One last Christmas fika at tretton37. Not cheerless, per se, but melancholy and lackluster.

Every time we get together, we can’t help talking about who have left and who will leave, and at some point inevitably someone wonders out loud why we aren’t getting any information about what management is up to and what the company’s situation is like, and then we force ourselves to change topics.

Finished my embroidered ATC, put it in the pile for ATCs for a blind swap, and came home with a different one.

I didn’t intend for it to come out quite as dark as it did – I thought the red would stand out more.

Got a fresh haircut today. A colleague’s first, spontaneous reaction when he saw me in a Teams meeting was that I looked like a five-year-old boy. I chose to take that as a compliment: clearly I look youthful and playful.

Also, here’s a splash of afternoon sun.

Wet, heavy snow, quickly followed by freezing temperatures, and then a bit more snow on top of that. Now everything is covered with very picturesque agglomerations of snow.

Everything, including the car, which was properly iced over when Ingrid wanted to practice driving. There wasn’t even that much snow on it – it was just frozen hard and had to be scraped off with much force. Three of the four car doors were impossible to open, but with a bit of yanking, Ingrid got in through one of them and could turn the heating on.

Took a detour in the morning on my way to the train station, to get rid of some cardboard boxes. Got an unobstructed view of the rather pretty sunrise.

On the one hand, sunrise, nice.

On the other hand, the sun barely being up when I leave for work, not so nice.

Over two months to go before the days are of decent length again. Whose idea was it that humans should live this far north, anyway?

Adrian gets an advent calendar with Christmas toffees. Ingrid has a store-bought Moomin-themed one with tea.

I’ve struggled to find a good place for the calendar in the past, especially with Nysse around. This year, after we’ve moved some furniture, I could hang it high up on the chimney wall. Well out of reach for the cat, well in reach for Adrian.

The chimney has been unfinished since we renovated the house, over ten years ago. Initially we dithered about maybe opening it up again – it’s been bricked up since the 1970s – and installing a fireplace of some sort. Of course if we were to do that then there was no point in wasting time and money on finishing it. We never made a decision, and then it sort of just sat there, mostly forgotten. I guess I should do something about it.

We made gingerbread cookies. Store-bought ones can’t compete, and I realize I need to copy Eric’s recipe because otherwise next Christmas in this household will be a sad affair.

Every year we tell ourselves that we will only bring out the most important cutters and that there is no need to dirty all of them. Our priorities overlap but only partially, and we end up using at least two thirds of all the cutters anyway. I like the traditional shapes, Ingrid wants the ones that are good for decorating, Adrian prefers the small ones that are best at using up the most dough. Eric is happy to just bake whatever we cut.

The dough gets smaller and smaller with each round, but there will be no wastage!

Sortera included consultants in their Christmas party this year. With very short notice, but hey, free party, can’t complain.

I hadn’t realized just how big the company was. There were about 250 people at the Christmas party, out of about 350 employees. In Stockholm only, not even counting Göteborg, Malmö or Örebro! I only see the office staff of Sortera Recycling and some of Sortera Group, so it’s easy to forget about the other businesses. And while I am very aware that all the drivers and facility staff are out there doing the real work, so to say, I lose sight of just how many they are.

Sortera’s customers are mostly in the construction industry, so they follow construction industry hours. Many in the staff start their working day at 7 and hence finish work at 16, so that’s when the pre-pre-mingle at the office started. Then we moved on to the pre-dinner mingle at Färgfabriken at 18. By 21 I had been mingling and socializing for five full hours and was feeling all peopled out, and called it a day.

One of the major things on Ingrid’s wish list for her birthday was to get her ears pierced. Today we made it happen.

We did some research online and opted for an actual piercing studio, rather than the quick and cheap piercing gun solution. Piercing Monroe did an excellent job, both before and during our visit. Ingrid is pain-sensitive and not at all fond of needles (and who is, really?) but they were the perfect combination of kind and professional and made everything go very smoothly. Very positive experience.

The lovely little studs are hammered gold, styled to look like they’re covered with tiny crystals.

The weather was bleh, my mood was meh. I had no energy and I didn’t want to do anything. So I forced myself to exercise.

I have learned by now that when I least feel like working out – not because I’m physically tired but when I just *don’t want to* – is when I most need to, and will get the most benefit from it. And that was the case today, too. In the afternoon I felt a lot more lively.

FitnessBlender videos, which I was recommended four years ago, are still just the right fit. Sometimes an old favourite works best to motivate me; other times I pick something new because everything else feels boring. Either way, I feel renewed afterwards.