Soledad's Journal

As I mentioned in the comments to yesterday's entry, Mum is up and hobbling again. She managed to get to the loo with the help of her walking frame and did a great deal of rearranging the knick-knacks, so that the cleaning lady can work properly tomorrow. We'll still use the console for the night, but during the day she's pretty much back to her usual mobility - well, almost. She's a great deal more cautious now, and I'm still a bit nervous, but we manage.
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Not much else was done. I knitted about another centimetre on the rag doll's scarf, and solved half a crossword puzzle, but didn't have the strength for anything else, after having rearranged the entire flat for tomorrow's cleaning frenzy. I tried to take an extended nap in the afternoon, but was too tired to actually fall asleep for longer than half an hour, so I gave up on it. H. and Mum's friends called to ask how she's doing, which was nice, and I talked to my friend Eenie on the phone.

Tomorrow we'll have an early start as the cleaning lady is supposed to show up at 8am. We'll see (and hope that she does).

I finally got that cardiology control appointment for Mum - and now hold onto your seat! - for 10 June! Of course, we could go to the private practice of the cardiologist, in which case we'd have to pay a ginormous amount of money - about one quarter of her monthly pension! Clearly, official healthcare has gone down the toilet, unless it's an absolute emergency. Well, fortunately Mum's doing well, so we hope this will last until the appointment, but I still find this outrageous. In any case, I'm grateful that the physiotherapist lady helped dumb me to get at least this late appointment online. I'd never have managed it on my own.

Other than that, I did the grocery shopping in the morning, went to the post office with Mum's postal cheques, and that basically ate half the day. I hope to do some more knitting and transcribing later, if I manage to bring up the energy.

... was my main agenda today. I had difficulties falling asleep last night; when you're still awake at 2am and have to get up at 6:30, taking naps during the next day is life saving. So that's what I did today. Two hour-long naps basically saved my life and what's left of my sanity. I can be very uncoordinated when sleep-deprived.

In the rest of the day I've sewn together Little Monkey Boy's trousers (all I still need to make for them are the suspenders), did a tiny bit of writing but gave up after a short while (it wasn't for any of the unfinished stories, just a bit of independent experimenting), cooked lunch, solved crossword puzzles and watched some telly. It was a slow day, but a needed one.

The lunch part, though, was a funny one. Originally, I intended to make cauliflower cream soup (sorry, noadvertising!), but in my zombified state I've mistaken a small bag of frozen chicken breast for a small bag of frozen cauliflower. I kid you not! I only realized my mistake when the poor chicken breast had already been boiling in the soup for, oh, twenty minutes or so! Trying to save the situation, I hurriedly threw some frozen carrots, parsley roots and celery into the soup, threw the whole thing in the blender when everything was cooked through, and added some cooking cream to the mix. Mum liked it, so it wasn't a wasted effort, but I'm still mourning my planned, beautiful cauliflower cream soup. :(

I've decided to take a crafting break before frustration would overwhelm me and do some necessary tasks instead. Starting with the grocery run, which went well enough, I only forgot two things I intended to buy (one of them even stood on my written list and I still managed to forget it). I shoved the shopping cart home, on which short way an old fart started bothering me about doing it, with the old b*tch on his side making disapproving grimaces.

( Rant behind the tag )

After breakfast and some telly I felt completely drained and decided to take a nap - which lasted two hours! Fortunately, we still had tomato soup (this time made from the scratch) and spanakopita from yesterday, so I didn't have to cook. What's even better, we'll still have some of it for tomorrow! I've bought Cesar salad and pork sausages and chitterlings, so that will take care for another two days. And a pot of quark, which means quark dumplings for the third day. Yay! I love it when I don't have to agonize about what to cook in the next couple of days. Cooking in itself is enough!

So, after lunch I continued my decluttering programme and sorted out six entire shelves. Well... five and a half anyway. Half a shopping bag is full of paper, which I'll take down to the selective waste, soon. Among other things I got rid of my very first (unfinished) Star Trek story, written half in Hungarian, half in German. It was a hard thing; Dame Agatha Christie compared such an act with the cat killing her kittens that are incapable of living. But I realized that a) I'll never finish that story, as I've switched to writing fanfic in the original language of the fandom, and b) I can no longer subscribe to the original storyline and idea anyway. Not to mention that I could hardly read it, as it was hand-written in very small and faded letters my eyes probably wouldn't be able to deal with. But it was hard.

So, all in all, it was a productive if not entirely pleasant day. Hope for a better one tomorrow.

... for the time being. (Ex-)colleague Kate promised to drop by and take a look at the state of things, especially those that might block my access to the dratted customer's gateway. It might not be entirely my fault, as the physiotherapist lady apparently has the same problems, and she's way more technically savvy than I am. We'll see.

The crafting is going well enough. I've finished the T-shirt and started putting together the trousers, which required another round of cross-grain seaming, which is tedious and boring, so I'm glad it's done. I'll try to solve the neck problem tomorrow, by adding another piece of felt, so that the neck will be longer and the oversized head look less disproportional. Once that's done, I can attack the feet/boots, which promises to be another complicated task. If I ever make another rag doll (after these two) I'll make a better pattern first.

I did also some cooking today: made an absolutely delicious tomato soup and spanakopita for dummies, meaning that I used ricotta instead of Feta cheese. Not on principle, just because I had a jar of ricotta in the freezer, which I had bought at Aldi for a reduced price, and Feta is insanely expensive, considering that it mostly tastes of salt. So I generously (too generously, alas) salted the otherwise bland ricotta, refined the spinach with some cooking cream, added pine nuts to the filling and rolled the whole thing into ready-made puff pastry. With lots of sesame seed on top, it turned out excellent.

