Soledad's Journal

Which can be because of serious sleep deprivation. My nights are seldom longer than 6 hours, and in the last three days I didn't manage to take my usual afternoon nap. I'll try to do better from now on!

That said, it was a relatively quiet day. In the morning, even before Mum would get up, I quickly iced my cinnamon-and-nougat cookies and put them out on the balcony, so that the icing could harden out. By the time we had gone through our morning routine, the cookies were ready to be boxed. Yay! Two sorts done, four to six more to go. But I won't bake again until next week - or, at the earliest time, till Sunday.

After breakfast I had to clean out the lowest shelf of the pantry cupboard (literally, as it serves as a sorry excuse for an actual pantry in the kitchen), to sort my packages of flour by their 'best before' date. The same with cans of pineapple, mango, pureed tomatoes, green peas and sweet corn. Now I have a general idea what we have in reserve and what has to be used up first.

Writing-wise it was a good day, too. I've dug out my Enterprise DVDs and re-watched "Rogue Planet", thus getting the necessary details for the description I needed to write. My total is almost two full pages, which is fantastic progress, after the dry spell of recent days.

No actual crafting was done today, but I finally managed to take a halfway decent picture of my little felt box (after three failed attempts). You know, the one that started as a failed pincushion and got repurposed. It still isn't entirely finished (I need to fix the front loop), but I think it looks nice enough.



For lunch I did some express cooking: Tütensuppe (10 minutes), fried fish fingers (another 10 minutes) parsley potatoes (about 12 minutes, since the potatoes were boiling while I did the rest of the dishes). I sliced some cucumbers in lieu of a salad, and that was basically it. But Mum liked it, and I didn't have to waste half my day in the kitchen.

After lunch we went for a walk with Mum, and after that I talked to some friends on the phone (3 out of 5 actually answered the phone, which counts as a good percentage). So yeah, it was a good day. I'm just falling asleep on my feet every ten minutes. Every five minutes if I sit down. *g*

Today we had 14°C, so I decided that the time has come to take Mum out of the house. I bought her some leggings, so with those and a light jacket we dared the street in front of the house. We've made half the trip to the corner café; considering that she wasn't out for over two months, it was impressive progress. Our goal is to make it to the café again - even though they have raised the prices to unreasonable heights. *g*

Not much else happened. I've put the covering on the ring book meant for the recipe collection, wrote nearly two pages (yay!), made a spanakopita-for-dummies for dinner and tried to find the candle-decorating kit I had bought at least a decade ago at the "Flying Tiger" shop. I failed. So I'll have to think of a different method to decorate those Easter candles. They are too tiny to use wax plates, so I might turn to stickers instead. I'm not happy. I so wanted to give that kit a try!

In the afternoon I spent an hour and some to re-read an old Merlin fic of mine and found that I still liked it. Alas, few other people shared my opinion. But again, I usually write stuff because I rarely find stories I'd personally like, so I shouldn't be surprised, right?

Also, I finally managed to reach my friend Evie via phone, which was nice. Social life is crumbling away at an alarming speed.

Still exhausting, but at least more fun. It did include some me-time, after all.

So, we had laundry day and Mum insisted on ironing the starched doilies and doing the washing-up two or three times (she can't resist when she sees as much as a coffee cup in the kitchen sink), but it wasn't all that bad. I managed to finish one lavender sachet and stitched on the felt appliqué on another one. This is a project with a December deadline, so I can take my time.

I also managed to do some writing that I've been pushing farther and farther in front of me for weeks. It's a necessary but somewhat boring part, where I try to deliver a massive infodump in a manner that wouldn't cause any potential readers to fall asleep. Still not sure I've manage it, but at least I have a draft now.

