Accidental Housework

I wish I could remember what this cloth was called, as I would absolutely link it.

I got a pack of them from Amazon, and I've used them to mop up spills in the kitchen and occasionally to wash dishes. Today I wrung one out in cold water to knock some dust off the fan heater in the study. However, before I got there, I found myself wiping over some of the woodwork on the way. The woodwork hasn't been touch for far too long and was covered in gunk, and this cloth, or rather, the damp version because I don't put damp cloths on my laptop, just wiped it off. There was no cleaning fluid, no soap, no magic ingredient like vinegar. It was just this cloth and water and it made a massive difference to some seriously mucky door frames, handles, light switch covers, window frames and the front of the fridge hasn't been so clean for years! It's better than the standard microfibre cloth - it's a miracle! I can see some easier cleaning in the future.

Bear has been working on his personal statement for university applications. It's a whole process, and it looks like he's in a good place as long as he gets the grades that are forecast. Some universities add weighting to kids from deprived areas and our postcode counts. Before Brexit, this area got extra funding from the EU because it was so deprived. Bear isn't particularly affected because of DH's hard work, but the area isn't a good one. There are a lot of one parent families, lots of generational unemployment, and far too much deprivation and drug use. I used to worry about bear a lot, but bear isn't easily influenced and his friends seem to be good people. And tonight bear was working on some maths problems while watching the first Tom Baker Doctor Who episode which was awesome. 

Writing stuff - King's Silver is now available as an eBook. Out of the London Mist is available as a paper back and Amazon is reviewing the paperbacks of King's Silver and Under a Bright Saharan Sky. A huge block in my creative process has disappeared. Now I hope to move on with purpose. The White Hart stories should be down by the end of the week, though I'm making no promises. 

Hugs and good health to all. 

Where Was I?

I've been pootling around and felt guilty and thought that I'd better update. 

There's been some stormy weather around here. 

I posted off bear's passport application and noticed that a huge branch had come down by the Co-op. 

The tyre pressure light came on again, so today I was back at In n Out, the garage, who are awesome. They didn't charge me as they just needed a little air. I'll keep an eye on things. I'll take them some chocolates later in the week as they are awesome and never mind me waiting and knitting.

I have fourteen different tabs open on my laptop and I think I have two music feeds going on. One is a rain sound effect, so I suppose that it's not too bad.

Bear has been fine, with a wonderful social life that has had me giving a lot of lifts. 

I'm sure that I'll remember a few more bits, and I'll add them as I go. My health is still a little ricketty.

As you can tell, I'm feeling a little fragmented. Today I've done a couple of loads of washing, been to the garage and Tesco (bear's favourite frozen Thai thingy isn't on the delivery app) and got a vast amount of writing stuff done - quite unexpectedly. I'd planned to only do housewifery today. 

Writing stuff - I put up an overdue instalment for the White Hart here. Then Amazon were amazingly helpful so you can once again find Out of the London Mist and Under the Bright Saharan Sky on their site. Currently it's just the eBook, which is enrolled in Kindle Unlimited, but I'm hopefully sorting out the paperbacks as well. It went quite well, but there were a lot of fiddly details that needed to be tweaked, altered in the original document, checked through the Kindle Create App and then uploaded again. I'm frazzled as I'm not very good at that sort of thing. I'm not exactly sure which way is up. I've a lurking suspicion that the books may be questioned by Amazon as they have been previously published, but I've got the documents I need ready and hopefully there won't be any problems. 

And that's it. 

Hugs and good health to all. 

Slow Day

Cheri - I shall try veggies in sweet and sour. One of my favourite recipes is something I just threw together one night and it stuck. It's one of those that's a 'some' recipe. I chop 'some' onion, soften in oil and add 'some' garlic. I throw in at least one, preferably two, chopped bell peppers and whatever other veg will suit. I usually have some mushrooms around, and courgettes would work, or practically anything that can be added and softened. I add some kidney beans/chick peas/black beans/haricot beans/some sort of legume and something tomatoey. In the past I've used condensed tomato soup but ordinary tomato soup or passata would work with abundant mediterranean herbs and worcestershire sauce. It's really good served with pasta of whatever type that you have on hand. Now I fancy substituting sweet and sour sauce for passata and serving with rice. 

