Years ago, when I was in the midst of an impromptu solo road trip around the West Coast, I was Couchsurfing (that's a real thing!) in Vancouver, B.C. at the home of a wonderful man called Simon. Simon is a life coach and a magnificent person, and he had this knack for flipping my world...
community
Are You Willing to Pay More to Shop Locally?
Here's a pertinent question for the holiday season: do you prefer to shop at locally-owned stores rather than big box stores or online? If so, are you willing to pay a higher price to do so? We lucked out in that our new town, Corvallis, has a great downtown and is plush with locally-owned stores....
Life in Sweden: Community Cleaning Days
Now that spring has (finally!) come to our part of Sweden, communities are having their biannual fixardagar or städdagar (fixing days or cleaning days). Most communities, be they neighborhoods, marinas, apartment or condo associations, or parent-cooperative preschools, have a day in the spring (and another in the fall) when members of the community get together to do whatever...
Happiness Project: Month 4—Community and Tradition
I'm plugging away with my happiness project despite the great lethargy I feel now at the beginning of my third trimester. I'm growing quite uncomfortable, and at the same time unsure of how I'm going to make it through the next three months. The darkness of winter is creeping in (sunrise: 8:25; sunset: 2:51) and our Vitamin D...
The Blog that Made Me Want to Blog - A Cup of Jo
There's this blog that I've been reading for a couple years now. It's called A Cup of Jo and I've linked to it a few times from Dear Sabrina, including a couple days ago. While I don't love all the posts (I'm not particularly interested in beauty and fashion stuff, as you may have guessed already), I like...
How Do You Do Kids' Birthday Parties?
We celebrated Leif's second birthday last week with a lovely, intimate party. One set of friends and the neighbors came, as well as one of the kids' former caregivers from dagis. We ate dinner together, then Leif opened a couple presents and the kids played while the adults talked. We sang happy birthday in English and Swedish before eating Leif's tractor-shaped ice...
Some Thoughts on a Friday
I went to a funeral earlier this week on the island of Åland. I hadn't known the person who passed very long, but I'd come to admire him in the months that I did. A friend and I went together, taking a ferry from Sweden to the Finnish islands lying in the Baltic.