Sometimes the kids grumble over schoolwork and ask me whether I’ve ever needed to know the year when Gustav Vasa became king of Sweden, or some such thing. I must admit I haven’t.

Most of what I learned in school I’ve forgotten, except languages and some maths. Many parts of maths would probably come back if I ever made an attempt to refresh my memories, because it was more about doing than about memorizing. But all the fact-based subjects, from biology through physics to history, are mostly gone. The basic frameworks are there still, but none of the details.

Languages have been truly useful. English, of course, and French, and even the smattering of German I learned in university.

In a strong second place after languages comes basic geometry. Pythagoras’ theorem is good for all kinds of everyday problems, from shaping the sleeve of a knit cardigan to estimating the length of steel flowerbed edging. And the relationship between the radius and the area of a circle comes in surprisingly handy for estimating the size of a pancake pan, and hence the right amount of batter. If the radius of the large pan is about 50% larger than that of the small pan, then the amount of batter will be 100% larger. 0.5 dl for the small pan, 0.7 for the medium, 1 whole dl for the largest one. I could of course reach the same result with trial and error, but that’s less fun.

All of a sudden the weather is really warm. Sandal season is here!

I wouldn’t go so far as to say I dislike shoes. But. Switching to sandals is always a pleasure. And being able to walk around barefoot indoors without getting cold feet. My extremities tend to be cold so I can’t do this in winter. But now the rooms are warm and the floor is warm and I can ditch the woolly socks most of the time.

I like feeling the wooden floor planks, and all the different rugs. I like feeling the difference between the old floor in the old living room, and the new floor in the new living room. I even like the feeling of the glow-in-the-dark anti-slip tape on the edges of the stairs.

Adrian ordered a box of Pokemon cards in February. Yes, February. They were supposed to arrive in early March. Then late March. And then April or perhaps May. The endless slippage was incredibly frustrating.

Two days after we got the “April or maybe May” estimate, the package suddenly arrived. Pokemon card boxes are random so you never know what you get (other than the one “front cover” card) but this was a good one. There were several duplicates, yes, but also all of three “shiny” cards. It seems it was worth the wait.

The morning sun is so warm that I can open the doors out towards the garden and enjoy the birdsong while I sit and read in the sofa.

I am so bored with my life. Nothing happens, and nothing will happen, and it’s just the same house and the same work, and the same neighbourhood to walk in. The most exciting thing in my week is a walk to the recycling containers in central Spånga.

The lack of any external stimuli drags my energy levels down. I don’t even want to do any of the things I usually enjoy. I cook dinner without really enjoying it. I knit without really enjoying it. I blog without really enjoying it. The only thing I do is sit in my corner of the sofa and read silly, fluffy, unchallenging books: fantasy romances and werewolves and such.

The good thing (which is maybe also slightly a bad thing) about reading on digital platforms is that I can always just click to get one more. I don’t even need to make the effort of ordering a book and waiting for it.

For a long time, I was the only one working from home, but Eric has been doing more and more from home since Christmas. It’s nice to have him in the house, even though I barely talk to him or even walk past him, because usually all my focus is on work. Often I even close my door so that my video meetings and his video meetings don’t turn into one large video meeting.

I’ve also had to learn that I cannot just walk through the house in a state of semi-undress after working out, and I cannot open the bathroom door to let the steam out after showering until I’m fully presentable again, because the way to the bathroom is in full view of his webcam.

Adrian gets restless. He likes to fiddle with things. Even when I’m reading to him at bedtime, he’s usually fiddling with something. It used to annoy me and I tried telling him to stop but I’ve learned to not do that.

He has a bunch of fidget toys that he alternates between. Or he just fiddles with some paperclip or chestnut or a lump of modelling clay.

Recently his favourite fiddle toy has been an old orange and white Rubik’s Snake. I had a snake like that when I was his age, and so did Eric. I’m not sure where this one came from but it could very well be my old snake. Or Eric’s.

The other day the plastic thread keeping the pieces together broke. According to Wikipedia the prisms are supposed to be connected with spring bolts but maybe that’s a newer construction. Or maybe this old snake was a cheap Chinese knock-off. In any case, it had a plastic thread instead of spring bolts, and when the thread broke, it all fell to pieces.

Apparently these are still a thing, and they still make them, and you can still buy them, which made Adrian very happy. He was even happier to find out that the snakes come in different sizes. So we now have a standard-sized 24-segment snake plus a double-sized one with 48. There are even snakes with 72 segments, but that seems like it might be unwieldy, so we didn’t go that far.

Some daffodils in the garden haven’t even gotten their buds out yet, but this one – right next to the wall facing south – is already in bloom.

Some bushes are still completely bare but others are well on their way. (This is blackcurrant.)

I’ve been procrastinating about more or less everything recently. Just don’t feel like doing anything. In fact I actively feel like not doing the things I could be doing.

But today I mended a broken pendant (superglue!), set up for knitting the heel on my socks, measured the cardigan, and then topped off the day by doing a load of white laundry, which means hankies, napkins and linen towels – and then ironed the whole load as well. Now I totally deserve to spend the rest of the day reading.