It's time for another in-depth Swedish lesson - this one in the form of a test.

7. Swedish attitudes about Americans. Although it seems unfair to generalize about the attitudes of all Swedes, I don't care. I work with them, live side-by-side with them, hell, I'm married to one, so I like to think I know a bit or two about what Swedes think about Americans. (For the sake of brevity, I'm using the term "American" to refer to citizens of the United States. My apologies to all those Canadians, Mexicans, Brazilians and other residents of North and South America out there.)

Leave your answers in the comments so everyone can see. Oh, and this is an open book test.

a. Swedes themselves are humble people and while they do have opinions about Americans, they assume that Americans don't give a damn about the opinion of the people of a sparsely populated country with an obscure language. Swedes agree that Americans are notorious for being a bit isolationist and not caring what anyone thinks of them. But in fact, we Americans have a terrible inferiority complex when it comes to Europe. We have no royalty, we have no roots, we have no class. We do care what Europe thinks, and it hurts our feelings.

Do Americans feel lacking somehow when it comes to Europe, true or false? (Yeah I know, this question is about American attitudes. Gotcha!)

b. Swedes are completely confused by Americans' attitudes toward guns. "I read that a governor was trying to pass a law that allowed people to buy one semi-automatic weapon a month!" a friend said to me once. I regretted to inform her that the law in question was in fact a gun control measure trying to lower the current limit.

Do Swedes believe that everyone owns a gun in America, true or false?

c. Swedes are horrified that America still has capital punishment. "No country in Europe has capital punishment anymore. Isn't that against the Geneva Convention or something?" they ask.

Do Swedes believe that Americans are barbaric on account of their support for the death penalty, true or false?

d. Swedes believe in a concept called lagom, which is usually translated as the middle way. It basically means everything in moderation or doing things just enough, but not too much. Swedes also travel extensively, and almost everyone I know has been to America, and they always comment about how Americans do everything in excess. For instance, they think the portions of food served in restaurants is definitely not lagom, but way over the top. "No wonder people are overweight," they say.

Do Swedes believe that almost everyone in America is fat, true or false?

e. Despite their criticisms of America, Swedes are somewhat unique in Europe in that they don't have love-hate feelings toward America. It takes no scratching below the surface to determine if they like the place, they are in fact quite open and unambivalent about it. "It's a great country," they say.

Do Swedes devour American culture with avidity, albeit not without some picking and choosing, true or false?

- brought to you by Francis S.

I woke this morning with a fitful headache and hungry. I stayed up too late, and the husband has gone to Spain. His mother has had a heart attack, and all the messiness of his poor family rises to the surface, his difficult sisters, his father's untimely death in 1972, the horrible cult masking as Christianity that he was raised in lurking in the corners always.

He called me at one in the morning crying because the doctors are so awful, because he doesn't want his mother to die or to be in pain, because his mother is frightened, because he heard a man dying in the next room, the heart monitor sending out a horrible drone marking the fact.

"I don't ever want to grow old," he told me. "I want to die before."

There was no comforting him, at the other end of the phone, at the other end of the continent. Not that it would help for him to be here; he doesn't take well to being comforted. At least not in the ways I selfishly want to comfort him: taking him in my arms, kissing his tears, stroking his head with the utmost tenderness and gently. Instead, what he wants is for me to sit quietly as he chain smokes, moving throughout the rooms of the apartment putting away stray magazines, polishing the mirror in the bathroom or fishing his passport out of the chest of drawers in the bedroom, his sense of purpose vestigial but persistent somehow.

It hurts to feel as if one is unable to give any sort of solace.

"I wish I was with you," he said to me last night, sobbing. "I can't sleep at all, I keep waiting for the telephone to ring and tell me she's died."

Don't smoke too many cigarettes, I told him. Have a drink. I love you more than anything in the world, I said, and I wish I was there with you, too.

So this morning I was listening to Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. And although Tatiana Troyanos has a lovely voice, I'm always disappointed that the witches' chorus sings its part straight and not as a pack of cackling hens as in the recording I had when I was young.

"Harm's our delight and mischief all our skill," the witches sing, but beautifully. And beautifully, it doesn't convey the same evil intent.

The husband won't be home until Tuesday at the earliest, if things don't change for the better or the worse.

The Swedish phrase for the day is jag saknar dig. It means I miss you.

- by Francis S.

Goodbye to Gamla Stan. Goodbye to Slottsbacken and the Royal Palace. Goodbye to Bollhusgränd and to Köpmanstorget with its statue of St. George eternally slaying the dragon, which is a copy of a wooden statue, the original being in the Storkyrkan. Goodbye to Stortorget dressed up for winter with its Christmas market, and goodbye to narrow little Mårten Trotzigsgränd.

My desk is packed, my computer unplugged, countless old papers, magazines and photos thrown away. On Monday, the company starts the day in Östermalm on Linnégatan, in new offices. Sweden won't be quite the same for me. I miss the old office terribly, and it's only been an hour and a half. I know, I'm a sentimental fool.

The Swedish words for the day are farväl, adjö and hejdå. They mean farewell, adieu and goodbye.

- by Francis S.

Have weddings in America always been nearly five days of feasting and fetes? Events of nearly royal proportions, it seems? Not that I'm complaining. I had a grand time.

First on the agenda was a small family dinner with one of my beloved little brother's oldest friends, who runs an eco-hotel in Ecuador - I hadn't seen him in nearly 10 years and amazingly, he is exactly the same as when I last saw him. Well, almost the same; perhaps a little more settled, a little more realistic, but just as kind. My youngest nephew fell in love with him. (The husband and I will definitely be going to Ecuador sometime in the near future.)

Then, there was the day where the bride, the groom, another old friend of the bride's, the husband and myself all spent the afternoon in the city getting pedicures and drinking champagne (the husband thought the pedicures were deplorably bad as pedicures go, but I'd never had one before so it seemed perfectly wonderful to me), yakking it up with people we'd never met before in an apartment across from the venerable old Ambassador West hotel, eating bad sandwiches at Cosí, some kind of new sandwich shop I'd never seen before that tries desperately to look funky and unique, serving toasted marshmallows that can be cooked over a can of sterno and with weird mismatched sofas. Except the same mismatched sofas can be found at every Cosí, of which there seem to be, er, at least more than 20 in Chicago, judging by the five or so we encountered in our brief wanderings.

Next, there was a dim sum lunch for 30 at Phoenix in Chinatown, with my sister-in-law officiating and arguing with the waiters in Cantonese while my beloved little brother made the rounds from table to table, introducing all the various factions of his life to all the various factions of his soon-to-be wife's life to one another.

Then, instead of a rehearsal dinner, my parents rented a bowling alley the night before the wedding, so 50 people spent the night drinking beer and bowling badly (I think I hit an 88 once). My favorite part was watching the various people under the age of 11, who had a grand time despite the constant announcements over the loudspeaker ("No walking in the lanes!" "The orange balls are for children only!" "Only one ball at one time in the lane!").

Oh, and then there was the actual wedding. The chuppah held up by among other people, my sainted sister and the husband; the very explanatory ceremony by the rabbi (she speaks Danish!?!); the breaking of the glass on the second try; my very bad singing (I was too nervous and too emotional); the bride's mother having a wee bit too much to drink; the fighting over the cakes (each of the ten tables had its own different cake and everyone wanted the gooey chocolate one); the karaoke singing ("Delta Dawn, what's that flower you have on?" was, perhaps, my favorite choice of song, sung by the voluptuous C. with great verve and gusto, if little understanding of the concept of pitch).

The Swedish words for the day are brud och brudgum. They mean bride and groom.

- by Francis S.

I've been there and back again. The United States is still the same, just with more flags. And more god-bless-america. I guess everyone everywhere has already noted the irony of both sides of the war on terrorism invoking god as being on their side. Not that it surprises me, I just find if funny.

However, I was amazed that the airport security wasn't overwhelming. And unlike the previous visit, the person at passport control didn't seem to be extremely uncomfortable about the fact that the husband and I are homosexualists.

When we visited in August of the past year, the woman at the passport control desk asked us as we stood together in front of her, "How are you family?"

We told her we were married.

She said with disgust, "We don't recognize that in this country. Next time you come up separately, understand?" Which made my stomach lurch, and my knees nearly shake. I wanted to say something nasty, but passport control is one place where you can't win by saying something. The passport control police are all-powerful.

This time, however, passport control was nothing like that.

This time, though the husband went up first by himself, the man behind the desk gestured to me to come up once the husband said that he was traveling not alone but with his husband, namely me.

This time, the man behind the desk said "Have a good stay," as we left after he stamped our passports.

This time, the husband didn't ask me how the United States dares to call itself the home of the free.

The Swedish word for the day is onöjdig. It means unnecessary.

