Soledad's Journal

No, really. All I did was writing down an idea that had been ghosting around in my head for a very long time; it's good to have it on paper at last. Then I searched the 'Net for some label outlines and printed out a few for the jam jars... and that was basically it.

Mum had a visit from the physiotherapist lady, we watched some telly and had nice, although short naps. No need to cook, as we still had leftovers - the very way I love to spend my days.

In the evening, I had a short phone chat with H, and then went online to read fanfic, watch YouTube videos and play Solitaire. A very nice day it was indeed.

... at the basket weaving. This time with the glue stick, which was slightly less frustrating. Not being wet, it certainly sped up the actual process (although the fact that I've finally figured out the pattern might have helped), but the result is every bit as lopsided as the first two attempts. Ah, well, I'll just continue and see how it turns out at the end.

Not much else happened. It was very hot - it's still 33 degrees outside and 26 degrees inside - so we lay as low as we could. Didn't cook. Postponed the leftovers for tomorrow, so that we didn't even have to switch on the kitchen hearth. Napped a lot. That sort of thing.

At least I managed to write down a few ideas for a future story that have been ghosting around inside my head for weeks. No idea if I'll ever use them, but at least I have them on paper. That's progress... sort of.

To start with the most important part: we actually made it to the café! Yay! And they even had freshly made butter croissants, the kind that Mum loves. So, that was a nice start into the day. We made two rests on the benches along the way, sitting in the nice, warm sunshine, and Mum enjoyed herself tremendously, even though she was a bit exhausted afterwards.

Having parked Mum at home, I went back to Lidl, to buy potatoes for my Easter bread dough - and creme freche because we've run out of it. Of course, I ended up with a lot more than just these two items (as usual). They had raspberries, which I absolutely had to buy, since those are the only fruits save for bananas that Mum can eat without butchering them first. And I used my extra coupons on the Lidl app on my way too smart phone to snatch some gift cheese and drastically reduced ice-cream-on-a-stick. Not the brand I usually buy, but one shouldn't look into the gift horse's mouth, right?

Back at home, I shared my ice cream with Mum; then I managed a tiny bit of writing before kitchen duty called. I boiled and mashed the potatoes for tomorrow; since I had boiled too much, I made potato salad out of the rest. Tomorrow we'll traditionally eat sardines, which will go well with the potato salad. I'm planning to make Blätterteigpastetchen (also known as vol-au-vents among people who like sounding snobbish) of the other roll of ready-made puff pastry and fill them with a sardine-based filling. I've found a recipe for a crab filling; I'll replace crab meat with sardines and hope for the best. *g*

( Boring crafty stuff )

When all this was done, it was half past six already, so we dropped into our seats in front of the telly to watch the GBBO and "Salvage Hunters", respectively. And that was, basically, my day.

I made good progress today - wrote roughly two pages and almost finished the current chapter. A couple of paragraphs more and I can actually post it. *fingers crossed*

Another accomplishment today was that I made the Easter ham, with garlic and cumin, like every single year in the last, oh, three decades or so. It is this recipe, in case anyone (who understands German) is interested. It is easy to make and very, very yummy. I'm glad to have another Easter-related task ticked off of my to-do-list. Now only the Easter bread is left, but that's not something I could make in advance. Besides, I still haven't decided which recipe to use; or if I should make an Easter cake instead. But since I've saved enough cookies for ourselves, I'm tending towards an Easter bred, which isn't that sweet.

What else? I've made first preparations for the cleaning frenzy on Tuesday, put away some baking utensils that had been lying around for weeks and are no longer needed, watched some telly, solved a few crossword puzzles, watched some YouTube videos and took Mum out for a walk. My like runs along the same lines, most of the time, but that isn't always a bad thing. Routine can be calming sometimes. (At other times - not so much, but that's another problem entirely.)

I had planned a lazy day. What I got in the end was a rather busy day, but that was (partially) my fault.

