A loverly day

Eden and her mom

You can tell where she gets her good looks

(I say that even though her dad is my son)

Special happy birthday to Eden, my beautiful 14-year-old granddaughter. She’s smart, sweet, talented, and beautiful--all the things you could hope for.

I divided the day between my two favorite activities—cooking and reading. Cooking in the cottage is getting a little better. Jordan brought me a rotisserie chicken breast (not the whole bird, bless her!). This morning I boned and sliced it, got an amazing amount of meat. Chicken sandwich for lunch. Then I put the carcass on to simmer—my fancy-dancy hot plate turns itself off after a while, so there was an hour or two when it didn’t cook, but I got broth to use for a casserole tonight. May put the broth back on the burner tomorrow.

Tonight I made creamed chicken on toast with the broth and some white wine. Pretty good if I do say so. Diced a couple of scallions and a stalk of celery to go in it, added tiny frozen peas. May make chicken salad tomorrow—I think a friend is coming by about lunchtime.

Got alone fine, though Jordan wandered out and served as first assist—reaching things for me and the like. I do tend to spill—probably the worst tonight was I took the lid off the broth which was cooling and dripped the liquid off onto my until-then clean pants. But it was condensation, not broth—still a pair of pants destined for the washer.

But I found out I can fairly easily stand at the counter to stir ingredients in the frying pan or at the sink to wash dishes. I keep the walker with a seat firmly behind me, so that the back of my knees always knows where it is. And I hang on to the sink if needed. Pretty proud of myself.’

Last night I thought I’d just dip my toe into Deborah Crombie’s latest mystery, Garden of Lamentations. Because Crombie’s work tends to be dense and require concentration, I intended to move on to something lighter—it was evening, and I was tired. But there is no dipping your toe into her work—I was immediately hooked and spent most of today reading.

I know it doesn’t seem like I work hard, so a vacation day may not be in order-but that’s how I viewed today. And while reading a completely unrelated work a couple of ideas for my work-in-progress popped into my head. I’m ready to write tomorrow and then continue proofing the last mystery I have to post online. Yep vacation but not a wasted day…and one that was good for my soul.