Adrian’s most recent project from crafts lessons at school – a wooden lamp. A really cool design, and very precisely executed.

We celebrated the end of the school year – today for Adrian, tomorrow for Ingrid – with a dinner at Sushi Sukai. Both of them finish their years with excellent grades.

Sushi Sukai was also excellent, with interesting and delicious food. Everything from crab tacos to spicy fried popcorn shrimp, salmon tartar to tuna tataki.

Active Solution celebrated the start of summer with a day at Gröna Lund amusement park for all the employees, with families. I haven’t been there for ages and was very happy for this opportunity.

We were offered armbands for unlimited rides, or a bundle of tickets for the various competitions. I’ve always been fond of roller coasters, and absolutely chose the armband. So did both Ingrid and Adrian, of course.

We were ready to enter when the park opened. Even a bit before – the gates opened before the rides started, so we were literally on the first round of the first ride. The park was nearly empty, almost spookily so. Teenagers sleep late, of course, and the chilly, windy weather was also on our side. (I was properly layered up but was still cold most of the day. Some poor folks in their t-shirts must have been freezing.)

We went straight for the roller coasters. For the first hour or so, we could go on the most popular roller coasters with barely any queueing at all. Twister was one of our favourites – a classical roller coaster with wooden tracks.

Monster was another favourite. On a busy day, the queues to Monster are 30 to 40 minutes, according to Ingrid, who’s been coming here regularly every season. Now they were next to nothing, so we waited a few extra minutes to get front-row seats.

Three or four back-to-back roller coaster rides later, I was actually feeling a tad queasy. Am I getting too old for this? Probably not – mostly it was the abrupt braking at the end of Monster that shook up my stomach. The rides themselves were no problem. We calmed down with less challenging attractions like the “funny house” and “tunnel of love” and the “scary train”.

After lunch, the kids convinced me to try the Catapult. It’s like a free-fall ride, but goes both up and down. I was afraid it would be too much for me but said I’d try it once – and it was my favourite ride of the day. No shaking, just flying! And with wonderful views.

More roller coasters. Monster sitting at the back instead of the front (less wind, less view, more surprise, more swoosh). Häxkvasten, like Monster but tamer, which used to be my favourite. Vilda musen, which I remembered not liking, and also did not like this time, because it was all rattling side-to-side (to the point where I was afraid I’d end up with bruises from being thrown into the side of the cart) and no soaring at all.

We had planned to go on the Eclipse, a giant star flyer, way up high, but were turned away at the entrance – it was closed due to the evening’s concert. Which we had been informed about, kind of, but the info just said “closed during the concert” – not that it would close two and a half hours before the concert started. Bummer.

The old-school wave swinger was nice, but not quite same.

The park was getting crowded now, and there were actual queues. (Many visitors probably came in the afternoon for this evening’s concert with KAJ, the Melodifestivalen winner.) One last ride, we said, and went back to the Catapult.

After that we all felt we needed some sugar to boost our flagging energy levels. Ben & Jerry’s ice cream for Adrian and myself; candy floss for Ingrid.

Today Ingrid finished the last exam in the last subject of her last school year, which we celebrated with ice cream at Spånga Konditori. She’s been studying so hard that she deserves all the ice cream.

Adrian still has more tests to get through tomorrow, and we’ll be celebrating that with all the fresh raspberries, blueberries and strawberries that we can eat.

Easter in Uppsala with my mum, as per tradition. She and the kids all like traditions and doing things the way they have always been done; makes me kind of restless to change something but I don’t really mind.

Herring and devilled eggs for lunch.

Pasha for dessert. We each have our own version, and while we all each both (because more pasha is always better) and like the other’s, we do think our own is just slightly better.

Lemon merengue pie after dinner.

And the painting of eggs, of course. Note which generation has been taught to straighten up and stop slouching, and which one hasn’t.

Ingrid, who’s the only one among us to regularly practise her craft, makes intricate little paintings.

Adrian focuses on fun designs. Body parts, and blue caterpillars.

My designs this year were inspired by the Desigual dress my mum was wearing, with black circular designs with eightfold symmetry.

