All my focus right now is on Ingrid’s graduation and the upcoming graduation party on Saturday. It’s exciting but also a teeny bit nerve-wracking and time-consuming. I’ll be working on catching up with my daily posts after we’ve got that behind us.

The latest issue of Utemagasinet (“Outdoors magazine”) had a section where various contributors described their outdoor memories, based on a series of prompts. It made me think, and then I decided to do the same.

And I realize again just how bad my long-term memory is at storing experiences. Eric and I went to all sorts of places before we had children – Wales, Lake District, Scotland – but since I haven’t looked at photos of those trips in many years, I only have rather hazy mental images of them. I am very grateful for this blog.

Anyway, here goes.

Day trip: The last day of our trip to Mercantour. This was our first outdoorsy trip with the kids, and on the last day we went up to a mountain pass where we got our first taste of high alpine landscape. Dramatic views, everybody super impressed, until the afternoon thunderstorm with heavy hail. We all still have strong memories of that day.

Week trip: Padjelanta on skis. My own hikes are usually long weekends so they don’t quite qualify. All my ski tours have been lovely but this one was wilder and more fun than most. In the middle of the Padjelanta national park, we were sometimes the only group in a hut.

Of the weekend trips, I still have very fond memories of the Kinnekulle hike. Most of my hikes have been to mountainous areas, or in various pine forests, but this was a beautiful lowland hike in a completely different landscape. I’ve been thinking of going back there during a different season.

Accommodation: The cave house on Gran Canaria, or perhaps the yurt in Mercantour, which I unfortunately have no photos of.

Highest peak: In 2005 Eric and I climbed the Kilimanjaro. That was BTB, Before The Blog, so I have no post to link to, but here’s a photo from my archives:

Worst weather: Actually not the day with hail and thunder, but a gale in Skarvheimen. High wind, wet snow. The only time I’ve felt truly miserable due to the weather. No visibility, exhausting skiing. By the end of it I was numb with exhaustion and chilled all the way through.

Camp site: Nothing immediately stands out as “the greatest”, because many of the sites near Stockholm are rather similar to each other. The camping site at Trehörningen in Paradiset nature reserve is beautiful, and so is the one by Finnsjön on Sörmlandsleden stage 18. Especially when I am the only one there.

View: Actually not Kilimanjaro. It was a high peak and the views were expansive, but not the most interesting ones. The land around the peak is quite flat and barren. And at the very top I was feeling pretty awful with altitude sickness. No, the best views I can remember were from Viševnik. Only 2000 metres compared to Kilimanjaro’s 5900, but with rather more scenic views. Or perhaps the Centenario SAT via ferrata route, which is right above Riva del Garda.

Here’s Eric’s photo of a very young-looking me on that route, with Riva del Garda far below us, in 2004:

A time when I was afraid: The gale in Skarvheimen. I remember having the realization that this is how people die in the mountains. It doesn’t even take any extreme temperatures – just a bad combination of them, and a long day, and a lack of visibility.

Swim: Many of the swims in the lakes near Stockholm have been pleasant, but the dip in a bog lake in Soomaa felt unlike everything else. The top layer was warm, but beneath it the water was very cold, so I had the strong sense how large the invisible waters were that the tiny little pool connected to.

Food: The outdoor food above all other outdoor foods is porridge, especially with newly picked lingonberries.

Look who’s all caught up with the blog posts! I’m so used to having to back-date all my posts that not doing it felt a bit confusing.

My go-to camera lens stopped working. And the camera itself has also been showing symptoms of wear – the rear LCD screen only works if I fold it out to a specific angle. I’ve been ignoring the screen issues because flipping out the screen wasn’t that much of a bother, but without the wide angle zoom lens, the camera isn’t that useful for daily use.

I sent them both in for repairs but forgot to take out the memory card first, so my photos for recent days are somewhere between here and the Olympus service centre in Portugal. If they’re still there when I get back the camera, I’ll fill in the gap later.

I’m just back from my annual ski trip, with a week of no mobile coverage and hence no blogging. And I was a bit behind even before the trip. Catching up commences now.

An ordinary year with ordinary things happening, most of the time. Fully in the post-covid world, with working from home as the new normal, but travel and cultural events all happening again.

Travels:

• The skiing holiday was a total bust for me this year because I was horribly sick all that week.
• My annual ski tour this year went to Hardangervidda. Mostly with the usual crowd, but our usual trip leader was unwell so we had a hired replacement
• The family active holiday was on Santorini. As early in the season as we could make it, but still very hot.

