Mom and I started scouring photo albums yesterday, to collect all my old school photos, and I'm afraid the school-photo-project is going to have to wait a while...turns out of the 13 years I was in public school (K-12)...I only have FOUR of them. How did that happen? I can't even find my senior picture and I have a bleached spot in a photo album where it once resided...what the heck happened to it? Why would I have removed it and then never returned it to its spot?? Very strange.

So, now mom has to hunt them down at HER house after she returns and then MAIL them all to me, because she doesn't have a scanner OR a digital camera. Sorry to get all your (and my!) hopes up for a funny post, but hopefully the anticipation will make the wait worthwhile. Heh.

Tomorrow morning we are getting up at the crack of dawn and driving to Gothenburg for the biggest book fair in the Nordics, along with several other women from the AWC. Both of us are taking empty backpacks....and copies of my 5-page single-spaced books-to-buy list. The kids are spending the night tonight and the day tomorrow with Anders' parents because...strangely enough, they DIDN'T WANT TO GO. To a book fair. Who'da thunkit?

Anders is still in Italy, but my brother and his wife are there visiting him, so they'll be hiking or biking all weekend, so he won't be missing us too much, I suspect. :)

Then, Sunday, we are going to the pumpkin patch to get our Halloween pumpkins. I have not seen an actual sugar beet on the side of the road, but today there was a sugar beet TRUCK on the side of the road so that counts, and it's now officially AUTUMN. Plus, there were pumpkins in our local grocery store, so that clinches it. After the pumpkin patch we are going to a huge art & handicrafts fair with over 70 booths...busy! busy! O! the busy!

What are you doing this weekend? Are you doing the busy, too?

Beautiful Bibliophiliac Belated Birthday Wishes to sealwhiskers!

How do you manage anticipation and scheduling when every day has something in it (apart from the usual weekday getting-up-and-going-to-work-thing) and every weekend for the foreseeable future is booked?

Especially when it's not just yourself that you have to keep track of things for, but your entire family? Things that have to be remembered in our household any given week include the following:

Monday
Gym bag for Martin, Chess club for Martin, remind kids to do their homework (evening)

Tuesday
Gym bag for Martin & Karin, remind kids to take their homework (morning) and do their homework (evening), Piano lessons for Martin, Karate lessons for Karin, possible AWC activity for Liz

Wednesday
Minigang Music/Play group for Karin, Badminton for Martin & Karin, remind kids to take their homework (morning) and do their homework (evening), Choir practice for Liz

Thursday
Gym bag for Martin & Karin, Hemspråk for Martin & Karin, remind kids to take their homework (morning) and do their homework (evening), Karate lessons for Karin, probable AWC activity for Liz

Friday
Swim lessons for Karin

Saturday
Hockey practice for Anders

Sunday
(every other) Scouts for Anders, Martin & Karin

We are still trying to get and keep all of this straight, and even though I am generally VERY organized and very good about remembering things and reminders, this level of activity has even me dropping the ball. If I'm not forgetting to remind the kids to pack their gym bags, I'm forgetting to make sure Martin has the house key. Neither kid seems to have a clue when it comes to remembering their own responsibilities yet and I'm getting a little frustrated at being the primary responsible rememberer for all of this stuff.

If you have kids, how did you train them to remember their own responsibilities? I'm not talking so much about remembering to drive Karin to karate or Martin to chess, but the stuff that is in the afternoon, after school, when I'm not even home to keep track of the time...how do I teach them to keep their own schedule and deadlines in mind? Reminders in the morning are long gone from their heads by the time school is over and they are home playing computer games and unwinding.

I can feel the Barky turning gray just thinking about it all.

Edited to add: Since I've gotten a couple of comments suggesting it, I guess I should have made it clear that we already DO have a monthly family calendar showing what activities/events are scheduled for each day; which is kept updated, hung in a convenient right-before-we-go-out-the-door spot. Even so.

Oh my god, did you see what month it is?? It's SEPTEMBER. September already! How did that happen? Where does the time GO??

Does jetlag get worse as you get older? Or is it just my crazy life that has eaten away the foundation of my stability and left me unable to balance evenly? Nearly a week since my return and I'm still waking up at 4 a.m. every morning...of course that could be the fault of the BRIGHT SUNLIGHT streaming in at an ungodly hour and the fact that still, after nearly 6 years in this house, the windows in our bedroom remain shade- and blind-less.