- by Francis S.

The New World beckons with a crooked finger. I could have conceived and bore a child in the time it's been since I was last there. If men could bear children that is. It's the longest time I've spent without going back. And I haven't missed it really.

Now, I just need to remember to give the husband plenty of space, and to grab some time alone just the two of us so that he doesn't drown in the too-muchness of my happy family. If there's one thing I learned from my ex, it's that it is important to show to one's spouse that they are No. 1 when it comes to family.

Rationally, it shouldn't matter: There is no contest between spouse and in-laws, it isn't a competition for my affection, I don't love one above the other, it's apples and oranges. But life on planet earth has little to do with rationality and everything to do with emotion. And wanting attention is in fact natural when faced with in-laws, no matter how well we all get along.

Chicago, here we come.

The Swedish word for the day is släktingarna. It means the relatives.

- by Francis S.

My mother and father spent last night hanging out at a gay club in Oak Park, Illinois. It's not like the clubs downtown in the city, the men are less beautiful, more tentative, more real than at the big clubs in Chicago. But there were strippers - "They were really handsome!" said my mother with conviction - and a dancefloor and loud music - "My ears are still ringing!" said my father after they arrived home.

The reason they went was to raise money for the Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays organization my mother started. Another local branch of the organization recommended it. My mother gave out hershey kisses in little bags tied together with rainbow ribbons with cards attached with a phone number and address.

"I kept telling your father 'our mothers are probably rolling over in their graves right now,'" my mother said to me. "But maybe your grandmother would understand, deep down."

I replied that I thought now that she's dead, my grandmother most certainly understands everything.

"Yes, I guess you're right about that," my mother said.

I keep envisioning my parents sitting there in that club, friendly and smiling and giving out chocolate kisses - as well as the real thing - to all these hundred or more gay men, listening as one by one they tell my mother about their relationships with their own mothers, my poor nearly deaf father unable to hear a thing but nodding amiably and sympathetically, both of them cool as cucumbers when the strippers come out. It about makes me burst with pride.

The second Swedish phrase for the day is Mors dag. It means Mother's Day, which is on May 26 in Sweden this year.

- by Francis S.

I can see on everyone's faces, feel it in the air: the promise of summer is almost too much to bear. April and May have been heaven-sent, sunny and warm and full of pale green leaves. But will the summer live up to this glorious spring? It's rumored that June and July will be hellishly cold and damp.

I would never have imagined living in a country where the collective national psyche is so dependent on the weather. Where one is forced to throw oneself into a warm and sunny day as if jumping from a high cliff into the unknown, where the ten lesser months of the year are mere preparation for a tenuous summer that could possibly never come.

Me, I'm as nervous as the next guy that today will be the end of the balminess, as the husband and I wander around the city, buying presents for the upcoming trip to the States for my beloved little brother's wedding to my friend the Rebel.

I'm sick of worrying about the weather, especially when it's this perfect. Perhaps this means I really am becoming a Swede.

The Swedish word for the day is sommaren. It means the summer.

- by Francis S.

Dogs are allowed in Sweden. In shops and on buses. Just about everywhere except restaurants. So it was no surprise to hear strangled and asthmatic barking in the subway as our train pulled away from Central Station - dogs are allowed in the last car.

The question is, however, whether pig-dogs are allowed. Because what was making the noise was small and round and pink and white and indeed, the ugliest canine-type critter that I have ever seen. An albino pug with a few white patches on its back, the rest of it a rubbed-raw pink, its owner was visibly proud of its pathetic ugliness.

Is it possible to be so ugly as to be endearing?

The Swedish word for the day is husdjur. It means pet.

- by Francis S.

The husband and I celebrated Ascension day by ascending to the minimal, luxe and empty bar of the Nordic Light Hotel with M., the t.v. producer and L., a great friend of the husband's from the old days and a king of the Swedish fashion mafia, on account of his being about the only haute couturier in the entire country.

I say a friend from the old days because the husband and L. rarely see each other anymore. Though neither has, or would, say as much, this is no doubt on account of me.

I like L. tremendously, his voice so soft one has to lean closer to hear him, his elegant but unstuffy manners, his twinkling blue eyes. But he surely must resent me, even if he never acts in the least as if he does. I think the husband and L. were friends in some measure because they were both single, it was in part a bachelor cameraderie.

Why is it that when one pairs off, certain friends suddenly fade into the background, while others come into clear focus? It is true that most of the friends of the husband and I, but by no means all, come in pairs.

Is it because single people grow weary of hearing the word "we" all the time?

Interestingly enough, this is not the case with M., the t.v. producer. It is no doubt because he romanticizes the relationship of the husband and I all out of proportion. It would be a mistake to think the M. is not a hopeless romantic, just because he's fucked half of the most beautiful women in Stockholm aged 18 to 24.

"I love you guys," he always says grabbing us around the shoulders, especially after having had one too many sips of white tequila, served neat in a whisky glass. "You guys are my family."

And we love him, too, because he is indeed a part of our large and unwieldy but much beloved family, most of whom are not blood relations of any sort.

The Swedish word for the day is söderkis. It is a slang term for a boy who is native to the island of Södermalm, once a working-class section of the city that now likes to consider itself as Sweden's answer to Soho.

- by Francis S.

The days are drawing near when my company leaves its offices across from the royal palace. It will be a blow to leave the old town behind, to no longer be able to walk to work, to be a bit off the beaten path.

At least despite its proximity, I won't have a view of the U.S. Embassy from my new window. (Not only do I find the embassy an ugly complex of buildings, I detest the place; the Department of Motor Vehicles can't possibly hold a candle to the supercilious attitudes of the staff of the U.S. Embassy: "Uh, are you stupid or something? Because why did you think you should pick up your passport at window F and not at window A where you dropped it off originally? Yes I know you've been waiting 15 minutes while I was yammering away on the phone with a friend, and that the sign above window F says 'passport pickup' but really, how stupid can a person be?")

I will now be taking a ferry from the sluice to Djurgården, an island with museums and a zoo and ambassadors' residences and Gröna Lund, that fabulous old amusement park with ancient rides like the blåtåget - the blue train - a scary ride for 6-year-olds; I love the blåtåget. I will then walk from Djurgården into Östermalm, where stand the new offices - which are actually old military barracks.

The Swedish word for the day is vad tråkigt. It means, more or less, that's too bad.

- by Francis S.

Wow. Last week was Valborg and Första Maj. Now this week we have Kristihimmelsfärd, otherwise known as Ascension. And the week after next it's Pingst - Pentecost. That's one holiday a week, three out of four weeks.

I love this anti-religious country that has so many religious holidays. Go, Jesus, go! Thanks for dying for our sins and giving us all these great holidays.

- by Francis S.

I wonder when the first bureaucracy was created? Was it in China, with all its scribes, or was it under Hammurabi with his code of laws in Babylon, or under the earliest pharoahs in Egypt? I wonder further when the first satire of bureaucracy was written? There must be a writer who pre-dates Gogol and his Dead Souls, the oldest novel that comes to mind on the subject. Because if bureaucracy has been part of human existence for thousands of years, then human beings have suffered from it for just as long.

Take the friend of my beloved little brother. His name is, uh, "George." On his driver's license it states that his sex is "female." He is not, however, female. But getting this changed is apparently a Herculean task.

"I was just reading," my beloved little brother said, "about a lawyer who had the same problem." This lawyer apparently went to the Department of Motor Vehicles, where a clerk there told him that the only way to correct the error was to fill out a form saying that he had changed his sex. Which he refused to do.

"I'm a lawyer and I'll take this to the Supreme Court if I have to," he told the clerk. The clerk said fine, but between the six years it will take for the case to get to the Supreme Court, he will have to put up with a lot of security hassles in the New America Made Safe from Terrorism.

The lawyer broke down and filled out the change-of-sex form.

My little brother was gleeful, because "George" has some, er, personal issues he hasn't quite worked out: "He would go ballistic if he had to fill out a change-of-sex form."

The Swedish word for the day is tjänsteman. It means civil servant.

- by Francis S.

Sweden is rich in square miles, poor in flowers. It's just too far north I think.

Oh, there are wildflowers and some flowering bushes like forsythia and lilac, and of course flowering fruit trees, but there don't seem to be gardens bursting with blossoms and no one seems to have vases filled with spring flowers picked from the backyard. I suspect that if people have flowers in the backyard, they're too precious to pick.

Instead, one clips bare branches from trees before they've started to bloom, sticks them in water and watches them slowly burst open over a weeks' time, perhaps. It's a lovely ascetic beauty, albeit one born of necessity more than anything else.

The Swedish word for the day is blomma. It means, of course, flower.

- by Francis S.

