I got chocolate for Christmas from Active Solution. Or rather, I along with everyone else got to choose from a range of delicious, mysterious options under the tree: chocolate, coffee, cheese, oil, or sausages. Among those options I naturally chose chocolate – and when I opened my mystery box on Christmas eve, it turned out to contain the most luxurious, decorative set of pralines I’ve ever seen. Sparkly golden pralines, pralines rolled in freeze-dried raspberries, or in flower petals. Some perhaps don’t quite qualify as chocolate (white chocolate isn’t!) but they’ve all been not just pretty but also delicious and interesting. The one rolled in green herbs tastes like a forest. I’m looking forward to finding out what the cornflower blue tastes like.

It’s not close to done by any measure, but reaching that white basted line is some kind of a landmark. When I also reach the vertical line to the right, I will have done two thirds of the trees. Finished by summer?

My desk used to be my home office, for everything from reading, to blogging, maintaining my to-do lists, paying the bills, to piling up books and magazines that I hoped to get around to.

Then covid came, and all of us switched to working from home all of the time, and my desk also become my WFH desk. I got properly equipped with a large monitor etc, which was a necessity for productivity but made my desk quite cramped. Plus, when I spent all day at the desk, working, it became strongly associated with work in my mind, and I didn’t like the feeling of going back there after dinner. My blogging and online reading migrated to the sofa; home admin got squeezed into a small corner of the desk, battling for space against all the work equipment.

Now I have inherited Eric’s work nook, which gives me the luxury of separating my home office from my work-from-home office. The desk in the bedroom is for private stuff; the desk under the chair is for work. Both activities get more space, and they don’t get mixed up with each other. And my back and hiops will be happier about spending less time in the sofa.

I needed a chair for the work nook, so I went to Blocket. Black chair, black chair, gray chair, black chair… boring, boring, boring… red! And the seller thought the red colour to be a potential problem. “Säljer en riktigt skön stol, som i färgen kanske inte är alla i smaken, men den är fantastisk på alla sätt o vis!” – “Selling a very comfy chair that might not be to everybody’s taste when it comes to colour, but it’s fantastic in all ways!” I’m glad that I like colour when everybody’s tastes lean towards black. This chair had been for sale for a month and a half, and nobody wanted it. It’s an RH Logic chair that cost around 15 000 SEK when new, and I got it for 600 – because the fabric is red and, to be fair, slightly faded along the front edge. Such a beauty, and such a great deal.

In addition to the obvious foodstuffs that Nysse will eat when given half a chance – butter, cream, eggs, tuna – he has some other, more surprising favourites.

The liquid from canned beans.

Various tomato-based sauces.

Rye sourdough.

The main part of the kitchen counter, to the right of the sink, is off limits to him, because that’s where we cook and serve our food. Everything in the sink and to the left of it – where the dirty dishes go – is fair game.

My first-ever attempt at sourdough bread.

Eric was the master baker in the house. Now that he’s not here, I need to learn to bake my own bread. Because I’m not going to be living on store-bought bread only.

For him it was a hobby; for me the process is not that interesting, and technical mastery is irrelevant. So I’m choosing the easy, low-effort route. For today: a no-knead sourdough bread.

First learning point: put the dough to rise in a warmer place. I had it in the kitchen at first, because that is where one bakes, but the dough wouldn’t rise. Moved it to the living room, under the heat pump, and things started happening.

Second learning point: even though the dough looks all gluey, you don’t actually need that much flour when handling it.

Third learning point: do not try to puff up the loaves before putting them in the oven. Even though the book says you can. They’ll just lose their form entirely and you end up with very misshapen loaves.

Fourth learning point: bake the loaves lower in the oven, or lower temperature compared to what the recipe says. These would have benefited from a bit more time in the oven, but the edges were nearly starting to burn.

Despite all of the above, the loaves rose, the texture was only a little bit doughy, and the taste was good.

