All set up for Adrian’s remote parent-teacher meeting.

Remote meetings for everything feel so normal now. The other day I participated remotely in a meeting between Ingrid and her orthodontist. I’m sure schools will go back to IRL, face-to-face meetings. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about that.

The back lawn was sparkling with dewdrops this morning. Some patches were sparkling more than others. Looking closer, I noticed that the ground was dotted with dozens of tiny, irregular spiderwebs. Each no larger than the palm of my hand, each with a little spider in the middle, on the underside of the web.

Two pairs of too-small hiking boots. Timberland, size 35. Lowa, size 36.

Are your kids in need of boots? Let me know.

More blacks, fewer whites.

More browns and greens.

Still plenty of red-white-black combos.

There will be no more opportunities to wear summer dresses this season.

I like to drink flavoured water with my meals. Sometimes I drink Adrian’s apple juice water. Sometimes that’s too sweet for me, so I make lemon-flavoured water for myself.

Observations:

One lemon can power a whole lot of water. Almost like perpetual stew: when the water runs low, I fill the carafe up with more, on top of the existing lemon slices. After a while the lemon starts dissolving, with individual cells floating around in the water, and that just makes it taste even better. It doesn’t last forever, though – after a while it loses its flavour.

Lemon slices make better drinking water than lime. Lime can initially taste nice but becomes bitter quite soon.

The peel also makes the water bitter. I cut off the peel and the pith from my lemons before using them for this. With luck I run across a recipe that calls for lemon peel but no lemon juice, so the peel goes in the food and then I only need to throw out the pith.

Busy days at work again, but I can’t skip lunch every day, so now lunch is something that I can prepare in 5 minutes and eat at my desk while barely looking at it.

The view from my home office is making me think of autumn.

Not for the first time, I wonder how people with larger and/or hungrier families manage to cook dinner. 500 g of pasta just barely fits in a standard strainer. I can just about fit noodle stir fry for four in our largest cast-iron pan if I’m really, really careful when stirring. It’s a good thing I no longer need to eat quite as much as I used to – I balance out Adrian’s and Ingrid’s appetites (Adrian growing, Ingrid going to the gym).

Årsjön and Bylsjön both had gangs of ducks who were all very used to being near people. They were pretty obviously expecting to be fed. After we washed up our breakfast dishes in the lake, some snacked on our porridge scrapings.