1. Little Girl’s new tangle-preventing hairdo

2. Enjoying our new dirt pile

3. I was just about Little Girl’s age in that photograph. The older girl was my step-cousin (there are not a lot of people on my mom’s side of the family so we make the most of what we have).

4. Shiny new tricycle! That helmet has already proved its necessity.

5. Ginger-bread house!

6. Really, REALLY, into, not a Christmas toy, but making robots out of Tinker Toys from 1982.

Little Girl received that dress, size 18 months, as a hand-me-down at birth and I’d never found occasion for her to wear it. My mother keeps her in a constant supply of fancy clothes (they may secretly be a campaign for us to go to church; it must be working as we are going to the Christmas Eve service for the exclusive purpose of showing off the red velvet holiday dress my mom got Little Girl). Then I hit upon my plan, brilliant but frustrating (aren’t they all?) of requiring us all to wear “ocean tones.” The bottom part of my outfit was not successful so that’s why we’re cropped at the waist. We didn’t get one photo where we all looked our most attractive, alert, and cheerful, but since I’m the one who does all the work relating to Christmas cards, I picked the one in which I looked best. That’s the rule. I also get to claim all the change I come across when doing laundry.

By pushing my craftiness to the limit I was able to produce a dress and crown for Little Girl to wear to celebrate the Swedish Christmas holiday of Luciadagen, or Santa Lucia Day. The particulars and wherefores of this custom are not especially clear to me, frankly due to a lack of interest on my part, but I understand that in Sweden the oldest girl of each family, on December 13th, wakes up the household at some godawful hour of the morning wearing a white dress with a red sash and a crown of greenery on her head lit with candles and carrying a tray of coffee and special buns called lussekatter. I also believe there’s some special song involved.

Since we’ll be attending an extended family get-together on that date (my family, obviously, since we’re in the US) I decided to torture myself by arranging for Little Girl to do this herself–complete with hand-made accouterments. But in the afternoon, and without the fire on her head, and with the buns in a bag and not on a tray, plus no mysterious song. Making the dress was such a trial (the crown was actually kind of fun) I deliberately measured it too large so as to save me from having to sew another one for a few years.

To make this event extra-stressful, I waited to inform Husband, who is sick and a big baby about it, of his requirement to make the complex saffron-infused, cat-tail shaped buns until this evening. I’m not sure how they’ll turn out, but the nice thing about putting on this performance for neophytes is that they certainly won’t have grounds for complaints as to the authenticity of the affair or the texture of the buns. Maybe rock-hard is just how they like to eat things in Sweden. Who would know?

In years past Little Girl has not been enthusiastic about Santa. The first year she was tiny and didn’t notice him. The next two years she tried very hard to pretend she was not in his lap and avoided assiduously any eye contact and did not speak to him.

But this year–this year she was into it. We’d been prompting her for weeks to think about what she’d like Santa to bring her, and after considering cows and pirate ships, she settled on a helicopter. (I think she means a remote control one like she saw at the mall; when pressed for details, she wants one “with a button” that “flies and flies and flies” and is “super big!” Also: purple.) So today when we went over to the touristy marina we visit at least once a week (it’s pretty, there’s a toy store you can spend hours in playing, and a fantastic playground) to see Santa (it was a little weird that it was warm enough to visit Santa outside; in fact, Little Girl only has her coat on for the green color it was so warm, as I inexplicably neglected to dress her festively for the occasion) she was prepared.

My Little Girl (who is unbelievably old enough to be seeing Santa for the fourth time in her life already) was happy to go to his lap, having business with him, and immediately pressed into his hand the crumpled yellow leaf she had selected from the stairs at our home for him (she is forever gifting people with “beautiful winter leaves” and twigs). She then bravely answered his questions, ever so softly or by nodding: What do you want for Christmas? Have you been a good girl? Do you help your mommy?

And then she hopped down, at my prompting thanked him and wished him a Merry Christmas, and proceeded to make lots of happy faces at us.

And then she wanted to know where her helicopter was, because, duh, hadn’t we told her Santa would give her what she asked for? Poor disappointed bunny. Three weeks has no meaning to her. But it’ll give us time to find a remote-control helicopter a three-year-old can use successfully. Hahaha!

We had a great trip to Tennessee and North Carolina and a pleasant Thanksgiving. But on the road I realized I’m starting to have “lasts” in the US, and they’re unnerving. Elderly relatives I’ll probably not see again, mountains I may never pass through once more, accents I might ever hear again, foods that won’t be easy to find in the future–I’m beginning to take note.

It was bittersweet to explore parts of an old hometown, Asheville, and know it’s not too likely and certainly not too easy to visit them again (may I note I impressively remembered, mostly, how to find my old house that I lived in when I was five; sadly, Husband wouldn’t let me knock on the door and try to visit, though I told him this isn’t a strange thing to do–is it?). I couldn’t even buy souvenir reminders–I really wanted to take home some kind of Blue Ridge Mountain-y handicraft–since it’ll be too difficult to get stuff to Sweden. I settled for buying gifts for people who are staying put.

