Ingrid’s school year is already over, and she finished her first year of high school with As in all subjects. Some came more easily, but she kept fighting all the way to the end in the ones where she was hovering between an A and a B. She spent so many hours practising her French verb tenses – every single day, for weeks – for the last major test, and it all paid off!

Adrian needs hiking sandals for our upcoming summer adventures, so we measured his feet. 25.5 centimetres from heel to toe, size 41 – which is a full two sizes up in just half a year.

The sweet spot, with him and Ingrid and me all having the same size, didn’t last long at all.

The best drinking water, in Nysse’s opinion, is the one on a flower pot saucer. Not that he doesn’t drink from his own drinking bowl – but there is something about this muddy water under the flower pot that makes him come back to it again and again. Even when I’ve just changed his own water.

Since he drinks like a slob, splashing almost as much water on the side as he gets into his mouth, this always ends with a small puddle on the window sill.

I’ve tried giving him a (clean) terracotta saucer of his own, right on the same window sill, but apparently it’s not as good as the one with the traces of mud and limescale.

500 years since Gustav Vasa was elected king of Sweden, which ended the Kalmar union and made Sweden an independent country.

(Fancy cake by Ingrid.)

As I was driving back from Paradiset, the car started making strange noises when I engine braked. In fact it was doing a little bit of it already yesterday afternoon, which was part of my reason for not driving further than I had to.

Google told me that thumping noises during engine braking should not be a sign of anything particularly dangerous (might just be the suspension screws of something-or-other needing tightening).

That’s fine, I don’t need to engine brake, I can drive home without it.

But what started out as a little bit of thumping during engine braking gradually grew into more thumping also while just driving, especially at higher speeds. I modified my plan from “just drive smoothly and don’t engine brake” to “stay away from highways and get home by smaller roads”.

Over the next 10 minutes the noises continued to worsen, to the point where it sounded like the car was about to fall apart. I stopped, found the nearest train station, and drove there very, very cautiously. Called Eric, who’s better at diagnosing car noises. He took the train there, took a twenty-second test drive, agreed that the car sounded unsafe to drive any further, and located the source of the noise to the front wheel. (To me it sounded like it was coming from below me, and I had stopped to check for obvious problems underneath the car, but not found anything visibly wrong.)

At which point I noticed that the driver’s side front wheel was missing two of its five bolts, and the remaining three were looking very, very loose indeed. So my fears of the car falling apart weren’t far off at all. Good thing I stopped when I did.

Luckily loose bolts are an easy problem to fix. Eric redistributed the bolts we had left and re-tightened all of them, so we could drive home after all, instead of calling for a tow truck.

This is actually the second time a weird noise from our car has been a warning sign of wheels nearly falling off (although for different causes). So, dear friends, here is a reminder to take bad noises from your car seriously.

Eric and Adrian went out on a hike on Friday, and Ingrid has long planned to go camping with her friend group this weekend. Not wanting to be left out, I thought I’d do the same and check off the next stage of Sörmlandsleden.

Not even halfway through my drive to the starting point, Ingrid called me, nearly in tears. They had ended up on the wrong bus, and since the right one only goes once every two hours, they’d lose almost all of their planned afternoon out in the forest. As luck would have it, I was only 15 minutes away from the bus stop they’d gotten off, so I turned around and then spent the next hour and a half shuttling them from their bus stop to the Paradiset nature reserve they were aiming for.

By the time I was done playing chauffeur, it was four o’clock in the afternoon. I could still have followed my original plan – but here I was, right at the entrance of a beautiful nature reserve, so why not stay right here? The horde of teenagers headed east towards lake Trehörningen; I followed Sörmlandsleden (stage 6) south-west, stopping just short of the other end so I wouldn’t get back to civilization.

This is a beautiful time to be out walking. The greenery is all fresh and young and lush. I’ve never before managed to time any of my hikes to hit the peak of lily of the valley season.

And then in the middle of everything vibrant and beautiful, I come across this devastation. I cannot fathom how clear-cutting can still be allowed – how it can be legal to destroy a landscape like this.

Towards the end of my walk I saw a clump of aquilegias right next to the road. Beautiful colours, larger blossoms than even the ones in my flowerbeds at home. I was surprised to see them in the wild – but another fifty metres on I saw a lilac bush, so I guess there must have been a cottage some time in the past.

Eric and Adrian are on a scout hike, and Ingrid is going camping with her group of friends tomorrow. Feeling almost left out, I decided to also go camping tomorrow. Which means that I rather urgently need a new sleeping pad. I tried to patch the old one when it sprang a leak, but it still had a slow leak afterwards. I could lie on it for 15 minutes and not notice anything, but after three hours it was noticeably deflated. Having to get up in the middle of the night to re-inflate it is not fun.

Thus, to town for errands. Sleeping pad; cotton fabric and pattern for a dressing gown; wool fabric and yarn for my next embroidery project; some small stuff from the pharmacy.

Stockholm Marathon passed through the city while I was there but I happened to pass the route only when the runners weren’t there, so I didn’t see anything more than banners, and heard some distant cheering.

Lunch at Waipo (delicious dim sum and spring rolls and chrysanthemum tea) brought back memories of team lunches there with Urb-it. I wonder how they’re doing.

I’m making progress on darning the linen kitchen towel. I can only work on it during daylight hours (which I had today, because I worked from home and it is summer so it’s full daylight still at five in the afternoon) and even then it’s a task that definitely requires glasses.

Putting on glasses is still weird. I feel like I see well without them, and then putting them on suddenly makes everything almost insanely crisp and sharp. Like a camera in HDR mode, almost unreal.

First there was a lot of commuting all of April because I started on a new project and we wanted a solid handover from the old team. Which we didn’t get. Then there were two weeks in the beginning May when things felt settled and I could work from home two or three days a week. And then our PM was let go. Which was absolutely the right decision and to the team’s long-term benefit! But it happened with no handover and barely any warning, so now we’re floundering again and having yet more meetings to figure out how we’ll work together and who does what. Which means lots of days in the office. I’m always tired in the evenings, and I haven’t worked out since I don’t even remember when.