Let there be light

I finally rang the guy to come and see about installing lights and he came last week and had a look and told me what I need to buy. So I did a quick search on the internet and found the details for this place, which is basically a big warehouse selling end of line lights and seconds and that kind of thing. I had bought one lamp from a big DIY place not long after I moved in as I at least wanted to put one up in the bathroom. Turns out that like so many of those chain DIY places, the staff hadn't a clue/didn't care about what they told me and what I bought isn't suitable for a bathroom at all. So, I'll put that up in the bedroom, which is also where I have the sewing machine set up and it'll be a good worklight and I can continue to just use the bedside lamp for those times when I don't need a bright light. The place I was at today had two guys who really did seem to know what they were on about and they were very helpful. I dithered about the light for the kitchen for ages and finally chickened out of getting the blue one and went for a more standard three-light arrangement. It had nice white glass fittings but one was broken and another broke when he was taking it down off the wall but he had already told me that since they couldn't find any others of that type I could take a different colour glass fitting from a different light if I wanted so I got some nice bright orangey/yellow ones instead. I may go back and get that blue one I was looking at though - I wasn't sure it would provide enough light for the whole kitchen but I might go back with the chair cushions and if the colour matches well enough get it anyway and see if it would work. I'll wait and see how money goes for the rest of the month. As well as those I bought a very simple red lampshade for the sitting room. It is very slightly damaged on one side at the top but you can't really see it, I could just feel where the chip was when I was holding it. And I got a properly enclosed one for the bathroom (plus an explanation from the guy on what to look out for in future which was handy). At a grand total of 85 euro for all three, including bulbs (the three bulbs for the kitchen light are energy saving ones, the other two just ordinary incandescents but sure spares are always handy to have) I think I didn't do too badly. I saw about five other lights which I really liked, some of them more expensive but all for far less than you would pay in a 'normal' shop. I got chatting to another customer while I was there and she said she had also used the services of an electrician they had given her the name for before and he was really good and very competitively priced so I also got his number from them. Always handy to have that kind of a contact. All in all it was an hour very well spent.

As it was raining this morning we didn't do any outside work in the garden. I wouldn't have minded but the head gardener decided we would work on seed saving instead. During the year at whatever time the seeds are ready for harvesting the flowers or stems are put into paper bags and then during the winter the seeds are actually removed and sorted. So today I tried to get at the seeds for meadowsweet, which are so tiny it's impossible to completely separate them from their hulls. Then I did something which was a member of the mauve family and finally some hollyhocks, just so I could have something easy to do before I went home.

In two weeks time there won't be any working in the garden but two of the members of the 'workers' cirlce' are going to give a talk on propogating, which should be interesting. On that Saturday I won't have to be there until 11 o'clock so I am going to take the chance to go to a shop I found up the road from me which sells wallpaper and carpets etc. The bathroom here has horrible lino tiles laid on the floor and I'd really like to get proper tiles in there (with proper grouting rather than the lines of dirt which seem to line the lino tiles in there at the moment) but although I could probably get tiles relatively cheaply, getting someone to fit them could be expensive so I thought in the meantime maybe I could try buying an offcut of ordinary lino and just laying that myself. I couldn't do a worse job that what's down there at the moment I don't think and at least with one piece of lino the dirt wouldn't be collecting in the cracks. Besides, a gray floor is just depressing to look at. They also had large offcuts of carpet in that shop (I window shopped for about twenty minutes there last Sunday) and I was thinking I might get one big enough to use as a rug in the sitting room. It would protect the wooden floor somewhat and be a bit cosier in winter I think. I'll have to measure the floor space but they had fairly big pieces for about fifteen euro so it might be possible to do. Rugs to cover that much space, even cheap ones, cost at least sixty or seventy euro and hundreds if I wanted to try and buy one I actually like. I was half thinking it might be possible to use the sewing machine to sew an edging onto a piece of carpet but I'm not sure how feasible that would be. Am getting caught up in a lot of plans at the moment but it's good to keep chipping away at the various things to do around the place so that I can make the place a bit more homey for myself. The lights will make a big difference and as soon as they are installed I am going to invite some people over for dinner.

