Sunday, 11:21 a.m. - began reading En Komikers Uppväxt (A Comedian's Growth).

Monday, 1:37 a.m. - finished reading En Komikers Uppväxt.

A new milestone: reading Swedish novels as if they were a bag of cheese doodles after a day without lunch. Not unlike my English reading habits.

The one sentence review: It's a bit funny, a bit poetic, a bit sad, a bit sentimental, a bit melodramatic and I liked it.

And maybe I'll get to meet the author, Jonas Gardell, at the wedding of the priest and the policeman. The husband says he might be there on account of he's a friend of the priest.

The Swedish phrase for the day is ost bågar. It's kind of fun to translate this in my mind into cheese boogers, but in fact it means cheese doodles.

- by Francis S.

It's time to come out of the closet.

The fact is, I'm insecure. You see, the husband's ex has moved back to Sweden after some six years in Shanghai and Hong Kong. He's bringing his American boyfriend along with him. Both of them are so tan and handsome and fit. And when I met my husband, I was tan and thin and fit and, well, four years younger. Now I'm pasty-white, have less hair in places that should have more, and more hair in places that should have less, and I could stand to lose a good 10 pounds. Or at least tone up the extra 10 pounds that I have.

I'm not jealous or worried, honest. I just wish I had taken the time to shape up so that the husband's ex couldn't possibly think that I'm "a nice enough guy alright, but he's gotten kind of flabby - they may be happy together but at least I've kept my looks..."

Is it true that marriage means one inevitably loses ones' shape?

The Swedish word for the day is viktväktarna®. It means weight watchers®.

- by Francis S.

We've all looked at our blog families.

Now it's time to look at our blog neighborhoods (hats off to John O'Keefe for the link.)

Now, if only I can figure out what it means exactly.

- by Francis S.

As we sat in our dining room with the neighbors, the remains of dinner on our plates, fireworks broke out in another part of the city.

The fireworks weren't supposed to start until 10:30, said L., the chef. According to my calculations, someone had started them a good seven minutes early, which is so like the Swedes.

We half-watched them as we smoked strange Turkish tobacco with a waterpipe, the fireworks crackling and popping and fizzing and booming in the reflection of the window of an apartment across the courtyard. It was a peculiar sideways view, looking through the frame of our window into the reflection of the fireworks, framed by another window.

What were they celebrating, I wondered.

No one knew. Not even L., though she had known there were supposed to be fireworks.

"We met each other four years ago today," L. said, referring to her and her boyfriend, P. the guitarist. "Or was it the 8th?"

Ah, I said, so the fireworks are for you two it seems.

Yes, indeed. So we smoked more Turkish tobacco and put old Madonna CDs on the stereo and turned up the volume and danced madly on the bare wood floors.

The Swedish word for the day is fyrverkeri. It means fireworks.

- by Francis S.

At dinner last night out in the stinking rich suburbs of Stockholm with the guy from the Goethe Institute and his husband, the South African publicist, we somehow got cajoled into gossiping.

"Everyone loves gossip, you can't believe anyone who says they don't," the South African publicist said. And he's right, of course. He gleefully, guiltily said that not only does he love gossip, he is completely unable to keep it to himself, mentioning an incident with a politician, tailored shirts, and someone else's boyfriend.

My own husband is actually full of first-hand celebrity gossip; he's quite respectful of privacy and rarely mentions any of it to anyone, including me. And yet, among other things, when asked by the publicist he answered that so-and-so t.v. personality is not gay, which disappointed our hosts. But the disappointment was immediately quelled when it was revealed that at least so-and-so t.v. personality has a big dick.

"Wait, but if he's not gay, how do you know that?" asked the publicist.

The husband replied that the information came from trusted and reliable female, uh, sources.

"You know, " said the publicist, "if it's such a burden carrying these celebrity secrets around, you should just tell me. I'm from South Africa and I don't even know who any of these people are and who am I going to tell?"

Who says homosexualists are shallow and interested in only one thing?

We were, in fact, utterly charmed by the two of them.

The Swedish word for the day is skvaller. It means, naturally, gossip.

- by Francis S.

I bet my family beats your family. If we're talking numbers, that is.

You see my parents both grew up on farms in Iowa, not 15 miles from one another, born at a time - 1934 - when it still made sense for farmers to grow their own farmhands. And so my mother has three sisters and six brothers. And my father has three sisters and six brothers. Which makes 18 aunts and uncles who are blood relations.

Then, each of these aunts and uncles got married at some point, which means that I have 36 aunts and uncles. Well, had 36 aunts and uncles; the number is dwindling, sadly, inevitably. And then each of my aunts' and uncles' families consists of an average of 4.27 children. Which means I have 77 first cousins. There are cousins who are opera singers, cousins who are preachers, cousins who are mayors and cousins who are garbage men. There are cousins who home-school their children (and shouldn't!) and cousins who are ex-cons. There is even at least one cousin who is a fellow avowed homosexualist (he's had kind of a tough time of it, though, poor guy.)

As for the next generation, I couldn't begin to count. We're talking more students than attended my junior high school. We're talking the population of a small town. Hundreds and hundreds. And we're not even Catholic.

I'd make a crack about whether this fecundity has any relation to improper use of prophylactics and low intelligence quotients, but I've recently learned that my parents read these pages and I don't want to offend anyone.

The Swedish word for the day is kaniner. It means rabbits.

- by Francis S.

Grownup girly-boy that I am, there are still places stinking of testosterone that send fear neurons bouncing from synapse to synapse throughout my body. Places like barbershops with red and white twirling barberpoles. Or the locksmith and model railway shop that used to be on 14th just above P Street in Washington.

The problem with these places is that I suddenly revert back to being nine years old, and I can't help thinking that I am a pathetic excuse for a male and that I will be the last one picked for the team (or if we're going to judge by history, second-to-last). I worry that I will be found out, somehow. So, I loathe these places. My soul cannot be convinced that no one is going to refuse to give me a haircut, or a new set of keys, because I don't pass the male test. Whatever that may be.

Are there equivalent estrogen- and progesterone-laden locations that have the same effect on you female-types?

The Swedish word for the day is manlig. It means masculine.

- by Francis S.

Miguel is the bee's knees.

I asked him to say "hi" to America from me when he was doing the whole family visit thing in the States, and he got America to say "hi" back.

The Swedish phrase for the day is du är en klippa, Mig. It means you are a rock, Mig, in the best way.

- by Francis S.

Happy birthday, dear diary, you demanding old thing.

Considering the day, I suppose it's only appropriate to acknowledge its geneology and give credit to the parent who inspired it, that pithy and fascinating potential pornstar who is Jonno, sadly now on hiatus.

The Swedish phrase for the day is ett år gammal. It means one year old.

- by Francis S.

This is a good year for mushrooms. Not that I know from personal experience. I've never actually hunted for mushrooms. It sounds so Hansel- and Gretel-ish. So Baba Yaga-ish. So very Brothers Grimm. And while I would dearly love to hunt mushrooms in a dim forest somewhere, I haven't, but at least I'm reaping the benefits of someone who has.

The husband is standing over the sink with a brush and big bowl of golden chanterelles that a friend gave him, gently ridding them of the remnants of the dirt they grew in.

Wait, no, now he's cooking them in butter.

The smell would be intoxicating, if we weren't still recovering from being intoxicated last night. The husband's marvelous agent invited us to dine at Pontus by the Sea. One definitely doesn't eat at Pontus by the Sea, one dines. And has bottle after bottle of very expensive champagne, apparently. And talks about how it wasn't long ago - ten years - that one could still find apartments in Stockholm where one's toilet was in a separate building out back. And smokes cigarettes even though one hasn't had a cigarette in weeks and weeks. And then when the last lamb chop is stripped clean and the final drop of espresso drunk and the last remnant of cherry tart scraped from the plate, one takes more bottles of champagne and glasses and drunkenly plays boule, the grand old buildings of the old town on one side, and on the other the waters of Stockholm harbor, black under a sickle moon. I don't remember who won.

