Getting things done

Not much of anything much but a good day all round.

Walked for the best part of two hours.

Put the leek and (now) potato soup on to cook when I got home and had the last two squares of that bar of choclate to keep me going. Phoned a friend and ended up chatting to her for just over an hour but while we were talking I was wandering around the kitchen clearing off the table and generally tidying up all the little bits and pieces that I seem to accumulate very quickly on the kitchen table.

Ate my lunch while reading this month's book club book, Handmaid's Tale.

Did the washing up that was there and made pastry. Chopped up the apples that I bought last week to dry but that I hadn't gotten around to doing. Boskoop are really great, love their taste and I think they dry really well but I have now discovered that at this time of year, they really don't keep very well. Even though they were only a week old some of them were too far gone to be any use. Lesson learned. I need to pay more attention to what apples are good when.

Came in to the computer to watch the latest episode of Grey's Anatomy but what was listed on surfthechannel as the latest episode turned out to be somebody's home video of them doing a workout. So I settled for watching Gossip Girl instead.

After that, back into the kitchen to roll out the pastry and make jam tarts.



Also made a quiche which I need to go and take out of the oven soon.

Washed the salad I bought yesterday and took the lambs lettuce I bought last week out of the fridge, fully expecting to have to throw it out and knowing I shouldn't have left it there so long. But three cheers for Tupperware (plus a bit of a dose of it's kind of scary, how do they do that), the lambs lettuce which has been sitting in a salad crisper for the past week was absolutely perfect. I didn't have to throw out one single bit. I chopped up the smoked chicken breast (which is delicious), some is gone back in the fridge to have with a stirfry tomorrow, some went into the quiche and some into my salad. And opened a thing of feta cheese which I bought ages ago but was still a few months within date. Most of it went into the quiche but with some for my salad this evening. The remainder of a jar of dried tomatoes which was still in the fridge also went into the quiche along with some onions and the eggs I bought last week. I used up the jar of jam which I also had open in the fridge for the jam tarts. Used up the last of a jar of mustard in the salad dressing as well and dug out the bottle of martini that has been there who knows how long and treated myself to a very large glass of it. Well, I did say that I was going to use up all the stuff that was in the fridge and freezer and that allowed me to make use of one of the ice-cubes from the freezer as well!

Kept at the washing up as I was dirtying things too so now there are only the dishes from my dinner to do.

I also put some seeds on to sprout. First time in my new sprouter, hope it works. I tried this a few months ago in a jar with muslin over the top of it but I was a bit hazy on exactly what to do and ended up with a smelly mouldy mess. So I decided to just buy one of the ready-made jars with a fancy top and, more importantly, proper instructions.

Update: just back from the kitchen where I went to rescue the quiche and just went ahead and did the last bits of washing up. That feels good. My brother just rang as well and that was a nice chat. The quiche smells absolutely fabulous but apart from picking at a prominent piece of feta, I have resisted. The very dark looking bits aren't burnt by the way, that's just some dried tomato which floated to the top of the egg.


And now I'm going to spend a half-an-hour reading a few blogs, drinking a cup of tea and having a jam tart. By then my apples should be finished and I can switch off the dehydrator before going to bed. I didn't do the ironing but not everything was quite dry anyway - I will do my trousers tomorrow before work and the rest when I come home.

Food for next week:

Monday
Breakfast - porridge
Lunch - quiche
Snacks - jam tart, yoghurt with berries, apple
Dinner - salad as starter then stir fry veg and smoked chicken with rice

Tuesday
Breakfast - porridge
Lunch - quiche
Snacks - jam tart, yoghurt with berries, apple
Dinner - salad (assuming I won't finish it all tomorrow) with turkey salami and cheese

Wednesday
Breakfast - smoothie
Lunch - out to a Chinese restaurant with a colleague
Snacks - jam tart, yoghurt with berries, apple
Dinner - quiche

Thursday
Breakfast - porridge
Lunch - bread, cheese, chutney - turkey salami
Snacks - jam tart, yoghurt with berries, apple
Dinner - pasta with tomatoes, onions, carrots and whatever else I find in the cupboard that might be interesting to add

Friday
Breakfast - porridge
Lunch - leftover pasta
Snacks - jam tart, yoghurt with berries, apple
Dinner - no idea, I do still have some potatoes left so if I have the energy maybe some fried potatoes

Sunday

It's Sunday morning, another lovely sunny but not too warm day (it was only 6 degrees when I got up about an hour and a half ago). Started off by doing the washing up which I had left there since Friday morning - after a great week I went and ended it up like that. Typical. It was only a pot, a bowl and two small plates since I haven't really eaten at home since then but still, it's the principle of the thing. Will keep on trying I suppose.

