weekend! finally! i thought it would never come...  ¶ 8:55 PM

  oh how cold it's getting! this morning's dog walk was made in a white, thick fog, that made nyland remind of a horror story. the air was white with fog, the grass (and the horse shit) was white with frost, and the breath from me, the bob and the horses looked like white smoke. but my cheeks and nose were bright read from the cold :)  ¶ 9:06 PM

  the tommy took the saab to the yearly inspection. it didn't get a driving ban! hurray! i'm going to celebrate with coca cola right now. and afterwards i'm going to telephone a brother, and ask if they have the time to fix a few things on the saab. otherwise we'll only be allowed to drive it one more month.  ¶ 8:00 PM

  i need a camera! everything is so beautiful right now that i can't even try to describe it. i'm doing a lot of sitting and lying in different places at the moment, enjoying the beauty of it all. it's a good thing i like brown jackets, so it doesn't show how dirty i am...  ¶ 7:46 PM

  head still hurts. hands have stopped shaking. i burned the apple pie.  ¶ 3:40 PM

  i am baking apple pie. i would be a great house wife!  ¶ 8:02 PM

  we had a party at work yesterday. very nice: rotten fish, snaps, wine, songs, dancing, gossip (LOTS of gossip). today: head ache and shaking hands. probably withdrawal symptoms. i didn't have a single drop of coca cola yesterday.  ¶ 7:54 PM

  we've discovered what's troubling the fantastic toyota. i'm quite proud of our mechanic-skills! i'm afraid 5-56 won't help, though. it's a metal thing that sits around a pipe that's loose. but i'm not flat enough to get under the car to fix it. i managed to push it right, but it fell back again almost at once. it looks really easy though, as long as the screws are not stuck in rust or anything. but if they are i'm sure 5-56 will help :)

a few days ago we met a toad on the way up to our house. there seems to be something very wrong with her, and at first we thought she was dead. a while ago another toad was killed on almost the same spot as this new one was found. so i'm guessing she might be the dead toad's mother, or something. we moved her to the side of the road, so that she wouldn't be run over by a neighbour, and she hasn't moved more than maybe 25 cm from where we put here. i'd really like to help her, but i don't know what toads like.

i'm suspecting that our new neighbours have a brothel at home. most days they come home at about 22.30 or later, and they always leave at 6.10 or earlier. there's one woman with a pale blue car, and several different men in several different cars. very interesting.

i finally went to the big city of sollefteå to get my hair cut today. last time was just before christmas i think. apparently you're supposed to cut your hair every second month! (i asked today)

yesterday we had a really fantastic thunderstorm here. the lightnings were so bright our entire appartment was lit up. the bob was so worried he squeesed down between the tommy and me on the sofa, and we could cuddle him and pretend he was a normal dog. the bob normally doesn't like cuddling very much. i think he thinks it's for babies. under normal circumstances he sits down just out of reach, with his nose high in the air, "allowing" us to rub his back for a while (the just out of reach thing is probably to make us suffer a bit, to appreciate it more). he seems to think people are quite stupid and silly creatures, but he doesn't want to be too rude so he lets us do our silly things now and then. in our familly i think it's the tommy and i who are the pets... but the bob is a nice and caring master, who lets us think we're in charge.  ¶ 6:49 PM

  the toyota is still rustling and the saab is still jumping. i was hoping it'd go away if i just waited for a while. seems like it doesn't. i wonder if 5-56 would help? i think my father once told me that 5-56 works for everything...

  ¶ 9:04 PM

  i forgot: today was the first morning with frost in the grass  ¶ 7:56 PM

  having a man from skåne observing me at work today went great. he was lucky, cause i had many weird and strange and interesting people and questions today. the man from skåne didn't say much. he introduced himself when he came, excused himself to go to the mens room once, asked a few questions now and then, and said good bye when he left. but my boss told me that he had praised me a lot afterwards. that was nice to hear. i'm beginning to think i might actually be quite good at what i'm doing :)

at lunch i had an unexpected thought. i think i prefer this kind of weather to summer weather! i wonder if this is a sign of a serious illness? it is very windy today, which makes really great sounds from the trees. and it's quite cold. cold enough to make gloves and a hat necessary, but not cold enough for the winter jacket. i had lunch (hot dog and coca cola) at my favourite spot at the edge of the mountain. the river is now beginning to show between the trees, as the leaves are falling off. it was then it happened. suddenly i was hit by the thought that "this is perfect". yellowing leaves, great big sounds of wind in the trees, dry leaves dancing in the wind, my nose and cheeks really cold, my fingers feeling the warmth from the hot dog and the cold of the air, the smell of fall, the taste of coca cola... i wound't change it for a warm sunny summer day even if i could. scary! i evem thought the taste of mustard on the hot dog was kind of nice. and i hate mustard!

i tried the pedometer/radio at the after-work-dog-walk again. this time i was almost hit by two cars, one truck and a racing horse. i must have looked really funny, walking with a big grin, and sometimes even singing. and i noticed it's impossible to walk with music in the ears and not following the rythm. all the horses we met stopped chewing and just looked at me. the bob was sometimes so embarrased i'm sure he'd blushed if he could. turning down the volume so that the sound of the wind was mixed with the music made the effect even nicer. i could have walked for ages.  ¶ 7:38 PM

  i just realised how very much of our conversation does not consist of words. i was talking to tommy and brushing my teeth at the same time. my mouth full of tooth paste and tooth brush making sounds i didn't even understand myself. tommy interpreted my "speech" and translated it to swedish, to see if he had understood correctly. which he had. amazing. afterwards in the bathroom i saw that his tooth brush was on its way to fall from the shelf, i just looked at it and tommy understood and stopped it from falling. i realised we often do that. exchange looks and understand what the other one wants. maybe i'm just tired, but isn't it very amazing that we are so clever?  ¶ 9:03 PM

  the estate agent called yesterday! we might be able to buy our house! for the ridiculously low sum we suggested! i'm almost embarrased...

