Soledad's Journal

We had guests!

2026-04-06T18:27:00Z

No, really! It has been a very long time since we had any, but today two of my choir mates/ex-colleagues/friends came over and we had a lovely time.

Otherwise it was a lazy day. I took an extra long nap after a late breakfast, we ate leftover soup and some cookies for lunch and I worked a bit on my mini teddy bears and the little Santa hats afterwards.

Health-wise I think I'll have to start looking out for a reliable eye doctor and a dermatologist, soon. My eyes have become very sensitive to the harsh sunlight we are having nowadays. I'll have glasses made that darken gradually with the intensity of light, I think; and some tinted ones for the computer. That I can do without a doctor, too. Unfortunately, both my eye doctor and my dermatologist have retired years ago, and finding ones that are actually good won't be easy. At least I have a very good dentist, whom I'll have to visit soon as well, to check out my teeth. I haven't been there for two years or so; it's high time that I do.

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Net woes and other annoyances

2026-04-06T18:21:11Z

This definitely wasn't my day. I had to cook for two days because we're supposed to have visitors tomorrow - I believe it when I see them - and I don't want to be exhausted when they arrive. I also finished that Easter cake for them, which I wouldn't have made at all otherwise; my filling hasn't exactly turned out the way I wanted it to but it looks reasonably pretty. I'll take a photo tomorrow before it gets cut because afterwards it would be an unholy mess: too hard sponge, too soft filling - a bit not good. At least everything tastes yummy.

Dreamwidth has also developed a glitch. I've tried to import my journal two times within a week - no luck. I hope they'll iron out the glitch, soon. I've started hand-copying my LJ entries, but it's boring, time consuming and annoying.

I was so exhausted from all that cooking and baking that I was practically useless for the rest of the day. The only positive thing was that H. gave us a call. The grandkids were making lots of noise in the background; I think she's dead on her feet by now, too.

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The culprit is found

2026-04-06T18:19:55Z

At least I think so. After my biscuit ended up flat like a disc, I believe the reason why my Easter wreath turned out completely inedible was the flour. This has happened to me before, even though I've been buying the same (cheap) brand for at least a decade, and usually it works like a charm. Either they stored it the wrong way or the wheat had some problems; I have no idea. But this is beyond coincidence, I think.

Anyway, I'm going to fill the flat biscuit with lots of cream filling (consisting quark, whipped cream and pureed strawberries) and cover it in marzipan, so I hope our visitors will be happy enough with it on Monday. *fingers crossed*

I bought today an Easter Hefezopf at our corner café because Easter just can't happen without one in our house. I hope it will be good. Their products usually are. Also, our neighbour, with whom we regularly exchange cookies at Christmas and Easter, brought us two thick slices of her mother-in-law's homemade Hefezopf, and that was probably the best one I've eaten in my entire life. so, Easter was saved. *g*

I also cooked our Easter ham today, the usual with garlic and cumin. I hope it will be good, but we'll only know when we slice it up. That and the grocery shopping (ad biscuit baking) ate the greater part of my day, so I'm suitably dead right now.

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Mainly kitchen duty today

2026-04-06T18:19:08Z

I've dismantled the sorry excuse of bread pudding, basically throwing out the pieces of actual bread - they were so hard they refused to actually soak up the custard - and the result was some baked custard and strawberry puree... perhaps two handfuls saved from the whole large dish. Ah, well.

I then made tomato soup a la Mary Berry: just dumped a can of hacked tomatoes and half a litre of tomato puree into a pot, added some vegetable soup (made of a soup cube) and some cooking cream, seasoned with some basil and a pinch of sugar and added ABC noodles. It was fantastic. Mum, who never liked tomato soup, simply loved it.

The day being what it is we avoided anything meaty and had fish with parsley potatoes and a salad for lunch. Mind you, I never understood why fish doesn't count as meet - fish are animals, too, that you have to kill to eat, so what is the difference? But I've given up trying to understand such things a long time ago. (Mind you, the original reason could have been that fish was basically the only thing poor people in certain countries could eat, so it was either that or starving. As a late friend of mine used to say: "At the beginning there was the poverty. The ideology came later.")

On the crafting front, I worked some more on my teddy bears and Santa hats. Small and slow progress is progress, too.

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Aaaand a bit of crafting again

2026-04-06T18:18:03Z

...because it has been too long.

