It’s been a busy week here. Last Wednesday my mom arrived from Texas for her annual month with us. We spent that day and the next mostly settling in, then Friday was Petra’s big birthday celebration. We did a big grocery shop on rainy, dreary Saturday, then on Sunday my mom, Petra, and I drove ten or fifteen miles south to an “open garden,” where we meandered through the spectacular display of Lilla Madeira before having a little fika and visiting a nearby flea market.

Monday, Brynja got up early to go to work with Olof — an hour or so of housekeeping before his four weeks of vacation — then had some lunch and shopping before heading home. I’m not entirely sure what all they got up to in town, but whatever it was, it must have been exhausting; Brynja fell asleep at dinnertime and didn’t wake up until seven the next morning. All told, she slept for fourteen hours!

Yesterday was my turn to go to town, this time with Lydia and my mom. Like any teenage girl worth her salt, Lydia shopped and shopped and shopped some more after we had lunch, and my mom and I also came away with a bargain or two. After all that hard work, we fortified ourselves with a little fika before heading home to make tacos for dinner.

Today is the first day in what feels like a long time that we haven’t had anything scheduled. I’m working, very slowly, on a fantastic book, The Cheese and the Worms, by Carlo Ginzburg, and I also started making a mosaic top for my little outside table. Otherwise, this is shaping up to be a day of rest and baseball-watching — the best kind of day, I don’t mind saying.