Ångerrätt and bad karma

I thought I had found the ultimate little diaper bag to go with our new double stroller: a Ju-Ju-Be BeTween. The bag seemed to be big enough to hold everything needed for a quick trip with two children without being too bulky and it even matched the somewhat odd colours of our ABC Zoom, so I ordered it online at "Lilla Max och jag". It was not until I actually held the bag in my hands that I realized that the pictures and videos on Ju-Ju-Be's hompage had maybe been somewhat flattering as the bag turned out to be a lot smaller in reality than what I had anticipated. It was simply way to small for my purposes so I immediately contacted the lady running "Lilla Max och jag" about a return. In reply I got an email saying that she did not really want to take back the bag, considering it had been on sale and that she had already paid for the delivery to me (p&p was included for purchases exceeding 300 SEK). Wasn't I maybe interested in exchanging it against the next bigger bag in that line? I wasn't. The BeAll is not just bigger, it also has a completely different design and I really don't like it. So I told her I was sorry, but that that bag wasn't for me and that I really just wanted to return the BeTween and get my money back. That was yesterday.

Today I had received another email from her with a new suggestion: If I didn't want the bag, why didn't I just sell it on Ebay? People there would often bid more than what the bag costs in the stores. I wrote back, again, and, with as much politeness as I could muster, let her know that this was starting to feel somewhat unfunny. According to Swedish law I have a whole 14 days of "ångerrätt" (meaning a right to "regret" my purchase and return the goods) when purchasing items online. If this right should be affected by the item being on sale or her paying for the delivery, shouldn't that be pointed out somewhere? But it neither says anything on their homepage nor in any of the mails I got. Hell, I did not even know the bag was on sale until she said it - on their homepage it just says "Nyhet!" (meaning "New!"). Last time I checked, "nyhet" and "rea" (meaning "sale") were not the same word. And either way: it doesn't matter. I just want to return that bag and unless one of you can enlighten me otherwise I also assume that I am BY LAW entitled to do that.

The real question though is why I keep attracting problems like this. Why do I constantly need to argue and discuss with people to get my right? Is it all about bad karma? I must have sinned BIG TIME in a previous life: defiling graves, stealing candy from orphans and snorting cocaine off a hooker's body, or something along those lines. And now it's coming back to bite me in the ass.

ABC Zoom

This afternoon we went out to buy groceries and returned with a double stroller, an ABC Zoom. I had seen it on the internet before and really liked it, but for my husband it wasn't love at first sight.
As opposed to about 95% of the other double strollers on the market the children don't sit beside each other in the ABC Zoom, but opposite of each other. You can also have them sitting back to back or facing in the same direction. It is extremely flexible - you can switch and turn around the seat units and the carry cot as you please. At the same time it is, of course, longer than your standard stroller, but actually not by that much. It LOOKS very long with the seats on it, but the frame itself isn't much longer than that of the Gesslein stroller we are using at the moment. It's something one will get used. I'd definitely rather have a long stroller than one of those monster strollers that should be sold with a "Caution! Wide load!" sign. The only alternative would have been a Phil & Teds stroller, but neither my husband nor I liked any of the models we tried.

Now all we need is the adapter for our Maxi Cosi Cabriofix car seat (very handy that it can be used with the stroller) and, oh right, the baby.

Roxie/Roxy

I am curious to find out what people associate with that name.

Do you think Roxie/Roxy is...
a) a stripper
b) a dog
c) a theater/club
d) all of the above
e) something else (please explain!)

So far it's one vote each for a) and b), but maybe there is others out there who have more suggestions.

Boy or girl

I have been thinking about this and not knowing if the baby is a boy or a girl has both advantages and disadvantages.

Disdvantages:
- You are never able to speak about the baby in a normal way, but always have to keep things open by saying "he or she". That gets a little annoying in the long run. My attempt to simplify the situation by referring to the baby as "klumpen" (the lump) and "it" was NOT appreciated by my husband, who felt that it was inappropriate to call a child that (as if the baby can hear it, please!).
- You have an extra hard time choosing a name. Finding a boy's name was difficult enough the first time (there was only one we could agree on at all). Now we have to come up with another one AND a girl's name as well, just to be prepared. Trust me, you do not want to start discussing names in the delivery room. It is a time-consuming, unnerving process and it does not help to know beforehand that half of the work is totally in vain.

