We had our work Christmas dinner yesterday, at a nice old manor house, with everyone’s partners and everything. It was interesting (but not exactly surprising) to see that the colleagues who I enjoy talking to, also had partners I enjoyed talking to, and the colleagues I’d never felt a connection with had partners I couldn’t connect to either.

I think we (Eric and I) managed to prove to everyone that we are incurably odd, since we decided to walk home from the party, even though it’s about a half-hour walk and it was raining a bit. But after 3 hours of sitting and stuffing ourselves we really felt a need for some fresh air and exercise. The Swedish smorgasbord-style Christmas dinners almost seem to be designed to make everyone eat too much.

Ingrid was at home watching Teletubbies with my mum. Her last time with a babysitter was almost a year ago, and we were a bit unsure about how it would go. In the end it went as smoothly as anyone could wish. She didn’t even ask for us, not even when it was time to go to bed. I warned her in advance that grandma would come for a visit and mummy would go out and Ingrid would stay at home. The first time, a few days before, she didn’t like the idea much at all: big teary eyes and trembling lower lip. The second time, the day before, she looked a bit cross and said she wanted to come with me. The closer we got, the less she cared, and by the time I was about to leave she didn’t even care enough to come to the window to wave me good-bye. So to all those who claim that children need to be left early on with babysitters in order to train them, and that all this co-sleeping and babywearing and liberal cuddling will cause trouble later, I just say “hah!”.

I had a day off today, the first for a very long time. I work 80% so my workday is supposed to be about six and a half hours, but somehow it often ends up being slightly longer (our afternoon never end when planned) and then occasionally almost twice as long (when we have our monthly company meeting until 8pm). So the hours keep accumulating. But if I get paid for part time, I intend to actually work part time, too, so today I took the whole day off.

The first thing I did (after dropping Ingrid off at the nursery) was to sleep for almost two hours. I’ve been sleeping badly recently, going to bed too late and waking too early, and having trouble falling asleep because my sinuses start hurting as soon as I lie down. (I suspect my cold has turned into sinusitis but I’m hoping it’ll clear up by itself.)

Then I went shopping. That’s what girls are supposed to do for fun, isn’t it? Although I didn’t exactly buy what girls normally buy for fun, I think… two extension cords, one multiple socket, socket timers (pack of three), one Advent star, one bottle of mouth wash, 2.5 metres of curtain fabric, 2 metres of curtain liner, and two green pot holders. An immensely productive three hours.

1.
Spånga is colder than central Stockholm. Most days the difference is a couple of degrees Celsius. For a good while I thought I was imagining it, or that it might be because I am in Spånga during morning and evening, while I’m in the city during the day, when it’s obviously warmer. But then we had about a week of near-freezing weather and I realised that it really is colder here. Every morning I’d go from the snow and ice in the streets of Spånga to the wet streets of Stockholm city. Here the ice never melted, even during the day, while in Stockholm it never froze, even during the night.

2.
Our house is badly insulated and generally kind of cold. I now understand why the previous owners put in three indoor thermometers, and that’s just on the ground floor. But what I don’t understand is why the thermometers seem unreliable. The one in the living room almost always says something like 17.7°C or 18.1°C. But sometimes that’s so cold that my fingers are stiff and it’s hard to type, and then the day after it feels quite OK. It’s not just me – Eric feels the same.

3.
Ingrid, on the other hand, is almost never cold. I am wearing a t-shirt, a fleece sweater, trousers or long fleece skirt, and woollen socks. Ingrid walks around in panties and socks. When we go out and I offer her clothes, telling her that it’s cold outside, she generally refuses most of the clothes and tells me “want be cold” (“tahad külm oleks”). It’s not uncommon for her to wear nothing but her indoor clothes plus a pair of boots, when we come home from nursery. On the other hand, when I tell her that it’s wet outside, she accepts that as a valid argument, and will put on her waterproof trousers or rubber boots. For a while I was losing hope that she would ever put on her snowsuit, and she probably wouldn’t have done it for the sake of the temperature only. But now she has found out that snow on bare hands is not pleasant, so when there’s snow outside she actually accepts snowsuit and mittens.

4.
A sledge is essential winter gear. I had thought of sledges as toys but they are also an important mode of transportation. We hadn’t realised that, and had to buy one really quickly when the snow came, because taking Ingrid to nursery in her pushchair through mushy snow was hard work.

5.
Speaking of essential winter gear, Smartwool makes the best woollen socks. They have sporty models and dressy ones, simple gray ones and colourful striped ones, high ones and low ones. (I like these best.) Nice-looking, comfortable, neither itchy nor scratchy, really durable, and can be machine washed on a normal program with the rest of our clothes.

When the leaves fell, they made the streets colourful and rustled nicely under the feet. But then they were trampled and driven over, softened by the rain, and trampled again, until they’ve all turned into a brown sludge. Not so pretty any more.

