I woke up at 4:45 this morning and had trouble going back to sleep. I sort of managed to get some more sleep but was still all groggy and yawny until lunchtime, at which point I took a nap, which I haven’t done in ages. After the nap my body felt better but then time felt all dislocated. So I have no photo for today. Not even of my pillow.

I went out for grocery shopping after work and put on my lightweight spring coat because it looked sunny and warm. Shouldn’t have trusted the looks of the weather, should have looked at an actual thermometer. Because it was definitely colder than it looked and I had to walk really briskly in order not to shiver. It’s spring, but not as much spring as I keep wanting to believe.

I’ve reached middle age and become lactose intolerant. Sharing the symptoms with you would probably be TMI, but suffice it to say, they’re not fun. I can still eat small amounts of dairy without any problems, but a few days eating, say, pasta in a creamy sauce will really mess up my stomach.

So I’m now buying lactose free stuff, somewhat reluctantly. It doesn’t quite taste like the normal stuff. Lactose free butter and cream cheese both taste kind of blander and sharper. I guess my taste buds miss the sugar. I guess I’ll get used to it.

What bothers me more is that there are so few organic lactose free products. I want my milk and butter to come from happy cows who are not pumped full of antibiotics and who get to spend their days outdoors. But I also still want my butter to be butter, not an artificial alternative.

I was happy to see that at least when it comes to heavy cream, there is an organic lactose free alternative. Too bad it’s one of those semi-fake ones, with a thickening agent compensating for the lower fat content (36% instead of 40%). Organic, thickener free, lactose free: choose any two out of three.

Three deer lazing around in the spring sunshine in the garden. Clearly feeling right at home here.

The cardigan is now at roughly the same point where I ripped it up last time. Time to try it on again soon.

I’m making good progress on it, and on the socks I’m also working on, with all the online meetings we have. Knitting is the perfect filler activity for meetings where I am mostly a passive participant.

But meetings are only good for a certain kind of knitting: the kind that I can do with half my attention. No measuring or fitting, no casting on new things, no tricky counting. I try to make sure to have at least one of my projects in a meeting-ready state by each morning. I wouldn’t want to end up in an hour-long meeting with no knitting just because I’m stuck behind the start of a heel or something like that.

This work-from-home thing is really spoiling me.

The libraries in Stockholm have been in covid mode for the past year. Some are closed, some just discourage visitors. And no late fees have been charged.

I’ve had an overdue children’s book at home all this year. The library in Spånga has been closed and I just haven’t bothered finding an alternative one to return it to.

I got an email telling me the grace period ends on March 31st, so I got off my backside and cycled to Vällingby to return the darn thing. It was a relief to finally get rid of it.

Vällingby felt mostly deserted.

After last week’s lack of energy, I’m glad to be back to feeling normal again.

Today was warm enough to open the window during my workout, but unfortunately wet. I’m looking forward to moving my workouts outdoors. But spring is deceptive – it always takes much longer than I expect.

When dinner is done, the dinner bell is rung. It has a wonderfully deep sound that carries well through the house. But it doesn’t do well through closed doors. Neither does my voice.

I used to go upstairs to knock on Ingrid’s door to call her to dinner, but that got tiring quite quickly. Especially when the answer I got was in the vein of “I’ll be down soon, I just have to win this battle”. Not only did I do the work of cooking dinner – I then had to chase down people to come and eat it.

The obvious, practical solution to this was a pair of remote-operated doorbells. The buttons are downstairs in the kitchen, next to the singing bowl. The bells themselves are upstairs in Ingrid’s and Adrian’s rooms. They each chose their own ringtones. One sounds like a bunch of birds tweeting; the other is a more traditional melody. Sort of like 19th-century servants’ bells, but the other way round.

Mostly the bells mean “dinner is ready”, but not always. Today Ingrid rang Adrian’s bell when she wanted him to bring down the iPad (that normally “lives” downstairs but is often “forgotten” upstairs) and had sore leg muscles from gym class. Snarky comments were exchanged, both about “forgetting” the iPad, and about using the bell instead of walking.

It’s a lovely spring day so Adrian and I went out walking. Of the whole family, he is the most willing to join me when I want to go out – especially when the walking involves geocaching, or grilling sausages. Today we picked off three easy caches in the nearby Grimsta nature reserve, with Adrian in charge of the GPS unit.

Adrian found a few rocks to climb, and plenty of sticks. He just never tires of sticks. There is so much that they can be used for! Pick them, carry them, peel them, whack the ground with them…

I found the season’s first hepatica flowers.

Once upon a time, several years ago, I stumbled upon a recipe for cheesy broccoli muffins. Since then it’s become a fixture in my recipe collection. The best part about it is how versatile it is. The cheesy “foundation” can be combined with just about anything. When I got tired of the broccoli and feta cheese flavour, I replaced them with grated apples and carrots and curry powder. When I didn’t have enough carrots at home, I made them with apples and curry and sweetcorn. When I wanted a Christmas-themed variation, I used feta cheese and frozen lingonberries. I’ve been thinking of making them with butternut squash, or perhaps with spinach, or why not both.