Bless - thank you for your kind hugs. 

Today has been something of a fail. I've spent a significant chunk of it on Amazon chat as I'm trying to upload Out of the London Mist. The problem is, it's been published before by someone else - the wonderful people at Three Furies Press. When they shut down, all rights reverted to me, so I have the right to publish. So far it feels like technical difficulties, but I may have to work on this. As I haven't done anything worth taking pics, I'm including the cover of Out of the London Mist which was created by the amazing Rebekah Jonesy.

Hugs and good health to all. 

Tesco May Have a Point

Last March, I think, Tesco had a 3 for the price of 2 deal going on sauces, including the pasta bake sauce that DH likes. I knew that this deal ran twice a year so I bought 26 jars. A few weeks ago, we ran out. It was a problem. Now that the deal is back on, I'm planning on committing. I don't save much, but it keeps me entertained. I can't stick 26 jars of pasta bake sauce on one order, but so far they've been happy to accept 6 at a time. I'm not getting much else, but I've added a jar of butter chicken sauce as that's something that we can always fall back on, and a jar or two of sweet and sour sauce for me because I like it and I can make up a batch of sweet and sour something and have it in portions at the same time as DH has his pasta bake. 

(As an aside, last week, before the deal, pasta bake sauce was 66p and now it's 76p which makes me really want to keep a price book and it also shows how few pennies I'll save.)

I've also just renewed my Delivery Saver. I got the expensive version where I can get up to one delivery per day at any time free. It also allows free delivery from their third party Marketplace sellers and it cost me £83 and change for a year. I think it's a bargain.

In fact, I may have saved the cost of the delivery save in the last month. For example, this week I had a delivery on Monday for the start of the week. That's the salad for DH and the basics for the rest of the week. I usually also have a delivery on Friday with all the stuff we need for the weekend. The minimum order is £50 but that has been a surprisingly easy target to hit with bear at home. This week I added a Wednesday delivery, as I needed more salad for DH and I thought that I'd take the opportunity to top up on jars. I just about scraped up to the limit by adding a few candles which we'll very much enjoy over the winter (and we're running low on candles after having a stock for ages).

Today (Wednesday) I woke up and checked the app to see if the order was on time, and before anything else I got a pop-up. It suggested that I may like to try shopping in-store. It felt like an intervention. 

I've had a day where I've moved a little more. I'm (very) slowly clearing the cupboards, throwing stuff that's out of date, and shifting things around to make room for the new jars. I've washed a load or two of washing and generally managed a few more steps. I even cast on for the next blanket, which was the only thing that was worth taking a pic.

I hope that I'll have something more to show tomorrow. 

Writing stuff - I'll be taking the White Hart books down on the first date possible after 7 September 2024. I'll be posting them again on Royal Road starting (if possible) on 1 October 2024 with one episode daily until I've caught up. 

Hugs and good health to all. 

Finished!

I finished the blanket.

And I don't think that I had enough for another row.

And I even sewed the end in straight away, which is a miracle. It's about 52 inches by roughly 72 inches, which would make a blanket for a single or child's bed or a decent throw. I knitted 800g of aran weight yarn on 7mm needles in just plain knit and it was incredibly relaxing. I did a search of this blog, which is better than a diary, and it cost £18 total and I bought it on 13th February 2023. I'm hoping to perhaps sell it on eBay, though I don't know whether I'll get the cost of the yarn. It's a lovely warm blanket, though, and I'm planning on waiting until November before listing, so fingers crossed that it will appeal for the long, cold evenings. 

