Restless yet not at all in the mood for working out, I went out and cycled during my lunch break instead. I had some minor errands on my list that I thought I could get done.

To Sundbyberg where I can buy fabric for a bag I want to sew? Or to Vällingby, where there is a variety of shops for my other errands?

I aimed for Vällingby, mentally complaining about the frustrating lack of fabric shops nearby. There is only the one in Sundbyberg, unless I want to go all the way to central Stockholm.

And then I realized – there is a Stadsmissionen thrift shop in Vällingby, which can totally count as a fabric shop, and even be better than the real thing. Every thrift shop in Stockholm has piles of curtains, pillowcases and tablecloths. More eco-friendly than buying new fabric, and a more varied choice, too. The tablecloth I bought is 100% linen, thick and soft – a much more luxurious fabric than I would otherwise have bought for this.

I can feel a twinge of reluctance to cut up a perfectly functional tablecloth. Maybe someone would have bought and used it as a tablecloth? But then again, I’m pretty sure that Stadsmissionen can’t sell all the donations they get and some of it ends up recycled. So if I cut up that tablecloth to make it into a bag, it’s still getting a good new life.

Last week, my first week back at work after vacation, was dull and slow. Half the team was still on vacation, and one of the two other developers was off sick, so I felt alone and isolated. I had to make a real effort to keep myself focused on work.

This week has been better. The team is back, we’re working together, talking to each other again.

And having meetings.

Remote meetings work very well when they’re small and tightly focused. But when we are six people in a meeting then inevitably some parts are more relevant to a part of the group and less so for others. In a face-to-face meeting, when others are talking about something that I am only peripherally involved in, I don’t lose focus much: I feel like I’m a part of the discussion just by being in the same room and looking at whoever is talking. But in a remote meeting, especially if I’m looking at a screen share rather than whoever is talking, my focus starts slipping and before long I am quite distracted, looking at code or browsing reddit or reading the news.

Giving myself something to do when I am passively listening helps a lot. A small distraction keeps worse distraction away. Crocheting works, and colouring. I keep my colouring books and pencils close at hand, in my desk drawer.

These days, in Sweden, the first day of school is nothing special. Admittedly they do teambuilding activities instead of ordinary lessons, and there’s paperwork, and going through the schedule and such. But it feels mundane and administrative.

The fact that it happens on some random Wednesday in the middle of August doesn’t help. In Estonia, the school year always starts on the 1st of September. That date is almost as much of an institution as Christmas Eve. You say “1st of September” and everybody knows what you’re talking about.

The first day of school was special and festive. I remember dressing up for it. Even the parents taking their children to school dressed up.

We wore a school uniform. These were later abolished, but I wore a uniform up to grade four or five. In the lower grades, girls wore a knee-length dark blue pinafore dress over a lighter blue shirt. On festive occasions, the blue shirt was replaced by a white one with ruffles.

The first day of school started with a ceremony in the school’s assembly hall. There were speeches of welcome by the principal, performances by the school choirs, etc. After that each class split off to their own classroom and the day probably shifted into a more mundane and administrative mode like today.

Here’s a photo of me on the first day of 2nd grade. Wooden clogs were cool back then.

Praegusel ajal siin Rootsis on esimene koolipäev üsna tavaline. Õppetundide asemel on küll muud tegemised, nagu üksteisega taas sõbraks saamine, mitmesugune paberiasjandus, tunniplaani läbivõtmine jne. Aga üldiselt igapäevane ja administratiivne.

Ei aita seda sündmust erilisemaks teha ka see, et kool algab suvalisel kolmapäeval keset augustikuud. Eestis algab kool alati esimesel septembril. See kuupäev on sama tuntud kui jõuluõhtu. Räägid esimesest septembrist ja kõik teavad, millest jutt käib.

Esimene koolipäev oli eriline ja pidulik. Mäletan, kuidas selleks puhuks pidulikud riided selga pandi. Isegi lapsevanemad, kes lapsed kooli tõid, riietusid pidulikult.

Koolis kanti koolivormi. Hiljem kaotati see ära, aga mina kandsin koolivormi vist neljanda või viienda klassini. Algklassides kandsid tüdrukud tumesinist pihikseelikut ja heledamat sinist pluusi. Pidupäevadel asendas sinist pluusi valge, volangikestega.

Esimene koolipäev algas aktusega kooli aulas. Kooli direktor pidas tervituskõne, esinesid kooli koorid, jne. Pärast seda läksid klassid laiali oma klassiruumidesse ja eks siis vist järgnesid igapäevasem paberimajandus nagu tänapäevalgi.

Pilt on minu esimesest koolipäevast teises klassis. Puukingad olid tol ajal popid.

Adrian, ready to leave for the first day of the new school year.

Both the kids enjoyed their summer break but in the last few days they’ve been getting impatient to get back to school. The in-between time between summer and school that is neither one nor the other has made them restless.

With my world so shrunken and small these days, I’m glad that Spånga looks so nice, with the young cherry trees and the seasonal tubs of flowers.

