Soledad's Journal

... and I'm not speaking about the usual routine, like giving Mum her weekly shower, washing my hair, taking down the dried washing and the likes.

Today I had kitchen duty. The cauliflower I had bought yesterday needed to be pre-cooked, cooled down, put into freezer bags and frozen for future use. For lunch, I made a mushroom-and-ham omelet with grated cheese and history's worst soup. For some reason trying to make gebundene Gemüsesuppe always ends in failure. I don't know why. It isn't such a complicated thing; and yet I fail every single time with it. Of course, I made a large pot. Enough for at least three days. Mum, being the soup junkie that she is, will eat it willingly enough. I might kip my portion into the loo...

Aside from the cooking disaster, I did some writing and crafting. The red felt bunnies are almost done. All that's left is the stitching of their faces, plus sewing the front and back panels together and stuffing them. I hope to finish them tomorrow or the day after. *fingers crossed*

Writing was considerably less abundant, but I did write a little bit, after I've googled for info on infected leg wounds. This is an alternate version of the TOS episode "Plato's Stepchildren", after all.

I wrote almost 5 full pages today. Granted, for a brand new story, instead of one of my never-ending WIPs, but still. That was the most progress I've made in... well, I think in years. I don't expect it to last, but it was a wonderful surprise.

Other than that, I cooked a cauliflower-heavy lunch (sorry, noadvertising), and we had the usual quarterly visit from the exterminator. A really good day indeed.

That's what a successful shopping trip does to me: it invigorates me like very few other things do. To be precise, after three fruitless tries today I finally found that leather watch strap I had been looking for... for months, actually. Now I can proudly wear my 80+years-old wrist watch that Mum had gotten from her uncle as a very young girl. It's a reliable Swiss model - not one of the big brands, but I find it pretty, and it has emotional value.

Inspired by this success I also paid the craft shop on my way home a visit and bought some extra thin wax plates and wax borders. I used to decorate Easter candles with my pupils as you can se here. My own creations were a bit more detailed (see this one), but thin wax plates are hard to find, especially as I no longer have the chance to visit Vienna. I have two plain candles, one pale pink, the other one pale turquoise, so I might do some candle decorating again. I used to do that a great deal after I had come back from Germany; unfortunately, there are no pictures of those. I didn't even have a computer back then, not to mention the internet.

Anyway, I also did the grocery shopping, including some baking and preserving ingredients that were in offer and spent an indecent amount of money, which always gives me a heady feeling of freedom. We used to be so poor for so long, it's liberating to splurge a bit from time to time. *g*

Naturally, the shopping excess took the entire morning. We ate instant soup with some leftovers and peanut butter cookies, watched some telly (during which I fell asleep several times), then I called my friend Evie (she got down from her steep hill okay yesterday), after which I wasn't sleepy anymore, so I decided to do some research for a fanfic idea that came to me unexpectedly. So that is what I'm going to do now.

I swear I had thought of one sometime during the day but completely forgot what it was by the time I got to my desktop PC. Which is the place where I do all my typing. On a proper keyboard.

Anyway, it was an uneventful day. I cooked for two days (again, something with cauliflower), mostly emptied the balcony that will be thoroughly cleaned tomorrow (a lady comes to clean all inside doors in the flat; that's one of Mum's favourite obsessions) and got to write a solid chunk: more than a whole page.

Other than that, I talked to H., took a nap in the afternoon and watched the GBBO with Mum. A slow day, but necessary, considered how hard tomorrow promises to be.

Meaning peace and quiet. A real blessing, especially as my back has slowed me down considerably. I need twice as much time for doing things as usually because I have to be more careful. It's just certain moves that set off the pain... but those are never the same moves, so that I could just avoid them. *sigh*

Anyway, I was lazy today. Did a bit of writing, a bit of crafting, removing some more felt ornaments from the Christmas tree... and that was basically it. To be honest, it felt wonderful to be lazy. Especially the not having to cook part.

The next chapter of "Alternate Caretaker" is taking shape. I've found, to my pleasant surprise, that there were actually almost five hand-written pages for it (which translate into about six typed-up pages), they just hadn't been transcribed yet. So that's what I'm doing right now. I also added another hand-written page and figured out (at least in my head), what should be happening in this chapter. I hope it will work out. *fingers crossed*

Neck and shoulders are all but healed - now it's my back that's acting up again. But that's nothing new. Ever since a bad move 30 years ago, when I had to reposition my bedridden grandmother quite frequently, this little problem pops up at irregular intervals. Slept in the wrong position again, apparently. Ah, well, it needs time to right itself, but it usually does.

