At book group the other night, we got on the subject of jokes and how they spread. Some of the joke trends that I remember most fondly from my own childhood are not a part of the Swedish culture at all, and introducing them to my children, especially to Martin who has the same sense of humor as I do and loves puns, has been fun for me. Elephant jokes and Why did the chicken cross the road jokes and the cannibal jokes we made up a few weeks ago: all very entertaining to the both of us. I get almost as much joy out of telling these jokes and watching Martin's face and hearing his reaction as he does out of hearing them for the first time. We went through knock-knock jokes awhile back and he recently told me that the kids in his class just don't get them.

Don't get them? Isn't that sad? How deprived! Especially when the latest one, which I read on a blog somewhere, made us giggle for AGES (because Martin is 11 and I, apparently, am not much older): Knock Knock! Who's there? I eat mop! (you need to say this one out loud to really appreciate it)

Anyway, I recently introduced Martin to "no arms, no legs" jokes, which elicited some major eye-rolling, and at book group the other night, I brought up the subject, asking the other women who were there if any of THEM remembered "no arms, no legs" jokes from their younger days. The response was enthusiastic on the part of several of them, and one woman and I got into a spirited discussion about the "sets" of jokes we remember floating around our friends and schoolmates. We knew all the same references: "Helen Keller jokes," I said. "A man walks into a bar" jokes, said someone else. "Dead baby jokes!" she exclaimed, "and Blonde jokes." And lightbulb (how many people, etc.) jokes! Then she got this really surprised look on her face and said, "And I was in CANADA! And you were in Alabama and Belgium and wherever else you were, and this was BEFORE THE INTERNET."

A bit of quick keyboard research gave me some interesting information. These types of joke sets are called cycles: a collection of jokes with a particular theme or setup. The basic premise of any of these kinds of jokes isn't very funny, especially if you just hear one of them, but after about 4 or 5 of them you catch yourself laughing. And when you were 11 or 12 they were hilarious (although I remember being mostly shocked by the dead baby jokes). But here in Sweden, they're even less funny: no one knows who Helen Keller is, for instance.

They must have similar trends even in Sweden, besides the horrible Bellman jokes Martin was delivering to Anders' amusement awhile back.

Got an old favorite? (Martin and) I would love to hear it!

***

Also, just noticed that last.fm has gone to subscriber only after a 30-track trial period: ARGH.

It's a bit late for me to actually be starting to write something here...usually I try to start writing, if I'm going to write at all, by 10:30 at at the latest. I write most of my journal posts late at night, though, because I'm a die-hard night owl. Even though I try to be better about going to bed at a decent hour, at least on weeknights, I fail frequently to actually get into bed before 11:30 and I fail nearly every night at putting my book down and turning out the light before midnight has come, peered at me, shaken its head, and gone on by.

I suppose if I could fall asleep while reading, it would help—at least I'd be asleep before 12 instead of just scrunching down into my pillow, on my stomach, opposite knee and arm raised. But reading in bed does nothing of the sort. It keeps me up, just one more page. Just until the end of the chapter. Just until I find out if the heroine ever makes a damn decision about who she's really in love with already.

Starting a post at 11 is dangerous...I might not actually finish until it's tomorrow, but at the same time it's motivation to write something TODAY. It's a deadline, albeit a silly one. It's not like I'll turn into a pumpkin if the clock strikes twelve while I'm finishing a sen

First things first: ( The 20-clove Garlic Chicken Recipe )

Most of the time, when we have visitors or even when we are traveling, for some reason, we find it hard to remember to take photos. All week my mom has been saying, "Where's the camera?" "We have to get the camera out!" and then we get distracted and forget again. But! Tonight, I got out the camera not realizing that actually remembering to get the camera out is the EASY part. Getting one of the sitters to stop TALKING and one to stop STICKING OUT his tongue and one to stop MAKING STUPID FACES is the hard part. In practically every photo, someone's eyes are closed or someone's got their hand across their face or someone else has their mouth open because they were TALKING. Portrait photographers don't get paid enough, is my conclusion. My mother says paybacks are hell.



The only "good" shot from the whole shoot


Lizardmom!

Cracking Me Up 'Til it Hurts: Just the last bit and then READ THE COMMENTS

Also, DON'T VOTE! (thanks to Marilyn for the link!)

