Suddenly, it's summer. Nearly a week of it so far and no end in sight that I've heard...and don't tell me if so; I'm loving this seemingly endless sunshine. Suddenly, the grass is long and rippling along the roadsides, the white flat wheels of Queen's Anne Lace have bloomed and every other bush and tree sports lilacs in every shade of ecstasy: white, lavender, pink, purple. The chestnut candles are glowing, white and pearly pink. The starry lupine leaves have sprouted and the flowering stalks are rising and calling: summer, summer, summer!

If I could slow it down, I would. The seasons turn so slowly on the other side of the year; and spring takes forever. Now the rush has begun and we must savor every second. We must see the world with wondering eyes. Stare at the sky and imprint that particular shade of sun-drenched blue upon the backs of our eyelids. There's nothing like it: the slide into summer is worth every minute.

Martin and I are sorting Lego. The kids have 3 huge plastic bins FULL of the stuff. For years, it was the go-to gift for both of them: Bionicles for Karin and basic building blocks for Martin. Karin never really played with it, however, and she must have bought or received nearly 30 Bionicles during her childhood. I don't even know if they MAKE the things anymore (just checked: they stopped in 2010). According to my nephew, Lego Ninjago is the rage now. Bionicles are so ...2010. Since neither kids is interested in actually doing anything with the million little plastic bricks we own, I hit on a plan. Even though I recycled every bit of packaging over the years, we DID keep all the instruction booklets.

We're starting by sorting by color (2 bins down, 1 to go), and then we'll put all the Bionicles and other sets together that we have instructions for. Then we'll bag them, and then...hopefully...we'll sell them.

We have 2 large paper bags more than half full with only black and white pieces and bowls of various sizes completely covering the dining room table with all the other colors. The Bionicles were produced with their own colors so there are several bowls of color pieces that are ONLY for them. All in all, we have 43 bowls or piles of DIFFERENT colors. Plus mini-figures and a huge pile of wheels. And a stack of super-size flat pieces for building on.

We have EVERYTHING. We have windows and doors and roof ridges and trees and wheels and an ELEPHANT. We have people and all the billion tiny things they can hold in their little Lego hands and a DINOSAUR...and an ALLIGATOR. We have transparent pieces and neon pieces and glow-in-the-dark pieces and shiny silver pieces. It's like Legopalooza around here!

God knows how long this will take me us. Martin is helping me sort. And Karin has promised to help put Bionicles together. Maybe by the time we're done and they're all bagged and ready to sell, they'll actually be worth something.

The last time I had a 4-day weekend I was super-productive. This time, I've been a total slug. A super slug! I HAVE done laundry, because you pretty much can't NOT do laundry when you're a family of four, but otherwise? I've read and read and read and slept in and watched all of season 3 of The Big Bang Theory and gone for walks and sat on the porch and sat on the trampoline and done nothing much of note. Sometimes the slug just beats the bee.

It seems to be harder and harder to find things to write about here, right now. I don't seem to have any motivation to sit at the computer and update my status anywhere or write about anything. The sky is a bright blue with soft feathery clouds crossing it, and the birch leaves are shimmering like silver in the breeze. Butterflies are busy as are the big bumblebees but not me. I could be cleaning the bathroom. I could be going grocery shopping. I could be vacuuming the house and I may yet. But for now, I think I shall take my book and a tall glass of ice water and dangle my bare toes off the end of the lounge chair on the porch before I go for a walk in an hour or so.

There's nothing better than a super-productive 4-day weekend...unless it's one like this.

To sit in the shade on a fine day, and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment. — Jane Austen

It's another short work week for us, made even shorter for me by the fact that I'm leaving tomorrow at the end of the working day for the UK, an overnight trip to visit a big security tradeshow that our company is participating with 2 huge booths at. It's the first time at this job, in over 7 years, that I've had a chance to go to one of our tradeshows and I'm thrilled that I will be able to go as a guest, so that I can see firsthand how all the materials that I/we create are put to use. I fly right back in the late afternoon tomorrow, so there won't be any time for sightseeing or even shopping (no all-English bookstores, boo hoo), but it's exciting to be traveling, even for just one day!

It's been a lovely sunny weekend and today Martin and I went for a walk in the sunshine. When we weren't in shadow, which was most of the itme, it was so warm that I ended up taking my light jacket off and tying it around my waist. Martin and Karin have both been taking and uploading photos to Instagram, so we kept having to stop so Martin could take shots of cherry tree blossom clouds, lily of the valley, a tiny-leaved vine-caulked stone wall, a spirea tsunami, a blood-red beech from below. Everywhere we looked, there were beautiful things to take pictures of.