This afternoon was spent trying to sort out bear's passport. He needs photo ID for various entrance exams. I was told this last week. He needs it by the end of October and the website said that the turnaround is currently three weeks, as I suppose that it's the end of the summer holidays. We applied online, filled in all the boxes, dug out my and DH's passports and then we needed to find someone to sign off his photo. This was hard. I don't get out much. DH doesn't get out much. Bear doesn't really meet up with his friends' parents. The list of people who can endorse his picture isn't that long, it's full of professionals and they need to have known him for at least two years. I was concerned that I would have to call his old school and beg one of the teachers as he's only been at this college for a year. Fortunately we worked something out, so they can now get his pic endorsed, then he sends off the birth certificate and we keep everything crossed.

I've also downloaded an app to count steps. I can only manage a few steps at a time, but I'm planning on getting more bursts in and I'm aiming for at least 10 steps more each day until I hit a decent target. 

Hugs and good health to all. 

Still lots of Ouch

Fat Dormouse - You have an amazing name. My washing machine definitely needs a patron saint.

Bless - It sounds more adventurous than it is. Last week I was scrolling through going, 'no fish as DH and I don't like that, no lamb because bear and I aren't keen, no pork as DH doesn't like that, no aubergine because I've only seen it slimy, no prawns because while bear loves them DH and I loathe them, I'm not paying out for fancy cuts, bear won't eat sweetcorn, I can't eat cheese or gluten, bear can't tolerate all cheese, I can't stand stuff that's too spicy, bear won't have soup...' 

Speaking of cooking, it's bear and DH doing the fancy stuff, and they are amazing. They're trying out a load of ideas because pretty soon bear will be away from the house and it's important that he knows how to cook a meal. I'm usually the one chasing down a recipe, but I give the guys plenty of options and we've been eating very healthy food. I'm chasing down recipes for savoury food that include oats as I bought a load when they were on offer so that bear could have over night oats for breakfast on school days. He's decided that he's not having that for breakfast any more and so I'll need to use them up. Thinking about it, it will probably be me having the overnight oats. 

Bear goes back to school on Wednesday. I've been checking all summer about stuff he needs to get ready for next year and he assured me that he had it all in hand. Last night, around 10pm, he decided that he needed a pencil case. I put it on the Tesco order for delivery today, but it was substituted - with a lock box! I was baffled and so was the delivery driver. I didn't accept that.

I've struggled a little today with health, so there's not much more to report. I've no pics from today so I thought that I'd share a pic from September 2021. I couldn't walk that far now. I need to make it my wallpaper so that I'm encouraged to get better and walk even further.

Hugs and good health to all. 

Problems with New Recipes

As I've been saying, we've been trying out a lot of new recipes recently. The Tesco Recipe collection has been ruthlessly raided. Tonight we had black bean burgers, but just the burgers and not the avocado accompaniment. Instead we had them with oven chips and green beans (I have a lot of green beans in the freezer). 

One of the ingredients is breadcrumbs and I splashed out on some fancy gluten free breadcrumbs. They may have been a little dry, as the burgers crumbled in the pan. We may well do them again as they tasted amazing, but next time we'll add an egg. I now have a nearly full bag of gluten free breadcrumbs that we need to use up. They can go next to the '100g less two teaspoonfuls' of sesame seeds that one recipe asked for. And I've a suspicion that there are spring onions that need to be eaten up tomorrow. 

I actually found this recipe because I wanted to use up the tinned black beans that I'd found in the cupboard. However we're gradually acquiring a growing stack of ingredients that will also need using up. I can see us getting more and more adventurous with food as we try and make sure that we waste nothing. DH has been pickling chillies. He did it initially because he wanted to use up some leftover chillies, but now he and bear are really enjoying them and I'm regularly buying huge quantities of chillies for them to pickle. It's like a vicious cycle, but tasty. 

I called in at a Sainsbury's local last Wednesday and took this picture. 

They've started putting out Christmas merchandise and it isn't even Halloween! Grumbling about how early the Christmas stuff appears is becoming as traditional as Christmas pudding. 

Hugs and good health to all.