The Swedish weather service reports that the past month has been the most sunless November for a hundred years. The official number for total hours of sunshine in Stockholm this month: three.

One fifteen-minute stretch of sunshine happened on a weekend so I actually saw it with my own eyes, and even caught it with my camera.


We baked lussebullar, saffron buns, today. We ended up with a wild mixture of all kinds of buns, including traditional shapes as well as “a pancake” by Adrian, several plaits by Ingrid, a few animals, and other things. My mum, especially, gets bored with the traditional shapes pretty fast and makes all kinds of weird squiggles.


The sock and slipper season has truly begun. Eric and I start off with woollen socks and then switch to sheepskin slippers when it gets colder. Ingrid doesn’t really need either but sometimes likes to wear pink slippers for fun. Adrian can’t make up his mind – sometimes he wears slippers, sometimes he’s barefoot, and today he decided he really liked the feeling of woollen socks.


Our bookshelves are full, and books keep piling up on all sorts of surfaces here. I have 6 piles on my desk. There are piles on the bedside tables in our bedroom and the kids’ bedroom. There are piles on the side table next to the sofa. At least we manage to keep the piles off the floor…


The local shops have put up their Christmas-themed window decorations and trees in SpÄnga torg have acquired lights.

I have a Coop MedMera membership card, which I use to pay for all my daily shopping at Coop Konsum, one of our two local supermarkets. I use my Visa card for everything else, and only rarely use cash.

MedMera means roughly “and more”, so it can also be used at other shops in the Coop group, for example at the Akademibokhandeln chain of book shops. But I use almost exclusively at Coop.

So much so, in fact, that my brain has apparently decided that the MedMera card is for Coop only, and refuses to process it at other locations. It has happened me on two occasions already that I have tried to pay with it at Akademibokhandeln and been totally and completely unable to recall the PIN code, which I use daily at Coop without ever having to even think about it. The card terminal looks different and that is apparently enough to throw my brain off.

And what’s worse, not being able to remember the PIN at Akademibokhandeln also erased it from the memory slot that I use at Coop. So: I use the PIN daily for years at Coop, then tried and failed (just once!) to remember the pin at Akademibokhandeln, and the next day I could not recall it at Coop either!

(Luckily muscle memory kicked in again the day after, so I can now use the card again.)



Adrian loves bread. He especially loves the apricot and walnut bread that Eric made this weekend. (Adrian helped put the apricots and walnuts in the dough.)

When Adrian eats food that he really really enjoys, there is no doubt about it: he chews with his eyes closed, going nyom nyom nyom all the time, like in a cartoon.


Playing with kinetic sand. Adrian, Eric, and two of Adrian’s friends.


Lusen is a Swedish game, dating from the 1950s, where you roll a die to collect parts to build a weird-looking plastic insect. Adrian and I played Lusen today.


Horsehair dish brush.