First, though, I sliced up the misbegotten Easter wreath and discovered that not only hadn't it risen but it was half-raw in the inside. So I put the slices onto a baking sheet and baked them on both sides until they became light brown. That still didn't make them edible, though, especially for Mum with her few and battered teeth, so I layered them with vanilla custard and pureed strawberries and put the whole thing back into the oven. That way we could at least eat some of it - I'll see what can I come up with tomorrow. If nothing helps, I can still throw the whole thing into the rubbish bin, but I so hate waste.

On the crafting front, I've finished decorating my little Santa hats and started sewing them together. I've also sewn on the face "plates" (the lighter-coloured felt upon which the actual features will be stitched) to a few of the teddies themselves. I also decided, in a sudden bout of insanity, that I wanted white teddies as well (polar bears are pretty), so I cut out the panels for two of those. Only two because that was how much white felt I had left from other projects and I didn't want to cut up a completely new sheet. So, I'm well armed for several weeks to come with half-finished stuff. *g*

Oh, and last night - or does it count as this night, since it was after 1am already? - I actually managed to write down some dialogue that has been lurking in the back of my mind for a while. So yeah, it was a creative day all around.

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April's Fool

2026-04-06T18:17:05Z

That is me, obviously. Instead of slowing down, I spent the morning at school, baking Easter wreaths with the kiddies.

This is mine. Looks better as it actually is; for some reason it hasn't risen properly, so I might have to turn it into biscotti later. But at least it is pretty.

I also promised a picture of my home-made Kinder Schokobons. They are here. As you can see, we had eaten quite a few Lindor truffles to produce wrapping material.

After coming home, we ate leftovers with Mum; then off I hopped again, first to the pharmacy to fetch the rest of her medication, then to Lidl because they had ginger ale for a reduced price and we drink that stuff all the time. When I finally got home I was so exhausted I slept over two hours. Then we watched two episodes of "The Repair Shop", and now the day is over.

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Things just won't slow down!

2026-04-06T18:15:49Z

9:31 pm - Things just won't slow down!
And I thought I would be done with Easter preparations by now! How... optimistic of me!

Anyway, I made gift bags of old wrapping paper today, in which to deliver the Kinder Schokobons tomorrow. Today, it was delivery day for the little pom-pom bunnies in their baskets. Also, I had to go to the pharmacy for Mum's medication - naturally, they didn't have everything and needed to order them first. Which means I'll have to go back tomorrow. At least it is a fairly quick process with this particular pharmacy, since they are open 24 hours on every day. Plus, I get allowance on quite a few things due to my customer card. Of course, the district nurse managed to prescribe one bottle of eye drops for Mum again; she keeps doing this, unless Mum specifically asks for three. They've been playing this stupid game for years by now; one would think the woman would have understood the requirements after all this time. Obviously, one would be wrong.

Afterwards I went to choir practice, which was fun this time. It appears we're going to have guests on Easter Monday: our choir leader and Eenie are coming over after lunch - which in Eenie's house takes place after 3pm, they being a half-Spanish family. So, I guess we can count on their visit around half past four at the earliest. But that's okay. We usually take a late lunch, too. Having guests means, however, that I'll have to bake that Easter cake I was planning to skip this year. Ah, well.

Tomorrow I'll go to our school's Bunny Cup day, which is basically some Easter fun that takes place on the last day before Easter holidays, during what would otherwise be the last two lessons. I'll help Erna direct the 7th and 8th term students baking yeast wreaths. So I've packed my own ingredients tonight, so that I can also bake our own Easter wreath in-between, which is practical, as the school kitchen has a much better oven than I have. *g*

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Hooo, boy!

2026-04-06T18:10:05Z

This was another day I could only describe as "sportlich", in the German sense of the word.

In the morning, I did the grocery shopping. It was a tiny bit raining, so I only went to Lidl and back but somehow managed to spend a lot of money nonetheless. ;)

In the early afternoon my friend Elise came to pick up her cookies (and the white kittens and little teddies for her five grandchildren). I love make things for Elise, she is always so genuinely happy when receiving them. She couldn't stay long (grandparent duties as usual), so afterwards we had lunch, and then I made these little cuties:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=0GeiXSSpm8o">

Granted, mine didn't turn out quite so smooth and even, but in exchange I made two and a half time the amount, and I wrapped every single on of them (38 individual pieces) into the Lindor chocolate papers I've been saving since Christmas for exactly this purpose. Which reveals the shameful secret of us eating a lot of these things; namely one piece a day each. In four months I can save a great deal of wrappings. Tomorrow I'll post a picture of them.

