Soledad's Journal

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.

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:



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. :(

- 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.

.. 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.

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.

Sorry, I don't know how to say that in English and inspire the same feeling. That's the difference between one's second language and third language, I guess.

Anyway, I've started the Easter baking today. Huge piles of Nutella bunnies and coconut lambs got baked, and I've made the dough for the chocolate chip and tahini cookies. That one needs to be refrigerated overnight, but if the baked cookies are anything like the raw dough they'll be delicious. (Yes, I like raw dough. Yes, I'm strange.)

Tomorrow the bunnies and lambs will be decorated with dark and white chocolate icing, respectively, and the lambs will get a coconut coating. The tahini cookies will be backed and boxed, after they have cooled. My friend Elise is coming on Monday (unless family life interferes - with an ailing father and five grandkids there are no guarantees), so she can take home her share right away.

We also had laundry day, and I baked up the apple and cinnamon rolls I had bought at Lidl on Thursday. And that was, basically, our day.

Here we go (click to enlarge):



As I mentioned before, they're made of large pom-poms and some felt rests; save for the googly eyes which I bought in the craft shop. The baskets are also hand-made by yours truly, woven of narrow paper strips. They've gone out of shape a bit during all those months of waiting on a shelf for their moment, but, well, they're still pretty. Or at least I think they are.

Still in the crafty corner, I worked a bit on my third felt mini-kitty. This one is a boy and his facial expression is shockingly similar to that of a 5-year-old I happen to know. Not intentionally; it's just how he turned out. *g*

Speaking of plushies, my politically incorrect, slightly garish elephant went to his new home yesterday. My young cousin called in the morning to tell me that his 4-year-old son loved it. It's fortunate that small children know nothing about political correctness. His big sis (all 7 years old) got one of the Bolshie rabbits and loved it, too. Have I corrupted those kids somehow?

In other news, I did the big grocery shopping today and rearranged my book cabinet to make room for future jams, since this flat came without a pantry. I'd like to have a few choice words with the architect who designed these flats...
Alas, the pear jam turned out a bit runny; we might eat it ourselves and I'll make a new batch for the fair. In the not too distant future I'll have to make a tour to the second-hand bookshop to get rid of a lot of Star Trek novels and other stuff I'm unlikely to touch for the rest of my life.

Then we ate leftovers, watched some telly and I had a phone chat with my friend Elise concerning the Easter baking. She's one of my very few remaining customers; I eliminated the others because I no longer feel up to the challenge to deliver cookies to 12-17 different families. Four or five are still doable, so I kept the ones who appreciated it most. Is that selfish?

Also, it rained today rather copiously, so I couldn't take Mum out for a walk. Let's hope tomorrow will prove better.

Not much, actually. My Sundays are always the same: we got up an hour earlier, so that Mum could attend to Mass via TV, she gets her weekly shower, I try to find the easiest way possible to produce something to eat for lunch, I take down the dried washing... nothing terribly exciting.

On the other hand, boring, routine days are safe. So, for that price I can deal with the lack of excitement. Safety is something rare and precious in these times.

The only thing I keep missing is people. In smaller doses than at the time when I was still working, but I'd really like to have them around me more often. So, since I had to give up on people calling me, I called our recently widowed choir leader instead. Poor soul is in a really bad shape. As if the loss in itself weren't bad enough, she also has to deal with bureaucracy, financial problems and greedy heirs. Life can be really cruel sometimes.

In the creative corner I've finished the second felt kitty. Not a significant progress but progress nonetheless. Especially considering how unmotivated I've been lately. Which also means that the Easter baking will be cut back considerably, with only three or four sorts of biscuits and likely the same number of recipients.

Back in Romania we'd be wearing little badges called "märtisors" on this day. Mum once had a colleague who also hailed from Transylvania and gifted those tiny things upon us every year. A long, long time ago...

Anyway, we had nice weather but stayed indoors as Mum's knee is acting up again. Arthrosis isn't something that would get better with time, unfortunately. So we had a quiet day. I wrote a good chunk, almost finished the new teddy (I'd have needed fifteen more minutes with natural light but didn't get it) and we rested a bit. And watched telly.

In the evening my friend Evie called. She's going to do a play with her lower primary class for the school's annual cultural event and asked for help with the dialogue. We agreed that she'll come over on Tuesday after her shift and we shake the little scene into proper shape. For many years I used to do plays with my pupils for these occasions, so I have a lot of experience with this.

And now I'm going over to picowrimo and make the daily post.

After three or four months (I don't really remember how long it has been), one of Mum's medicines that was in short supply finally resurfaced in the pharmacy. Phew! She was down to half a bottle already, so it's a relief that the thing is available again.

Lidl was fairly bearable today. They had caster sugar for a reduced price, which is great as I'll need lots of it for making experimental jams for the next Christmas fair. I bought four kilos. Fortunately, sugar will keep (unless it gets wet, but I'll see to it that that doesn't happen).

We had leftovers and I also bought Pogatschen and a Babka for afters. The Babka is very economical; you can slice it paper thing, so it will last us three days. It isn't cheap, as only the corner café sells it (they have their own recipe for almost everything), but worth every cent.

In the afternoon I worked a bit on my red rabbits. Both little Bolshies have now a face, and I started sewing together the front and back panels. If we didn't have two days of deep cleaning waiting for us I could finish them in that time. As things are, they'll have to wait. But at least I'll have help with the cleaning now. Or so I hope. I only believe it when said help actually turns up. *fingers crossed*

I tried to call two of my friends but neither of them answered the phone. Grandmother duties, most likely. I'll try again tomorrow.