I started with washing my hair, which was overdue. Then I cooked for two days - not such a hard work, just fiddly, what with peeling the mushrooms and chopping the ham and all that. Pasta Bolognese (with Spätzle instead of spaghetti because we like our noodles to be substantial) turned out very yummy. So, to work off some calories, we went for a walk. It went really well, so we decided to go to the corner coffee for breakfast tomorrow, assuming the weather will cooperate.

My friend Evie had mercy with me and delivered my eggs in the afternoon. Inspired by that fact, I spontaneously decided to bake the Nutella bunnies today instead of tomorrow. Mind you, this is a recipe that I make every single year for Easter. I even made it with 30 kids in the Hort. Never had any problems. Today, my dough turned out a disaster. It crumbled so much that I couldn't even roll it out. Since this has been the second such disaster in a row, I strongly suspect that something is wrong with the package of flour I'm currently using. For tomorrow's baking session I've opened a new package; I'll use up this one for cooking.

To save the yummy (not to mention pricey) dough, I shaped little balls and eggs of it by hand and baked them anyway. I'll give them some chocolate icing and coloured candy decoration tomorrow, to save face. But to prove that the recipe actually works, here are several pics of the Nutella bunnies I've made since 2015.

Writing-wise I managed to write the first part of the hunting scene for my current WIP. I'm fairly content with it. I also decided to post to AO3 a funny scene to an as-yet unrealized Andromeda/Star Trek TNG crossover on its own, just for a good laugh.

No actual crafting was done today. I did put my 6 of my coloured styrofoam eggs into their respective baskets, but that's all. Originally, I planned to make three more baskets of the toilet rolls I had pilfered from the waste paper bin yesterday but couldn't bring up the energy for that roughly 6-minutes-long work. ;)

Which can be because of serious sleep deprivation. My nights are seldom longer than 6 hours, and in the last three days I didn't manage to take my usual afternoon nap. I'll try to do better from now on!

That said, it was a relatively quiet day. In the morning, even before Mum would get up, I quickly iced my cinnamon-and-nougat cookies and put them out on the balcony, so that the icing could harden out. By the time we had gone through our morning routine, the cookies were ready to be boxed. Yay! Two sorts done, four to six more to go. But I won't bake again until next week - or, at the earliest time, till Sunday.

After breakfast I had to clean out the lowest shelf of the pantry cupboard (literally, as it serves as a sorry excuse for an actual pantry in the kitchen), to sort my packages of flour by their 'best before' date. The same with cans of pineapple, mango, pureed tomatoes, green peas and sweet corn. Now I have a general idea what we have in reserve and what has to be used up first.

Writing-wise it was a good day, too. I've dug out my Enterprise DVDs and re-watched "Rogue Planet", thus getting the necessary details for the description I needed to write. My total is almost two full pages, which is fantastic progress, after the dry spell of recent days.

No actual crafting was done today, but I finally managed to take a halfway decent picture of my little felt box (after three failed attempts). You know, the one that started as a failed pincushion and got repurposed. It still isn't entirely finished (I need to fix the front loop), but I think it looks nice enough.



For lunch I did some express cooking: Tütensuppe (10 minutes), fried fish fingers (another 10 minutes) parsley potatoes (about 12 minutes, since the potatoes were boiling while I did the rest of the dishes). I sliced some cucumbers in lieu of a salad, and that was basically it. But Mum liked it, and I didn't have to waste half my day in the kitchen.

After lunch we went for a walk with Mum, and after that I talked to some friends on the phone (3 out of 5 actually answered the phone, which counts as a good percentage). So yeah, it was a good day. I'm just falling asleep on my feet every ten minutes. Every five minutes if I sit down. *g*

It was lovely. In the morning, I worked quite a bit on the folding book for my friend Erica's granddaughter who'll turn two in may. It's a Hello Kitty! themed quiet book, with five pages, one of which is half-done now. I've sewn on the carpet of the bedroom, the window with the view behind it, the bed, the pillow and the bedcover. It was a lot of fussy work, but I'm quite pleased how things turned out.

