I finally got around to organising a bicycle parking spot in the basement garage at the office. I’ve been chaining my bike either to the building or to a post in the lane between our two buildings. But the security guards didn’t like that much, and they’ve been reminding me occasionally to register for a place in the garage. It takes longer (getting in, going down into the garage, wrestling the bike into the rack, taking the lift back up) but on the other hand the bike will no longer get rained on.

A week ago I read this posting at Familjeliv.se:

jävla debatt om skrikmetoder, vad fan ska man göra med de som ligger och leker och gapskrattar när de är supertrötta och borde sova då? nyss gick jag in i sovrummet och hittade min snart 9 månader gamla son halvvägs i en kullerbytta. ja, han stod nästan på huvudet. ögonen gick i kors och han skrattade belåtet.

In English:

all this debate about cry it out methods, what the hell does one do with those who lie and play and laugh when they are super tired and should sleep? i just went in to the bedroom and found my almost 9 month old son halfway through a somersault. well he was almost standing on his head. he was all cross-eyed and laughing happily.

At the time I thought it sounded like a funny story, but I couldn’t really imagine myself in that situation.

How things change. For two evenings now I found myself in the exact same position: half an hour past Ingrid’s normal bedtime, when she would normally be cranky and barely able to keep her eyes open, I watched her laugh and roll around in her bed. I didn’t even need to keep her company or supply her with toys, like I normally need to do during the day. All I had to do was to lift her back towards the centre of her cot when she had gotten tangled up in a corner and couldn’t get out. She was as happy as she’s ever been and yet somehow she seemed totally loopy: overclocked, overstimulated, and unable to slow down.

Then suddenly 10 minutes later her energy ran out and she whimpered. And 2 minutes later she fell asleep. Wacky.

Finding new bugs, finding old bugs, finding bugs I myself have created recently, fixing bugs, and thinking of how to find more bugs.

And in the evening, the last episode of season 1 of Buffy.

We’ve been watching the first season of Buffy in the evenings. (It’s been years since we had a TV so we generally don’t see any TV series when they actually run.) There was one episode where people’s nightmares became real – not only for them but for everyone. One of Xander’s nightmares was about a clown who had scared him during his 6th birthday party.

It made me think about my own nightmares. I don’t have nightmares particularly often – generally only when I am fevered or when my brain is otherwise totally knocked out of its orbit.

One nightmare that I used to have, but don’t anymore, was a childhood one that survived for many years, like Xander’s. It makes sense that a childhood nightmare would survive – we are most vulnerable to nightmares when we are children, small and powerless in a large and scary world. In that dream the world is a child’s drawing of a forest. A very young child’s drawing, with trees that are green circular scribbles and tangles on top of a brown stump. And I am running through that forest while being chased by a child’s drawing of a monster: a big black circular scribble. In fact I never see the monster but I know it is there, and I know what it looks like. I remember having that dream already over 20 years ago.

Two nightmares that I have occasionally had in more recent years both also involve running. But now I’m not running away from anything – I am running towards something, or sometimes simply running but despite my enormous efforts I barely move forward. In one variation I feel like I am running uphill through treacle and against the wind: I feel constant resistance that slows me down. I lean forward, into the resistance, until I am leaning so far that I feel like I should fall forward, but I never do.

In another variety I am again running but my feet don’t get a grip. In this dream world running is done by pushing the ground backwards underneath me, only it’s like I cannot touch the ground. My feet are moving but simply passing just above the ground without any friction. In an effort to move I lean forward (and often the ground obligingly tilts up to meet me: I often end up running uphill in this dream as well) so I can also grab the earth with my hands and pull it backwards, almost like running on all fours, except there is no weight on my hands or feet as I hover above the ground and pull at it.

It makes me think of the Red Queen in Through the Looking Glass: “it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place”. The dominant feeling is that of frustration.

It’s interesting, I think, that my nightmares are so abstract and so similar. I am usually not running towards anything in particular. Sometimes there are other people running as well (and they never have any trouble getting a grip on the ground!) and sometimes not. Sometimes there is a world around me – trees, a path, something – other times not. Generally it’s just me trying to run.

Far less deadly than knife-wielding clowns or giant spiders!

Went to Spitalfields market in the late afternoon – the crowd has generally thinned by that time. Noticed that I now need to keep a safe distance between Ingrid and all the interesting things around her: she wants to explore everything. Clothes, foodstuffs, and all sorts of fragile items: fun for adults to look at, but not suitable for being chewed by a baby.

Met friends from Sweden (mostly Eric’s friends, to be honest: he has known them far longer than I have) who were in London with their children. Three girls with a lot of energy in them! We saw the Tower together – crown jewels including the world’s largest diamond, and armoury and all that.

I think Ingrid has finally beaten her conjunctivitis. But she still has a runny nose and occasionally coughs hard enough to make her throat hurt.

Sunshine again after a week of poorish weather, and we had a nice walk.

Today for the first time ever Ingrid “told” me that she was tired by some other means than whining or crying (which is a rather generic signal and makes it hard to tell tiredness from other problems). Well, she started by crying, but when I picked her up she immediately started sucking on her thumb, which she otherwise never does when she is awake. I put her down in the bed and she was asleep 5 minutes later.

She did it at a time when she wouldn’t normally be tired so if she hadn’t given me such a clear signal, it would probably have taken me a long while to figure out what was wrong. In fact I probably wouldn’t have figured it out at all, because it was so far from her normal naptime, and she would have been all cranky for the next hour.

I guess you could say she used sign language. Yay for communication!

Ingrid came home with mysterious green stuff around her fingernails. Alien goo? Finger paint?

Again one of those days where things happen and time passes and at the end of the day I find I’ve hardly gotten anything done at all.