Today my 2 older boys are coming home so I really should not be blogging but finishing my middle boys room. It has been such a nice break to be a small family and it is good to get to long for them and miss them. His new room that I have been fixing will be a big surprise since it was just walls when he left a week ago. Bought the finishing details at IKEA yesterday and I think it is fantastic that they have this service where you can leave the kids to play for an hour while you do the shopping. I was really happy to get some colorful carpets real cheep and colorful drapes. I will post a picture when it is ready.

Before I forget tomorrow, Sunday night at 20.00 there is a fantastic film on TV called “Hästmannen”. Me and husband went to see it on the cinema and it is fantastic. This man is living like it could be 100 years ago and he has the biggest respect for animals and nature. He also has a huge knowledge and so much patience. Would I want to live like that, no but I have the biggest respect for the once that do. And he had such a big joy in life and was so kind to other people. There are more people then we think living different lives and that chooses freedom in front of safety and materialistic things. There are 2 great book about this called ”De ovanliga 1 – människor som går mot strömmen” and ”De ovanliga 2 – där frihet är viktigare än trygghet” by Åke Mokvist. The books are about people who have chosen very different lives. People who have dared to follow there dreams and instincts. I really admire these people. They chose lives that are usually much more challenging physically and mentally and on the top off that other people judge them hard and sometimes treat them awfully bad because off these other peoples own faults and pride. Other fantastically beautiful books about a different life are the books about Tasha Tudors life and garden. Both pictures and writing is so inspiring.

I am going to keep this short and spare you the details from when I took the kids to an indoor swimming pool yesterday (I absolutely hate these places; the smell, sound level, germ attack - do I need to elaborate that?) that they absolutely loved.

I do sense a feeling off spring in the air – wishful thinking?

Love and Peace

Seniors make the world go around

I saw this really interesting program yesterday about the last farmer at Vidbynäs. It was about this older man, Eric 88, who had been a farmer all his life. First he rented a farm outside off Stockholm for 25 years until he was evicted because they made a golf course there. So he moved to Vidbynäs, outside off Katrineholm and rented a farm for 33 years until he was evicted because – they made a golf course there. They had destroyed tons and tons off good soil, chopped 22 000 trees and scared away deer, moose, birds, otters, ants and more. This kind off destruction makes me crazy. How can we consider golf more important then people, how can you even compare.

Obviously golf is also more important then production off good food and keeping the biological variety in our gorgeous nature. If golf courses need to exist it should off course be where the land is not used, is that really hard to understand.

Now Eric could not imagine changing his life again so he shot himself. I think it is a scandal that the people who have worked so hard all their lives, building up the welfare we have today, so your and my kids can have mobile phones from the age of 3, can be treated like this. Why don’t we let our older age with dignity? What went wrong? Not long ago grandparents were as natural part of the society but nowadays they are so forgotten, they hardly dare to go outside anymore. When a person doesn’t work anymore, when no more money can be squeezed out off her, throw her on the dump.

Older people can be of tremendous help in so many ways. They are the best babysitters since they do not only cook and bake fantastic but they can also tell stories and are very patient. Actually it isn’t even stories, it is history but since generations live so differently now a day it sure sounds like stories. Kids can’t even fantasize how life looks without TV, let alone computer games. They are fantastic teachers because they know things like chopping wood, good Elvis and Beatles songs, what mushrooms to eat, how to knit a hat, mend your socks or saw clothes. They are fantastic at playing board games and card games. They have time and patience enough to enjoy and really see the child and make it feel special which so many children are completely starved from. So in many aspects they do save us money if we only look at that aspect.

You see, a child that spends time with a senior learns to behave and do not go and bully others, abuse others and steel from others. A child that spends time with a senior gets help with homework and is not seen as a problem child because he might need a little more – or a little different time in school. A child that spends time with a senior feels good about her and does not need to be confirmed through sex or drugs. A child that spends time with a senior learns the logic way the society works; to get money you have to work and to spend money you need to have money (just imagine the enormous social welfare costs we would save right there). A child that spends time with a senior learns to cook and bake and therefore learns to eat well and saves the society enormous money from huge hospital costs with food related diseases like diabetes , obesity etc.

I could go on forever because both I and my children have been growing up with grandparents and other caring seniors around. But I think the most important is; a child growing up with seniors always feels loved and safe and that you cannot put a price on. The conclusion; seniors make the world go around, the world go around, the world go around! They are our history and they help us make our future. So a big thank you and a thousand hugs to all important seniors.

Love and peace!

Big huge logs and an aging woman (who just starts realizing it)

As promised I am going to write more often and hopefully not a book every time.

Is there anything better in life than a barn full of big thick logs? Yes off course there is but for us who get our heating from wood it is a beautiful sight. My husband picked up a truckload full with pine and birch today that we now have to chop in smaller pieces. They are 3 meters and really wide. To think off all that heat they are going to give is pure joy. And it is fantastic exercise to chop them even though we have machines it is a lot off carrying, and the smell when you work with wood is heaven. We all get our kicks from different things.

Kept the kids home from kindergarten today and we spent some hours making sushi. We tried the kind off roles where the rice is on the outside and it was rather easy. My friends M in Japan and J in England would have been impressed. I find sushi a great food to make with the kids with the rolling and spreading off the rice. Just found some nori leave by the computer. My kids love it and chew on it like it is candy. Good since it is so healthy.

