Its been an interesting week. I’ve been backwards and forwards about how much I was going to share, but I figure it is all part of my life right now,  so I might as well tell y’all.

A few weeks ago I had a mammogram, promptly forgot about it and went on with S-L life until I got a phone call from Breast Screen WA. It was a lovely lady with a very soothing voice telling me there was an ‘area of concern’ in my right breast and I had to to have another mammogram. Suddenly the whole coronavirus thing went right out the window and my mind was running at 100 miles an hour. Over the last two weeks I have had another mammogram and a breast scan. All the ladies at these places are so calm and caring which is nice when you are feeling anything but calm inside.You exchange pleasantries about how life has changed, what you are watching on TV, whether you have a vegetable garden, but inside you are just wanting someone to say its all fine, there’s nothing to be concerned about.

I had some moments of omg!  what if I have to go to Perth? where am I going to stay? I can’t stay with the kids in case I pick something up in the hospital, who’s going to look after me? will I have  to go into self-quarantine when I get home? who’s going to look after Papa Bear? Mostly I was quite calm though, I reminded myself what strong stock I came from,  us Louis/Stokes women can get through anything! And as it turned out all is well and I can go back to worrying about coronavirus, which seems a lot less worrying now.

We’re over the hump of Week 3  so I’m just going to do a quick run through of Week 2. My boss was a lot happier with me this week,  I was a lot more organised. But really I just did the same, except a bit more of it!

I didn’t do as much beach walking this week , and certainly no swimming. It was quite chilly and seaweedy, happy to report everyone on the beach is behaving themselves

I’ve done lots of cooking! I’d resurrected my sourdough starter and made delicious rustic pizza

The recipe for my fig, fennel and walnut loaf instructed me to prove it for two hours. Perhaps I should have checked earlier!

However , I cooked it anyway and it turned out ok!!

A mate of Papa Bear’s dropped off some freshly caught dhufish, we had crumbed fish, rosti and Waldorf salad. I love Waldorf salad but it still makes me think of that Fawlty Towers Episode!!

I made Mum’s granola and had it with home made yoghurt and mango puree from the freezer

Papa Bear cooked Saturday Big Breakfast, including his amazing home-cured bacon

As always our dining room living art room was amazing

I read this book which D3 sent me. Loved it, loved it, loved it. It tells the story of the “Marsh Girl’ who grows up on her own in the marshes of the North Carolina coast and her relationship with two young men from the nearby town. One of them is found dead and she is an immediate suspect. The description of the marshes are beautiful, I tried to savour these when I first started reading the book, but then I just wanted to find out what happened. I will read it again! Do yourself a favour and read it.

Papa Bear and I gardened, mostly Papa Bear gardened, but I did a bit. He put up a new wire and arranged the bougainvillea artistically along the wall

The beans sprouted!

D1 came home from work, she usually stays with us but wasn’t able to this time. She did some shopping for us. I never thought the words “See if you can get a plastic tray of it”  or “Try and get the plastic-wrapped continental cucumbers” would ever leave my mouth again. But its easier to disinfect if its in a tray.

Although she didn’t stay with us we did have drinks a couple of couple of times, making we sure we exercised appropriate social distancing

Papa Bear converted my office desk into a stand up desk. We saved hundreds of dollars with a couple of plastic tubs and a printer box!!

And I managed to get out of my ACDC t-shirt and Nepal pants

All in all, a good week. Keep safe everyone.

My boss was very happy when I presented her with my project plan for the week last Monday. I was very excited to get to work, all was good. But then disaster struck. Don’t you hate technology sometimes?   All this week I  have been unable to upload photos to my blog. Many, many bad words were spoken about WordPress which I now need to take  back. Yesterday in desperation I updated my software and oh joy, I can now upload photos. Yay!!

I had a couple of projects in mind which I was going to show you  during the week but never mind, flexibility and all that!  I will merely reschedule.

Project 1: 99 Things to Do

When I retired a dear friend gave me book called 99 Things to Do When You Have the Time. I have added a subtitle!

I absolutely love books like this. I have one called 365 in which you are supposed to record something every day for a year, like a diary or what you did in the garden, free writing….whatever you fancy. I think I got to page 15. I also have a lovely book that D2 gave me for Mother’s Day in Spain in 2014 – A Sentence a Day. Pretty self-explanatory, answer a simple question every day, repeat for three years   I have done this on and off over the years.  Maybe I’ll cheat and just fill in for the first three months of 2020!!

So the question  about books like 99 Things is “In what order do I do the 99 things?”

Do I start at number one and work through methodically?

Do I choose things that take my fancy at the time?

Do I open a page at random and do what ever activity is on that page?

I have decided to go with the first option. If I chose either of the other two options it would make me anxious that I could have chosen a different one, a better one!  I worry I will do all the ones that I like the look of, or are easy, and then not do the rest! History says this is the most likely thing to happen.

