One of Those Days

51°f/10.5°C, clear.

Have you ever had a day when you just felt like you were treading water, or even going backwards when trying to move forward? 

That was today. A bad night's sleep, not because of my knee, but my shoulder and arm that wants to go numb and get all tingly and buzzy several times during the night. So aggravating! Larry has a similar issue, and was diagnosed last week with carpal tunnel and an entrapped nerve, so he's heading to surgery soon. After my knee surgery, though, I don't think I want to try that road.

So a bad night, followed by a sluggish morning. I had meant to spend the day painting a dresser and working in the flowerbeds, but what did I do? I spent hours listing stuff on ebay! Which needed to be done, but wasn't on my list for today. How does that even happen? Clueless.

However, there was a fun moment in there. We had some milk that was beginning to spoil. I didn’t want to waste it, so I decided to try cheese making. Mother Google came to my aid, and within an hour I had a nice bit of cheese. The first photo above shows the milk after heating up to just under 200°f, and adding lemon juice. The curd formed immediately. 

 I put the curd into some cheesecloth and hung it up to drip. I left it for about an hour. 

My only mistake was waiting to add my seasonings (salt, pepper, and caraway seeds)  until after all the whey had dripped out. The remaining cheese was surprisingly dry and firm, and crumbly. I worked in the seasonings anyway, then put my cheese on a plate, added a lot of weight to press it down, and came out with a nice firm bit in the center. We sliced it up and had it with crackers. What a delightful, surprise snack! I will use the crumbles in salad, and it used the whey to cook pasta for dinner---using up the last of the spaghetti sauce I made earlier this week. So anyway, that was pretty cool, and ii will definitely do it again. Very tasty!

I finally got to painting, but not the dresser, and only after we ended up doing more repairs on a cabinet that has plagued us for the past 3 months. It will never be right, and will most likely end up for display use. Ah well, better than pitching it into the bonfire as we were both tempted to do!

And then? I spent another hour or so piddling in the workroom, trying to organize Larry's mess. He is the opposite of me when it comes to tools and work area. I want my stuff organized, he doesn't care. I made a lot of headway, but to keep it reasonably  straight I will have to add this organizing to my regular to-do list. Since I'm the one that the mess makes crazy, I guess that's only fair.

The evening, though, was lovely. Larry had a similar day to mine, never quite getting to what he wanted to do. But he built a nice fire in the firepit, and we spent the last hours of daylight on the patio with the dogs and the cat. And looking back over the day,  it really wasn't so bad. We made progress, just not on the things we thought we were going to do.

And those ebay listings? Three sales already, and an offer of $350 for one of those Blenko glass pieces I listed. A nice profit on my $75 investment. So in the end, it was time well spent.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.