Then I went to interview some senior citizens for our local information paper that I and husband produce once a month. This group meets once a week and cooks lunch together. Then they eat and gossip together. They were really sweet and seem to have a fantastic time. It is lovely to see how they care about each other and cherish this moment together. Especially in the winter when it is just so easy to sit inside. Sometimes I wonder how life will be when I am old and grey. I see me living next door to J and P and sip tea and cook interesting foods, doing gardening and enjoying loads off grand kids. And off course the weather will be fantastic and there will be mountains with my favorite ice-cream cookies and cream or caramel, brand Nirvana. Lots off knitting and writing charming books.

Lately it has hit me that I am not as young as I always thought. I do get tired, like yesterday when I took apart middle boys bunk bed and moved it in to his new room and put it all together again. It weighed a ton. I have not learned to be patient and wait until husband comes home, maybe that will come with time. I also catch myself with thinking, oh look at that old stiff man, and then I realize his probably 10 years younger than me. I do not know if I have anxiety about it yet. I also started liking peace and quiet since around Xmas and there is not a lot of that around here. Also noticed how kids never wants to sleep, well I noticed I do like to go and sleep at nights so that must be a sign of getting older. Would probably need glasses to cause sometimes the letters in my books just goes break dancing but I always blame it on being too tired to read anyway.

OK signing off, was that good L, not to long I hope.

Peace

Swedish sport holidays

So I did not blogg for awhile, just have not felt the inspiration but maybe you do not need to.

We still have lovely winter weather. I heard the other day that if you ski 45 minutes a day you spend 760 calories so that makes me wonder why I do not. Not really for the calories that I am just old enough to not care about but it is just so easy to put the skies on a go. I will do it today for sure.

Last week our kitchen water froze for 4 days and the kitchen looked like a bomb had hit the place. Finally I had to do the dishes in the bathroom and that brought back old memories when we restored the kitchen last year and did not have a kitchen for 9 months. Suddenly a measly 4 days seemed like a piece off cake. We had horrid snowstorms in south off Sweden a week ago but despite that my parents drove up on Friday to pick up my two oldest boys to go skiing. They have the yearly sport holiday, which usually means that kids sits in front off their computer for a week. We are so lucky to have my parents cause I doubt that we would go away skiing all 7 off us. It just seems like to much dressing kids, finding lost mittens and hats, carrying tired crying kids and not so much relaxing for us parents. And second youngest boy does not like snow at all. He complains every morning when he has to dress up in the warm overall and a year ago when he went visiting my husbands mum the first thing he did coming their he called home and said you do not have to even where a jacket here. A true Mediterranean boy.

I am spending the sport holiday fixing middle boys room. He has always shared room so far but is now getting one all by himself and a fab one I might add. I painted the walls a strong, light green color and his bunk bed in a metallic green and when he comes back we are going to paint big cartoon dragonball characters. When we restore we always do it in an old way, not just looking old but we strip the walls down to the timber and newspaper and paste it with wrapping paper which is the only paper they had back then and then we paint with linen oil paint so the room smells like a nice salad dressing. But on the kids room we do an exception. I want to do it how they like it. You know how you will see in magazines kiddy rooms with 2 toys on the floors and mild pastel colors. If you ask me the child did not chose that herself. We have already been remaking all the kiddy rooms the 3 years we lived here and therefore I tend to find cheap material and paints that are easy to paint over. We started with Lilo and Stich on small boys’ wall, middle boy had Harry Potter flying on a broomstick and big boy had 2 horses from the movie Spirit. I am not great with my own painting ideas but a wiz at copying. Big girls room was lovely to make since she wanted Indian and romantic theme. Then big boy got teenage room with turquoise, lime green and dark blue walls. Bed in metallic turquoise. The two middle boys got yellow, green and purple walls and also metallic blue beds. I really like the metallic paints, they make such a cool impression and they are water based so they do not stink more then necessary. Then I add the finishing touches from IKEA like pillows, rugs drapes and so on. IKEA is the best for kiddy stuff. I love doing rooms up if I just get the time and space I need. And a big thank god for the libraries where you get loads off ideas. We redo the kiddy rooms often, but the other rooms we want to do once so it takes a long time to figure out how we want it and what furniture we want.

Now to a sadder note. Our lovely neighbor went in to the hospital a week ago. It turns out he has herpes simplex encephalitis which is an infection in the brain and nothing to play with. He has had bad fevers for more then a week and has been confused. I really do hope he will recover. His wife is off course really affected by this considering just a little more than a week ago they were living they everyday life just like normal. They are one off those couples who has it. I mean who are happy and content with each other and who like spending time together. They respect each other a lot and are always happy and have lots off humor. I would love to be like that when I grow old. And they always have time for the village kids who often visits. Him and his wife are really close to us and kind off adopted grandparents to my kids who have their own grandparents so far away. Sure it is just life passing by but a hard part which we do not have around a lot thank god.

And yesterday 2 busses collided on the icy road north off Uppsala, resulting in 6 dead people. Makes you think.

Sorry L this one became long again but I will take your advise and blog a little shorter once and more often, if I can organize myself, as you know I am lousy at that.

Love and Peace