Today is Valborg Afton - Walpurgis Eve - when all of Sweden is outside lighting bonfires in the street to welcome the Spring. Supposedly, the festival of St. Walpurgis or Walburga was also the time for a traditional witches' sabbath, so people lit bonfires to keep away the witches.

Unfortunately, I feel like the witches have already had their way with me - I'm sick with a cold and a fever while the husband, that lucky dog, is out having dinner with A. the former model and aspiring producer and her boyfriend, C., the fashion photographer. They've probably lit their own bonfire somewhere up in Vasastan, in the northern part of the city.

Fortunately, tomorrow is a holiday not just for St. Walburga - it's the first of May. Which is when most of the world celebrates labor day - International Workers' Day. But there are vague communist overtones to the first of May, and so of course the United States has to have its own separate labor day to avoid any appearance of looking even the least little bit pink. It sounds so old-fashioned now.

The Swedish word for the day is vänsterpartiet. This - the Left Party - is the current name for what used to be called the communist party in Sweden.

- by Francis S.

I don't care how balmy the spring is here in Stockholm, I wish I were in New Orleans. I would pay good money to see the latest opus of Richard Read, written with his paramour, that pornstar up-and-comer Jonno D'Addario, and their buddy Flynn De Marco. Er, I would pay up to $15 at least. To be able to say you've seen a play called "Hell's Belles" is worth the price of the ticket alone.

I wish I could write campy movie parodies in the vein of Charles Ludlam and Charles Busch, I could at least entertain myself. Stockholm doesn't seem to be the place for such divine kitsch. It's really an American thing, the stuff that makes the U.S. great, the part of the States that needs protection from terrorists and the reason why George W. Bush is so bellicose with the axis of evil - you know without even asking that that damned axis of evil absolutely loathes Charles Ludlam.

The Swedish word for the day is teater. I think you don't need my help to figure out that it means theater.

- by Francis S.

It's marvelous to take a day off in the middle of the week. It makes the end of the day on Friday seem like an unexpected gift. I wish I never had to work on Wednesdays.

The Swedish word for the day is onsdagar. It means, of course, Wednesdays. (Which makes me wonder, why are days of the week proper nouns in English? Is it a holdover from German, where all nouns start with a capital letter?)

- by Francis S.

Damnation. The Stockholm bourse (link in Swedish only, sorry) has fallen for the seventh day in a row, helped along by Ericsson's announcement on Monday of its latest mammoth savings and cutback plan.

This is what happens in the stock exchanges of small countries: When big companies go down, they take the bourse with them.

We bought our Ericsson stocks after they announced the previous set of big cutbacks, when I thought the value of the stock couldn't go lower. But oh, no, they are now worth half of what we paid for them.

The Swedish word for the day is ned or ner ("ned" goes with verbs of movement, "ner" with verbs where no movement is implied). It means down.

- by Francis S.

The husband and I just made a mad dash to the SAS ticket office at Stureplan. We are the worst procrastinators about some things and we had yet to get our tickets for my beloved little brother's wedding, which is in less than a month.

The nice lady at the counter managed to squeeze us into flights to and from Chicago, but we have to leave on a Wednesday and come back on a Monday, so it'll be nearly two weeks in America.

I haven't been back since Sept. 11, and frankly I'm a little frightened. Not of terrorists, but of the rhetoric and empty but unnerving security measures. I wonder how much things have changed, or if they really haven't.

The Swedish phrase for the day is övriga frågor, which means miscellaneous questions.

- by Francis S.

My friend R., who also happens to be my favorite employee, is moving back to Finland after more than four years living in Sweden. It was a blow to learn that he was leaving, not just because the company has a hiring freeze and we can't afford to lose good project managers. It's also a blow to morale, mostly mine because I count on him to inject energy, keep us all honest, and send me 10,000 e-mails a day.

We started talking about the whole expatriate version of the you-can't-go-home-again theory, which says that after about four years outside The Fatherland, the likelihood of your being happy living back home is rather slim. Of course, moving back and forth between Finland and Sweden is rather like moving back and forth between Canada and the United States - the countries share an awful lot of culture, so the difference is less pronounced than it might be between other countries.

"I think it would be hard to go back now," I said to him.

"Maybe. I guess I'll find out," he said.

Then again, it would be hard to stay here if I weren't with the husband. Still, the idea of moving back to the States is very strange. Unnatural even, and I can hardly say why. Except that life seems too easy there. And in fact, it doesn't matter because we are not planning on leaving Sweden in the foreseeable future.

The Swedish word for the day is enkel biljett. It means one-way ticket.

- by Francis S.

Oh, and don't forget to check out Raising Hell, the new "so-called" parenting magazine by Mig, Michele and a few other parent-type people. It's all anyone'll ever need to know to raise a kid, believe you me.

- by Francis S.

My beloved little brother has asked me to sing a song at his wedding... something to get people to stop chit-chatting in the hall and move into the room where the ceremony will take place. I've decided to do it in Swedish, singing a summer song called "Uti Vår Hage."

Uti vår hage där växa blåbär,
Kom, hjärtansfröjd!
Vill du mig något så träffas vi där.
Kom, liljor och aqvileja,
Kom, rosor och salivia.
Kom ljuva krusmynta,
Kom, hjärtansfröjd!

Which means something like:

Out in the meadow, where blueberries grow,
Come, heart's desire!
If you want to tell me something,
then meet me there.
Come, lilies and aqvileja (I have no idea what it is)
Come, roses and salvia,
Come sweet mint,
Come heart's desire!
(It's lovely and poetic and vaguely sad in Swedish; my translation leaves something to be desired unfortunately.)

- by Francis S.

I'm a writer. I came to Europe to write a novel, which turned into a series of vaguely autobiographical interconnected short stories. Then, after saying I could never become an expatriate, I ended up staying on this continent but leaving the novel behind, not even trying to get the finished bits published.

I sometimes get the urge to write fiction again - it plagues me when I'm trying to fall asleep on a Sunday night - but mostly my job takes up whatever writing desire I have. Oh, and then there's this journal. Which I sometimes blame for my not writing fiction anymore.

But the truth is that my life is perfectly satisfying without the extra writing - it's too full to fit in the fictional, I suppose. Yet I'm sometimes a wee bit jealous of my friends who've written successful novels or books of poetry. I still tell myself that I'll go back to it, one day.

The Swedish word for the day is författare. It means writer.

- by Francis S.

K. left this morning, flying back to Boston through Reykjavik as she always does. I helped her drag her heavy bag down the five flights of stairs and into a taxi.

"See you in two weeks," she said, and I kissed her on the cheek and she was gone.

Then I felt guilty for not spending the rest of the day outside in the balmy spring, even if we did at least eat a late lunch at a table outside a cafe with M., the t.v. producer. It's amazing how the guilt induced by my mother - "how can you kids waste the day inside watching t.v.? Get out, now!" - still lasts to this day.

But really, what's so great about the outside anyway, especially when you have a reasonably good book to read and a delightfully deep and comfortable sofa to lie on?

The Swedish word for the day is deckare. It means detective story.

- by Francis S.

Today, one of the women who coordinates the translations of magazines at our office asked me about a particular sentence she wanted to make sure was correct.

"In Swedish, they use the phrase 'business ethics and morals,'" she said. "And they translated it that way, but then the American editor changed it to just 'business ethics.'"

Yes, I said, the American editor was right. We Americans don't talk about business having morals. Businesses are generally amoral at best, and immoral in most cases. They have codes of conduct - ethics - imposed on them by the law. But morals, no. They basically do what they can get away with.

Swedish companies, on the other hand, are expected to not only obey codes of conduct, but to know the difference between right and wrong; they are expected to act in the best interests of everyone and not just in their own interests. Whether they do or not is another question, but society expects it of them.

I wonder how long Sweden can hold out against the tide of Americanization on this particular issue.

The Swedish word for the day is beteende. It means behavior.

- by Francis S.

I've got that damned nicotene monkey on my back again. Drooling in my hair and breathing down my neck, it's an ugly sight.

It's the stress. And of course K. is a terrible influence. She goes cigarette crazy whenever she's here. She keeps sending me monosyllabic e-mails (her desk is on the floor above mine) such as "cig?" or my personal favorite, "fag?"

The Swedish word for the day is apa. It means monkey.

- by Francis S.

My beloved little brother is getting married on May 19. The invitation came yesterday. He met the bride at my wedding here in Stockholm, in fact - she's my friend the Rebel, the chemistry PhD slash patent lawyer (why is it all my friends can only be described in long phrases that by rights should require hyphens?). I would never have imagined when I met her over dinner some six years ago at a restaurant in Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C. - I had recently split up after 13 years with my ex, she'd recently split up with her husband, the asshole - that not only would we hit it off so well, but that in late May 2002 she would be related to me, at least by law. It makes me grin from ear to ear.