Advantages:
- You provide a certain entertainment for the people around you who want to guess the gender of the baby. Like Muddiz's husband who, from a fuzzy ultrasound picture showing mostly the baby's head, deducted that we were definitely expecting a boy. (He was however not interested in betting on it. Coward!)
- You might be more motivated during the actual birth. With Pontus I knew what I was getting. I would not have needed to squeeze him out to know that he was a boy. It was like opening a present, but basically knowing what was inside. However, if you don't know if it's a boy or a girl there's only one way to find out: you gotta push and you gotta push hard. And then at the end you get the surprise. Like opening a present without knowing what's in it, to use that metaphor again. It sounds more enticing, doesn't it?

Happy New Year!

May all your wishes come true! Mine already did - Pontus did not wake up from the fireworks. (Have I mentioned just how much I HATE fireworks?)

Ctrl lock

If you know how to use a keyboard (as you are reading this I assume you do), you might have used the "Caps Lock" function at some point and maybe even the "Num Lock" function. But I give you the previously unheard of CONTROL LOCK function.

How does it work? Hm, let's say you are writing a posting. A very long posting. A very long posting that has not been saved for a while. You are doing your final proof-reading and want to add a single letter. You click on the space in the text where you want to enter it. The whole text gets marked. A new Firefox tab is opened. You try again, the result is the same. You panic. Less than one minute later you have more than 20 new empty tabs when suddenly the page you were working in reloads and goes blank. Everything you wrote is gone - you start to sweat. You click the "back" button. A new empty tab opens. Every time you try. You start to use foul language and close down the browser, then start it again. Only to realize that anything you do opens a new, empty tab. You go through the settings, one, two, fourteen times. You make some changes. More new, empty tabs are opened. Your language gets more explicit by the minute. More changes. More tabs. Then another browser restart. Certainly Google has the answer. But whatever you type: tabs. And pop-ups. The search bar appears, then the bookmarks are suddenly shown on the left-hand side. Your entire internet logs pop up. A thought starts to form in your head. Don't you usually have to press the Control key together with another key to access these elements? You did press some letter keys, but the Control key is not pressed in. You did not press it for sure. Is there such a thing as "Ctrl Lock"? You slowly approach the Control key with your finger and press down, expecting yet another new, empty tab. Instead everything works again like before. Except for all the settings you changed of course.

Both my husband and I have what I consider to be very decent computer skills. Neither of us has ever heard of or experienced anything like this before. I have discovered a new, if completely worthless function. If I had discovered a new, yet completely worthless animal I could at least name it after me...

A Christmas story

It was the time between Christmas and New Year. The whole family was gathered in the kitchen, Pontus contently playing on the floor while my husband I stood and talked quietly, lovingly looking into each others eyes the whole time. Soft music, delighted laughter and the smell of the delicious food in the oven filled the room. Suddenly we became aware of a movement outside the house. My husband, wearing a reindeer sweater I handknitted for him, carefully approached the window and looked out. There, sitting in the snow, were two people, huddled together to protect themselves against the icy cold, but still shivering. Their big, empty eyes looked at us from faces that were clearly marked by the hunger they were suffering. One of them was so lanky it seemed that he had gone without a proper meal for a very long time. My husband looked at me and we both knew in our hearts that we had to help those poor souls. My husband opened the door. The warm shine of light from the kitchen lamp touched their faces and they turned away, almost as if they were embarassed to be seen like this. My husband walked over and gently helped them up. It was only now that we saw that they also had a baby with them, a little boy with golden curls who looked just as malnourished as his father. We quickly led them into the house and sat them down at the table. My husband took the food from the oven and served them each a generous portion. They ate hungrily and in silence, their eyes gleaming with joy over the feast. We also gave them a sweet treat, something to drink and allowed them to rest on our couch, while Pontus played with their son. The little guy carefully touched all the toys, as if he had never seen anything like this in his life. After a while our guests insisted on moving on, thanking us over and over again for our generosity and hospitality. They carefully wrapped the child in blankets and disappeared into the night as we stood there at the door, feeling that our hearts had been touched in a very special way.
The end.

