A beautiful misty morning. (View from the tram bridge towards Stora Essingen.)

The mornings are cold now, just barely above zero. I’m taking these chances to cycle to work because I feel very conscious of the fact that the end of the cycling season is near. Yeah, it’s technically possible to cycle all winter, but I don’t have the equipment for it and I don’t enjoy cycling in the dark.

Eric and I are divorcing.

We agreed to do this about a month ago. Now that Ingrid and Adrian, our families, and closest friends have been informed, I can write about it here.

It’s been a long time coming. We did counselling a few years back, but it didn’t make any real difference. We just can’t reach each other any more. We both want/need things from each other that the other isn’t able to provide. There is always a tension of underlying dissatisfaction. It can be unnoticeable for a while, but keeps coming back.

There are no signs that we can ever “fix” this. I see no common foundation to build upon. After years of vain effort, everybody will feel better if we stop struggling and let go.

I have been vaguely considering the idea of divorce for a long time. At first as a scary worst-case scenario – what if we can’t make our relationship work and have to divorce? – that led me to do everything possible to avoid it. Then as a possible, but still scary outcome. Finally as a practical solution. Now that we have agreed to go ahead with it, the feeling is one of relief.

Ingrid and Adrian were initially very shocked but are, I believe, getting used to the idea. They both have multiple friends with divorced parents, and though a few have very rocky co-parenting relationships, most manage it without drama.

The shock was, in my eyes, a good thing. If we had gotten to a state where dissent was obviously visible even to children, then we’d have been well past the point where something needs to happen.

Now we can do this in a civilized, even friendly way, without drama. Figure out all the practicalities together; sort out all the admin. We sent in the divorce papers yesterday, but probably won’t have separated our households before the end of the year. Eric has bought an apartment with a move-in date in November, and then he’ll need time to furnish it. I’ll be keeping the house; today we started the process of getting it valued.

Every autumn the indoor temperature takes me by surprise.

Outdoors, the average temperature mostly follows a nice curve. Warm summer, gradual decline into cool autumn, continuing into a cold winter, and then a corresponding curve back up in spring.

Intuitively I expect the same indoors. Warm in summer, cool in autumn, cold in winter. But that is not what happens. Instead it is warm in summer, cold in autumn, then the heating turns on, and we have the same cold all the way through to late spring when we can turn off the heating again. It wasn’t necessarily always like that, but it’s been our reality since Sweden’s electricity prices spiked in 2021.

This means that there is a very short season for medium-warm clothes: long-sleeved jersey dresses, thin jersey tops, things with lacy sleeves. Half of August maybe, all of September, and that’s more or less it. After that it’s all layers of wool.

A bunch of folks from tretton37 went on an evening walk after work, on Järvafältet.

On the plus side: going for a nature walk after work was very relaxing. We saw the hairy cows at Väsby gård, and got some lovely evening light. And the company was good.

On the minus side: I was tired and starving when I finally got home, a good hour and a half later than I had expected.

What I thought would happen is that we meet up at 17 at Akalla, walk 4.5 km, and end up at Häggvik from where I can take the train or the bus home. Home by 19.

What I didn’t take into account was, firstly, that those 4.5 km didn’t start at Akalla station – we first had a 15-minute walk to the starting point of the hike. And the hike itself was maybe more like 6 km rather than 4.5. And there would be fika afterwards. And the hike didn’t actually end at Häggvik station, but only in its general vicinity (another 25-minute walk).

Adrian is doing homework; I am keeping him company.

He has struggled in the past with setting aside sufficient time for doing his homework, and has repeatedly ended up leaving way too much work for the last minute. He’s also been rather resistant to any kinds of suggestions for various alternative ways to schedule time for homework. After school he wants to rest; weekends he wants to game with his friends. But now he’s found a new routine, which – most importantly – involves planning ahead and figuring out how much time he will likely need to spend on homework, and making time for it. It’s way later in the evening than I would ever choose for myself, but whatever works for him!

He is much more productive and happier when he has study company. (So is Ingrid, for that matter.) I get to practice French vocabulary, learn obscure Estonian spelling rules that I had no idea about (the spelling just is that way in my head, without any rules) and hear about different types of sports injuries and how to treat them.

Meanwhile I am working on my black and white embroidery exercises. I added a layer of watered-down acrylic paint on the embroidery that wasn’t quite black enough, and I’m doing the groundwork for the next one by sponge-painting a newsprint-like pattern.

We visited my sister-in-law at her cottage. Ingrid drove us all the way there, over 100 km through very varied conditions: city traffic, large roundabouts, long stretches of busy motorway, and then ever smaller country lanes. Along the way she got to practise all kinds of skills, from cruise control, to overtaking lorries, to making space for vehicles on on-ramps.

For all practical purposes, she can drive. Under supervision, for now, because she sometimes forgets some details. But when she took a driving lesson earlier this week to get a gauge on her skills, she came home dejected and stressed out – the teacher made her feel like she knew nothing. They are incredibly nit-picky about things such as the timing of gear changes, how aggressively to accelerate when taking off after a traffic light, etc. If I had to take a driving test today, I would certainly fail.

Still traipsing through Stockholm for job interviews.

Even though I don’t have anything signed yet, today I gave notice to quit my job at tretton37. Three months’ notice period means I will leave by the end of the year.

I wasn’t entirely satisfied with my last exercise for the black and white embroidery course. I touched up the shapes to make the proportions better, and that helped. The difference is perhaps subtle in a photo but obvious when I hold the piece in front of me.

The surfaces are still not as black as I would like. I preferred the appliqué look with its proper, deep black. But the teacher argued that embroidery is about stitches, and a stitched surface has more character than plain appliqué, and I can see the point. Her suggestion was to paint the surface where I want it fully black.

Had I planned for this, I could have painted those parts of the fabric before embroidering. Now I’ll have to do it after. I don’t have black fabric paint but I do have black acrylic. I’m now experimenting with watered-down acrylic paint to see how it affects the look and feel of the fabric.

Speaking of paint, our second exercise is to paint on newsprint with Indian ink and use that as a starting point for our embroidery design. I don’t think I’ve ever worked with Indian ink. One immediate learning is just how much the brush matters for this. I had one broad, thick, stiff brush and one smaller one, much softer. The thick brush held on to the ink and gave me even, smooth strokes. The soft brush gave up most of its load of paint as soon as it met paper, then ran out of ink before I even finished the stroke, and the brushstrokes came out as blobs with tails. Both brushes are from the same main street hobby store, so I guess it’s not even a matter of quality but just type of brush.

All my tights came out from the washing machine covered in specks of white lint. Some worse than others; this pair of black leggings looked the worst. I guess someone forgot to empty their pockets. Luckily I only this particular pair and its twin at home.

A lint roller didn’t help at all, but the specks were easy to loosen with my fingernails.

I wouldn’t want to wear the leggings like this, but they did look rather pretty, I thought.

This cardigan is accumulating more and more darned patches. I wear it a few times, and then find another threadbare patch that needs some TLC. They’re very unevenly distributed, and with no thought to what would look good – they just go where the holes are appearing. I’m thinking that maybe I should add more patches elsewhere, not so much to strengthen the fabric but to make it look more cohesive. I have enough of that yarn for a heck of a lot of darning.