Tagged: wonderfulworld

28
Oct
2013

BLUSTERY

The 10-minute drive home from work was exciting to say the least since we are in the middle of a class-3 storm and it was already in full gale-force mode as I left the building. All day the rain beat down and the clouds powered along and the sun came out at intervals for as if for half-hearted reassurance. There have been a few “tornado-level” storms in the nearly 17 years I’ve lived here. One ripped the corrugated plastic roof off the porch of our old house. One knocked down a zillion trees on the hill up to Dalby, and...

24
Oct
2013

ALL DISTRACTIONS WELCOME

I’m all aggravated this week, my shoulders up around my ears and shooting pain down the muscles of my neck. Work is making me crazy or rather certain someones with no real way to resolve the issue. Thankfully tomorrow is Friday and while I’m not exactly GLAD that my family is going away for 3 days without me, I can’t deny the idea of 2 days of absolute peace-and-quiet slugville are quite appealing at the moment. QUITE. Have fun, y’all! Don’t let the door hit you on the way out! I read a sad book and it made me cry....

12
Oct
2013

AUTUMNAL

Darn it, I swear I’m going to write more, be present, and then time gets away from me and I realize I AM being present, just not here. All year long, people here in southern Sweden have been exclaiming in wonder about the weather. The sunshine, the blue skies, the perfect temperatures. It was a perfect spring, a fantastic summer and now a stunningly gorgeous fall. The leaves on the trees outshine the sun in a revolving spectrum of all the best colors nature’s got on offer. It’s hard to keep your eyes on the road when you’re driving, as...

25
Sep
2013

COLLECTIVISM

Yesterday, as we sat at the kitchen table eating dinner, we counted NINE magpies hopping about in the street in front of our house. That’s surely enough for a tiding. Or even a charm, which is one of the alternative collective nouns for magpies according to a couple of different websites I checked. A charm of magpies seems more fitting to me, since I think they are such charming birds. They’re so flashy and curious and bold. And big! Striking black and white with a brilliant flash of peacock blue that shines out when they spread their wings. They seemed...

13
Sep
2013

END OF A LONG WEEK

Tonight feels like a harbinger, of sorts. It’s not the first time that Karin has been away overnight, but Martin is out, too. He doesn’t go out often or socialize nearly as much as his sister, mostly because the majority of his friends live much farther away. She can bike to the next village or get one of us to drive her over since we’re in that town nearly every day for something: groceries, gas, soccer practice pick-up and drop-off, etc. But tonight they’re both gone, and while it’s not the first time that Karin has been away overnight or...

25
Jul
2013

AT THE TOP OF SUMMER

The lawn is crispy crunchy underfoot, every grass blade seared and sun-brittle. No one here wastes water on lawns so the whole neighborhood has a sere look to it. In the fields around our village, wheat and oats and grasses are tawny beige as well; harvest-time is nearly here. The only thing still blooming outside of pots around our house are the roses which are still going strong. The pots add dashes of color: pelargoniums, flowering succulents, begonias and some sad blasted pansies that weren’t quite done when I was repotting summer flowers some time ago. Tomorrow is 7 weeks...

16
May
2013

BLOGILICIOUS

OMG, how good do these peanut butter brownies look? NOMNOMCITY! I had to confess to The Things I Don’t Drink again today, this time to 3 colleagues during a training course I was at. They all boggled at me. I couldn’t decide which one each of them was boggling at me most for which beverage…as they seemed to be equally divided, all three. Yeah, I don’t drink coffee. I don’t drink tea. And I don’t drink alcohol. “For health reasons?” …no. I just don’t like the smell. Or the taste. Here in Sweden, most Swedes can’t decide which is worse:...

12
May
2013

BABY, IT’S NICE OUTSIDE

It’s true I love my job. I’m good at what I do and I like doing it, and every workday when the alarm goes off, I hop right up (albeit a bit more slowly than in younger years) ready to start the day…but after a long weekend like this? Retirement sounds pretty good. It’s nice to relax, spend the day doing the things I feel like doing, getting things done at my own pace, having time to set chores and projects down and just read for a while. Time to sleep in, go to bed late, plan excursions and enjoy...

16
Jan
2013

SUBZURRRRO

The trees have got their bling on again. Snow-sparkle ephemeral diamond gorgeousness. Yesterday, when I drove home the fog was so dense it was BLACK. Have you ever driven through black fog? It was creepy as all get-out. It was only when other car’s lights hit it that I could see the whiteness. It’s been FURRRREEZING this whole week, in the minus teens celsius. Then I drove Karin to soccer practice…outdoors. -11 degrees celsius, fog so thick they couldn’t see halfway across the field and still, an hour and a half practice on snow-covered (unswept) artificial grass. CURRRRAZY. I’m adding...

19
Oct
2012

AUTUMN BEAUTY & A BOOK DILEMMA

Most years, autumn here in southern Sweden is an afterthought. A quick flash through gold to brown and ashes! ashes! all fall down! Autumn is usually rainy, sodden, darkening and the leaves don’t stand a chance: they fall with the rain to lie in decaying circles beneath suddenly bare branches. This year, O! we’ve been blessed by cold, clear days and a long stretch of solid blue sky and flame-tipped, flame-topped foliage. The birches are golden, the maples are red, and everything else is in between: orange, pumpkin, crimson, amber, saffron, carrot, coral, terracotta, rust, umber, copper, bronze. Most of...

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