When I planted this elder, I hoped it would be nice focal point in the front garden, and that we would be able to use it to make extra pretty pink elderflower cordial. The bush delivered admirably on the first point, but unfortunately not at all on the second. The sweet sap attracts completely ridiculous numbers of aphids, to the point that I don’t even want to touch the bush, much less use it for anything that will get close to my mouth.

28°C all day long and I’m supposed to be getting work done. This is not turning out to be my most productive day.

Another super hot day, with around 30°C in the shade, and I am wilting. All I can do is find shade and wait for the evening.

The heat doesn’t affect the kids as much as me. Adrian and his friend wanted to go to the beach, and spent hours splashing and fooling around while I sat and read under a tree. I don’t know where they get the energy from.

For the first time ever, both Ingrid and Adrian are away on sleepovers and Eric and I are spending an evening on our own.

Cooking dinner for two feels strange and unusual: all the food suddenly fits in a single pan. (Adrian is technically not a teenager but sure eats like one.)

This whole covid isolation thing is really starting to drag me down. Nothing fun is happening. Things that should be fun aren’t. Everything takes such an effort, and most things don’t seem to be worth making one. It’s beginning to feel quite depressing.

And then I watched Bo Burnham’s Inside and realized how much worse it could be. I could be stuck in a small inner city apartment, but I live in a spacious house with a large garden. I could be living alone, but I have family around me. I could be stuck with no human contact, but I have colleagues whom I “meet” daily. I could have had my entire career aborted, but I have a job that I can still do more or less normally.

25°C outside. I tried doing my workout on the deck but it was so hot I felt near fainting. Moved inside again and aimed the fan right at me and stripped down to my sporty underwear (no, you’re not getting photos of that) and survived the workout. But if it gets any hotter than this, I’m going to have to stop my exercise sessions.

Five months after starting this assignment, I finally met (most of) my colleagues at a team picnic. It felt so normal and somehow also very strange.

In video meetings, you only see the front of people’s upper bodies. Of course you make up a mental picture of the rest of them, but seeing them in person nevertheless came with surprises.

The big thing is that on screen you can’t see how tall people are. Some of my teammates were taller than I had thought; some not. Some just didn’t move or sit or stand the way I had expected.

But there were also small surprises that never would have been surprises in a normal year. One turned out to have a tattoo that I hadn’t seen. One had graying hair at the back of their neck.

Continuing with the badly-posed, awkwardly-angled vaccine selfie theme. My shoulder is slightly sore but no worse than after a workout. But the spot where I got the shot also itches, which is kind of annoying.

Even more annoying is the fact that apparently there’s a new virus strain against which the vaccines are less effective. Just as I was starting to feel optimistic that seven weeks from now life could maybe start becoming slightly more normal again. It feels like this will never end.

Getting my first covid shot in Kistamässan.

The process was incredibly smooth and fast. Large info signs, hand sanitizer stations, wide queueing areas, etc. There were 30 or 40 vaccination booths lining the edges of one of the congress hall, with nurses who were probably quite tired of repeating the same five sentences to everybody… The other hall was all set up with carefully spaced chairs for the mandatory 15-minute post-shot observation period, with nurses at hand and a large digital clock in the front.

No photos allowed inside, unfortunately but understandably, so I had to make do with a badly posed selfie.