It’s very blowy and snowy outside. The worst of the wind passed us during the night, blowing down string lights and driving snow into odd corners. Now there’s tons of fresh snow everywhere. Luckily the temperature stayed just below zero, so the snow was easy to work with. The last dump of snow, earlier this week, was immediately followed by rain and a thaw, which wasn’t enough to not actually melt all of the snow – just long enough to make it really wet and heavy. And then freezing temperatures the next night, so I had one evening to clear it all away, or deal with thick clumps of ice on all the stairs and driveways.

The municipal snow ploughs have cleared the streets, but haven’t had time to remove the snow, so it’s all piled up along the sides of the streets. And since I have a sturdy retaining wall towards the street, whereas the neighbours across the street have a lilac hedge, the snow ploughs – very reasonably – push most of it to our side. Now I’m running out of space where to put the snow.

Clearing everything after a decent-sized (but not extreme) snowfall takes about an hour and a quarter. That covers the staircases (upper and lower), the landing between them, the landing towards the street, the spaces in front of the mailbox and the rubbish bins, the car, the driveway, the wooden deck, and the stairs down from the deck to the driveway. A good workout.

The snow pusher is still great – and not just for the driveway. I’ve figured out a technique to use it on the lower, concrete stairs, too. Hold it parallel with the stairs, as close to vertical as possible, and I can push the snow down from one stair to the next. Two such pushes is enough to clear an entire step in no more than twenty seconds. And then I have a pile of snow on street level, where it is easy to clear. So I replace lifting and shovelling with pushing, which is much easier on the back and arms.

My new employer offers free massages on Fridays. Can you believe it?

They mentioned it during the interviewing process and it sounded almost too good to be true. What’s the catch, I thought? And it wasn’t even difficult to get a slot – when I booked mine on Thursday evening, half the slots were still free.

This was very, very nice. Afterwards, my body felt like a fluffy, soft pillow. And I was extra aware of all the times I tensed my shoulders.

Weaving in the ends of my latest knit sweater. I finished it last year already (ha ha) but I haven’t gotten around to finishing it. Very close now!

This was one of the years where the holidays all fall on weekdays, so you get maximum amount of Christmas break for a minimum of vacation days spent. I was home for 17 days, for the cost of 5 vacation days.

Yesterday was my first day back at work after the break. I spent most of it on getting my new computer up and running. It was all installation files and license keys and VPN configurations and access tokens. Bleh.

Today was my first full day at the office at Active Solution. I was told that Wednesdays are a good day to come in if I want to meet people, because there is Wednesday fika in the afternoon.

The office had a very homey vibe, quite unlike the sleek lines of the tretton37 office. A slightly labyrinthine layout, soft carpets in muted tones, throw pillows, and lots of plants.

Eric finalized his move on Friday. I have the house to myself until Sunday afternoon/evening, when the kids will come for their week here.

The quiet feels particularly calming after the stress of last week. Like breathing out, and putting down a heavy weight. A lightness.

I don’t think I’ve quite settled into this new reality yet. It feels temporary.

My to-do list is massive. There are things to buy replacements for, closets and shelves and drawers to sort through, decisions to make. Good thing I have more time and more energy than in a long time.

Eric and I had two single beds put together, because we preferred mattresses with different firmness, with a double-width mattress topper on top. Now we detached them from each other and took one each.

It only took me one night to discover that a single bed feels much narrower than half of a double bed. I have to take care all the time to not lose the blanket over the edge of the bed. (I feel like there’s some kind of metaphor in there, for the end of a relationship.)

My plan was to make do with a narrow bed for a few months, until I have time to figure out how I want to furnish my bedroom in the longer term. Get a feel for the space, consider what else I might want in here.

That’s a bit of a chain of projects, though: before I invest in a new bed frame, I want to see the rest of the room as it will be. That means getting rid of the large double wardrobe in the middle of the room. For that to happen, I need to move my clothes into one or more of the built-in closets on the other side of the room. And that in turn requires me to sort through the stuff that is currently there, so I can make space.

I’m reconsidering that plan, though, because this is not very comfortable.