I seem to have inherited a keyboard.

It used to be that Ingrid and Adrian inherited Eric’s and my old electronics – laptops, phones, cameras, etc. That was when it was exciting to have any kind of laptop that was their own. That they were trusted to use, that wasn’t borrowed, that they could use without having to wait for when I didn’t need it. Performance didn’t matter, and neither did OS versions.

Now we’ve come full circle and I may end up inheriting Ingrid’s hardware. She upgraded her gaming keyboard, utilising the Black Week sales to get a great deal on a really good model, and asked me if I wanted her old one.

I have actually been thinking of replacing my keyboard, because the keys on the one I have feel a bit “mushy” and indistinct when I type. Plus it’s noisy enough that I have to turn off my conference microphone if I want to type during an online meeting, or my colleagues will complain about the noise.

Ingrid’s old keyboard turned out to be as noisy as mine, so that’s not going to be any improvement, but it does have a nicer feel.

It also has LED backlighting.

I guess I can understand the appeal of colourful backlighting if you’re trying to set the mood for gaming, but I’ve literally never felt any desire to have the keys on my keyboard light up when I type, or to have all the colours of the rainbow constantly rotate across the keyboard. But I had to try out all the effects after I had plugged it in – if not for anything else, then to see just how crazy they were. The Wheel was truly almost nauseating to my old brain.

The Breathing effect was actually kind of nice, though. A pleasantly slow swell of a single colour colour, that softly ebbs away again. I liked it well enough that I didn’t immediately turn it off.

So now I’m doing my work on an RGB keyboard. With colour effects. For real.

Adrian, being of the age of frequently outgrowing things, has outgrown his rain jacket. He’s also outgrown all of Ingrid’s past rain jackets that I had hoped he could inherit. So I now have 4 kids’ rain jackets in sizes 140 to 158 in various colours, but not a single one that Adrian can use. (Honestly the one that he says he last used, in size 140, is ridiculously small for him – it’s a wonder he hasn’t complained earlier.) He has a scout hike coming up in a week, and it’s very unlikely we’ll get an entire weekend in September/October with no rain, so we’re emergency shopping for a new rain jacket.

This season’s colour is clearly dark yellow. All the three brands that had rain jackets for active use in “junior” sizes had all chosen to make theirs dark yellow or orange. Black and gray were also available, as usual, but Adrian doesn’t even look at those. (Helly Hansen also had some eye-wateringly garish neon colour combinations, which were too loud even for Adrian’s tastes.) So I guess we’ll take a yellow one, then.

Adrian & Eric in front of Adrian’s school.

Ingrid, caught in a random moment at her new school.

There were parent/teacher meetings at both schools yesterday and today. Adrian wants to work on his writing skills, especially when it comes to writing longer texts – being more descriptive and structuring his texts better. (He has a bit of a habit, both in writing and in speech, of just jumping right into the middle of things and forgetting to set the scene.) Ingrid, being in a completely new school, isn’t setting any goals at this time, but needs to decide whether to skip the maths course that she’s scheduled to take because she’s done it all in secondary school already and move on to the next one – which would mean not being with the rest of her class during maths.

There are ghost footprints on the deck that come out when it rains, from when someone sprayed their fancy retro sneakers there.

Our first full day of hiking in Slovenia. Today we climbed Viševnik, a 2000-metre peak. Which sounds like a lot, but you don’t start at sea level, of course.

The actual ascent was just over 700 metres. Which is still a lot, especially on a hot, sunny day! And the route up this mountain was steep and unrelenting. Up, up, up, constantly, with barely any breaks in the ascent, or even a zig-zag. The first half of the ascent was also quite boring – for a big chunk of the lower parts, we followed a dusty trail through through a monotonous spruce forest. I don’t even have any photos from that part.

Halfway up we were feeling quite knackered and demoralized, and not enjoying ourselves much at all. But then we came to a small plateau with actual views, and enough room to sit down and take a proper break, and got some calories into us, and found the energy to keep going. After that the actual ascent didn’t get any easier, but the landscape opened up and got more varied, so the effort felt less.

And occasionally we even got views of the peak we were heading for!

Adrian really struggled with the heat and was seriously thinking of turning back even when we had no more than 15 minutes left to the peak. But with plenty of encouragement, and relieved of his rucksack, he managed to keep going.

The higher we climbed, the more fabulous the views were.

And we made it! When we got to the top, all we wanted to do was sit down and drink lots of water and scarf down dried fruit for some fast calories.

Once we had revived ourselves, we took photos.

The way down required less huffing and puffing, but more attention and concentration to not lose our footing.

By the time we were done with the descent and just walking back to the car, even Adrian was full of cheer, almost skipping along, and talking about how the whole thing wasn’t so bad after all, and how cool it is to climb a peak, and how he could totally do this again.

How selective our memories can be! The best parts we’ll remember for a long time, and the worst parts melt into a vague sense of “it was a bit of an adventure”. The same happened with our last day in Mercantour, when we got caught in hail and thunder. When we were living through it, the last half-hour of it felt pretty horrible, with me carrying Adrian in my arms, curling up around him to protect him from the hail. But six years later it feels like it wasn’t so bad at all.

For the first time ever we had two end-of-school ceremonies to attend. (At first Ingrid and Adrian were in the same school, and then with covid-19 there were no ceremonies for two years.) We started at Ingrid’s and moved on to Adrian’s after a while.

The ceremony at Ingrid’s school was a “bring your own chair” affair. (At Adrian’s it’s “bring your own blanket” and only the oldest ones get chairs.)



There were a lot more parents at Adrian’s school so basically it was impossible to see anything. And the ceremony has been the same for the last 9 years – same songs, same speeches, same order – so hearing it was not very exciting either. But it’s tradition.


Going out for a buffet dinner after school is out is also a tradition.

Ingrid’s puberty growth spurt is tapering off, with her just a few centimeters short of my length. She’ll probably catch up in a year. Meanwhile Adrian is pulling further and further ahead of Ingrid at the same age.

Urgent shoe shopping for Adrian today. His old shoes (on the right, in case there is any uncertainty about that) are about two sizes too small and falling apart. Apparently he now has size 38 – the same as Ingrid who is 4 years older.

It’s an awkward combination of size and age. He’s ten going on eleven – still very much a kid. His tastes and habits are those of a kid. He needs durable shoes with flexible soles, made for running and playing – and for easy access. Especially at school they’re putting their shoes on and taking them off again all the time. He’s got no patience for tying laces. His shoes need velcro closure or some kind of elastic solution. Otherwise, as experience has shown, he simply leaves them so loosely tied that he can slip them on and off without doing anything. Which doesn’t exactly make for good fit.

There are “junior” shoes that go all the way up to size 38, but few go beyond that. Men’s shoes on the other hand mostly start at size 40. I’m not sure what is supposed to fill that gap or what we’ll do when he outgrows this pair. I don’t expect him to like laces much better in a year’s time.

Memm, jag har någonting till dig. Och nej, vi ska inte slänga dem.

“Mum, I’ve got something for you.” (Doesn’t even need to look at me to guess what my response would be to seeing this thing.) “And no, we’re not throwing them away.”

All right then. Mending it is.