This makes no cooking tomorrow, perhaps not even the day after, so I can continue my decluttering campaign. Considering the number of shelves and drawers that need to be sorted out, I have to work on that rather diligently.

In a feeble attempt to tick off the first point on my to-do list (figuratively speaking), I went to the local government office today because I knew I'd need help with this Digital Citizenship thing. Well, I didn't get it. I took all possibly necessary documents with me, but the whole thing was hamstringed by the fact that I didn't have a screen lock installed on my phone. Now, I don't even know what a screen lock is, not to mention how to install one. The "helpful" lady clerk told me to get help and then come back for the Digital Citizenship app. And this after I've waited for nearly an hour, in an overheated, unaired room, together with a great lot of people, many of whom were coughing and sneezing all the time. I was wearing a mask (together with exactly two other people), but still... Considering how Covid is on the upward swing in our country again, this was not a healthy environment.

After I've left without having gained my goal, I rode the bus further outwards the district to one of the shopping centres that has an international newsagents' and bought my German crossword puzzle booklets. And a large bag of polyester stuffing for my rag dolls. Then I did a bit of grocery shopping as well. Spending money is always helpful for my state of mind.

Fortunately, I remembered that one of my (much younger) (ex-)colleagues is very clever with such things, and also very helpful. So, in my misery I gave her a call, and she promptly offered to help me tomorrow, right before choir practice. That was a great relief, as this thing needs to be done by January 16, and my neighbours (who could help, in theory) are both very busy people; not ones I like to ask for favours.

So, that was my day of epic fail with a faint shimmer of hope. Accordingly, everything else got postponed. The only thing I did for fun was to stuff both doll bodies, so that I'd be able to fit the clothes next.

I've been working on the trousers of the boy doll. They are a pair of striped dungerees, with a large breast pocket situated in the middle, with a sealing ship motif on it. I've finished the front of the trousers and cut out the back part. It's fairly finicky work, with lots of small details, but as I don't have a headline for it I can do it as fast or as slowly as it comes. *g*

Today it was slow work, which took me the most part of the morning; that there were several things on the telly that I wanted to watch didn't help. Also, we had laundry day, Mum had her weekly shower (always a somewhat complicated process) and I had to cook, too. So, writing got short shrift again; perhaps I'll manage to do my obligatory two sentences in the middle of the night like yesterday.

At least cooking was fun. I've upgraded my Käsespätzle with some canned tuna and tomato puree, and the result was surprisingly... Italian, I'd say. Add to the fact that we finally consumed the last of the (fairly horrible) red champagne left over from New Year's Eve, in lieu of red wine (which neither of us likes), and we had a somewhat mediterranean meal. ;))

Social life was reduced to a (lovely) text message from the_wild_iris, who has finally received my Christmas card, so that was nice.

Today was... eventful. It started with rearranging the flat for tomorrow's scheduled cleaning frenzy. It's unbelievable that it has been two weeks since the last one again! Time flies by when you have fun - NOT!

After the furniture moving, etc. I worked a bit on the head of the second rag doll. It didn't turn out exactly how I wanted (most likely the felt was too thick for the double layer), but it's... acceptable. And the doll now even has flower-shaped earrings like a proper girl. Even though her head is still detached. *g*

Fortunately, I still didn't have to cook - long live the leftovers! After lunch, my friend Elise called, which was really nice. I then took a nice, long nap, and after that I started sorting out the second shelf of my bedside table. I've thrown out stuff I had been clinging to for decades, literally, and it was liberating, even though still a bit bitter. But one needs to go on.

When that was gone, I squeezed in a bit of writing time, and now the day is almost over. I'll watch "Salvage Hunters", and then do some more packing for tomorrow. I intend to go to bed a lot earlier than usual as I'll also have to get up at 6am, which is ungodly early for me.

... rather my to-do list for the next couple of months. It's a rather long list, so I'll keep this as a sticky post to remind me of my "duties".

To do in the not too distant future:
- finally getting Mum to the cardiologist for control;
- getting myself an appointment with a dermatologist to see if they can do something about my bumpy face;
- dealing with a tax issue (a fairly minor one but still...);
- selling half my library and a great lot of my DVDs and video tapes;
- getting help with the PC and TV issues;
- decluttering a great many drawers and shelves (have started today);
- trying to get the landline transferred to my name;
- finishing to type up the complete EMV II story;

This is an inclusive list, not an exclusive one. I'll add more things as soon as I can remember them. I'm fairly certain that there was more, I just don't know at the moment what it was.

... despite the fact that Silvester and New Year's Day are still looming on the horizon. Since that means another weekday when the shops are closed, I hopped down into the small grocery shop in the morning to buy a few necessities like bread and mincemeat and some apples. We still have everything else; I've stocked up the fridge before Christmas.

Tomorrow I'm planning some serious kitchen work: making a sausage roll wreath using ready-made puff pastry and Prue Leith's cheese and chive scones for the evening. Prue's recipe asks for homemade butter but I won't bother with that. Ready-made butter and buttermilk will do the trick just as nicely. I refuse to make such basic things myself, especially as they never turn out half as good as the ones I can buy.

We had leftovers today, and nibbled some cookies with coffee and eggnog afterwards. It was very nice and relaxing. The amount cookies has been seriously lessened now, so I could put away four empty cookie boxes, decluttering our environment a bit. In a flat as small as ours it's always a relief.

I did some crafting as well: sew together the body of the second rag doll. Now I have the basics of two bodies and one head. I'll work on them as fast or as slowly as the fancy catches me; it's so nice not to have a deadline for a project! Still, knowing myself I'll press on as much as I can. I'm one of those "let's do this quickly, so that we can do something else afterwards" kind of persons. *g*

Other than these things, I did a bit of writing, solved some crossword puzzles and had a nice, long nap. All around a good day with some small but very satisfying achievements.