Ingrid has crooked teeth. She’s old enough to start fixing them, with adult teeth all in place where needed. (Except for one baby tooth which she’ll get to keep for life, because there’s no adult tooth developing underneath it. I had no idea this was a thing, but now I know.)

Her teeth are too many for her jaw and simply can’t fit, so the first step is to remove some. To me, pulling out teeth feels like a very drastic step, but the orthodontist was very sure and very convincing about this. So today Ingrid had two teeth pulled out.

I’ve never removed any teeth. All I’ve seen is dozens of baby teeth – both my own, decades ago, and now Ingrid’s and Adrian’s. Lost baby teeth are just nubs, but Ingrid’s two teeth have substantial roots. I hadn’t pictured them as being so long.

They’re a bit bloody so I’m hiding the image from any squeamish readers. Just click this text to view it.

Nothing photo-worthy happened today, so here are the pumpkins posing for me again.

Today’s strength training: carrying home 15 kg of pumpkins from the supermarket.

I’m buying the pumpkins early this year. Last year I made the mistake of trying to buy them on Halloween and by then they were sold out. Other years, when I’ve also waited too long, I’ve had to drive elsewhere to hunt for pumpkins. Not making that mistake this year.

Python code beaten into submission, another pair of socks finished. A good day at work.

90% of the code we have at Urb-it is .NET. Whenever I have to work with any of the remaining 10%, it takes hours to even get started. It took me three hours on my own, and then another two hours together with two more developers, to get the python project to build and run on my computer. Even though I’ve done it before on that same computer. Some damn package gets updated somewhere and boom, there goes my afternoon. But that was yesterday, so today was pure productivity.

Ingrid’s puberty growth spurt is tapering off, with her just a few centimeters short of my length. She’ll probably catch up in a year. Meanwhile Adrian is pulling further and further ahead of Ingrid at the same age.

The quince is done. Now we’ll line them up on oven racks and dry them, and then we’ll have enough sweet candied quince to last us a year.

I wish I had weighed them before. Eric could probably tell me how many kilograms of sugar we’ve pumped into them, but without knowing the original weight, it’s hard to relate it to anything. I know we’re talking kilograms in any case, because “sugar 1 kg” has been on the grocery shopping list several times recently.

I also wish I had taken before and after photos. I kind of did, but not in comparable lighting. I know that the quince and the syrup around them have a much deeper colour now, a dark amber instead of the original bright gold, but want to really see it.

Birchleaf spirea in autumn colours.

I have a set of three reusable bags for fruit and vegetables, in polyester netting or something like that. I keep them in my purse so that I always have them when I need them.

Except when I leave my purse at home because I have my backpack for some reason… and then I have to use something else for the apples I buy. Single-use plastic bags are still available but on their way out, and most shops offer paper bags instead.

More eco-friendly than plastic, yes. But this bag – that I used to bring home six apples – really reminded me how awesome plastic can be, and why it has conquered the world so easily and overwhelmingly. The paper bag was thick and clumsy in comparison to the filmy plastic bags. It felt like the bag with apples took up almost twice as much space as the apples on their own, because it was so stiff. The rolled-up top on its own is like two apples.

I noticed the same on my hike. Nothing beats sealable plastic baggies when it comes to packing food for a hike. Nothing beats ordinary plastic bags for containing any waste and garbage in my pack. I know people got by just fine before plastic became available, but giving them up now would be so very hard.

My knitting is as much part of my daily work equipment as my conference speaker and web camera. Although not quite as much as my mouse and keyboard. Online meetings without knitting make my whole being itch with impatience.