The Christmas break ended, and after just two days of everyday life I am already feeling my stress levels going up. And I have had a cold for over a month now – I haven’t felt fully well since early December.

Adrian and I went to the theatre (Dollans dagis at Dockteatern Tittut). Afterwards we went for a restaurant lunch.

Getting ready for bandy practice.

Ingrid had an “important call to make” because there was “a major computer problem at work”. A virus had infected the network, apparently.

Eric with a cup of glögg in front of the computer, late at night when the kids are in bed.

Rufus the plush monster disappeared. One day he was here; the next he wasn’t. It is still a total mystery to me how he can have vanished. Adrian wanted a new monster, so today I made Dinah. Both Rufus and Dinah come from the book Sy monster, which also exists in English (Make a Monster).

We had a girls’ night out at the theatre, Ingrid, myself and my mum. We saw The Wizard of Oz at Maximteatern. The show was pretty good. Nice costumes, clever scenography (with pages in a giant book providing all the different backdrops), lots of singing and dancing. Visually I thought it was bit unimaginative to mimic the look of the movie so closely, but I guess it’s such a classic that for many people Dorothy needs to look like Judy Garland or it won’t be Dorothy.

Ingrid at riding camp, during the (beginner level) show jumping competition they had in the afternoon on the last day.

The riding hall has awful lamps that make everything and everyone look sickly green. More and more often I find myself mildly annoyed by the bad lighting that I encounter when I try to take photos in indoor spaces. Fluorescent lights that give really weird colour casts, or – even worse – combinations of multiple kinds of fluorescent lights with different colours. It is something I never noticed before I got serious about photography.

After dropping of Ingrid at her riding camp, I went for a walk in the nature reserve, on the border of which the riding school is located.

It was a good day for walking. While we had snow for Christmas and New Year’s Eve, it quickly melted again, and we’ve had muddy weather since then – that November weather of mud and constant cloud cover. But now it turned a bit colder again and the sun came out, so the ground was frozen firm, rather than muddy, and as long as I walked in areas that were open towards the south, I could even get some actual sunshine.

Macro photo of a corner of that kitchen towel.