Dailies: Breakfast Sandwich Ritual, Hans Christian Andersen, big things, Little House

Monday 30 June

Up a little late this morning due to some night-waking, and my stupid coccydynia is slowly receding. Gawsh it’s been a LOT. I read up about it and found out that inflammation and pain that you get with a condition like this can spark feelings of depression. Apparently it’s because the cytokines the body releases to fight inflammation and infection can inhibit the hormones that make us feel good. I just thought it was the not being able to sit or walk around much or bend that was making me feel sad, but apparently there were extra factors at play! Anyway. I am on the slow mend and that’s very good news.

(Also I forgot to update you on the kids’ car … after it was smashed into … It ended up being a write off. No more Jimny for them. Darn it. It was their pride and joy, and now the same car has appreciated so much in value they don’t have the budget to replace it with the same. Motto: Don’t drink drive and smash into a couple of good kids’ car when it’s just parked outside their house minding its own business.)

I did a plodding bundle of morning habits and then sat down to watch The Mindful Narrowboat (the little cygnets! the slug!), drink my tea, and ponder what to have for breakfast.

Getting dressed: Op-shopped jeans (originally from Target), grey skivvy, cosy blue jumper, fair isle socks, Merry People pink Bobby boots.

Breakfast was tinned tomatoes on toast. Then I went to the op shop and then I popped in on Rin and June for the first time in a week or so (their household was sick and I was unwell too). It was so lovely to see them again. June gave me a very long hug and some smiles which was very restorative. There’s a lot to catch up on when you haven’t seen each other for a week, so we nattered and drank coffee and unpacked two bags of presents I had made/picked up for them. So nice.

Dinner is a chicken casserole with mushrooms and potatoes and carrots and spring onions. Hopefully it turns out to be delicious. I adapted a recipe from an op shopped copy of this book, for the stove top and to suit our tastes. I actually wasn’t going to make a proper dinner because I’m home on my own tonight, but then I reasoned with myself that nutrition is super important and you can’t default to toast, just because it’s just you (or me, in this case).

And the op shop run? It was good. I got a bunch of great books for a song. They are:

Small Fry by Lisa Brennan-Jobs
Dora B by Josiane Behmoiras
Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor K Frankl
The Possibility of Everything by Hope Edelman
Hans Christian Andersen Favorite Fairy Tales (illustrated by Paul Durand who also illustrated the vintage Little Women book I found a couple of months ago)
New Rural by Ingrid Weir

---

Tuesday 1 July

It had been raining – and was continuing to rain – when I got up this morning. The world outside had that swishy and dampened sound that can only mean wet weather. The doggies ran outside and attempted to u-turn immediately, but I shut them out for 2 minutes so they could at least stretch their legs etc etc. Don’t worry though, animal lovers, our backyard has concrete ‘deck’ and it’s all undercover. No wet tootsies for these pups. After that it was the usual morning habit bundle, making tea and settling in front of the heater in a huddle to write to you. My back is slowly improving, but it still hurts to sit, which is  … a pain!

Breakfast was eggs scrambled with tomato, red pepper and chilli oil, then piled onto grainy sourdough toast. After that, I got dressed …

Getting dressed: Grey jogging pants, a floral dress, a purple balloon-sleeve cardigan, socks with flowers, Merry People Bobby Boots.

I wanted to get out of the house for a little while, so I went to the nearest op shop and picked up some old magazines (back issues of Frankie, US Country Living, Quilters Companion, Romantic Homes, Vogue Entertaining), a few little things for June, and a leopard print dress. Then I came straight home because the roads were wet and people were driving really fast and dangerously. Ugh.

The weather was pretty dodgy all day, so I hunkered down inside and sewed up a little yellow jumper I’d crocheted for June. Then I worked on some granny squares. And started a little jacket too, while watching The Outrun which I had not seen (it’s very good, but sad, and matched the gloomy weather perfectly … and did you know that seals can howl like wolves out there in the ocean?) I also watched the new Jayne Mansfield documentary My Mom Jayne on Max. It was so good.

We’re having laksa for dinner again, so all’s right with the world, in this minute at least.

---

Books for June

Wednesday 2 July

After watching The Outrun yesterday, I looked up the International Space Station’s orbit and watched it fly over Melbourne around dinner time last night. There’s something deeply contextualising about doing this when you’re feeling a bit glum. When life feels small and challenging, it’s good to note that out there in the atmosphere there are astronaut’s circling and seals howling and vegetation yielding to the weather and waves breaking in lacy and threatening patterns far out from the shore. What I mean is there are other things at play, away from the everyday … the big things. My great-grandfather once wrote about these exact sort bumpy days and the tonic to cure them …

“Immensity is magnificent medicine. That is one reason—if we may let the cat out of the bag—why the doctors send us to the seaside. We forget the tiddley-winking in the contemplation of the tremendous. We lose life’s shallow worries in the vision of unplumbed depths.