It turns out that chanterelles cooked with onions in butter are quite good for a hangover.

The Swedish word for the day is, of course, kantareller, which means chanterelles.

- by Francis S.

I had lunch earlier this week with the guy from the Goethe Institute, one of my fellow students from the Swedish class I took earlier in the summer. He told me that he doesn't understand the Swedes.

"I've lived in South Africa, in Romania, in the States," he said. "I could basically figure them all out. But the Swedes - "

They are an enigma to him. He said he can't figure out what makes them tick.

"Some guy, a Swede, said to me once that Sweden is what America would be like if it were socialist," the guy from the Goethe Institute said. "Now that made sense to me somehow."

I didn't tell him that while George W. Bush would never admit it, the U.S. is in fact rather socialist around the edges. Still, the idea of Sweden as a socialist version of America makes sense to me, too.

The Swedish word for the day is skär. It means pink.

- by Francis S.

I live on the Farmer Street. That would be Bondegatan in Swedish.

I've always found the name charming, if a bit mundane.

Here in Stockholm, the names of streets, roads, avenues, alleys, lanes and hills seem to have practical and historical origins.

There are Kungsgatan and Drottninggatan, the King's Street and Queen Street - for some reason, the possessive -s- is only there for the king, implying that while he owns his own street, the poor queen doesn't own hers. Odd, that.

There is Narvavägen - The Narva Road - which I assume is named after a famous 18th century battle in the once-Swedish city of Narva, which is now in Estonia.

There are Linnégatan and Birger Jarlsgatan and Morten Trotzigsgränd, one named after the famous Swedish botanist Carl von Linné, one named for a medieval Swedish ruler, and one named for - uh, I have no idea who Morten Trotzig was, I only know it is the smallest street in Stockholm, basically a narrow set of steps leading from one street to another.

There are Västerlånggatan and Österlånggatan - the West and East Long Streets - both of them in the old town, the names really just a description of what were assuredly the longest streets of Stockholm some 700 years ago when the city was young.

There is Lidingövägen, the street that leads from the city of Stockholm to the bridge that takes one to the island of Lidingö.

There is Fredrikshovsgatan, a short street that runs next to the sight of a former royal palace that was called Fredrikshovs Castle.

And there is my favorite, Tystagatan, the Quiet Street.

History, honor, direction, description.

I'd love to see a map that explains why all the streets are named what they are named.

Who gets to choose, huh?

The Swedish phrase for the day is Vem är rädd för Virginia Woolf? It means, of course, Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?

- by Francis S.

More recommendations from the tasty links to the left:

Want to know about rocks? Yami knows about rocks. But what's best about Yami is not her rock knowledge, but rather her hilariously warped yet somehow logical take on life.

Thinking about becoming a single mother? I'm not sure whether or not Miss Lauren would advise it. Yes or no, take her advice. She's awfully wise for one so young.

Looking to improve your knowledge of pop music trivia? Mike's knowledge is encyclopedic. I kid you not. But wait, there's more. You also get plenty of juicy and well-written personal details at absolutely no extra cost!

Interested in life in the other New York? Read what April has to say about life in Buffalo with her sweetheart and a veritable bestiary of animals.

Want to talk libraries? Want to talk Swedish libraries? Linnea and Erik (he's in Swedish only) actually don't talk so much about libraries, but they are both as eloquent and thought-provoking as one would expect a librarian to be.

Ever wondered if there were Chinese-West Indians? There are. And some of them, like Patrick for instance, write with great insight and warmth on birth, death and everything in between.

- by Francis S.

"Isn't it nice to lose the socks?" said my neighbor P., the guitarist. Er, that's how I'd translate what he said, more or less.

And I agree, it is nice to lose the socks. One of the glories of summer is to be able to wear sandals and even more minimal variations on sandals; it would be even nicer if I could go barefoot completely. I think I've never gotten over the barefoot halcyon summers when I was 9 and 10 and 11 years old, when my parents shipped me off to my Uncle Wilbur's farm in Iowa for a couple of weeks.

I would get up with my cousins as soon as the sun was up, then we would run outside wearing only the flimsiest pairs of shorts, slipping our bare feet into galoshes to do our chores: gathering eggs and feeding the chickens and dumping silage in a trough for the cows. Then we would kick off the rubber boots until the late afternoon, when chores had to be done again. Kicking off those boots was the mark of complete and utter freedom. We didn't even bother to put shoes on when we decided for no good reason to go running through freshly cut fields of dirt clods and hay stubble that hurt like hell, shouting, "ow, ow, ow, ow!" as we ran.

I suppose the city streets are even more hazardous to my feet than those fields were, so there's no question of trying to go barefoot now. Besides, I don't think my feet are tough enough anymore.

The Swedish verb for the day is att springa. It means to run.

- by Francis S.

The Swedish summer is over. Everyone is back from their four- and five-week vacations. It's time to buckle down and ignore the fact that the sky is bluebell-blue without a cloud in sight. Time for three meetings a day. Time to speak Swedish with all and sundry.

C'mon Francis, you can do it. Stop being a little chickenshit. Quit your worrying that you're mixing up your en- and ett-words. Quit trying to remember förstod is pronounced as if it were spelled förstog. Quit correcting yourself when you use the wrong adjectival endings, when you put the inte in the wrong place, when you use ska instead of kommer att.

Just speak.

The Swedish word for the day is liksom. It means, like, like.

- by Francis S.

Finding books in English is little trouble in Stockholm - Hedengren's has a great selection, and NK, the big expensive department store, ("kompaniet," as all the little old blue-haired Östermalm matrons call it) has an English Bookshop that is excellent. So while the husband was gone a week ago, I took the opportunity of browsing leisurely for a couple of hours, and ended up buying Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford.

Now, the Mitford girls were one weird contradictory bunch. Diana still likes to say when interviewed that what everyone forgets about the Nazis is that Hitler had exquisite manners (thanks, Simon and Alex, for the link); Jessica, who happened to have been communist, wrote scathing books about America, on the, er, mortuary industry for example.

But Nancy, she wrote about what it was like to be a member of the English upper class between the wars. There is no denying that Love in a Cold Climate and The Pursuit of Love possess a certain precious charm. The characters, most of whom are based quite explicitly on her own family, are a zany lot with some interesting priorities. Most remarkable is a hero who happens to be a, well, screaming queen; he even actually wins it all in the extraordinarily pixilated ending of Love in a Cold Climate. What is a bit dissimulating, however, is the way she imputes Nazi sympathies not to her own fictional family, but rather to villainous rich in-laws who have the misfortune to have a German surname.

Of course it is a bit hard to pick out what might and might not be irony from the distance of more than five decades since the books were written. So in the end, I'm not sure what to make of it all.

The Swedish word for the day is märkligt. It means peculiar.

- by Francis S.

As the world's stockmarkets took a nasty spill, we spent the evening dancing on a volcano, not knowing things were crashing down around us outside.

Well, not dancing exactly, more like having a dinner party on a volcano. A dinner party thrown together at the last minute in honor of two guys from America whom I'd never met before, friends of a great friend of mine who lives in Chicago. The Americans, naturally, provided the news from America; we provided the food, the rioja and the Spanish eau de vie brought by the husband from Spain, and most importantly, the charming Swedish guests.

A., the former model and aspiring producer, ravishing in her little black shawl and impossibly thin spiky heels, told us about the time the animal talker came and talked to the family dog. "Dogs can make jokes," the animal talker had said. "They're very funny sometimes."

We sang silly Swedish drinking toasts.

The Americans were stuck reluctantly defending America. Which is a good thing for us Americans because we rarely have to do it to non-Americans. It toughens us up.

M., the t.v. producer, drank so many whisky glasses of neat white tequila that he couldn't stop talking way too coherently about Israel and Palestine and the power of positive propaganda. He also graciously taught the Americans - including me - a useful Swedish verb that does not translate squarely into tight English, although the concept is simple enough: att olla. It means to touch objects with the tip of one's dick.

