Soledad's Journal

After yesterday’s dental adventures I decided to have a slow day. Especially as our brief heat wave peaked today at 32C.

Slow being relative, of course. In the morning, when it wasn’t quite that hot yet, I sorted out the upmost shelf ou our built-in wardrobe and got rid of some never-used bedlinens. Those will go to charity. I also made another mini Teddy and imprivised lunch from various leftovers.

In the rest of the day I was lazy: I had several phone calls, took a nice, long nap and watched some telly with Mum. I definitely could use more such days…

Oh, and IT guy supposedly comes tomorrow or the day after to sort my desktop PC! *fingers crossed*

I gave Mum her weekly shower.

I labelled my little jam jars. I forgot to take a photo, though, but will do so when I regroup them.

I made carrot soup and a salad for lunch to go with the postponed chicken paprikas. Mum approved.

We watched an old episode of the GBBO. Now I am craving cookies. Or cake. I might bake sonething tomorrow.

My friend Evie called. We gossiped a bit.

I’ve typed up some recently written stuff on Methuselah, the geriatric laptop. Since it can’t be connected to the Net, I saved the stuff to a data stick and will upload to my main PC as soon as it is safe again.

And that was basically it today.

Mum got her appointment via e-mail today. For July, which counts as fairly soon over here. So, that's a relief for starters.

The extra yummy strawberries have arrived today. So I went to school today to fetch mine. They are very delicious indeed. At first I thought we'd never be able to ate 5 pounds of strawberries, but now I think it won't really be a problem. Especially as I intend to bake a sponge cake with vanilla custard and lots of strawberries tomorrow. *g*

Our choir leader fell in love at first sight with the teddy bear I had made for the little granddaughter of one of our choir-mates. Since the woman in question didn't come yesterday to choir practice, I let M. have the teddy and started making another one for the kid this morning. It went well - the big ones are always easier to make than the tiny ones - so tomorrow I'll sew it together and stuff it. Then I'll continue with the tiny ones.

The hunt for an eye doctor hasn't lead to any results so far. But I'm not giving up.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, the_wild_iris!

Thank you for over a quarter century of friendship and support. I remember fondly of our meeting in person in Cambridge, London and Budapest and hope one day we can see each other again. Have a fabulous day!

Not much happening on my end of the connection. This entry is late because my desktop PC spent two and a half hours to configure the updates - exactly those hours I usually spend with reading and commenting and playing games. *sigh* Mum and I watched episodes of "The Repair Shop" instead.

In the morning I did the grocery shopping; then I cooked lunch. In the afternoon I gave my friend Evie a call, which lasted over 30 minutes; it was really nice. I'll watch the re-run of the GBBO, soon - the last season with Mary Berry - but afterwards I might return to read and comment a bit. Assuming my eyes haven't rolled out of my skull by then.

I've finished all the little Santa hats. I also drew the features of the little teddies with textile pen; now I only have to stitch them. All 10 of them. Eventually. And I started knitting the little scarves for them. The first one I started with 6 stitches - and had to rip back the whole thing because it proved to be too wide. I've redone those 5 centimetres with 4 stitches. You can imagine how small the whole thing is going to be.

Today I could no longer avoid cooking. Fortunately, I had boiled too much pasta for the previous dish, so I hacked some Easter ham into small pieces, mixed it with the pasta, poured sour cream over it and added some shredded cheese. It was yummy with a mixed salad and leftover soup. What's even better, we could only eat half of it, so - no cooking tomorrow! Hurrah!

Not much else happened. I did a few crossword puzzles (in German), had an ungodly long phone call from my friend Evie and we watched some telly. And that was about it.

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*

- 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.


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.

So Mum had today an appointment with the hairdresser who's kind enough to make house visits and pretty her up in our kitchen. She looks twenty years younger now and is ready to celebrate. :)

As for myself, I made some long overdue phone calls - to the insurance lady, to the financial advisor guy and to my neighbour, the IT guy. Hopefully there will be some serious computer update, soon. I'd prefer to keep my Windows 7, but there are websites that don't accept it anymore, so needs must. Gah, I hate getting used to new things!

I also started another three mini teddy bears - one for Elise's other grandson and two more as preparation for the Christmas fair. Those two will get little Santa hats and knitted scarves. Four-stitch-wide scarves of 20 cm length are about my limit where knitting is concerned, but at least I can do those.

We were still eating Evie's goulash soup; for the third time, and Mum is determined to eat the rest tomorrow. This is the kind of dish that gets better with each new heating up. I'm actually acquiring a taste for it... once a year. I'll need several weeks of very light food to recover from this masterpiece of traditional Hungarian cuisine. *g*

Tomorrow there will be baking again. I'm giving the alfajores cookies a try, and since they only require egg yolks, I'll make Amaretti biscuits from the egg whites. Those are completely flourless, so Evie will be able to eat them. Bad enough that she developed a gluten intolerance in recent years, she ought to have some yummy things for Easter, too.