More blacks, fewer whites.

More browns and greens.

Still plenty of red-white-black combos.

I keep forgetting my lactose intolerance. I do remember it when I’m doing my grocery shopping. But for some things there are no lactose-free alternatives, and then I just buy the normal stuff and plan to take a lactase tablet when I eat it. Yogurts, for example. There are very few lactose-free alternatives and none of them taste well. Or anything with ricotta cheese.

The problem is that when I get to actually eating these things I forget about the tablets. I’ve been eating normal yogurt for decades so I just do it on autopilot. And a few hours later my stomach feels like a balloon and my clothes literally don’t fit me any more.

Knowing that my waist circumference at this point is 4 cm larger than normal, I wonder if could you calculate the volume of intestinal gas from that, and then the amount of lactose that was digested by bacteria instead of myself.

I’ve been thinking thoughts of lemon & poppy seed cakes since early summer. Since May, even, I think. Dropping hints occasionally when Adrian has said he feels like baking. (He always ends up baking either mud cake or chocolate chip cookies.) And I still haven’t done anything about it myself. A basic cake batter takes, what, fifteen minutes? Twenty? It’s nothing. But I just haven’t been able to muster the energy it takes to start even this humble project. Starting things is hard.

Until now. I feel inordinately pleased by this small accomplishment.

Eric and Adrian are away staying with friends; Ingrid is away staying with other friends. I’m on my own for a few days.

I can enjoy the peace and quiet during the days, but I’m really not cut out for living on my own. My sleep schedule starts slipping immediately – I kind of don’t see the point of going to bed, so I stay up way too late and only finally go to sleep when I really have to. I wake up as usual in the morning, but around midday I can’t keep awake anymore so I end up sleeping on the sofa.

I’ve never had a home that was only mine. When I moved out of home, I moved straight in with Eric. My only longer stretch of living on my own was a term as an exchange student and it was the most miserably lonely half-year of my life.

Even on days when the rest of the family are all doing their own things most of the time, I like the feeling of just knowing that they are here.

I cut my thumb while cooking. Not badly, but enough to bleed all over the potatoes I was chopping, so I had to put a plaster on it. Such a tiny change, but it messes up so much.

The plaster gets wet and dirty the moment I touch anything in the kitchen, so I try to avoid using my thumb when cooking. When I do use it, my grip is off. And then my brain somehow goes from “don’t use the thumb” to “just avoid that part of the hand” so I find myself doing things with my middle finger instead of the index finger, for no good reason at all, which makes the weirdness even weirder. Give me back my thumb!

We have a cleaning service who come here every other Tuesday and spend three ours vacuuming, dusting, scrubbing the toilets and such. I’m very happy about this luxury but I will never, ever get used to how the cleaners all move things around. One of them was so bad about it that we had to ask the company to swap her out and send someone else. I literally couldn’t find things after she had been here, and at one point had to by a replacement some kitchen utensil because she had put it away somewhere and I only found it weeks later.

They normally don’t even move things very far or to particularly odd places. It’s just that we like having every thing in its proper place, because that place has emerged as the best and most proper one after potentially years of tweaking. Especially on the kitchen counter. The salt will always be to the left of the pepper because the pepper mill is taller and is easier to grab if it isn’t too close to the knife block. The dish detergent has to be to the left of the soap dispenser because we use it more often and it’s easier to reach there. And so on. By now their proper places are deeply ingrained in memory, and when things that I use daily get moved, it really throw me off.

Today the coffee table had been shifted literally just a few centimetres from its normal spot. That was more than enough to feel off when I put my feet up on it (which I was definitely brought to not do but like an utter slob I still do it anyway). Muscle memory is a strong thing.

I feel a bit bad about depriving the family of home-grown strawberries (even though they probably don’t really expect me to provide any) so I’m solving the problem by throwing money at it and saying yes to buying strawberries whenever Adrian asks for them. It’s a good thing he does ask, because I would be stingier if I was buying just for myself.

Adrian and I often eat cereal with yoghurt and a generous heaping of fresh strawberries for breakfast. (Meanwhile Ingrid sleeps until late morning and doesn’t really do breakfast at all, and Eric has already left for work after a much earlier and simpler meal.)

Watching the rain while transferring Adrian’s scout badges from his old, outgrown shirt to a new one. This is the last time I’m doing this; next time he can do his own sewing.

Adrian and I got fresh summer haircuts.

Seeing our hair side by side reminded me just how gray mine has become.