Isn't Swedish great?

- by Francis S.

Holy mackerel, there's a group of Christian guys who want to shut Landover Baptist down.

I guess the old equation is true: orthodoxy = no sense of humor whatsoever.

However, it is not true that orthodoxy = no sense of rhyme or meter.

"Any message you read claiming to be from Jim Carlson or any other OBJECTIVE: Ministries member that contains vulgarities, sexual innuendo, bad poetry, or other un-Christian sentiments is to be considered a FRAUD and ignored."

Bad poetry is, apparently, the sign of a pretend Christian.

(Thanks for pointing me in the general direction, yami.)

- by Francis S.

More reading recommendations culled from the list of links at the left:

You want to know about Crown Princess Victoria Ingrid Alice Désirée? Des can tell you. Don't ask me how a straight English guy knows all the latest dish on Sweden's most eligible bachelorette, find out for yourself by reading his amusing reflections.

You want to know about the California State Legislation process? Aaron has firsthand experience. But it's his tender, angry, funny and poetic jousting with life in general that never fails to impress me.

You want to hear about the ultimate in long-distance relationships? Forget the pathetic and defunct "Damn the Pacific." Those two have nothing on Ash and Fraser, who will never ask you for money because, well, they have jobs.

You wanna talk accordians? Joey, itinerant Accordian Guy, knows all about life in the accordian fast lane. The accordian fast lane being club life in Toronto. But don't let his nice bad boy persona fool you. He is domestic enough to have white sofas at home.

- by Francis S.

The tongue is such an unwieldy organ.

Yeah, it does some useful things. I'm a big proponent of licking, for instance. When appropriate, of course. And tastebuds are quite useful, although they don't really function well without an olfactory component, so they deserve only so much credit.

But the tongue seems to have its own little counterbrain that works in direct opposition to the Big Brain. And my tongue's single-minded little brain is driving me absolutely crazy because it keeps telling my tongue to press against the spot where the permanent retainer used to be, the one that had been in place for nearly 25 years but got accidentally ripped out in an ugly dental-floss accident yesterday.

I wish I could find the override function.

The Swedish word for the day is tandkött. It means gums.

- by Francis S.

My version of the Trojan War in 100 words.

Two stories about Helen

1. They all thought she was just a common whore when she showed up in the bed of the farmer’s son. Then it turned out she was worth something on account of she’d run away from money, real money. So they said the farmer’s son wasn’t so stupid after all. But it didn’t stop them from spitting on her whenever she passed.



2. “My mother screamed when I was born,” says the ancient blind woman sitting alone in the orchard. "I hatched from a lavender egg."

She tells herself, “I was an ugly child,” and she can’t remember why she is lying.

copyright 2002 Francis Strand - just a little reminder!

So, could you, would you reduce a classic epic tale to 100 words? And which one would it be?

The Swedish word for the day is novell. It means short story.

- by Francis S.

At long last, the husband comes home today. He's been gone for 10 days. It feels like a century. I can hardly stand waiting until his plane arrives at 9 p.m. this evening.

It's time for a deep-cleaning frenzy around the apartment.

But first, let me start with something I've been meaning to do forever and the first in a series, I guarantee it. That is, recommendations to some of the links on the left side of this page:

You want to talk literary criticism, social criticism, movies? You must read Tinka. The only blogger I've met in person. She's sharp, witty, intensely interested in language and speech, of a literary bent, able to nimbly switch gears. And so's her writing.

You want to know what's really happening in America? The best source is undoubtedly Nancy of the "World of Jill Matrix." Überdyke extraordinaire, I get way too much of my scary news of America from her. Oh, and she's really funny, too.

You want to know about Moscow? Read now what Fiona has to say about living with a babushka, because Fiona's going back to Scotland soon. She must surely be droll, dry and madcap if her writing is any indication. I bet she can talk a mile a minute.

You wanna know clothes? Try Jacqueline X. Or is that Miss X? Her take on life is short but sweet, and occasionally a bit obsessed with finding the right size 11 mules.

You want to hear a good yarn from an old sailor? Bill is your man. He's full of the past, present and future.

You want to know how to make Welsh cakes? Want to know what Welsh cakes are? Duncan has the recipe. And a lot of other interesting observations about life.

You interested in becoming a father? Do you like comics that feature a hero with some 20 legs who spends a lot of time in a Doblo? Want to hear what another expatriate - other than me - thinks about America? Read Miguel, whose writing is touching and hilarious.

You obviously are interested in what an Anglo thinks about living in Sweden. But what about a Swede living in England? Simon has only just begun, but I know I'm curious as to what he'll be saying about us wacky English speakers over time.

More to come.

The Swedish verb for the day is att läsa. It means to read or to study.

- by Francis S.

I should've known he wouldn't be able to resist.

R., my good buddy and proud father to be, has started his own weblog to record the anticipation of the birth of his child. Woo-hoo!

So now I can keep up on a daily basis with his emotional highs and highers as he waits to welcome a new little human being into the world.

Thanks, R.

The Swedish word for the day is Hilda. It is a name rather infrequently given to Swedish girls when they are born.

- by Francis S.

A wasps' nest is a curious thing. It can't rightly be called beautiful, there's too much menace and fear associated with it for beauty. And yet it can have a papery round perfection to it.

Wasps, on the other hand, can only be given grudging respect, except perhaps if one is an entomologist. Especially as August draws near and wasps become increasingly aggressive. Which is why C., the fashion photographer, decided it was time to remove the nest that wasps had built in the eaves of his summer house.

He started rather cavalierly with merely a jacket and long trousers, poking a little here and there as he exposed the nest to daylight. But the mad buzzing was enough to make him reconsider.

And so we fitted him out, Tweedle-dum fashion: first with a stocking cap; then on top of the cap, one of those wire-mesh hemispheres that serve as an airy cover to keep flies off of the last two uneaten pieces of rhubarb pie still left in the pie pan; then we pulled down a mosquito net from one of the bedrooms and put that over the wire-mesh pie protector so the yards of netting hung to the ground.

With his long legs and the high cheekbones of his handsome face hidden behind the netting so that only his huge hands poked out, he looked like a Gilbert and Sullivan version of a Chinese potentate. We tied the long trailing ends of the netting around his waist, and then taped his gloves to his sleeves with duct tape.

Looking now more like a comically maniacal and slapdash beekeeper, C. was ready to do battle with the wasps, tree-pruner in hand.

In the end, it was impossible in that get-up, and he got the thing into a bag with only the jacket and gloves for protection, with the help of another summer guest.

As he walked me down to the jetty where the ferry back to Stockholm stops, we laughed that he was wary that the wasps might somehow follow him even though he knew they would not.

"I wonder how long the ones that weren't in the nest will fly around before they figure out that it's gone?" he asked.

It was nearly enough to make me feel sorry for the wasps.

The Swedish word for the day is of course geting, which means wasp.

- by Francis S.

And now off to the archipelago for a couple days of sea and sun with A., the former model and aspiring producer, and C., the fashion photographer, at their summer home on Birds Island. And of course the boys will be there. It's amazing how quickly one gets used to having cats around. The two cats were here only three days, and I still keep thinking they're still here, ready to follow me around the apartment or come walking into a room for no reason whatsoever looking at me with great expectation in their eyes, or start wildly racing around in the middle of the night on a racecourse that just happens to include my poor naked butt, over and over.

- by Francis S.

My tastes in music are catholic. Or rather, Catholic. As in Fauré's "Cantique de Jean Racine," Duruflé's "Four Motets" or the Bach "Magnificat." I really only like music that most of the world describes as classical - although in fact it's not just classical music I like, it's everything from plainchant to polyphony to baroque to romantic and onwards.

But, the first record I ever bought was a 45 of Chaka Khan with her group Rufus singing "Tell me something good."

