WeekÄnd

Cleaned the kitchen - twice. Mopped hallway, kitchen and living room floors (muttering about the mop bucket missing). Did math, read scientific articles and reports, and knitted socks. Bought an almond grinder. It's amazing, really, a grinder made for nothing but almonds. Thank someone for all the people into baking macaroons (I've never even had one, does that make me weird...er?) these days, meaning stores still sell them. It is made in Sweden, no less! Baked awesome cookies - grandma's recipe - piles of frozen butter, almonds and sugar. Awesome piles of goodies, that is. (Butter cream is good for you). Had awesome lunch while listening to parents trying to explain their "how to learn how to read" strategy to their five year old daughter. Her dad proudly proclaimed that if they wrote the word "window" on a piece of paper in both Swedish and English and attached it to a window at home, she could learn Swedish and English at the same time. Holy cow. Gotta applaud their ambitions and excitement, but-eh overkill much? Don't kids these days get a chance to learn how to read in a language they know first, before starting on the foreign ones they haven't been equally exposed to? I was proud beyond belief at age seven when I was among the first few in my class to finish the green "Mini och den röda stenen" and got the red more advanced sequel. Mom left it at that, and I turned out okay in the reading department. Hell, it was all I did for years and years, sorta. But what do I know about preschool and elementary school nowadays? Grades in 4th grade, lack of educated teachers, huge classes, English increasingly taking over the world, parents reading  magazines, books and websites, each with different "experts" saying different things. I have a framed family tree painted by one of my great grandpa's brothers, and on the back is a poem, among other things saying that people turned out okay and had the best of times already before preschool and barnavårdscentralen existed, just like we turned out okay without the current mass hysteria of psychological, diet and behavioral experts. Might be reasonable to conclude that today's kids will also turn out okay, experts or no experts. Common sense will prevail, I hope. But I do worry when mothers exclaim that "I can't understand why my children want to be outside playing in the snow, when they could be in here watching a movie!" (true frigging story!). I only have one thing to say about that: Go outside and play with your kids, build a snowman, pull them around in a pulk or on a sleigh, throw snowballs, teach them not to eat snow and that yellow snow is bad. Happy, laughing kids with rosy cheeks are still considered healthy, no? Oh, and mom - it's good for you too, eliminating the time and cost of a gym membership. I believe the modern term is quality time. Not to mention it creates loads of happy memories that stay with you, at least they did with me. Memories of a time when a meter of snow was the best thing that could happen, and I insisted on wading through it rather than walking on the boring cleared path next to it. And I was insane when it came to climbing up and down and across every single pile of snow bigger than me, something my mother still remembers with fondness and cold toes.