11 snow peas, a little bit lost, gnomes, being a snail, apple cake

Sorry to be absent for a couple of weeks, pals. I’ve been sicker than usual and there was not much to write about. This week, however, I have conjured up some everydayness because I miss writing here when I don’t. I got a little bit lost, didn’t I?

Monday 26 August

Doctor’s visit is first cab off the rank today. I’m going to talk about EMDR therapy (the tappy-looky one) as a few people have said it’s a good treatment for PTSD and it might also help improve my other health issues (Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, among other things.) Here’s hoping.

Before that I got dressed and worked on my mitred square knitted blanket for half an hour or so. Also? The lawn mowing men came. Exciting. Noisy. Done. (Breakfast was baked beans on toast, the breakfast of champions.)

Getting dressed: Jeans, op-shopped vintage Yale sweatshirt, Birkenstocks.

(Delicious) shop-bought Ferguson Plarre Apple Cake found out about via Wren the Librarian (who is a very favourite TikToker of mine!)

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Snaffled the Mental Health Treatment Plan referral to see an EMDR therapist. While I was over in that neck of the woods I also went to the Sacred Heart op shop and bought two books and a $3 t-shirt that says CANADA on the front of it. The books were The Writer’s Reader by Brenda Walker ($1) and The Wild Places by Robert MacFarlane ($3).

I posted the long-overdue-blanket to its new owner also, so that felt super good. They have been waiting for aeons to get that blanket and I have finally been well enough to finish and send it. And I popped into the Asian Grocer at Preston Market to buy: my favourite fish curry powder (I use it for vegetable curries, though), achar, Chinese broccoli, egg noodles, chilli garlic sauce and laksa paste.

The afternoon involved contacting the EMDR person, eating a bowl of rice salad and then having a meeting with my Honours supervisor to talk about domestic elements in literature and their relationship to comfort, among other things.

In the evening I ate some more of that rice salad and watched telly, then clocked out very early due to extreme exhaustion.

Above:  Gnocchi with tomato sauce

Tuesday 27 August

Breakfast was baked beans on toast again. I am really liking this for breakfast of late. I top it with plenty of salt and pepp and Sriracha and wolf it down with a  big cup of coffee. Beans are such a good and sustaining brekky, I think. I’m going to make a smoothie soon as well because I have a couple of things to do today and I need to make sure I can manage it. While I was eating  breakfast I watched this cute YouTube video. 

Getting dressed: Jeans, Yale sweat, Birks (again.)

(above) Block stitch crocheted blanket in Canon Ombre Cake Tranquil Colourway

I visited one of the kids and then we went to Saver’s for a little while and then I came home and rested. I got a bunch of great cookbooks there today so I am v pleased. I was less pleased when I drove straight home without going to the shop and realised that I have a) a sink full of dishes to wash and b) no dishwashing liquid. A Little Shop visit might be on the cards, I think. I would walk but it’s very windy and I don’t want to get hit on the head by a tree or one of the many broken chairs that seem to be abandoned on the streets near me. Also? Yesterday when I got home a chicken was on the footpath in front of my house and then it walked ACROSS THE ROAD, people. I know. I know. I couldn’t believe it either. It disappeared into a house and I assumed it knew where it was off to so I left it at that.

(Above: Beautiful op shop book finds)

The books were:
The River Cafe Cookbook by Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers
At My Table by Mary McCartney
Cooking with Colleen McCullough and Jean Easthope
BALI: The Food of My Island Home by Janet De Neefe
Turkish Flavours by Sevtap Yüce (I’ve been looking for this one for ages! It has great recipes for Hummus and Turkish Bread.)
Eat At The Bar by Matt McConnell with Jo Gamvros

No word from thearapyland yet. Hopefully they will get back to me soon so I can tick that box and resolve it in my mind.

Reader. Would you believe me when I say that when I went outside to get in my car and drive to buy the dishwashing liquid there was a POMERANIAN puppy on the footpath. There was. I promise. She was so happy to see me and leapt onto me 122 times until I picked her up. Then she wriggled until I put her down. I followed her a few doors up and chatted to her asking her where she lived. And then a man’s face appeared in a gap in a particular house’s gate and called out to me taht he was coming out to get her. She promptly ran away around the corner, but we trackd her back down and he picked her up and she wriggled just as much in his arms, so I felt a bit better. Then I went to ALDI.