I was entranced with the dandelions. I don't care if they're a weed. Their ubiquitious cheerfulness always makes me smile; tiny suns polka-dotting the whole world. They look so bright and so yellow, until you catch a glimpse of a rapeseed field beyond them, and suddenly you know what YELLOW really is.

Wednesday is a half-day and we have Thursday and Friday off, so apart from the day in the UK, I'll only be working a day and a half this week. On Wednesday, most of the Wonders are coming over for dinner. It was the only date we could find for all of us some months ago, but now Emily won't be able to join us as she'll be with her family in Berlin. I'm hoping we can all get together again in the early summer, since it's been AGES since we last met. I'm dithering over the menu and am not sure what I want to serve. I can't decide between oven-baked salmon with artichoke bottoms & asparagus tips in a lemon sauce with rice, OR lemon-pepper crusted pork filets with au gratin potatoes and blanched asparagus.

I had already decided on the dessert: a meringue cake with whipped cream & chopped Daim filling and fresh strawberries on top, but then today Anders made strawberry ice cream in his new ice cream machine and it was so good I'm considering asking him to make something for us...I've already put in future orders for peach amaretto and chocolate caramel. NOM!

*Title from a quote describing dandelions by Henry Ward Beecher

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY to all my favorite moms out there, but most especially to MINE!

Yellow Sunshiney Birthday Wishes to redpirk!

I wonder if anyone has ever counted how many greens there are in spring? 20? a hundred? MILLIONS? Every tree that CAN flower, is. Fields of grass are blowing in the wind, like wavy green oceans. Even the grasses alongside the roads are long enough to dance in the breeze. Anders ripped up and re-did the "vegetable garden" which, most years, grows an untidy tangle of weeds for us, and re-planted 2 of the raspberry bushes, 2 wild strawberries and EIGHTEEN baby strawberry plants from our neighbor. If they all fruit and the cherry tree does well, I will be BERRY happy.

Every morning when the alarm wakes up, I get right up out of bed. I don't mind going to work, even though it's crazy and stressful these days but I sometimes wonder if there is ever enough sleep. Martin was told that 10 hours was what people need to function well. I usually get 7...unless the book I'm reading is really good, in which case I get ...less. Last night I went to bed at 10, read for half an hour, put my book down and fell asleep so hard that I never had a chance to put my biteguard in.

Usually I hold it in one hand while I'm falling asleep and then pop it in just before I think I really will nod off. Inevitably, the moment I do, I fall asleep. It's like a Pavlovian biteguard. Sometimes I wake up with it still in my hand. Sometimes I think I've dropped it and I swipe my hands around under the pillows or under myself until I find it. And sometimes when I think I've dropped it, I realize a few moments later while swiping more and more frantically that it's already in my mouth. I find it amazing that I can deal with a biteguard considering how easily I gag. I hate that about myself.

I don't know what the lifespan of a biteguard is. I hope mine lasts forever because I never want to go through getting another one made again.

I have no idea why I am talking about my stupid biteguard. I didn't come here to write about that, but god knows I have little idea of what to write about at all these days.

Maurice Sendak died today. It made me sad, because he was ONLY 83. Have you noticed how pretty much EVERYONE is too young when they die? I've loved his books and artwork since I was a kid. Chuck wrote a post today about 5 people he wished weren't in heaven yet. He mentioned that he might be able to make it a meme and a meme takes other people to get it going, so!

5 famous people I wish weren't in heaven yet (I only selected people that have passed away in my lifetime)


Maurice Sendak


Diana Wynne Jones


Madeleine L'Engle


Sergei Grinkov


Dorothy Dunnett

I could go on for days with this list, I suspect. What about you?

Really Funny Writing Out There Right Now, Also I'm Craving Pretzels, Dammit: 7 Badass Bavarian Foods You Must Try

Bonny Budding Belated Birthday Wishes to same_sky, thinkum, big_bubba and Sheryl!