Wednesday was choir (first practice in 4 weeks—croak!) and yesterday my husband celebrated a birthday. It's been gorgeous all week, with beautiful sunshine and lovely temps and we've suddenly slid into full-blown summer. The lilacs are popping out all over and the pansies in the pots are running riot, literally, all over the yard.

Tomorrow a niece gets confirmed in the Swedish church and Karin has her first karate competition, and Sunday is Mother's Day, though not here in Sweden...however, the kids are "taking me out" to lunch anyway.

I keep thinking, as I go through my day, O! I have to remember this! I have to write about this! I have to ...what was it I was going to write about again?

Bedtime Routine
Liz: Good night!
Karin: Good night!
Liz: Sleep tight!
Karin: Sleep tight!
Liz: See you in the morning!
Karin: See you in the morning!
Liz: ...what was the last one? I can't remember. Hmmm...oh yes! I like you!
Karin: *rolls eyes* No, mama.
Liz: You're OK! ...no, that's not right.
Karin: NO mama.
Liz: *brightly* I guess you'll do! *inquiring look*
Karin: *patiently* NO mama.
Liz: Hrmmm...what was it again? oh I know! *nods* You're a good kid, I think I'll keep you!
Karin: *laughs and makes big bug eyes at me*
Liz: I love you! *smiles*
Karin: I love you!
Liz: *leans over for a kiss, bumps lip into Karin's tooth* EW! I just kissed your TOOTH!!
Liz & Karin: *giggle madly*

Biggest Bestest Birthday Wishes EVER to my Swedie Anders! (though posted 1 day late)

If the sky this afternoon had had flecks of pyrite or been interspersed with dark, spidery limonite veining, I could have properly termed it turquoise. Either way, it was BLUE. Blue to the max. It was an awfully nice feeling to look up into that endless blue sea above me when I left work; not a cloud nor a contrail in sight, after the unpromising morning of pouring rain that the day began with.

Things are motoring along here. The week zips by, consumed by work, by sleep, by getting dinner on the table. By running errands and driving to activities and filling the dishwasher. The week is nearly over and sometimes it seems that at the end of it I have nothing to show that I didn't have at the beginning. They all begin to fade into each other, with nothing much sticking out to catch the edges of memory on. No wonder it so often seems like time is flying by when each week is like the one before, with only minor changes to detail.

I think of things to write about and they blow to wispy fragments around my head. Like smoke, they curl and wind upwards. I listen to my children and laugh at the things they say but memory lapes and betrays; when I want it, it's smeared to illegibility by synapses that spark and part.

Sometimes it seems as if anticipating things too far in advance also helps to make time disappear in large chunks. When it is early March and you are looking forward to that trip home at the end of April, when it finally arrives, what will you remember about the month and a half that just passed? Nothing! Because you missed it. You were busy looking FORWARD and not looking NOW. Not that I think it's a bad thing to look forward to things, just that I think it's awfully easy to lose sight of living in the present. Anticipation is like a drug. We get hooked on the excitement of it and then we're always looking forward to our next hit. Probably explains post-project let-down and the feeling of restlessness that so often hits after vacation or a visit we've been awaiting for so long.

All year long, I am on tenterhooks for spring to arrive. Even though we've been scraping windows in the early mornings and shivering in the sudden dive the temperature has taken, there are signs of its gradual and nonchalant arrival. The light tilts daily toward full and I am longing for lilacs and looking forward to short sleeves. Other things I am looking forward to: dinner with the Wonders tomorrow night, sleeping in on Saturday, watching Ratatouille, cat-sitting for brief_therapy. And you? What have you set your sights on?

Edited to add: It's official. Brain gone. Asked pretty much same questions last week, which just PROVES MY POINT.

I just don't know what to say. All my words seem to have deserted me lately and I've been completely subsumed by work work work work work.

However, today I saw the faintest sheen of green on the trees across the pasture behind us and at the schoolyard on Friday afternoon there were also tiny peridot leaves on the bushes. I've seen little slips of crocus: bright yellow, royal purple, and the wavy zigzags of daffodils planted by the city of Malmö are green shoots about 4 inches high.

The entire winter, while all the rest of my family and friends have been buried under a white blizzard blanket, we've had exactly 4 hours of snow one evening and lots and lots of galeforce winds.

