How to learn Swedish in 1000 difficult lessons

The twelfth day of Christmas has come and almost gone, and those damned 12 drummers are pa-rum-pa-pa-pumming away in my head, reminding me that I go back to work, um, tomorrow.

I didn't do my winter vacation homework - I promised my boss to read a particular book about public relations - and we never managed to drag all our thousands of kronor worth of coins to the bank. I never wrote those New Year's cards I'd planned to write, and the apartment probably could use a deep-cleaning.

But the husband and I did manage to get to Chicago and back without a major mishap or nasty comments about homosexuality at passport control. Christmas itself was unusually calm, and while my nieces and nephews continue to grow up at a frightening pace, somehow it's less hectic and nervewracking that they no longer jump all over us with wild abandon for a solid week of Christmas.

We spent a grand New Year's Eve in a sort of glass pavilion in the middle of Norrmalmstorg, eating lobster and dancing like mad. And this very afternoon we babysit for baby Signe without her crying at all.

But most of all, we even managed to put in an offer on an obscenely huge apartment on Odenplan, an offer which has been accepted and we're just waiting for a final okay from the bank before we sign on the dotted line, sometime before Monday. (The apartment is just obscenely huge by Swedish standards; Americans outside of Manhattan would merely consider it a bit on the large side.)

I can't believe it. We're going to move. And the husband has lived his whole life in the apartment we're in now.

Holy cow, Batman.

The Swedish word for the day is lägenhet. It means, of course, apartment.

- by Francis S.