Thursday 3rd September - homemade

After some underwhelming supermarket ready meals last month, and earlier this week, I'm trying to go back to more cooking from scratch. It's easier, too with the cooler weather.

Yesterday, for supper, I made some vegetable soup, just a chopped carrot, onion, stick of celery all softened in olive oil and then cooked in stock with a dollop of tomato puree and dried herbs. I  added a tin of butter beans (drained and rinsed). There was enough for two days, so I served half the veg and all the liquid and put the rest in the fridge. (Lunch was homemade spaghetti with roasted courgettes).

Today I added more tomato, and quite a decent amount of cooked chicken and we had it for lunch with baked potatoes. Supper was a crustless quiche with bubble and squeak. 

I'm very pleased to have used up the eggs and pancetta which were approaching their 'use by' dates, and the leftover potatoes as well! I've also cooked a crockpot-full of minced beef, again, at it's 'use-by' date, to freeze and use in various recipes. 

I am feeling so virtuous!

Today's 10-minute journal;

Yesterday I dealt with bills, etc. Today I tried out my 'keep it handy' container of watercolours, brushes, lidded jar of water, pen etc first to colour the picture,  and later just to fiddle around with. I reckon this setup might suit for a quick few minutes dabbling.

Later in the morning; the first piano session of the new academic year! Good fun for both of us.

A friend came round yesterday evening with a bunch of five of the biggest gladioli stems I have ever seen. They are on the hearth in front of the fireplace and are easily taller than the fire surround! They have started coming out.

....

Nothing much to add to the extension progress. They have been very busy all day doing what I xalk 'invisible work', fixing things in place, adding extra screws, fastening things down, tiling the roof, ready for tomorrow. 

Wednesday 2nd September - rainy, but good day

I'm thinking of having a darkish green back wall to the extension; not too dark, not to light, not too yellowy,  not to blue... time to look at paint charts. This feels very daring... we've always ysed light colours. The kitchen units are a pale shell grey,  as I remember. 

The day was cool, even cold at times to people who have been softened upby heatwaves. Frequent showers of rain too. The hup! installers moved the garden table and chairs from the patio to inside the extension so they could sit in the dry for their tea breaks.

The builder, who will be taking on the next phase, turned up with a long ladder. A nice bit of exemplary teamwork, one 'hupper' holding the ladder, and another passing the soil pipe up meant that it was replaced in minutes. He stayed to talk to the huppers about mysterious subjects like 'first fix' and he'll be able to send the electrician round to start work while the huppers are here. The electric cabling will run in the channels round the walls.

The window and door frames have indeed gone in today, as I hoped, ready for glazing.

The panels either side of the French windows are hinged at the side, for opening, but are also hinged at the bottom to tilt inwards. Two of the glazed roof lights will also open and close.

Tuesday 1st day of Autumn - and I'm back...

 I wasn't my normal self yesterday, but I'm OK today.

Yesterday morning after I had swallowed my morning pills and as I was putting things back, I noticed an inconspicuous little yellow tablet lying among the bits and pieces on the table. How long had that been there? Since this morning,  of for several days? Should I take it, or not? Would I be under-medicated if I left it, or over-medicated if I took it? It was obe of the two steroid tablets I take every morning. 

I left it, and forgot about it. 

As the day wore on, I felt more and more peculiar, dizzy, shakey, breathless... not like me at all... then I remembered the time, several years ago, when I had been asked to try geadually reducing my steroid dose to see if I could manage on less. At 5mg, I had felt dizzy, shake, breathless... so clearly that had been today's tablet. An early night helped 'sleep off' the effects, and today I'm fine. Phew!

Sadly I had to cry off the home-group Communion featured in Sunday's 10 minute journal (complete with bonus quote - I'm drawing these in my Commonplace Book). The top left picture shows me measuring the square I had nearly finished, only to find it was nearly seven inches instead of six inches wide. Sigh.

But we've arranged another date in September. The month is filling up already. 

Here's yesterday's 

BB put in another stint of transferring old compost from the old bin (which is broken) to the new one. One more time should complete the job, We're in no hurry, as smothering the kitchen scraps in wormy compost must be helping the stuff to sort itself out after the summer drying out disaster.

