I had a haircut today. For many years, Eric cut my hair, but now that we’re juggling jobs and nursery hours etc, it’s hard to find the time for it in the evenings. So for the past half-year or so, I have been going to professional hairdressers. I don’t have a favourite one, because I haven’t stood still long enough to find one (we have moved home twice and moved office once during the past year) and because I haven’t been sufficiently satisfied with any I’ve tried.

They all do some things the same and some things differently. One thing they all like is to put stuff in my hair when they’re done cutting and drying it. I’ve generally let them do it, even though I am not particularly interested, because it’s less bother than trying to explain it.

I can generally agree with their opinion that the stuff makes my hair look better (on some scale) or at least different. But that positive effect is by far outbalanced by how unpleasant the stuff feels. Sometimes it just feels slightly less soft, other times (like today) it’s stiff, sticky, positively disgusting to touch. I bet it smells as well.

Putting goo in your hair makes sense if you only interact with your hair by looking at it, or having other people look at it. But since I also like to touch my hair, to pull my fingers through it, to scratch the back of my neck, and to put my head on a pillow next to Eric’s face without having to worry about it stinking… I’m washing this stuff out before I go to bed, and I really will insist on no goo the next time I have a haircut.

This weekend I was thinking that it was starting to feel like spring, looking at the first tentative crocus shoots outside, and today we woke up to find everything covered with snow again. And it turned into a very slippery day. The small streets around here are quite hilly, and within the first few hundred meters of walking this morning, I passed two cars that had gotten stuck on a slope. One slid sideways diagonally across a T-junction as I was watching it, and then managed to reverse up the slope. The other had managed to get up the slope to a junction and then tried to make a right turn, but had then slid back while still steering to the right, so the rear end was almost off the road and very close to hitting a lamp post.

Later I read that there had been 100 traffic accidents in Stockholm today due to slippery roads.

We invited our next-next-door neighbours for coffee and cake this afternoon. Their younger daughter is in Ingrid’s group at nursery, and we’re hoping that they will become friends, once they are old enough to actually make friends, and spend lots of time playing together.

Since Ingrid was familiar with both the girl and her parents (and probably the older sister as well), she was not at all shy with them, as she normally is with guests. Instead she started showing off: someone mentioned singing, and she burst into song (“Nyss så träffade jag en krokodil”) followed by another song and then another, and she very much enjoyed the attention.

There wasn’t much playing together this time. In fact there wasn’t much playing at all: instead they spent a lot of time listening to the mother reading, and some time eating (and aping each others’ monkeying around at the table) and drawing. Ingrid was a bit possessive about her stuff, reminding us that the pens were hers, and the jigsaw puzzle that the other girl looked at, but she didn’t object to others using her stuff.

The guests left at 5, after about 2 hours. Ingrid fell asleep a quarter past 6, which is, I think, the earliest she’s ever gone to sleep without being ill. All this socializing must have really exhausted her. Now I hope she won’t wake at 6 tomorrow morning.

Unusually tired both yesterday and the day before, I went to bed together with Ingrid both days: a quarter to nine on Friday and eight o’clock on Saturday. And within half an hour we were both asleep. And slept until around 8 in the morning. Weird.

A few months ago we bought a bottle of laundry detergent of a brand we don’t normally use. (Änglamark, instead of our usual Skona or Grumme.) After just a couple of uses we discovered that it made our clothes itchy. I’m generally sensitive to scratchy seams and labels and itchy fabrics, so at first I thought it was just me, but Eric also complained that his T-shirts were making his waist itch. (I think we notice it most around the waist because that’s where clothes move most against the body.)

We’ve thrown out the offending detergent long ago, but we’re still coming across itchy things that were last washed with that detergent – a set of sheets here, a top there. Very annoying.

Out of curiosity, I borrowed a step counter, and used it for a day.

It was a very typical day: walk to the train station, walk from the train to the tube, walk from the tube to the office. Down 6 flights of stairs for lunch (up by lift) and again in the afternoon to go home. Then walk from office to tube to train to nursery to home, plus a bit of pottering around at home during the evening.

The grand total came to 10,032 steps. More than I had expected, actually, given that 10,000 is often quoted as a goal for active people, and I definitely wouldn’t describe my current lifestyle as physically active. Makes me wonder how inactive the average urban adult really is.

Happy fact of the day: for the last two weeks or so, I’ve had full daylight both on my way to work and the way back. In fact it’s kind of light already when I get up (around 7), and still kind of light when I get home with Ingrid (around 5). Very very pleasant.

It’s January 27th, 4 days before the deadline, and I’ve just gotten my (UK) tax return done and submitted. There’s something about the combination of “tax return” + “online” that really makes me drag my feet. I know it’s going to be boring, and I know the bottom line will be negative, and at the same time I know that (because I’m submitting online) there’s no rush.

My track record for the past 6 years: January 25th, January 22nd, November 27th, January 19th, December 30th, January 27th. I think the 2004/05 tax return got done so early because there was a discount offer for the software I use to do my tax return, and the discount expired end of November. This year those few pounds weren’t enough to make me download the software early.

Blogs and web sites I would write if I had a lot of time on my hands:

• Good stuff – where I would find something good every day, something worth appreciating. Good news, good events, personal successes, beautiful things seen during the day, etc.
• How life used to be in Soviet Estonia – before we all forget what it was like.
• 1000 everyday facts – like the previous one, but written now and not 20 years later. Something for my grandchildren to read. It would be an interesting exercise to try and guess what might change in the next 50 years.
• Recipe-free vegetarian cooking – vegetarian improvisation and cooking without following a recipe.

I did nothing useful, again. But we did get a couple of experienced guys over here to look at our wall, and their verdict was that it was not load-bearing so it’s OK to tear it down.