I didn't eat a huge amount of anything yesterday really, had a cheesy bread roll for breakfast on my way to the garden, then a couple of slices of bread and some biscuits there once we were finished for the morning. I came straight home afterwards because I was just so tired. I had woken up shortly after seven but then fell back asleep until after nine which meant I had a dash to the market before heading straight to the garden (late!). Thankfully there wasn't a big queue for the dairy van so I was able to get some milk, yoghurt, cream cheese and two small wedges of cheese reduced in price because they were the last little corners. It is much easier to slice cheese off a nice square piece but the little bit of effort it'll cost me is more than made up for by the at least 1.39 per kilo price reduction. I also bought a half a loaf of spelt sunflower bread, which was my contribution to the after-gardening break. There was a small corner of that left which I took home with me and that, with a small amount of cheese and some chutney along with half a packet of pringles I found in the cupboard and four squares of chocolate, were all that I ate yesterday evening. Actually, once I got home I put a wash on and went straight to bed. I was that tired, I thought I might doze for half an hour and then have some energy for the rest of the day. Conked out completely and didn't wake up until six o'clock.

I still could have gotten up and gone to the supermarket but I decided I didn't need anything badly enough (although I completely forgot I need distilled water for the iron if I'm going to continue my good work of being prepared for the week so now I'll be ironing without steam or trying to decided if boiled water will do just this once) and apart from getting up to hang up the now washed clothes and put another wash on, I did nothing except read for a couple of hours before going back to sleep. No, wait a minute, that's not true, after reading for a couple of hours I got up and in the way that these things happen although I was only getting up to put on the second wash, as it was going to be a hot wash, I decided it would be a good idea to wash the e-cloths I use for washing the floor. I had used the dry sweep one a good bit to tide me over last weekend rather than hoovering properly. So then I decided I would wash the floor properly as well so that I could quickly put the wet cloth in for a good wash too rather than waiting until today to wash the floor and then having the wet cloth sitting in the laundry basket for a week. So I spent a half-an-hour hoovering really well and washing the floors and got my wash on around half-eight. Pushing my luck for having it finished before ten (after which time there's not supposed to be any noise in the building) but at least it was done. And the floors are clean. And then I read for another hour before going to sleep.

I did the same thing this morning as yesterday, woke up around seven but despite thinking I was fully awake, before I managed to get up I had fallen asleep again and didn't wake up until nearly nine. So I got up, hung up the washing that finished last night and did the washing up. Have spent the last hour or so checking a couple of discussion forums, sending a thank-you email to the friend who had me over for dinner on Friday night, checking my emails and worrying about my budget (no matter what way I slice it I have almost no more money to spend this month and won't have any next month either if I'm going to manage to have something for when I go away). I do get what they call lunch vouchers in work. These are vouchers worth 3.07 each and for every day I'm working in the office for at least one hour I get one voucher. I think I have 19 due to me for last month and we should get them by the end of next week. You can use them in local restaurants, we don't have a canteen in work so this is my company's way of subsidising our lunches. The great thing is that most of the supermarkets near me will take them as well as two bakeries near work. They are going to be very useful to have this month for sure.

Once I've finished here I am going to head out and go for a walk and then see where the day takes me. I may peel a few potatoes before I leave so that I can pop them into the rest of the leek soup and have it not long after I come back.

Other market purchases yesterday: onions, turkey salami and a smoked chicken breast, some apples and a lettuce. All in all a modest amount of stuff but more than enough to feed me well throughout the week as long as I stay focused. I have planned to go out to lunch on one day with a colleague but otherwise will be bringing my lunches with me and eating properly at home in the evenings.

Not a bad week

I nearly didn't make it through the work day yesterday without succumbing to cravings to eat chocolate. At about five o'clock though someone offered me a piece of nut cake their mum had made for them and that with a cup of hot chocolate (my second of the day - I don't do that often) kept me going. I decided to stop at the supermarket on the way home though and buy some dark chocolate for today. I needed to buy a few things to get to the minimum charge for using a debit card though but luckily there are selling barilla pasta at half price so I grabbed a load of that and three bars of lindt chocolate (which was also reduced - 23% off) which left me spending just over 10 euro. I also took 10 euro out of the bank this morning as I wanted to make a contribution to a birthday pressie for a colleague and apart from buying a couple of bread rolls this morning I used most of the rest of that tenner to buy more pasta on the way home this evening as well. If you find a bargain, might as well make the most of it and the pasta had a good long best before date on it as well.

