facing. Any problem I might have is so overwhelmingly first-world that it would be embarrassing to write about it and to be honest, I don’t have any problems like that. I’m fine. We’re fine. Everyone I know is fine, so far. We’ve been on a rotating work-from-home schedule for 2.5 weeks and I’m officially halfway through Gilmore Girls and have no idea what I’ll watch after that. Westworld season 3? Except how can I...

21
Mar
2020

LIFE IN THE TIME OF CORONA

I could get used to this working from home thing, even if the social distancing will prove difficult in the long run. I suspect it makes rather a huge difference that my children are grown and (pretty much) gone and it’s just the two of us rattling around in here. There are plenty of weekends that I spend, to all intents and purposes, alone, as it is. This isn’t that much different. We started a rotating work-from-home schedule on Thursday, splitting our entire department into two groups and each of our teams into two as well. The idea is that...

29
Feb
2020

THERE SHE GOES, THERE SHE GOES AGAIN

I don’t know why I was just thinking about it, but one thing that I regret is that there are no home movies of my childhood. We never had a video camera, and Anders and I never got one either, when our kids were small, so I regret that, too. Even though we eventually had iphones, it wasn’t until the kids were nearly teenagers. We have a VHS of our wedding somewhere, and a film clip some friends took at an AWC fourth of July BBQ when Karin was quite young, but that’s pretty much it. So, February flew by....

22
Nov
2019

THE OPPOSITE OF NANOWRIMO

There’s no shortage of days in November, no lack of days that I could have been writing, but didn’t. November days all seem to blur together in one gray, cloud-covered, drizzly blur. Today was no exception. A few weeks ago, we had so much work we were drowning in it (not waving, but drowning), and I sent out an email to all the marketing people both in Corporate and out in the regions to give them a heads-up that we were really slammed and could they please 1) give us more than 1-2 days deadline on their requests and 2)...

28
Sep
2019

SPEAKING OF WHICH

Years ago, a friend who was a teacher asked me to speak to her English students about my thoughts and opinions of living in Sweden. I don’t remember much about it, except that I stood in front of a class of high school kids and told them what my experiences were and answered their questions. My kids were small then, and I had only been in Sweden for a handful of years or so. Now, I’ve lived here for nearly 23 years. My kids are, to all intents and purposes, grown and heading out on their own adult journeys. They...

22
Sep
2019

LONG WEEKEND, SHORT THOUGHTS

I had a nice long weekend, with Friday off, and not a lot of plans, though I seem to have done things…apart from just cleaning house and laundry. I also noted yesterday that my shoulders didn’t hurt like they typically do after a regular work day, so that was good. I still DID work, though most of what I did this weekend was for the AWC and not my day job, as we have our annual business meeting and board elections coming up on Tuesday. My life seems to be a lot of lather-rinse-repeat these days. One year blending into...

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