Level 2 Chi Kung.
A productive day. Tudor dropped Sherlock back first thing in the morning as he had a meeting in town, but said he would be happy to collect him again in the afternoon. I was relieved to hear that Sherlock had behaved well and slept through the night. I didn’t like to ask outright whether he had chewed up any socks! I commented to Katie that I suspected that Tudor and his wife had let Sherlock sleep in their bedroom (which he doesn’t get to do at home) and she said they probably let him sleep in the bed!
When Sherlock and I got back from dropping Katie, I decided that I should find downstairs things to do in order to keep Sherlock company during his captivity, and the new freezer had reached temperature, so I started transferring stuff from the ancient chest freezer in the garage and then clearing out various bits. I was delighted to find an ice cream container of Nigella’s Beef in Belgian Beer so I got it out to thaw for dinner. I also found some roast capsicums and tomatoes, and some slices of dense dark pumpernickel-style bread, so I had the veges on the toasted bread for lunch. I got the chest freezer a bit more organised but was thwarted when it got to the point where I simply couldn’t get the lid open – the warm air that had got in had obviously cooled and sucked the lid down tight! What it really needs is to be turned off and completely cleaned out but for that I think we need to first eat our way through some of the supplies until what is left can mostly be accommodated in the inside freezer, with the rest in a chilli bin for a couple of hours. I also need to buy some more of the stacking bins I got to organise it – I bought them on a whim and only bought two because I wasn’t sure about dimensions but I think we need at least another two. Otherwise the chest freezer is just one big space.
After that I noticed that the builders had left the hose all covered in cement – which seems to screw the fittings if not cleaned. So I spent half an hour cleaning that off, while making a mental note to leave an old hose out for them next time. Still more time to keep Sherlock company so I vacuumed the fluff out of the innards of the tumble dryer and the crumbs out of the hard to reach part behind the oven door.
We were just about out of fruit, so I shut Sherlock in the house and did a quick shop. About mid-afternoon, I started to feel really dreadful: overwhelming nausea and headache and a general feeling of hardly being able to put one foot in front of the other. I was relieved when Tudor came to collect Sherlock before Dash and I had to leave to get Katie from film club as at least that meant that we could just walk quietly, without the added complication of an excited pooch pulling us along. I had to drag myself out to get Katie and resolved to ask Nick to take her to trampoline instead of me. I was wondering if the veges and bread from the freezer had perhaps been a bit dodgy, however we hadn’t been home long when Katie complained of nausea and then rushed to the downstairs loo to throw up, so it looks like we both have the same thing and my lunch wasn’t to blame.
I started feeling a bit better around 6 pm so I made a pound of butter up into shortbread. It turned out really well so I made sure I got some packed away in the freezer before the vultures could demolish it all. I was careful to do this while Katie was occupied elsewhere. Last year she ran into the kitchen when I was carefully packing shortbread into a pretty tin as a Christmas gift for my nephew, and went pop, pop, pop with her grubby little fingers, snapping a dozen pieces and prompting a stream of most un-Christmassy invective from her mother. Some visitors who had ‘popped in’ for half an hour and stayed for three hours, and who had announced their departure some 90 minutes earlier but were, in fact, still in the entrance hall, very slowly gathering up their possessions and getting their coats on (I had said my farewells and excused myself, explaining that I needed to get on with Christmas preparations), were rather shocked to see me chasing Katie through the house, flailing wildly at her bottom with the damp tea towel which happened to be to hand!