The days just whiz by. Sometimes at the ends of them, I suddenly stop what I'm doing, and give a little shake of my head, blinking a bit, wondering, "What just happened? What have I been doing all day?" when the truth is life keeps motoring along whether I'm consciously partaking or not.

Living on autopilot is a bad habit.

Some things I have listed quickly so I wouldn't forget to talk about them: Dirty Jobs, election ballot, rotating CDs, spider season, weird mom.

Then I look at the list, a list of things that I kind of mentally wrote on mental post-it notes and stuck all over my brain (I typed brian again! Why do I always type brian first before I get it right?? Do you do that? Is it just me and my weird brian??) so I won't forget to write about them here, and I think, "why would anyone care about this stuff? What a weird list. Maybe what Martin says, says constantly, won't let me forget, okay, I get it already kid, is true: I'm weird.

I'll start from the end and work my way forward, how about that? Read on, my friend.

Weird moms
Martin has taken, in the past half year or so, to continually commenting on my weirdness. Mostly I think it's his way of saying I'm being silly, or that I'm embarrassing him, but the fact remains that it's become his favorite refrain in regards to me, his mother. Not only am I generally silly, and very embarrassing to have around if you are 10 years old (I sing! out loud! in public! IN FRONT OF HIS FRIENDS!), but I'm also not Swedish, and my Swedish is full of errors, which must only double the embarrassment at this stage of his pre-adolescent sensitivity, and the worst part is: I DON'T CARE ABOUT MY WEIRDNESS. I get my weirdness honestly: from my mom! (hi Mom! Don't try and deny it!) and I've always been kind of proud of it. I've always equated "weirdness" with "unconventional" and though I'm really VERY conventional in oh so many ways, there are some things about me which will always and forever remain different. Isn't that nice? I'd hate to be the same as everyone else, even though we're all essentially the same. Everyone is someone else's weirdo, after all. I can certainly be his, until he wises up at the age of 25 or so and realizes what a treasure of a mom he has, just like I did.

Spider season
Every year about this time, all the spiders in Sweden suddenly realize it's getting a bit nippy out there and they all head indoors. This would be fine, if they weren't so freaking big and LEGGY. O! those gams! *shudder* I've caught-and-released so many giant spiders in the past few weeks that I feel like I deserve my own Steve Irwin-like TV show: The Spider Hunter.

Rotating CDs
Most of the time I have mixed CDs in the car, unless I'm in the middle of a crush obsession wherein I listen to the same CD over and over and over until the rest of the family starts asking, "Can we take the other car?" But the other day, for some reason, I was remembering my old roommate, the Great LP, telling me that she was listening to my (then small at 50) CD collection one CD at a time. And I thought, hey! I have FIVE HUNDRED CDs now! (not including all the mixes) and a great many of them never get listened to at all. So now, I'm grabbing 4 at a time, at random, and listening to them in the car. I have a lot of old stuff, and a lot of 80s music, so I may get tired of this experiment quite quickly. Today it was The Cars' Greatest Hits, Da Buzz, General Public and Vanessa Carlton. Why in god's name do I have a Da Buzz album? Hrm.

Election ballot
I voted today, for the next president of the U.S. of A.! Am I first? Woo hoo! I registered online for my absentee ballot last week and I received an email yesterday with my ballot and certificate of overseas status and instructions to print out. Signed, sealed, and soon to be delivered!

Dirty Jobs
If you're a long-time reader, you might remember that I'm not a big television watcher. But I have to confess that the Discovery Channel has done the unthinkable and addicted me to a TV show for the first time since The West Wing's first season. On Friday nights we have traditionally had myskväll (family night) with a DVD film, popcorn and candy, but lately films have been pre-empted in favor of Mythbusters and Dirty Jobs. I think I have a crush on Mike Rowe. He's so earnest and funny and educational, and he also reminds me a lot of my Uncle Mike, whom I adore but so rarely see. And now Dirty Jobs is on every weekday, so the kids and Anders (who are equally smitten) and I are all getting down and dirty every evening before bed-and-story-time with Mike.

There, look at that! It's after 11! It happened again! ZOOOM!

Bouncy Bouncy Pouncy Flouncy Birthday Wishes to Tracey and Belated ones to orangepoppy!

Anders left for Italy yesterday and while in transit on the Munich airport runway, one of the wheels of his plane starting SHOOTING FLAMES out that actually began LICKING UP THE SIDE OF THE AIRCRAFT.

