I will soon (read: this week end) write a long post about our experiment to be living in a house on the country side, but one thing I can tell now is how the house was warmed up. With fireplace and wood.

You may think that it was not a big challenge with that for a summer, but the ones that think that did not spend these months in Sweden. We fired the place almost every day. I had to learn how to make a fire without smoking the whole room. I also had to learn how to put the wood right in the fire place in order to make it burn right how it has to: quick at the beginning and slower when the fire is alive, to make the wood last.

The smell of the wood reminded me a lits of memories from when I was a kid, visiting my grand parents, actually both from my mother’s and my father’s sides. I could see places I was 30 years ago and had very special images in the head, mostly because I had this smell around. This is pretty fantastic how you can travel in your memory only with a smell. I saw myself again like a littel girl, scared in a bed alone in the bed room for the kids, with scary shadows on the walls. The knitting machine that was under the bed transformed itself in a terrible monster, with big arms and unpredictable mouvements. I used to lie so perfectly under the sheets, just to feel safe. I could hear the voices from the adults, spending the evening in the kitcehn, right under the room I had to spend the night, with the TV making some hasardous melodies. I don’t remember if I asked the adults to stay with me sometimes, but I remember the hours I was waiting for them to go to bed as well. And someone, adults were magical: they could dompt the monster and hold the room warm.

I also remembered how cold it was when I woke up as a kid in this room in the morning. This feeling came back pretty distinctly in this house as well: oh my, it takes tons of courage to get out of the bed when you know that you will freeze your toes, body and ass. Positive point: the morning routines are shortened to the necessary ones!