It's very hard to do nothing. Surely you know the feeling. You've got a million things to do but you just can't bring yourself to do them, so you just waste your time wishing you had an absolute need, or better still, an urgent must to do something. But you don't. The deadlines seem far off, the chores seem daunting, and you just do nothing. You spend a lazy day and at the end of the day feel weirdly exhausted and less than fulfilled.
Here's what I did today.
I cooked. I cooked a lot. Three meals for the children, two meals for my husband. I baked. I had some jam that had gone sour, and I used that. It didn't turn out right, but then again - normally I wouldn't even bother. It's just that we're down to the last eggs and flour. Oh well.
All this running out of money thing has hugely improved our diet and our eating habits. It can't be overstated, it's nothing short of a miracle - seeing my kids at the table at mealtimes and clearing off their plates without so much as a complaint. They're eating chicken, they're eating pork chops, they're eating anything I give them and thanking me afterwards. Ever since I've stopped buying convenience food like cereal or yogurt, or cookies, or cottage cheese desserts, they've come to eat "normal", healthy, proper food. I am concerned how to keep this rhythm going after next week when I'm getting paid. But there's a downside - I have to spend a lot of time cooking and even more time - planning.
I also did the laundry. It's all piling up in the bedroom again, but at least it's dry - lately we've been having much more rain than sunshine, so I had to wash at least one load today. It's supposed to be hot and sunny next week - hopefully I'll get to washing blankets and airing the pillows.
In the afternoon I took the kids exploring. We rode our bikes to an eerie little place some 4 kilometres from our home - there are little gardens and sheds, and almost no people at all, apart from quite a curious man who was working in his garden and looking ever the fence all the time to see if we hadn't come to steal some strawberries or beans. But we hadn't. We had come to explore and to have a picnic. And the dog had run all the way with us!
And then we came home, catching the first large raindrops, and sat down to watch a very nice Swedish family movie "
Nils Karlsson Pyssling" together. I loved the book (it's quite a short story) as a child, and I was glad to see that the boys loved the movie which is done quite close to the original. I can never enjoy a movie if I don't have something to knit or sew, so I spent a good while rummaging around the room for an embroidery project I had begun years ago, but I couldn't find it (surprise, surprise), and the boys suggested that I should crochet them some slippers. I've made dozens of those from some leftover yarn, and they don't last long, so I had already decided not to make them any more, but the temptation of doing something with yarn was too great. It's been more than a year since I've knit anything at all. Partly because I felt no need for knitwear, partly because the kids had entered a phase when Mom-made things seemed a bit, well, humiliating, and partly - because I had actively tried to do something that involved less sitting down and more moving around. So I was quite scared to pick up the needles (or the crochet hook, for that matter) and to decide what to make. But I'm so very glad I did. That simple
Mary-Jane slipper pattern seems to have broken down some "knitters block", and I foresee many more leisurely projects in the coming days. So it's been a wonderful day after all.