And it’s a very slippery sludge, by the way. In fact it’s so slippery that ice is an improvement, because the sludge is thick enough to be slightly lumpy and uneven when it freezes. So when it’s above freezing in the morning I aim for the bare black parts of the road, and when it’s below freezing I aim for the frozen sludge.

I thought leaves used to be cleaned away well before they turned into mush, by men with leaf blowers or big street cleaning machines. Is this a new way to save money? Or are our streets too small for the city to care about?

Turns out it’s Halloween today. We’d sort of missed that, and were unprepared. Luckily only one gang of kids turned up and we found something for them in the corner of a cupboard.

But it all felt uncomfortable and weird rather than fun. How did it become OK to just go out and beg?

There is a somewhat similar tradition in Estonia kadripäev and mardipäev or St Catherine’s day and St Martin’s day, one for girls and one for boys. But the girls and boys who go out as kadrisandid or mardisandid give something in return. At the very least they sing: first behind the door, asking to be let in, and then more songs once they’re in. Traditionally they would also bless the household but I’m not sure how much of that is still done.

In fact I’m not sure if the tradition is still alive… perhaps it’s been drowned by Halloween. I remember doing this when I was around 10 years or so, and I remember receiving kadrid later than that. But now I’ve been away for 15 years of course.

In any case, it was fun to get a visit from a gang of kadrid. It was a show. The family would gather in the hallway and listen. These kids came, got their candy and left. Where’s the fun in that?

I went for a haircut yesterday. I’ve been thinking for at least two weeks now that I desperately need one but somehow a meeting of some sort has cropped up almost every single afternoon around 2pm, just when I’ve been thinking of leaving. Well, yesterday I managed to leave on time and get it done.

On a whim I went to Frisörakademien (“haircutting academy”) which is what it sounds like: a hairdressing school. I pass it every morning on my way to work, and then again in the afternoon, and every day I see their sign advertising haircuts for 99kr which is dirt cheap. Worth a try.

The haircut I got was a good one. I got more care and attention from the guy than I normally do from a hairdresser. He was very focused on doing the best possible job, took note of the various whorls in my hair and so on. More experienced hairdressers are more likely to give me their Stock Haircut #14. I looked good when I walked out of there, and I still looked good this morning when I’d slept away his styling efforts.

It was interesting to hear them talk about haircutting technique, too. The whole process turned out to be more standardised and organised than I had realised.

What I gained in price and attention, though, I lost in time. The haircut took almost an hour and a half. I was all stiff and my bum was sore from sitting still for so long, and I was almost falling asleep there in the end. On balance, I don’t think I’ll be going back there… I’m willing to pay money for not sitting still for 85 minutes.

One thing I really miss from my London life is good sushi. I’ve sampled several sushi places near work, and been disappointed every single time. Tasteless fish on tasteless rice. And there’s never any variety: it’s always a few pieces of salmon nigiri, one prawn, and a few rolls (with salmon of course).

Just as I was ready to give up all hopes of good sushi lunches, one of my colleagues found one. It was delicious. Salmon and prawn, of course, but also 2 kinds of tuna, plus a macquerel or something. And really full of flavour, too.

Even better: that place is about halfway between our current office and the new office we’ll move to in February, so we can keep visiting it!

Sushi Devil on Tegnérgatan.

For the record, the weather here is now officially freezing. Yesterday we woke up to a frost-covered lawn. I am starting to realize that I will need to buy some sort of winter boots and a winter coat.

It was no surprise to us that Stockholm is greener than London. Both cities have green stuff, but in London it tends to be concentrated into parks, which are unevenly distributed. In some parts of town you can get long stretches of streets and housing with nothing green in sight. Stockholm has many more tree-lined streets. Of course, moving from inner-city apartment to a leafy suburb also made a difference

What I’d forgotten, though, is how beautiful Stockholm becomes in autumn. The majority of trees in London are London Planes. In autumn their leaves just go brown. But here in Stockholm there are maples, birches, chestnuts, and ah, the colours! Bright reds and dark reds, greenish yellows and fiery oranges. Every morning (and that’s no exaggeration) I look at the beautiful red maples along the road to the train station, and I cannot help smiling. Every evening on my way home they make me smile again. I’ve never wanted to take a photo of an ordinary London tree but here I’m often reaching for the camera.

And the skies. You might think they would be pretty much the same everywhere, but you’d be wrong. The London sky is generally either all blue or all grey – there seems to be some sort of local weather effect which turns all clouds into 100% even dull cover. But the sky over Stockholm is so much more varied and interesting. Wispy clouds, little fluffy clouds, looming dark grey mounds. I am in love with the clouds here.

Yesterday I bundled Ingrid into the bike trailer and then loaded in a large bag full of paper for recycling, and then we cycled to the recycling station. She quite enjoyed stuffing the magazines and cardboard boxes and packing paper into the container. I felt like quite the environerd.