It’s been hot for a week at least, and it’s still hot, and not getting any cooler. 27°C in the shade in the middle of the day. Shades down, windows open, and still I’m hot and sticky.

I’m not a big fan of fans (ha). I don’t like the noise, and the constant breeze makes my eyes dry and itchy. But today I gave up and moved our big fan to my home office. It was the only way I could get any work done.

I haven’t done any proper hiking for almost a year. No ski tour in the spring, no summer hiking holiday with the family… and an autumn hike in the Swedish fells, like what I’ve done the past few years, is not going to happen either. Staying in small huts, cheek by jowl with strangers (and new strangers every night) does not sound like a good idea at all in the current coronavirus circumstances.

I guess I’ll have to figure out some other kind of hiking this year, without any huts and such. And for that I’ll need a tent. We have a tent but it’s a stonking big four-season tent for three people – robust, but weighs a ton, and there is no way I’ll be lugging it around on a solo hike.

I cycled to the city today (which felt just like the old days) and went shopping for something more suitable: a three-season one-person tent. I looked at a few and even put up two of them on the shop floor. They had a special area for that, which I hadn’t expected but it does rather make sense. Tents are expensive and you don’t want to buy a pig in a poke.

Well, I tried putting up two of them. With one of them my efforts failed, and so did the shop assistant’s, even after watching an instruction video. It was an easy decision at that point to give up on that tent and buy the other one – Hilleberg’s Enan – which had a very clear instruction manual and was very easy to figure out. And made in Estonia, as a bonus.

It also happened to be the most expensive tent I looked at. It wasn’t my plan, but it also wasn’t a surprise. Cost and quality don’t always go strictly hand in hand, but when it comes to camping equipment, there is a strong relationship. The tent we have already is also a Hilleberg. We’ve had it for a long time and it’s still going strong. With care and repairs, I expect the new tent to last the rest of my hiking years.

Summer break is nearing its end and Adrian’s friends are returning to town, and he is most happy to spend time together with them again.

His friend F has been hanging out in our house a lot. They play Minecraft together, build Legos, or go out playing Pokemon Go. When they run out of other activities, they bake. Both of them really like chocolatey things so they have baked a mud cake, chocolate muffins, and now chocolate cookies.

Friend F has nearly no experience of doing anything in the kitchen. Adrian, compared to him, is a pro baker. Adrian supervises, follows the recipe, weighs and measures, while F enjoys the more physical acts of breaking the eggs and stirring the batter.

The aftermath of their baking sessions is usually an astonishing mess. After the mud cake (or maybe it was the muffins) they cleaned the kitchen, then I cleaned the kitchen one more time, and still I kept finding small splodges of batter in various parts of the kitchen for more than a day.

This time the mess was more contained but still quite impressive. One step in the recipe suggested working the dough together with your hands. The boys did this using all four of their hands. Before long they had more dough on their hands than in the bowl. They were wise enough to call for help at that point, and I managed to scrape most of the dough back into the bowl.

The cookies came out delicious.

Since Adrian’s and my last camping trip was not entirely satisfactory, we went out again today. Eric and Ingrid were less interested and stayed at home.

(I heard afterwards that they had spent the evening watching a horror movie. Mother-son bonding: camping in the woods. Father-daughter bonding: watching a horror movie.)

This time I made a focused effort to avoid crowds. Firstly, we’re going on a Friday evening instead of Saturday. Hopefully most people will do their camping during the weekend itself.

We went to the Paradiset nature reserve instead of Tyresta – it’s less well known and generally less crowded (though no harder to reach). Plus the rules about where you can put up your tent are less strict in Paradiset, so we won’t be all crowded into a single small spot. And since we’re not actually putting up a tent nor making a fire, we could technically stop and sleep just about anywhere we like!

We got a late start and didn’t get to Paradiset until close to half past six in the evening, so we kept the walking to a minimum and aimed for the east side of lake Trehörningen. It’s a lovely little lake with pleasant views and evening sun. There were some tents there but, to my relief, no big crowds and no loud groups.

We picked a flattish spot off to one side and set up camp.

First things first. Bathing! The day was hot and even though we had walked no more than maybe a kilometre and a half, we needed cooling. The lake water was wonderful – cool enough to be refreshing, warm enough so that I could swim without getting cold. The surface layer was warmer than I remember swimming pools being. I swam a few turns back and forth while Adrian splashed near the shore.

When we were done bathing it was quite late already and we had a lot left to do. Get the hammock up for Adrian, cook dinner, eat… It still takes me a while to get the hammock properly adjusted. After dinner it was bedtime for Adrian, while I stayed up reading for a while.

Now that nearly two months have passed since midsummer, it actually gets properly dark at night so you can see the stars. I thought I’d lie there and look at them but I could only see a very small patch of the sky so it stopped being interesting quite quickly.

Ingrid has gotten her sleep patterns quite turned around during the summer. She regularly stays up until two in the morning (or something like that, I don’t really know, that’s well past my bedtime!) and then sleeps until two in the afternoon. Sometimes I go to check on her in the afternoon just to make sure she’s still alive and well, because I cannot imagine how it can be possible to sleep that late. Apparently it is quite possible.