Despite the ups and downs of sorrow the sun keeps on shining and I muddle along. I dragged Martin up off the sofa and made him go for a walk with me after dinner this evening. The sun was lowering, but still high in the sky; it hasn't reached its zenith yet...we're still enjoying the lengthening days.

It's cool in the evening air, there's an autumn-y nip in the spring sunlight which is rather refreshing. I much prefer a cool, sunny spring to a direct dive into humidity and heat, so no complaints here. We pulled on fleeces and started out. Martin often requests a treasure hunt list to take along but I was feeling fresh out of ideas so I told him he'd have a different kind of hunt this time: he had to make his own list...of sorts. I jotted down a quick column: "dogs, cats, frogs, birds, butterflies, bees, others" and told him this time he had to count all the ones he found.

His enthusiasm for games is infectious: we both found ourselves stepping out with zeal and a bright glint in our eyes. I think you notice so much more of your surroundings when you deliberately set yourself a task like this. I hadn't said that the animals on the list had to be real, and Martin quickly bagged 2 dog pictures on the dog-doo collection can at the head of the walking path. As we rounded the swampy spot behind the school, the air was full of tiny bits of flying fluff: dandelion wishes floating free. I made wishes on all of them: health for my suffering friends. O! The very air is full of wishes!

The pussywillows have all exploded alongside the dandelions and the path further on was lined with white fluff. Rooks and ravens marched about the meadow, heads bent to their evening meal hunt. Across the sunny pastures, a group of animals grazed: how had I forgotten to write HORSES on the list when we live in the horse capitol of Sweden?? Martin ratcheted up a full set of marks under "others"—4 horses and a cow, 3 hares frolicking in a far-off field, a polar bear design on a camper. We met walking dogs along the way, made kissy-noises at basking cats, found FIVE frog figurines in various gardens. 2 fat and furry bumblebees buzzed down low in the front yard as we headed back toward home but the only butterfly in sight was a plastic reflector on a stick in front of a neighbor's house.

Then we came into the backyard and sat on the trampoline for awhile, just my kid and me. We talked about everything and nothing and I tickled him and he zapped me with static electricity and we discussed the pros and cons of putting the pool up this year and whether anyone would notice if we stole appropriated and relocated the lilac bushes from across the ditch and whether the kohlrabi and artichokes will ever sprout and how many marks he could have made under dogs and birds and others (horses) if the lady in the farmhouse behind us hadn't recently moved away.

It's the evening of the 3rd day of the 5th month of the year. It feels as though it was simultaneously just Christmas a moment ago and as if it is just around the corner. If the year continues at this speed, it IS just around the corner. Time boggles me, often. It's so ...heedless. It takes no heed.

Had to stop and go look up the etymology of heed. It's word that seems to get used a lot without people ever stopping, ironically, to take heed as to what it really means: it means "to pay attention, to give consideration to; to mind" but it came to Old English from the Old High German word huota which means "to guard".

We can't guard time, even if we can pay attention to it and give it consideration. It rushes on, regardless of us. We can't save it or take it or waste it or spend it: it goes of itself, it's not a currency we can bank on, despite our many human desires to force it to our service in some way. Whether we make good use of our time is one thing, but we have no control over it in the end.

I think I usually make pretty good use of my time, though it often slips past me and continues on its merry way when I'm distracted; when I'm busy (which is to say, often) and when melancholy. Reading, on the other hand, the kind of reading that absorbs you into a good story, seems to merge you INTO the flow of time. It passes but you pass with it, subconsciously aware and fully involved in its forward progress even while you detach mentally from the world time is passing through.

Mostly, I think, we are aware of time only after it has passed. It leaves us with whiplash from trying to look both backwards and forwards. What are nostalgia and anticipation, after all, but ways of trying to slow down or speed up time?