Actually I am also pleased that last night and tonight I didn't give in and go and get some takeaway of some kind. I had a kind of stressful day yesterday (expected given that it is month-end in work), ended up working till nine and missing choir and then arrived home to a letter from my friends ex-landlord. My friend, H. who stayed with me for a couple of months and has now moved back to the Black Forest to work there again had been on to me yesterday anyway complaining that his unemployment money still hadn't come through and asking me to ring them to find out why. I did do that but since I don't have a power of attorney for him with them, they could only tell me some documents still needed to be submitted. Since I know I hand delivered those documents myself, it's frustrating to not be able to then get put through to someone who can help me more. Anyway, I've made copies and will send them registered post tomorrow and hopefully that will help. But all in all I was feeling a bit under pressure from his whole situation. He is an alcoholic and has gotten very bad in the past year or two and although I want to help him if I can he causes most of his own problems or at least causes them to get worse by not dealing with the bureaucracy properly and I'm getting sick of him expecting more help and pity to be honest. So when I arrived home to that letter from his ex-landlord (apparently his roommate and so-called friend who was going to take over the flat on his own after H. left has just moved on somewhere else so now the landlord wants not only the four months rent owing to him (which is what he so badly needs the unemployment money for) but also claims that H. now has to pay full rent until the end of August unless he finds someone else to take on the flat as well as repairs for the bathroom boiler and anything else he finds which needs fixing) it was just too much. And even more frustrating that I couldn't get through to H. on the phone. I very nearly went out again to buy something very greasy for dinner but then just decided no, I am going to tell him I am staying out of this problem and he has to sort it for himself and I made myself some toast and had that with some cheese, chutney and the rest of the turkey salami. I had two squares of chocolate as a dessert too.

I went straight to bed afterwards to read for a while and tried intermittently to get through to him on the phone but couldn't and finally I actually just wrote him a letter. I sent him on the landlord's letter and told him that I couldn't help him with this problem and he would have to sort it out for himself. I also told him that he was going to have to start taking a bit more responsibility for his problems because I am not sure how much more I can take and that no matter how much I love him I will cut contact with him before I allow all of his shit to destroy me. I hope I hit the right balance between letting him know I was serious while still letting him know that if he does try to sort himself out I will support him. I had to write that letter although I'm sure it's going to hit him hard. It shouldn't as I've actually had that conversation with him twice over the last weeks but I'm fairly certain he just wasn't listening (or didn't want to) or else just didn't remember it. Anyway, it's in writing now and fingers crossed he will be sober when he reads it and that way he'll have heard it drunk and sober so no excuses for not remembering.

But enough of all that. This is supposed to be about the positive aspects of this week. I have made and eaten breakfast at home every day (and have porridge oats soaking in the fridge for tomorrow morning). I have brought lunch into work and eaten it every day. I have brought yoghurt and fruit into work to have as snacks and have eaten what I have brought every day. I have made dinner at home every evening. I have done the washing up every day. I've put away the washed dishes every day. I finally got around to taking out my wee wipes again and have been using them. I walked home from work one day.

I haven't eaten any takeaway or canteen food although again this evening I really wanted to stop for a pizza or something on the way home. I had leek soup in the fridge but despite loving leeks I just haven't been able to get enthusiastic of the thought of another big bowl of that. But then I remembered that I also needed to use up the rest of the cream cheese I got last weekend so I fried up a couple of small onions, drained a load of leeks out of the soup and bunged them into the frying pan as well, mixed the garlic and chive cream cheese with some milk and added that as well and made enough pasta for two large portions, which means I've also taken care of lunch for tomorrow.

I did go over budget but not by too much. I have put a wash on this evening which gives me a bit of a start on the chores at the weekend. I finished the milk and the youghurt and the cream cheese. In short, more or less everything I bought to eat this week has been finished - no throwing food out. I do still have some leek soup left but I will put some potatoes into that on Saturday and it will make a nice lunch. I'm invited to a friend's house for dinner tomorrow which I realised is the first time I will be going to dinner in one of my 'new' friends' houses (i.e. new since I moved here) and that is exciting. And I wrote a difficult letter. And posted it. And today I also sent an email to my oldest sister (the one who stopped talking to most of my family for no apparent reason a couple of years ago - I decided last year that I don't care if she doesn't want to talk to me I am going to talk to her and never let her get away with saying it was because I never made an effort, but it's hard to talk to someone on the phone who barely gets a monosyllabic sentence or two out so I'm trying a few emails now as well).

Actually I did go over budget by more than planned because yesterday I also booked a flight to go home for the weekend at the end of the month. It was a cheap flight but I am very happy that I have booked it - when I phoned my brother to see if he was around that weekend he sounded so happy that I would be going to stay with him in his new apartment that it just made me day really. I rang him again yesterday evening after having written that letter and we had a good chat.