I'm going to go with the Swedish tradition of never-ending speeches and get all sentimental while still trying to embarrass both of them. I think.

The Swedish word for the day is hjärta. It means heart.

- by Francis S.

The days are getting longer, and walking home from work with the husband, we decided to take the Katarina Hissen - the old elevator by Slussen that takes one up to the heights of Södermalm and on into Mosebacke Torg. At 8:15, the sun had just made it below the horizon and turned the sky all rosy blue, the various towers of the city - the German Church, The Knight's Church, the city hall - all burnished and rightfully proud of themselves. (Oh, but I love the pathetic fallacy.)

"Sweet boy," the husband said. He calls me sweet boy because I call him that. I've never told him that it seems hardly fitting to call me sweet boy, with my gray hair and grizzled old face. Not that that would stop him.

The Swedish word for the day is skymningen. It means the dusk.

- by Francis S.

At long last, I'm coming up for air.

It's hard to keep up the weblog when one is working 16-hour days. And there are a few people who, if this world were fair and just, would be getting slapped right now, but good.

The Swedish phrase for the day is mer senare. It means more later.

- by Francis S.

My review for Rasmus' Peer-to-Peer review project:

Name: Bingbowden's rants 'n' stuff - while this reviewer has a problem with the use of 'n' instead of the full word and without irony, the weblog mostly avoids similar stylistic errors.
First entry: Feb. 2, 2002.
Biographical information on the writer: 21-year-old male living in Bristol.
Promises: "some cracking links and heartfelt (and occasionally
controversial) opinions."
Lives up to promise: uh, well, maybe a little with the links.
Music links: this reviewer knows nothing about current music and is not in any position to judge these.
General links: mainstream press and a small mix of vaguely left-wing non-profits, plus a link to My eBay shop thrown in for a little capitalist greed.
Other weblog links: nicely avoids the a-listers. Mostly Brits, from the inane to the okay.
Links within the blog entries: a mix of oft-linked tests, articles from The Guardian, lots of Mark Thomas, and a decent smattering of random links to other websites, of which a reasonable number are interesting.
Spelling and grammar: careless. But then, this reviewer is probably overly sensitive when it comes to proper grammar and spelling.
Writing style: brief and conversational.
Politics: left.
Voyeuristic appeal: not much. Little, if any, sex, angst or anger.
Comment: The writer seems an amiable enough fellow. It's possible that the weblog would appeal to laid-back twenty-somethings who are interested in Radiohead and other similar music, have vague left-ish feelings about politics and the world, and don't seem to be interested in too much else. Unfortunately, the weblog was not this reviewer's cup of tea.

(I hope my tone isn't too elak. That would mean, uh, cruel or mean.)

- by Francis S.

My friend K. is coming back again to Sweden. She'll be here tomorrow.

She just can't seem to stay away.

Well, actually, it's because I keep asking her to come back to manage projects at work because she's so good at it. She'll be here for a month this time, staying with us. Which will be much nicer a year from now because we will have more space: the co-op board of the building at long last has said that we will be able to buy at least 70 square meters of the attic above our apartment, and the bank has said they will give us the money to buy it.

This is brilliant, amazing, wonderful news.

We will expand our apartment so that it is on two levels - build a terrace, and a great big bathroom with a sauna (you have to have a sauna here in Sweden), and extra bedrooms, and turn the dining room into a library, and the big bedroom into the dining room and open it up to the living room.

We will have a huge apartment (by Swedish standards at least). We will be spoiled rotten. Our lives will be even more complete. Er, not exactly, but we'll have more space in which to make our lives more complete. Or something like that.

The Swedish word for the day is ovän. This is at the request again of A., the former model and aspiring producer. She was asking me last night if there is a comparable word in English, and there isn't. It means one who is not a friend. Not an enemy, just not a friend. This can be someone who was a friend before, or someone who on first acquaintance is immediately not a friend. When it comes to words that don't translate from Swedish into English, this is almost up there with my favorite, kissnödig.

- by Francis S.

Happy birthday, beloved little brother. Ja, må han leva uti hundrade år! (may he live to be a hundred!)

- by Francis S.

The priest is pregnant. And now she hates the cult of motherhood, a phenomenon she never realized existed before. At least, that's what she told me.

She doesn't like that she's not supposed to have any ambivalent feelings about the whole thing, that everyone expects her to be all gushy about it. She doesn't like that for most people, her usual priestly self has been replaced by another being: the vehicle for The Baby. She finds the hap-hap-happy attitudes at the pre-natal clinic insufferable, and she doesn't like that there doesn't seem to be any room there for her boyfriend, the policeman, - the cult is about motherhood, not fatherhood.

She's also feeling a bit of pressure from her boss. The Swedish church may be liberal, but not so liberal that it's keen on, er, unwed mothers.

"He keeps asking me, 'do you need a priest for the wedding?'" she told me.

The priest and the policeman had planned on getting married in October, but this puts a crimp in things.

"I hope I stop feeling sick soon," she said.

The Swedish word for the day, of course, is gravid, which means pregnant.

- by Francis S.

The year is recklessly using up its appropriate weather chits. First, New Year's and the tail of the Christmas season were crisp and snowy. Now, Easter weekend has been all balmy and sunny and on the verge of green. I'm worried that the rest of the year is doomed to foul weather.

This is what Sweden reduces one to becoming. A weather obsessive.

At least I don't have to feel guilty about not taking advantage of the blue skies and warm temperatures. The husband and I woke up early Saturday morning, despite having had a grand dinner the night before with the friends from London, and the television producer, and the parents of the friends from London. Well, the parents of the photographer, that is, not the parents of the Wallpaper* editor. It was all food smothered in the olive oil and parmesan cheese we brought back from Lucca, and salami and pecorino from Lucca too, as antipasti.

Aside the parents, and me (who stayed up only until 2 a.m. because I had to work the next day), everyone else was horribly hungover from staying up until 5 a.m. Thursday night talking and drinking vodka - the husband has no brothers, so the photographer and the television producer are his surrogates, whom he doesn't get to see so often. So when they do get together, it's a celebration.

Which all means that we were awfully tired at 7:15 on Saturday morning when we got up to catch the ferry out into the archipelago, groaning all the way, not even trying to look out the filthy windows of the boat, instead reading the paper and sleeping fitfully all the way there.

But when we arrived, it was worth it all.

The husband was suddenly wide awake, and spent the afternoon helping C., the fashion photographer, cut up a fallen tree, rake up the scattered branches and leaves and burn it in a heap, all in a most manly fashion. The husband has always lived in the city and thus finds raking leaves romantic, somehow. I grew up in suburban Chicago and find raking leaves a big fat pain in the ass.

Me, I took my usual walks in the civilized paths through the woods of the island, which seems to have finally let out its breath after holding it in all winter. It hasn't quite relaxed into flower and leaf yet, and the sea is still leaden. But the birds are giddy, a parliament of fowls all talking and laughing over and under each other with no sense of decorum.

This particular little island allows no cars, and there are some two hundred houses or so, but only one year-round inhabitant. The island is crisscrossed with well-laid paths of gravel with functional names like "västväggen" and "mittelväggen" - the west way and the middle way.

There are several great meadows in the middle of the island - now cut to the ground and covered by bleached and straw-colored clumps of dead hay and grass. The meadows are ringed by plots of land with carefully tended green lawns and as many as four small buildings - main houses and guesthouses and boathouses and pavilions and greenhouses and sheds - and gardens with nothing to show for themselves but freshly overturned dirt. I don't much care for these houses.

Further toward the edges of the island are the places I like, the plots of land that are all lichen- and moss-covered granite rock, the houses perched with views to the sea on one side or the other, all looking much less soft and domesticated, a bit tougher, and a lot more expensive no doubt.

After walking round one of the meadows, and then through the path that bisects it, I end up between two rocky outcroppings and then down into a low marshy area now muddy but during the summer is filled with raspberry canes and sea grass and a million buzzing bees. I take the path on up into a shallow wood and up onto lejonklipporna - the lion rocks - and sit, alone, with my feet dangling a few meters above the frigid waters of the Baltic, watching the sun trying and failing to burn the haze from the sea and the surrounding islands.

I find it all such pleasingly digestible nature, and so terribly romantic. Everything a city boy wants from a couple days in the country.

The Swedish phrase for the day is smultronställe. It literally means a place where wild strawberries grow, but is a metaphor for an idyllic spot on earth.

- by Francis S.

Four years ago today, going by the calendar, I was living in Barcelona in a flat not far from the great unfinished Church of the Sagrada Familia. I was so skinny then, on this particular night wearing a skintight club shirt of shiny 100-percent artificial cloth of one sort or another, dancing wildly, drunkenly in a club called Arena, a bit unsure of myself, looking for love or even just some sex, and being disappointed.