Spring and fall are the two seasons where we can mark the passing of time so much more clearly than summer and winter when the world often, for all intents and purposes, seems to be standing still. Some days, watching the slow-motion time-lapse of spring around me I can almost SEE the colors appearing and disappearing. Already the forsythia are morphing from yellow to green, just as the rapeseed spreads their neon-pulse across the fields. The crocus came up, went down, replaced by snowdrops and daffodils and wood anemone and tulips in turn; first cherry blossoms and now here come the lilacs, each giving way to the next in a slow-moving dance of color. The chestnut candles have yet to burst into pink- or white-tipped flame, but the wild white hawthorns are blooming now.

Time may give me no heed, nor you, but we at least can glory in the special effects its passing brings to beauty and rejoice that it continues. Time comes to pass. It comes to pass, not to stay.

Dear Spring in Sweden,

Whatever you're on, I want some. You're lit up like a house on fire. Oh wait, that's just the forsythia. I don't think we've ever, EVER, had this many sunny days in a row and every morning when I wake up and look out the window to see what the weather is like, my heart skips a beat and I rise, amazed, feeling light as air, that the sun is up, the sky is blue, the birds are singing and it's going to be ANOTHER beautiful day.

Yesterday, I went out and laid on the trampoline and got my hair and my clothes all full of static electricity. It was late afternoon, I don't remember exactly what time. Karin was at a friend's house, Anders was out bicycling, Martin would shortly join me in the sunshine, but for the moment I was simply lying in the light with my bare feet caressed by stray breezes. I shut my eyes and watched the back of my eyelids gyrate through lightning sparks and color spectrums that left me gasping with how VERY RED red can be.

With your eyes shut, Spring does a magical number on your ears. I could hear children playing two yards over, a metallic ding as something was bumped repeatedly by the wind into something else, crows querulously arguing, jackdaws screeching, songbirds warbling and at least 2 wood pigeons cooing in the pine trees. I heard a pheasant squawk somewhere not too far away. Once in a while leaves rustled, grass rustled, everything rustled as the breezes shuffled the air about. You could almost hear things GROWING. And then a heavy lumbering buzz—low-flying bumblebees the size of my thumb, sturdily zooming past on their way about their business.

Daffodils dot every bed and border, the magnolia trees are lifting their cream-and-pink-colored lamps. Along the pear allé, those old scraggly trees are working hard on their bright white blossoms: not quite yet, but soon! The bird cherry across the ditch is full of promise: it's going to burst at any moment. Everything, everywhere is going green, green, GREEN.

I rolled over and sat up on the trampoline, feeling the movement of the bounce beneath me. From the corner of my eye, across the pasture in the newly-turned rapeseed field, something moved. The horses are gone; our farmer neighbor has apparently moved out: the ducks & geese have disappeared and the herd of yappy dogs with them. It wasn't horse or pony, it moved too quickly and kept to the edge of the fence: deer! Little tiny deer, so small that Martin thought for a moment they were the big hares that lollop across the yard when they think no one is looking.

Really, Spring, you're out-doing yourself. Save some for summer. But bring on the lilacs!

All my love,
Lizardek

***

And some silliness

Liz: Martin! Karin! Time for Bread!
Martin & Karin: Huh?
Liz: BED! I meant BED!
Liz: *chases Martin up the ladder into his bed* Sourdough! Rye! Pumpernickel! Whole wheat!
Martin: You are so weird.
Liz: Good night! Sleep tight! See you in the morning!
Martin: Good night! Sleep tight! See you in the morning!
Liz: I love you! NO! Wait! I LOAF YOU! Get it? Loaf? hahahaaa!!
Martin: *rolls eyes*
Liz: *giggles madly*

***

Brimming Barrels of Belated Birthday Wishes to jackiejj, blue_eyed_girl and Meg!

The sun has been shining for an unprecedented number of days in a row. Yesterday the sky was solid blue all day long and today there are little white fluff-clouds floating around. The trampoline is up and the pots have been planted with multi-colored pansies. Spring is here and we want to wish YOU a very Happy Easter!

Counting down at work and getting a bit stressed out because there is always so much to do before you take vacation, and I will not, WILL NOT, work evenings if I can avoid it, even though I know I would get at least a bit more caught up. It's a river in flood, and sometimes it's all I can do just to not get swept downstream.

