I find myself yet again spending Monday trying to recover from another busy weekend, instead of taking on the new week well rested. Why is it always like that? I’ve experienced a constant lack of sleep for the last few weeks, and this weekend didn’t make it any better.
I had to spend Friday night in the burb as I was headed to the forest for scouts Saturday. All’s well and good so far. I slept in my parents bed with my mom, and my niece between us. It was sweet and cute until midnight when she threw up on us and the bed. Not my favourite of wake-up calls. Ugh. So, new sheets and a cleaned kid later, we went back to bed. Of course, 2-yearolds don’t sleep that long at any rate, so it was still an early morning. Yawn.
Come Saturday I donned durable clothes and headed to the scout cabin out in the forest. My task was to have the fika ready for the kids’ arrival. The 17 kids’ arrival. So I started a fire, made hot coco, got glögg ready on the wood burning stove, made 40 sandwiches, and just as I’d lit all the candles and put the Christmas music on, a lady, a stranger to me, stormed in, stared at me furiously and stated loudly “We’ve booked!”. Uhm, yeah, so had we. And I was there first – so HA! She looked like an angry, and larger, version of Kristen Johnston, so I wasn’t about to start a fight with her, but the fact that my kids were a mere 10 mins away at this stage and hers hadn’t arrived, I somehow “won”.
Dinner Saturday night. Next year we'll remember to bring table cloths.
Once my nerves were back in place I was happy to have the kids arrive, and finally have some company. They all helped prepare the Christmas feast, food wise, and we had a good meal where the highlight, as usual, was the competition of who could drink the most julmust. That competition goes for the full 24 hrs we’re away. The winner this year was the same as last, but he upped his personal record and finished 10 bottles of it: a total of 3,3 litres. Impressive!
After dinner I did dishes while the kids played outside and danced around the “Christmas tree” (a birch trunk this year), and then tomten arrived! Everyone had brought a gift each and they were exchanged. At 11 pm all the dishes were done, the kitchen was reasonably tidy, and I was knackered, so I went to sleep on the kitchen floor. Sounds a bit like Cinderella actually! But I doubt she used earplugs and blinders 
Come 7 am I was up to make rice pudding, which is the tradtional Christmas breakfast in Sweden. It’s served with cinnamon and sugar, and if you get an almond in your portion you have to come up with a rhyme – fun!
More dishes (sigh) and then we cleaned the whole cabin before practicing Lucia songs (you can see the result from this evening in the new header!) and having fika before heading out. It was a great 24 hrs (20 spent in the kitchen for me), but very intense. It sucks that I’m always the one to nag at the kids when they don’t clean up after themselves, they don’t do their dishes properly etc., but the way I see it is that someone has to. Right? How else will they learn?
Once I got home I hit the shower, had some tea and sat down in front of the telly to watch winter sports. I was asleep in an instant! But then mom and dad got home, we had fika (again) and they gave me a ride to the city. Where a friend came over for adventsfika (for crying out loud!), and it became another late night. Yawn!
And here I am – Monday night, 10:15 pm, not yet all packed for Brussels though the flight is at 6:50 am… That I never learn. Good night!
Now it still feels swollen and impossible to bend properly. Bummer.
It was my second shot, and I’m hoping I don’t have the same reaction as I did to the first one, i.e. a left arm that didn’t function properly for three days… Sigh.