My usual autumn hike didn’t happen because Nysse disappeared and turned up three days later, badly hurt. He got patched up but had to spend many weeks on cage rest. Which meant me staying at home with him all that time, taking him out for walks, etc. Thus – no hike.

Work-wise, I visited the Urb-it hub in London, only for my contract with Urb-it to be terminated a few months later because they were running out of money. (Despite all their efforts, they went bankrupt at the end of the year.) I moved on to join a dev team at Sortera, a waste management company.

Lots of crafts. Finished the fire-coloured cardigan on the first of January, and knitted a pretty shawl, and a frustrating sweater that I both love and am continually annoyed by. Started but did not yet finish embellishing a skirt; sewed three dresses and then one more plus a dressing gown. I am now set with comfy summer loungewear for many years.

Bought and started using glasses for fiddly work.

This year’s landscaping project was the area to the side of the stairs, where I paved some parts and planted others.

What else might leave long-lasting marks? I joined an embroidery club and am enjoying it a lot, so that’ll probably last. I started volunteering for the scout club, helping out with their accounting and finances.

Adrian finished grade six and went on to the accelerated math and science programme at Spånga grundskola (which Ingrid also did). Got a gaming computer for his birthday, and started shopping at menswear departments because he now has size 41 feet.

Ingrid started gymnasium with a focus on business/economics and law, and participated in their art programme She has now overtaken me in height.

I just noticed I’ve made over five thousand posts on this blog. Here’s to five thousand more!

These first five thousand took almost eighteen years. If I keep up my daily posting – which I haven’t even considered giving up – the next five thousand should go faster, in less than fourteen years. I should reach ten thousand around April 2037, at which point I will be approaching my sixtieth birthday. And probably be one of very few bloggers still active, because blogging has been going out of fashion for years already.

January was still very much about covid, but life started getting back to normal in February. We were even able to go on a ski trip in Branäs (Day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4.)

In March, when the pandemic was generally more or less over, I got covid.

Luckily I got well enough in time to not miss my ski tour on the Troll trail, which I had really missed during the pandemic. I wasn’t quite at 100% and started coughing as soon as I laughed or talked too much, but I was in good enough shape to ski. (Day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4, day 5, day 6.)

Afterwards I was in a funk for months. I had no energy, struggled to start anything, and instead spent a lot of time curled up in the sofa, reading.

By summer all traces of covid restrictions were gone, and travel and large gatherings of people were on again. There were conferences at home and conferences abroad, and end of school celebrations and midsummer celebrations.

So the world around me was generally back to normal, but my brain didn’t catch up with the new reality for quite a while. I was stuck in stay-at-home, do-nothing mode, and I think there was some kind of residual tiredness after my covid infection as well. After summer I made it a project to get out again. I signed up to an embroidery course, and went to a local knitting café a few times. I made a concerted effort to build good habits to get my energy levels up even more. It’s taking time, but it’s working.

With travel restrictions lifted, we could finally go back to Estonia again to see friends and family. (After we got around the passport renewal logjam that occurred when everybody wanted to renew theirs.) We also went to Slovenia, where we climbed a mountain, saw scenic valleys and stunning caves and beautiful Ljubljana and pretty Bled. Ingrid, who didn’t feel up to a week of walking, stayed at home and took care of Nysse.

Later in the autumn we visited Amsterdam. I also did a solo hike along a section of the Bruksleden trail.

In the wider world, the situation in 2022 was dominated by the war in Ukraine and an ongoing electricity crisis, which led us to buying and installing a heat pump.

Work-wise I kept working at Urb-it, and enjoying it more and more. It’s a worthy project, with interesting challenges and a great team. We’re still mostly working from home but Wednesdays are office days, and since the summer I make sure to spend one day a week at the tretton37 office as well.

This was our first full year with Nysse. He went from a timid, mostly indoors cat, to a confident explorer. He managed to get lost three times during the year, brought home a mouse and a squirrel and a bird, and made friends with Morris.

I made two cardigans (one, two) and two scarfs. Socks I don’t even count any more.

Our neighbours blasted away half the garden and built an ugly house and moved in just before the new year.

November brought snow chaos.

I am experiencing some technical problems with the site after an upgrade by the hosting provider. So if you see any issues, I am working on it. I will start posting again when everything is stable.

The pause in posting was mostly intentional this time. We were gone hiking for 10 days, but Ingrid preferred to stay at home on her own, and I didn’t want to publicise the fact that she was on her own here. Not that I have any untrustworthy characters reading this blog but it still felt better to be safe. Now that we’re all at home again and I’ve spent 2 days acclimating to work, I’ll be catching up in no time!