Soledad's Journal

I had a restless night. Neck and shoulder (and back) pains made me unable to find a position in which I could have slept any longer than two hours in a row. It took me nearly fifty minutes to fall asleep in the first time, and then I woke up again... and again... roughly every two hours.

Of course, the fact that I had to get up an hour earlier than usual because Mum wanted to attend to Mass via TV didn't help. Ah, well, at least I was pissed off suitably to finally clean the kitchen; something that had been long overdue. And to take down the dried laundry. And to give Mum her weekly shower.

Funnily enough, neck and shoulder (and back and wrist) don't bother me when I'm doing slave labour. Just when I'm trying to rest. Or to work at the computer. Bleh!

No cooking was necessary - long live the leftovers - so I used the time to do a tiny bit of sewing. One set of laundry room shelves is now finished. All I need to add are the little hooks for the towels, which I need to buy first in a sewing shop. A good thing that I'll have to go to the Allee shopping center tomorrow anyway. They have an excellent craft and sewing supplies shop. I hope I'll find there what I need.

After lunch I gave in to the inevitable, and since my various body parts chose to behave I slept for two hours. It was a real blessing. Then I gave H. a call, who's fighting off a bad cold (again), posted the next chapter of 'Alternate Caretaker' to otherworlds_lib and we watched the GBBO - the only thing worth watching tonight.

Oh, and I forgot: I also started a small notebook for collecting various... unusual jam recipes I intend to try for this year's Christmas fair. Like apricots with rosemary, sour cherries with thyme, strawberries with basil and balsamico vinegar and the likes.I've just added the spicy fig jam of noadvertising's DiL to the list.

Many heartfelt thanks for the lovely Christmas cards received from:

red_day_dawning,
meathiel,
curiouswombat,
noadvertising,
the_wild_iris

I'll keep adding names when more cards arrive. You are the best, folks!

Happy Birthday, dear elwenlj!

I hope you had a quiet, peaceful day, with a bit of birthday indulgence. :)
Here, have some virtual calories:



Over here, it was fairly quiet, too. I've made the gingered pears but they haven't set properly, despite the gelatine I added in the last moment. I'll try to put them into the fridge for a night or two, perhaps that will help. If not, I'll sell them as pear sauce for pancakes, pudding, ice cream and the likes. Problem solved. We tried some for our Topfenknödel today, it tastes heavenly, so there.

I also worked a bit on H's birthday present. The recipe book is taking shape, so I'm well content. Tomorrow, I'm planning to cook for two days, that gives me a bit of leeway for Tuesday, so that I can do the food shopping. Thursday is a national holiday when the shops are all closed, so people will be afraid of starving - better not go on the last day!

Several websites got small changes in appearance. None that would meet my approval. I think the new designs are uglier than the old one - YouTube, I'm looking directly at you! - and others, like the new tiny symbol of Outlook, make me nervous when I first see them not knowing what's happening. Why do they have to change things time and time again? Grrrr!

Happy Birthday, dear manue7a!

Once again, Lj failed to send me an alert. Fortunately, I saw on my Friends page that this is the day. Have some virtual calories:



I hope you had a nice day. :)

Happy Birthday, dear noadvertising!

I hope you had a terrific time today, family situation notwithstanding.
Here, have some virtual calories:

Happy Birthday, dear meathiel!!!

I hope you had a fantastic day. Here, have some virtual calories:



Not much happened on my end of the connection. I took Mum for a walk; she then rested on the playground, admiring the toddlers, while I did the shopping at Lidl. Afterwards, we did - basically nothing. We hadn't been out much lately, due to the heat and her most recent fall, and even this short outing exhausted her. We'll have to practice more, so that we can reach our corner café again.

Then I got an appointment for Mum with the hairdresser, who's a nice lady and will come to our house to cut Mum's hair. I also talked to Erna, our arts teacher and an old friend; I'm planning to visit her on Monday. She lives in one of the outlying towns, and although we've been friends since 1995, this will be the first time that I'll go to her house. I'm looking forward to it very much.

Thank you, elwenlj, for the lovely little bells - I've never seen so tiny ones, and I'm sure I'll be able to put them to good use. :)

Also thank you, thesmallhobbit, for the lovely summer card. It was such a pleasant surprise! :)

In other news, Mum and I made our weekly trip to the corner café, which was really nice. Then I made cauliflower Strudel (sorry, noadvertising), talked to my friend Evie on the phone and we watched re-runs of the GBBO. And now I'm about to read some fanfic until "The Repair Shop" starts.

Question to well-informer British people: Is BBC News not showing Trooping the Colour this year? I'd love to watch the parade, but I couldn't find any hint at a live broadcast.

I've got up to 24 degrees in the morning. By the time Mum and I made our morning excursion (she admiring the toddlers on the playground, me hopping over to Lidl), it was 28 degrees - at half past ten in the morning, mind you! Currently, it's 31 degrees. We are sitting in the flat with blinds down and all windows firmly closed to keep the heat out. Ah, well, at least I didn't have to cook today!

Crafting-wise I've made one side of the little cardboard baskets. It was harder than I imagined. Part of the problem was that I can't for my life, cut things (even paper) in a straight line, so the individual strangs didn't fit as they should have. Another part of the problem was probably the wet glue that I used. I do own a hot glue gun, but... well, let's just say that the piping bag isn't the only thing I'm fairly hopeless with.

I'll try a different kind of wet glue tomorrow... and when that doesn't work, either, I'll switch to the glue stick - and to double-sided tape if nothing else helps. Those all have their own nasty tricks, so this promises to be a really interesting project (in the Chinese curse sense of "interesting"), and the four sides of the poor basket will probably turn out all different. But we all learn through pain, right? *g*

Lidl is having Greek days right now, so I've bought some frozen spinach and feta satchets, which we'll bake up in the oven as soon as temperatures go down a little. I've also bought halva with pistachios in it. I hope it will be better than the supposedly pistachio-flavoured ice-cream I bought on Friday and that tastes very artificially, almost like perfume. Grrrr. We had to pour eggnog over it, which is a waste of good alcohol, but what else could we have done?

Oh, and before I forget: congratulations, adafrog, to the 20th birthday of your journal! It seems we've all been on LJ for a considerable time. :)

Happy Birthday, dear adafrog! To quote the Ninth Doctor, I hope it was a fantastic one!

Here, have an assorted choice of virtual calories:



As for us, we had a quiet day again. I did the grocery shopping in the morning, then we continued the kitchen project (mostly involving Mum washing up rarely used things and me putting them back in their places), watched some telly and rested a bit in-between the various tasks.

The weather is still a bit cold, so I heated up some Zwiebelkuchen from the freezer to create a more pleasant temperature. Other than that, not much happened. Nothing on the creative front in any case. I don't mind, though. I had worked really hard on the little sewing kits; taking a break before I start decorating the actual boxes will do me good.

Happy Birthday, aeris444! I hope you had a good time today. Many happy returnings!

Nothing overly interesting here. I did the grocery shopping in the morning and the hairdresser paid us a visit in the early afternoon. In the remaining time I rearranged the flat for tomorrow's cleaning frenzy, processed the first batch of asparagus of the year and tried to persuade myself that tomorrow won't be that horrible. So far I haven't succeeded.