Five years ago today, going by the feast days of the church, I was chanting the part of the evangelist in the passion gospel of John at the noon good Friday service at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C. On one side of me was the man chanting the part of Jesus, on the other side was the man chanting the part of Pilate. The congregation likewise stood.

In the order of service, an instruction was given that all should kneel when the story first mentions Golgotha. But, several lines before then, I had to chant about a place called Gabbatheh, and my diction obviously wasn't clear enough because everyone knelt then, although they realized their mistake when, a minute later, I chanted about a place called Golgotha.

I remember how difficult it was to chant for the five or more minutes it took to finish, but also how moving it was. I was nervous when I started, but the nervousness left me after the first couple of lines.

After I finished, they turned the cloth on the alter table over to red, and there was no more music in the service, and would be none until Easter morning.

It's odd what one remembers, the sacred and the profane.

The Swedish word for the day is Långfredag. It means Good Friday.

- by Francis S.

It's amazing how many religious holidays there are in this seemingly secular country. Easter, for instance, is a four-and-a-half day affair. Sadly for me, I'm stuck coming into the office tomorrow because I can't get a hold of an interview subject to set up an interview, I still need to write a brief, and I have to make phonecalls to the U.S. And I should have had the day off especially since it's my birthday tomorrow. (I'm going to have to change my brief bio to read "41" instead of merely "40.")

Whinge, whinge, whinge.

At least the friends from London are coming into town, so we'll have dinner with them. And then Saturday morning we'll traipse off for two days in the Stockholm archipelago on Birds' Island at the country house of A. the former model and aspiring producer, and her boyfriend, C. the fashion photographer. I hope today's sunny weather holds.

The Swedish word for the day is stackan. It means poor thing. Yeah, that's me I'm talking about.

- by Francis S., in such a mood of self-pity that he can barely blog

I wonder why I never seem to retain the knowledge that a vacation involving family in some form or other is not a vacation for the husband. He is stuck hearing about ancient family history, dim family friends best forgotten, and sad little jokes as well as my parents' amiable and constant bickering with each other (which is strange to me as they never fought when I was a child, they were always such a united front).

I explained this to K., who was back again from the U.S. and staying in our apartment while we were gone before she left again on a jet plane this morning.

She told me that I shouldn't feel guilty about doing this to the husband.

"You moved to Sweden for him," she said. "I think it's a fair exchange that he puts up with your family every so often."

Which would be true if he didn't need a real vacation badly, complete with beach and sleeping until noon. Not to mention us needing a nice romantic vacation together. If only I didn't enjoy my family so much, I wouldn't be tempted by cottages on Lake Michigan and stone houses in Tuscany.

The Swedish word for the day is förlåt. It means sorry.

- by Francis S.

We got back from Tuscany late last night, back from the land of former brutal city-states now reduced to an idyllic gold and green and romantic adult Disneyland of leaning towers, Uffizi galleries and Pitti palaces, tree-covered walled cities and charming many-towered villages. My mother was obsessed with the blooming of the wisteria growing outside the little stone house where we stayed in a little stone village tucked away in a valley that looked out toward Lucca on one side. My father drove like an Italian maniac, making my mother gasp. The husband and I fought over bringing home an obscenely large salami that I know we'll never eat.

We're home.

I only received two calls from work while I was there. Everything's a mess at the office. Our company was bought by another, my favorite employee is moving back to Finland and taking his girlfriend and highly competent co-worker with him, and the new magazine that we're starting in record time has gone to hell and I'm going to have to pull it back up to the land of the living.

I sometimes wonder if vacation is worth it.

The Swedish word for the day is tillbacka. It means back again, more or less.

- by Francis S.

I so want to find a picture of the latest advertising campaign for - er, I don't know what it's for. All I know is that it asks the question "Jobbar du naken?" - do you work naked - and the ad, at every bus shelter in Stockholm, features a blond lad big as life with perfect milky skin and a perfect untoned but fit body with perfect rose-pink nipples and a perfect Mona Lisa half-smile playing on his lips, a chef's hat on his head, standing naked in a kitchen surrounded by other clothed cooks, a pot strategically placed in front of his wee jimmy, or as I like to think, his not-so-wee jimmy (what is it about a large penis that is so aesthetically pleasing?).

I wanted to find this picture so this post could be the seventh in-depth lesson on Swedish culture, which would say something along the lines of the fact that, although there are no naked Swedish chicks, or naked chefs for that matter, lounging around on street corners (contrary to popular belief), Swedes do have an interesting open attitude about sex being a natural thing, and nakedness not being dirty or necessarily connected to sex.

But alas, I guess this isn't to be.

Instead, I'm going to write about how awful my day was (why ever did I allow myself to become good at solving problems with staff, customers and impossible deadlines?) and how happy I am to be traipsing off with the husband to Tuscany in a mere 36 hours or so. Of course, the whole present-for-the-husband thing still needs to be solved. I have yet to figure out what to get him, and I had no time today to even think about it let alone do any shopping, on account of spending an inordinate amount of time solving endless irksome problems at work.

So, I'll be back the Monday after next. If you're looking for something to read, I recommend you go check out Tinka's defense of impenetrable yet meaningful language (no, that's not really an oxymoron although it pretends to be).

In the meantime, you can meditate on the Swedish word of the day, which is åtminstone. It means at least.

- by Francis S.

Damn. The husband's birthday is Friday - the Ides of March - and as usual I don't know what to get him. He almost always gets me lovely expensive presents - Prada backpacks or 40 red roses from Holland that have all the women in the office sneaking down to my desk to have a look and then bemoan that their husbands and boyfriends would never be so romantic.

The problem is that I don't trust my own taste anymore because he has so much more than I do. Taste, I mean.

The Swedish phrase for the day is ingen aning. It means no idea, haven't a clue.

- by Francis S.

The Swedish government (link in Swedish only, sorry) has recommended to parliament that homosexual persons, such as myself, be allowed to adopt children. Parliament has until June 4 to respond to the government's proposal.

The biggest hitch is that the vast majority of adopted children are from outside Sweden and none of the countries Sweden has agreements with allow gay men or lesbians to adopt children (Liberal attitudes toward abortion are apparently one of the main reasons so few children are in need of adoption within Sweden.)

But what's great about it is that once Sweden decides this, homosexual persons who decide to adopt children, such as myself or Aaron, will get all the same fantastic rights and privileges that other parents get here in Sweden - mainly a year and a half off of work at 80-90 percent pay, and universal daycare.

And now, it looks like the United Kingdom is likely to approve gay adoptions as well.

The Swedish verb for the day is att orka. It's one of my favorites. It isn't directly translateable, but more less means to have the will to, and is more often used in the negative - jag orkar inte - which would mean I can't get up the energy to... or something like that. My friend D., the editor who moved back to America this past summer, used to say "I don't have the ork for it."

- by Francis S.

The bar of the Lydmar Hotel in Stureplan is one of Stockholm's trendiest spots. You can barely squeeze yourself in amongst all the smoke, the music and the beautiful people on a Friday or Saturday night. But on a lazy Sunday afternoon, it feels luxurious to slouch about on a black leather sofa at the Lydmar and drink a beer with A. the former model and aspiring producer, and her boyfriend, C. the fashion photographer.

A. was exhausted, but happy.

"Three different couples had sex last night, so it was a very successful weekend," she said. She was talking about the show, "Big Brother," for which she works.

The Swedish word for the day, by request of A.and C., is torped. It means, among other things, hit man.

- by Francis S.

Over coffee yesterday with the priest and her boyfriend the policeman, the priest said that she had run into a girl who had bullied her when she was young. The priest had just moved back to Sweden from Africa, where she had spent her early childhood, and she was the strange new girl in school.

"Petra?" the priest asked when she ran into the bully.

Yes, it was Petra, who was now working as a waitress at Gondolen, a fancy cocktail bar and restaurant on Söder overlooking Stockholm harbor, not a mile from where the priest lives.

"And what are you doing, now?" Petra had asked.

The priest said that all the old feelings came rushing back and it felt strangely as if in that sentence, Petra the Bully was trying to assert herself all over again.

This isn't surprising, really, because one of the priest's great strengths is her vulnerability. She lays herself open when she leads, which gives her tremendous power because one can't help but believe in her deeply. But at the same time, I know that she finds it exhausting to be so vulnerable.

"I may be wrong," she said, "but I feel like I can always pick out people who were bullied when they were young."

I wondered how she could see this.

"They have a certain sensitivity about how other people feel," she said.

I asked her if she could tell whether I had been bullied or not.

"Well," she said, "With you I can't tell whether it's because you grew up in a very kind family, or because you were bullied. I think maybe it's a combination of both."