This was enjoyable but also utterly exhausting. I slept two hours after I had finished. But when I go to school on Wednesday to help Erna organizing the Easter baking with the 7th and 8th term students, I'll take a small bag of the sweets with me for Elise and Evie. Alas, Erna can't eat them as she is allergic to milk protein, which is unfair. :(

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I was productive today

2026-04-05T18:43:26Z

- I washed my hair.
- I gave Mum her weekly shower.
- I unboxed all the remaining cookies to make room in the fridge for the homemade Schoko-Bons - alas, I didn't get to make them because Mum wanted to cook today, and that means a blocked kitchen for most of the day and an unholy mess afterwards, since she was making Schnitzel, which is a very messy undertaking.
- I worked a bit on my little Santa hats. By my current speed, they'll take forever to be finished, which is actually my own fault: I keep adding more tiny details because I thing they would look cute. They do, but stitching berries on tiny straps of felt is fiddly work. Those berries are small like the head of a steel sewing pin...
- I helped Mum a bit with the cooking, which mostly meant moving heavy objects she can't move herself. The kitchen seems to shrink somehow when we are in it at the same time...
- I watched quite a few idiotic YouTube videos. Blocked a few dozen more channels to prevent temptation. Still not enough, it seems.
- I gave Elise a phone call; she's going to come over tomorrow to fetch her cookies. I hope she can stay a bit this time, even if it means postponing the making of the Schoko-Bons again.

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Slightly crafty today

2026-04-05T18:41:13Z

.. since it was a more or less quiet day. I took down the dried washing, made a simple lunch and worked a bit on my tiny Santa hats. It was finicky work, sewing on 18 white felt stripes, 1cm by 5cm each. I also started decorating them with tiny pine branch motifs. It will take a long time to add the sparkly pom-poms and the sequin stars and to sew the little hats together, but I do have the time. Of course, I still have to sew the teddy bears themselves, but as I already said, I do have the time.

Not much else happened. We watched some TV, I talked to Erna, our art teacher to synchronize things, as I'd promised to help her at school with the Easter baking, and that was basically it. We're planning to go to bed earlier so we can get up in the morning.

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Will this week never end?

2026-04-05T18:39:46Z

We changed the bedding. We did the laundry a day earlier because of it. I cooked lunch and baked some cheesy sticks with the help of ready-made puff pastry. The sticks remained flat like cardboard because the egg I spread over them ran down their sides and hindered the puff pastry to go up. Ah, well, at least they were tasty.

I cut out a the pieces for the little Santa hats for the mini teddy bears. Well, the main panels anyway. Detail work will have to wait. I'm not in the mood.

And that god-damned daylight saving time is due tomorrow night. That means one hour less to sleep. I wish they could do the stupid thing away. I hate, hate HATE it with the passion of a thousand burning suns.

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Brain dead

2026-04-05T18:38:08Z

We survived another visit from our talkative chiropodist lady. Like in the recent two times in a row, she asked to watch her favourite series here. I escaped via doing the grocery shopping. Mum endured. Afterwards she talked to her friend (the one that had visited on Monday), who, it turned out is also watching the same series. So she updated Mum about the basic settings. A good thing that the series runs out next Monday. I wonder what the lady will watch next time...

As always after her series, we were both brain dead for the rest of the day. So brain dead that I fell asleep during "The Repair Shop" repeatedly. So I gave up and slept for roughly two hours. Now I feel that I might be able to function again.

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So, we survived

2026-04-05T18:36:32Z

... the cleaning frenzy, I mean. I've also realized that I'm irrevocably getting older. We did slightly less than we used to do with our last regular cleaning lady, and I was a lot more exhausted than I used to be back then. And the balcony still needs to be cleaned. *sigh*

Accordingly, not much else happened today. I took a really long nap in the afternoon because I was falling asleep in front of the telly every five minutes. I had a phone chat with H, which was nice, but that was basically it. We ate the Champignonfleisch I made yesterday - it was yummy and we have enough left over for tomorrow, so I can lie down and recover after the talkative chiropodist lady is done.

I hope to return to the world of the living on Friday.

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The week of blues continues

2026-04-05T18:34:47Z

Today, I cooked for two days in advance; because I won't be in any shape to do so tomorrow and the day after. Then I started rearranging the flat for tomorrow's cleaning frenzy. Then the physiotherapist lady helped taking down the lace curtains which I put into the plastic tub to soak overnight before we wash them tomorrow. They need to be hung up while still wet, you see.