One of the women in our department recently left and the majority of her workload descended upon the two of us who work with the marketing implementation work...mostly datasheets for our products, and because my colleague has had a couple of high-priority full-time projects, I've been handling the extra work during the past couple of weeks. Most of it has been layout review of the work done by our freelancer, and then when I've given the approval, the job consists of receiving the source files for the document, archiving them correctly, uploading the PDF to 2 different databases and sending the link to my colleague (the same one) for the weekly internal enews.

Over the course of the past week, I think I've sent him links for approximately 15 datasheets that I've processed. He emailed me yesterday, while he was working on the enews and said, "I used to get 4-5 a week before...are you really that much faster?" And I wrote back, "Yes, to my sometime dismay. I'm faster than everyone." Heh. I wasn't bragging. I was stating a fact. I AM faster. I type fast, I talk fast, I react fast; often too fast, also to my sometime dismay. It's not always a good thing, since I know it's the manifestation of my impatience personality. It's something I actually work on: slowing down. It's really hard, I can tell you, and I have mixed results.

The sun was shining all day today in a bright blue sky and I was itching to just leave work and go out in it, but couldn't (see above: flood). It was almost a physical itch. When I came in this morning I realized I had left my office window open overnight, and I just realize, just now, that I did it again. We're on the 2nd floor at least, but I'll have to put a reminder note up or something so I don't forget again.

I couldn't wait to get home and go walking and was delighted that as soon as the kids got home from hemspråk and Karin had left for soccer practice, that Martin was willing to go with me. The signs of spring are definitely sproinging. Each day the lilac buds are slightly bigger and slightly greener. There are circled patches of bright purple, white and yellow crocus everywhere and the sharp pointy leaves of tulips thrusting a few inches into the air from the turned soil of the garden beds.

Martin told me a bad joke and I said it wasn't nearly as good as the cranberry crannibal one, and then suddenly we were in a pun war about CANNIBALS. We were snapping them out and the sunshine was beating down on our heads and we were laughing like maniacs every few minutes and groaning at each other's submissions.

The one that started it all:
What do you call a cranberry that eats other cranberries? A crannibal!

Liz:
What do you call a cob that eats other cobs? A cornibal!

Martin:
What do you call a roll of hay that eats other rolls of hay? A cannibale!

Liz:
What do you call a cannibal that takes really little bites? A can-nibble!

Martin:
What do you call a bird with long legs that eats other birds with long legs? A crane-ibal!

Liz:
What do you call a sweet thing that eats other sweet things? A candybal!

Martin:
What do you call an automobile that eats other automobiles? A car-nibal!

Liz:
What do you call a fun fair that eats other fun fairs? A CARNIVAL !

Martin & Liz: *giggle madly*

Hearing that (another) friend has been diagnosed with cancer has put quite the damper on my weekend, even though I think, given today's medical advances, that she can beat this, it's still a horrible experience for her and her family to go through. The alternative doesn't bear thinking about. I'm not thinking about what it would mean to ME to receive such a diagnosis; my mind skitters and leaps about it, looking distractedly in the other direction, pulling my sleeve and pointing, not letting me dwell on any of those grotesque and overwhelmingly awful scenarios.

***

Martin and I took the recyclables in, went grocery-shopping and then went for a walk. The sun had disappeared, unfortunately, but it was still bright out and he had a treasure hunt list in his hand to do. I was a bit too optimistic with the first item, Easter feathers, because I saw them at the store and even, nearly, bought some myself, but I guess it's still too early for anyone to be decorating even if they are selling egg-coloring kits and small fluffy chenille pipe-cleaner chicks. We saw crocus in a pastel palette of different colors, snowdrop clumps by the dozens, and gardens covered in the small yellow spring flower whose name I can never remember...yellow anemone? We saw baby pussywillows and tiny, tight lilac buds.