She laughed.

She was right.

The Swedish word for the day is of course mobbing. It means bullying.

- by Francis S.

Vi ses på Nangijala, Astrid...*

They held the funeral for Astrid Lindgren today in the Great Church. All day the streets of the old town have been swarming with children holding bouquets of flowers and little old ladies in black. Lindgren's funeral cortege - four stallions drawing an antique carriage holding her coffin, a young girl leading a riderless, unsaddled white horse - wound through Stockholm from Adolf Fredrik's Church and ended at the Great Church next to the Royal Palace, which just happens to be directly outside my office. She was buried in the church, witnessed by the king, the queen and the crown princess, as well as numerous dignitaries and friends.

The frustrating thing of it all, however, was that the journey from church to church took about half the time expected, so I missed it, horses and all. As I was walking up Bollhusgränd with a sandwich, an old woman came from the other direction and said to me "förbi" - past. The cortege had gone ïnto the church already, a full 20 minutes before they said it would.

I didn't get a chance to pay my respects. So here they are.

- by Francis S.

* We'll see each other in Nangijala... A phrase on everyone's lips in Sweden today. Nangijala is the name of the land after death in Astrid Lindgren's Bröderna Lejonhjärta or The Brothers Lionheart, which happens to be one of the two books I've read in the original Swedish.

Someone told me that we are now gaining more than five minutes a day of daylight, some 40 minutes per week. It's a bit disorienting and my sleep patterns are all awry. But it's wonderful nonetheless, no matter how much I love the winter, to be tantalized by this frantic push toward summer.

The Swedish verb for the day is att lova. It means to promise.

- by Francis S.

Walking through the nasty blue-tiled and filthy passageway under the road at Slussen - the sluice - I noticed graffito that read:

Long live proletarian feminism
Down with bourgeois feminism

I'm not sure what the difference is between the two. But it reminded me of my two favorite pieces of graffiti from my days in Washington, D.C.

The first one, which was on the Ellington bridge for years, read: Rich people will fall. Someone added an over at the end of it. Seeing it always made me laugh.

The second was on the side of the building that years ago was the site of the Cuban restaurant Omega, once a Washington institution. Last time I saw it, there was a tiny neighborhood grocery on one side and a Persian rug store on the other. Back in the days of the Omega, there was graffito on the side of the building that read: Paul Volcker sux. Paul Volcker was Alan Greenspan's predecessor I think. Only in Washington could one see such graffiti. And I love the way the writer spelled it s-u-x. The whole thing was all so post-modern. Bourgeois feminist as well, undoubtedly.

The Swedish words for the day are röd, grön, blå and gul. They mean red, green, blue and yellow.

- by Francis S.

Things change, no matter how much it seems the world keeps sliding backwards and to the right.

The husband and I watched a fascinating television documentary last night about Jin Xing, a former Chinese military officer who has become a woman and is now one of China's most celebrated modern dancers and choreographers - her stagings of "Carmina Burana" and "Shanghai Tango" were apparently wildly successful. (She's also played the part of a Lara Croft-like heroine in a Korean action flick, among other movies, and owns her own nightclub and performance space in Beijing. She's a veritable culture maven.)

I guess with the Chinese government supporting her, you can't really call Jin Xing a sexual outlaw anymore.

The Swedish word for the day is hoppfull. It means, of course, hopeful.

- by Francis S.

Yesterday, I spotted rhubarb among the pathetic display of fruits and vegetables at the ICA grocery store on Folkungagatan. Pink as a pink begonia and with even a few leaves on the stalks, it was a sure sign of spring, despite the five or so centimeters of lingering snow outside.

So I bought it and made a sort of rhubarb cobbler to have for dessert with creme fraiche.

C. the fashion photographer came over with his two children, and M. the television producer came with his laughing sexual innuendo, and R. the popstar came with her goddaughter, who at nearly three is quite the actress and capable of easily commanding the undivided attention of four adults and two teenagers with merely the slightest display of her dimples.

"Was the rhubarb cobbler good?" I asked the husband afterwards.

"Oh, yes," he said. "But it wasn't enough food."

Maybe he was right, but his own mother is of a generation where one should always serve four times as much food as needed on the table at any given occasion. Because that's what hospitality means, an embarrassment of riches so no one ever feels worried about taking second or third helpings.

"And I didn't get so stressed fixing the food, did I," I said to the husband.

He looked at me skeptically. Then he laughed.

I guess I didn't do a very good job hiding it. I'm definitely not a team player when it comes to cooking. I want to be alone when I'm fixing food.

The Swedish word for the day is vår. It means spring, as in the season of the year.

- by Francis S.

Reading about sex education that preaches abstinence makes my blood pressure sky rocket. And makes me sad. It sounds like Victorian attitudes toward sex are back in favor in the United States, not that they've ever really disappeared. Worse, organizations such as SIECUS, seem to be worn down on fighting this battle against dangerous prudishness.

I am incredulous at the stupidity of adults trying to convince teenagers that sex is bad except when one is married. Is it the intention of U.S. government policy to create a generation of sexophobes? Do these policymakers and administrators honestly believe that teenagers will really buy this argument, or should buy it? There is so much love and pleasure to be derived from sex, why turn it into something scary and evil? I first had sex when I was 15, real sex as opposed to childish sex play, and it was wonderful and exciting and taught me many things about how to treat other people in all sorts of situations that have nothing to do with sex.

I still don't understand what the big deal is.

The Swedish word for the day is vanlig. It means normal.

- by Francis S.

I guess I've started a trend, if you can count one other person as a trend: The Dutch/Flemish word for the day over at Uren.Dagen.Nachten is overstroming, which means inundation or flood. In Swedish that would be översvämning, according to my dictionary.

- by Francis S.

Irritable male syndrome.

I think I have it.

This explains a lot.

The Swedish word for the day skitstövel. It means bastard.

- by Francis S.

My friend A., the former model, is now working for the Swedish version of the television program "Big Brother."

She told me that every single one of the 2,000 or so female applicants who applied to be on the show stated that they were bisexual.

I had no idea that there were so many bisexual Swedish women wanting to make names for themselves in reality [sic! sic! sic!] television.

The Swedish word for the day is förvånad. It means amazed. (The Swedish word for the day should be something that would translate to incredulous, but it's not a word I know.)

- by Francis S.

It's a lie that everywhere outside the United States is a pharmocological utopia. Well, at least Sweden doesn't fit the profile. Spain, now that's a different story. Or a place like India - my friend the Indian novelist recently told me he stocks up on convenient family-sized bottles of valium whenever he goes home to Bombay.

But here in Sweden, I could almost swear you need a prescription to get anything stronger than paracetamol. And I'm almost out of that bottle of generic nyquil that the American editor and his wife left when they were staying with us last summer. Even with a prescription, they have nothing like nyquil here.

I hope I don't start coughing again as soon as I lay down tonight.

America is a nation of happy drug addicts, and they don't even know it. Lucky dogs.

The Swedish word for the day is narkoman. It means junkie.

- by Francis S.

They think my older nephew - the one who is eight and takes after me and always has to do things his own original, creative and often bizarrely funny way - may have Tourette's syndrome.

It sounds more like he's got a, uh, chronic tic disorder, but it's unclear to me whether full-blown Tourette's means having a small tic that one just can't help indulging. In my nephew's case, he has a funny little ritualistic cough that involves covering his mouth carefully for each cough, as he has been told to do by his mother.

I now realize the reason behind all those strange noises that used to come from one of my former co-workers. And I thought the constant coughings and throat-clearing and whistling was just another aspect of his horrific passive aggression and his general strange closeted behavior.

The Swedish word for the day is småningom. It means little by little.

- by Francis S.

Tommy: Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior?

Hedwig: No, but I love his work.

We just bought the DVD of "Hedwig and the Angry Inch." The husband appreciated it so much more with subtitles. Plus the DVD included a documentary as long as the movie itself. I learned that the song "Wicked Little Town" is in fact inspired by Grinnell, Iowa. My Uncle Ed once had a farm outside Grinnell, Iowa. Not as unlike old Isak Dinesen and her farm in Africa as one might imagine. And yet, it does not surprise me at all that Grinnell would be inspiration for such a song.

- by Francis S.

Last night we had dinner with A., the former model and her boyfriend C., the fashion photographer. Moules frites - which is not fried mussels, but mussels with french fries, a tasty dish that must be the national dish of Belgium.

Their friends Annalie and Johan were there, and they had brought Vicky along. Poor Vicky is blind and deaf, and she takes anabolic steroids to help her walk, as her hips are not what they were when she was young.

Vicky is in fact an ancient toy poodle who wanders around in circles bumping into things and sniffing during the half an hour or so each day that she's not sleeping in her bed or cuddled in the arms of her owner, Annalie.