Good things

Violet Cabin has been posting the most gorgeous images lately.
Ratatouille Lasagna is such a good idea.
Nancy Drew costume ideas.
Small, inexpensive things that make life better.
This Amatriciana looks so delicious.
The cutest baby hat ever.
A gorgeous community garden
Gosh. These photos made me so nostalgic and teary.
Summer reads as recommended by Miranda Mills.

Getting dressed (evening): Black t-shirt dress (bought 2 years ago at Kmart), chambray oversized shirt (from Saver’s), black tights, Chelsea boots

In the evening I went to a small family dinner at my son-in-law’s family restaurant in East Melbourne (Roccella) and ate the best pizza I’ve ever eaten in my whole life. You should go there. You really, really should. Then I nipped home as quickly as poss (very, very narrowly avoiding a car accident when a car ran the red light at the intersection I was turning across) and tucked myself in while the wind was absolutely raging outside.

(above) Some cheese on toast breakfasts

Wednesday 28 August

Nothing to write about here as I had to stay in bed due to doing too much on Tuesday. And by ‘too much’ I mean just normal things for regular people. Leaving the house for two hours in the morning and then going to a family dinner in the early evening. Normal things mess up my body and cause it to flake out and hurt in over dramatic ways. It’s really boring. That said last year these activities would have me bedridden for a week. At the moment I think it will be a couple of days until I’m back to my (still low energy/high pain) baseline. So you see I am improving.

I worked on a blanket I’m making and did some reading of:

1. Anne of Green Gables on audiobook via Borrow Box.
2. Nightlight by Janine Avril (This book is so well written, full of beautiful domestic detail – which I love. I found it at Saver’s for $2.99 and it’s further proof that you don’t always need to be reading what social media recommends. You can create your own real life algorithm in a second-hand book shop and reap the surprising rewards.)
3. A chapter of The Little Virtues.

Last week I picked up my reservations at the local library. It’s a tiny branch and as I walked in – past three big schoolboys – a man was walking out. We shuffled back and forth to try and let each other through the doorway and the boys roared a sort of soccer chant until we worked it out. It was FUNNY, people. Everyone laughed and I’m sure it’s another sign that the cooler weather’s retreat is making everyone feel a lot more chipper.

(above) L/ a quite delicious noodle dinner and R/ vegetable pastie for lunch last week (I have been loving pasties of late. I buy the veggie ones from the frozen section and have them with sriracha and tomato sauce.)

Thursday 29 August

Gosh. It’s been outrageously windy in Melbourne. WInd gives me the jitters at the best of times, but this day-in-day-out bluster is especially unsettling. Hopefully it passes super soon and we can all remember what it felt like to hear the birds rather than the roof banging/rubbish bins hurtling down the streets.

Getting dressed: PJs

I’ve made a coffee and I’m going to choose a video to watch while I drink it, then make a plan for the day. I also did a few rows of knitting, because I am loving my mitred squares at the moment. Very addictive.

I forgot to say, do you remember when I bought the tulip and snowdrop bulbs? And put them in the fridge? Well I semi-forgot about them and now it’s way too late to put them in the ground. They are sitting in the vegetable crisper draw, hoping for the best. I suppose I just take them out and tuck them away for another year? Is that what I do?

I harvested some snow peas this week too, dear readers. Yes. I pulled an impressive ELEVEN snow peas from the plants along the back fence. If you’d like tips on how to reap similar rewards in the vegetable garden I am the QUEEN of underperformance. Hit me up. (My ranunculus are looking more impressive though and just starting to bloom!)

Also? I found a couple of old compact digital cameras at the op shop for cheap last week, so I am waiting for new batteries, SD cards, adapter and chargers to arrive in the mail for those and I’m going to have A LOT of fun playing with them. Perhaps it will encourage me outside more? I am hoping so.

Breakfast was cheese on toast.

Lunch was leftover noodles that I made on Wednesday for dinner.

Dinner was a banana split. Not sorry.