One of the items on his list was "3 different birds" and I thought, since Sweden is full of over-sized fowl, that he'd most likely see crows or jackdaws or magpies or rooks, and that if nothing else, there were always the ducks and geese in the farmyard behind our house, or the odd cocky pheasant walking through our backyard. But he saw a giant wood pigeon up in a tree, and then we found a blåmes (blue tit) and then a flock of talgoxe (great tit), and then a lilac hedge filled with LBJ's (little brown jobs).

We bought roast chicken and potato salad for dinner, and tonight is the final Melodifestivalen competition, and we have baked brie and crackers to enjoy with it. At the post office counter, we picked up 2 boxes that we'd received slips for yesterday and one was Karin's dragon wallpaper mural, and the other was a box from my mom: a care package of American items I'd requested, plus perfect cup-size tupperware containers for fruit and PEEPS...the yellow chick kind.

PEEPS! Now I KNOW Spring is on the way! Thanks, mom!

Reading travel books about exotic places is a stimulating torture process. Even though we have vacation plans that actually involve travel this year, they are not, sadly, to somewhere we haven't already been. After finishing the travel book that has taken me much longer to read than any book has a right to, I'm now yearning to explore European destinations I have yet to visit: Prague (yes, I know!), St. Petersburg, the Italian coast, more of Greece, Ireland, Wales, Portugal, France (when all I've seen is Paris). And that's only grazing the surface. Poland! Croatia! Budapest and Zagreb. I'm not even wandering off the continent I'm ON.

But even so, traveling BACK to a place that I've been to, a place that I have good memories of, can also be a joyous experience and a chance to not only re-live some of the experiences I treasured, but to share them now with my children: an added bonus! There's world enough, for sure, but never, never enough time.

It rained all day today, a steady wet dripping that darkened and saturated everything. I suppose we needed it, but it's been grey for so many days that yet another one with the additional wetness was kind of depressing. Around 5:30 in the evening the sun tried to poke itself out from behind the clouds for a short moment but as it was sinking below the horizon anyway, it didn't do much more than make us sigh with frustration. I'm looking forward to the time when sunlight once again saturates everything, even if does mean exclaiming in horror over how DUSTY every surface is, how smudged the windows are! Time enough for spring cleaning when spring actually arrives and kicks everything into action.

I feel a bit scattered right now; my head is overflowing. To-do lists feel like they're a mile long and a busy week lies in wait: something every night. I have to grocery shop for Friday's dinner tomorrow because there is something every other night of the week; I'm menu-planning for the Wonders who I'm hosting on Friday and am not sure my menu is just right. What do you think?

• Toasted Shrimp Sandwich Triangles with dill garnish


• Seared Salmon Filets w/Saffron, Lemon & Red Pepper seasoning


• Vegetable Sauté of snap peas, kohlrabi and artichoke hearts


• Buttered Rice


• Chilled White Chocolate & Crème Fraîche* Dessert with Raspberries and Chocolate Brownie Hearts

Actually, I'm drooling just typing up that list so maybe it IS just right.

*mmmmmmmm crème fraîche

Bright & Bonny Belated Birthday Wishes to rearviewmags!

I'm so focused on other things (work, mostly) that I'm continually surprised by the promise and the preparation that the Earth is making for the return of spring. Driving up the hill, out of the corner of my eye, my mind registers a patch of what can only be snowdrops. Another garden, caught in peripheral vision, seems to be polka-dotted with tiny yellow bulbs...surely not crocus already? The sun has been shining inbetween times, but with my head bent to the cyanotic glow of circuitry, I keep catching only the tail-end of it, as I leave the office.

It's not good, this all-consuming concentration on getting things done that I know are not the be-all and end-all but feel very compelling and important right now. Too much to do and not enough time to do it in causes an overflow into all other areas of my life. Sometimes this is just how it is. You wade through it, holding your precious sanity over your head in order to keep it dry.

