Torpid

This evening, I was watching a DVD by RC Sproule (my usual Wednesday evening with my neighbours), and I learned from dear old RC the word "torpid".  Once looking it up, I realized that it exactly describes my blogging habit... and a lot of my other habits around here lately!  Between the lack of electricity, weird weather, weird politics, shortage of bread, flour and other bits and pieces, there have been a few extra things to think about lately.  Hence, my torpidity about normal habits such as blogging. 

As I was thinking about rectifying my torpid ways, I was composing a blog in my head. But somehow, it has fallen out of my head again!  Sorry.  There's really not been many adventures lately - as I said, we have limited power each day.  I've been really busy at work.  And in the evenings, I've been busy with things like, well, cooking, eating, and washing up.  My garden is growing a bit, except that some of my baby plants didn't survive the last downpour :(   My pumpkins, cucumbers and kale are growing well, though.  I'm hoping that I can start eating my bean leaves (called "korofo") next week! 

I also haven't been blogging much because I've been busy reading stuff on my little gadget.  I love my little gadget. It's been especially wonderful these past weeks as we only have electricity during working hours and for a few hours in the evening.  Having books and magazines on the gadget means that I can read in the dark.  Just me, my cat and my gadget, and we're happy together.

I've also tapped into my neighbour's back up battery system.  He has an inverter and a battery, and I have just "boosted" the system with a second battery (which, wow, do not come cheap!).  Already, I can plug in a little fan and even my computer (or my gadget!) into a wire that goes from his place to my place.  What a difference it has made, to have a little moving air in the house when it's been so terribly hot!  But we are going to work on wiring up a few lights in my house, to be powered by the battery (which gets charged up when the generator is on), so I can at least see what I'm cooking in the evening and find my way to the loo at night. 

Another project that I've been working on is breakfast alternatives.  My normal breakfast of champions here in this place is a piece of bread (which looks like a little dinner roll) with peanut butter and jam.  However, there's a serious shortage of bread at the moment in town.  I also just ran out of jam yesterday.  I also haven't been able to find any oats in town.  And I have already blogged about the fact that the closest Cheerio is thousands of miles away.   Eggs have also almost doubled in price over the past few months.  And, obviously, I'm not going to get out of bed early so that I can actually COOK anything in the morning!  So.  This all leaves me with not too many options for breakfast!  I have baked some muffins, which turned out quite yummily.  Tonight, I cooked up some "potato pancakes" which should last a few days - will just have to heat them up in a skillet in the morning!  Any good breakfast ideas are welcome :)

At least I'm getting healed from my trauma from all these things during the day.  I'm working with one of the language teams here to check a book that they have translated about healing from trauma.  This book is full of stories about people who have suffered through horrible things, including wars and famine and abuse and all sorts of things.  It's a really much needed book in these parts, and I really do hope that people will be able to make good use of this book and find some peace after all the awful things they have experienced here.  It's also just been an interesting experience to check a translation.  I haven't done very much of this sort of work, but it's really interesting.  Today we checked two chapters of the book, translated by two different people.  It's amazing to see the different styles of translation that the two translators have used.  Both of them have the right meaning and have translated it relatively naturally into the language... but one of them has stayed quite close to the English structure, while the one has definitely paraphrased!  Anyway, the group that I'm working with are being very patient with me, too, as I find my way in this new sort of work. too.

It's nearly time for the power to go off once again, so better get this posted, jump in the shower, and put away my leftover potato pancakes!

And I will try not to be quite as torpid about this blog over the coming weeks... though in a few weeks, I am travelling to a country where this website is actually blocked!  But hopefully you will hear from me before then :)

Zaney Zane

I seem to have a fridge full of leftovers at the moment, which isn't very good when there's no city power and you only have 6 hours of electricity out of every 24 hours and it's 38C in the house most of the day.

So, I'm trying to eat through them before they go bad... and I've enlisted someone to help me.  Thing is, I pretty much eat vegetarian food at home - when you've got this little electricity, I'm not really into keeping meat in the freezer!  So you might think it odd that I have enlisted my kitty cat, Zane, to help me consume the leftovers.

For two days, he was helping me make my way through the leftover sweet and sour lentils.  Today he started helping me with the leftover greens (kale) which were drizzled with a lovely dressing of balsamic vinegar and honey, with a side of brown rice.  And he's loving it!  He's not even leaving in the evenings to forage for food from the nieghbours - he just sucks all those delicious veggies and legumes, and plops himself down by the fan.  He's really quite the crazy cat.

At least this evening he's plopped himself down on the floor, instead of on my chair.  Yes, I have my chair, and yes, my cat and I fight over it once in a while.  Does that make me into a crazy cat lady!?

Just hanging out at home

Me and Zane have been enjoying being at home lately. It's just nice to sit in my chair, in front of my fan, listening to my BBC,enjoying cooking and eating, and just being at home. What's happened to me!? Am I getting old?! But I'm just happy sitting quietly in my house. I have had several people over for dinner at various times, and I definitely see lots of people during the day. But come 8pm, I'm happy to sit with Zane, and read a book with a nice cuppa. I've also been enjoying my blender! It is a fine piece of machinery (of which, for some reason, I can't upload a photo of!). It slices and dices and makes the most delicious smoothies. It's gotten to the point where I prefer to chop, chop chop some fruit into my blender in the afternoon instead of popping open a cold Coke! I found some passion fruits at the market the other day, so the current recipe for juice includes mango, pineapple, banana and a passion fruit, along with as much ice as my poor little freezer can manage to produce with only a few hours of electricity each day. There doesn't seem to be any yogurt in town, but if yogurt ever comes again, a dollop of yogurt completes the smoothie! Mmmmm.... Fruit juice. God sure knew what he was doing when he made fruit! However, the ants also seem to be enjoying being at home with me and my fruit. I've been invaded by these giant ants! And they also like to climb up my ankles while I sit in front of my fan with Zane. I guess they just want to join the fan party! But I'm not a fan of them -- at least they don't seem to bite and they move pretty slow. But they also leave quite a large smear in the floor when you smash them, which even Zane finds a bit unsightly. Hopefully they will find someone else to be friends with sooner than later! Right, power goes out in 30 minutes, and I should probably go wash the ant smears off my feet...

Feeling hot, hot, hot!

I know that I co plain about the weather here a lot. But honestly today was hot. Hot. Hot. Hot. It was 42c in my living room this afternoon. And that felt refreshingly cool after coming in from the outside. My neighbor's thermometer was reading nearly 50c outside. It was so hot that our generator kept overheating and shutting itself off. Meaning, no fans. By the end of the day, I was a pretty disgusting little puddle. I was wearing a dark shirt, and after supper, someone told me that I should take the map of the country off and take a cool shower - because all my sweat had left white salty lines all over my shirt!! How is that for attractive?! So I did end hip int eh shower, but it was still hot water, as the sun was heating it in the tank all day. It was the second warm shower of the day, as my shower at 7:30am was also warm. Where, oh where is the rain?!

Gorillas

I post this for you, SM, 'cos I think you can get a chuckle from it at my expense, of course... I was sitting at my table eating French toast with RM the other day, when suddenly, my fork broke. The comment from RM was, "eh, you have become a gorilla!" So yes, I have become a huge gorilla. And that is all I have to share tonight.