All in all, not an earth-shattering week but I feel like I accomplished a lot of just exactly those extremely simple things that most people take for granted and that I just don't always do.

No-spend day

I read a few finances-based blogs a while back and one of them was using a particular method for organising your finances and getting out of debt. I did click through to the link but to get the information and join the discusssion forums you had a pay a subscription so I didn't bother. What she did mention often on her blog was no-spend days. Without reading what the 'official' idea behind this was it seemed to me to be a good idea. In fact it's amazing how easy it is to feel like there's something wrong if I don't take my purse out at all during the day. Even if it's just to buy something in the bakery for breakfast on my way to work (which happens more often than not).

Today was a proper no-spend day. Despite staying up much later than planned last night (I didn't finish the filing but did cut up three of the t-shirts while watching 2012 - a film which wasn't really worth staying up late for at all) I got up in time this morning to hoover up all the glass from the dish that fell off a cupboard last night, have a nice long shower to wake myself up and cook myself breakfast. I bought a goose egg at the market at the weekend and scrambled that. It was HUGE! With two slices of sunflower seed bread toasted and slathered with butter I was definitely full before leaving the house so absolutely no excuses to stop in the bakery. I also washed the pots from last night and took the recycling stuff down to the bins.

I have deliberately not gone to the bank again as I have definitely already spent as much as I had budgeted for this week but I know if there is cash in my purse I will find something to spend it on. So I have 1.83 in small change and that's it. Mid-morning I was contemplating whether or not I would use some of that to get some chocolate from the machine in work (which definintely isn't the kind of nice dark chocolate which would best satisfy any chocolate cravings) when I remembered that I hadn't finished a bar of chocolate last week. There were still two squares left in my desk drawer so I had them instead and then a short while later an apple.

It helped that it was fairly busy in work as well. I had nothing else (except for some water, I usually get through 1.5 litre bottle during the day) until lunchtime, when I walked to a nearby park and ate some of the pasta and veg that I made yesterday. For a snack in the afternoon I had brought some yoghurt (I still have half a jar of dried redcurrant and blackcurrants left from last summer so I'd put a good handful of them into it as well) and I also had a few brazil nuts and a cup of hot chocolate (healthwise no better if not worse than eating chocolate I suppose, but moneywise, much better since it's free). I walked home from work and ate another apple while doing that and am feeling very good about myself for having eaten everything I set out for myself this morning withouth leaving something out because I'd replaced it with an unplanned something else. Have some leek soup heated up and waiting for me now. I think I have definitely achieved my 5-a-day today!

Expenses

I thought it would be interesting to write down in black and white what the actual fixed expenses I have are. This is all in my excel budget spreadsheet as well but I suspect that I'm so used to looking at that, I don't really see it any more.

Rent - 560
Gas/electricity - 35 (usually get a little bit back after the annual readings are done)
Pension - 150
Bus/train ticket - 55
Home phone/internet - 26 plus whatever I spend on calls

Annual expenses (divided by 12 and rounded to give monthly amount)
House insurances - 17
Travel insurance - 7
Bahncard - 18 (gives me 50% discount on train travel)
Choir - 12
Rental association - 5

Total (not including servicing debt): 885

That's quite a bit really. I also try to put about 15 a month aside for preserving supplies. Still being fairly at the beginning stage of preserving my own stuff I need to build up a bit more of a stash of jars as well as replacing lids as necessary. Not to mention someday I would like to get a pressure canner and a much bigger dehydrator than the one I currently have.

My aim this month is again to spend as little money as possible so that I have a good amount left at the end of the month - I would like to be able to transfer at least 100 extra to my credit card. However, I do need to pay two dentist's bills so will need to keep to a strict budget to achieve this. I still have a few things I need to finish from the freezer and did buy some cheese, apples and veg at the weekend so I really shouldn't need to buy anything more along the lines of food for at least a week. And will perhaps only need some more cheese and milk at that stage.

I wanted to do a two-day detox over this weekend but haven't done so. I did have some chocolate on Saturday but that was the last of it and apart from a couple of biscuits left over from Christmas that I found yesterday (thank goodness for tupperware - they were as good as new) I ate nothing sweet yesterday. I still have a few biscuits left and just had a couple with a cup of tea so hopefully that will stave off any sugar withdrawal headaches. I have a pile of leeks to make soup with, a bunch of chard which I plan to add to a tomato-based pasta sauce and that will give me lunches and dinners for the rest of the week with bread and cheese and chutney to keep a bit of variety going as well. I'll see if the stress of month end (which means billing needs to be done in work) makes me long to reach for chocolate and potentially buy some good dark chocolate to get me through that without eating too much.

