This is what I feel like today …

Turns out the Airborne I’ve been taking to keep a cold from coming on does not sit well with my stomach … I am miserable and in pain.

Not really into tarot, but …

I thought the art on these cards were intriguing and the “truth” of my online reading quite spot on. Take a look for yourself.

You are The Empress

Beauty, happiness, pleasure, success, luxury, dissipation.

The Empress is associated with Venus, the feminine planet, so it represents beauty, charm, pleasure, luxury, and delight. You may be good at home decorating, art or anything to do with making things beautiful.

The Empress is a creator, be it creation of life, of romance, of art or business. While the Magician is the primal spark, the idea made real, and the High Priestess is the one who gives the idea a form, the Empress is the womb where it gestates and grows till it is ready to be born. This is why her symbol is Venus, goddess of beautiful things as well as love. Even so, the Empress is more Demeter, goddess of abundance, then sensual Venus. She is the giver of Earthly gifts, yet at the same time, she can, in anger withhold, as Demeter did when her daughter, Persephone, was kidnapped. In fury and grief, she kept the Earth barren till her child was returned to her.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

I found this site through My Marrakesh.

One thing leads to another

My previous post took a comical turn on Flickr, and my coworker Jack got a little creative. We have had quite a few laughs over the last couple of days and … well, what can I say. It's me and the gulls.

I really have no shame, do I.

Twenty Years in America

How can it be that twenty years have gone by already? It does not seem possible, yet here I am staring at the beginning of 2009, twenty years to the day after I landed at JFK. I was alone in a new country. And I was hot. I had just left a snow covered Sweden, dressed in a turtleneck sweater, a heavy winter coat and gloves and here I was, shuffling through the airport with my carryon and not a snowflake in sight. In fact, I think there was a heat wave. Or, it was unusually warm for the season, as they might have said on the weather forecast that day. Personally, I was having a heat wave. Then again, it could have been the fact that I was tired, nervous, and hot from wearing too many layers at a crowded airport right after the holidays.

I came to the U.S. with the intention of getting an associate’s degree in commercial art. That’s what my school called it back then. Commercial Art. I was going to study art and design for two years and then go back home again. Or so I thought. My studies went well, in fact, I graduated top of my class that year, in May of 1992. I got the cap and gown, walked the walk and attended the graduation dinner. My mother, her husband and my brother flew over for the occasion. It was grand. Then I spent the summer back home in Sweden and had some time to think. We were in the middle of a recession, what was I going to do?

Three weeks before classes started back up again, I called the college and said I was coming back for my bachelor’s degree. I remember there was a scramble to get all the required paperwork ready to renew my student visa before I could return. All went well and I studied some more. And did the whole cap and gown thing again the following May, receiving my Bachelor of Arts summa cum laude. I also had the honor of being the valedictorian and receiving awards for outstanding academic achievement and outstanding achievement in commercial art. More than I had ever hoped or dreamed. After all, I just came here for a two-year degree.

With my BA in hand I was entitled to a training permit, giving me permission to stay in the country for an additional twelve months. Looking back at that year, I vaguely remember goofing off and getting closer to the end of my visa. A few weeks before the dreaded date, I realized I had better get a job or start packing. Not ready to return to my home country yet, I started looking. Two weeks before the deadline, I landed a job at a company that for the next seven years became the only entry on my resume, even though it appears under three different names.

I didn’t work my way up as much as get a new position or title each time the company was bought out. I was fortunate to stay, when others were let go. Every two years, I had to hire an attorney to renew my work visa—and pay big bucks for him to do it. My life was lived in two-year increments, with trips back to Sweden every year or two, usually including a visit to the American Embassy in Stockholm to get a new visa stamp in my passport. Every time I walked through immigrations on my return to the U.S., I was just as nervous as the first time, but they never turned me away.

A few years went by—two or three work visas I think—and then I met a man. I had met men before, but this man was different. I could usually tell if a relationship was going to work within two weeks of meeting someone, and usually I determined it was not. And it didn’t. Yet, I tried to make it work. So much wasted time. This time, I knew within two weeks that this was the man for me. I had recently given my life to Jesus, and in return, Jesus gave me a man. Well, I like to think so.

This man and I were married in May 1998. It was bliss. Why wouldn’t it be, we were married in Sweden and honeymooned in Paris. He was my best friend. We shared a lot of laughs. We cried, too. We had a similar sense of humor. We were both very sarcastic. We were as compatible as a man and a woman can be. We were happy. For a few years, at least.


Along came a little baby girl and a green card. I stopped working and became a stay-at-home mom. My little girl and I spent our days taking walks and recording milestones, but something didn’t feel right. I didn’t realize how much I missed my job until I was forced to go back to work two years later. Our finances were bad and getting worse. Our marriage was heading in the same direction. But, there was still a lot of love there. And I enjoyed being back at work at my old company with a new name. My spirits were lifted and I was back in my element.