Then I baked a... well, a traybake perhaps, using ready-made puff pastry, custard powder and some canned peaches that needed to be eaten before reaching their BBF date. Sadly, I managed to bake the pastry too dark and to nearly burn the custard, but the outcome was still yummy, so I declare that a success. *g*

In the meantime Louise Sr. (the washing machine) has rune her cycle, so I had to hang up the washing. Then we watched two consecutive episodes of "Salvage Hunters - The Restorers", after which I fell asleep for an hour. Clearly, that was badly needed.

I then switched my desktop PC on to type up some more of Chapter 2 of EMV III, but my friend Evie called right after I had begun, so I didn't get the whole thing done, despite not being much left. But I don't mind; talking to a friend is always lovely. The transcribing can be finished tomorrow.

... for a while anyway. So, behold Lola:



Mum voted for the red flower eyes, and she was right: they look good. In exchange, the back of poor Lola is a bit... well, wavy, no idea why, but I think she's cute nonetheless.

Today was a lazy day. Aside from Mum's weekly shower (which got postponed because the cleaning frenzy on Friday), I only did a bit of writing and the finishing touches on Lola. Took two naps of considerable length, talked to my friend Evie on the phone - and nothing much beyond that, honestly. Tomorrow will be busy again, so it felt good to be a bit lazy.

My very first, 16+-year-old mobile phone died on me today. I went to Telekom to have my account modified, and after the nice young man put in the new Sim card, the phone couldn't be switched on again. It's most likely the on/off button that is broken (I couldn't really use it for at least half a year, so the phone had been on continually), and while it's just such a small part, no-one has the ersatz parts or knows how to mend it anymore. Granted, the battery had been weakening for some time, too, but... well, it can't be helped. I'm really sad, though. That phone had gone through so much with me, and I really loved it.

So, right now the Sim card resides in Mum's old phone (inherited from H. about four years ago), until I can get myself a newer model. Also a button-operated one, mind you, I prefer those for simple phone calls. Not to mention that if Mum got to the hospital again (which I hope to avoid in the future, but one can never know) she won't be able to deal with my way-too-smart phone, so yeah. Fortunately, my friend Elise, whom I asked where to find such an old-fashioned phone, told me that she had bought one for her father who didn't like it and never used it. So, she'll bring me the phone next week, we'll try it out, and if it works for me, I'll buy it off her. It would spare me the necessity of running all over town like a headless chicken and trying to find one.

The phone drama cost me half the day. Fortunately, we had cooked in advance yesterday, so no slave labour was necessary. I started on the third elephant instead, mostly to calm down a bit (elwenlj would agree that hand-sewing is very good for that) and even finished it to about 80 per cent. She's very... floral, and I think I'll call her Ellie (very original, I know). I've got more of the same fabric (Granny's old gown) to make a similar one. Then I'll probably declare the elephant herd complete.

I also talked to my friend Evie in the evening. That was very soothing for my nerves, too. Friends are a gift one can't value enough.

So, I went to my bank today in the hope that the lady clerk will have an idea how to deal with the "paying for LJ" problem. Well, she had not. The only credit cards our banks deal with are Visa and Mastercard, and those don't work with LJ, unless they have been issued by Russian banks, which my card has not. She was also not familiar with the YooMoney payment service, and the computers in the bank underlie serious restrictions, due to data protecting (with which I whole-heartedly agree), so we couldn't check out the link LJ Support had sent me.

So, just for the record: has anyone managed to renew their paid account? And if yes, how did you do it? I still have a month to figure out a way, but I have no idea what to do. :( Help, please?

In other news, the two rag dolls have gone to their new home. My friend and ex-colleague was over the moon, she loved them so much, and didn't mind that they are (more than a bit) oddly shaped. So, that's one tiny piece of success for the day. One has to count one's blessings.

I've also made Mum's birthday cake: a chestnut one, with chocolate icing and decorated with mini marshmallows. We haven't cut it yet, as the big day is tomorrow, but she approved of it.

More social life was had as I talked on the phone to two more former colleagues; all in all, it was a good day.

