Back in business

I'm back in Stockholm after 12 days in Málaga, and as usual, it's both good and bad to be back. Good because coming home after some time away feels just like, well, coming home. And bad because you're not on vacation anymore and real life with real responsibilities reminds you how much you need a vacation! 😅

Our flight landed around 19:30 last night, and the hour it took to collect our luggage and drive to Simon and Pippa's house to collect Rover felt like an absolute eternity. It was so good to see this smiling face again!

Simon and Pippa were nice enough to invite us to supper, so we didn't have to go through that just back from the airport refrigerator scavenger hunt that is the norm. We got home about 23:00, and I had just about enough time to shower before falling into bed and sleeping for 10 hours.

And then this morning, reality set in with a vengeance! We had no food, of course, so Rover and I set out for the store. Halfway there, I remembered that I had a package to pick up–many supermarkets in Sweden have a post counter, so rather than having your packages delivered to your home, you usually go and pick them–and of course the package was being delivered to the other store within 10 minutes walk of my house, but in the exact opposite direction from that in which I was walking. "No matter," I thought to myself, "I'll just pick it up later." But of course y'all know the one about how to make the universe laugh, right? As soon as we got to the store, a mail truck pulled up and began unloading boxes.

Rover did not like this one bit. I don't know how the bad blood between dogs and post carriers started, but in Rover's mind, he's the only thing that's prevented the post carrier from brutally murdering us these past five years, and he wasn't about to let this person unload those boxes without giving them a piece of his mind. And I wasn't about to leave Rover barking his head off outside the store whilst I dashed in for the essentials, so I admitted defeat, turned on my heel, and started trudging towards the other store (the one that had my package).

It was a cool and clear morning (14°C after 12 days of around 30°C felt wonderful), so I didn't mind the extra bit of walking, and I had a nice surprise at the store when my package turned out to be my refurbished phone. The battery on my six year old iPhone SE was down to about an hour on a charge, so I finally admitted defeat and replaced it with a used iPhone 12 Mini, which arrived whilst we were in Spain. I had gotten a notification on the PostNord app (of course there's an app for that), but had no idea what the package was, so it was a bit like Christmas morning as I opened the box and found a new (to me) phone.

After Rover and I got home, I had my first cup of proper Swedish coffee, and it was amazing. Spain is wonderful in many ways, but it's not really the place to go for good brew coffee, so that first sip of home coffee was about 100 times better than usual.

After coffee and a little breakfast, things went downhill fast. It was time to clean the washing machine, which sounds a bit ironic, since it is a machine that exists solely to clean stuff. But apparently the stuff it cleans off clothes has to go somewhere, and sometimes that somewhere is into the pump filter. Which I guess is better than into the pump itself, hence the filter, but cleaning that filter isn't exactly fun. I had to turn off the power to the machine, turn off the water to the machine, pull the machine out away from the wall so I could get to the filter, drain the drum into a bucket (it was amazing how much water came out of a purportedly empty machine when I took the plug out), then finally clean the filter itself, which was thoroughly disgusting. I guess that's what I get for not having cleaned it since we got the washing machine two years ago; apparently you're supposed to clean it 3-4 times a year. 😬

After cleaning the filter, I vacuumed and mopped behind the machine, because it was gross back there and I couldn't in good conscience push the machine back where it went knowing what would be under it, then I decided that hey, in for a penny, in for a pound, so why not go ahead and clean the bathtub? Ugh.

I think I need a vacation.