Swedish Postscripts: My Theme for the April A-Z Challenge

So you survived Valentine's Day? I'm not usually much for Hallmark-manufactured holidays...but I must say, I got some nice surprises this year. The Engineer even arranged for my boys (12 and 14.9) to get me a card. Chinese take-out for dinner. Tomorrow night is our regular date-night, so we'll hit our favorite place (family owned-operated authentic Mexican restaurant that's been around for at least the 20 years we've been going there) where they “run out of the regular glasses” and bring me a 20 oz. Margarita instead of a 12 oz...gotta love 'em! We don't even try to go out ON the 14^th. Just too many people!

See? Normal paragraph. No ranting and raving. No popsicle threats. Just a regular blogger telling about a regular day. Did I scare you Sunday? No one even TRIED the competition...{sniff} I'm actually doing much better, sanity wise. Finished all the anti-biotic. Now I'm just on oral steroids. For the winter. Earned myself an extra week of bed-rest for showing up at the lung specialist with a pulse ox of 84...I'll take it though. Do NOT want to go back to jail.

This post is actually about something though. That part up there was the stretching and the warm-up lap. Remember I promised to work out every other day? Missed another day, so figured I should start slowly. Now let's hit the stairmaster!

I've decided what my theme is going to be for the A-Z Challenge! I'm Swedish. Half. Mom is American, Dad is 100% Swede. That's why his name on my blog is “The Swede”. Clever, eh? I've got stories of my European childhood scattered throughout Life is Good, and I've had readers and friends ask for more. I thought a month of posts focusing on that part of my life would be fun. After all, it's still a wide open field, with room for a lot of creativity. There is one, tiny, little, insignificant detail. (Name the movie!) The Swedish alphabet has three more vowels than English, rarely uses w, y isn't very popular either, and of course I'll have the same X and Q issues as those tackling this challenge in English. But it will be fun! It just means that while the rest of you get four days off for good behavior, I only get one. But I'm not one to back down from a challenge, so I'm now, officially, announcing my theme and being honest about the letters. Accountability among friends is very good, don't you think?

What I still haven't decided is what goes with which letter...and I'm tossing around the idea of each week having a theme. For example, the summer I turned 14 was a very significant time in my life, and I spent most of it in Sweden with my grandparents. Just me. I could write for weeks about that. However, readers might also like to know about what school in Sweden is like, what our favorite sports and hobbies are, what cultural differences separate us, compared with the similarities that unite us.

I'd love to hear from you what topics you would find interesting. Shoot me your ideas in the comments. If you think of more that you'd like to add to your suggestions, just come back and add another comment.

One last thing before I go. My A-Z Challenge co-host, Stephen Tremp, has just released his 2^nd novel in the Breakthrough Trilogy. Check out his post at the main A-Z Blog from Monday, and while you're there, read Heather's guest post from Tuesday. She's a very a new blogger already taking on a big challenge, AND encouraging others to join.

Have you signed up? Have you decided to be winger or a themer?