I was ten. And now at 41, I've finally seen Chaka Khan sing her tough old heart out, on the waterfront of Stockholm harbor. Her voice could still no doubt split granite, despite all the booze and heroin.

Tell me something good - tell me, tell me, tell me,
tell me that you like it, oh yeah.

Oh yeah, I liked it. You are still the shit, Chaka Khan.

The Swedish phrase for the day is värsta brud. It means foxy chick. More or less.

- by Francis S.

A., the former model and aspiring producer, never does things half way.

Or rather, things never happen to her in measly little spurts. Yesterday was her birthday and she and C., the fashion photographer, were engaged to be married.

You should see the rock on her left hand: a great big lavender sapphire the color of some unknown exotic liqueur, surrounded by diamond baguettes.

After the dinner and the champagne and the strawberry torte her sister made her, she was so happy she put Aretha Franklin and Serge Gainsbourg and Teri Moïse on the stereo and danced her way around the room, so unbearably beautiful and sensuous and girlish and ecstatic that C. and I finally jumped up and joined her as midnight closed in and the day came to an end.

Happy birthday, happy engagement, happy everything, A.

The Swedish word for the day is puss. It means kiss, but in a friendly as opposed to a romantic way. Not be confused with kiss, which means, uh, pee.

- by Francis S.

The sun was just finishing up its brief pass below the horizon when I was woken out of a fitful sleep last night at 1:30. It was a late dinner in the courtyard of the building. I hadn't noticed anyone down there chittering away when I'd gone to sleep, but I suppose they'd come out sometime after midnight. And now, though they were assuredly drunk, they were singing a song I knew by Bellman, in glorious and sure-footed three-part harmony:

Bort allt vad oro gör,
bort vad allt hjärtat kväljer.
Bäst att man väljer
bland dessa buteljer
sin maglikör.
Granne, gör du just som jag gör,
vet denna oljan ger humör.
Vad det var läckert!
Vad var det? Rhenskt Bläckert?
Oui, Monseigneur!

Bort allt vad oro gör,
allt är ju stoft och aska.
Låt oss bli raska
och tömma vår flaska
bland bröderna.
Granne, gör du just som jag gör,
vet denna oljan ger humör.
Vad det var mäktigt!
Vad var det? Jo, präktigt!
Mallaga - ja!

I suppose I might have been angry, woken up at an ungodly hour. But it is Sweden, and it is summer, and I could only be charmed by the ever-so-civil incivility of it. Who could be upset at being woken by a choir of Swedish angels? So I stood by the window, naked, and listened for a while as they continued to sing and laugh through the slow-coming dawn.

When I woke this morning, I wondered for a moment if it had been a dream.

The Swedish word for the day is grannarna. It means the neighbors.

- by Francis S.

The husband is off to Spain again to see his mother, who has recovered nicely now that she has a pacemaker.

Me, I'm staying home to take care of the boys.

The boys would be the two cats belonging to A., the former model and aspiring producer. She and her boyfriend, C. the fashion photographer, are off to a wedding on Gotland for the weekend.

I wonder how many kitty treats are suitable for a cat over one weekend?

The Swedish word for the day is bortskämd. It means spoiled.

- by Francis S.

In the 1960s, one of the chairmen within Sweden's National Department of Health and Welfare, a man with the peculiar old-fashioned name of Bror Rexed, declared that within his department, in keeping with a modern social democracy, employees would no longer address their superiors using the formal form of you - Ni - but rather using the informal form, du. And so began a big debate in Sweden that became the so-called du-reform, in which the Swedes collectively decided to do away with the concept of tutoyer. Along with the disappearance of the formal you went the practice of never addressing one's parents and other older relatives in the second person: children no longer directly address their parents by saying things like "Skulle vilja mamma/pappa/morfar få en kopp kaffe?" - "Would mother/father/grandfather like a cup of coffee?"

The idea of getting rid of such a formality, and doing it in the form of a national dialogue in order to drive a concensus, is so very Swedish.

But when they got rid of the "Ni," the Swedes also got rid of other formalities such as saying "goddag" - good day." So oddly enough, in books that teach foreigners Swedish, the book does not begin with a description of how to properly greet someone in Swedish. In fact, a description of how to properly greet someone is nowhere to be found. Perhaps because the proper way of greeting someone is simply to say hej - hi.

However, my Swedish teacher told us that "Ni" seems to be making a comeback.

I wonder what that portends?

- by Francis S.

After nearly two months of endless meetings, rounds of nasty e-mails, exhausting management meetings and vaguely uncomfortable one-on-one meetings, the salary-setting at the company is finished. And as a boss, I've learned that those who work for me inevitably go through the five stages of reaction to the discussion of their annual salary increase with me: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

I hate setting people's salaries.

The Swedish phrase for the day is i värsta fall. It means in the worst case.

- by Francis S.

I can think of no peace as sublime as the peace of waiting for a train at a country station on a warm Swedish summer evening. The dusk drawn out to what seems an impossible length, a silent and respectably modest country mansion barely visible through a curtain of green leaves on the other side of the station, a well-fed cat padding its way inscrutably along the train tracks, the husband and I nearly drunk with the luxury of not having to mind a 25-minute wait for the train.

Why does it charm me so that the train will only stop at the station if the engineer sees that there are passengers waiting on the platform to climb on board? How is it that all night trains give me the same odd feeling of being in a delicious limbo, between two lives along with all the rest of the odd people who ride the night train: a young French boy disappointed nearly to the point of aggression at failing to get the attention of a pair of Swedish teenagers with his inadequate English; a sixty-ish woman dressed to the nines and talking slowly and deliberately to her sixty-ish American guests, who are not dressed to the nines; a boy nearly weighed down in his seat from all the silver jewelry hanging from his fingers and wrists and neck.

Who are these people taking the night train back into the city after a day in the country?

The Swedish phrase for the day is på landet. It means in the countryside.

- by Francis S.

As we sat last evening drinking beers up at Mosebacke, looking out over the Baltic and the city of Stockholm spread out below, the drunken woman next to us pestering us in her slurred Swedish, M. the T.V. producer told one of his music video stories:

A Swedish back-up singer favored by a number of Swedish - and non-Swedish - popstars was signed by a small but prestigious Danish record company. M. was asked to produce the music video. He went down to Copenhagen and met with the record company, shaking hands all around and getting his moderate budget.

"She's very special," the record company executives said to him. "She'll be a hit with the gay club crowd in Spain and Germany. But she wants to do her own clothes and makeup, so just let her."

Uh, okay, M. thought.

So he and the back-up singer flew to California, where he collected an American co-producer among other crew members, and they went on to Las Vegas. M. didn't explain to us how he found all the various American crew members, but he did say that he thought that the American co-producer was probably not just a producer, but a serial murderer-rapist as well.

"I can't explain, " M. said. "He was just kind of scary in a serial murderer-rapist kind of way."

The husband and I nodded.

Once in Las Vegas, after a few problems with the co-producer, the production ended up in a suite in a big hotel. And the makeup artist and seamstress that M. had gotten, just in case, "collaborated" with the back-up singer and her, uh, artist friend in doing the makeup and clothes for the video. "It came out beautifully, all things considered," said M. "The shots were great and it looked fantastic."

After some scrimmaging, M. managed to wrest the film out of the American co-producer's hands and bring it back to Sweden and get it edited.

They showed the rough cut to the back-up singer. They touched up the film and magically got rid of the wrinkles and lines on the face of the back-up singer. At last, they sent the finished video down to Copenhagen and got their paychecks.

And then they heard nothing. For weeks and weeks.

Finally, curiosity got the best of M. He called the executives at the Danish record company and asked if they were happy with the video.

"She's fat," they said to M., their voices incredulous.

Well, yes, M. thought. Hadn't they actually met her before they signed her?

No.

The Swedish phrase for the day is ...och det spelar ingen roll ändå om hon ser ganska tjock ut, eller hur?. It means ... and it doesn't matter anyway if she looks fat, does it?

- by Francis S.

Blame Denmark.