There are other places I’d like to see again (DC area to see family, San Francisco, Alaska, NYC) and since they’ll still be there even after I emigrate, there’s technically no rush. But it feels, rightly so, like time is running out on America. Just over four months left. And I so like it here.

We just don’t know what to do about this bathroom in the Swedish house. We are planning on gutting it but we don’t know how to put it back together.

It will be the only full bath in the (six bedroom!) house and so we want it to have the following elements: toilet, sink, storage, mirror, towel rack, tub, shower. It’s about 5×8 feet (160×257 cm). We had hoped to have a separate tub and shower but it seems the room is just too narrow for that I think.

The other problem is the window–if we have a shower/tub combo over there where the tub is now, how do we keep the window from being damaged by the water? And with that slanted ceiling a shower curtain won’t work, not that I like those anyway, and so I guess we’ll have to get some custom-cut glass panel. Or what?

And it looks like the typical thing there is to have floors and walls and the slanted ceiling all covered with the same linoleum-type material (but you can use different colors; we don’t want tile, except maybe for an accent somewhere).

So what should be put where? How do we solve our problems? What color(s) should it be? What kind of vanity? I need new thoughts on this!

Since my birthday is two days after Halloween I traditionally have weeks of candy/cake/chocolate gifts to enjoy. This has been less the case this year as Little Girl mostly did not get sweets while trick-or-treating but boring shit like pretzels and popcorn balls and little plastic toys. Obviously this was great for her, but since, in addition, she also has a much lower tolerance for trick-or-treating than I do, and was ready to pack it in after no more than a dozen houses, there really has been no candy extravaganza, especially as we didn’t stock ourselves for trick-or-treaters at all, rightly expecting none (which is why we got in the car and traveled to the only child-infested neighborhood on the island for Halloween).

Wow, I don’t know what happened with that sentence, but it is really long. To summarize, it’s my birthday Monday, and Halloween was meager (but fun). They’re starting to do Halloween a bit in Sweden so I didn’t have another this-is-the-last-time-I’ll-ever-do-this-again freakout.

I dressed up, too, as always, and carried the extra treat bag a neighbor had given Little Girl. But nobody mistook me for a kid. One person even asked me, “Are you collecting for another child?” And then at lunch today the waitress, upon learning it was my birthday celebration, asked me, laughing, “Are you twenty-two today?” Why is that a joke? I mean, I could be twenty-two, right? How would she know? Hell, I could even be a teenager, for that matter! Maybe I was trick-or-treating!

Uh, I guess I’m having some birthday issues. But Halloween was good, even though it was pretty weird to be sweating while trick-or-treating. It was so warm that day we swam in the ocean. Ah, island living.

Bonus points if you can guess what Little Girl was. She nodded affirmatively to everyone’s guesses yesterday but nobody got it quite right. Probably because it’s not an actual thing. Cute, though. (She’d also nod affirmatively anytime anyone told her that, too. Which was even cuter.)

Little Girl today noticed our dog, Loki’s, penis. This has only served to heighten her recent desire to discuss genitalia and who has what. And why. She’s in that phase where she wants to know the whys and wherefores of everything.

–Loki has a penis, why?
–He’s a boy. Just like Daddy!
–He’s a boy, why?
–Some people are boys and some are girls. Girls have vulvas and boys have penises.
–Why some people are boys and some people are girls?
–Because we need some to be girls and some to be boys.
–Why we need that?
Uh…

And so forth. This usually continues until I use some phrase with which she is unfamiliar, like “Because that’s the social norm!” (that was about leg shaving) and she has to stop and think about it for a minute. I do try to give her real, comprehensible answers as much as I can, and encourage her inquisitiveness, but it isn’t always easy.

At any rate today’s main topic was about everyone’s equipment. She’s been getting the various elements and purposes of her own personal anatomy straight in her head, and her interest extends to those around her.

–I need to see Loki’s penis some more. Where he put it?
–Well, Loki likes to keep that private. So we don’t look at it a lot. It’s just for him. Just like your vulva is just for you. It’s private.
–It’s private, why?

She sees her father and me naked a fair amount; typically after we swim in the ocean, or at any rate wear our bathing suits at the beach (which, yes, the week before Halloween we were able to do, despite my recent dithering about The End of Summer for All Eternity), we all shower together. She has no interest in her father’s personal area except insofar as it relates to his getting to stand to pee, which she considers the height of awesomeness, and is something she frequently mimics. “I Little Daddy! I pee pee standing up!”

And tonight was her pièce de résistance. She managed to straddle her little potty, facing the wall, and really and truly pee standing up like daddy. I’ve never seen such joy. We were very proud. What a talented and curious little girl!

