These scary and fear-inducing names belong to the two new members of our household.
Behold: Fluffballs!
Jocke is the one with the black ears, Svente with the brown ears. And whoever guesses where the names come from gets a cookie. Worthians don’t count, they were told already. 
Word: Penguin
Form: nursery rhyme
Little penguin sat on a floe
Little penguin sang “Here we go!”
On the floe he danced the jive.
When he was done, he took a dive.
Caught some fish in the water below
then climbed back onto his floe.
Today, one of the heroes of my youth (and of my whole life) would have been 100, had she lived to see the day.
The woman who invented Pippi Longstocking and Emil, Lotta, Mardie, the Tomten and the children of the noisy village. She won the German Publishing Peace Prize for her creation and engagement, and even that was, imho, not enough honor.
She was an exceptional writer who chose to dedicate all her talent to children. She wrote about a little anarchical rebel girl at a time where children were still beaten at schools. She wrote a whole book about the long voyage after death – a book so revolutionary that the Swedish parliament discussed censoring it. She wrote for children, but she touched all of us to an extent that changed her time, her world, her century.
I read everything she wrote, every single line, and I still do. Her books accompanied me through my childhood, and she has influenced my life almost as much as my parents did. I still read and re-read what she wrote, and some of her books grow with time, and open to a depth of wisdom few people ever achieve.
I won’t recount you her life here, or list the books she wrote, this information can be found everywhere. I cannot find words enough to say how much I loved her, and still love her.
Thank you, thank you so much, Astrid Anna Emilia Lindgren.
Sometimes, I feel sore and desperate? from the children’s? pain and sorrow.
Yes, it’s that topic again; it is touching my life from every possible angle right now, and I don’t really know how to cope, yet.
I talked to a kid some days ago. A teenage kid, an intelligent, talented, nice kid, who had to spill out his heart to someone, and that someone happened to be me. He told me that in a quarrel, his mother had told him she wished she had never had him. (more…)
I called the police today.
I was visiting a friend yesterday, and she told me some stuff about her neighbors. They are both alcoholics and junkies, and they’re got 2 kids: A boy aged 2, and a little baby, 6 months old.
They do not care about the kids at all. Every second or so night, the guy demolates the whole flat, kicks in doors and such, and they both beat up each other. They use the baby buggy for transporting beer bottles rather than their baby. And by the middle of the month, they’re totally out of money (which is social welfare money anyways).
My friend called the youth care dep. twice, but they didn’t do anything, obviously. And she won’t call again: The guy is threatening her. Being a single mom, she has to protect her kids, she sais.
So I went to the police. (more…)