In the fields of the Ramel farm there have been huge white birds resting every morning of the past week. I don't know if it's the same birds from day to day...they're not there in the early evening when I come home. And they are just too far away for me to be able to tell easily if they are white geese or swans. We get a lot of swans flying the migratory routes here, but this seems to be an unusually large flock so I'm leaning toward the geese theory. They bring to mind one of my favorite passages from The Book of Merlyn by T.H. White when King Arthur travels with a flock of grey geese. I memorized one of the poems that accompanied it, back when I was a teen with so much time on my hands and so many more clean, uncluttered braincells; now all I remember of it is Hank Hank Hink Hink Honk Honk. A silly song of the wild grey geese.

Thanks to Google, it's at my fingertips:

We wander the sky with many a Cronk
And land in the pasture fields with a Plonk.
Hank-hank, Hink-hink, Honk-honk.

Then we bend our necks with a curious kink
Like the bend the plumber puts under the sink.
Honk-honk, Hank-hank, Hink-hink.

And we feed away in a sociable rank
Tearing the grass with a sideways yank.
Hink-hink, Honk-honk, Hank-hank.

But Hink or Honk we relish the Plonk,
And Honk or Hank we relish the rank,
And Hank or Hink we think it a jink
To Honk or Hank or Hink!

Someone has been plowing the fields; the chocolatey velvety earth has been turned over and furrowed. The neon yellow of the rapeseed is only a few weeks away. The Kävlinge river is actually not overflowing its brim. The abandoned boats near the Flyinge stables are well up above the waterline. This doesn't bode well for the crops in the long run or for our planned canoeing trip in June. Maybe we'll have to hike instead. In the back of my head someone has stuck up a post-it note that is telling me in no uncertain terms that I can't wait much longer to do my own part for spring preparations: clear last year's deadfall away, remove the evergreen branches that are keeping the hostas warm, trim the things that need to be trimmed, remove the old dead growth from the flowerpots. Get ready, get ready! Spring is coming.

...It is no good trying to tell about the beauty. It was just that life was beautiful beyond belief, and that is a kind of joy which has to be lived.—T.H. White

Happy Birthday to My Favorite German Sister-in-Law, Simone! Alles Gute zum Geburtstag!

It's snowing like crazy outside. Fat white fluff-flakes floating dreamily down, down and around in the white light of the streetlights. The street is filled up with snow. Clifford the Big Red Rock has a sparkly white skullcap. The plants are hunkered down, puffed up with the white stuff. We've had snow on the ground for almost 2 weeks now, though really it hasn't been that much; it keeps melting down to a thin covering and then freezing. All the footprints in the yard: kid, dog, neighbor's cat, are softening at the edges and filling in. They'll have to stomp their snowy flattened paths all over again.

Everyone else all around the world got clobbered with snow early on. We just had grey. Snow makes everything whiter and brighter and sparkly. Ooo sparkly! Add that to the bright blue sky days, sunshine-filled with freezing temps we've had lately and that's just about the perfect winter weather for me. Sun and snow, who could ask for anything more?

***

Inside Joke at Work, Just For My Own Remembrance
Kristian sent me an email, groaning a bit about the awful DVD project he's working on (one that I very joyfully gave up to him when he was hired), telling me that he had changed his name to Sisyphus. And he had actually changed his email signature to sisyphus@axis.com; I laughed like a maniac. He and I are both struggling with monster projects and too much to do at the moment. I replied that I knew how he felt, as I was resembling Prometheus more and more everyday. The rock I'm chained to being the Technical Guide localizations and the damn eagle that is pecking out my liver every day is the Marcom-Helpdesk that he and I handle (all the million marketing tasks that flood in every day from our subs, and which I've been trying to be front line on this week so that he could get somewhere on his project). So now he's signing off on emails to me as SiSS and I'm signing off on mine to him as PRO. Hee!

***

The kids spent last night at farmor & farfar's and tonight, too, and spent the whole day today out sledding (see above: snow). But this evening Karin called me up with a trembly voice to say that she'd just thrown up. After initial sympathizing and confirmation that she didn't want me to come pick her up and that she didn't think she was going to hurl again, I asked her, with a note of trepidation, where? "In the living room," she replied, sounding very guilty. "Oh, honey!" I exclaimed, "Couldn't you have made it to the toilet?" No, she told me. "My mouth just exploded."