Or rather, blame the so-called "Danish People's Party." And while you're at it you can also blame Sweden's biggest national newspaper, Dagens Nyheter (all links in Swedish - sorry!).

The big stink here is that the anti-immigrant Danish party placed a full-page ad in the Sunday edition of Dagens Nyheter. I think it was rather a shock for many Swedes to open the paper and see party chair Pia Sjaersgaard's big blond head next to a Danish flag and a Swedish flag. "We thank the Swedish people for their support..." the text read, more or less, with the implication being that although Swedish politicians have spoken out strongly against the Danish People's Party, the party has the support of the Swedish people.

So it seems that an awful lot of Swedes are mad at the paper for running the ad, and insulted at the implications made in the ad. Politicians of various stripes are worried that it will stir up racial animosity; other politicians are calling for much wider public debate on the issue of immigrants. Interestingly, the Sunday paper also included an opinion piece quoting a recent survey of the Swedish Integration Department which showed that 70 percent of Swedes favor a multicultural society with immigrants.

So I didn't know what to say to the guy from Barcelona in my Swedish class who asked me if Sweden really had as good race relations as it seemed from his week and a half here.

Does 70 percent equal good? What about the other 30 percent?

What's a responsible Swede to think, or do?

Blame Denmark!

The Swedish phrase for the day is det går inte. It means it doesn't work.

- by Francis S.

In my quest to gain dual Swedish-U.S. citizenship, I need to fill out a form. It is in fact an itsy-bitsy form, all things considered. I don't have to pledge allegiance to anything, reel off the names of Swedish kings or prime ministers, or even learn Swedish, for that matter. I simply have to fill out four pages of questions that ask what my name is, where and when I was born, what my parents' names are and where and when they were born, what the husband's name is and where and when he was born, when and where we were married, as well as where I work and for how long I've been working there.

Can this really be all that they want to know about me?

Ah, and they want to know when and where I've been outside of Sweden since I first arrived. There are only four spaces in which to put this information. Perhaps this is the trick. Because I need about 25 spaces.

My old passport was filled to the brim, with only three spaces left for new stamps before it expired.

I like the triangular stamps from Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur and the jetty at Kuah on Langkawi (Passport control at the jetty at Kuah was like something out of a wartime Hollywood B-movie, unsavory officials in crisp uniforms standing behind ancient and flimsy wooden tables, groups of vaguely desperate looking families with trunks and satchels and oddly shaped packages tied with string, and me feeling like I'm trying to get to Thailand under false pretences when I'm doing no such thing, it's all just delicious melodrama.)

I like the round stamps from Panama, too (You had to pay 50 U.S. dollars to get out of the country there. And the police hated Americans, because we'd bombed police headquarters when we attacked Panama back in the early '80s.)

Then there are all the non-descript rectangular stamps: Dorval (The first time I went to Montreal, they told me I didn't need a passport, but there actually was a passport control when it was time to get back to the States, and they gave me hell for not having mine. So the next time I visited my good friend L., I brought my passport. Oh, and you have to pay to get out of Montreal, as well. Only 15 Canadian dollars, though, I seem to recall.)

Nickelsdorf (At the border between Austria and Hungary, the police scared the hell out of me as they passed through the train, snarling in German and me not understanding a thing.)

Casablanca. And Prague, Bologna, Nice, Barcelona, Heathrow, Charles de Gaulle (I wouldn't have half of these now: The great thing about Schengen is that you don't have to stand in line in passport control to get a stamp in your passport every time you fly within the borders of the Schengen countries. The bad thing about Schengen is that you don't have to stand in line in passport control to get a stamp in your passport every time you fly within the borders of the Schengen countries.)

And Arlanda and O'Hare, over and over and over again.

It will be strange to have a Swedish passport. But I guess it means that I will have even fewer stamps, in the long run. And I'll always have to choose which passport to use where.

The Swedish phrase for the day is det är dags. It means it's about time.

- by Francis S.

It wasn't until I left my Swedish class at 1 p.m. this afternoon that the other American in the class reminded me that today is the Fourth of July. It's cold and raining, but I bet the American Embassy, not 500 meters from my office, is full of foreign service lackeys firing up American Embassy grills, while the wives of foreign service lackeys are husking American Embassy sweet corn and cutting up American Embassy watermelon. Yee-haw.

It's difficult to stop myself from writing nasty things about whatever possible orgy of nationalism is taking place in the States today, people waving flags like big old hard-ons in each others' faces to bravely show that they haven't, uh, had their meat beaten by terrorism. Or something like that.

I feel I barely have a right to criticize anymore. Although I noticed some migalomaniac ex-patriots were unable to restrain themselves.

So tell me, how is it really? Are you having fun?

There is no Swedish word for the day.

- by Francis S.

One of the oddest things to get used to here in Sweden is that instead of the vague affirmative vocalization we like to use in English - "mmm-hmmm" - Swedes show you they agree with you by a sharp intake of breath, as that red-haired Viking chick Gale Storm has noted.

The first time it happens is always a shock - you can't help wondering if the person who just sucked in some air could in fact be having a kind of minor heart attack. Or wondering if that person has some new tic you haven't seen before. Or even wondering if you are hearing things. Even after a couple of months hearing it, this Swedish idiosyncrasy remains disconcerting and distracting.

The question is, if you were really having a heart attack and breathing in sharp little gasps, would a Swede think that you were simply a terribly agreeable fellow?

The Swedish word for the day is ja. It means yes

- by Francis S.

There is no real equivalent to The Guardian in the U.S., or in Sweden for that matter. The Guardian satisfies my leftist news needs like no other newspaper. And it has a web log. Not only that, soon it will be publishing a story on web logs. But first it's published a list of recommended blogs. I was ever so pleased to be included.

Thanks, Guardian!

The Swedish phrase for the day is jag har inte fått så många hits förut. It means I've never gotten so many hits before.

- by Francis S.

So last night we went to the Swedish premiere of "Minority Report." We rarely go to these things, but this time the husband wanted to actually see the movie, and it sounded pretty interesting to me, plotwise.

So we stood in line behind a, er, television personality and then had to wait a bit to get in while the tabloids took pictures of her and her escort. And then of course we ran into all sorts of beautiful people inside: the husband's agent, an up-and-coming fashion photographer who lives across the street from us, a crazy model.

So we listened to Peter Stormare introducing the film fast and furiously in his sunglasses in the dark theater. And it was appropriate that he was there in person to present it, because he was the best part of the movie. And it turned out that it was also appropriate to see the movie in Sweden because there is a part that is actually in Swedish. An extremely bizarre part, which includes a nurse with a huge mole on her upper lip singing "Små grodorna." But she changes the words, which are in Swedish in the movie, singing: "small frogs, small frogs are funny to see. No eyes, no eyes, no tails have they..." (The real words are no ears, rather than no eyes.)

So the movie deteriorated significantly after this over-the-top Swedish interlude. Someone kept putting thicker and thicker coatings of vaseline on the lens (Tom Cruise isn't that old yet, is he?), which was very distracting. The ending about made me spit up. And the moral of the story beaten into us with brutal force was, uh - I don't know.

So the popcorn was pretty good.

The Swedish word for the day is besviken. I think this has been the word of the day before, but that's just too bad. It means disappointed.

- by Francis S.

My summer extra-intensive Swedish class began this morning at 8:30.

Just after the second break, the Chinese woman sitting next to me, Y., said to me that she assumed I lived with a Swedish girlfriend or wife. I told her, no, I live with a Swedish husband.

She was rather taken aback by this. After a brief look of astonishment and silence, she asked me why.

An odd question. I didn't really know how to answer, especially not in Swedish. I sputtered a bit. I suppose I should have said it was because I was in love. Instead, I launched into the story of how I met the husband. Y. recovered her aplomb, and politely asked a few questions. Me, I was a bit red in the face. I desperately wanted to act naturally and matter-of-factly, but I'd slipped a little on my statement and it took a little while to completely regain my composure.