Weekend

I had a lovely weekend. Up early on Saturday to get to the market before heading to the community garden. Picked the last of the tomatoes there then pulled up and chopped up the remaining plants and removed the stakes and string which had been holding them up. Picked the dried parts of another plant as well. I did ask what it was but since I didn't have anything to write with the name didn't stay with me for long. Some kind of an oriental which had a lovely scent to it, a bit citrusy and really good. The master gardener said that we'll harvest the seeds out of those dried pods on one of the days in winter when it might be too cold to work outside. The parts of the plant which weren't dried were chopped right back then. And finally I dug a big hole so that the buckets of jerusalem artichokes packed in sand could be buried. We put the buckets in, covered them with other slightly bigger buckets placed upside down over them and then packed the earth back in around and over them.

Then I had an hour to myself at home before heading out to a Darkness Ritual. This was at the same place I went to the Harvest Thanks Ritual at the end of September. This time the idea was all about accepting the darkness of winter into your life and letting go. It was a far more introspective ritual than the harvest one was, much more meditative. I didn't enjoy it as much and found it difficult to focus really but when trying to concentrate on what it was in my life that I needed to let go off I found myself thinking that it wasn't letting go I needed to do but rather holding on. I was thinking about my oldest sister, who hasn't spoken to me (or most of my other siblings) for about three years now. As is the way things always go in our family there hasn't been any big argument or anything so there's nothing to work on to try and figure out what the matter is. It sort of started when she was going through a hard time after her hubby had been sick and she really just wanted to retreat from the world for a while so we gave her her space as requested but she just got less and less interested in keeping in touch with any of us at all. I persevered for longer than the others, even calling in unexpectedly once but you do get tired of the two minute phone calls which end with a sudden "I have to be somewhere else" and always being the person making contact and when she didn't even bother to show any interest in our youngest sister's wedding I had had enough. I've been through so many stages on this whole roundabout that it was impossible to keep track. I'd decide it was her tough luck and if she wanted to be like that then fine, whatever. Then it'd be her birthday and I'd think well, I'll just ring and say happy birthday. Or I heard her hubby was sick again (and bear in mind, this is a guy who married into my family when I was nine, so he has been around for a long part of my life) and would ring to find out how he was. I don't think I actually managed to speak to her for the last three years or so though. Either no-one or her hubby would answer the phone. But last week I had a really strong compulsion to just phone her and ask if we could start talking again. Don't know where it came from although part of it was because I realised that I hadn't turned my calendar onto October and I know it was because I didn't want to have to think about her birthday (it didn't work and her birthday really preyed on my mind this year, more so than usual). So, I decided that the thing I needed to let go off was all the hurt and anger and grief that this whole situation has caused me and then I just needed to make contact with her. So when I came home after the ritual I gave her a ring, her middle son was just heading out so answered the phone and almost immediately said "hang on, here she is now" (I'll never know whether, if her hubby had answered the phone, she might have realised it was me and made signs at him that she wasn't there, which I suspect happened more than once in the past) and put me on to her. I didn't go with the self-pitying, somewhat dramatic "please can we start talking again" in the end but was able to use halloween as my excuse for ringing and start a conversation by asking if she had dressed up or done up the house or anything. It was a bit of a stilted conversation in a way, felt like it was taking a lot of effort, if you know what I mean, but we did talk (well, mostly I talked) for about twenty minutes which is a good start. I've just decided that I'm going to ring her at least once every two months and talk to her whether she wants it or not and that I am not going to give her the opportunity to turn around in 20 years time and tell me that it was all because I was so wrapped up in my own life that I was never interested in what was happening with her. I'm just going to keep on keeping in touch and she can like it or lump it but if she wants to lump it, she's going to have to say that directly.

There you have it. Despite the fact that I didn't like the ritual as much as the last one, I am glad I went and have signed up for the solstice one in December. Something good (hopefully) came of the whole thing at least. And I do really like the idea of marking the seasons in some way.