*commence minor it-was-over-before-i-heard-about-it freakout*

Coming as this did so soon after the airline tragedy in Madrid, I was more than a little concerned when he called to tell me he wasn't yet at his destination and was, in fact, waiting in Munich airport for more news on what to do next, considering he had left the plane without any of his possessions except his mobile phone, and that the only thing he did know was that they might be able to fix the problem and put him BACK ON THE SAME PLANE.

Um.

Would YOU get on a plane that had, only a short time before, been ON FIRE? Me neither. Nosirree bob, not me. Anyway, when he called me this morning (from Italy!) to tell me he had arrived (at 1:30 a.m.!) and was fine, they had, in the end, put the passengers on a DIFFERENT plane. Which, hello, why would there even be a debate about this? Why was it even in question? Plane on fire = Time for new plane.

It figures that every time Anders has a business trip, we have a crazy busy week that I have to deal with singlehandedly. I do this with efficiency but very poor mental grace, bitching and moaning up a storm inside my head because I am so very put-upon and have to do everything my own damn self. Then I get a reality check and a chill pill, respectively and manage, because hello, my children are not infants and they actually dress themselves and eat their own breakfast and come home by themselves and even, sometimes, do their homework without being reminded more than twice.

Anyway, because it's the start of the school year and the start of every extracurricular activity known to man, we have the following on the schedule for this week:

Monday: First meeting of Chess Club (Martin), return recyclables, post office stop & grocery-shopping (me & Karin)
Tuesday: First AWC meeting (me, plus I'm dragging the kids along only they get sushi first, to minimize the impatient demands of "when are we leaving, mooooommmm?)
Wednesday: First choir practice (me...might skip this one, though)
Thursday: Bookworms (me, plus I'm dragging the kids along since it's at my friend Debbie's house and the kids can hang out with hers)
Friday: Wonders dinner here at my house because even though it was not my turn to host, Emily was having trouble with the logistics so she's hosting it at MY place. BONUS: not having to drag the kids anywhere) Plus, pre-packing for the overnight camping trip Anders and the kids are taking on Saturday night after Anders gets home on Saturday morning.
Saturday: Collapse, muddy & exhausted (me)

Tonight, when Karin and I arrived back at the community house to pick up Martin after running our errands, we had a few minutes to kill and were sitting in the foyer waiting for him. I was flipping through a magazine and found an article on Face Yoga which caught my eye, so I called Karin over and read the directions to her and we tried it out.

Liz: First exercise is for your eyes. Look to the left, then to the right, then diagonally up to the left, then diagonally down to the right. Repeat diagonals 4 times, then repeat, flipping the directions.

Karin & Liz: *Do the eye exercise, ending up with a few crossed-eyes*

Liz: Okay, second exercise is for your lips. Put two fingers to your mouth and then blow a kiss. Repeat 6 times.

Karin & Liz: *blow kisses at each other*

Liz: Next one is for your cheeks. It's called The Satchmo after Louis Armstrong; he was a famous trumpet player. Fill your cheeks with air and then move the air from one side to the other until you run out of air.

Karin & Liz: *Blow up our cheeks with air and then make poofy faces at each other until we crack up*

Liz: Next one is for your mental attitude. Close your eyes and visualize a spot between your eyebrows. Hold this pose for 30 to 60 minutes.

Karin: *Shuts her eyes and pokes herself in the forehead*

Liz: No, no, you're supposed to just THINK about a spot.
Karin: That's boring, what's next?
Liz: The Lion. This one is for your whole body. You tense up tightly and then throw everything out: your tongue, your arms and hands and fingers. So tense up your face muscles and your fists and scrunch everything up as tight as you can, even your butt, it says! And then...

Karin: *Squeezes everything up tight and then lets loose a tremendously loud and obviously unexpected fart*

Liz: *Gapes at her and then explodes into laughter* You were supposed to CLENCH first, THEN release!!

Karin: I DID!

Liz & Karin: *giggle madly*

I've talked about my freaky kids before. They've got quite a bag of stupid human tricks between them. Karin can splay her toes abnormally wide and pinch with them. They can both roll their tongues, and Karin can turn hers over to the left or right or from the front down under. Martin can vibrate his eyes (I used to be able to do that, too, but found it started hurting to do it as I got older). Karin recently discovered she can also do the tongue flower! I shudder to think what effect she'll have on the boys when she's college age.

