Let's list;
- Half-shoulder of lamb slow cooked in the crock-pot for 8 hours yesterday, with herbs and vegetables and a generosity of (English Dry) cider. Resultant melt-in-the-mouth meat now shredded, portioned and in the freezer. The stock chilled overnight in order to lift off the solidified fat layer, liquidized and frozen in portions as well for soups and gravy
- Slab of belly pork also slow-cooked in crock-pot for 8 hours today, again with herbs and vegetables and a little left-over cider. Meat shredded (all right, "pulled",) and freezing as I type. Stock waiting to chill overnight ready for same treatment as lamb stock.
- Pannetone attempted, with great success, in the bread machine. I can't wait to have it for breakfast tomorrow. It was delicious when we tested a some as soon as it was cool enough to slice.
- One load of laundry in and out of the washing machine, on and off the line, ready to be put away.
- Barclaycard bill, that arrived yesterday, paid.
- internet order for items in clothes sale placed
- items of post read, dealt with, filed appropriately (in a bin or in a real file)
- The quilt that I have been working on for nearly a year finished. It has the cat's unqualified approval.
- Three drawers of a small, six drawer, filing cabinet emptied, sorted, contents saved or recycled, resulting in another basket of "sundries" on its way to emptiness. (Three drawers more to go!)
- The brown-topped garden waste bin filled with - garden waste, of course. We suddenly noticed it was "brown bin day" tomorrow. The tangle of twigs and branches that has been crammed into the bin is the consequence of chopping at the Russian vine to reveal the rotting remains of the shed (Who knows the children's nursery song "There was a princess long ago, long ago, long ago" retelling the story of the Sleeping Beauty? The verse "He chopped the trees down with his sword" came into mind when I saw what he had done to the vine)
- And after all that cooking yesterday and today, we had roast chicken for supper. Excellent.
What's going on?
We have both become a bit obsessional about clearing up, tidying away, ticking things off the list, dealing with things straightaway. It's a reaction to the seeing at first hand what happens when things get Really Out Of Control. We had previously embarked on a moderately intensive program of de-cluttering, after the hectic pace of the last few years had meant that piles of paperwork were waiting to checked and filed, heaps of teaching resources were stacked, unsorted, in crates, and every bookshelf in the house was double stacked with books and laden with useful things.
I'm really looking forward to the time when everything has its place, and can be put away. Step 1 is to be a bit more conscious about what we keep.
Don't worry. It won't last. Something is probably just around the corner waiting to pounce... and then we will be back to normal. But hopefully a bit tidier than before?
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