What should one do with an extra week off at the tail-end of the holidays? Write a mile-long to-do list, of course. If you’re me, which I’m guessing you are glad you are not, after hearing that. To be clear, my to-do list has things like “Watch Downton Abbey’s Christmas episode” on it, as well as “iron clothes” so it’s both things I want to do and things I need to do.
I’ve already crossed off 7 things and started two others. We denuded the trees of decorations yesterday and Anders chopped all the limbs off. Both trees were dry as tinder…if you ran your hand along a branch, all the pointy, rock-hard needles came zinging off like confetti. They’ll be bagged and out tonight or tomorrow, but the packing of the ornaments usually takes me several days because it’s not nearly as much fun to put them away as it is to take them out before Christmas.
Martin and I went to the bank today so he could get set up with all the things he needs to be an adult (at least at the bank). A real debit card, mobile BankID, and Swish. Now he just needs to get a job and start putting his own money in his account, haha! How long do you give kids allowance? Until they get a job? Until they move out? Until they turn 18? Heh.
Tonight was WW, my first meeting in two weeks and I was a bit worried about my results, since a week in Germany is fraught with pretzels and sausages and spaetzle. I did make good choices during our week away most of the time, however, and we DID go walking, nearly every day (one day for 5 hours!) and I only went up 0.3 kilos which will be a cinch to drop, so I’m quite pleased.
After reading the headlines online a bit ago, I realized why we had to show our passports when we came over the bridge to Sweden on our way home Saturday. The country is now checking identification at the borders to slow down the influx of refugees. Sweden and Germany have granted asylum to the most people to date. One of my colleagues is working quite a lot with the relocation efforts in Malmö and Simone is teaching German to refugee families in a nearby village.
I’ve downloaded the PDF to start on formatting my blog book for 2015 and I have plans to work on a cookbook later…which is kind of amusing to me since I don’t actually cook all that much. I just think it will be fun to put together all our favorite recipes in one place. I want to be more creative this year than I’ve taken time to be in the past few…joining choir is one step, and I have several ideas percolating.
Onward into 2016!