Now, I did very little of what I planned to do yesterday. I bought ten folders on Saturday and was determined to do all the filing that I have essentially been ignoring since I moved here. I have a suitcase full of stuff on the living room floor and I am sick of looking at it. I had promised myself that I would do it yesterday no matter how long it took but I didn't even start it. So my reward of spending today reading my library books and with only the ironing as a chore is out the window. I am going to do the ironing now (it's not something I actually do very often but I'm getting sick of needing to be up a few minutes early every day just so I'll have something ironed to wear to work). Then I think I'll see how it goes. It is another gorgeous spring day and a nice walk in the park, although it was supposed to be part of my reward for having finished the filing yesterday, might still need to happen just to get some fresh air into my brain!

Getting stuff done

Sunday

13.30: the estate agent who has his offices in our back courtyard rang the doorbell, surprised he is here today but that was great as he had taken in a package for me during the week and I was able to go down and collect it

14.15: have managed to do all the washing up, wipe down the counter and washing machine and put back the stuff that normally lives there (have to take it off when I'm using the machine and this is working out well as it means everything gets cleared off and wiped down at least once a week)

14.25: am enjoying a quickly put together lunch of bread, cheese and chutney and am on to my second cup of herbal tea


Monday

16.18: have done ALL the ironing, even bedclothes (always such a pain to do but I should make more of an effort as it does make them fold up smaller, handy when you don't have much storage space) and have put everything away, including the clothes horse which sometimes seems to be in permanent residence on the sitting floor. I've also put the leek soup on to cook and have made another quick lunch of bread, cheese, chutney and herbal tea. And I've sorted out the t-shirts I bought last summer which are now too big for me - I need to chop these up before I start wearing them again as they really are too big for me. I bought cheap t-shirts last year knowing they wouldn't last long, planning to cut them into strips and make a rag rug when then were past respectable use. I still have enough of the size smaller to do me. Am glad to have sorted them out now rather than hanging on to t-shirts that really aren't in great condition and hanging off me.

21.30: did go for a quick walk (just over 30 minutes) and combined it with a trip via the donate old clothes container to get rid of a bag of clothes that my lodger left here to be gotten rid of. Before I left I cleared off the 'day bed', which has been the main couch in my living room for the last year and dumped all the stuff out of the suitcase onto that. Brought the suitcase straight down to the cellar - no excuses anymore, all that stuff needs to be filed and put away properly before anyone can come over to visit. Put away the ironing board and iron. Took some measurements in my bedroom. I have been using my couch bed as my bed for the past year and although a year ago I was sick of sleeping in a single bed (the 'day bed') now I'm more sick of not having the nice couch I wanted in my living room. I also recently bought another wardrobe and cupboard so that my lodger would have somewhere to put his stuff - he is gone now but does still have some stuff here. I had rearranged my room quickly to fit it in but having taken some measurements I think I see a better way to do it so for sometime in the next month the plan is to move the couch back out into the sitting room, move the day bed back into the bedroom (a pain as it doesn't quite fit through the door so I'll have to take it apart) and basically move the rest of the bedroom furniture around too. I want the living room to be finished (except for painting) finally. Have food cooking as well - swiss chard, carrots, onion, wild garlic, home canned tomatoes, lots of pepper and herbs. That'll go nicely with pasta for lunches.

I got april fooled

Well and truly caught out. Wednesday and Thursday were much cooler days than we've been having recently, temperatures in the morning down to 4 or 5 again rather than the 10 or 11 we've been getting used to over the last few weeks. And I'd seen pictures and heard about the blizzards in Ireland and the UK as well as us having a brief sleet and hailstone shower on Thursday afternoon. So on Thursday evening, when I was waiting in the train station to go home and I saw the weather forecast on one of the information screens saying that Friday was going to be extremely cold with temperatures between minus twelve and minus seventeen, I just believed it. When I came home I made sure to close all the windows and I turned on the radiators in all the rooms so that just in case it got below freezing overnight, nothing would freeze up. At seven on Friday morning it was only four degrees so I assumed it would keep getting colder. My sort of half-thought out plan of going out for a long walk didn't seem quite so appealing any more so I switched it to a day of mostly staying in bed reading. I remember texting my brother at around ten to say that the cold weather didn't really seem to be materialising but I think it was late afternoon before I copped on that it wasn't just the weathermen making a mistake - it must have been an april fool's joke. Looks like despite my increasing cynicism over the last few years, I'm still as gullible as ever!