Then I went to choir practice and delivered the Easter cookies for three people. Miraculously enough, I even managed to do a tiny bit of writing in the morning. But now I'm done in and dreading the next two days.

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Old Ladies' Club

2026-04-05T18:32:43Z

That was what we had today. Mum's oldest friend - also beyond 90 - took a cab to us in the morning. They phone each other daily but haven't met in person for years. The old lady lives in a building without an elevator and Mum is no longer in the shape to climb up two storeys to her. So, they had fun.

While they were discussing "God and the world", as the Germans say, I made the iceberg salad for today's lunch. We had fish and chips, which I bought frozen at Lidl and only had to shove in the oven. Not a real delicacy - I had much better fish and chips in a nearby eatery - but it spared me the necessity of cooking, so I was happy to compromise.

When Mum's friend left, I did a short grocery shopping. Then we had lunch and watched some telly. Well, YouTube, actually. Then I called my friend Elise to discuss ways to get her Easter cookies to her. Currently, she spends most of her day in an outlying village because her father needs to be cared for, and her hubby is mostly useless in such things. Alas, we still haven't found a solution; which is bad for me - I want all those cookie tins out of my fridge to make space for real food!

Drained by so much social life, I slept an hour and a half afterwards. Which means that no crafting or writing got done. But my tired old bones - not to mention my tired old brain - needed the rest.

Note: Since DW hasn't allowed me to import I'm beginning to hand-copy my LJ entries I can always delete the duplicates, should the importer recover.

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Just checking

2025-05-30T17:31:51Z

... since I don't seem to be able to comment at the moment.

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Busy, busy, busy...

2023-03-05T17:28:01Z

I'm afraid I'm not a very good Christian since I regularly violate the Third Commandment, being busier on Sundays than any other day, most likely.

Today I started with putting the laundried stuff away. Continued with going to two different supermarkets. After that I made breakfast, cut up the dried-out bread from last week to make breadcrumbs of it (we don't throw out food as long as it can be used otherwise), then rewrote a lengthy scene for a future chapter of "A Stitch in Time". It took me two hours, I think, but I'm pleased with the outcome.

We ate leftovers for (Grandma is turning in her grave again), then I did some crafting; not because I'd actually feel like it - I would have preferred a lengthy nap - but because the deadline is coming closer ominously and I still have a lot of work to do on those three baby books. At least now all page bases are finished. Next up: the binding (shudders) and embellishments. Many, many embellishments, very little time to make them.

That isn't how I prefer my crafting, but picowrimo is also in session, and I'm trying to keep up with my plan to write something each day, even if it's only a little. But that means that my nonexistent spare time has to be split up between writing and crafts, so it isn't easy.*sigh*

And then there are the household joys, of course - tomorrow is time for the regular cleaning frenzy, and Mum has developed brand new ideas what has to be done before Easter cleaning-wise. :(

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Saturday night (without fever)

2023-03-04T21:15:44Z

Lj is acting up again, so I'm cross-posting today's entry while I still can.

Not an eventful day, which is how I like them. Less events, less frustration, lol! We had laundry day, I've redone the baby book page messed up yesterday, did a bit of writing, Mum cooked Kartoffelgemüse, which we ate with leftover soup and Faschiertes, I played some Solitaire on my geriatric laptop, and the day was basically over.

The redone baby book page looks well enough - save for the fact that I didn't find exactly the same shade of pale yellow for the page bases, so the twin pages didn't turn out exactly identical. They still look good enough, but it annoys me. Ah, well, I'll simply state that they are fraternal twins, not identical ones. What else can I say to save face?

Tomorrow I'll try to make the same twin pages for Baby Book #3. Let's hope I won't mess up the measurements and/or the folding again; that would be beyond annoying. Of course, not having any undisturbed time for such tasks doesn't help. *sigh*

Writing-wise the success is modest. I've managed to write something each day so far; not for any of my never-ending WIPs, though. This stuff is for a story that's still in the planning phase and may never see the light of day. But it's writing, and I'm relieved to be able to do at lest this much.

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WTF, LJ?

2023-03-03T19:08:19Z

LJ seems to be down for me, so I'm continuing my blog here for the time being. I'll then copy&past the entries to LJ when it (hopefully) comes back.