So here we go! I was quite excited to get started, not so excited when I saw the first three activities. An artist I am not!!I made a good decision on the order of doing the activities though, I would never do these first three  by choice. And I have to say it was fun and I was pretty happy with my results.

1. Draw a picture with your eyes closed

2. Make a self-portrait

3. Draw a picture of a friend (very happy with this picture of the lovely Mrs L)

4. Look up a word or phrase you have never used before and try using it.

This was fun! I posted it on my Facebook Reading group, asking for suggestions of words and phrases that are no longer in use. I got lots of great replies and had an interesting day looking up the meaning and origins of many of them. In times PSO (Pre-Self Isolation) I wouldn’t have had time to do that or if I had I would have had the niggling “I should be doing…..” in the back of mind.

I used some of them to write this little piece (suggested words in bold)

Forsooth, the sun is high in the sky and quafftide is fair upon us. Pray good folk, come join in much boisterous merrymaking! We may become gigglemugs and laugh and dance ‘til we are fair puckled!
But I beseech thee, do do not partake overmuch of Mistress Meg’s honey mead, lest thee become a valetry of common riff-raff!”

I am loving quafftide (when the sun is over the yard arm and it’s time for a drink!) and  fair puckled which means very tired. The self-auto kept changing puckled  to pickled which is a different thing altogether but would still work!

5. Look up the words to a song you half remember

My Dad had a beautiful tenor singing voice and I grew up to the songs of musicals – Carousel, My Fair Lady, South Pacific, Hans Christian Andersen. The song I loved hearing him sing most of all was Younger Than Springtime, Lieutenant Cable’s love song to Liat, a local girl. The depiction of interracial love  caused a big stir in the 50’s when the musical was released.

I could sing all of the songs of South Pacific off by heart as a child, but just recently I found myself humming Younger Than Springtime and I realised I couldn’t remember all the words .

Once upon a time in a different life (about 3 weeks ago) I was intending to spend this particular weekend preparing for a long-planned trip to Pemberton with D2 and D3.  We were going to walk in the forest, have drinks and tapas at the local bar, explore the surrounding towns, it was going to be great. The novel I have been writing for about 2 years is partly set in Pemberton and I was intending to do some more research and take photos. D2 and I visited last year  and we were looking forward to returning.I reckon when we finally make it we’ll stay in one of the poshest Airbnb’s in Pemberton!! 

I have to say the weekend is not much different to the weekday here at Casa Anderson (Geraldton Retreat). I had a performance review with my boss on Friday afternoon and we both agreed that I didn’t get as much done as I’d hoped and I needed to lift my game. She suggested that I make a little plan each morning of what I intend to do – my Bullet Journal is letting me down here!!

Seriously though I really do want to make weekends different from the week, otherwise its just same old, same old! S1 ( know that some of you may not not even know that I have an S1! )  is a journalist and is starting to work from from home this week. He said he intended to get up and get dressed in his work clothes each day, I read  of someone who said they get up, dress in their work clothes, grab a coffee and their lunch, leave the house and come back into their office (dining room table) Interesting thoughts. So I may wear something other than my ACDC t-shirt and Nepal pants during the week!

I was very earth mother this weekend. I made yoghurt and revived my sourdough bread starter. This is not a Hunkering Down initiative, I’ve been doing it for a few months now. However, it was the first time this weekend that I had made yoghurt with long-life milk. There are two things to remember when making yoghurt (apart from the obvious, you must have colour coordinated  utensils and ingredients).

First, when you are bringing your milk to the almost boil, never leave the stove. Don’t go and get something out of a drawer in the pantry otherwise you may get caught counting how many tins of tuna you have and the milk boils over. Secondly don’t leave the kitchen bench while you are waiting for the milk to cool to 44 C, especially not to chat with D2 in the lounge with a coffee. By the time I got back to the yoghurt it was 28C. I thought what the hell, I’ll just do the whole process all over again. After all yoghurt first appeared in many cultures (hah!) when people carried their milk in animal stomachs and it thickened and developed a delicious sour taste. So I guess the making of it is pretty forgiving. Anyway, it turned out fine. 

My sourdough starter had been hibernating in the fridge since before breaking my wrist and took some persuading to wake up and bubble. However, bubble it did, eventually, and I decided to start making pizza dough using the air knead method which is basically slapping it  onto the bench for 5 minutes,  lots of fun!!

When I retired a dear friend gave me this  book, I added the subtitle!  So I thought I might do these, not sure whether it will be a work activity or a weekend activity, it seems like a fun weekend activity to me. I decided to start at 1 and work my way through to 99. If I tried doing random activities that take my fancy I’d get too anxious that I’d make the wrong choice.   I’ll let you know how I go.

So we have made it through one week of self-isolation, so far so good. For this I am grateful.  Keep safe dear people.