As a Swedish person, I don’t celebrate Thanksgiving. We have nothing like that holiday, at least not any more. Back in the day—before the arrival of Christianity—we were thankful and celebrated harvest on Michaelmas by eating and drinking and rejoicing in the abundance of food. But Christianity didn’t like that heathen holiday, so they claimed the day as their own. Now it’s a religious thing, and since Swedes aren’t very religious it’s not widely celebrated.

So I’m borrowing the American tradition of giving thanks today (albeit belatedly) because there are five things I’m intensely grateful about that I need to tell someone about. And you’re the ones I picked 🙂

Here it goes:

• The three very nice (and talkative) mover guys who hauled all our stuff from the moving truck into our house, assembled all our furniture, and even unpacked some of our boxes. I was thankful for them on the day they were here, but even more so the day before yesterday when I had to help my husband move a humongous crate full instruments a couple of feet. It was so heavy I almost popped a vein in my brain, and I had nightmares after about us trying to haul that crate up the very narrow flight of stairs. It would for sure have resulted in herniated discs and possibly divorce. Or my husband standing above me on the stairs yelling “Pivot. Pivot! PIVOT!” and I would have been Chandler, “Shut up, shut up, shut uuuup!” So thank you, lovely gentlemen, for saving my back and my marriage 😊
• Addison Albright. Addison isn’t just a fabulous author and my most valued beta reader, but she’s an all-around wonderful person. She is incredibly kind and generous and spends lots of time and creative energy promoting her fellow author friends (including me). I don’t know what I did to deserve her, but I’m intensely grateful and y’all should go and buy all her books to help me show my gratitude 😊
• My new office. In Kuala Lumpur, my tiny desk was crammed between the couch and the dining table in the living room, always resulting in a discussion in the evenings when my husband wanted to watch TV and I wanted to write (the two can not exist in the same room, TV sounds are incredibly distracting.) But now I have my own space. A small room tucked underneath the sloping roof of our new house, with enough space for a bigger desk and several bookshelves, and blessedly TV-free, that’s all mine. I love it.
• My mom, the expert knitter. It’ll take a while to get used to the arctic (okay, I’m exaggerating a little, it hasn’t been THAT cold down here in the south just yet) temperatures in Sweden after living in Malaysia and constantly 30C/90F heat. But my mom knits the most fabulous socks and scarves and hats, so at least I won’t freeze to death.
• Living close to my daughter. Or you know. Close is relative, of course, but the 284 miles that part us is vastly different from the 5700 miles or so that used to part us when I lived in Malaysia. These days it takes me three and a half hours on a train to go see her. Before it took taxi-flight-stopover-flight-train for 24 hours and then several days to adapt to a different time zone. But not anymore! Which I’m taking advantage of this weekend, when I’m jumping on a train to go see her. Yay!