I hate when I turn these things into a big deal, because it wasn't a big deal.

For Wednesday, we have to write an essay on why we are taking the class.

The Swedish word for the day is därför. It means because.

- by Francis S.

Last night we sat up late eating caviar on toast and drinking white wine. Swedes prefer löjrom - whitefish roe, the best coming from Kalix up in the north of Sweden - to Russian beluga caviar. Our neighbor L., the chef, had styled food for a shoot with various caviars and while she'd given away the expensive Russian stuff to the photographer, she had saved the löjrom for us to have together.

We got to talking about self actualization, as we seem always to do with L. and her boyfriend P.

"When I moved to New York," L. said, "I was a bitch and stupid. I was such a perfectionist." She had worked at a renowned restaurant in New York. "They prepped the food way ahead of time on the weekend, and I would come in and say it wasn't good enough and throw it away. And this was to people who'd been working there for three years."

She was all of 21 years old when she had arrived. She had argued with the chef, who is well-known in Sweden because of his restaurant in New York. She had argued with everyone, and no one liked her.

Now, at the ripe old age of 27, she's learned that she was crazy when she was 21.

"I was crazy," she said.

She believes that she had too many unresolved inner conflicts then.

She believes that one of the problems with the world is that people expend too much energy trying to change things they can't change instead of fixing things inside themselves. That they worry about the Palestinians getting a fair deal, or a man getting stoned to death in Nigeria, instead of making their beds in the morning.

The husband wasn't buying this because in fact I make our bed in the morning, not him.

I told L. that I kind of agree with her; and yet it's sometimes hard to say how far our responsibilities to others extend.

And then we ate strawberries, without sugar.

The Swedish word for the day is ansvarig. It means responsible.

- by Francis S.

In one breath I claim I belong to no culture, in the next breath I'm getting all hot and bothered about religion rearing its ugly head yet again in America: the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in favor of government subsidies of private - mostly religious - schools in the form of vouchers for parents who send their children to such non-public schools.

Does anyone else find it ironic that the Supreme Court has just decided that a bunch of priests and nuns deserve government handouts to molest, oops, I meant teach our children?

The Swedish phrase for the day is nu kan vi få betala, tack. It means can we pay now, please.

- by Francis S.

I got those little-brother-left-for-Paris-yesterday blues.

The Swedish word for the day is bröllopsresa. It means honeymoon.

- by Francis S.

"How do you find it living here?" asked F., the freelance art director, as we sat at a table or under a tent or on a rock sometime during midsummer.

After three and a half years living in Stockholm, people still ask me whether I like it here in Sweden. I always answer with a yes. I like it because I'm happily married, no doubt. And I like it because I have an interesting job and a life of my own outside my marriage. These are probably the three biggest factors.

But I also like it because Swedish culture agrees with me, or rather I agree with Swedish culture. Which is not to say that I am really a part of the culture. I feel rather outside the culture, but not in a dismaying or alienated way; I'm just not a Swede, and never will be. In fact, I feel outside American culture as well by this point. I'm a man without a culture, but I think being a homosexualist rather prepares one for living outside a culture (regardless of whether one believes in a gay culture or not, the vast majority of gay people live much of their lives as outsiders in many key ways).

Being without a culture certainly allows me to be lazy - I don't feel I have enough of a toehold in the culture to be able to make accurate and fair judgments about political issues, for example, and so I'm not burdened with having to make the effort of finding out more or trying to change things one way or another, something I most definitely felt when I had a culture. It makes me sound like a bum, though, doesn't it?

So, how do l find it living here?

Well, it's like, uh, life. (Apologies to Lorrie Moore.)

The Swedish phrase for the day is svårt att säga. It means difficult to say.

- by Francis S.

On Sunday, we had paella at H.'s apartment out in Stocksund, a well-to-do suburb of Stockholm. Eating paella beside us was Sweden's answer to Barbara Walters - a bit more intellectual and far to the left of Barbara, she has interviewed everyone from Moamar Qaddafi to Leonard Cohen.

She had just gotten back from the States, where she was doing a story on Steve Lofton and Roger Croteau's fight to adopt their foster child, and a follow-up story to one she had done 11 years ago on a family of white supremacists in Georgia. Eleven years later, it had hardly changed.

"I think racism is getting worse," the Swedish Barbara Walters said.

I am an optimist on the issue of racism. I've always felt that, slowly but surely, two steps forward and one step back, we move in the right direction. Yes, it can be discouraging sometimes, with right-wing parties gaining a foothold in Europe because of their anti-immigrant stances. With the U.S. Department of Justice using the current climate of fear to do away with due process. And yet, we move forward, things are better than they were 20 years ago; it's just that positive change also brings out the worst in some people.

Am I wrong, is racism on the increase?

The Swedish phrase for the day is jag vet inte, faktiskt. It means, I don't know, actually.

- by Francis S.

Midsummer was what it was supposed to be: alternating downpour and sunshine, one meal ending only for another meal to start, endless conversations in English or Swedish or French about soccer and Palestinians and where to eat in Paris and how expensive it is to buy a flat in London. We even managed to learn and sing the chorus of a nonsense song in Bengali, which an Indian guest quite effectively made into a drinking song. (We couldn't come up with an appropriate American song - "A Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall" just seemed a bit, well, long and puerile; at least the English and the Swiss who happened to be there failed to come up with English or Swiss drinking songs, so we weren't alone in our dereliction to sing.)

My beloved little brother earned his midsummer chops by standing in rain that was coming down like bolts of cloth unfurling, one in a group of four people soaked to the skin and desperately fastening birch boughs to the midsummer pole so that we could all dance around it later. Which we did, eight hours or so later, with great gusto and like little children.

I managed to scrape myself up good, stepping at 1:30 a.m. out from under the tent erected in the front yard of the farmhouse and sliding down a ditch and coming up the other end and smashing into the pavement. Oh the blood, oh my poor hands, oh my sore ribs.

The Swedish word for the day is fest. It means party.

- by Francis S.

The dog days of summer are here:

1. My friend K., who lives in Boston, has become a pawn of the puppy Internet trade. She is now the proud mother of an adopted baby boxer named Alice. There was a chubby little boy in all the pictures of Alice that K. had been sent beforehand, but interestingly enough he was not in the cage with Alice when she arrived. K. was relieved.

"I guess he could have slimmed down with a lot of games of fetch on the beach," K. said.

And, K. did an evil thing that I told her not to. She sent pictures of Alice to the husband's e-mail account. I told her that I would remove all traces if I found them, but I wasn't diligent enough.

"I want one," the husband said when he read the e-mail, his voice all dreamy and wistful and full of pleading.

Me, I was raised by parents who grew up on farms, parents who believe that animals have a job to do, and that job is outside, be it a cow, a pig, a dog or a cat. I like animals well enough, but I've managed to inherit my parents rather, er, distant love of animals. I am not big on the idea of having a boxer in an apartment in the city.

"Hee hee," K. giggled when I confronted her. "It's just a good thing that he can't see Alice in person, because believe me, she is so cute he would need psychiatric care."

2. My beloved little brother and his wife the Rebel arrived last night, 30 kilo suitcase in tow and bearing pictures of the wedding (I liked them so very much because I looked so nice and thin even though I'm not nice and thin. Oh, and everyone else looked pretty good, too, especially the very photogenic bride and groom.)

As we sat up late, drinking wine and sipping gazpacho, the Rebel told me about her friend Karen and Karen's girlfriend Susan.

"They love their dog," she said. "And now it looks like they're going to pay a big wad of money to have one of the dog's lungs removed. The dog looks just fine but apparently this is not so. One of my friends said 'that dog is circling the drain.'"

Circling the drain?

The Swedish word for the day, of course, is hunden. It means the dog.

- by Francis S.

On my way to pick up the husband from work, I passed through Humlegården - the bumblebee park - the park that surrounds the Royal Library. The park was filled with numerous groups of Swedes drinking beer and playing boule or kubb - an ingeniously simple game from the Swedish island of Gotland - under the trees.