You really do get what you pay for with convenience foods. We have been consistently underwhelmed by recent jar and ready meals. This M & S gastropods lasagne was a cut above - less of the gloopy generic tomato sauce flavour, less salty, less sweet, less oily. And more expensive. Still, it isn't as though we eat out very often, and this was still cheaper for the two of us than a pub meal for one.

With the cooler weather I have made meals from scratch more often and we do prefer them to ready meals. And that's just the taste!

Today's also comes with a bonus;

I'm wondering what on earth I'm going to do with all the 6" knitted squares I'll end up with. I fancy a patchwork jumper. There are patterns for boxy jumpers knitted from four rectangles sewn together, front, back, and the other two pieces folded into sleeves. Something like 48 squares should do it, but I don't think Ang will want to keep the collaboration going for FOUR YEARS!

Sunday 30th August - we can help...

 Reading the news is overwhelming at the moment, but we can help...

'Many a mickle makes a muckle', the say...

We can donate... to the disasters emergency committee, Red Cross, Christian Aid, Save the Children, Medecins sans Frontiers (MSF) to mention just a few organisations working in areas throughout the world where there is desperate need.

And we can pray... Ang posted a prayer for Nepal on her site today. Or you can just hold a place, or situation, or person, in your mind and ask for God's mercy upon them

Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison 

Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy

Voces8 singing the Kyrie from William Byrd's Mass for Four Voices 

Friday 28th August - new day...

 I think my 10-minute-journal more or less says it all.

I was SO cross and fed-up last night. That cannot, and did, spiral quickly down into a kind of sadness and darkness and despair, to be fought off with every means available. It doesn't do to let such a mood take root; like weeds with tap roots, you have to take action before it gets a hold.

My friends on our zoom homegroup soon lifted me up and back into 'cleaner air'; how on earth do people without family and friends cope?

For me, a homegroup is a group associated with a church. Many do praying and bible study, maybe sing a few worship songs... we four (sometimes five) just natter, unload the week, and then someone will think of a prayer or quotation from scripture as a result of our meandering.

This time, one of us had, during the week, come across 

which couldn't have been more perfect. Nice one. Isaiah!

Thursday 27th August - channelling my inner Pollyanna

 doesn't always work...

Yes, it is possible to make a pot of tea and eat a mini-magnum in a state of suppressed fury and frustration...

My huppers, as I have started calling the hup! installation team, didn't turn up until 11am... they are usually here at 8 so I rang the boss-in-the-office after 9am. This is the second time they have had to call at another site to receive a delivery before they start here. They are going to be late again tomorrow; yesterday they just forgot to tell me... it happens...

But since this phase began on 3rd August, they will have lost about three half days to taking deliveries for other jobs, and four days for other reasons. That's a week in my reckoning, and it is causing issues for the next phase, when the original builders return to do everything else. It's not my hupper's fault, but I'm thinking I might have to say something to the m-i-t-o. I do know he's under pressure to squeeze all the upcoming jobs into his schedule, but I'm now passively-aggressively drinking tea, if such a thing is possible! 

And    B r e a t h e... normal state of cheerfulness will resume as soon as I gave drunk a cup of tea..,

Helped by one of the books I am reading; 'Cheerfulness Breaks In' by Angela Thirkell, set in I suppose 1940, and recommended by several people,  most recently wrinklymartha.

I'm reading a moderately rather very weird book by Wisconsin university professor called Lynda Barry. It is the syllabus she devised for her course on drawing and cartooning.

I'm not a fan of her cartoons, but I'm intruiged by her syllabus for teaching this university course, for undergraduates with any or no drawing skills and experience.

Here's a page;

I so, so wish I'd had the courage to present my teaching plans as stickmen and boxes in a graphic style, instead of spending HOURS AND HOURS typing into a proforma on the laptop, fussing around with font sizes and formatting to make it fit. 

One lesson, early on, is a great leveller for experienced and newbie artists alike; expressively, child-like figures. I just had to try this for myself;

I am now desperate to try the next assignment at the bottom of the page... take some index cards to a suitable venue and do 'quick draw Mcgraw' life sketching. She says use blue colouring pencil and ink over when you get home.

...

Finally, today's 10 minute journal. (Ignore the stuff at the top, that's about something else on the previous page.)

Thank you, elizabethd, for the suggestion of the hebe.