Ingrid also woke up with a slightly sore and phlegmy throat. Now the two of us have dinner in the dining/living room, while Eric and Adrian sit in the kitchen, so we don’t all breathe our potential germs at each other all the time.

It feels weird.

The soreness in my throat is so slight that several times during the day I thought I had only imagined it. Hypochondria, due to all the talk about covid-19. But occasionally it comes through more clearly, just enough to confirm that, yes, it’s there for real.

The old planting boxes are rotten through after ten years of sun and rain. I’m putting in place new ones, with fresh new soil and new strawberry plants.

Some kind of horrible weed had invaded several of the boxes with strawberries. It has thread-thin stalks and roots that break as soon as you try to remove it, so it’s impossible to get rid of. Replacing the soil will give the boxes a fresh start; maybe we’ll get a few years without that thing.

Adrian helped me assemble the boxes. Then Ingrid came out as well and they “helped” each other. There was so much monkeying around that there was almost no progress on the boxes… when they gave up and went in, it was almost a relief, and I could finally get the last boxes done on my own.

Adrian cooks dinner with me once a week, but now he wanted to make a meal all on his own.

Pancakes are a great first dish for him. There’s a single stream of obvious tasks to be done. No multi-tasking, no task-switching, no wondering what to do next. And he’s had enough practice that it’s almost impossible to fail: even if some of the pancakes don’t come out perfectly round, they will all taste good.

Another day with wonderful weather. Adrian and I went out to do some gardening. We bought three bushes to fill some gaps in the planting. I dug holes. Adrian watered things, climbed on things, and took wheelbarrow rides.

Then he found my measuring stick from when I dug the hedge and started making balancing experiments. He balanced the stick on top of the street sign, and experimented with rocks on top of the stick. How far from the middle can he move the rock before the stick is out of balance? That, of course, led to see-saw catapults.

Those electricity cabinets and the street sign next to them are great for climbing on, even if they are a bit of an eyesore. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t choose to put them there. But I’m pretty sure that Adrian would, if he could choose. Just like with the sewer access thing that you can more or less see in this blog post. I found it an eyesore and tried to find ways to hide it; Adrian loved climbing on it, stacking things on top of it, and so on. I’m glad it’s gone; he misses it. In a way I’m glad for his sake that I can’t get rid of the electricity cabinets.

Another old blog post reminds me of the covers I made for the cabinets. Those got vandalized soon after with graffiti and then with a knife, so they got thrown out. Someone keeps spraying graffiti on the cabinets; Eric keeps covering it up with silver-gray spray paint.

It’s taken us a while to eat all the Easter eggs. Hard-boiling is not the most delicious way of serving eggs. But some of them accompanied a cauliflower soup, and some we actually had for breakfast.

After knocking them first, of course. The tournament was won by Stitch, who’s just about to meet the referee here. (Stitch beat him, too.)

What would Easter be without painted Easter eggs? Nothing, that’s what!

Ingrid had a theme in mind for her eggs, and I also found inspiration, so we got to work.

Adrian quickly finished his first egg but then struggled to find ideas for the next one. Instead he painted the newspaper protecting the kitchen table, and then got caught up in some article.




Finally I suggested that he just pick a colour and start putting some paint on the egg, and that was enough to get him unstuck.

He usually makes abstract designs on his eggs, and today was no exception. This is him with a dark egg that he energetically splatters with small speckles for a starry-sky effect.

My eggs this year are a picture puzzle, but it only works in Swedish. I made a “vägg-ägg” and a “hägg-ägg”. (Vägg means “wall” and hägg means “bird cherry”.)

We usually go to Uppsala and my mum and brother for Easter. But with all the government recommendations to stay at home, not travel, especially not from Stockholm to other parts of the country, not meet people, especially older people… that’s not happening.

My usual default solution for long weekends is to go out for a walk. Today we went to Tyresta, back to that north-eastern corner of the national park where we camped last summer. The walk to lake Långsjön and back is picturesque and varied and not too long, and there’s a fire place at a beautiful spot on the lake shore where we could heat our lunch. It’s somewhat harder to get to than the area around the main park entrance in the west, and it doesn’t have any of the super accessible stroller-friendly paths, so I was thinking it would be less crowded.

“Less crowded” maybe it was, but definitely not “not crowded”. Dozens and dozens of families had obviously found themselves in the same situation as us, and come to the same conclusion as us. The parking lot at the park entrance was completely full. Luckily there was another parking lot just a kilometre before it, where we got the last but one spot. (Technically we were probably outside the parking area, but the ground was flat and not in a shrubbery, so it worked.)