In eight grade, Swedish schoolchildren get to do practical work experience. The concept is called prao in Swedish. Kids spend two weeks at an actual workplace, doing real work.

This is Adrian’s second week of prao at a Brillo Pizza, and I stopped by to see him at work.

The first challenge is to find a prao place. Some find a place through friends and family, but I couldn’t find anything suitable at Sortera. (It’s all either office jobs, or work that is too dirty and dangerous for an inexperienced underage worker.) Adrian spent hours searching, both online and just walking from place to place, before landing a prao place at Brillo Pizza near Odenplan.

I got to order a pizza from Adrian, pay him for it, and watch him make it fresh for me. I found out that pizzerias have machines to flatten balls of dough into standard-sized pizza bases.

I also learned that they pre-portion all the toppings such as cheese in plastic cups during slow periods, so when it’s time to make a pizza, there’s no measuring or guessing – just grab a cup and spread its contents on the pizza. A standard pizza gets 110 grams of cheese. A pepperoni pizza has exactly 14 slices of pepperoni, and a kebab pizza gets 80 grams of meat.

Adrian made a pizza for himself as well and then we could have lunch together. We both opted for a “Maggan”, which is a fancy margherita topped with extra mozzarella after it’s baked. (Mine is half-sized since I don’t eat like a growing teenager any more.)

First thing in the morning: IKEA, to start looking for a new bed, and to buy clothes rails for my built-in closets. Visiting IKEA on a Saturday can be a nightmare, but not if you’re there right when they open. Plenty of space in the parking lot, and no crowds inside, either. By the time I was ready to leave, the situation in the parking lot was rather different, with cars hunting for free spots.

Next up: a trip to the city to buy embroidery yarn, which was also this season’s inaugural bicycle trip. My 30-day travel card ran out yesterday, and today was a bright, sunny day, which seemed like a clear sign that it was time to dust off the bike, pump up the tires, and start pedalling.

The sun is warm, but the air isn’t. And at this time of the year the sun still doesn’t reach very high in the sky. Even at two o’clock in the afternoon, long sections of the cycle lanes from here to the city are in full shade from the houses that line them.

In the evening: party. Eric, Ingrid and Adrian had a housewarming party at their new apartment. They’ve got all the essential furniture in place and have settled in. The living room sofa is large enough to fit Adrian’s entire band of friends at the same time!

And then later in the evening, Melodifestivalen with Ingrid, while Adrian was watching it with his friends at the apartment – we preferred a quieter evening. Much of the music is pretty boring – artists trying to repeat their wins by replicating previous hits – but the winning song, a catchy and humorous Swedish-Finnish song about saunas, was actually fun.

Exhaustion and bedtime after that.

Happy forty-seven and a half to me!

For my birthday this summer I wanted to go out to have a nice restaurant brunch. I was going to wait until September so the brunch places in the city would open again after the summer. But then it was the kids’ birthdays, and the divorce, and Christmas, and more divorce, and it never happened.

Today Ingrid, Adrian and I finally went for my birthday brunch at Kelp, a very local restaurant, just five minutes’ walk from home. We all ended up ordering the same things: scrambled eggs, sourdough bread, single-variety Swedish apple juice, and French toast with a home-made berry compote. And then, while Ingrid and I were bemoaning how full we were, another serving of French toast for Adrian, who is in that teenage bottomless phase. Very nice.

Cleaned out and sorted through Adrian’s hat and glove basket in the hall. For some reason I’ve been assuming that he would do it himself, but clearly it doesn’t bother him that half the space in it is taken up by things he has outgrown.

Well, it bothers me, so I did it for him.

There were hats in there that are so small he literally can’t have worn them since he was in pre-school. The fingerless gloves I made for him in 2017. And underneath the too-small hats and scarves, there was a pile of literal junk. It was like looking through a window into an earlier time.

Several safety reflectors. Mitten clips, which I had forgotten were even a thing. Stones, of course, and sticks and chestnuts. A broken balloon. A marble, a bread bag tie, and a broken pencil.

At some point in time, each of these things was important enough for him to put in the basket.

A few snapshots from the Bergheden family Christmas party. Food (potluck style), conversations, and presents for the kids.