Ah, selfless love. I want someone to hold me in their arms like that when my hair is in uneven matted patches and I'm blind and deaf and my hips don't work like they used to.

- by Francis S.

Who would have imagined, but I read today in Dagens Nyheter that Marianne Faithfull is actually the daughter of Austro-Hungarian Baroness Eva von Sacher-Masoch. This means Marianne is a descendent of the famous Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, author of Venus in Furs and the man whose name is the root of the word "masochism."

All of which makes me think someone surely must have thought up a good joke about the difference between a sacher torte and a sacher-masoch torte, which begs you to eat it, brutally.

The Swedish word for the day is blått öga. It means black eye, although the Swedes consider it blue, not black; they also say gul och blå - yellow and blue - where English speakers would say black and blue.

- by Francis S.

Have you ever been to Lucca? It's a small city of great charm in Tuscany. It has none of the history of nearby Florence - all those fabulous fortresslike palaces of the Medicis, the ghosts of Machiavelli and Savanarola - but then, it has none of the tourists, either. Well, at least I wasn't overwhelmed by the number of tourists in Lucca as I was the first time I went to Florence. Poor Florence seems to be populated only by tourists, as if it were just another Eurodisney; it can be awfully hard to appreciate all that art and architecture when every place is swarming with tour groups from nearly everywhere (except France, of course. I don't think the French care much for Italy.)

But, Lucca has charm. Walls encircling the city, walls covered with trees planted by Elisa Bonaparte - Napolean gave the city to his sister, who ended up being an able administrator who did well by the city, and the city by her. And a cathedral in a style similar to that of the cathedral in Siena - black and white with crazy corkscrew columns.

My parents have rented a house for a month somewhere outside Lucca. The husband just bought airplane tickets so we can go down and spend a week with them in mid-March. I can hardly wait.

The Swedish word for the day is spännande. It means exciting.

- by Francis S.

Language is all-powerful. Or at least I can't seem to get myself to feel - or worse, act - otherwise.

I had a dinner last night for all the staff I am in charge of. Eight of the 11 came (of those who couldn't come, one just had a baby, one was on her way to a funeral and one was teaching a class). And while I understood nearly all that was said, and it was even fun, I felt undermined completely throughout the evening by my poor Swedish conversational abilities, despite being bolstered by many glasses of red wine. And this was a completely casual evening, just for fun, no work involved, all-play all-the-time. I was just so terribly nervous, unnecessarily nervous. I nearly burned myself with a cigarette at the beginning of the evening, and my voice damn near cracked at one point. Oh, the horror.

The problem is, that I feel like I can't be a proper boss without my precious English. I feel I have no authority, and probably worse, that I have no control over whatever situation I'm in where I'm supposed to be the person everyone looks to, the man with the answers.

I hate feeling this way.

I must get over this or I am going to be one unhappy and unholy mess.

The Swedish word for the day is fegis. It means chickenshit yellow-belly coward.

- by Francis S.

The stomatol sign is back on.

I walk every day from the island of Södermalm where I live, to my office on the island that is Gamla Stan, the old town. I walk down a long set of steps from my favorite little square in all of Stockholm, Mosebacke Torg. These steps take me down to the sluice that lets the water of Lake Mälaren flow into the Baltic.

On the way back home, just to the right of the steps, on the top of a building, there is an old sign of white and red colored lights, a four-meter long tube of stomatol eternally squeezing glittering toothpaste onto a giant twinkling toothbrush.

The sign was dark for weeks, maybe even months, it seems. But last night I noticed it's blinking again.

I wonder how many other people see it as the beacon that I do.

(Hats off to Susie for the link above.)

The Swedish word for the day is gubbe. It means old fart, more or less. It is often a word of affection.

- by Francis S.

In an interview at the Actor's Studio in Manhattan, Anthony Hopkins was asked which swear word was his favorite. He answered in part by saying that he once asked a Jesuit priest what was the shortest prayer. The priest replied, "fuck it."

That is, the shortest prayer is more or less giving up and letting God, whatever God is, step in and take over.

I think "fuck it" is a great prayer.

The Swedish word for the day is hjälplös. It means helpless.

- by Francis S.

Not a week ago I was wondering whatever happened to Ulana Holubec.

She's a girl that I went to elementary school with.

It turns out that she lives in New York and she's an attorney. It also turns out that the person I should really remember is her sister, Diana, who is my age. Ulana is actually my beloved little brother's age.

The memory plays strange tricks on one. And the Internet plays even stranger tricks.

Walt Disney was so right when he said "it's a small world after all."

Or was that "it's a Duff™ world after all"... ?

The Swedish phrase for the day is vad som helst. It means whatever.

- by Francis S.

Not that he needs it considering that Blogger has posted about it, but I thought I'd put in my own plug for Rasmus' peer-to-peer review project.

It'll be most interesting to see the results.

- by Francis S.

We're going to make preserved lemons, the husband and I. You take a big glass jar, pour a bit of coarse salt in it, then one by one you slit the lemons and pack them with more salt, stuffing them into the jar as tightly as possible, finally adding boiling water and covering the jar to let sit for three or four weeks. Preserved lemons add a lovely and odd flavor to the right kind of stew.

Normally, the husband and I are not really compatible in the kitchen. I need to cook alone, getting frantic in those last 30 minutes before the guests come and I realize I should have started cooking at least an hour earlier than I did. The husband has wisely learned to stay out of the way.

But I think we can work on this sour yellow fruit sweetly with one another, side by side.

The Swedish word for the day is tillsammens. It means together.

- by Francis S.

Hey, I won an award from that wacky Viennese comedian, Miguel of Feral living... I haven't won an award since I was in the 12th grade and the Highland Park Chamber of Commerce gave me some stupid social studies prize that consisted of a certificate and 50 dollars. So it's ironic that I won first prize in Miguel's first annual Feral Living Feral Valentine's Limerick Contest for a limerick I wrote when I was, well, in the 10th or 11th grade:

Though his stomach protruded obtrusively,
Sir John dressed in tight suits exclusively;
With his mustache waxed dandy,
equipped with mint candy,
he'd molest the young children abusively.

(I think there's been enough homemade poetry slash doggerel on this site to last for several months at least.)

The Swedish phrase for the day, which undoubtedly has been a phrase for the day in the past, is tack så hemskt mycket. It means thanks awfully much.

- by Francis S.

Soave sia il vento...

Love is like Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte, the music is sublime but the plot is a jumble of utter nonsense, crazy circumstances and despite occasional brief moments of profundity, is barely to be believed, for good or for bad.

The Swedish phrase for the day is alla hjärtans dag. It means St. Valentine's Day.

- by Francis S.

I've never been terribly fond of business travelling - it was never as glamorous as it sounded when I was 12 and my father used to go to all kinds of exotic places, such as Kansas City.

But I rather like making my regular jaunts down to the company office in southern Sweden, where life moves at a more Danish pace. And the jaunt becomes infinitely more interesting when I can sneak away to have lunch in Copenhagen. The carpaccio and arugula with manchego was delightful, but it couldn't hold a candle to the infinitely more delightful company.

The Swedish words for the day are förtjusande and duktig. They mean charming and clever.

- by Francis S.

I wonder whatever happened to my 7th grade girlfriend, Stephanie Berkowitz? I remember slow-dancing with her to Paul McCartney singing "Only My Love" in her basement at a party, and that she and her sister and step-sister all had copies of the April 1972 Cosmopolitan issue that had a Burt Reynolds centerfold (his arm strategically placed so that nothing really showed).

And I wonder whatever happened to all the little girls with strange names from my boyhood: Did Pye Squire live up to her promising beginnings at age 7 and grow up to be a very tan chainsmoking gamin? Does Ulana Holubec still have brown bangs and wear red tights? Does Hulya Oktaiktekin still have lots of freckles and a peculiar but not unpleasing high voice?

The Swedish word for the day is att undra. It means to wonder.

- by Francis S.

I'm going to Lund in southern Sweden this afternon, and then on Wednesday I finish in the morning, so I'll be taking a little sidetrip to Copenhagen, which is roughly 45 minutes away by train.

Tinka, here I come.

- by Francis S.

Warning: saccharine and sentimental post ahead. Read at your own risk

The husband is now on a cleaning rampage through the house yet again. I feel guilty because I've only folded a few sweaters and he's going at it fullstop. I hate cleaning.

He drives me crazy sometimes, but I love him.

Right after I met him and we decided we were hopelessly in love and I came up from Barcelona to see him and visit Stockholm for the first time, I bought him an antique netsuke - one of those elaborately carved Japanese buttons, this particular one had two old men standing arm in arm. And I wrote a poem to go with it.