Six days ago we were swimming in the ocean and making sand castles in our bathing suits under a nice, warm sun. I don’t know what the hell happened but it’s totally freezing now. Hot weather doesn’t bother me at all–100 degrees? Great! No need to wear clothes!–but anything under 70 is unacceptable and we are already 20 degrees below that and I am unbearably cold. (Sweden, here I come!)

I’m pretty mopey about it. It feels not just like the end of this summer, but the end of any kind of summer for the rest of my life (don’t make fun of my melodrama). Even in July in Sweden you might need a jacket. Normally I like fall–my birthday, scarves, the candy, corduroys–but since the weather in Sweden is, in some ways, perpetually fall, at least Georgia-style, I’m not interested in experiencing it in advance. As though I had a choice. I’m pretty, disproportionately, I suppose, upset about the turn in the weather.

But I reluctantly put up the Halloween decorations and we carved a pumpkin and ate the seeds and that was nice so I guess I’m finally giving in and accepting that summer is gone and I’ll just have to be cold forever. There’s still fun stuff to do, I guess. Like washed-up logs to jump over and dead baby sharks–with teeth!–to poke at with sticks. It’s not all bad. Sigh. Sucks though. Least it’s not snowing, like it is in Sweden already.

And…we’re back. Actually, we were back in the wee hours of Friday, and then that day I had a big conference call, and then the start of my new class, the response at enrollment for which was so vast that I’ve been asked to tack on more hours to accommodate the students. And we did so, so much on our trip to Seattle–mountains, beaches, skyscrapers, libraries, fountains, attractions, parks–that it’s a bit overwhelming to recount. Then there’s the special comedic chemistry my father and I create when together, leaving us laughing so hard we’re almost silent, stomachs aching, buckled over, or on all fours, on the sidewalk, concerning Little Girl.

For example: During one morning walk through the neighborhood there was a donation truck for a charity for the blind making a similar route, driven by a gangly, hatted, plaid shorts-wearing guy listening to NPR. Some people had left collections of items out for him to pick up, and we passed one tidy box of electronics with a little hand-lettered sign: BLIND.

I peeked in: They’ve got some good stuff in there.
Dad: You could say you were blind if anyone asked.
Me: And I just walked by, and happened to see these items and the sign?
Dad: Maybe Little Girl is your specially-trained seeing eye toddler.
Me: That I carry? What, does she direct me by flinging her body in one direction or the other, causing subtle shifts in my movement?
Dad: Maybe she communicates with you with American Sign Language.
Me: Right, that makes sense, since I’m blind.
Dad: Look, they’re donating a picture! For the blind to put on their walls and enjoy!

Hey! We’ve been busy. Sometimes when you leave it too long so much happens and then it feels impossible to parse it all. I’m sure you know what I mean. Here are the salient details:

The trip back to where we just moved from was mostly successful. The resort relaxing, the friends entertaining. We did not close on the house, however. Somebody screwed up the paperwork. But we signed power of attorney over to the realtor on this matter so when it’s ready to close–by the end of August if people can find time to do their jobs–we won’t have to go back, since it’s a long trip and anyway Husband is in Belgium until Labor Day.

The Swedish Embassy is moving extremely quickly with my application for residency. They contacted us with two questions: Where will we live? What will Husband do for work? (I have to say I am peeved that no one seemed interested in my career plans.) We were also told that an interview would be unlikely, given the length of our marriage. Husband of course finds this rapidity to be a relief; for my part, as the move gets more and more imminent, I feel a mixture of regret about leaving the US and excitement about the new adventure.

Our dogs were very, very bad for our pet sitter, the fourteen-year-old girl across the street whom I’d engaged to walk them when we were gone. They escaped from the kitchen one night, ate the litter box, became ill, and shat in various rooms of the house on fine needlepoint throw rugs. They even managed to stain the hardwood floors. And while we were gone my mother decided to come to town–thank goodness we’d cleaned the house and done the yard before leaving town–and she and the handyman, who was around trying to fix the roof leak, couldn’t get the dogs to stay penned up either as there was a thunderstorm and apparently there was this chaotic scene where the dogs kept eluding them, escaping out either end of the galley kitchen, vomiting intermittently. Goodness.

Pudding has been mourning her dead brother. In the middle of the night, she cries and yowls in the dark living room. I go pick her up and bring her to bed with us and pet her until she relaxes enough to rest. It’s beyond sad. She’s been talking a lot in general, partly because, as I’d promised Tang on his deathbed I’d give Pudding salmon, she’s now quite keen to have wet food every evening, and also because she’s always been a talker, and now she has serious questions for me.

