- In the spirit of celebrating small victories, let me report that I’m feeling quietly smug about managing to keep the house moderately clean and presentable. Very moderately. My standards are pretty low. But we have a fairly steady cleaning routine and it basically works and I greatly enjoy that weekly feeling of having Done Right By Our House and everything being nice and fresh. This even includes getting the kids on board with doing their bit, at least occasionally. That’s the hardest part. But there’s progress.
- I’ve also been keeping my nails more or less presentable lately, with colour on and everything! This is one of those things that delivers gratification entirely disproportionate to the effort required, but the perceived effort is also entirely disproportionate to the actual effort. So it’s also very much a question of habit and routine: if I can keep it going, I’m a very happy bunny, but when I stop, eurgh.
- Speaking of good habits, I am finally managing to do yoga semi regularly. Thank you Down Dog, and thank you sis for introducing me to this! Despite being a long-time yoga fan I’ve never ever managed to actually do yoga at home; turns out the reason was mostly boredom. I was completely turned off by the idea of having to repeat the same video or routine. Having this app mix it up for me, so smoothly, and giving me absolutely control over the duration and difficulty is just magic. And 20 minutes of yoga is such a very, very excellent start to my day. Not every day. But a lot of them.
- Something else that’s weirdly working right now is my social life. I’ve been seeing friends a lot more often, suddenly, and it’s not exhausting me. This is great! Weird. But great. I feel almost like a regular person.
- This is a list of very domestic victories, and I feel I should round it off with something about making peace with the Hausfrau life or whatever, which would indeed be a worthwhile victory but I’m not sure it’s actually true. I’ll give you another Hausfrau high five though: I feel pretty good about my parenting right now. I’ve had a number of lovely compliments on my lovely kids, I’m enjoying them hugely myself and we made it through the two-week break without screaming fratricide – even with some lovely sibling moments – so yeah, well done us.
Nos 12 & 13 of #52recipes: salted caramel chocolate torte, which I made with dulce de leche and Greek yoghurt subbed for half the cream, which was a very good call indeed. The more tangy flavour worked really well. Also, Lotus biscuits for the base, yum. And I made Nigella’s simple hollandaise sauce from How to Eat – not entirely successfully, but also not entirely unsuccessfully, so for my first emulsified sauce I’m calling that a win. Got to be reeeeeally careful with the butter at the end there… I was not prepared for how suddenly it would go from thick sauce to thin!
Woolly thoughts (and fuzzy logic) 