Note: Even though we edited the movie to rotate it and it shows as rotated when I play it on our PC, it views sideways on Youtube. :( Sorry!

Karin's Flower Tongue

We took some videos of Martin's vibrating eyes, but unfortunately, the effect isn't nearly as cool on video as in real life...it just looks like he's moving his eyes around sort of rapidly and blinking weirdly inbetween. When you see it in real life, it's quite a different effect; like they're shaking on speed back and forth. So, we showcased his other major talent on video for you instead!

Martin's Folding Ear

What kind of stupid human tricks do YOU have up your sleeve? (hee!)

Edited to add: Anyone know how I can embed these in my LJ post?? LJ keeps adding an embed code that makes it invisible. :(

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: Olive oil!
Karin: I lo---*pause*
Liz: No? Oil of Olay?
Karin: *rolls eyes*
Liz: Hmmm...what was it again? Eulalia!
Karin: *patiently* No, mama
Liz: Oilily?
Karin: *suspiciously* Are you doing this just so you'll have something to write about on your journal?
Liz: *giggles madly*

There's no real coherency here, just observations and dribs and drabs of thought, as if my brain were a giant mixer and someone's set it on permanent pulse. It's like the damn dishwasher. Something is wrong with it and it stops in the cycle every 2 minutes and one has to come and restart it each time. After half an hour of this, it will run for awhile and then start the whole stop-and-start cycle again until the bitter end. What does it want from me? Just SOME ATTENTION??

Anders is in Italy again this week. He was there 2 weeks ago (for a week) and will be gone all this week, and then again for the first 2 weeks of April. I knew when he started this job that his travel time was going to increase; double, in fact, with all likelihood, though when it was under discussion it certainly seemed worth the price of his getting a job that he THRIVED in. But single-parenting is sure no fun and I miss him when he's gone even though he returns bearing Italian sausage (haaa! get your minds out of the gutter) and pasta and other goodies.

It's funny how my brain is running on ahead of itself, thinking of things that need to be done in preparation for my trip to the US that is still WEEKS away. I think: I have to make lists! I have to go through my cabinets and see what I need to pick up at Target. I have to think of hostess gifts and of buying enough chocolate to satisfy the entire office when I show up for work the first day, totally jet-lagged. It would be fun to work in America again, I think. Sometimes. Though the pace of working life there would probably kill me now. I know how good I've got it here in Sweden, but sometimes I think it would be great to move back and work there again.

My brain says I need to make a list of the children's books so that I don't buy duplicates when I'm there. It says I need to print out copies of my book lists and music I want and toiletries and cosmetics and clothing my family needs. My brain says it's heard that iPods are cheaper in the States. My brain says I need to think about Christmas gifts, for crying out loud. Geez! Shut up, brain! Do you think I'm made of money?? I won't have any money since it will probably be spent on a new DISHWASHER.

Which I have gotten up and re-started, during the writing of this post, I kid you not, no less than 42 times.

My brain says I should go lie down now. But I'm not done talking, so there.

Martin had chess club tonight in Södra Sandby, so Karin and I dropped him off and then went for a walk. We got completely lost and ended up discovering that we'd gone in a giant circle ending up coming from exactly the opposite direction we'd started out in, halfway across town. Despite the fact that S. Sandby is the next town over, where we regularly grocery shop and where our bank is, and where the kids had swimming classes, and where we take the recycleables, and where we will now (Hallelujah!) be able to pick up packages, I've never spent much time in it otherwise. I've certainly never really walked anywhere in it.

Karin and I passed lots of ducks and a very burbly fast-moving stream. It was too big to be called a creek but wasn't really big enough to be called a river. We ended up crossing it several times in the course of our wandering circle. We saw a black cat sitting watching us from amidst a thicket and lots of people out walking their dogs. As we approached each intersection or branching, I asked her which way to go and we strode along quite happily; she was always a little way ahead of me (she "wins" that way, you see). It was fun and the best part? It was LIGHT all the way until we got back to the community center at 6:40 p.m.!

Martin is going walking with me on Wednesday evening after we drop off Karin at karate and we'll see what we can do about getting lost in Eslöv again this time. I guess single-parenting has its good sides.