Poor unlucky farmor was cleaning up the mess, though apparently it wasn't that much, but STILL. I'm simultaneously feeling very guilty that I'm so glad I'M not having to clean up vomit and incredibly sorry for farmor. Though, she WAS a nurse, so maybe it doesn't bother her as much as it bothers me.

***

There was more, but I'm stopping now and taking myself off to bed with a book that I suspect I've read before a million years ago (niggling familiar feelings) and am not enjoying all that much now. However, it's for book group and it's not quite (yet) reached the point of awfulness at which I will actually stop and put it in the giveaway bag without finishing it. I keep thinking SOMETHING'S got to happen soon, and the jacket blurb backs me up: someone's gonna kick the bucket and I'm greedily hoping it's ALL of these oblivious, self-centered, vapid women or their stuffed-shirt, insufferable, chauvinist men, though I know only one of the characters, sadly, will actually get the ax.

Sometimes when you are reading a book and a character dies, there is an actual jolt of complete horror and disbelief and then anger at the author for daring to do such a thing: how could they??! But in this book there is no one I wouldn't be rather pleased to see knocked off. I'm feeling very bloodthirsty, apparently, and since I can't kill anyone at work, aggravating fictional characters will have to do. DIE! DIE!

Yesterday, I was a guest at an evening activity with one of our vendors. We were divided into 2 teams by our hosts: two delightful chefs who are making names for themselves in the Öresund region. David Fernandes, who owns the S:t Gertrud Patisserie and Tareq Taylor, who made a name as the owner and master chef of acclaimed Malmö restaurant trappaner.

The activity was cooking our own dinner, under the leadership of our two chefs, and then sitting down to enjoy it. It was great fun, and the food was fantastic. One team (mine) was in charge of the starter: Potato & Jerusalem Artichoke Soup and the main dish: Seared Halibut Filets w/Cauliflower Purée. The other team was down in the Patisserie making a series of individual-serving size desserts: Dark Chocolate Panna Cotta, Crème Brulee, Crème Caramel, Crema Catalana, and black-current-dusted chocolate truffles.

There was even a cheese course that featured quince marmalade: a new one for me! I don't think I've ever eaten quince in any form; it was quite tasty. Did you know that the golden apples that Paris gave to Aphrodite were actually quinces? There is also a theory that quince could have been the forbidden fruit that Adam and Eve munched on.

Look at that, sidetracked onto the food tangent. As usual.

The whole point of my writing about yesterday evening to begin with was because of my fascination with the fact that both of the chefs were essentially third-culture kids. A Third Culture Kid, or TCK, is "someone who has spent a significant portion of their childhood in one or more cultures other than their own, thus integrating elements of those cultures and their own birth culture into a third & personal culture of their own." Some TCKs have parents who come from more than one culture, and who live in a third.

David is Portuguese, but grew up in Luxembourg and is now married to a Swedish woman and living in Sweden for the past 5 years. Tareq's father is from Jerusalem and his mom is half English and half Swedish. 3 of us at the event were Americans living in Sweden, all of whom have spent years in other parts of the world as well. Another participant was a Frenchwoman whose father came from Croatia, and who grew up partly in Australia. I'm a TCK, having been a military brat who spent six years of my under-18 years overseas.

I know so many people who qualify as TCKs and think it's a intriguing subject. How small the world grows sometimes! Just to satisfy my curiosity, drop me a comment and answer this informal poll for me, will you? My answer are first :)

1. Are your parents from the same culture? If not, where are they from?
2. Were you born in the country your parents (or a parent) came from? If not, where?
3. Did you spend time as a child (under 18) living in a different culture than your birth culture? How long? Where?
4. Did you go to school abroad or outside or your state/country?
5. Have you lived abroad as an adult (over 18)? If you lived abroad as a child, have you ever lived in the country of your birth?
6. How many times have you moved to a new residence?
7. Do you hold dual citizenship? If not, are you eligible to?
8. How many languages do you speak?
9. Do you consider yourself as belonging to a particular culture?
10. Is your spouse/significant other from the same culture as you?