Yesterday then I had my fabulous session of trying on clothes I thought would still be too small but weren't. While doing that I cleared a proper space in my wardrobe to store the dried goods I've been trying to stock up on a bit. I also started a spreadsheet to make sure I keep track of exactly what I have and when it's good until. It was good to see it all in one place. I realised that I have plenty of pasta but really should get some more rice and some other pulses as well. I'm going to ask at the fair trade shop if they can buy in a big sack of rice and depending on how much that is, might just buy one big sack and make it into little ones myself.

After doing that I headed out for a walk. Did the same round as before so about two hours of walking. I'll probably do it again another two or three times (maybe with a slightly heavier bag) before looking at a different route.

When I got home I did the few bits of washing up from the day before, put some pasta leftovers covered with cheese into the oven to heat for dinner and chopped up some apples for the dehydrator. Once I had eaten, I set about chopping stuff up to make tomato ketchup and while that was cooking I chopped veg to make soup, using up the curly kale that I had brought home from the garden. I also chopped up veg and tomatoes to make a sauce for lunches during this week. Once the ketchup was made and bottled (only two 120 ml jars, I swear I get less and less out of that recipe every time I make it) I put the onions, courgettes, garlic and tomatoes on to cook with a load of herbs and when that had softened up well I added in some chopped chicken breast. I left it cooking but it never really seemed to start smelling good so I finally dumped a slug of balsamic vinegar and a few crushed dried little chillies into it. It remained uninspiring but I got four good sized portions out of it. What a difference a night makes though. I had the first one for lunch today, just bought a roll to eat it with and it was delicious. I think I'm finally starting to be able to use chillies in cooking properly.

I left some porridge steeping in milk overnight and had the first porridge of the winter for breakfast this morning. Hmmm, I love porridge. Off to put more steeping now for tomorrow and will add a handful of the dried berries from earlier this year. They were a delicious addition this morning.

WW - week 12

1.1kg down today, which is nearly 2.5lbs. Total loss since August = 7.4kg or 16.3lbs.

I decided to give myself something to aim for yesterday by trying on my good hiking trousers and seeing how far I needed to go to fit into them. Haven't worn them for probably two and a half years. And they fit. Actually, they're even a tiny bit loose so I'll have to find the belt now too. I'm sooo pleased. I pulled out a pile of trousers to try on and there's one other pair of nice casual black trousers that fit again as well. And some tracksuit bottoms, which I bought in Aldi once but then couldn't get into when I got them home. New wardrobe without having to spend any money (now)!

WW - week 11

Down half a kilo today. Total weight loss since August 6.3 kg or 13.889 lbs - I'm going to call that my first stone!

More chutney.

I've spent the whole day at home, didn't get out for my normal Sunday morning walk as I slept for nearly 12 hours last night and so wasn't awake until after 10 this morning. I bought loads of tomatoes yesterday - they're nearly finished for this year I think and I wanted to make a couple of more batches of chutney and some more ketchup. Before deciding whether to go out for a walk or not, I actually counted up all the time I would need considering a batch of chutney needs to cook for three or four hours and I knew if I went out I would probably not get both done so I just stayed in. I had to do the washing up that I had let pile up for the last couple of days first though. I hate it when I do that and yet every once in a while it still happens. Since I was doing that I also decided to scrub the sink with bicarb and lemon and since I was doing that I thought I might as well use the rest of the bicarb to give the cooker a good scrub. And then since I was doing that I gave the butcher's block type thing that the cooker is on top of a good scrub too.

And that is how the day has gone really. I've done a load of things I've meant to do for ages but not because I actually intended to do them but rather because something else I was doing made it make sense to then do the next thing.

Once I'd chopped the first lot of stuff for chutney making (this time round I used tomatoes, pumpkin, quince and apple) I set it to cooking and then sat and read my book for about twenty minutes. I have to read Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace before Tuesday. It's almost 1000 pages long (and that's only if you leave out the foreword and all the footnotes) but we chose such a long book because we didn't have any meeting in September and so had plenty of time to read it. I've actually had the book since the beginning of September but just cannot get into it. It took me about two weeks to finish the first chapter and today I've only managed to read about thirty pages.