*Edward Abbey

I'm getting up at that age (29, did I mention?) where I sometimes have trouble remembering things. Usually it's a name, or a title or what film someone was in. I'm not as unbeatable at Trivial Pursuit as I used to be in the good old days when my brother made me answer 3 questions instead of 1 every time I landed on brown.* I have to struggle to dredge up facts and information from the crevasses of my brain which seem to be filling up with sand and Swedish and advertisement dimensions and deadlines.

Most of the time I've found that if I just relax and go do something else, the answer will come to me. Sometimes an hour later, sometimes a day. It's certainly aggravating, but I suspect it will just get worse on the next birthday and the next and the next each time I turn 29.

Tonight was the start of our spring choir term and I ended up sitting next to my buddy brief_therapy who had to listen to me sing off-key and swear when I did it ("Liz, there's no 'shit' in the chorus") and endure my bouncing in my chair and making faces and laughing at inappropriate moments and at one point even throwing wadded up paper balls at her, just like an unruly 3rd-grader with ADHD. I should probably have stayed home, given the mood I was in, but I didn't want to miss the first practice and the new songs we were sure to be singing and sure enough, we were.

The song we started practicing tonight is titled Donna, Donna and while most of the Swedes were singing along with the first play-through, neither Geena nor I had ever heard it or heard of it. After googling it tonight, I found out that Joan Baez made it famous and Donovan Leitch sang it as well. (you can listen to the melody here if you're so inclined)

One phrase in the song —the whole day through— suddenly popped out at me and stuck in my head. I knew that phrase from some OTHER song! But what was it? *thinkthinkthink* I could NOT get it to come to the surface. I leaned over and whispered to Geena, asking if she knew. Nope. Argh, it was driving me crazy! I spent the break singing the phrase to myself over and over under my breath, trying to get it out in the light where I could see what it was, but it refused to even make eye contact. "The whole day through, the whole day through," I sang quietly to myself, while the sopranos were going over their part. But I couldn't concentrate while others were singing or when WE were.

We went through another song after the break and finally wrapped up at 9:30. I walked down the stairs singing the phrase in various melodies over and over again, still trying to catch the wiggling tail of that sneaky memory, and out the door into the cold, clear air. The sky was pure black with tiny pinpoint lightbright stars scattered across it and the moon dangling like a sharp little silver hammock over my head. I pulled my scarf up around my ears and buttoned the topmost button on my coat. Hoooooo, I breathed out smoky dragon breath into the winter air. Hoooo!

And then! I remembered! It came in a booming flash of memory! And I sang it all the way home.

( Boom Boom! )

*Arts & Literature

I wasn't planning on posting anything tonight but I seem to be on a roll, and rather than lose the impetus of destiny, I'll just charge ahead and see what comes up. Heh. I have no idea what that means. Forward, ho!

If I WAS on a roll, it would be a cinnamon one, and not the pearl-sugar-dusted dry but cinnamony Swedish kind, chastely nestled in its round of paper. Oh no, my roll would be a double-thick squishy one, packed-with-cinnamon, slathered with white oozy icing, that sinks beneath your teeth and makes them ache with the sweetness in the first bite.

Or one of the Pillsbury buttermilk dinner rolls that come out of the oven with their tops and bottoms all golden brown, just tinged with fire, and their insides softly white and ready to receive a small pat of butter that will melt and then drip slickery and salty on your fingers. O! how I miss Pillsbury products. And Sara Lee. Just the thought of the taste of a Sara Lee pound cake tosses me back into my childhood with a whoosh. And my mom's Bisquick drop biscuits, with their moisty innards steaming as you break them open.

Ode to bread, that's what's coming up, apparently.

Oh bread, why must you be so good and yet so very, very bad?

I worked in a bagel deli for 3 years in college; I could sing an ode to bagels if I pleased. The silver rolling racks with shelf after shelf of rolled dough: white for plain, yellow for egg, beige for wheat, coral for cheese and pale pale lavender for blueberry. The big bowl of the boiler, the conveyer belt for drying, seeding, salting. The huge oven with its gaping blasted mouth rimmed in black, each rolling shelf turning past, the baked bagels suddenly dumped and sliding into the bin beneath to cool.

Sing the praises of bread with me: O Panini, Focaccia, Baguette! Sing rye, sing pumpernickel! Croon cooooornbread. Serenade the sourdough. Chapati, tortilla, brioche and O! for soft german pretzels. Ba da ba da ba da...bagel!

Yum, bread.

Cake-ity Bake-ity Cupcakealiciously Delicious Birthday Wishes to blueberrymoon!