It's Anders' birthday today. As far as I can tell, he really liked his presents, which makes me glad because I worked really hard to get good ones that he would be happy about. I'm the luckiest woman in the world to have this man in my life. I hope you know that, honey. And I hope you had a good day, despite having to work :) XOXO

It's the first of May! Here in Europe and in a large part of the world, that means Labor Day. However, since it's a day off, and yesterday, being a "pinch day" was also a day off, in fact for us it was a NON-labor day. It's been a nice long weekend, with lots of sunshine and walking the loaner-dog.

I had a to-do list of about 20 things that I divided up over the 4 days, which meant nothing was stressful and it included things that I've been meaning to do for ages, like iron those 3 tablecloths from that dinner party LAST YEAR and go through Martin's clothes (6 additional bags donated to charity), as well as house-cleaning and a few other essentials like Swedish taxes which are due tomorrow. I'm actually getting a tax refund this year, and so is Anders...first time I think we've BOTH gotten one. Usually we cancel each other out.

All the things on the list are now crossed off, and along with the other things I accomplished which weren't even ON the list, I'm feeling pretty productive. The house is clean, birthday presents have been dealt with, taxes for 2 countries are done, all the bags of clothes under the front hall table are gone except one, and there are only 3 days ahead until the next weekend: Woot!

Anders still has bags to deal with though...he and a friend rented a moss-ripper yesterday and spent the entire day trundling it back and forth, first over our giant yard and then home to Hans, to do his. Our lawn looked something had been chewing on it. Anders is still raking it up, and he's already filled 20+ bags.

Addictive Apps I Can't Stop Playing: DrawSomething, Rumble, Where's My Water?

I'm so glad it's spring. It makes my heart sing to see the cherry trees blossom and the lilacs budding. I even noticed a field of rapeseed the other day, because it was starting to shine neon yellow. My mother-in-law came over on Sunday and helped me with the roses and lavender. She cut them all down and we went to the nursery and bought a new rosebush (Flyinge Plantshop's 2012 Rose of the Year) to replace the one that hadn't made it through from last year. I also bought a pile of pelargoniums in various striking shades of pink and a whole flat of mixed-color pansies. Even with all those potted, I still have 3 pots to fill! Now if I could just get someone to come and actually design a garden in this big old yard.

Spring feels like crazy season too, there's something on the calendar every day, every weekend...much of it soccer-related, alas. Ha! Who am I kidding? Our calendar is ALWAYS full.

Another long weekend; April is replete with them! I'm both glad about it, because aaaaah: long weekend! And stressed because we have so much to do at work and aaah! short week! Ah well, it's not like I'd get done with the work. It just keeps coming in, anyway.

It was raining this morning so I made a long list of household chores and things to get done and have been steadily whacking away at the list, while watching episodes of The Big Bang Theory on DVD inbetween. The sun came out a couple of hours ago, and I just went out to do some garden stuff...I've been very negligent. The roses and lavender haven't been clipped down and now they're green and bushy and I'm scared to do it myself. So I called my mother-in-law and she's going to come over and help me tomorrow if it doesn't rain again.

While I was looking at the roses, I discovered 3 EGGS, nestled in the dirt, behind one of the busy lavender plants, right next to the house. They are quite good-sized, nearly as large as a chicken's but a very pale green (if that isn't just the reflection of the lavender). They are literally a step away from the porch door. What bird would lay their eggs in such a precarious place? Even if they are sort of protected, and up in the garden bed, STILL! They are right next to the door! I wonder if they are abandoned or if the mother was just freaked because Anders was out there getting the grill ready to make dinner. First grill of the season! Yay!

You know how I decided back in March to spend a month or so re-reading old books that don't belong to a series? I've done really well, I'm glad to say. Here it is, the end of April, and since I started that plan in early March, I've read 18 books, and purged several into the media sale bag for next year. I actually didn't read the book group book for April because 1) I didn't want to interrupt my project and 2) I couldn't get ahold of the book in time. I did get it finally, AT book group, and WILL read it, but I still have a few days to round off my big re-read project. Then I want to re-read Game of Thrones since I got the latest book in the series right before I started this. Martin has been reading it VERY slowly for a couple of months and I was going to wait until he was done with it, but he's taking too long, and plus he's absorbed in a Big Fish iPad game, so he probably won't even notice if I snitch it out from under him.

We're dog-sitting tomorrow for 3 days...a Shih Tzu that belongs to a colleague. The last time we kept her (just overnight), she was still a puppy and not house-trained. I hope that has changed for the better since she's nearly a year old now. I'm sort of nervous about it; I confess to preferring big dogs. I hope hope hope the sun sticks around and we can go for walks with Lucie and enjoy the springtime that is passing by all too quickly. The bird cherry behind us turned into a popcorn tree about a week and a half ago and the blossoms are already wilting. Everywhere I go I see forsythia blazing and magnolias budding and the cherry trees are pink.