Friday 30 August

Gawsh the wind, people. The wind. It blew half the washing off the line overnight and the roof was banging on and off til all hours. Now it’s sunny and calm out there, as if to say ‘you imagined it all!’ … but I didn’t.

I just made and sipped my big coffee and now I’m watching YouTube and thinking of what I am needing to do today. I am still not recovered from Tuesday so I am going to get some supplies and then hunker down, I think. Waiting for energy is a very boring game, but the less you do the shorter the wait so perhaps one more restful day will do the trick? Also? The therapy people got back to me so that is getting sorted. TICK!

Getting dressed: Gingham dress, black leggings, old Sportsgirl cardigan

When I first moved to Melbourne and had a little baby, I – for some eccentric reason – spent a lot of time reading Vasari’s Lives of the Artists. I think younger me wanted a speedy education in the arts (something I didn’t get at school) so for some reason this book felt like the answer to all my scholarly prayers. I picked up a copy at the op shop a few months ago and I keep seeing it on the shelves at other op shops when I pop in. Perhaps this means that I am meant to read it again? I think I will dig it out of one of the 17 piles of books that are wishing for a bookshelf and take it for a more grown-up whirl. I can’t remember much of it, but I do remember a feeling of falling into it when I was younger me. Perhaps it will have that same effect now? I will see!

(above) Learning mitred squares, amazing jewels for sale at the pie shop and chicken baked in the terracotta baker (from last week!)

I made a delicious Chicken Chasseur (below) in the multicooker (pressure cooked) and we had it for a late lunch with mashed potatoes and peas. I highly recommend it. Even if you are not chickeny you could sub the chicken out for robust yellow potatoes and it would be amazing with crusty bread. Yum. I would double the mushrooms too. Twice as many please.

I made some tofu and vegetable noodles, then watched The Twelve season two in the evening and fell asleep quite early because I am a snail.

Saturday 31 August

I have busy-shop anxiety. It’s an affliction and it’s quite the catastrophising nightmare. With this in mind I nipped to the shops at 8.30am this morning to be sure to a) beat the crowds and b) not get stuck doing laps around the shopping centre being beeped at by other people. I picked up the antihistamines I needed, plus some ciabatta rolls, a couple of tins of tomatoes, a packet of linguine, some pet food and a can of sardines. I was back home just after 9 where I made myself some baked beans on toast and a cup of tea and got stuck into some gentle videos as a sort of restart to the day.

Getting dressed: Track pants, Yale sweatshirt from the Salvo’s, Birkenstocks

It’s windy again. So much wind. It’s an outrage. I’m still not well enough to have a normal-for-me kind of day, so I think it will be knitting and eating nourishing snacks and watching shows today.

Should I make a pot of soup, perhaps? I’ll think on it.

Sunday 1 September

Pinch. Punch. 

Father’s Day is such a tough day for the fatherless, isn’t it? It’ll be over before we know it though.

Getting dressed: Gingham dress, black leggings, Birkenstocks.

I did a couple of errands and saw all my kids and then I came home and washed a sinkful of dishes and yelled at the garden-trampling dogs. Talked to my cute sister. The wind? It’s still winding. It’s been very relentless, hasn’t it? We haven’t had it too bad where we are and there is not a single tree in our yard, so no limbs down or similar. Our old house in Balwyn had lots of trees and it was a day like this that one came down and just missed the back of the house. It took the fence with it and for a few months our garden and the next doors were one. The dogs were delighted with these improvements but it all got fixed eventually and they went back to their smaller yard ways. They took it well.

I was looking for something in the spare room earlier today and pulled out a bunch of old favourite bags (all brown, all leather, it’s a me thing). They were filled with a scattering of receipts and lip balms and forgotten key rings and cough lollies and hair ties and notebooks. There’s something comfortingly historic about the contents of old purses, isn’t there? You catch a glimpse of a different you, one from a time you survived and moved on from and then landed here. If you launched a Retired Handbag Museum and showed all the things people left when they moved from former bag to new bag, I would line up to buy tickets. I’d be so interested, I tell you.

Thinking of you all! Thank you for checking in!

x Pip

If you fancy, buy me a coffee —>  https://ko-fi.com/piplincolne