Quiet?

I was wondering what I'd do this week. No rushing around helping Daniel get ready to go to Africa; no kittens to feed after this morning; not even Tim here, as he's helping all weekwith the children's work at a conference locally, only returning for evenings after leaving at 8am each morning.

I needn't have worried. After saying goodbye to the kittens (see previous post) I cleared up the various boxes and ground coverings we'd used for them, and threw out the rather tatty plastic dishes we'd been using to feed them. Then I cleared out the fridge. A disadvantage of having a larger fridge than we used to is that I often seem to put things in there to cool down, or to keep for a day or two, and then forget about them. With the small fridge, there wasn't room for anything extra!

It was certainly easier putting things on the compost heap when I didn't have to watch out for kittens all the time, and could leave the back door open. It was also a great deal easier to hang out laundry. Those kittens never did learn not to get underfoot!

Then someone from the conference - an old friend - phoned Richard to see if he could do something at his office. We invited him to lunch, which was easy as we only ever have cold lunches in the weekdays: bread, cheese, salad, spreads, fruit. It was nice to catch up with his family news.

Richard went with him to the office after lunch, and half an hour later I had a phone call from another old friend at the conference. She has a free evening today and wondered if she could come and see us, so I invited her to supper.

Thankfully I've started on my summer plan for cooking, which means everything as easy as possible. I bought some ready-made chicken tikka masala sauce, and have had some cut-up chicken breast marinading in it since this morning. A terrible cheat, but so much easier than making my own. It will go in the oven for an hour and I'll steam some rice, and cook a few veggies. Or maybe even have salad with it. We don't usually have desserts, but since we've got a visitor (and the first course will have to feed four of us rather than three) I took some of the frozen loquats out to thaw, and will make a crunch dessert. I'm so glad I froze all that fruit back in April and May.

It's getting hot, but not yet too humid. As I sit here, there's a slight breeze coming in the window. I have a fan on, pointing at my computer to keep it cool, and am gaining some benefit from it myself. Our air conditioner isn't fixed yet - the man didn't appear despite promising to before the weekend - but as the humidity hasn't started yet, it's not a huge problem. I prefer my computer being in this little study/guest room as long as possible, anyway. As soon as we get the a/c working again we'll have to move it to the living-room/dining-room which is where the a/c unit is.