BIG-time. Don’t ever recall having this much of a struggle before. But gradually the work’s getting done. And in the meantime, oatmeal biscuits have been baked and a fantastic new dish – a Jamie Oliver roast cherry tomato and sausage bake thingy – tested and given the thumbs up for future experiments.
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Made a batch of raspberry muffins with the raspberries left over from yesterday’s apple & raspberry crumbles. There were exactly enough for 3 raspberries in each muffin, which led to an amusing result: happy-face muffins!
Unfortunately, the happiest of them turned out to be living a lie – he committed suicide off the edge of the bench as I was turning them out onto the cooling rack.
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A good friend gave me a talking-to on Friday about how I’m always trying to do too much. And he’s right. I woke up absolutely hating everything today. The house is too neutral, I was disappointed with the work the landlord had done in the bathroom – he seems to do everything on the cheap and often without consideration for how it looks or functions, so in changing the shower setup so we can shower without crouching, he removed the good quality, perfectly functional and convenient mixer tap and replaced it with two cheap taps, so we no longer have the convenience of staggering, half-asleep into the bathroom & just lifting the mixer tap, knowing it’s on the right temperature – we’re back to faffing around with trying to get the temperature right before we can step in. And they’re the sort of taps where the colour panels on top start unwinding themselves the instant you start to use them. And the plumber put them on the wrong way round so hot says cold and vice versa. Small things, but enough to set off an attack of the glums.
So I spent a fair chunk of the morning thinking about how I can make the house brighter and better and feel more like home than rental accommodation. And I think I’ve at least settled on a palette of red, orange and teal. It’s kind of hard to make stuff go with the oatmealy walls because they’re neutral but not truly neutral – in the kitchen, for example, depending on the time of day and available light, like right now (overcast, indoor lighting on) one wall looks pale yellow, the other looks almost apricot. But it’s the same colour. So I think strong colours are really the only way to tackle it. Anything else will be wishy washy.
On the plus side, this fit of frustration made me get up and do some tidying and cleaning and to write some lists of all the things we need to buy or get done before my parents arrive in about 3 weeks’ time. I put on the CD of Tripod vs the Dragon which we bought at the show in Edinburgh (awesome!) and sorted a bunch of stuff out.
Djelibeybi had to go to Andover in the evening so I caught the train with him as far as Shepherd’s Bush, bought some stuff for dinner and wandered round the shops & finally caved on the beautiful little red & orange Le Creuset Poterie ramekins I’ve been eyeing off for at least 2 years. They were a little more expensive than I’d seen them elsewhere, but I was so desperate for colour that I just thought ’sod it’ and took them to the counter… Where I discovered they were 20% off!
And then I decided to take the evening off too – house to myself, Wiener schnitzel for my tea, I made apple and raspberry crumble in the ramekins and watched a whole DVD of Season 1 of Chuck. Happiness!
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Yeah, it’s been a while, but I’m trying to get back to eating a bit more healthily, so I actually made an effort today and mixed up some red curry paste and then made a chicken curry – nice to eat a proper meal again!
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while baking a 7-apple crumble to salvage the near-extinction apples I bought a couple of weeks back. Peaceful times.
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5th recipe cooked out of my Greek cookbook – chicken with fresh oregano (although I had to do it with dried) – very tasty. I also made some more progress on the Whitman interlude.
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I’m still exploring the new box set I bought last week – well, with 22 CDs, odds are I’ll be exploring it for a good long while to come! – and today I listened again to the disc of Poulenc and Britten songs (composers accompanying), and had my first listen to the Khachaturian disc (composer conducting), which has the Violin Concerto on it. I heard this piece on the radio the other day and was so taken by it that I had to switch it over from clock-radio to real radio to read the track info – so I was very glad to find I already had a recording of it. I’ve also been reacquainting myself with Peggy Glanville-Hicks’ Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird which I have loved ever since I first heard it sung by Gerald English at a composer conference in Melbourne back when I was at uni. It’s a really intriguing work, and relevant to me especially now because of the Whitman songs being similarly fragmentary and miniature.
I’ve also listened to an incredible piano piece – most definitely NOT miniature – by Carolyn Yarnell, called The Same Sky – you can hear it from a link in about the 6th paragraph down in Kyle Gann’s post ‘Aiming My File Cabinets into the Right Student’s Ears’. I’d link to it directly, except that Gann’s post also includes a chunk of very beautiful and daunting-looking score, which is worth seeing. And also because if you don’t know Gann’s work, you should get to his site and have a listen. I highly recommend, in particular, Custer and Sitting Bull, which truly shows how beautiful and emotive microtonal music can be.
And to celebrate djeli’s safe arrival home from the snow, I cooked another new recipe from my big Greek cookbook – ‘Drunken Pork’ – fantastically delicious and easy. Will have to pull this one out for guests sometime, I think!
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Experimenting with recipes from my new Greek cookbook and cooking kn the dark because the lights had blown. Felt adventurous and the results were tasty too.
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with a friend who lives in Paris – lovely random chat. Haven’t done anything like that in ages. Rest of the day was similarly relaxed – slept in, listened to music (Ravel, Faure, Elgar, etc), made big progress on djelibeybi’s hat (very nearly up to the crown shaping), made mushroom soup. And at the end of it am very nearly feeling human again. Shame I don’t have another day off – feeling very close to capable of writing some music, but I think it’d take another sleep to actually get there… when of course I’ll have to go back to work. *sigh*
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with a much-needed 4-hour nap. Also had a massage to counter the tension headache, which has been quite horrific this week, baked oatmeal scones again, did a bit of work on djeli’s new hat (I’ve passed the turn-up and am on to the hat proper now!) and received the first part of my Amazon order – Wii Fit Plus (which obviously I can’t use until the sprained ankle is sorted out) and 3 Beatles albums – Magical Mystery Tour, Revolver and A Hard Day’s Night – woo! Also had a bash at one of my new Wii games – Lego Indiana Jones – which looks like a heap of fun. A lovely, relaxing day – can’t remember the last time I had one of those!
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