It’s amazing how the cucumber plant can reach out with its curly gripper thing to the one and only support that’s even remotely within reach, 10 cm away. What magic does it use to find it?

It’s still super hot so I try to come up with cold meals for dinner. Getting tired of salads, trying to think of new things.

Adrian’s palate has really matured these past few years. He now happily eats anything and everything the rest of us do. Asparagus? Bring it on. Sun dried tomato spread? Sure. Avocado? Yes please.

Adrian and ran some errands in Bromma. Ingrid wanted us out of the house for as long as possible so she could get some time on her own, so she sent us a link to a nearby ice cream place. The ice cream place turned out to serve the most delicious gelatos. (Swedish raspberry and chocolate sorbet for me. I’ve never had chocolate sorbet before.)

Before covid, I’m sure there would have been a long and tedious queue outside the door. Now they had a ticket dispenser instead, which makes waiting a lot more relaxed. And the electronics store we visited before had the same. I’d much rather move around while waiting than stand still in one spot, covid or not.

Like with working from home, I hope that these changes persist.

I cut my thumb while cooking. Not badly, but enough to bleed all over the potatoes I was chopping, so I had to put a plaster on it. Such a tiny change, but it messes up so much.

The plaster gets wet and dirty the moment I touch anything in the kitchen, so I try to avoid using my thumb when cooking. When I do use it, my grip is off. And then my brain somehow goes from “don’t use the thumb” to “just avoid that part of the hand” so I find myself doing things with my middle finger instead of the index finger, for no good reason at all, which makes the weirdness even weirder. Give me back my thumb!

We have a cleaning service who come here every other Tuesday and spend three ours vacuuming, dusting, scrubbing the toilets and such. I’m very happy about this luxury but I will never, ever get used to how the cleaners all move things around. One of them was so bad about it that we had to ask the company to swap her out and send someone else. I literally couldn’t find things after she had been here, and at one point had to by a replacement some kitchen utensil because she had put it away somewhere and I only found it weeks later.

They normally don’t even move things very far or to particularly odd places. It’s just that we like having every thing in its proper place, because that place has emerged as the best and most proper one after potentially years of tweaking. Especially on the kitchen counter. The salt will always be to the left of the pepper because the pepper mill is taller and is easier to grab if it isn’t too close to the knife block. The dish detergent has to be to the left of the soap dispenser because we use it more often and it’s easier to reach there. And so on. By now their proper places are deeply ingrained in memory, and when things that I use daily get moved, it really throw me off.

Today the coffee table had been shifted literally just a few centimetres from its normal spot. That was more than enough to feel off when I put my feet up on it (which I was definitely brought to not do but like an utter slob I still do it anyway). Muscle memory is a strong thing.

Some friends of ours have left town to spend most of the summer at their cottage. We’re picking up their mail – and plant-sitting their potted cucumber.

We cycled to the recycling centre in Bromma. All the way there and back, the sky loomed over us and the air felt like it should start raining any moment, but not a single drop actually fell.

I feel a bit bad about depriving the family of home-grown strawberries (even though they probably don’t really expect me to provide any) so I’m solving the problem by throwing money at it and saying yes to buying strawberries whenever Adrian asks for them. It’s a good thing he does ask, because I would be stingier if I was buying just for myself.

Adrian and I often eat cereal with yoghurt and a generous heaping of fresh strawberries for breakfast. (Meanwhile Ingrid sleeps until late morning and doesn’t really do breakfast at all, and Eric has already left for work after a much earlier and simpler meal.)

We won’t be getting many strawberries this year, if any, because I really haven’t been taking care of the garden at all. The tall grass doesn’t matter but I really should have replaced the nets. I didn’t, though, so now the deer have eaten most of the strawberry plants. Well, there’s always next year.