We then watched a bit of telly, after which I managed to write almost an entire page. Granted, it is mostly rewritten canon dialogue in different settings, but it does move the plot along, so I'm well contend.

Mum volunteered to make the batter, after which I fried the Palatschinken (crepes), which we ate with home-made apricot jam. They were extremely yummy. After lunch we watched some more telly, and then I solved some crossword puzzles and we both took a nap. Waking up from that we had an early supper and now a bit of online browsing before "Salvage Hunters" would start.

The main reason why I like "Salvage Hunters" so much is because they show so many lovely places in the UK I'd never get to see with my own eyes otherwise. They even tell a bit about the history of each place, and it's great fun besides being educational. One is never too old to learn new things. ;))

Today we had 14°C, so I decided that the time has come to take Mum out of the house. I bought her some leggings, so with those and a light jacket we dared the street in front of the house. We've made half the trip to the corner café; considering that she wasn't out for over two months, it was impressive progress. Our goal is to make it to the café again - even though they have raised the prices to unreasonable heights. *g*

Not much else happened. I've put the covering on the ring book meant for the recipe collection, wrote nearly two pages (yay!), made a spanakopita-for-dummies for dinner and tried to find the candle-decorating kit I had bought at least a decade ago at the "Flying Tiger" shop. I failed. So I'll have to think of a different method to decorate those Easter candles. They are too tiny to use wax plates, so I might turn to stickers instead. I'm not happy. I so wanted to give that kit a try!

In the afternoon I spent an hour and some to re-read an old Merlin fic of mine and found that I still liked it. Alas, few other people shared my opinion. But again, I usually write stuff because I rarely find stories I'd personally like, so I shouldn't be surprised, right?

Also, I finally managed to reach my friend Evie via phone, which was nice. Social life is crumbling away at an alarming speed.

I didn't get the chance for napping in the last two days, so today I took two extended naps; it was glorious! There was no need to cook, we had leftovers, and all I had to do was to take down the dried washing. Well, Mum had her weekly shower, but that was a short affair.

Aside from being lazy and watching some TV, I finished another lavender sachet and did a bit of writing. I also typed up everything that was already written from Chapter 3 and posted Chapter 2 to AO3. That was a relief, as I won't have much time for such things in the next two days.

And now off to picowrimo to post the daily entry and reply to comments. :)

Still exhausting, but at least more fun. It did include some me-time, after all.

So, we had laundry day and Mum insisted on ironing the starched doilies and doing the washing-up two or three times (she can't resist when she sees as much as a coffee cup in the kitchen sink), but it wasn't all that bad. I managed to finish one lavender sachet and stitched on the felt appliqué on another one. This is a project with a December deadline, so I can take my time.

I also managed to do some writing that I've been pushing farther and farther in front of me for weeks. It's a necessary but somewhat boring part, where I try to deliver a massive infodump in a manner that wouldn't cause any potential readers to fall asleep. Still not sure I've manage it, but at least I have a draft now.

Then I baked a... well, a traybake perhaps, using ready-made puff pastry, custard powder and some canned peaches that needed to be eaten before reaching their BBF date. Sadly, I managed to bake the pastry too dark and to nearly burn the custard, but the outcome was still yummy, so I declare that a success. *g*

In the meantime Louise Sr. (the washing machine) has rune her cycle, so I had to hang up the washing. Then we watched two consecutive episodes of "Salvage Hunters - The Restorers", after which I fell asleep for an hour. Clearly, that was badly needed.

I then switched my desktop PC on to type up some more of Chapter 2 of EMV III, but my friend Evie called right after I had begun, so I didn't get the whole thing done, despite not being much left. But I don't mind; talking to a friend is always lovely. The transcribing can be finished tomorrow.