Nysse vs the neighbourhood cat. Whose name is Morris, by the way – he deserves to be called by his proper name.

After Nysse moved in, Morris doesn’t dare come in any more. He was always a cautious one – it took weeks before he came close enough to be touched. Now he comes to the door, I open it for him, he pokes his head in – and then he sees Nysse and backs out again. Then he sits and looks at Nysse, who looks back at him. After a few minutes, Morris gives up and slinks away, looking defeated.

He’s been by several times since Nysse came. Nysse looks more confident each time; I’m not sure about Morris. He hasn’t given up yet. I had hoped they might be friends, or at least coexist peacefully, but maybe not.

I want to thank everybody who sent us Christmas cards this year, even though I forgot.

One card stood out because of the envelope it arrived in – a Soviet-era envelope from 1987, with a New Year’s Eve celebratory design. Complete with boxes for filling in the postal code in a standard way, down at the bottom left. (The flap of the envelope has examples of all ten digits, so that the boxes get filled in correctly.) The boxes for postal code have existed for as long as I can remember, and clearly at least since 1987, so I guess they had OCR for sorting mail already back then?

There was officially no Christmas in Soviet Estonia, since Christmas and everything else with Christian roots was a despicable remnant of bourgeois mores and thus Not Done. We nevertheless celebrated Christmas in our home, on the quiet, and so did many other households.

Official midwinter celebrations were all for the New Year. Apart from the name and the date, it was very similar to Christmas, though… with decorated trees with baubles and lights, gingerbread cookies, and a bearded man bringing gifts. The bearded man was Ded Moroz, Father Frost, who was usually clothed in blue rather than red, and whose sled was pulled by three horses rather than a bunch of reindeer, but who otherwise functioned very much like Santa Claus. (TIL that even Ded Moroz was too bourgeois and was banned after the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, but brought back a few decades later.)

In Estonian, Ded Moroz was not called Father Frost or külmataat, but näärivana, because he fused with not only Christmas but also the old Estonian New Year’s traditions, called näärid. Fun fact for you: näärid have their roots in Scandinavian traditions, and the word itself comes from the Swedish nyår, “new year”.

My mum came by for Christmas. She can be fun. But in large amounts I find her exhausting.

We finally brought home a Christmas tree. We’ve never been this late and this lax with the Christmas preparations. For the first time in years I didn’t even remember to send any Christmas cards. Sorry, folks. At leat we’ve bought gifts for the kids.

Nysse used to live together with two other cats. When food was served, he was fast and pushy, and always got more than his fair share. Since he was living in the countryside, he probably supplemented the cat food with mice and voles and such as well. Now he’s visibly overweight.

We serve him food according to his weight, and there’s nowhere to get any extras, since he’s staying indoors for now. And he is not happy with this new situation. Add the usual cat curiosity to the mix, and you get a cat that is very, very interested in our food. He jumps up on the kitchen table and the counters while we’re cooking or eating, and tries to steal bites of whatever he can find. We keep shooing him down, but I expect it’s going to take a long while for him to learn that those places are off-limits.

And of course he seizes the opportunity when we’re not in the kitchen keeping an eye on things. No dinner ingredient or half-eaten sandwich or butter lid can be left unguarded. We’ve never been so disciplined about putting any kitchen clutter away immediately.

When he can’t get hold of anything else, he licks the edges of unwashed dishes in the sink.

My daily exercise is a brisk midday walk more often than it is a proper workout session, these days. Often I don’t have the energy for more.

With lower energy levels, my taste in workout videos has also changed. My favourite sources used to be PopSugar (on YouTube) and HASfit. The PopSugar videos with Raneir Pollard were the most fun. But then YouTube turned up their advertising earlier this year to truly annoying levels – interrupting a HIIT workout to show me some ads in the middle really doesn’t make me a happy user! – and I had to give up on those. I don’t mind paying for online services, but I’m not going to be bullied into paying.

I actually support HASfit via Patreon, because I watched their workout videos a lot. But now their tone doesn’t work for me any more. I used to find them motivating, but now it’s almost the opposite. Telling me “you can do more”, “if your brain is telling you you’re tired then it’s lying”, “don’t stop when you’re tired, stop when you’re done” does not help when I was already struggling to find the energy to just start. Reminding me to think about what made me come here, when I barely managed to do that, just makes it harder.

Now I mostly watch FitnessBlender. The workouts are quite similar but the tone is very different. Calmer and less pushy. Forgiving any weakness in advance, somehow. And right now this low-key approach works much better for me.

I often start the workout telling myself that I am allowed to quit before the end. I commit to five minutes only. Sometimes I find the flow as soon as I start. Other times I don’t, and I keep promising myself that I am allowed to quit after this exercise, and after the next one, and so on, if I really don’t feel like continuing. But I’ve never actually used my out.

One might almost get the impression that we chose Nystagmus so that he would match the furniture and carpet. Which we didn’t, but I do think he is very handsome in his gray coat. And soft like velvet.

I’m going to have to hold back with the cat photos here. The temptation is there. This will not turn into a cat blog.

We have a new family member. Meet our new cat, Nystagmus, also known as Nysse, also known as Musse.

Nystagmus is a graphite-coloured mixed-breed domestic cat, just over a year old. We drove to Mörtbol this afternoon to meet him. We all liked him immediately, he seemed to like us as well, so he came home with us.

He has lived in the countryside until now, so we hope that a free-range life in our suburban home will suit him. It would be impossible to have an indoor cat in this house, with the way we keep the French doors open all day in the summer. Hopefully he has enough survival instincts to learn to cope with the traffic here, which isn’t fast or heavy but is still more than he is used to.

I read up in advance on how to introduce a cat to a new home. Keep them indoors initially, even if it’s an outdoor cat, while they get used to their new home. Don’t take them out of the carrier – let them come out at their own pace. Let them hide if they want. Keep them in one room initially and let them get used to the rest of the house gradually.

So I was all prepared for Nystagmus to not leave the bedroom today, and to possibly stay hiding in the carrier for the entire evening. Making contingency plans for moving the litter box into the bedroom, even, if he didn’t want to come out.

Well, Nystagmus ignored all of that useful advice and bravely went around exploring the house straight away. He was not the least bit shy about eating in a new place, either. And within an hour or two he was already up on the sofa with us, asking for cuddles and pets. I’m glad Nystagmus is not as shy as the neighbours’ cat, who took weeks to feel that secure in our house – a sociable, cuddly cat is a much better fit for us.

My brother came by for a pre-Christmas visit. We made gingerbread cookies. We all take optimal dough usage very seriously. It matters! Every time you gather up the scraps and roll out the dough again, you work more flour in it. This year the dough was perfect to begin with, easy to work with. By the fourth or fifth rolling, it was all dry and barely workable.

Later we also made mince pies which I love even more than gingerbread cookies. Both taste great, especially when made from scratch after years of tweaking the recipes, but mince pies are moister.