(That is how the story would be told if we were living in fairytale land, but the truth was of course a little more like this: We were making dinner while Pontus was running around and screaming because he was unhappy. He had been unhappy and very vocal about it all day, so we were counting down the minutes until bedtime. My husband told Muddiz's husband on MSN that we were about to eat and he mentioned that they were hungry as well, but had not cooked anything yet. We had enough food so we asked if they wanted to come over, which they did. We had made noodle gratin with spicy sausages and right away Muddiz's husband informed us that he never eats the noodles in the top layer of the gratin, because they are hard (he is a little older than the rest of us, you know, and he was taken care of by a childminder instead of going to Kindergarten). Pontus was not happy with the food either, so he screamed instead. Everyone else enjoyed the meal, but of course the obligatory 3 noodles and 1 slice of sausage were left in the dish (Swedes NEVER take the last bit of food, don't ask me why). We rounded off the meal with some leftover Christmas cookies and proceeded into the living room, where Muddiz and her husband collapsed on the couch. My husband immediately exploited their immobility and presented his latest technical gadget, while Pontus and Milton completely tore the room apart. At one point Milton tried to climb into one of our highchairs from below (through the opening for the leg, which is TINY) and got stuck halfways. While I looked on, equally amazed and fascinated, his parents seemed somewhat indifferent, like they had seen it before and then some. Or maybe they were just captivated by my husband's demonstration, because Muddiz's husband started to talk about also needing to buy that very device. The children were screaming, my husband was selling and I just "was". After a while the Muddiz clan got up, thanked us for dinner and left. We put Pontus to bed and with that another day was over.)

What would Caroline Ingalls do?

There it is: my approach to parenting in a nutshell (and with a question mark).

When Pontus is cranky, things aren't going well and I don't get anything done I do not check my parenting handbook. I simply close my eyes and ask myself "What would Caroline Ingalls do?". She did, after all, live out in the middle of nowhere (in a little house on the prairie you could say), raised several children, took care of the household, helped out on the field and took on extra work whenever necessary. Compared to that, how can I have trouble starting a machine of laundry and keeping my one child happy at the same time. It really puts things in perspective - you should all try it some time.
Caroline is there for you...

Restless hands

Comparing the first pregnancy and this one I seem to have a recurring problem that I like to call "restless hands syndrome". Well, it is not just my hands that are restless, but rather all of me. It is like a humming, a nervous vibration inside of me that makes it impossible to sleep. I don't know what is causing this feeling, but it really helps to actively do something when I get it, in a "If I can't fix the real problem because I can't identify it, why not use the restlessness it creates to fix something else instead" kind of way. Last night for example I took down all Christmas decorations and completely re-organized the boxes we store them in. My husband understands my problem so he doesn't say anything, but I am sure he would not have minded if Christmas hadn't been over so soon in our house.

Tonight I am keeping my hand busy by writing this posting, but what about tomorrow? I need something to do, something that I can (preferably) continue evening after evening, a simple, repetitive task that will give me peace of mind and maybe even a sense of accomplishment.
In short: I need to crochet mormorsrutor (literally translated: "Grandmother's squares")!



The mormorsrutor in this picture were made by Emma, who can crochet just about anything it seems. Think of her as the MacGyver of crochet. And then think of me as the Star Wars Kid of crochet. I have never worked with crochet in my life. I have no clue how to do it, I am not 100% certain what I need, but several internet tutorials have confidently assured me that every dimwit can learn how to crochet. Sounds like something for me!

I can make as many (or few) mormorsrutor as I want, put everything aside when I need to, and in the end I can use them to make a blanket. Or a blanket for a doll. Or a pot holder. Or a pot holder for a doll. It's all very flexible, you see. Now if I could only understand what they are doing there with the hook and the yarn...

Nathalie Choux

Pontus' room is finally coming together, the only thing that still needs to be improved are the very blank walls. After giving up on my initial plan to paint something myself (my Barbapapa looking like the severely traumatized victim of domestic violence, black eye and all) I surfed around for some nice artwork for children. Unfortunately a lot of what one comes across is so unbelieveably tacky and tasteless that it defies words. But then I found (and fell in love with) the pictures of Nathalie Choux, a French illustrator.



These are the 7 pictures I have ordered so far, but just the other day I saw 4 more that I feel I also just have to have.



I think they are so great - if Pontus ever grows tired of them I might well put them up in my room.