The netsuke and the poem still sit on the nightstand next to his side of the bed. And it's all clean now, after his cleaning rampage.

Netsuke

Once on a time
men lived lives so uncontainable,
they were immortalized
after a fashion:
sent to the skies
by some jealous god or another,
as if it were an honor;
Pollux and Castor,
say, side by side,
burning up for each other,
but the black space between them impassable,
so unbearably cold,
so impossibly wide.

You and I, well,
we are at least
as deserving of immortality.
But I would choose
nothing like a star.
No, we should be something
intimate, domestic, graspable;
something to be held
in the palm of the hand.
After all, we are
quite containable.

A button?
Yes, we could be a button
of the Japanese sort,
a netsuke, you and me,
two old men carved
from the same piece of tiny ivory,
the dye almost rubbed
from all but our smiles.

Take it, my love,
this button,
warm it in the palm of your hand.
We are hardly immortal,
you and me.
But this button,
we can aspire to be the smiling,
bald, thick, flower-bedecked
old men who hold one another
forever,
on this button.

Aren't the first throes of love heroic?

I know I should be embarrassed to show anyone this poem. But I'm secretly rather proud of it.

The Swedish phrase for the day is min stora kärlek. It means my true love.

- by Francis S.

The week that was, was too much. And it's given me a hangover.

On Tuesday we had a colleague of the husband's - the divorcée - over for dinner. After an unpleasant meeting at work, I rounded off the day with beers with fellow managers and we sat and bitched and laughed. Then I ran home and frantically whipped up something out of thin air, and the divorcée was an hour late and arrived while the husband was downstairs yakking it up with the neighbors and I was stuck entertaining her. She's a little tightly wound, the divorcée, and she has the thickest of Skånska accents. I'm lucky to understand a quarter of what she says. It was not my favorite kind of entertaining.

On Wednesday, the husband had a board meeting in our dining room from 6:30 p.m. to midnight. I sat in the living room eating sushi while the fashionistas smoked pack after pack of cigarettes, drank wine and came to not a single conclusion about anything. At least I didn't have to participate, well, not much anyway - they did haul me in from time to time to ask my opinion about this or that, but only if it had nothing to do with fashion.

On Thursday, we had another one of those damned 30th birthday parties to go to. I ask you, what kind of person has a Thursday night bash for eighty people at some new club, complete with booze and buffet and the Swedish equivalent of a Broadway star live on stage belting out song after song (but doing a great job at it with no irony lost on the guests, who loved watching one gay man singing "No Woman No Cry" to another gay man)? It was fun, but please, not on a Thursday. I'm still recovering from all the cigarettes I smoked.

Then Friday came, the day I was dreading. Because I had to have five one-on-one meetings in Swedish with the five people for whom I am their new boss (there must be a less awkward way of writing that, I'm just too damned lazy to bother to fix it). So Friday morning I walked down the island of Södermalm, and took a ferry over to the other side of the channel at Hammarby. I walked into the office where my new employees are working. I went to the meetings and all was well and good. But it made my head hurt, and I had no time for lunch. I took the ferry back and on the way the husband called. He was at the neighbors, chatting it up. And silently, I cursed him because I just wanted one night to call our own.

But it all came out in the wash. We ended up with the neighbors and our friend M. the television producer, eating dreadful Swedish food, husmanskost - food of the people is how I translate it in my head: Macaroni in white sauce (no cheese, that would add too much flavor) and falukorv, a sausage that resembles an oversized and obscene hotdog both in looks and taste. It was satisfying. And we inadvertantly put on a little show for the neighbor across the way, who had earlier commented obliquely to the husband about our parties with people rolling, er, cigarettes. I wonder what she thinks of the part when we got out the handcuffs - the real thing! - and the 10 different pairs of glasses the husband and I own.

But oh, I need to recover from it all.

The Swedish word for the day is äntligen ensam. It means alone at last.

- by Francis S.

I have been reminded of my dereliction in describing exactly how to pronounce all the fascinating and useful Swedish words and phrases posted here. This is the second time in six months, so I figured people must be dying to know exactly how to say all those strange words.

While an actual phonetic transcription might be interesting to linguists, it is undoubtedly useless to us native-English speaking masses.

So, here's how I would phonetically transcribe the language:

A - either the short ah before double consonants (long consonants), or long awh before short consonants (sure, you say, I know exactly what you mean by short and long consonants, and I really care that ah stands for the short A and awh for the long A, and I also understand why you have an h at the end of awh and that that means it is more or less a pure vowel and I also understand completely what you mean by pure vowel).

B - same as English.

C - Only found in words that come from other languages really, and like in English can be a K or an S sound.

D - same as English.

E - this one is all over the place, it can be the old schwa, it can be a dipthong (it's a lie, I think, that Swedish doesn't have dipthongs) sort of like ee´-ah-uh, it can be eh, definitely not hard to pronounce but nearly impossible to get right, the only way to really learn it is by hearing how it works in each word.

F - same as English.

G - same as English before an A, O, U or Å; but before an E, I, Y, Ä or Ö it is pronounced more or less like a y; it's like in English before consonants, except when at the end of words such as berg or borg, where it sort of disappears as you almost make a y sound but don't really; the other consonant exception is when it comes before an N, such as in barnvagn - baby carriage - the combination of gn becomes like ngn. Finally, it sometimes doesn't follow these rules at all.

H - same as English.

I - sounds like ee, sort of, but in Stockholm at least, some people say it very far back in the throat and it sounds, well, kind of gargly. I can't possibly describe this and I can only pronounce it this way in one word, musik. God only knows why I can give it that upper-class Stockholm gargle in that one word.

J - sounds mostly like a y, but sometimes more like an sh only with your lips more rounded and with a lot more h and blowing in it.

K - follows the G rules somewhat in that it's like the English K before A, O, U or Å, but before an E, I, Y, Ä or Ö it sounds like an sh; then there are all sorts of other horrible subtle variations on the sh when the K is in combination with J or S or SJ; I cannot possibly describe these subtle variations accurately, but suffice it to say that if you don't do them properly you are in great danger of not being understood. And finally, K often doesn't follow the rules - such as in the word människa - which means human or person - in which the K is like an sh instead of a hard K... this is because the word comes from the German word mensch and so they've kept the German pronunciation even though it breaks the normal rules of Swedish pronunciation. Or so I've been told when I asked why this was so damned hard to get these K's right.

L - same as English.

M - same as English.

N - same as English.

O - more or less like English, a long O is like oo in gooey and a short O like augh.

P - same as English.

Q - like an English K, usually paired with a V and pronounced like KV.

R - more or less like English, but usually softer and occasionally more rolling. The English R is probably the most difficult habit to get rid of if one happens to be a native English speaker.

S - like English when preceding a vowel, except in Stockholm at least (but not in Skåne, for example) it becomes an sh after an R - this can be in a word that contains the two letters, such as Lars or it can be in two separate words, such as jag tänker så här; but sometimes they don't do it, such as in vi för se - we shall see - and I've never figured out any kind of rule for when they do the sh and when they don't. Before certain consonants, S also sounds like the soft K - when it is paired with K or J, or TJ, or KJ - and it sounds slightly different with each and I can't possibly describe the differences. S in one of these combinations was the most difficult letter for me to pronounce, hands down.

T - same as English, only usually softer. Also a few strange exceptions. See S.

U - short U sounds more or less like oo in wood, long U is like the French U or the German Ü, an exaggerated ew.

V and W - the same V sound as in English, the letters are basically interchangeable; Swedes have trouble sometimes remembering which is which in English and can say wery instead of very, but they are very aware that they can make this mistake and usually correct themselves.

X - same as English.

Y - except for in a very few foreign words like Yankee or yogurt, Y is only a vowel and is more or less pronounced like a long U, except with even more rounded lips - I never get this right.

Z - like an English S.

Å - sort of like oah in Noah, except the ah is much less obvious, more of an afterthought.

Ä - basically follows the rules for E.

Ö - like the German Ö. Kind of like a schwa but with very rounded lips.

- by Francis S.

The boys and girls of Millbrook
Are on the train from New York,
Wearing new hats,
Shooting the shit,
Deep in the heart of Dutchess County bounty.

I have now gotten to the state where I must listen to Rufus Wainwright's song "Millbrook" right before going to sleep. For some reason, the song conjures for me images of idyllic and halcyon days, and it calms me so that I fall smoothly asleep without the usual sweaty thrashing about and tossing and turning.

What's especially strange is that I only really like classical music. And my beloved little brother gave me this CD sometime not too long after I moved to Sweden, but I only just pulled it out last week when cleaning up the living room.

Rufus Wainwright is undoubtedly the sexiest man living (aside from the husband). Oh, that voice.

The Swedish phrase for the day is sov så gott. It means sleep well.

- by Francis S.