I washed a load of medium-coloured laundry today. (We don’t sort ours by colour more specifically, other than separating out black and whites. Modern cotton clothes don’t get colour runs.)

Shortly after the wash program started, the machine started making very loud clanking noises. It sounded like there was a rock in there, or as if some part of the machinery itself had fallen off and was going round and round in the drum.

Nothing to do but wait for the programme to finish, and hope that the clanking thing didn’t wear any holes in any of the clothes.

When we emptied the washing machine afterwards, a literal stone fell out, together with a handful of miniature clothes pins. Apparently one of Adrian’s clothes was in our laundry basket. A bathrobe.

I’ve learned by now to carefully check all the pockets on Adrian’s clothes before washing them, and then checking again in case there was an inside pocket I missed. But I really didn’t expect a bathrobe to need this kind of treatment. Who the heck keeps stones and clothes pins in his bathrobe pockets?

We watch Robinson occasionally. Adrian and Ingrid find it more exciting than I do; I keep them company and usually knit at the same time.

Adrian’s pockets are always full of random things.

His jacket pockets tend to be full of chestnuts, above all. When I last emptied his winter jacket for washing, all the pockets together yielded about half a kilogram of chestnuts.

Trouser pockets and hoodie pockets tend to have smaller things. Screws. Pebbles. Bottle tops. Clumps of sticky putty.

This is his latest treasure: waste pieces of thick wire in various finishes, from the crafts room at school. (They’re doing wood and metal crafts this term.) Pocket-sized, shiny, endlessly fiddlable.

Adrian said he had a little catching up to do in his math workbook tonight.

When he brought out the workbook late at night, it turned out that the “a little catching up” was around 20 pages, which would take him at least an hour. He was quite tired by the end of it. I was quite annoyed that he had described this as “a little” and had just spent two hours playing board games in the evening instead of getting started on the homework.

One of Adrian’s birthday presents was a book with experiments using everyday things. A whole section was dedicated to experiments with candy. Adrian decided to try out an experiment that involved heating marshmallows in a microwave oven and seeing them expand (because the air bubbles inside them expand) and then contract as they cool.

That was kind of cool, but Adrian pretty quickly decided to add more. First he stuck wooden toothpicks in the marshmallow to see if they affected things.

Then he added more marshmallows and more toothpicks, and constructed sculptures – that he then heated in the microwave oven to see how they were affected.

He found out that the marshmallows got soft when heated, so the sculptures tended to collapse and needed to be reinforced with yet more toothpicks.

We went to a theatre performance in the afternoon – a modern version of Hansel and Gretel at Orionteatern. (Some fun touches but too much over-dramatized acting, not my style.)

Since we were going to town anyway, we left earlier so we could fit in a visit to the Science Fiction Bookshop. It’s conveniently on the way, close to the Gamla Stan metro station. Adrian wanted to look for books about drawing science fiction monsters; Ingrid wanted more manga; I always need more fantasy and sci-fi books.

After shopping we had lunch at Vapiano. It’s my go-to place for family lunches in the old town but they don’t seem to ever change their menu so even though I eat there just a few times every year, I’m beginning to get bored with it.

Favourite position in favourite corner of the sofa, with favourite oversized sweater and favourite reading matter.

It’s nearly Halloween. Today we carved pumpkins (just look at Ingrid’s stabbing!) and bought lots of candy for the trick-or-treaters we hope will come.

Eric’s computer is occupied by Eric, so Adrian can’t program in Scratch. He found Scratch Jr on the iPad instead. It didn’t have the flexibility to make a game, but he could make objects loop around the screen – one horizontally, one vertically – and go “bing” when they hit each other. And each time they hit each other, they also grew larger, so finally they were constantly hitting each other and constantly going “bing” which Adrian found hilarious.

This is the bath shark, reminding Adrian that it’s bathing day.

Ingrid is past the stage of needing reminders and can both see when her hair needs washing, and actually do it voluntarily and without prodding. Adrian is a different story. Once he is in the shower, he doesn’t actually mind showering and often stays far longer than he needs. It’s getting him there that is hard for some reason.