Ingrid is sewing a plush fleece doll/monster. Not for Adrian, this time, believe it or not! She’s sewing the plushy for her sponsor child.

At her school they have a “sponsor” system where kids in 3rd grade take care of newcomers in grade 0. In Swedish it’s called being a fadder, which can also mean godfather/godmother, but I suppose sponsor works better in English.

Basically each older child is assigned a younger child to take care of and be friendly to. Occasionally there are arranged “sponsor” meetups when the whole class gets together with the other class, the older ones read books to the younger ones and they play together etc. Outside of those meetups the sponsors are just an extra friendly older student.

Ingrid still has strong memories of her sponsor and I remember how cool she thought it was to be noticed by a 3rd grader. It’s a nice way to help the newcomers feel welcome, to show them that the older kids are not scary, and to give the older ones some extra responsibility.

Ingrid’s math homework for this week is a practice sheet for the 7 times table. She doesn’t like this kind of repetitive homework much. Her way to make it more fun was gamification and competition: timing herself (hence the iPad next to her) and trying to beat her previous records. This led her to discover that she can do the sums faster if she doesn’t read them out loud.

Apparently she is also one of those people whom music helps concentrate (which is the total opposite of how I work) so we had her favourite playlist with Minecraft songs blasting away next to us.

I recently had the opportunity to spend an hour in the science fiction bookshop and came home with a pile of books, among them a whole series by Robin Hobb – the Rain Wilds Chronicles. Now I can’t stop reading. This series is just as unputdownable as the ones I’ve read before. I am putting off household tasks, skimping on sleep, choosing the quickest dinners I can cook, saying no to the kids, so that I can go back to reading. I’ve come to realize I need to ration my reading so that other parts of my life don’t get completely neglected.

One of the things that I really like about Robin Hobb’s writing is her ability to hint at things to come and to build up anticipation. She builds it up gradually and subtly. She may start by just mentioning an idea or a concept in an aside, or perhaps a person who hasn’t been mentioned for a while. Then later she discreetly brings up the same idea from another angle. And you know it’s going to lead to something big, and you know it’s getting closer, and even though you have no idea what it is, you’re biting your nails while you’re waiting to get there.

We went to Moderna museet, Stockholm’s museum of modern art, to see an exhibition by Olafur Eliasson. Reality machines was interesting and varied. Many of the installations were such that they became much more interesting when there were people near them, looking at them: installations where the structure itself, reflections, light, shadows and the viewer’s movement all combined to create something new.

…devices for experiencing reality, thus creating new perceptions of the world. It is a matter of becoming aware of what we see, but also of being aware of ourselves in the act of seeing. Or, as the artist puts it, “seeing yourself seeing”, of acknowledging our presence and our participation.

The exhibition was accompanied by a room where visitors can build using a construction toy (Zometools). A sort of artwork – a “structural evolution project” constructed by the visitors/participants – in theory, in practice it was just fun. We probably spent as much time there as in the exhibition itself. Well-designed construction toys are always fun, and it’s especially fun when you have lots and lots of materials to build with.

I spent all of today volunteering with Vi gör vad vi kan, helping to sort donated clothes for refugees on Lesbos and elsewhere.

Introduction:

I worked in the rough sorting area, where we opened sack after sack of donated stuff and sorted them into categories such as men, women, kids, backpacks, blankets, hygiene etc. We also ended up with amazingly large piles we labelled “charity” (with usable items that would nevertheless be of no use to refugees trekking across Europe in winter, such as neckties, sandals and strappy summer dresses) and “garbage” (with clothes that were too dirty or worn to be of any use to anybody).

I wonder what people were thinking when they donated that kind of stuff. Were they too busy or too lazy to sort through their stuff before donating it? Smelly shoes, clothes covered with cat hair… Did they not think that someone would have to sort those out?

My scrum master habits kicked in almost immediately, so I sneak scrum mastered the heck out of the area immediately around me. I couldn’t help but notice that some parts of the process could be made a lot more efficient with very little effort, and without even having to tell people to do anything differently – just by moving some boxes and bags around and by doing things differently myself.

The roughly sorted things went on to a second round of finer sorting. Kids wear sorted roughly by size; winter clothes sorted out for high priority handling, etc.

Winter is coming.

At some point we had lunch, sitting on packing pallets and wolfing down Max hamburgers.

I got to brush up my 20-year-old pallet jack skills.

Packing area:

Finished, packed boxes:

On our way to the bus that will take us back to Stockholm:

I worked for 10 hours, with a few brief breaks. I got a lot done, and I helped the people around me get a lot done. But I also feel like I barely made a difference. I wish I could do more. Still: we do what we can.

Normally when I pick up Adrian at preschool the place is half empty. I’m neither the first nor the last to arrive – just late enough so that things have calmed down a bit. But this afternoon Adrian’s preschool had a parents’ fika, i.e. coffee and cake for all the kids and their parents. Adrian was a bit tired so when we left the fika was still underway. Many of the kids were still there, plus a parent or two for most of them, and some siblings as well.

This is the mess that met us in their cloakroom. I don’t normally see it in this state because when we leave, maybe half the kids have left already and taken their clothes with them. And often they are playing out in the yard when I arrive, so the clothes are on the kids instead of on their hooks. But now: all their clothes, plus bags, dropped toys, super important drawings mixed up with random pieces of paper… It struck me that this is probably not an unusual sight during daytime, when the clothes of two groups of kids (30+ in total) are crammed into this small room. And I tried to imagine what this room looks and feels like when those kids try to put their clothes on to go outside…

Every other Tuesday we get a delivery of vegetables from Ekolådan. When we got home today, there were no vegetables, and the empty box that we’d left outside for the delivery van to pick up was still there, as empty as it was in the morning.

I try empty the fridge of fresh vegetables ahead of the delivery as much as possible, so that I can use the veggies from the box when they are at their freshest and finest. When the box did not turn up, that plan failed. But luckily “empty” doesn’t mean “totally empty” – we still had some carrots and onions and a few other long-lasting veggies at home, and there are of course also canned and frozen vegetables to fall back on.

Finally the box turned up just as I was in the middle of cooking dinner. Our ordinary driver had fallen ill and the temp driver was not at all familiar with the route, which is why he arrived so late.

Adrian and I played with Geomag.

I got the Geomag as a Christmas gift many years ago. Now it’s a toy that the whole family enjoys. When we play with it together, we often run out of pieces before we feel that we’re done with our constructions, so now we have bought even more pieces so we can build even bigger things.

Today’s Geomag construction started out as two space ships that had antennas so they could talk to each other. Then we added a “wire” between them for even better communication. Then that wire needed supports. Then I think the space ships became houses and we built an extra free-standing basement. Next we added remote controlled claws on long arms that we could use to catch bad guys, and more supports for the arms. And finally a Lego Spiderman came to operate one of the arms, and caught a Lego bad guy and put it in the basement which was now a prison, while a Lego king made himself at home in the largest part.

After preschool Adrian often needs a snack so he can make it all the way to dinner without a meltdown. One of his favourite snacks is gurksnittar: cucumber sandwiches made with flatbread that is buttered, folded around cucumber slices and then cut into smaller slices or triangles. Sometimes we do the same sandwiches with apple instead of cucumber. Adrian, being the food sceptic that he is, doesn’t put anything else on his sandwiches, ever.