An entire dry day!

That's more like it, 10pm sky in July and no rain for a whole day. Shame the weather folk said there would be showers, I could have got some washing done if I'd known it would be hot and dry and windy. Instead, I obsessively unscrewed kitchen gadgets that had been stored in the back of Mr P's cupboards so that I could evict the tiny tiny tiny spiders that had set up home inside them. Who could blame them, some of those things hadn't been used for 3 years.


Last week

The things I'll do to take my mind of food cravings. I'm having to go on a pretty serious allergy detox/elimination diet to try and figure out what has been making me sick recently (well, sicker than what I already was). So no naughty treats like chocolate covered sesame snaps. I'm generally wheat free but not always gluten free cause I eat ryvita and oatcakes. I'm dreading the return to only having rice cakes now (the other suitable things are too pricey for me, or too tasty so they don't last). I'm slightly worried that rice and nuts seem to be causing problems recently. But for now I'm just cutting the ones I'm sure of. If there is no improvement in a month I'll try the others.


Last week

I had to go through the cupboards double checking the ingredients on the things I use and sure enough there were offending ingredients hidden in the things I use like my corn syrup (has malt from barley = gluten) and to my soya margarine had bloomin' dairy in it! Mr P bought that one so he's not used to label checking. Lucky I never use it much. Did I talk about the margarine already? This memory thing is freaking me out. The irony is, it's only 2 months since I applied to do voluntary work with Alzheimers patients.


Last week

So anyway, once I started looking in the cupboards I couldn't stop hence the discovery of the spidery gadgets. After the eviction there was some intense washing with lots of vinegar (kills bacteria). I have to be in the right mood for that sort of obsessive cleaning, and today I really was, I think because of the sunshine, it was like getting the spring cleaning urge. My hands, which are normally rough from gardening, are now the softest they have ever been in my adult life. Vinegar is such great stuff. I buy it in big 5 litre bottles for cleaning, chemicals are not given shelf space in this house. There's not much you can't clean with vinegar, bicarb or lemon, and for the rest there's Ecover.


Last week

Another benefit of intense washing was that the warm water really eased my aching hands and wrists after my mini drama yesterday where I locked all my different sets of keys inside my shed! The torrential rain appeared suddenly and before running to the house I closed the shed door and clicked the padlock shut - then yowled as I realised what I had done. Because I was pet sitting everywhere I had lots of keys with me so I couldn't feed anyone's animals without them. Mr P was away at a school reunion so no hope of getting into the house later on both our houses were locked.

I had to borrow a rusty almost blunt hacksaw off a neighbour and stand in highly inappropriate clothing (it had been very hot and sunny before the rain) hacking at the padlock for half an hour before I managed to cut through. I tell you, if ever there was a reason to treat myself to a naughty snack that would have been it, but I was good, I resisted temptation! This morning when I woke my body had seized up completely. I t took 4 hours to get enough movement to go and pee (too much detail, I know). I won't be locking my keys in the shed again.