Those who have read Mrs. Barclays Rosary will remember that, in the crisis of her life, the heroine, the Hon. Jane Champion, determined to consult her physician, Sir Deryck Brand. And, after having realized the fearful strain to which his poor patient’s nerves had been subjected, he exclaimed: ‘Here is a prescription for you! See a few big things!’ He urged her to go out west, and see the stupendous Falls of Niagara, to go out east and see the Great Pyramid. ‘Go for the big things,’ he said; ‘you will like to remember, when you are bothering about pouring water in and out of tea-cups, “Niagara is flowing still!”‘

…The tendency of life is to drift among small things—small anxieties, small pleasures, small ideas, and small talk. He is a very wise physician indeed who can prescribe for us a tonic of big things.”

FW Boreham

---

I’ve been watching some dark sort of shows on TV in the evenings, so I’m turning over a new leaf and banning them at bedtime. I read the first chapter of The Girls of Slender Means last night, after hearing it on BBC Radio4 and am enjoying it immensely. After that I watched the first episode of my childhood favourite, Little House on the Prairie (in preparation for the upcoming reboot) and turned the lights out early. I’m glad I did because I was up at 6 for a hot bath and hot tea, totally turning my usual routine on its head. I can’t pretend this will happen every day, but it felt hopeful to both end the previous and then start the new day this way.

(The Little House on the Prairie was the one where the Ingalls family arrives at Plum Creek and Pa Ingalls builds a house and works himself into the ground. There’s a kite involved, also. I noticed he’s very bossy with his wife “You can get me my supper” but back in the day, when I was seven or eight, I thought he was the most perfect father in the world. Granted he has twinkly eyes and is kind and often apologetic, but he could be a little less snotty about his dinner, I think.)

Getting dressed: Jeans, leopard print dress, fair isle socks, Merry People Bobby boots.

I went to see Rin and June and stayed for a while so Rin could eat her lunch and I could have an extra good play with the wee baby. She’s waking up to the world so much now. I put her in her little baby bouncer thing and Rin had strung a pram toy I bought across it. June proceeded to coo and smile at the little faces on the toy, eyes wider than I’d ever seen. It’s clear that the little faces are her friends and she was being a very good buddy by looking and smiling at them very intently. You could honestly see the neurons firing in her little brain. On the way home I listened to a new podcast about grandparenting, which was very affirming. And I made … Chilli crisp fish for dinner.

---

Good things

Savoury Smores, anyone?
A defence of joy at The Marginalian
Tea sandwiches with herb butter
A helpful guide to intarsia knitting
This chickpea salad looks delish
Make a bear paw quilt, maybe?
Gorgeous shots of Olivia de Havilland
When Diana was a kindergarten teacher

---

Thursday 3 July

Gosh. Thursday already. Whodathunkit?! June is three months-old today!

My back is still recovering from last week’s debacle, so I think a slow day today because it’s still pretty creaky. Up a little later to release the hounds and habit bundle, as is the tradition. Then hot tea and some catching up on the news (it’s all particularly horrendous.) I’m thinking I’ll work on some crochet projects today and hopefully I can move about enough to do a bit of Tidy Time.

Saturday 5 July

It’s a sparkling day in Melbourne today. Blue skies and very crisp. The perfect winter Saturday, I think.

Getting dressed: Jeans, floral print dress, Birkenstocks, purple balloon sleeve cardigan.

Yesterday I flung some seeds into the garden, because there’s rain coming early this week and I figured that’s a very good time to throw (broadcast? remember that?!) seeds. I just sprinkled a bunch of different poppies, some coriander seeds and some chive seeds too. I might do a few more before Tuesday, I think. That’s the rainiest day heading our way, from what I can tell.

Yesterday I had a no crochet and no computer day, which was new. I did a tiny bit of reading and rested and made chicken soup and also a lemon cake, so quite industrious (as one commenter remarked last week), even without the craft.

I ordered some DK yarn from Source of Fibre and that arrived too, so I’m pondering which projects that might be destined for.

I’ve been reading about rituals, and have in fact started a quiet and slow ritual of making a breakfast sandwich each morning this week. It’s partly because I want to include more nutrition in my breakfast and partly because I wanted to implement some new and intentional rituals into my days. A Breakfast Sandwich Ritual is as good as any, I think. An investment in slowing down, making decisions, investing in myself and the day ahead … and a delicious one at that. Ingredients have included halloumi, bacon, semi dried tomatoes, avocado, lots of fresh dill (which I used to hate and now I love), kewpie mayo, salad greens, sautéed mushrooms, fresh tomato … not all in the same sandwich all of the time, but some of the time. Today I’m going to make a focaccia so I can use that for the sandwich in the coming days.

Continuing on with my non-dark viewing, I watched three episodes of That Girl before bed last night. I loved that show as a kid. I used to watch it at my Nanna’s with a metal legged tea tray pulled up to my lap, waiting for her to deposit some sort of meat and three veg plate on the flowery surface. Marlo Thomas was such a good and funny actress, and she has the best eyeliner in the business, even now.

If you’re book clubbing along with us, I’ll be posting the new quarter’s book choice and our Sipsworth discussion thread next week. So hang in there!

Hoping you are as well as you can be, dear reader. Thanks for all the support and the kindness about last time’s boring post, lol. So appreciated.

xx Pip