Ingrid came home today with a chart of her height and weight development, from the school nurse. The girl who used to be shortest in her class, always at least one standard deviation below the average for her age, has now caught up with her peers and hit the average line. 163.5 cm and counting.

The points on that curve are sparse so it’s hard to say anything about the slope, but since she’s grown 10 cm in each of the last two years (according to my home measurements) she’s likely not done growing yet.

I’ve always expected this to happen, and always told her so. I was a late grower myself. Always among the shortest in my class. The militarily inspired gym classes in Soviet Estonia did their best to rub it in by lining kids up at the beginning of each lesson, first by gender, then by height. I caught up later than Ingrid, some time in high school I think.

Ingrid was never too worried, I think, but still very conscious about her height, or rather the lack of it. Now she is very conscious and very pleased to be as tall as she is. She often shows off how she can touch the door lintels – without even being on her toes! – and how she is almost as tall as me.

I wonder what it is that makes us not want to go to bed at night, when sleeping is actually a rather pleasant and comfortable activity.

I stay up too late way too often – reading, mostly – and when I finally go to bed I wonder why I didn’t do it earlier.

Adrian does the same. He knows he needs to shower but he puts it off, and then he wants a last late snack, and then he stays up reading Kalle Anka some more, and by the time he finally gets to bed it’s later than he wanted it to be.

I’ve fallen behind on posting here, I know. I’m alive and well and not corona-infected or anything. Just hit by a bout of laziness.

With my mid-day workouts I’ve gotten into such a nice daily pattern. Only in the last week or two I’ve had to skip it twice because I have had meetings upon meetings and really just physically couldn’t squeeze in one more thing. But when I do actually have time I don’t make up excuses or postpone it.

I haven’t achieved the same kind of discipline with blogging, even though I think it would do me good. Time to make a new effort.

A beautiful, snowy walk on Järvafältet around Säby.

We saw quite extensive ski tracks on the fields. I didn’t know there were prepared tracks here. Tempting. I wonder if my back country skis would fit in the tracks.

We’ve had a good two or three weeks of lovely winter weather now: plenty of snow, temperatures between –5°C and –10°C, and surprising amounts of blue skies and sunshine in between the flurries of snow. I love shovelling powdery snow on a sunny day.

The snow cover in the garden is so thick that I can barely see some of the smaller bushes. I only know to avoid stepping on them because I remember where I planted them.

Snow has piled up on tree branches and porch railings in precariously curling layers. In some places, it’s started slumping off whatever thing it landed on, but somehow still clings on in gravity-defying curves. I’m peeved that I can’t manage to take photos that do these shapes justice.

There’s a wildish rose bush at the back of the garden. Its rose hips look especially decorative against snow, even when they’re all shrivelled up.

I’m surprised that the fruit is still there and hasn’t been eaten by birds.

I’m not sure what species it is, but I’m guessing it might be a beach rose. Those are common in Sweden, and for years I thought them to be a long-time part of Swedish nature. I only found out recently ago that it is considered an invasive species, and I learned that the first one was spotted in Sweden just a hundred years ago (1918 according to Wikipedia).

My days are still full of meetings. This new team loves meetings and discussing every decision and doing remote pair programming. It is very democratic and very sharing but also rather exhausting. I barely have enough time for a workout and a quick lunch during my lunch breaks, and definitely no time to go out for photos or anything like that. So here’s a desperate, badly lit and badly composed, end-of-day, better-than-nothing, photo of my dinner materials.

Even so, the photo reminds me of how happy I am with our “new” kitchen. Well over a year and a half old, it still feels new, and I often find myself thinking fondly about it. It is so much more functional, well-organized, light and better-looking than the old one. All these deep drawers with their smooth mechanisms, felt bottoms and well-fitting dividers! And the smooth, solid, easy to clean counter top! And the dimmable lights, aimed at places that actually need them! Love it.

Speaking of splurging, I bought four new hand towels just because the old ones were looking tatty, even though they were still perfectly functional.

There is no doubt that the new ones look better. The trouble with new towels, though, is that they never work as well as old ones. The cotton is too smooth and just doesn’t absorb much water. At first these felt entirely hopeless. Full of fabric softener, I guess. I threw them in the laundry bin and after a first wash they work a teeny bit better. But it will probably be many months, if not longer, before they can compare to the old ones. By the time they’re at their best, they will probably be looking tatty already…

Money wasn’t something we discussed in our family when I was a child. Still, I believe that during my first fifteen years, our purchasing decisions were limited not so much by lack of money but by lack of things to buy. Soviet planning, defitsiit, the usual story.

After I moved to Sweden to join my mother, we were poor. One adult and two teenagers living on the income of a single doctoral student, plus whatever welfare benefits we got. We always bought the cheapest variety of everything: those horrible artificial-looking apples, and whatever groceries were on sale. I remember a carton of orange juice that my mother bought because it was the cheapest, that tasted so bad that I refused to drink it. But we didn’t buy a different one until someone had drunk it.

Luckily I got a job within less than a year – illegally, for cash in an envelope at the end of the week. Other teenagers get an allowance; I worked to help pay the rent, and whatever I wanted or needed to buy for myself. The job was at a sporting goods shop and I got an employee discount even though I wasn’t formally employed, so I got good deals on cheap winter jackets and such. I still have one backpack that I bought there.

I could never afford going to the movies. I think I may have gone once during my four years of high school.

Buying books was a luxury. I remember the feeling of saving up for a single paperback, and then the difficulty of choosing just one.

I know my grandmother was poor in her retirement. I saw her always considering the prices of groceries oh so carefully, and wondering whether she could afford to repair her shoes.

I have no rational reason to expect my own retirement to be like that. I have a well-paid job and I live well below my means and I have significant savings. But underneath the surface there is still that small fear that I might end up there, like she was, like I was. Old and poor.

One part of adulting that I still haven’t fully learned is allowing myself to spend money on nice things. Even when there is no doubt whatsoever that I can afford it, and I know it to be useful and believe it to be beautiful, there is still a twinge of guilt.

It took an effort to spend 700 SEK on this useful and beautiful lamp.

These days I usually manage to recognize this feeling and sometimes decide overcome it. But frugality is easier for me than splurging, and asceticism comes more naturally than indulgence.

On the plus side, this means that I spend much less than I earn and there is always money left over at the end of the month, and unless I do something spectacularly stupid in the future, I won’t have to worry about running out of money when I’m old. Maybe I’ll learn to splurge when I’m ninety.