... the doll disaster was marked by a defiant attempt to prove myself that I can still sew. In this spirit I cut out the necessary parts for a toy elephant - a fairly simple pattern that I hope I'll be able to finish in a couple of days. *fingers crossed*

I also baked Mum's favourite savoury scones that nearly ended in a disaster, too, as I only realized in the last moment that I forgot the butter (well, margarine). Fortunately, I could still add it in time, and the yummy, cheesy things turned out every bit as well as always.

Other than that, I was a bit out of sorts all day. We had laundry day and watched some telly, but I felt so tired all the time I had to lie down three frigging times! Frayed nerves, most likely. And I had such ambitious plans for today, regarding of decluttering and transcribing and the likes... nothing of it happened. :(

At least I got a phone call from a former colleague of mine (now retired like myself), who noticed that I haven't been to choir practice twice in a row and called to see if I was okay. That was really nice of her. Sometimes I get the feeling that if I didn't call people I wouldn't get to speak to any living thing for weeks. Phone calls like this prove me wrong from time to time, and that does my poor soul good.

Okay, stopping the self-pitying feast now because it's pathetic.

... and the lack of it can ruin your day. I had errands to run in the morning, and they were of a nature that I had to start them around noon. Considering the fact that Mum usually gets up after 9am and doing her morning routine can take as long as 40-50 minutes, not much of the morning was left. Definitely not enough to start anything of importance. Especially as we usually have a fairly late brunch because of my intermittent fasting routine.

I left shortly after noon and got home around half past three in the afternoon. We then had lunch - canned pumpkin cream soup and Flammkuchen that I had bought on my way home, so at least I didn't have to cook - watched some telly, took our afternoon nap (fairly late that one, too), Mum had phone calls from her friends, and with that the day was basically over.

Lolek the rag doll was a great success with my (ex-)colleagues and the kids at Erna's crafting workshop (I briefly visited her at school to help me learn more about my way too smart phone). I think I'll work tomorrow on the girl doll before I'd give his cap a try. Some of the girl doll's parts are still half-finished and don't require much brainpower to complete, so that will be both relaxing and productive.

Starting with the chiropodist visit, then the big scare with Mum, and now our latest cleaning lady has performed the disappearing act on us, too. I hope that nothing bad happened to her, that would be horrible for her two little girls. I've tried repeatedly to reach her on the phone but so far no success.

So I had to do all the cleaning by myself on a single day. Usually, I do this in several smaller parts when I know I wouldn't have any help, but I talked to the cleaning lady two days ago and she assured me that she would come. So I prepared the flat for a two-men (or rather two-women) act and had to do everything on the same day, which sucks.

Our janitor was here to take a look at the water tap in the bathroom and the water tank in the look both of which are showing signs of breaking down. He promised to buy the ersatz parts tomorrow and fix them. *fingers crossed*

No cooking, crafting or writing was done today. I talked to H., my friend Evie and another (ex-)colleague on the phone; the latter has managed to break a leg (again) and needed surgery to fix the bone, the poor thing. She had barely got rid of the screws in her other leg bone and now this. We're definitely getting older.

Mum continues getting better. She keeps complaining that she feels weak like a kitten, but she sneaked out into the kitchen to do the washing-up and did a great deal of packing in the living room, both before and after the big cleaning, so I'm cautiously optimistic. She also has her appetite back, which is always a good sign.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY,
dear artemis10002000!!!

I hope you had a lovely day, with good food, nice birthday gifts and peace all around. Here, have some virtual calories (they are inside the flowers):



The good news over here are that I've actually managed to make the new customer gateway work - for the time being anyway. Let's hope this wasn't the only time. *fingers crossed* At least I could download and print out the official info about the (moderate) rise of my old age pension.

Not much else happened today. I'm utterly exhausted, but that's probably coming from the frayed nerves. All this struggle with both the virtual stuff and the rag doll was simply too much. My nerves were never particularly resistant, and the older I get the easier do I lose them. *sigh*