I have a vaccination appointment!

As soon as the news were out that bookings were open for those born in 1977 to 1981, I dropped everything I was doing and logged in. It took me four attempts to book an appointment because the slots kept disappearing before I managed to confirm the booking. On my fourth attempt I made sure to pick a random time in the middle of the day – not the beginning, not the end, not lunchtime – and then finally I got lucky.

Ten days to my appointment. Then another 6 or 7 weeks after that for the second dose. Maybe I could actually travel somewhere in August or September.

The workouts are happening outside now that it’s so warm.

I’m kind of pleased that I’ve managed to keep up my daily workouts for 7 months now. Thinking of buying bigger dumbbells yet again, but then again I’m not sure if I’ll have the discipline during the summer break, and who knows what happens in autumn anyway…

Working from home and spending so much time in the bedroom/office/gym, I am seeing the front garden from a new angle. I am used to seeing it when I walk past it or through it or to it. Now I’m also seeing it from above every day, especially when I open the window to cool down the room. It’s a bit of an unconventional angle for admiring a garden, but this part of it looks really good from above. There are the curves of the flowerbed and the path, and the bushes right next to the wall beneath me giving it depth.

Guess who actually got some things done today! I planted the currants and bought a peony and planted it. It looks limp now but I’m counting on it regaining its strength.

I like traditional, old-style plants like lilacs and bleeding hearts and peonies. Not their fancy, refined varieties either, but the simplest, commonest ones.

Both hydrangea bushes have actually survived the winter. Both have some dead branches, and dead buds on the live branches, but enough green leaves coming out to look hopeful.

Knitting is all about maths.

Sock yarn comes in hanks of 100 grams. One pair of standard socks for myself or Adrian weighs 51 grams. (His are 1.5 cm shorter in the foot than mine but higher in the calf.) So one hank is just barely not enough for two pairs of socks, which is a bit unfortunate, since both Adrian and I loved this yarn. But I can make us a pair each if I use a different yarn for the sock heel for one of the pairs, which would actually be pretty practical anyway, because it will help us tell our socks apart.

This is like an arithmetics problem for elementary school.

Mum has 100 grams of colourful yarn. She knits one pair of socks using 51 grams of the yarn. After knitting a third sock, using plain brown yarn for the heel, she has 27 grams of the colourful yarn left. How much brown yarn did she use for the sock heel? After finishing the second pair of socks, how much colourful yarn will she have left over for darning?

… and more rain today. The garden is absolutely sodden, and after two days of cold weather and no sun, the house is getting cold as well. I’m back to wearing thick winter cardigans indoors, while looking longingly at the deck furniture we brought up last weekend.

Non-stop rain literally all day.

When we redid the kitchen, we put in a tiled backsplash along two sides of it. Somehow we didn’t realize that the wall next to the dishwasher and the espresso machine would also need tiling. That was a mistake, because both those machines cause splashes on the wall occasionally, and scrubbing coffee stains from a painted wall is a bloody pain. So we’re now rectifying that mistake and tiling that wall.

The guy doing it uses string to space the tiles, rather than any kind of plastic spacers, which I find interesting. I’d have thought that string would get compressed but he obviously knows what he is doing.

The weather is mild and the blackbirds are singing and I like to keep the doors to the garden open to let both those nice things in. This also lets in flurries of cherry petals. Not in the same amounts as outside, luckily.