All life has moved outdoors, and the nation can't decide whether or not to believe the weather forecasters who are predicting rain for Friday, which is midsommarafton - midsummer eve, arguably the most important holiday of the year.

My beloved little brother and his wife the Rebel will be arriving tomorrow night, and on Thursday we will make our way in the afternoon to Ornö, an island in the southern part of the Stockholm archipelago. Ornö is the site of the summer home of P. and E., the parents of the Swedish photographer who lives in London with his English wife.

P.'s grandfather was the schoolmaster on the island at the turn of the century, and P. still owns the farm that his grandparents bought in the twenties. There are three or four small houses on the land, and I think we'll be staying in the one that is haunted by the ghost of Mor Anna, who will only let you open the door to the house if she likes you. (She likes me, evidently, because I had no trouble opening the door when I was there last summer.)

P.'s grandparents moved up to Ornö from southern Sweden for some unknown reason; and sometime shortly after, the island became an arts colony of sorts - Strindberg lived there at some point in his life. The island has become more of a summer spot these days, although there is still a grevinna - countess - of the island, who can be seen buying ice cream in the small market down the road from the farm of P.'s grandparents.

As for midsummer, it will be a mix of some 25 English, Americans and Swedes, and I suppose that all who are familiar with the traditions of the holiday will have to do his or her part to train everyone else - the toasts, the singing of "små grodorna" and dancing around the majstång - maypole, the eating of herring, herring and more herring, the toasts, the wearing of midsummer wreaths, the OP and beskadroppar, the toasts, and the playing of games, for example.

So, what are we waiting for? Let's get on with it.

postscript: my friend A. tells me that the word for bumblebee is humla and not humle, which is hops. But bumblebees are so much more picturesque and appropriate for a park than hops are. I think I will start calling it Humlagården instead of Humlegården.

- by Francis S.

I don't do memes, not usually. I hate the word, it sounds so Doctor Who-ish.

But it seems that Nancy, über-dyke and proprietess of jillmatrix.com, is trying - god only knows why - to win this blogwhore contest. And, well, I'm a sucker for Nancy.

So, here goes. A meme for Nancy:

"Five things that pick me up when I'm feeling blue. Now, how 'bout you?"

1. Saffron ice cream from Gunnarson's konditori down the block.
2. "Nur Ein Wink vom Siene Hände" from Bach's Weihnachtsoratorium, sung in the crisp and clear voice of the late Arleen Auger.
3. A big sloppy kiss from the husband.
4. Re-reading "When I Was Thirteen" by Denton Welch.
5. A hot bath, a la Blanche Du Bois.

- by Francis S.

You'd think that being queer, I would escape seeing Sweden lose to Senegal in the latest round of the World Cup. But no, the husband roused us at 8:15 this morning to watch the match, and then M., the t.v. producer, came over during halftime and watched the rest of it with us.

Oh well. Senegal did play a tougher and tighter game. They certainly deserved to win.

I hope I haven't just jeopardized my future chances at dual U.S.-Swedish citizenship.

The Swedish word for the day is förlorare. It means loser.

- by Francis S.

In Europe, men wear perfume. Or in Stockholm at least. It's not considered a great big homo thing here. Plus, there don't seem to be any people in Sweden who find perfume abhorrant, demanding fragrance free zones, and suing people for wearing too much Eau de Love.

I never used to wear perfume in the States, but now it's Issey Miyake for me. The husband wears Bulgari.

The Swedish verb for the day is att dofta. It means to smell, and in a sweet way.

- by Francis S.

Those wacky Americans are at it again! What will they say or do next?

Take Texas. I guess Texas school children got a story quite different from the one I got when I was a child growing up in suburban Detroit and suburban Chicago. One of the things our teachers taught us in school was that those celebrity colonists in Plymouth - the "Pilgrims" of Thanksgiving fame - came to America because they wanted to be free to practice their own religion. "America was founded on religious freedom," our teachers told us. Fact or fiction, it was and is a noble idea.

Just don't tell the Republicans in Texas, though: "Republican delegates wrapped up their state convention Saturday by calling for repeal of the Texas Lottery, praying for an all-Christian judiciary and scolding Democratic gubernatorial candidates for debating in Spanish." (from the Austin American-Statesman.)

An all-Christian judiciary? Uh, doesn't this seem, at a minimum, anti-Semitic? And here I thought such public anti-Semitic statements were pretty much unacceptable in America these days. How naive of me.

The Swedish word for the day is skamlig. It means shameful.

- by Francis S.

I swallow.

Chewing gum, that is. Am I the only person in the world who does this? I've done it as long as I can remember, in part because my mother the nurse used to say: "That's a bunch of malarkey that it stays in your stomach for seven years, it just goes right through you." My mother used to like to use the word "malarkey" a lot.

I've never quite understood why other people find swallowing gum quite so disgusting.

Then again, my niece and nephews don't understand why I find swallowing fish eyeballs so disgusting.

However, I will admit that my swallowing gum - usually as soon as there is the tiniest hint of loss of flavor, that is, after about two minutes - is a reflection of some kind of, er, oral peculiarity on my part and having to do with a distinct lack of self-control.

On a completely different note, it turns out that my friend and former employee R., who moved to Finland last month with his girlfriend, is going to be a pappa. This is the kind of news that makes me swoon. I'm a real sucker for babies, for people having babies, for pregnant ladies, for people just thinking of having babies. I'm all excitement, empathy and envy rolled into a tight little ball smiling so hard it could break in two with the least provocation.

The Swedish verb for the day is, of course att svälja. It means, of course, to swallow.

- by Francis S.

Happy anniversary to me and the husband.

As of yesterday, we've been married two whole years. We had a little champagne, dinner of caviar and those delightful little potato pancakes, and indulged in reminiscing about how we met (at 3:30 a.m. in a club in Barcelona) and how we kissed the first time (minutes after meeting as we were dancing to "Ray of Light") and how we then talked for hours afterward, drinking water (in the only quiet place in the club). It was a most romantic beginning.

To gild the lily and ice the cake, in the mail was an invitation to the wedding of the priest and her boyfriend the policeman. It was sheer luck that we met her - another priest couldn't marry us when we wanted - and it has proven to be the best of luck, to be able to call her a friend, and a good friend at that.

I can still picture the three of us before the wedding - the husband, the priest and I - chainsmoking as we waited for all the guests to gather before making our grand appearance in the library of the Van der Nootska palatset.

The Swedish word for the day underbar känsla. It means wonderful feeling.

- by Francis S.

Last weekend, climbing up onto the rocks overlooking the Baltic at Nacka, the priest said as we were scrambling up a path, "Once, the bishop asked me why I became a priest, what was behind it."

We stopped and caught our collective breaths, especially the priest who is just now starting to look pregnant with four months left to go.

"Everyone always thinks that it's faith," she said.

I nodded, her boyfriend the policeman waiting patiently in front of us, ready to keep climbing.

She continued, "But for me, it wasn't faith, it was fear." And then she laughed.

The Swedish word for the day is församlingen. It means the congregation.

- by Francis S.

After a week of taking the ferry to the new offices, I feel so much more how the city of Stockholm is a city built on water, how the people of the city look to the water, that the city impresses most when approached from the water.

And then on Friday, it was even more apparent how Stockholm harbor is a grand highway. As we pushed off from the landing next to Gröna Lund, ahead of us the deadly and beautiful black-green water was a mad criss-crossing of ferries full of people making an early start on summer and going out to their summer homes on the islands of the archipelago. The enormous cruise ships to Finland, big as skyscrapers laid on end, were sliding into their spots to disgorge passengers and pick up new ones. Taxi boats skimming in and out and making their way to the sluice. A few of the tall ships from the 750th year anniversary of Stockholm were leaving at last, and the absurd reproduction of a Viking boat that is normally docked in front of the royal palace was whizzing along, incongruously without sails, a tiny motor boat tied behind it in such a way as to look like a put-upon child forced to keep up with its parent's swift gait.

