It's hot out there!

We're having a heatwave which means we're on day three of about 35° weather, with at least another week of it on the horizon. Not my ideal operating temp by any means. 

I prepared by going to the supermarket on Thursday afterwork and buying a mountain of crisps, crackers, cheese, quark and yoghurt. And actually cooking the lentils I had put to soak on Tuesday and then forgotten about. That's enough for at least three lots of lentil salad. Yesterday after work, I stopped at the farmer's shop and bought a huge oakleaf lettuce and some eggs, and couldn't resist adding a courgette and a couple of carrots, too. 

Apart from boiling some eggs, there should be no need to switch on the cooker at all. If I get up very early tomorrow, I might put on the oven to make some soda bread and a quick cake. We'll see. 

Was trying to insert a screenshot of the weather forecast but apparently chose this picture of my aloe vera from the other day instead. Apps, new phones, fat thumbs, what can I say. Anyway, enjoy this picture of loads of new pups on the aloe that I thought I had really actually killed (it didn't seem to enjoy it's last repotting at all).

 

For now, well, about an hour ago it reached that time of day that still feels surreal for me, having grown up in Ireland. The sun had moved round to the side of the building so it was time to open up the shutters and blinds in the bedroom. But the temperature had passed 30° so it was also time to close all the windows. Even 12 years of living here has not made this any less weird to me. In another hour or two, it'll be time to close down the shutters in the living room and they'll stay that way until almost sunset. At least I did actually go out and water the flowers and the tomatoes on the balcony properly this morning. Don't think any new fruit are coming but have already harvested loads and there is still quite a lot ripening. 

Hope everyone is having a lovely weekend.

Getting back to the simple life

I am having lots of thoughts and feelings at the moment around depression, accepting how severe my depression has actually been over the years and trying to come to terms with how much of my life it has absorbed and the feeling that I have wasted years and years while trying to be kind to myself and accept that it wasn't all my fault, dealing with depression absorbed most of my energy, etc., etc. I have been taking anti-depressants for about a year and a half now and am slowly getting to a point where it feels like I have some energy to spare for just life in general. Very much an ongoing journey and it's going to be a long one. As always, accepting something logically is easier than accepting it emotionally.

In terms of energy, I wouldn't describe myself as full of beans but I am making an effort and managing to get something done every day. Mind you, being on holidays from work helps.

All of this led to me yesterday doing something that I have thought about doing every summer for the last few years but never quite getting around to. I bought two large punnets of strawberries. From a local shop that grows a lot of their own stuff on a small farm on the outskirts of town. And this morning, I washed, hulled and sliced them, and put them into the dehydrator.

Dehydrator trays on scales, 1 punnet worth of strawberries, preserving notebook

I dragged out my preserving notebook to add it in and see, somewhat to my amazement, that the last entry was 2014. Wow. Looking at it logically though, I knew I hadn't done anything since I moved here, and that was 2016. And in the summer and autumn of 2015, I was working my notice at my corporate job, then starting my translating on the side business and trying to recover from years and years of overwork and stress. I'm pretty sure when I moved here I told myself it was ok to not do anything the first summer - I was only working part-time and money was tight, I was trying to settle in and all that. The next summer, I feel like I was determined to do at least some dehydrating but it never happened. I'll have to read back and see if I posted anything in 2018, because I am really not sure why I didn't do anything then, although thinking about it, I was pretty miserable in work and depressed. And then at the start of last summer, I had just switched to my new job, was loving it and starting to really enjoy life when my boss killed himself. It seems hard to believe that that was almost a year ago. I still miss him and think about him, well, not quite every day but on many of them.  Strawberries were his favourite fruit, and remembering the conversation we had when he told me that is probably something that will always come to mind when strawberry season arrives.

When I look back and view it logically, there were almost always reasons why I wasn't getting around to doing some of the things that are important to me in terms of the simple life that I was searching for when I started this blog. It is very hard to accept that it wasn't all just me being lazy or worthless. I'm working on it. Today, at least, it felt good to switch on the dehydrator, and now the smell of strawberries is filling the room. Getting started is always the hardest part and that's done now. So here's to living the simple life I want.

The Organised Mum Method

This will be short, since my phone ate my last return-to-blogging post a couple of weeks ago.

In December a friend mentioned the Organised Mum Method to me. She was very enthusiastic about it and the app you can also get. Note: you don't have to buy the app or the book, everything you need to follow the method is available for free on her website. I was not specially impressed by what my friend told me but a week or so later I checked out the website (mostly so that I could tell her I hadn't just dismissed it out of hand) and actually found it interesting.

I got the app (and the book. And I've pre-ordered the second book.) and am a total convert. But after a bout of depression through most of March and April, it mostly fell by the wayside again. I've been picking it back up over the last few weeks and although I'm not at the stage where I'm doing everything every day, I'm doing something every day. But even if I don't even do all the level 1 jobs every day, every time I do something else it feels good. I may take a while to get to a place where most of it gets done most of the time, but it is true that the cumulative effect has an impact. Would love to get lots of 'you're done for the day' messages but for now I'm just happy every time I tick something off.