Of course, the silver lining of this situation is that I now have a lovely clean apartment. I took down the tomato plant finally (and used what few tomatoes I had gotten, mostly still green, in the chutney), and moved the telephone table and frame that had been supporting it out into the hall. I was going to move it into the kitchen and put my herbs onto it but I realised that it will fit exactly into the space beside the door which currently has nothing but a stool which seems to accumulate piles of rubbish on it so I'm going to clear off that stuff tomorrow and put the telephone table in place there. I also put up a couple of nails to hang a picture and more securely hang up the notice board. And since I had the hammer out I put up a nail to hang the shoe horn on and another one in the kitchen to hang the dustpan and brush from. These are two things that I constantly feel like I'm tripping over and it feels good to finally have a place for them to go. Since the plant was moved from the window in the sitting room I swapped the small couch and armchair around again so the room feels more spacious again as well.

The first batch of chutney turned out really well I think. The second one has pumpkin, tomatoes and pears and apples. It was a bit runny when I put it into the jars and could probably have done with cooking for another while but I was just ready for the days cooking to be over. I still haven't made ketchup but might try to get that done tomorrow after work.

I could only work for two hours in the biogarten yesterday as I had to go to a friend's house in the afternoon and needed to catch a train. I started off picking up nasturtium seeds from the ground around where the plants are/were. Had to fill one bowl with the brown ones (already fully dried) and one with the green ones (not dried yet). Then I packed some weird root vegetable which had been harvested in sand. I've forgotten the name of it now, some South American plant I think. After that I packed a few buckets of jerusalem artichokes in sand as well. And then I pulled out the stakes and supporting cords from the tomato plants which had already been removed. Since I was leaving early I didn't expect to get to take anything home but H.M. the master gardener told me to make sure I got something. I took some jerusalem artichokes (called topinambur here), a small bunch of parsley and some chard. H.M. told me his favourite way to cook chard is in a pasta bake with sheeps cheese and some tomatoes so I decided to do that today. I cooked some pasta first and put it into an overproof dish. Then I sauteed the chopped up stems of the chard for a few minutes. I added an onion and a couple of cloves of garlic and then the chopped up leaves as well and left the whole lot for a few minutes while I chopped up some tomatoes. I mixed the chard and onion into the pasta and added some feta on top of that. Then I left the tomatoes to cook down for about fifteen minutes after which I poured them on top of the pasta as well. Then the whole lot went into the oven while I did the dishes and tidied up for about the fifth time today. I had hoovered very thoroughly earlier but decided not to wash the floors until tomorrow but then everything else was so nice and clean I couldn't stand it and since the pasta wouldn't come to any harm if it was left it a bit longer I decided to wash all the floor as well and then had a shower myself as well so that when I sat down to dinner, although it was later than planned, I felt really good. It was delicious too.

So it was all in all a very nice weekend, even though I didn't get a walk in or manage to read my book. I don't even want to bother but I have to try and get a couple of hundred pages read before Tuesday if I possibly can. I love book club and it has meant that over the last year I've read lots of book I never would have otherwise but goodness gracious it is difficult sometimes to keep at it.

P.S. The Germans don't have a separate word for slugs, they're just called naked snails. How could you not love such a logical language?

Posting

I have a few dozen ideas for posts that I would like to write but never seem to be able to drag one to the forefront of my head and focus on it for long enough to actually get it written while I have time. I think I need to start making notes in a small notebook whenever the thoughts pop into my head and then I can use that as a reference later.

Work has been okay the last day or so after starting off very badly this week. I think in a way I had such a great weekend that the crapness of Monday felt even worse than it was. And it was pretty bad with one of the managers deciding to display his extremely unpleasant and arrogant side. I actually spent some time on Monday updating my CV. Need to tweak it a bit more and then do the English version as well. I've calmed down enough by now that I'm not going out looking for a job immediately. But I want to be prepared just in case anything came up out of the blue (which I think only happens in films) and just in general to make myself feel less trapped. The thing is that for what I do, I'm really very well paid at the moment (partially due to having transferred within the company from a country with far higher take home salaries which they had to try and get close to matching). But being sensible, until I have cleared my debt I cannot afford to earn much less than I am now.