*Title from a quote by Hal Borland

What happens to a place like Venice when there is no one left but the tourists? Anders read an article about Venice recently that said people were moving out of the city in droves; that they couldn't afford the price of groceries and that there is no business left there except tourism. I wonder how many of the buildings along the canals are empty; abandoned. There are only 60,000 people residing in the city, though the total population including all 118 islands that make up Venice is 272,000. That's not very many considering the amount of tourists averages 50,000 A DAY.

Both the kids and Anders were a bit disappointed with Venice. I was the only one that had been there before, and I found myself gazing happily around because I didn't remember ANYTHING and thus it was all new to me. I knew what to expect, and because it was a cloudy cold day the crowds weren't nearly as numerous as I had anticipated, which was a plus. The Piazza San Marco had a large section blocked off; San Marco itself was half covered in scaffolding, and we hadn't really made any plans for what to see, other than my desire to go to Murano where the glass production will dominates. Even if Venice isn't really that romantic anymore, and even if it is overpriced and crowded, it's still spectacular.


Piazza San Marco and the Doge's Palace from the Giudecca Canal


Along the Giudecca Canal


Il Redentore, the Church of the Most Holy Redeemer, on the Giudecca Canal


Grand Canal with Gondolas


Snapped by Karin


Ponte del Sospiri: the Bridge of Sighs (connects the old prisons to the interrogation rooms in the Doge's Palace)


Twice now, I've been to Venice and not ridden in a gondola. That's like going to Paris and ignoring the Eiffel Tower!


Grand Canal and Ponte Rialto (originally a pontoon floating bridge; it is the oldest bridge across the canal. Rialto means "marketplace")


Karin & Martin aboard a Vaporetti to Murano

Daffodilly Crocus-silly Belated Birthday Wishes to blue_eyed_girl and Meg Fowler

I started walking again, officially yesterday, even though I walked all weekend because we were in ITALY. I mean: going for a walk. One of the really great things about Martin, who is pretty great in lots of ways, is that he always says yes if I ask him to go for a walk. And then we get to talk and laugh and have really great discussions to boot. Honestly, it's crazy that I don't do it every day; that's how rewarding it is.

In the midst of all our talk, Martin was telling me Things His Classmates Don't Know About. Apparently, a couple of weeks ago, in his art class, the teacher asked the kids if they had any questions, and some of them asked how to make GREEN. They didn't know they could mix blue and yellow together. Martin was completely boggled by this, and I don't blame him. Did they MISS ALL of lower elementary? Did they not play with fingerpaints? They're 8TH GRADERS. Crazy. And in another class, around the same time, it transpired that no one in his class knew who Jules Verne was, though they had all heard of, read or seen some of his works. Now he plays a game with his best friend in class: a yes/no question game asking him things/people/places that he knows. "Sometimes I throw him a bone," Martin told me, "and include people I'm sure he's heard of."

And this is the Information Age/Internet-Savvy generation? Hrm.

In other news, the radio silence here was because we were in Italy for 3 days. Or rather in Italy for approximately 1.5 days and traveling there and back again for the other half. Anders is working, holding a 2-week course in Modena, and we flew down to spend the weekend with him. We didn't get to Modena until dinner time on Friday, but we went downtown and walked around a little bit and ate dinner at a very fancy restaurant near the church. And on Saturday, we drove 2 hours and spent the entire day in Venice.

I spent a day in Venice when I was in high school; in the middle of a choir tour around Italy where the non-denominational church youth choir I was in sang at various military base churches and schools. We went to Pisa, Florence, Rome, Pompei, Venice, and Naples (not in that order). I was 16 or 17, and as with our last family trip to Italy in 2010 where we visited Florence & Pisa, I didn't really remember squat about Venice.

The weather all weekend was pretty bad: freezing cold, very cloudy and spitting rain most of the time. Saturday was cold and cloudy but it didn't rain on us at all, for which we were very grateful. One day in Venice is definitely not enough. We took the waterbus from the giant parking lot on the outskirts of town up the Giudecca canal (because we didn't realize it wasn't going to go up the Grand Canal, which is what we were expecting), and disembarked at San Marco Piazza. We walked around the town, admiring the architecture and the artist stalls and people-watching. We walked through the alleyways and over tiny canal bridges to the Rialto, and then found a lunch place and spent a fortune on food. We went into San Marco, and did the free 15-minute circuit of the church, but didn't pay for any of the extras like the treasures or whatnot.