The Swedish compound verb for the day is att åka på färjan. It means to go by ferry.

- by Francis S.

Today is National Day in Sweden, and to top it off, the 750th anniversary of the city of Stockholm (the city was actually built to protect what is now a suburb of Stockholm, the city of Sigtuna). And as Aaron, whose birthday it is today, reminded me, on this day not only was the Swedish Constitution adopted in 1809, but in 1654 Queen Christina converted to Catholicism and renounced the Swedish throne.

Strangely enough, it is not what they call here a red day - that is, a bank holiday. However, next year it will be: Score one for nationalism over Jesus - we'll no longer get the day after Pentecost as a holiday.

The Swedish phrase for the day is Du gamla, Du fria, Du fjällhöga Nord.... These are the first words of the Swedish national anthem. They mean Thou old, thou open, Thou mountainous north...

- by Francis S.

The Swedish Parliament has voted to give gay and lesbian couples the right to adopt children (link in Swedish only, sorry). The vote was 178 to 31, with 78 abstaining.

The Swedish phrase for the day is vad kul!. It means nice!

- by Francis S.

The husband is on his way home from Barcelona now. At least, he's supposed to be. And his absence reminds me of my love and loathing of Barcelona, the city I have the strongest feelings for, and how when I lived there, without knowing the depth of it, I was desperately unhappy and uncertain and feeling loveless:

On the Apprehension of a Second Language in a Foreign City

Take a lover
who speaks no English,
they tell you,
you will learn Spanish
by the time
the affair is over.

In no time,
simple phrases, words,
come to you:
Egoistic verbs --
I have, I want,
I need... I am, I am;

Useful nouns --
what eyes! great sweater!
Modifiers --
most, very, better;
You sound like a child,
yet at least you make sense.

Comprehension,
on the other hand,
is harder.
You often misunderstand,
eavesdropping
when he is on the phone.

In the next room,
you lie in bed afraid
it is you
he meant when he said
cerda -- sow --
in the fiercest tone.

To the end,
adult conversation
eludes you,
done in by conjugation,
excepting the past imperfect.
You can say, "I have gone."

Barcelona 1998
uh, and, while I'm at it, copyright 2002

Yes, yes, it's a little glib. Of course, the reality was that I had no lover, not even dates. One-night stands, yes, but no dates. That is, not until I met the husband in a club, Metro, at 3:30 a.m. on July 18. Interestingly enough, the misunderstandings and worry in the poem came purely from listening to my crazy flatmate yammering on the phone, I felt so shamefully and annoyingly dependent on his great kindness.

The Swedish word for the day is tillbacka. It means back again.

- by Francis S.

Nancy is Blogwhore.

- by Francis S.

Catch The Bug. Soon available in Swedish. Sort of.

- by Francis S.

So tonight, A., the former model and aspiring producer, got us tickets to see MacBeth. In Swedish.

Good thing I knew the plot: so-called "weird" sisters talk a lot of nonsense and predict man will become king of Scotland instead of merely a lowly Thane (what the hell is a thane anyway?), man tells his wife, who is, shall we say, a tad ambitious and she, using an equal dose of berating and wile (which included crotch-grabbing in this particular version) urges man to kill current king, which he does, making a bloody mess in the house, and then he kills lots of other nice people and makes a lot more bloody messes, then wife develops somnambulistic obsessive-compulsive disorder and can't stop washing her hands in her sleep which eventually kills her (who knew one could die of a somnambulistic obsessive-compulsive disorder?), then man goes out with a bang, Rambo-style, except instead of singlehandedly killing an English army with thousands of soldiers, he is killed, but pitifully and offstage.

I went because a friend of mine, the former model and ex-girlfriend of the new-age popstar, was playing Lady McDuff and one of the witches. The former model and ex-girlfriend of the new-age rockstar goes to Sweden's equivalent of RADA.

Naturally, I thought she was the best of the lot - she sure screamed when they slit her throat! In fact, she was the only one who really moved like she belonged on stage, everyone else was a tad stiff as they walked back and forth across the stage purposelessly, although I assume they were great elocutionists. Of course, since I have enough trouble following Swedish when it's not Shakespeare, perhaps I was paying too much attention to the movement and not enough to the words. It would be accurate to say that the first part of the play flew up and hundreds of feet over my head.

However, the second part - which is much more exciting and in fact, downright creepy if you ask me - well, I understood most of it. What helped, of course, is that all the great speeches are in the second half:

"...bort, förbannade fläck..." (that would be how I recall the out, damned spot speech - when I try to find a translation on the web, all I come up with are detergent sites) and the "Imorgon, och imorgon, och imorgon..." speech (er, I bet you could guess that that means tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow).

It's so nice that my friends are making sure that while the husband is away, I'm being taken care of - not only did we see the play, but A. and her boyfriend C., the fashion photographer and his daughter, O., and me had dinner afterwards at my favorite Thai restaurant down the block, Koh Pangang (they write your name on a board when you come in because they don't take reservations and you almost always have to wait for a table; the Swedish King came to the restaurant once and they even made him write his name on the board and wait like everyone else. Now that's Sweden for you. I love that story.)

But the husband is back tomorrow, and despite wishing I could be with him, part of me thought that it would be kind of nice to be on my own for a little while. Yet as always, I think it will be fun - I'll read and write and watch t.v. and not feel guilty about being a slug but I end up bored after one evening and by the time I'm ready to go to sleep that night, I'm wishing he was there beside me in bed.

Which he will be tomorrow.

The Swedish phrase for the day is Shakespeare- tragedi. I'm not going to bother to translate that, because if you can't figure it out, you shouldn't be reading this in the first place.

- by Francis S.

I've taken to sleeping with a sleeping mask on and I feel like Joan Crawford in The Women. Next thing you know, I'll be both talking on the phone and eating chocolates while in a bathtub overflowing with bubbles. Although to be honest, the mask is a cheap one given in the packet they hand out to you in business class flying from Stockholm to Chicago on SAS. And the reason I'm wearing it is because of the invincible sun, which comes driving through the thin blinds relentlessly and in full blinding force by about 4 a.m.

It happens so quickly this time of year. Already, I noticed that the sun was hovering just below the horizon at midnight last night as I walked home from dinner with A., the former model and aspiring producer and C., the fashion photographer. We ate at PA's, which turns out is a photographer hangout, and the two of them seemed to know just about everyone in the place. I felt hopelessly unfashionable and unaware, the waiters and waitresses bringing in more and more chairs to jam us all in.

"The swordfish carpaccio is good," said the man sitting next to me, who I'd met several times before but I can't remember his name, or the name of his new wife.

"There's Staffan over there," A. told me. "He's getting married soon and they have to plan his svensexan." (A svensexan is an all-day bachelor party in which the groom-to-be endures a day of humiliation and increasing drunkeness that should properly end in soul-wrenching vomiting and a three-day hangover.)

"Say hello to New York from me," A. said to a thin and pretty girl with a supercilious gaze, sitting and holding court with an Englishman amidst a crowd of Swedes talking madly in English and Swedish all at once.

"Oh, you're an American," said the 50-year-old dapper Swiss-Irish man with the wheezey tobacco rasp and the pipe, his laughing eyes barely in focus behind his Ari Onassis-lite glasses.

We left in a flurry of handshakes, air kisses and promises to see each other in the morning, as all but me seemed to be going to a party at 11.30 a.m. to watch Sweden play England in the World Cup.

As I walked home, the city crowded and overjoyed at it being summer, Skeppsbron was lined with tall ships docked for the 750th birthday celebration of Stockholm, teenagers were streaming from the boat that comes from Gröna Lund, the ancient amusement park two islands away, and me, I was regretting that the husband wasn't there walking with me, but at least happy that he hadn't been crying when he had called me while I was waiting for my dinner.

The Swedish phrase for the day is öppet dygnet runt. It means open 24 hours.

- by Francis S.

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.