Parent-teacher meeting for Adrian at school. As usual, the meeting starts with Adrian showing us some of his work: pictures he’s drawn, stories he’s written.

He’s doing great in all the core subjects – reading, writing, math. In math he’s practicing his times tables for six to eight (feeling confident already with all the others) and paying extra attention to reading the problems carefully so he answers the right question. In English he asked for more challenging materials; he gets so much practice at home from YouTube and Netflix that the basic fare (colours, fruits, etc) is boring him.

Adrian has brought home a head full of lice from school. Truly, when I started combing, they were everywhere. Big, fat, well-fed. I actually caught one in the act of sucking blood. Now I’ve combed and killed them and then treated him with Linicin so hopefully we’re free from them now.

We have a whole apple buffet at home.
I like Ingrid Marie. I actually like them best when they’re just a little bit wrinkly, but still juicy rather than mealy.
Ingrid likes firm, crisp apples and abhors soft, mealy ones. ICA has had several new varieties of extra firm Swedish apples this year, such as Saga and Rubinstar.
Adrian likes Pink Lady apples and isn’t particularly interested in any others.
Eric is not a big fan of apples at all.

Monday’s are still Adrian’s days to cook dinner with me. Today we’re doing his favourite pasta with mature, hard goat’s cheese and pureed peas.

There are two tasks that he particularly enjoys. One is peeling garlic. He likes doing it with just his fingers, with no knife or anything.

The other is weighing. When he measures pasta for the four of us, it has to be 360 grams, no more, no less. He’s always a little bit peeved when the pasta weighs 359 grams and adding one piece takes the weight to 361.

I’m all done with my embroidered circles!

Eighteen circles in total, counting circle-within-circle as one when the inner and outer circle form part of the same design, and as two when they are separate designs.

When I look at the whole design, it makes me think of a map of constellations, or the symbols on a Sami drum.

There is the Web, and the Coiled Chain, and the Fence. And the Big Wheel, the Little Wheel and the Dark Wheel. The Sun Flower, and the Little Flower. The Crow’s Tracks, and the Little Black Thing.

It’s all simple stitches: running stitch, backstitch, chain stitch, and blanket stitch, with some satin stitch and some freeform no-name stitching. This last one is called feather stitch in English, but when I learned it in Estonian we called it “crow’s feet stitch” (varesejalapiste) and that’s how I think of it.

The witch hazel is flowering in beautiful pinkish-orange-red in front of the house. Apparently I bought a red variety. I love it, and I hope it thrives.

And yellow Eranthis is already dotting the gardens in the neighbourhood. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it in January before.

We’re getting rid of the Wii. It’s the end of the era of Just Dance and Mario Kart – now it’s Fortnite and Overwatch and Spiderman and Destiny instead, on more modern machines.

Work was stressful and rushed all autumn, all the way up to Christmas. At one point, it looked like we might have to work the weekend before Christmas. Somehow we got it all sorted out without having to work on weekends or holidays, and we all heaved great big sighs of relief at the end of the year.

But 9 months of short-term thinking have left their traces. We’re instinctively still rushing, still thinking we need to hurry hurry hurry. The duct tape and bubble gum solutions we had to build in some places are not getting fixed. We’re not adding to our debt burden, but we’re not paying it back either.

We’ll have to retrain ourselves to slow down again. To not take shortcuts – because we don’t have to. And we’ll have to retrain our product owner to not expect that kind of pace, and to make her understand how unsustainable it was.

At some point, a box of Humble toothbrushes somehow turned up in the house. I’m sure I didn’t buy them. But here they are, so I thought I’d try them.

After decades of smooth plastic toothbrushes in my mouth, a bamboo brush feels distinctly odd. The handle and the head are flat and straight, not rounded like I’m used to. It doesn’t have that kink in the handle that most brushes have, so the geometry feels a bit off. And I can feel the texture of bamboo against my tongue and cheeks all the time.

The plastic brushes, especially those with colourful patterns, radiate fun, modernity and slickness.
The humble brush radiates humility.

Buying plastic that I know I will throw away within months feels really, really icky now.

I am adding more circles to my skirt.

I’ve never embroidered with wool before. It feels nice, but it is also kind of challenging. Wool is scratchy, so the yarn tends to get tangled up more than I’m used to. And this yarn is surprisingly fragile. When I get a knot and try to unpick it with my fingers, I sometimes end up unpicking the yarn itself. I’ve also broken it several times just by trying to pull my stitches tight. Some stitches can be looser, but blanket stitch has to be tight or it goes all crooked.