There was a sign as you came into the church that said, "SILENCE. NO EXPLANATIONS INSIDE THE CHURCH" which both the kids thought was rather harsh, and they were also taken aback by the hieroglyphic admonishment against bare arms and legs inside the nave. I was, as always, completely fascinated by the unbelievable expanse of the mosaic tiled floor and ceiling. SO MUCH WORK!

We had paid for a 12-hour waterbus pass, so after leaving San Marco, we boated over to Murano, where the glass blowers have reigned for centuries. Every single shop on the island sells glassware. We paid a small fee to watch a glass-blowing demonstration, and went in a few shops, but everything was so expensive that despite my desire to acquire, we walked away with only a couple of very, very small items: tiny glass fish embedded in a blue glass marble. I would like to go back with a shopping-savvy girlfriend or my Mom and a couple of extra thousand bucks to blow. Everything was so pretty but I kept wondering how the heck I would get it home without breaking it. I already have a lot of little glass animals in my shadowboxes, but I could happily populate an entire glass menagerie if I could afford it. :)

I'm sure that if we'd had more time, we could have researched a little better and found some of the more out-of-the-way, not-quite-so-touristy areas, but...I suspect most of Venice is only geared toward tourist prices now. Still, it was really fun to see the town again. And weird to think that if you removed the power lines and electric lights and advertising (which was minimal in most places) and some of the relatively discreet trappings of the modern age, the city must look pretty much as it did in the Renaissance.

Now the kids want to go to Rome.

We have been watching Season 1 of Game of Thrones on Swedish TV, and it's on at 10 p.m. on Wednesday nights. I read all the books (except the latest, which I JUST got) ages ago, and remembered very sketchily what happens. I was all excited to watch it and I figured the kids would like it too, because well, the books were really good and they both like fantasy stories and it's quite engaging what with all the interesting characters and what not...and why in the world would they put this acclaimed series on at 10 p.m.?! Crazy. It's a school night!

The fact that it was HBO escaped me, since it's not HBO here, and the fact that it was on at 10 p.m. failed to tip me off, that the show might not be...exactly...kid-appropriate. So it was the COPIOUS amounts of doggy-style sex in the first couple of episodes that was the real clue. As my kids freaked out a bit and decided that app right there on their phone was REALLY REALLY interesting. "Don't look yet," I had to keep saying. EEK! Don't look now either! Egad. Parenting FAIL.

But once they had watched a couple of episodes they were hooked, and I couldn't very well keep them from watching the rest, and besides, they have now seen it ALL. Strangely, all the gore and violence and squirty blood from sword slashes doesn't faze them a BIT.

My brother asked for the box set of Game of Thrones for Christmas, and my sister ended up getting it for him for his birthday at the end of March because it hadn't come out yet by Christmas. He called me one Wednesday evening while he was watching his DVDs and scolded me because I had RUINED Game of Thrones for him. "There's EIGHT SOLID minutes of hot girl-on-girl action...EIGHT MINUTES...and all I can think about is that you let your kids watch this."

"What? We haven't seen anything like that! What episode are you watching?"

"I don't know...7 or 8."

"Gah. We haven't gotten that far. OK, forewarned is forearmed." *sigh*

EIGHT SOLID minutes of "Don't look yet!! Play DrawSomething! And turn the sound down. Yikes."

NOW they've really seen it all.

*sigh*

Last night, we watched Episode 8...there are only 2 left of Season one. The main character is in prison, his children are scattered and fleeing or in peril and I know what happens to them all. I couldn't remember everything so I looked them up on Wikipedia and refreshed my memory with all the tragic details. And after the show ended, I went to bed at 11 p.m. (ON A SCHOOL NIGHT, see FAIL) and then lay there and worried about the Starks for an hour and a half before I finally dropped off to sleep.

And to top it off, I woke up suddenly at 5:30 a.m. thinking that I had thrown away* the receipt for my Swedish passport that I was supposed to pick up after work today and had to force myself not to get up and root through the paper recycleables to check.

*I hadn't. Passport is now in my possession!

Bright & Bonny, But Belated Birthday Wishes to reebert, thistimearound and kissekat!