Weekend

I came home Friday afternoon to find my whole patio cleaned and re-arranged! All my garden tools were now standing around the corner in the far corner, in the rain! Next I get barked at about not keeping the patio clean - followed by another bark about not getting to clearing the weeds growing on the far side of the garden!?! Hello? Do you remember what it looked like a year ago, before I moved in, when it was YOUR responsibility? The whole garden was covered in grass so tall, I didn't even know there was a bench (which is about 2m from the house) let alone the rest of the garden! And the patio? Was no better! It was covered in weeds and grass growing between the bricks and covered in dried leaves!

I think they simply have too much time on their hands to sit and nit-pick my life. I take it with a shovel full of salt (a grain simply doesn't cover, ha ha!). His sudden concern with the weeds is a result of finding snake spoor - not a small, but a frighteningly large snake! The neighbour behind us is keeping hens, which means eggs and eggs attract snakes. So he wants all the tall grass cleared, especially anywhere near the house, to keep us all safe. Fine. I just wish he could discuss that in an adult fashion, rather than barking at me as if I'm a naughty child!

Anyway, I moved some of my succulents to the area behind the house, making two new beds. I took all my plants out of the bed along the path, where his - I don't know what they are - are completely taking over. They're growing tall now, impeding me when I try to carry groceries - which bugs me! Well, they can go ahead and grow there now - I'm not touching the bed again. No more compost or fertilizer from me, he he he.

Saturday morning mippies woke me early! The Mini is getting really inventive at waking me! First, she pulls / pushes my hair brush / glasses case / cell phone off the bed, and if that doesn't make me get up and open up, she starts taking the food dispenser walkies! Pushes it around the floor. If even that doesn't work, she has now learned that I instantly shoot out of bed when I hear glass in danger! This is her most inventive method, yet: my night lamp has a glass base. It's already on the floor ... so she sits right next to it, puts out her claws and just taps her claws against the glass! I couldn't believe my eyes! She just sat there, looking at me, paw at the lamp! How clever is that? Well, I got up! Mission accomplished! And at least she's leaving the flower fountain alone now!

I spent the morning cleaning the flat, laundry, floors and kitchen. The gardener was sent to clear the grass. That worked in my favour, firstly as the ground is so hard, I have to wait for rain before I can work there, and secondly because he cleared out EVERYTHING! Whenever I worked in that area, I'd get barked at about some wild plants that my landlord wants to me to keep in my garden. Now: it's all gone! I have clear space to do whatever I want, now! Ha Ha Ha!

In the afternoon I was somewhat at loose ends - didn't feel like anything specific, and couldn't decide what I'd want to start nor what I should maybe want to eat. I had baked some extremely delicious Bismark Herring Rolls on Friday - I simply made pizza dough and then filled little pockets with the herring before baking it. Shaped like an omelette - I just made several small ones, instead of the a single big one. Delicious!

Sunday morning I woke very early again and let mippies out, even though it was not yet daylight. They didn't wake me up, though - I woke on my own. I spent most of the morning working out the spreadsheet for the game, and then worked on my budget. Sigh. Well, it's not so bad, after all - I had built in a good 'extra' at the beginning of the year, just a teeny bit short, so not much of a change. I'm still okay - I just absolutely have to stick to my budget!

On Friday, at work still, I stumbled across a special on vacuum sealers! Firstly, it's not the Verimark one (I try to stay away from those products), and then the price was reduced by a third! That's quite a saving! So, I gave it some thought and then placed the order. Now I'm holding thumbs that I don't get a repeat of my last attempt - when they let me know at the last minute that they are out of stock & won't be getting stock again, and then wanted to send me the bags for the machine they didn't have! But that was HiFi Corporation, this time I'm trying Creative Housewares. It would really be good if I can finally get that!

I baked myself 4 Debreziner rolls (debreziner are spicy sausages) and made myself a stroganoff-like meal. I used strips of steak as well as strips of mielie-pap (that's a type of porridge made of maize flour). I finally gave those mielie-pap polony a try! It comes in a polony type sausage, which you just cook - as is - for 10 minutes and then you have ready-made pap! Turned out quite nice! Also the whole meal turned out delicious - I added brussels sprouts again, simply because I love them!

With the bread, I tried something different, again: I added an egg-yolk! I measured the water after adding the yolk, so the amount of liquid stayed the same.

I also activated my new water filters on Saturday. It's just a stick of charcoal, which is activated by boiling it for 10 minutes. I can re-activate it every month, for about 3 months. I've placed half into my water jug and the other half into the water bottle I take to work every day. That works out much, much cheaper than the filters from the water jug manufacturers! I'll add some more to my next order, for the mippies' flower fountain!

The filters I had recently bought for that fountain are to keep out the big stuff, like hairs and such, which would get into and block the pump very quickly. I've come to realise that, when that pump makes a noise, that's when Mini starts investigating. So, the charcoal won't be replacing those filters - I'll still need those. They work more like a gunk catch-net than real filtering.

And that about was my weekend. I still need to decide when to schedule my next store shopping trip - I really need white bread flour and I'm low on toilet paper; I should go this Friday, but I'd much prefer to put it off another week. I'm just checking the calendar: this Friday will be the 13th ... that's not even mid-month ... well, let's see how it goes.

I had the weirdest dreams this morning, one where Mewthos got lost! Somehow he went so far out, he got into someone else's garden and ended up in their home. To my relief, I WAS able to get him back before waking up! You know how people talk about getting up on the wrong foot? Well, that last dream in the morning - whether you remember it or not - sort of sets your mood as you wake up. If you don't remember the dream, it's not really possible to make the connection, is it? You just feel miserable for no apparent reason.

That wasn't the only weird dream, though. I also dreamed about Lady Jane, and that she was sick? I no longer remember too well, now ... I also dreamed about Rose! About arranging to meet up, as I was in East London, and we'd arranged to meet at some mall. Then, when I got there, somehow my phone was lost and I had no means of contacting her ... both of us wandering around the mall looking for each other ... then I spotted her.

In another episode, Rose, myself and all our cats were somewhere out on some traffic island in a quiet area having a picnic, when someone simply got into my car and drove off with it! Weirdest of all was that these three dreams seemed to be running concurrently! All at the same time, like switching channels on TV!

I was quite relieved to wake up after all that!