Now where did I put ...?

Ste Pélagie
Yesterday's weather: Mild, warm, occasional sunny spell.

I'm feeling helpless this morning. Jon is starting work on the kitchen and because of my blasted toe I can't help him. It's very frustrating feeling generally fit but knowing that if I try to stand or walk for more than a few minutes I'll pay for it for the next few days, so at this stage it's better to keep out of things.

Jon is going to strip down the kitchen shelves and cupboards as much as possible and put everything into the cave before he starts rubbing down the walls one at a time and filling. The next job will be to put saltpetre protection on the lower half of the walls as we suffer from both condensation and 'leakage' through the back of the house when we have heavy rain (the back wall of the kitchen is the rocky hillside). It will be at least a week before I can start helping with the painting so I'm looking for something to do that will make me feel useful.

I've been designated breakfast and lunch chef as I can just about manage that. By the evening my foot has usually swollen up again so I can't cook dinner. I've got some sewing to do and some filing and paperwork but I don't think these things will keep me busy for long. I may weed out those items from the kitchen which we haven't used and see if we can lose them. Usually if I am doing this I put things in a box and out of sight always intending to dispose of them after a respectable few weeks or reinstate them should they suddenly prove to be vital to the smooth running of the household. Unfortunately they usually need to be reinstated and a new home found.

We are missing things that we know we had in the UK and all our packing boxes have been emptied. We remember being reasonably ruthless when packing up the old house but there are some things that we are certain we would have kept and still haven't found. Sometimes we wonder if, after all, there is a box that hasn't yet come to light but if so it will contain items from lots of different rooms so it is highly unlikely. On the other hand sometimes we'll come across some totally useless gadget bought from Lakeland Plastics in a moment of weakness and wonder why on earth we kept hold of it. Such items will be relegated to the 'probably don't need this' box until we discover that we can't possibly live without it again, by which time it will have been disposed of and we'll have to go and buy a new one.