Now that summer’s almost done, about which I am rather broken up, I finally learned that we could have been using the three community pools around here all this time. The jellyfish are out now and I looked into getting a pool pass for a few weeks when I discovered that was unnecessary. So now we get to do truly awesome things like play in a large, nearly empty pool with old oaks overhanging, listening to restaurants’ live music, where Little Girl swims like an otter (she can really move underwater; the only thing she can’t do is not drown, i.e. come back up to breathe, so usually I have her in a vest), and then we can hop in the car or on the bike and go to the ocean for a romp in the waves.

Oh, and Little Girl turned three!

Yesterday I had to put my cat, Tang, to sleep. Normally I’d tell you the whole story but I’m too sad. Basically he was old (14), and suddenly really, really sick. He was a fine orange kitty, handsome and relaxed, and he slept with me every night, and he loved being scratched, and I so very much miss him.

Here his sister, his litter mate, is sitting with him in his last hours.

Huh, strange things happen when you are too absorbed in cleaning out the closet to pay attention to your small child.

Why yes, those are my underpants.

And is she…wearing a Swedish-themed baby’s onesie on her head? While putting all her toys in the retired hamper? On the porch? With the bird-seed holder basket from my wedding? I see.

Do I mention that I live at the beach often enough? No? Okay, so I live at the beach, right? Even when I’m not actually on the beach (at which I live, btw) it’s pretty casual around here, and much of the time people are in their bathing suits when riding bikes or whatever. And, my friends, most of the time people are doing the swimsuit thing all wrong. I need to set the general public straight. (I realize a guide to bathing suits would have been more helpful at the beginning of the summer, when you were shopping, but I wanted to make a careful study of this topic before presenting my research findings.)

I have scientifically determined the bathing suit style that looks great on everybody and every body:

This enhances small breasts and lifts and shows off big ones. It’s cute but not slutty, fun but not too young, glamorous but not self-conscious. Add a floppy straw hat and you’ll be set.

And it doesn’t have one of those little skirts (in fact, I think this particular example cuts a little low on the thighs–the higher the cut the longer your legs look! Of course, then you have to worry about, you know, hair removal, but still.)

Look, I know everyone thinks those swim skirts are a good way to cover up body flaws, but really all they do is highlight the fact that you think you have some. Nearly every woman has some cellulite. Nobody cares, I promise. Weird veins, stretch marks–honestly I only notice them when you are trying to distract me. (Not to mention, when wet, those skirts are all clingy and drowned-kitten looking). Same goes with extreme shirring, though a little can be flattering. Confidence and unselfconsciousness in your body make it look better. If you insist on a cover-up on your way to and fro, a little sleeveless cotton dress or some sweat shorts are the way to go. A big white T-shirt, say, is basically a sign that says, “My body embarrasses me. Guess why!”

It’s largely about attitude. And also, like I said, my rigorous research findings suggest this particular style works on everyone. Problem solved. You’re welcome!

(And no, that pic is not of me. I actually totally would have put one up–I think I have a rare form of body dysmorphic disorder where I look way hotter to myself than to anyone else–but I haven’t mastered the art of photographing myself in a mirror like the population of MySpace, and Husband has been out of town, and plus he would totally make fun of me if I wanted a bathing suit shot of me for my blog. I even tried to get Little Girl to photograph me, but she just kept getting shots of her feet.)

Except our parents, no one has come to visit us now we’ve moved. What our friends have against free beach vacations is beyond me, not to mention that they are missing out on hanging out with us.* And we are very fun.

But now people are starting to email me possible visit dates, which is totally exciting. Except they all want to come during the same week. And also except the fact that this other lady I kinda know, and do not like, emailed me: “Heard A was thinking of coming to visit. We’d love to tag along!” Um…uh…you smell like cigarettes and are unreliable and unpleasant and your kids like to push. And there is only so much space, you know? Plus, notably, I did not even invite you! I mean, really.

I miss my friends. I miss them, specifically, very much, and I miss having friends in general. And so does Little Girl. She’s still talking about the little six-year-old girl, here on vacation, we played with at the beach a few days last week (I guess tourists aren’t all bad). Now, when she mentions one of her old buddies, she automatically tags on, having heard me say it so much, “but she’s too far.” It’s very sad. Sigh for her, sigh for me.

* In answer to your question, yes, we could go back to visit, too. But it’s rather hard to organize what with having to find a place to stay there, arranging pet care, and scheduling it not when Husband is here nor when he is not here (we like to make things overly complicated). Should nothing go wrong, we’ll return for a visit when we have to be there anyway for the house closing.

All that said, we had a wonderfully sociable time today in Savannah visiting with other bloggers and their assorted delightful children (and one hot husband), and then enjoying some of the historic district’s highlights. It was very fun. Little Girl seemed to be under the impression it was her birthday party, actually (we went to a pancake house, and so that means I uttered the word “cake,” and she knows her birthday is coming up, so she put two and two together). Good times.