Winter again

Posted on January 19, 2013 by Wolfie217

As winter came back the joys of winter returned too.

The first is that it’s not as dark anymore. The snow lights up everything.

The second is that it is fun to play in the snow, especially with my daughter. Last Thursday my brother and I had some time on the slope next to our house with her. Going down the hill with and without my daughter is great fun.

Here is a short film of us going down the slope.

[embedit snippet=”fun-in-the-snow”]

The third this is the sound that walking on snow makes on a cold day, like today. It’s a kind of squeaking or crunching noise. It has to be below -5°C.

The forth thing is the fog over the lake on a cold morning after a ship has passed by and broken the ice.

Bicycling in the snow is the fifth. I really like it. It’s just a bit tricky when it is snowing. I did bike 17 km with the trailer last Tuesday. (For you who weren’t in Stockholm that day, it snowed more than 20 cm that day). My daughter has a swimming class and I had made up my mind to go by bicycle as I like that more. On the way there I had a real workout. On the way back it became a bit too much, so I had to stop and get some food. My daughter seemed to enjoy it though. (She slept on the way home). That’s how the bicycle and trailer looked like at the stop:

New Year what will you bring?

Posted on January 10, 2013 by Wolfie217

As most of you noticed a new year has started. (Sure in some areas it hasn’t started yet or it had started a bit earlier than here, but I’m thinking of us living in the part of the world where time is related to the birth of Christ).

Some years are just normal years. The last one was that in some way. Normal years are good, they give you time to reflect on life. No real life changing thing happened. As far as I know anyhow. (Some of the life changing things have the tendency to first show themselves after some time).

Will 2013 be a normal year again, or will it bring big change? I don’t know. There are things brewing, but nothing is actually planned.

A few things are more certain:

I will go back to work. (Just the date is not decided yet).
Our daughter will turn two. (She actually turns 16 months today).
We will travel to Skåne a few times, the first trip to see my cousin in law become a priest in the Church of Sweden.
Our daughter will learn so many more things.

None of these things will qualify this year as non-normal.

I just hope I can make the most of every moment of this year anyway. I have started out good I think. Like today, when I took our daughter for a ride in the bicycle wagon to go shopping despite the snow. (You who know me know that I like bicycling in the snow). After dinner tonight I also took a few rounds down the slope beside our house on the snowracer. I think I might enjoy it more than her, but she likes it too. Now the snow is really fast so we have to turn around the house to not go through the thorn bushes and down the steep slope into the nature reserve (that contains plenty of trees before ending in the lake Mälaren, that isn’t frozen over here so far).

This morning I saw this post on facebook where there were 45 good advices given by a 90 year old lady named Regina Brett. I looked it up, since I liked the advice given and found out it wasn’t a 90 year old lady after all giving the advice and it wasn’t only 45 but five more. But it is good advice anyway so I shared it there, and I share it here too: http://www.reginabrett.com/life_lessons.php

I think I might print them and post them on my board here at home.

The other day as I was bicycling home from church I went by a little group of people that were taking photos. I thought that one of them looked familiar, but she lives a bit away nowadays so I thought it is just someone similar. Then when I glanced through her blog the other day, I recognised a picture taken at the spot I bicycled by. I should have stopped and said hi. (And here is the link to that blogpost: http://litenlisa.blogspot.se/2013/01/en-ovantad-grej.html)

After Susanna proofread this post she said she wanted to show me a thing. We had the book that Regina Brett wrote on the 50 advices standing in our shelf (translated to Swedish). Now I have a new book to read.

This is it folks!

Posted on December 31, 2012 by Wolfie217

I think 2012 will in my mind be remembered as a year with much joy in the everyday life.

It hasn’t been a year of big things like the year before (when we had our daughter) but of many small things.

Like:

Our daughter learning many new things to our and her joy. (This could be a long list in itself).

Having a few short vacations to Germany.

Having a nice summer vacation driving around Sweden.

Having my brother coming over much more than before. (See his homepage for updates: www.wolfmaier.com)

Being home with our daughter (that will continue well into 2013 too).

A few business trips to Gothenburg and Malmoe.

A beautiful snowy December.

Now it’s coming to an end. I’m writing this while our daughter is playing with the pens on my desk, right after our New Year’s dinner. It has been a good year. I have learned new things about myself. I have learned to enjoy new things.

I’m so happy to share this year with my family. Susanna is the best wife I could ever have found. Our daughter is just the cutest there is. We enjoy our company and like doing things together. Basically most things we do together end up being fun. Even fairly boring things like shopping for food.

Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas!

Posted on December 25, 2012 by Wolfie217

Merry Christmas to you all!

Here is our Christmas card for you:

I wish you all have a wonderful time with family and friends in great fellowship, good food and much joy!

This year we stayed home for Christmas, having my parents and my brother for Christmas Eve and Christmas day, Susanna’s parents are coming on the 3^rd to have a second Christmas with us then.

It is lovely to see how our daughter for the first time really enjoyed the feast. The joy she had opening presents, (she started with the small ornamental ones we had put in the tree) and later playing with her new toys. This really makes giving fun.

Now it is time to rest until it is time for sound on Sunday.

The perfect Friday night dinner?

Posted on December 15, 2012 by Wolfie217

Today I think I made the perfect Friday night dinner. You decide for yourself if you agree.

Take one day of perfect Friday with beautiful snow and sunshine.

Blend with a bicycle ride and a nice walk through the forest.

Prepare a sourdough-sunflower-seed bread in time (in the morning) for part of it becoming the buns for the dinner.

While the daughter is sleeping (after a short stay at the open preschool) start making the last preparations for the bread.

Take it easy for a little while.

Make dinner; the task for today was; it should have bacon in it.

Form burgers from minced meat.

Bake the buns.

Put french-fries in the oven.

Fry burgers.

Fry bacon.

Have your wife come home.

Take french-fries out of the oven.

Prepare lettuce and other assembly details.

Put the rest of the bread into the oven.

Assemble the burgers.

Serve with beer.

Enjoy!

Don’t forget to take out the bread before it is black. (As a good dinner takes a while it might be in the middle of it).

Now let the weekend begin!

Sourdough

Posted on November 8, 2012 by Wolfie217

This last two weeks I have had a little project. It was to start my own sourdough and bake bread from it. Tonight we had the first slices of it. It actually tasted really good, like the one mum made when I was a kid.

Sourdough is a bit of a project in itself. It takes a while to start it, but they say it is easier if you have the right kind of flour to start from. In the beginning of September we got some rye flour at the old mill where we live. (It’s an old mill that is preserved as a museum, but they run it and make flour a few days every year). The flour was organic too, this because you need as much of the natural yeast that starts the sourdough and as little other things like leftovers from pesticides or fertilizers.

To start all this I had a little help. We have two good books about baking bread: (Both in Swedish)

Gateaus brödbok by Claes Christenson (brödbok = bread book) that I have used a lot before to make my Sunday buns. It has all kinds of bread in it, but mostly yeast based ones.

Surdegsbröd by Martin Johansson (surdegsbröd = sourdough bread) that I used to get my sourdough started and some ideas how to bake the bread, like using a thermometer to know if the bread is ready instead of just timing the baking.

None of these books has simple plain sourdough bread in it. (Okay some are fairly simple, but not just rye, water and salt). And I wanted to start out with a rye bread that was just that simple and German. So where to look, our good friend Google sent me to this page: chefkoch.de that helped me with the last part. I did half the amount in the recipe, I didn’t want to waste too much rye if I failed and our food processor might retire if I have a too big dough in it.

Just a few lines about our food processor, it’s a few years old, actually I don’t know how many as I got it second hand from my grandmother some years ago. It is one of the kinds where the bowl and the hook turns, makes a lot of noise and is a bit tricky to get clean. When I lived by myself I had it packed away above the fridge, making it a bit of a project just to use it, needless to say I didn’t use it very much then. Now we have it standing on the counter so it’s just to start it whenever it is needed. It also has a vegetable chopping part and a blender.

Back to the bread:

As I had started I decided that I would use sunflower seeds in it to give it some extra taste. I really like sunflower seeds; they fit perfectly in bread too.

As the bread got ready, the baking took a lot shorter than what the recipe said, I wanted the bread to be 98°C inside as I had learned from the book on sourdough and that took only about 45 minutes not 1 hour and 15 minutes as the recipe sais, I wonder how the bread would have been if I had waited that long?

After dinner (we had Penne with a mushroom, tomato and crème fraiche sauce) we all had a slice of the bread. It was wonderful. I never imagined that I would actually be this successful on the first try. Sure I have been baking Sunday breakfast buns for a while now, but still, first loaf of bread, first sourdough bread and first bread I made that was only rye. It tasted just like when I was a kid.