Today was very frustrating; I spent the morning at the bank, without being able to get my things done: their entire system was being "refreshed". During office hours, while clients were waiting. After an hour I got enough and left. Apparently, the system came back just 5 minutes later. Annoying, but there's nothing I can do about it in hindsight.

Morning being ruined, I tried to do a bit of crafting in the afternoon... with several interruptions by phone calls, Mum's various issues and all that. As a result, I completely ruined an entire page of Baby Book #2 and will have to redo it tomorrow. Grrr!

One of the phone calls was from my insurance agent who's going to visit me next week to take a look at my various contracts - which would be a good thing in itself, if she weren't a person who talks a mile a minute, without the need of taking a breath. Next Friday will be most likely wasted with that. *sigh*

At least I managed to do some writing. One has to count one's blessings. And at least the subtitles are back on YouTube... for now.

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Lj outage and picowrimo

2023-03-03T17:24:50Z

To all picowrimo participants and readers: LJ seems to be down at the moment, so I've put up the daily post on the DW mirror site. As soon as LJ is back up (hopefully soon), we'll switch back there, and I'll copy & paste the entries from here.

Regards, Soledad

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WTF?

2022-10-05T17:21:53Z

Trying to post, comment, log in, whatever, several times. Getting denied access. I wonder if I succeed now!

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Quarktaschen

2022-05-21T16:56:55Z

... with freeze-dried strawberries. That's what I baked today. They are ugly but yummy. And I made a dish with cauliflower, fried chicken breast stripes and bechamel sauce, with grated cheese on top, baked in the oven. Again, very yummy. Not as ugly as the Quarktaschen, so I was moderately successful.

I also started working on the binding of the quiet books and had promptly undo the spine of the first one. I've sewn it on again and decided to stop for today. If the things refuse to cooperate, I won't force things. At least I've figured out (again) how to do the binding. I always forget the method between two quiet books, but since I do this once a year (or even more rarely), that is to be expected.

I was lazy for the rest of the day. Watched TV, read fanfic... that sort of thing. Motivation isn't something I've got a lot of lately.

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The last pages...

2022-05-19T17:16:54Z

... are finished. All I need to do is to bind the books, which will be quite the chunk of work, but I'm trying to be optimistic. *g*

The octopus pages

Side by side to compare them better:

And separately for more detail (on the left Beni's, on the right Abel's):

Match-the-shape pages

Side by side:

(They are not quite this crooked, just the felt is soft and won't stand straight, I swear!)

Separately (again, on the left Beni's, on the right Ábel's):

The stitches aren't as straight and even as I'd like them to be, but after having them re-done several times, with increasingly worse results, I declared defeat and decided to accept them the way they are.

Aside from the tedious needlework I also made a food run today and some cooking. That's enough for one day, I think.

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Sundays are working days

2022-05-15T16:12:02Z

At least in our house. Starting with the fact that on Sundays I have to get up almost an hour earlier because Mum attends to Mass via telly and needs to be made pretty in time.
( Boring domestic stuff behind the cut )
Having done all this, I've now relocated to my desktop PC for more fanfic and games before Mary Berry's Country House Secrets starts on TV Paprika. I do love that programme so much! And then, around midnight, I'm going to watch Britain's Best Home Cook. Yes, my tastes are a bit one-sided, I know. *g*

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Puttering indoors

2022-05-14T21:21:58Z

I'm still trying to recover from the three-week-long computer-related stress. My nerves are so frayed, I react much stronger to Mum's age-related oddities than I ought to. At least I manage to react in the inside, without hurting her needlessly.

But at least I managed to do some crafting today. I'm working on the last page of the twin quiet books and am currently trying to reproduce this page:

I've first made it a few years ago for Theo, the recipient of my very first quiet book. The new ones will be quite similar, only with slightly different colours and I've used flower-shaped beads instead of sequins. I hope they'll turn out well - those flower-shaped beads look great indeed and are surprisingly easy to work with. I'll try to buy some more at Kik on Monday, but with my luck they might be already sold out. *sigh*

( The tutorial I use for this page )

Other than that I didn't do much today. Dealt with the weekly laundry (although Mum helped a bit). Printed out some notes for the next choir practice, now that I can actually get into Google Drive, watched some Blaulicht Report while stitching, solved some crossword puzzles, since I was lucky enough to find the newest 100 Seiten Bastei Rätselheft yesterday at the newsagent's... and not much else. We still had some leftovers, so I didn't even have to cook. Tomorrow is asparagus day, however! Yum!

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