Busy morning

Since I went to the PO Box on Friday, I didn't need to go today, so thought I'd have a fairly leisurely morning. I thought I'd do a bit of dusting and mopping, and I wanted to prepare a beef/bean casserole to cook in the slow cooker all day as we have two visitors staying at present. And I thought I'd bake a loaf of bread for lunch, and do some laundry... really, not a lot. And I thought I might pop out to the froutaria later, for some oranges.

At 8.00 I realised that I didn't have either onions or tomatoes, both of which I needed for the casserole. So, I thought I'd go to the froutaria early. I had a card to post, too, and knew I'd go past a letter box on the way.

I arrived home with two bags of fruit and veg... still clutching the card. So I dumped the shopping bags and went back to the letter box.

Then I prepared the casserole - including chopping and lightly stewing the tomatoes before adding them, and also soaking some beans so I could boil them later and add them too.. and set the slow cooker to work. So far so good.

Then I thought I'd better get the bread on, and remembered that I needed to make some almond milk to put in it. No problem, I put the almonds to soak yesterday. So I made that, and then got the bread ingredients in the breadmaker.

Then I remembered that we'd run out of lemonade... but I'd frozen some rind and juice last time we were given a large batch of lemons, so I pulled those out of the freezer, and made the lemonade.

Then I remembered that we'd almost run out of yogurt, so I prepared another batch of that, and put in the yogurt machine.

By then, it was about 10.00. So I put some laundry in the washing machine, and put away the dried laundry from Friday that was still hanging out.

I do like my kitchen 'servants'...

I was a bit tired by then - the cough still lingers - so I sat down for half an hour with a cup of blackberry fruity tea, and read some email.

At 10.30 I thought I'd just do the dusting and mopping, which I didn't think would take that long.

Then I remembered that on Sunday morning we'd woken up to find that the windows looked like this:


and the outside steps looked like this:


due to a rather blustery sandy rainstorm late Saturday night. If I'd been a good Cypriot housewife I would have cleaned them all on Sunday, but I try to take Sundays off as much as I can. I did brush the steps - not wanting sand trailed into the house - but that was all.

So I mopped the bathrooms, and the indoor stairs, and then had a go at the outside ones - I needed two entire buckets of water, and although they looked a little better by the time I'd finished, they weren't great.

Then I dusted the inside of the house, which was a bit more dusty than usual - perhaps also due to the sandstorm. Then I swept the floors, and dry-moppd them.

Then I thought I'd have a go at the windows... and that took me rather longer than I'd expected, but they did look a great deal better when I had finished. Then I cleaned the kitchen, including the sink and the area around the window.

Then I finally got to wet-mopping the floors. After that, I hung out the laundry, removed the bread from the breadmaker, and bottled the lemonade.

By which time it was 1.00pm... so I set the table for four of us for lunch.

I'm kind of tired this evening...