Slipping away to some exotic or culturally rich location for a vacation is wonderful; bringing home souvenirs from that vacation, which jog travel memories and help the vacation last longer in your mind, is also wonderful. But that doesn't mean you have to stop at those kitschy, overstuffed bric-a-brac shops and pony up for some mass-produced (and questionably...
Miscellany
The One Thing I Always Wish I'd Brought With Me On Vacation
We're having a great time in Spain so far: it's been sunny, warm(ish), and we've spent our days walking, playing, and eating. This is EXACTLY what we came for. But there's one thing I forgot to bring that I'm kicking myself about...
The Third Trimester of My Third Pregnancy in My (Late) Thirties
(Nota bene: the pictures in this post have almost nothing to do with the content. This is mostly because my husband refuses to take pictures of me, also because I find selfies to be too self-aggrandizing to bother taking any, and because it's winter in Sweden and the light is shit.) I'm just over 32 weeks into this...
Let's Talk About the Moon
For some reason, I've got it stuck in my head that I'm going to teach my kids, from the very beginning, about the stages of the moon. I think it would be so cool to hear a tiny human voice say, "Look mama! A waning crescent moon!" With that in mind, any time we see the...
My Secret, Irrational Hatred of Something Totally Benign
I have a confession to make. There's something that I have an unreasonable and rather passionate dislike of. It's something that has no real effect in my life (except to make me cringe); has never done anything rude, unkind, or unfair to me; and is in itself rather innocuous. And yet, every time I see it,...
August's Haircut
Last week, our neighbor, Agneta, pulled a coup we never thought possible: she got the boys' hair cut. We didn't think Leif would be much of a problem, but August has always disliked both change and any sort of meeting with a hairdresser/doctor/nurse/dentist/you get the idea. We had a rather tragic attempt last summer when we...
Adding a "Now" Page
This morning I somehow stumbled across the website of Derek Sivers, and was fascinated when I read his "now" page. I liked the idea immediately and decided to add one of my own to Dear Sabrina.
The Underachieving Mom's 2016 Holiday Gift Guide for Tiny Human Boys
This is my first-ever attempt at a gift guide, and I'll be honest: it's pretty basic. There are a couple reasons for this: 1) you know your kid better than I do, so you probably know what s/he likes better than I do, so who am I to give advice?; and 2) listing a bunch of stuff...
Asking for Simple Support
I didn't mention that we've taken a quick trip to England. We booked tickets last Wednesday, then flew on Saturday! We're visiting my husbands parents in the county Devon, in the southwest. We head back to Sweden tomorrow. Yesterday we had a pint in a pub in Chulmleigh, the small town near my in-laws' place. I wanted to...
Fuck You, Fox News
Despite the timing and the title, I want to state upfront that this post has nothing to do with the recent election. This post is entirely personal, not political. I have had a hard time mourning my father’s death. In recent years we had grown distant, as distant emotionally as we were physically; an ocean stood between us, and...