glad we had that pre-meeting

Since C. has now moved in with us and we are three in the house, we decided it would be a good idea to put regular household meetings onto the calendar, so we could discuss things that matter with respect to topics like finances, house cleaning, events we want to attend, etc., and we decided on Friday evenings as the default for that, accepting the fact that sometimes there would be something else on that evening and we would need to adjust.

However, on Wednesday evening, just after dinner (which was after accomplishing four batches of concrete for the earth cellar walls, yay!), we decided we were already inspired to ( have a pre-meeting financial discussion )

That meeting took a few hours, but it was good to have, because we then pedaled into town on Thursday to have the bank do a new three-person joint account for buying groceries etc. The guy at the bank had problems understanding why we would want such a thing, when we can just swish cash between us. We explained that it makes accounting much simpler to do it this way, and didn't mention just how close the relationship between the three of us is (indeed, he looked like his brain would break if we had).

Normally we will be having our meetings on Friday evening, but since we are on vacation this week, and we thought the first meeting would take longer than usual, we opted to start in the early afternoon. Good thing we did. The meeting ran for nine hours, thirty minutes (including fika breaks). But now we are all on the same page as to:

*What the cleaning rotation will be (three main stations: A. bathrooms B. upstairs dusting/vacuuming C. downstairs dusting/vacuuming, with each of us to be responsible for one of them each week, and the next the following week), exactly what is expected to be done for each, and what daily cleaning tasks are expected. We are all fussy about cleanliness, but we each have different "this is really important" things, and we all agreed that it is best to make certain that all of them are taken care of.

*What our social calendar will look like this autumn. We are making an effort to make certain that we set aside some time each week for the three of us to do things together, and that there is time for each pair of us to do stuff just two at a time, and that each of us gets enough alone time each week, while still managing to get to the regular activities that we want to attend (choir, nyckleharpa, Frostheim, dance, etc.)

*What home improvement projects are urgent, which are moderately important, and which ones can take longer time.

Each of these took much longer to discus and find appropriate compromises for when needed than it does to type it up now, so I managed to get lots of progress on the sewing of my jester costume, and the day was well spent. But it is now well past bedtime, so I had best close this and do my yoga.

Oh--before I forget, I had an email from my step-sister who reports that mom is doing better and already getting mobility back in her arm etc., and in good spirits and joking, but will be spending some time staying at a hospital for further rehab etc. Thanks for the good wishes.

Now why didn't I learn that years ago?

When I moved to Sweden/in with lord_kjar he was living in an apartment, and like all apartments in this town there was a trash building at the complex with containers to sort our trash into various forms of recycling, compost, and what they call "burnable". When we bought the house, almost four years ago, it came with a city provided can for our burnable trash and another for compost, both of which the city empties regularly for us, but we are responsible for hauling away our own recycling. My understanding at the time was that this was because our house was just outside the city limits, and lord_kjar showed me a recycling collection spot at the next village further out from town where we could take the recycling.

At the time I assumed that since the city didn't take away recycling for the houses in the countryside that the collection stations were located in the countryside, and I thought no further on the topic.

We soon fell into a routine of being careful to wash our recycling before taking it to the shed, where it was sorted into different boxes by type, and we would put off hauling it off to the collection station till we had accumulated more than one box of each type and the shelves in that shed were truly full, since that collection spot was located a bit out of the way of anywhere we normally go.

Then, this year, I found out that there is another recycling station across the street from the university, near the little grocery store, and I started taking away the recycling a bit more often, when we had only one or two full boxes of a given type.

However, this new information didn't cause me to reevaluate my assumption that such stations are for countryside communities and never conveniently located . Noticing another such station in the village of Alvik, 20 minutes drive from here, right next to the site we use for Norrskensfest did nothing to change this assumption.

Yesterday C. suggested that today we should combine errands and take away not only the recycling, but also the "pant" (cans and bottles for which one gets a token amount of cash back when they are returned), the boxes of stuff to donate to the second hand store, and also do the grocery shopping on the same trip. I agreed because all tasks were needful, but, but it also sounded bothersome, since the recycling collection point is located the opposite direction from everything else. This surprised them, and she explained that she was thinking of using the station right next to the major grocery store. The one I have never noticed in more than five and a half years in this country, and never looked for as my base assumption was that it didn't exist. I don't quite feel stupid, but it does underscore the part about how we see what we are looking for.


In other news, today's email said:

"When I walked in this morning, she was so proud to show me that compared to yesterday, when she could barely lift the fingers on her right arm, now she could lift her full arm all the way up to her head! Absolutely amazing recovery for someone with a stroke. She is doing so well that they decided to go ahead and transfer her from Issaquah back to Seattle to a location that specializes in rehab.

They estimate that she will be in there for 7-10 days for rehab (originally they thought 2 weeks, but that was yesterday when she could barely use her hand)"

I am delighted to hear that, and am hoping that mom's entire recovery from this stroke goes well.