Then another baby came along. I took some time off work to care for her, before returning to my little gray cubicle to design my heart away. And to lose the love of my man.

The last three and half years have gone by quickly. I have survived a heartbreaking separation and divorce, been blessed with a new job, sans cubicle, and raised two beautiful girls on my own. There are days I want to run away from the responsibility of being their main provider and then there are days when I count myself so fortunate to have two such smart little girls. Strong-willed, independent, headstrong, willful, beautiful girls. They are the fruit of my love. They are the reason I am still here. Even though it would be so much easier for me to pack up and move back home, where I have family who can help out, I don’t want to take them away from their father. This is their country and it has become mine. Twenty years. How time flies.

*1989 with poodle perm in Helen, Ga., 1994 with hair down to my butt, 1998 on my honeymoon in Paris (at the Eiffel Tower), Elisabet and Malena at our old house, 2005 after getting too skinny during my divorce, today in 2009 … mostly happy, especially with the short hair!

My First Published Piece

And there it is, my first published piece, The Necklace, as promised in the January edition of FaithHopeFiction.com


Perhaps I should write more, instead of devouring one book after another. I’m calling it research, though. I’m studying style, delivery, dialog frequency, and … well, you know, I’m disappearing into the books and forgetting all about the research, that’s what I’m doing. Let’s be honest. So, I will continue to write in my journal, which I began in my first writing class, and when I hit on something of interest I will turn it into an essay for others to enjoy. That’s my new year’s resolution to myself.

My last writing assignment

Another creative course has come to an end, just like another year is about to. This class was called Writing Your Life Story, and although I plan to do that in the future, it was not for now. I still got a lot out of the class and have a better foundation for when the time is right for me to share my story. This last writing assignment called for us to write “200 words or less, tell me how you feel when you capture in your notebook or writer’s journal the essence of people and places that appear in your writing. Are you excited, afraid, puzzled, delighted, daunted, or a combination of all these feelings?” Since I was not actively gathering information on the people I have encountered, I wrote something a little different. The instructor’s comment is at the end.

For as long as I can remember, pen and paper have been an obsession of mine. When I was around 10 or 11, I started writing letters to pen pals around the world. There was Keiko in Japan, Farhana in India, and Sandra in France. It was so much fun buying colorful stationery and unusual pens and pencils. My handwriting was quite neat and legible back then, and I would constantly play with new ways of writing, sometimes slanting, sometimes in all-caps, sometimes straight up and down. Sometimes it depended on the paper and the pen I was using at the moment. As I’d get used to writing one way, my handwriting would eventually become sloppy and I would make up another one.

Every summer growing up, I would stay with my uncle in Finland. My cousin Anne was just as fascinated with papers and cards as I was, so we would visit a little paper shop where I was first introduced to everything Japanese. Well, maybe it wasn’t everything, but to a paper-obsessed young girl, Hello Kitty! was quite exciting. In that little store, I would stock up on writing pads, erasers that smelled like strawberries and other little notebooks, postcards, and gadgets.

As a funny twist to my obsession, I was more interested in collecting the pads and note cards than actually writing on them. If it wasn’t a letter being written to Keiko or Sandra, I liked the pages left blank. My love for everything paper-related made it challenging for me to actually write something in something so pretty.

When I started my first online writing course a few months back, I was encouraged to start journaling. Around the same time, I started attending a Single Moms group at church, and Claire, the leader, supplied us with pens and journals—it must have been fate that she encouraged us to write. I loved the little black notebook with pink and purple butterflies she handed each of us. It even had an elastic band to keep it closed. I immediate starting using it for my writing class and begged Claire for another one for the group. She was glad to give me one and told me they were from Target. I went and cleaned them out. They are cheap and they are the perfect size to carry around without having to buy a suitcase to lug them around. I also love the elastic. It’s not quite a lock on a diary, but it still gives me a sense of privacy, knowing it won’t fling open at a bad time.

Journaling in this inexpensive little book has given me the freedom to abandon trying to make my handwriting perfect and to just follow my thoughts, random as they are at times. I can also feel liberated in knowing that, although my daughters know how to read or are learning to read, my handwriting is so atrocious they would abandon their attempt to trying to decipher what I’ve written. I feel like my thoughts are still my thoughts and that they can remain private. In a cheap little black book with pink and purple butterflies.

My dear colleague Katja: This IS the best writing you’ve ever done for me, and you’ve done some excellent piece of work.
May I nudge you? I could see this in any women’s magazine that takes essays. OR how about a regional, or local one like Points North? Or how about one of the Christian women’s magazines that you read?
All that said, my friend, do not let this languish in your computer. We must, according to our beliefs, not hide our light beneath a bowl. Right? Eva

It’s that time of year …