Where has August gone?

Three weeks of August have raced by. I'm in my summer routine - get up early, do whatever chores, cooking or shopping need to be done, have breakfast, take a shower, then switch the air conditioning on in my study and turn on the computer for a few hours.

Um. Except that, today, I switched the computer on before doing any chores. As I have done a few times recently. So I'm sitting here with my study door open and the ceiling fan on only. We're trying to use the a/c significantly less this year in a bid to save electricity. We're running the air conditioners at 29C rather than 28, and mostly relying on a fan at night. But, alas, the bills are as high as ever. If not more so. And I simply can't deal with unrelenting heat. Yesterday it was a little cooler.. 'only' about 33C at most, and the humidity was lower than it has been. But still too hot to have a computer on without cooling, most of the day, and too hot for me to do anything other than potter gently.

If anyone read my post about the end of July, they might have wondered how successful the jigsaw roll was. I'm happy to report that it worked extremely well. The following Sunday I unrolled it:

And even completed it. Then I rolled it up again, unwilling to take it apart again at once, and it's sitting in a cupboard. We no longer have a huge table that can take several completed puzzles over the summer, but it was nice to do one again, for the first time in many years. 

At the start of July, we said we'd aim to go to the beach for an hour each evening, around 5.00pm, and swim. Just to get some fresh air and exercise, and because it seems silly to live a mile from the beach and not take more advantage of it.

How many times did we do this?  Perhaps four or five times in all.  Some days Richard was busy with other things, some days it was still too hot for me, some days we just forgot. 

We did have a very enjoyable beach barbecue with our friends nearly two weeks ago, on Pervolia Beach where cooking is still allowed: 

At the weekend after that, Richard and a couple of friends took the boat for an overnight trip to Cape Greko, which they very much enjoyed. 

And then, suddenly, it was last Friday. The small cell group we belong to has been meeting at a local beach during July and August, to hang out and relax. We take our own picnics and usually stay until after it's dark (which was after 8.00 at the start of July, but nearer 7.30 now). I keep forgetting to take photos, but I did take this one of Katie, putting a lot of time and effort into creating a 'cake' for Richard (whose birthday is in a couple of months), covering it with vast amounts of fudge sauce, well disguised as sandy gloop. 

It occurred to me that it's probably the last time we'll visit the beach this summer. Possibly the last time this year.

If asked what I've done in the past couple of months, it would be hard to say. Mainly writing, reading, and browsing online.  Some website updates, some email, some reviewing, and some online Scrabble with friends. But I don't really see how that's taken up all my time. I don't ever plan to do much during the hottest months; low-key aestivating is all I can manage, but there seems to be very little to show for it this year.

On Monday I defrosted our large upright freezer, delighted to find that I had run down our supplies sufficiently that everything fitted (albeit rather tightly) into the top part of our fridge-freezer. I did throw out a couple of mysterious and un-labelled bags, which I suspect may have been leftover stuffing from Christmas. And a couple of small tubs of leftover pasta which I had evidently frozen a LONG time ago as they were iced up and smelled of freezer... we eat pasta so rarely that I'm not sure what I planned to do with frozen leftovers.

Keeping the large freezer off for the next few weeks should at least reduce our electricity costs slightly. I wasn't sure that everything would fit until the last moment - I have several tubs of frozen chicken stock, awaiting soup-making season. I still have three litres of frozen lemon juice to make more lemonade with - left from the very inexpensive lemon-glut season. I still have three tubs of frozen tomatoes, too, which I use instead of buying canned ones.  They're much cheaper here, if I buy tomatoes on special offer in season, and more nutritious too. I also have at least a week's supply of frozen portions of meals from the crockpot, some frozen peas in the only brand we like that were on offer a couple of months ago.  And various other bits and pieces... but it all fit in the fridge-freezer, so I was pleased.

The last ten days of July

As I wrote in my previous post about restaurants, we had a very busy week, out every evening seeing various local friends. It seems a long time ago now. I got as far as our anniversary on Thursday 19th July, but that wasn't the end of the busy period. On Friday we had our usual 'cell group' get-together on the beach, as we do during July and August. We hang out, swim a little, play with the children, eat our picnics, and chat about life, children, and anything else that comes to mind, staying there until darkness falls shortly after 8.00pm.