Money is occupying my mind a good bit these days. I would like to try and save enough so that by this time next year, I have enough in saving to be able to pay off the rest (i.e. the last eight months) of my loan. As it's a fixed rate loan I can't pay it off early without having to pay penalties, but I'd be happy just to have the money saved up and earning a little bit of interest while the last months were being paid off. I don't see much scope for saving much until the new year but am planning to budget and track properly for November and December so that I will hopefully be well placed to start in January.

I've been reading a bit about what's called prepping (survivialism but not quite as extreme to my mind) and trying to get my head around all that as well. It's hard to decide how much I want to do. I do think that in my lifetime we're going to see huge changes in the world and it seems only sensible to make preparations to deal with whatever my come. And there is lots of stuff that can be done before you start having to consider finding somewhere to build a bunker. And the whole idea of living a simple life has a lot in common with the whole area of prepping in terms of self-reliance at least. On the other hand, a so-called simple life is generally one in which you're trying to rid yourself of an excess of material possessions and prepping involves accumulating things in a manner which comes a bit too close to hoarding.

I feel like I've been on a roller-coaster my whole life when it comes to hoarding. As a teenager and in my early twenties I almost never threw things out (pop psychology will say it's because of losing my mum at age 11 and I think there's a lot in that idea). However, by my early twenties I had at least stopped buying so much new stuff. For example, it was around that time that I decided I was only going to buy souvenirs that had a practical use. So plastic Eiffel Towers were out, nice mugs were in. Slowly but surely I gained the ability to be able to get rid of things. I still have some things which no-one else would keep but at this stage I've kept them for so long it's particularly difficult. So they are shoved in a cupboard to be dealt with someday.

Where was I? Oh yes. So, in my mid-twenties when I started to find out more and more about simple living, voluntary simplicity and frugal living one of the first things that always popped up was to consider if you really need everything you have. And now I'm in a place where I'm contemplating filling the place up with stuff again. It's all very frustrating although I'm sure I will find a balance eventually.

I bought a tent during the summer at a shop that was closing down for renovations. This is a good thing to have if I was ever in a situation where I did have to run for the hills, isn't it? But, in the meantime I have persuaded my brother to come camping next summer for a few days. So I will get a use out of it and learn some new skills, while hopefully having a lot of fun too.

And when it comes to food, after spending a long time getting to a stage where I didn't have cupboards full of stuff that ended up getting thrown out because it had gone off, I'm back somewhere that insists it is a good idea to have supplies on hand. But now I know that it's essential to actually use up what you've bought in a timely manner. I have a few packets of pasta and rice tucked away but am thinking of hunting down an Asian supermarket to buy a large bag of rice, for example, and break it up into smaller packets for storage and use. First, I'm going to ask at the fair trade shop if they can order in large sacks of stuff. Because sticking to the principles I try to keep to in terms of organic/fair trade/local is important as well, I think.

Part of my difficulty at the moment in posting is that I start writing about one thing, drift onto another and then don't know how to end. I envy those people who are able to write well-constructed, well-thought out blog posts. But, obviously, not enough to bother doing the same myself! Maybe one day.

In the meantime maybe I'll add a few lists to the sidebar to keep me focused on what I want to be doing and what I have achieved. But first, I think some sleep is in order.

Book meme

I've never really done memes (which I always call me-me in my head because I think that makes much more sense than rhyming it with theme. These are after all all about ME) but I thought this one was fun when I saw it. I don't tag other people either but feel free to do this on your blog if you like.

Pick up the nearest book of at least 123 pages..

The rules are:

Open the book to page 123, find the 5th sentence and post the next 3 sentences...

I thought my nearest book was The Nonesuch by Georgette Heyer (I really, really need to get reading that book club book soon but in the meantime I am nearly finished re-reading all the GH books I have) but then realised that Jane Grigson's Vegetable Book was on my other side and much closer so here it is:

Put the vegetables through the mouli-legumes to make a puree and return it to the pan. Reheat, mixing in the butter and a little milk to make a good consistency that is soft, but not at all sloppy. You can also use this recipe as a basis for soup.