The bread:

Some different life

Posted on October 11, 2012 by Wolfie217

So, now I’ve been home with our daughter for one and a half week. I’m starting to get a hold of things. I’m starting to understand the work involved in entertaining a kid all day. I’m having a hard time thinking of easy and good food, but thanks to some of my readers I still have a few ideas that I can use.

One thing I’m realising is that no day is like the other. One day I’m getting all the signals right and I don’t have to change one used diaper. Other days I’m missing all of them. (She has been using the potty a long time, but for safe we use diapers too). Some days I can eat in peace with her enjoying her food at a comfortable pace without too much a mess, other days she just throws things around, leaving me cleaning the floor, table, three chairs (including hers), wall, windows and sofa. I always have to clean her, sometimes less, sometimes more, then I just put her into the shower.

It is amazing how she has become so much more attached to me. She now comes over to me and wants to be lifted up while I’m cooking even when Susanna is at home. That didn’t happen before. I’m getting stronger in my left arm; it’s kind of tricky to cook with only the right arm free, but doing it with the left is even trickier. I do have to put her down for some task and she does somehow understand it too, but as soon as I’m done with the thing that made me put her down in the first place she’s back between my legs almost trying to climb up.

I thought the hardest thing would be not meeting people all day. And I think it is. I’m trying to get out every day, some days for some shopping, others for some activity (we have her swimming once a week now), or just to go to the playground or to the open preschool. Later, when Susanna is working full time I will come and visit her at work too.

Sleep is a bit of a problem still. I can get her to sleep, but it requires a long walk or bicycle tour. I have to time it right and have to be on the move for at least half an hour. Then she maybe sleeps for one hour, but if I stop it’s not sure that she continues to sleep. Twice she did sleep a while after I got home, but every other time she woke up.

This last weekend was beautiful, so we had a little walk around our house:

As I was writing Susanna was looking at some toy-car-thingy: http://www.swingcar.se/ (She didn’t look at that page I’m sure of, because I couldn’t fine the film she was looking at there. It had a song as soundtrack; see film below; which made me remember a walk I made midsummer 2004. I made a walk in my neighbourhood that night, thinking of how my life was. Back then I was just doing the last parts of my master-thesis. This was a period in my life when I had lost myself. I felt like I wanted to run from everything. I was thinking I should move to a new place and start over. I just knew I wouldn’t get rid of the feeling anyway. It felt hopeless. Still I had many things I was really happy about. I had a few good friends and I really looked forward to visit my brother later that summer.

[embedit snippet=”not-gonna-get-us”]

Here are a few pictures from that walk:

After looking at those pictures I started looking at other old pictures. O have I changed. I showed some of them to Susanna, I think she is really happy I have changed. I’m happy too. I found myself again. Now I have a happy family and the feeling of wanting to run from it all just doesn’t come anymore. I live so much more right here, right now. I think that’s the only way of living taking care of a child.

Some more music reference there if you want:

[embedit snippet=”right-here-right-now”]

How to get wet and enjoy it.

Posted on August 22, 2012 by Wolfie217

How to get wet:

Work half an hour longer than planned. (I wanted to start a simulation before leaving).

Get yourself on a bicycle.
Move towards the dark clouds.
Don’t stop and put on a raincoat.
Don’t even bring one.
Continue biking.
As the rain starts: Don’t take a break under a bus stop.
Continue even as the water rises on the road. (In this case about 1 cm).
Drive close to cars, they splash some on you.
Drive through the river that comes down from Blackeberg. (It used to be a road).

If you aren’t wet by now, you might be water-repellent.

As I got home only the back of my underwear was still dry. Probably the spot I was sitting on. Luckily I have the best wife there is: She handed me a towel as soon I entered the door at home.

Now how to enjoy it:

Don’t regret biking home half an hour later than planned.
Don’t stop under a bus stop, you might stay there all night.
Let it be summer, or at least above 15°C.
See it as an adventure.
Switch on the lights. You really don’t want some car rear-ending you.
Don’t stop. You get cold standing still.
Feel everything getting heavier. It’s a funny feeling if you think about it.
Enjoy the squeaking sound wet shoes make.

Today I managed well. I followed all the points above and I really enjoyed it. I might not be wearing the same shoes to work tomorrow though.

On a totally different note: My daughter does not really walk yet, she has done a few steps on her own, but she does want us to hold her hands while walking to not fall over. Sometimes that even doesn’t help. As soon as that changes I’ll let you know.

My thoughts and random rambling

A simple blog about my life.

Tag Archives: Happiness