my office turned two today, and our bosses gave us cake and presents. pedometres with radios. i tried mine on the after-work-dog-walk today. i was almost hit by a tractor and a bike. i guess listening to the radio during dog walks is not very good for me... but it was a really interesting feeling. i realised i listen a lot when i'm walking, and not being able to hear the natural sounds made me feel like being in a different world. it felt weird not being able to hear my footsteps. almost as if i wasn't really walking at all... maybe there's something wrong with the way my brain works, but everytime i listen to music (or anything, really) in headphones i get almost hypnotised. it's as if my brain can't work when my head gets filled with sounds. next time i'll try listening to the radio in only one ear, so that the music can get out through the other one :)

it wasn't the bubble on the tyre that caused the jumpings when the saab breaks :( tommy bought him a nice new tyre, but he keeps on jumping. and the toyota has started to rustle. we've looked for loose parts under the hood, but haven't been able to see anything.

tomorrow i will have a man from the county labour board of skåne observing me at work. when i first heard about it i was really nervous. the county labour board people are quite high in the organisation. but then i realised my office is part of the National Labour Market Board (wow), which is the highest you can get in our organisation. if i do anything wrong people have to appeal to the governmet. (cool!) this means i'm higher than that little man coming to visit us tomorrow. i hope he'll have difficulties sleeping tonight, as he is meeting me tomorrow. i'll be nice to him though. i'm always nice to the little people :)  ¶ 7:41 PM

  the fantastic toyota has now been driving 250 000 km. 250 007, to be exact. we cheered and petted him. and when we came home we celebrated with coca cola. today is also my mother's birthday. we celebrated that with home made cake.

we made a trip to "our" house today. it looked happy to see us, and i felt bad about leaving it again :( we also looked at another house. the new house was also very sweet, and it had really really good raspberries. of course i prefer my own house, though. tommy has tried phoning the estate agent, but he never answers... maybe he wants to keep our house to himself?

  ¶ 9:06 PM

  the northern lights are growing stronger and stronger!


...and the nights are getting colder, the days are getting shorter, the lake is getting darker, the frogs are getting fewer...

i'll have to rescue what's left of my garden tomorrow


we've (hopefully) discovered what makes the saab behave weirdly: we found a bubble on one of the tires. we'll buy a new one next week, and hope we've fixed the problem.
the barn dancing was cancelled. some people were sick, others had sick kids and i didn't feel like it. i had a nice evening sleeping on the sofa instead :)
today the tommy and went to a "harvest market". it was the smalles market i've seen in my life: only four booths :) we bought marmalade and chocolate. and had lunch in the vegetarian restaurant.  ¶ 11:29 PM

  tomorrow i'm going barn dancing with my boss

and a few other people :)  ¶ 9:15 PM

  the sky was baby blue and baby pink and not grey at all on my way home from work today. and the lake was so still it was almost invisible. very very beautiful! it rained a bit though.

my boss observed me at work today, and afterwards we discussed how good i am, to prepare him for the discussion about raised wages that he will have with the union soon. apparently he thinks i'm very good at being an uneployment-office-working-person. i guess i *am* quite good at it, to be honest... who would have thought that? the bad thing about today's observation was that the boss asked me if i could let visitors observe me when they come to look at how we work in our office. i couldn't really say no, with the discussion about wages coming up... and i guess i should be proud, as he thinks i would be a good person to show off, even though i'm so new at it. i'll just have to hope we won't have many visitors.

the other day the tommy and i baked a very good cake and a very good bread. we're quite house-wifeish sometimes.  ¶ 7:55 PM

  the smell of winter is leaking through the windows (or maybe the walls?) and is now filling our home... i can't believe it's ever going to be summer again  ¶ 10:19 PM

  the first northern lights are dancing in the skies. my ears are so cold from watching them they hurt. it's black everywhere you look, and you can't tell where the skies end and the earth begins. except that the sky is covered with stars. it always amazes me to see that they are so many... i love the way they remind me of how small i am. and a pale green group of norhtern light ghosts are dancing quickly over our house and across the lake and down behind the mountains on the other side. i'm glad i saw this. i'm going to sleep well tonight.

today has been cold but sunny. we grilled in the garden, and made sallad with our "home made" lettuce. i guess we won't be able to do that much longer...  ¶ 12:30 AM

  i'm going to miss our lake if/when we move. it's not a very social lake, but it's nice. it's not the kind of lake you bathe in or drive around with boats on. it's the kind you just look at. it might be ok with a calm and quiet midnight swim, and i guess it would be ok to row across it to go to the barn dance occasionaly. but i think screams or shouts or laughter or motor boats or even fishing would offend it.

it's started to look very autumnish lately. i don't know how it does it, as it's just water, but somehow it can change looks very dramatically. today it's very dark, with upset-looking waves moving randomly across it. the mountains around it look as if they're made of smoke in different shades of blue and grey, and even though the sun is shining and the wind is mild it's a very autumnish feeling over it all.  ¶ 6:56 PM