Other than that, it was an eventful day. I did a tiny bit of sewing in the morning, then made lunch. Then Mum had a visit from the physiotherapist lady, in the middle of which our neighbour - a different one, but every bit as talkative as the one from last week - came over to discuss with me the guy who's made our secure front door 13 years ago. (It turns out, he's still in business.) This mutated into her long-winded report (which she delivered without actually breathing!) about her most recent visit to ER that apparently led to no-where. I lost track after 20 minutes.

A colleague of me used to call such people energy vampires.

Fortunately, the PT lady read my body language (she's known me for 6 years, after all) and came to my rescue, asking for a drink of water from the living room (the verbal steamrolling took place in our front door). Neighbour realized we weren't alone and left. I thanked the PT lady most profoundly, but my brain needed at least another hour to recover.

After lunch I called H. who's still quite ill; only that Little Emma has also caught her bug, so they are suffering together at home. I also talked to my friend Elise, who was very glad to postpone snow-shoveling duty for those five minutes because yes, a ton of snow has fallen during the night again.

As for the rest of the day, I did some more research and even wrote half a scene for a further story that might or might not take shape in the foreseeable future. But it was writing, which always makes me happy.

My cold is developing nicely. I've moved on from the stuffed head phase to the running nose phase. Whether that's a positive thing or not, it remains to be seen. At least no sore throat, no chest soreness, no coughing and no fever. So it's just a simple cold which I had achieved by running to and fro from the overheated kitchen to the unheated balcony during my baking frenzy.

Other than blowing my nose every thirty seconds it was a peaceful day. I've postponed the grocery shopping for tomorrow, deciding that one more day in steady warmth was in order, finished decorating the Christmas tree and even started working on the upmost piece of my depressingly high pile of things-that-need-mending. We had leftovers, so there was no need to cooking, and aside from the physiotherapist lady's visit nothing really happened. I took two short naps, read some fanfic and concentrated on recovering. *g*

The tree:


I also started to post my decades-old (started in 2003 and never finished)Alternate Voyager stuff to otherworlds_lib, inspired by ApostropheN's series over at AO3. Mine will get there, too, eventually - I just hope no-one will accuse me of plagiarism, seeing that mine is twenty years older. But you never know.

After an exceptionally lazy day yesterday, when I didn't do anything else than making breakfast and supper (we had leftovers for lunch), today I was back in the thick of things.

Firstly, I went to the grocery shops because Lidl had very tempting offers. Bought three packages of chicken meat, two of specific mixes for chicken paprikas and one of chicken breast fillets. Then we did the laundry. Then I made the chicken paprikas for tomorrow, except the pasta. Then I somehow even managed to write a full page - I still don't understand how. I also took a nice, long nap before we watched the GBBO... and now the day is basically over.

But tomorrow I'll start the Christmas baking, yesssss, Precioussss!

Lo and behold, here it is:

https://hu.pinterest.com/pin/341640321753778509

I didn't want to clutter up my scrapbook with it, since it isn't anything spectacular, so: link. I swear, the liquid in the bottles is the same colour in all seven - I don't know why it looks different. Perhaps because of the lighting. But it's done now, which is a great relief.

Today was eventful again, being Saturday. We had laundry day, plus I had to go to Lidl because we had completely run out of bread, yogurt and milk, which are basic necessities in this household. I had to do half the lunch as well: grilled Wiener sausages and a mixed salad to go with the leftover soup and rice. That was easy, thank goodness.

In the afternoon I even managed to do a bit of writing, hopefully moving EMV III away from its dead stop. *fingers crossed* Then I took a nap and slept so deeply that Mum had to wake me up, otherwise I'd have missed the GGBO finals, and that would have been horrible - after all, I had only seen this particular season once. Or twice? Definitely not a dozen times like the earlier ones.

So, all in all it was a nice day, even though I'm still half asleep. *g*

... and I'm pathetically grateful for it. At least I managed to bring up the energy - barely! - to wash my hair. It was overdue. It's a good thing that I've got so little of it; that makes things faster and easier.

I didn't really do much today. In the morning, inspiration hit unexpectedly, and I wrote over two pages of dialogue for a "Cadfael" story that has been in planning for years, without as much as a single word being written - until today. I don't know if I'll ever get around to write the actual story, but I'm glad I put those lines to paper.

We ate leftover soup and cheese-and-ham toast for lunch because we need to consume our bread before it would get mouldy. It is surdough bread, and as such more sensitive than regular yeast doughs.

After lunch I slept for an hour because I was still exhausted from all that packing and cleaning that we had to do in recent days. Then I did a bit of crafting: sewn on the other six tiny felt apples and tried to make one interactive bit, namely the rain, working. I failed. Two different approaches didn't work out. After that, I got annoyed and put the whole thing away.

Later in the afternoon a former colleague called. She'll come over tomorrow, with cherry pits and other crafting supplies she'd collected for me. It promises to be a fun visit, or so I hope.