I keep thinking about work, even when I'm not there. This past week was crazy with commitments every evening, and yesterday after I got home I think I turned temporarily into a vegetable. Something leafy and green and very, very sedentary. Then today I ruined it by making the kids go through every toybox and sort and purge and organize. Now there are 9 bags of toys in the hallway to go to the daycare. Along with the 10 bags of books under the front hall table and in our closet, and the 5 bags of recycleables that need to be packed up and carted from the laundry room, this place is looking like baglady paradise.

Tomorrow we are going to Denmark, to the Experimentarium Children's Hands-on Museum outside of Copenhagen. I love those kinds of museum and am still upset that the best one ever, the one that introduced me to this type of museum, the Evoluon in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, closed many years ago. Museums that let you put rubber balls in liquid nitrogen to see what happens when you try to bounce them afterwards, and that let you pull a giant ring of soap bubble up around yourself or that show you that a spinning wheel of rainbow colors turns to white are the best kinds of places to spend a Sunday.

I just wish I didn't feel so out of it.

It's a crazy week ahead so I'm pretty glad that today was pretty relaxed. I did some stuff around the house and ran a couple of errands but nothing much, mostly I was reading and recording music and playing computer games. I have something every evening in the week coming up until Friday night: taking Karin to karate tomorrow and walking, AWC meeting on Tuesday, choir on Wednesday and book group on Thursday.

We're done with the Lord of the Rings. We finished the last hour and a half on Friday night; I let the kids stay up ungodly late to finish watching the whole thing and also so that they could be awake when Anders arrived from the airport after being gone all week. :) Karin was wiping away tears at the ending when Frodo is saying goodbye to his friends before he sails for the Grey Havens with Gandalf and the elves. "So, it's NOT a happy ending after all?!" she said in tones of the utmost betrayal. Next up: Alice in Wonderland, Edward Scissorhands and Stardust.

You know what the best thing about the upcoming week is? It's not the fact that I'll have a massage on Tuesday or sushi for dinner or that I get to see friends and talk about books or even that I get to sing some spring songs...it's the fact that February ENDS THIS WEEK. I was beginning to think it would never happen.

What about you? What are you looking forward to?

Time stretches and compresses and suddenly days have gone by without warning; this is how the year flies, how they all fly, until suddenly you're aged and wondering where your youth and resiliance went.

The house is full of Christmas glitter if not yet Christmas cheer: the windows are full of advent candelabra and golden Christmas stars, we've put up the snowman card holder made from felt by my great-aunt, the garlands of red and gold beading, the hand-knit personalized stockings, the cinnamon candles and santa figurines. Years worth of little tomtes made by the children are crowded into a red and white pile in the playroom windows. All that's missing is the tree and we'll be out for that next weekend. I pray it doesn't rain as tramping through the knee-high grassy swells and dips in the nursery lots is hard enough when it's dry.

The annual Christmas letter still isn't written and I've only made a stab of a start at Christmas cards. I'm not in the mood, somehow, for them this year. Maybe because they seem to be an obsolete and fading relic. Though it's the one time of year when people actually DO send snail mail, it's starting to feel like an archaic tradition; and like the phone books, another huge waste of paper. Much as I have always loved Christmas cards, both giving and receiving, it feels more and more like a practice that is on the way out.

Karin and I were out yesterday and bought Martin's birthday present, as well as a present for a birthday party she's attending next weekend and a few stocking stuffers. I'm not done with my shopping, though I'm a good bit along the way. It's mostly the little things left now and one or two more people still on the list.

This week is full up—book group tomorrow evening, picking up Lizardmom from the airport on Tuesday morning, doctor's appointment Wednesday morning and choir practice that same night. Then our work Christmas party on Thursday and Martin's birthday on Friday. To round it off I'll be singing in 2 concerts on Sunday, both at elderly care homes in Malmö. Though our choir is much diminished, we're still determined to get out there and do our annual rounds. The following week is busy, too, but then it starts to taper off until the holidays actually hit. I'm taking Fridays off all month (and all of Christmas week), which feels good. I think I really need the break.

It's beginning...only beginning, but that is fine with me, to look a lot like Christmas.

Whitely Whirling Snowy Swirling Belated Birthday Wishes to georgiamars!

My list is so long it makes my head whirl.