Mental Meanderings

The Day After Yesterday

Sunday was rather fun. I spent most of the day in the kitchen. My pasta was a bust. I prepared it too early so it ended up really dry. Next time I'll boil the pasta first and prepare it last once everyone is here rather than before they arrive. The salad and eggs however were beautiful. My sister Tracy asked where I got the recipe and I couldn't help but laugh. I don't generally use recipe's, back of the box cooking instructions for cakes etc. but other than that it's all by touch and taste.

I know how to mix compatible flavors and textures for effect so I frequently create lovely concoxtion you wouldn't normally have. Yesterdays significant new recipe is the eggs. It's a family recipe to hard-boil eggs, put the yolk into a mixture of mayonnaise, and curry, mix it all together and then spoon the mix back into the egg whites. This time since I'd done a ceasar salad with chicken and a chicken pasta I cut up some chicken and mixed it with ceasar salad dressing instead of mayonnaise. It was beautiful.

The ceasar salad was basic, cos and hydro lettuce, tomato, cucumber, chicken. No onion (I never use onion when cooking because I hate onion) I skipped the bacon, I had a whole unopened packet and I only needed one strip for the salad so I didn't both about it, I also didn't add croutons and on afterthough the bacon and croutons would have perfected the ceasar salad. I did add cheese, not parmasen because I don't much like the tang of parmasen but regular mainland tasty shredded. It tasted great and I have plenty left over for lunch today because I prepared so much of it.

My sister Amanda didn't end up coming after all that. It was getting on to five when we decided to call her so I'd know if we needed to wait dinner much longer. I don't know why she didn't come, she was definately planning too. I suspect my mother is going to chew her out about it. Those Sunday's are family days that I started up because the connection with family is very important to me. As such all our family schedule their weeks around those Sunday's. Missing it means you better have a good reason.

My Grandma missed it too. She's got the flu. It's her 73rd birthday this Friday so I hope she's feeling better by then. My mother and I are planning to take her out on Thursday (Mum works all day Friday) to celebrate. I've already got her birthday card and I'm trying to think of something special to give her.

So we didn't end up seeing any movies. I gave my sister Tracy the Star Wars video's I'd inheritted from my brother. It was good to be able to give it to family, especially since she wanted Star Wars and had made sounds about being jealous that I had the trilogy on DVD. Since I'd bought it on DVD I had wondered what I would do with those video's. I couldn't give them to a stranger or sell them because they came from Gaelon but giving them to Tracy puts them in a good home.

Yesterday ended up being great fun. My ex-step-father (lol, it's a long story) Rob stayed for dinner but he helped me out with a few things around the house. Not so much because I wanted to do stuff that day but he'd come over to check out the bathroom because we are in the planning and budgeting process of renovations. We are planning on gutting the bathroom and he was a bit worried that there might not be a cement base under the bath. It'll be an added expense if we pull up the bath to find nothing but the earth under the house. There is an access point in the bathroom so it is possible. Oh well. It's getting done, it's just a matter of getting the money together. Renovations done in bit parts. lol

Anyway, Tracy gave me an old annex she had in her old house. We set that up over the swingset out the back and the backyard is starting to look like a back yard rather than the jungle it used to resemble. Now to level out the pool put in the footpath down the side and create the pond for which I already have the rocks and basins. Not to mention tidy all the unused things off the back porch and I'll have a backyard I can really be proud of and where the kids will have lots of fun.

Rob also helped me move a cupboard into the cavity we created in the toilet. We'd moved a half height cupboard from there into the kitchen on which I now have the microwave and we've now moved the laundy cupboard into the toilet so that's where I'll keep all the things from that cupboard and it opens up the laundry a little more. The cupboard used to take up a lot of room in there.

Other than doing those few things we enjoyed sitting and chatting and eating lollies. Talking trivia (from the Fantales of course) and later after Rob had left we had a hunk fest when Tracy suggested searching for Orlando Bloom online. She loves Orlando and was overawed when I showed her how to do an image search on google. 76,000 pictures relating to Orlando Bloom. She was in heaven. Thankfully we only had to look at about 300 before my mother got sick of doing it and insisted she give up. I suspect she'll be back another day to see the rest. lol

At the end of the night, after the kids were in bed and Tracy had headed home I talked to Mum about finances. She thought I had a lot of money left over from the $100,000 mortgage so I sat with her and showed her how that got divided. She also thought I was doing well on the money from the government so I showed her the budget I had worked out where she can plainly see that I'm just making ends meet. She thinks I shouldn't be depending on Paul's money just incase he stops paying but the truth is, if he doesn't pay then the ends won't meet. I'm working on making budget cuts but knowing where I can cut and paste money takes time. I do know that I'll have to concentrate on my willpower and stop spending. I mean printers, DVD's and takeaway are a no no from now on until all my renovations are finished.

I did however arrange to have her pay my Ancestry.com subscription so I now have access to all the UK census. I've already expanded some of my information just last night and I'm looking forward to being able to knuckle down into it all. I always need a solid, mind-holding project and at the moment Genealogy is it. I had reached a dead end on the 1881 census and spent last week going round in circles because I wanted to work on it but had nothing to work with. Now I do.

Meanwhile, that was yesterday. Nothing interesting today except that I'm not running late. lol Gotta run to get Kaylie ready for school.