The resting place with its shelter and fire place was of course full of people as well. But again we were lucky to arrive a bit later than a large group who were mostly done grilling their sausages, so Eric found room for our “hike bombs” at the edges of the fire. (More good luck for us in that someone had brought their own firewood, because the park’s official firewood box was completely empty.)

On our way back we had an Easter egg hunt. I hid eggs for Ingrid on one side of the path, and she hid eggs for Adrian on the other. We’ve done this in our own garden several times, but there aren’t that many good places to hide colourful eggs in a bare, early-April garden, so this was a lot more fun. Under roots and under rocks and under twigs and moss. I wish I had thought to take close-up photos.

Ingrid and Adrian are both in a phase where they enjoy each other’s company. Well, Adrian has always enjoyed Ingrid’s, but right now she enjoys his as well, which isn’t always the case. Lots of silly jokes. It always makes me happy to see and hear that.

Now that it’s spring and the weather outdoor is inviting and pleasant, Adrian wants to cycle. He’s outgrown his bicycle, though, and cycling on a too-small bike is not very comfortable.

We took the train to town last week to see if we could find something at Cykelåtervinningen, a second hand bicycle shop, but our timing was not the best. They only had bikes at the extreme ends of the quality scale left in his size (24 inches) – no-gear bikes with rusty scratches, and mountain bikes with more gears than I have toes and fingers – so we came home empty-handed. (Nothing wrong with many gears, but Adrian wants a back-pedal brake, and you won’t find that on a mountain bike. And they tend to be expensive.)

Yesterday we found a bike on Blocket that both looked good and seemed suitable. We met the seller the same evening and came home with a shiny new bike, barely used.

Today, of course, he wanted to cycle. Unfortunately Ingrid is completely bikeless right now, because her bike got stolen last summer. (She actually got two bikes stolen within less than a week, because she left them outside at night… so we didn’t want to buy her a new one. If she wants one, she can earn money for it herself.) But she’s now tall enough that her next bike might be a full-sized one.

We ended up with a whole chain of bike switches. Adrian took his new bike, but everyone else got something they don’t normally ride. Ingrid rode mine; I took Eric’s; Eric took his recumbent bike.

After adjusting the seat to the lowest possible height, Eric’s bike was about the right size for me. But I was really surprised about how “off” the whole geometry felt. The seat was too far to the front and the pedals too far back, and the seat angle felt wrong. Pretty uncomfortable, on the whole.

We cycled to Vällingby, just to have a destination of some kind. Once there we bought ice cream, after which we would “just browse” the bookshop for a moment but bought three beautiful jigsaw puzzles, two books and one GeoBender puzzle. And then had a lovely cycle ride back through the spring sunshine.

I’m guessing we might get a stricter quarantine soon, and I’ve tried to think about what that might mean for us. Boredom, of course, and cabin fever. We’re well equipped, with Netflix and Kindle and PlayStations and board games. But just in case, one of the things we did today was to buy the Nintendo Switch that Adrian has been saving up for, and letting him spread out the rest of the cost over the next six months. Just in case.

And we went quarantine shopping. If we get a quarantine, we might end up with the same kind of shopping routines that they have in the UK: strict limits of how many people are allowed to be in a supermarket at the same time, and hour-long queues outside. If this happens, it will probably be at its worst at the very beginning, so we stocked up with enough basic groceries to last us a week. No canned ravioli or meat soup or other panic food; just normal basics like pasta, rice, canned tomatoes and beans, and frozen vegetables, that we’ll eat anyway, with or without quarantine.

I made a list and Ingrid and Adrian immediately volunteered to take care of it, and seemed to have fun doing it. Meanwhile, Eric and I did the normal shopping for this weekend.

What we saw in Bromma confirms Google’s statistics. The parking lot wasn’t as packed as it would be on a normal Sunday, but it was more full than empty. Not much staying at home going on here.

An unexpected side effect of the coronavirus pandemic: badly chapped hands.

Adrian (and all the other kids) are constantly reminded at school to wash their hands. Before meals, after breaks, after going to the loo of course, etc. And with plenty of soap and a lengthy scrubbing of course.

He has somewhat dry skin to begin with, and all this washing is affecting his hands quite badly. His knuckles are constantly chapped, red and rough. On bad days, it spreads to his wrists as well.

An “ultimate strength” hand salve is his constant companion through the day, and among the most important things he packs with him to school every day.

Ingrid is also back at school now. Her post-whooping-cough-coughing has finally subsided so she won’t be scaring people any more by her violent coughing attacks.