On Saturday we were out in the evening again, playing a Settlers game with our usual game-friends, and on Sunday they came to us for a DVD (for the children to watch) and yet another game for the adults, followed by a cold shared supper.

Then on Monday we were privileged, once again, to be invited to the 'family dinner' for our friends' daughter Katie, who was about to turn seven:

It was actually a day before her birthday, but she was about to go to Germany for ten days with her mother and two younger sisters, so she had an early celebration including a star-shaped cake:

I contributed some home-made ice cream, as I usually do.  Katie was expecting to have a 'proper' party after her return from Germany, but for various reasons there were no dates that worked with her chosen guests, so it was all the more special that we were counted as part of the family for her birthday meal. 

And then... 

We had a VERY quiet ten days. I don't just mean because we didn't see my three favourite small people who were away for that time, but we didn't see the rest of their family either, other than for a couple of minutes when they came to borrow a drill. 

And I didn't see any other friends, since just about everyone else we know seemed to have gone away to the UK, or US for a while. It makes sense to get out of the heat and humidity of Cyprus during the summer months, but I don't recall quite such a mass exodus last year.  

Besides, last year Tim came home for a couple of months, which was wonderful. This year he has a job, so is not coming back until Christmas. 

Richard has been working on cataloguing the various tools and other bits and pieces we have in multiple locations, and I've been reviewing and writing and reading, and keeping the house going, and generally coping with the high temperatures. In the evenings we played games, and watched more DVDs than usual, but by Sunday afternoon I was feeling in the need of something different. 

Richard had made the comment a few days earlier that I hadn't done any jigsaws this year. I replied that I hadn't done any jigsaws for, probably, seven years.  Other than a couple of small ones done for fun with friends at Christmas, the last time I did any real amount of jigsaws was Summer 2005 - I posted about the completed jigsaws in September that year. 

I pointed out that we no longer have the huge table where it was easy to do jigsaws and cover them with a cloth for meals. And I don't have anyone to do the puzzles with, now the boys have left home. And since we have small people visiting quite regularly, I don't think a puzzle would be very safe to leave out.  There were lot of good reasons for not doing them... 

Then on Thursday morning Richard needed to get some glue on special offer at Lidl. I wanted to go to the nut warehouse nearby, so I went with him, and in wandering around I spotted a 'jigsaw roll'. It supposedly allows a jigsaw puzzle up to 2000 pieces to be rolled up when partly done and put away.  It wasn't expensive, and I have a hard time finding anything I want to buy with my birthday or Christmas money, so I decided to be impulsive and buy it.

On the Friday evening the Olympics opening ceremony was broadcast and Richard had a link to watch it via his computer... but since it didn't start until 9.00pm UK time, that was 11.00 here, which is past the time I like to be asleep. He'd been sailing with a 

And on Sunday I got it out. It was just the right size for our small Ikea kitchen table. I also found a puzzle that I was given last Christmas, but had never done. Actually there were two puzzles in the box, so I picked one at random, not knowing which one it might be.

It was a bit strange working on green felt, and I had a bit of a battle to keep the cats from jumping onto it but at least pieces didn't go flying everywhere.  And it was useful having the approximate outline for a 1000-piece puzzle. It looked quite tricky, with patches of colour and not much to focus on, but I sorted, off and on, while cooking lunch, and then set to work on the sky, and it was a lot easier than I had expected: 

After lunch I pottered a bit, and kept sitting down to do just a little more to the puzzle, but had to give up eventually as I was getting neck-ache.  Still, I was quite pleased with what I'd achieved: 

So then I rolled it up and put it away!  I haven't got it out again yet... 

On Monday evening we watched an entire film on DVD (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets) - something we do maybe two or three times a month at most. And on Tuesday evening, we played a game of Seafarers of Catan (Fog Island), where Richard insisted I take a photo at the end to show my rather excessively long 'trade route' - I think it was 28 roads and/or ships in all: