Phone vs. Life, and Zucchini Challenges

And just like that, another week has passed, and here I am sitting on a Sunday evening, thinking about where the heck the week went.

I can't say it was a particularly productive week. I'm finding myself sitting around more and more, scrolling through my phone like all the other phone zombies out there. It is a horrifying thought. To combat this, I attempted a bit of knitting, but for whatever reason, my head just was not in it. thought it would be better for me to leave it than to try and force it. That's just a recipe for a lot of mistakes, ripped out stitches, and pouting.

I am determined not to become a slave to my phone.

Possibly the most productive thing this week was to organize the top drawer of my desk at work. It had gotten to point that, every time I opened it, I would shake my head, and close it in disgust. It was a disaster in there. I had been given an "organizer" that had wrong size compartments for all the stuff I had crammed in there, and as a result, I would just toss things on top of all the other junk that didn't fit. One morning last week, I'd finally had enough. I went wandering around looking for smaller containers, then dumped out the whole drawer and put stuff in actual PLACES. I felt quite proud of myself after that... so organized, so efficient, so adult:

And then, that afternoon, I dropped salsa onto my lap. So much for victories. And thank goodness for Tide To Go pens.

As an aside: There was a period of my life (from age 15 to about age 22) when I only drank clear drinks (either water or Sprite/7Up) simply because I knew I would spill them. Also, in case you're wondering: milk will stain. It is not a spill-safe drink.

But anyways...

I woke up on Saturday morning with grand intentions of hitting the gym, but I got up, walked over to my gym clothes, then turned around and went back to bed. My track record has not been great these days, and my rehabilitating foot is not helping, but I'm trying to live by the 80% rule: If I'm on track 80% of the time, that's pretty darn good.

I plodded down to the kitchen with intentions of pouring myself a bowl of cereal and then settling down on the couch with it to yet again mindlessly browse through my phone, but my eyes caught the crowd of vegetables I'd picked up with my veggie box the night before. I looked at my phone and then back at them.

Phone will not win.

It's zucchini season (courgettes, if you're British), that time of year when they grow so quickly that you'd swear they multiply on the counter. You find yourself with so many that you seriously consider leaving them on people's doorsteps, ringing the doorbell, and running away. For me, I am also contending with all of its relatives: patty pan squash and summer squash - basically the same veggie in different forms. I decided that, instead of eating cereal for breakfast, I'd cook up something fresh and interesting:

I softened some deseeded summer squash with some diced fresh tomatoes, then removed them from the pan to brown the chopped up bacon. I drained out some of the fat and put the veggies back in, along with a handful of chopped up fresh basil leaves, which I have been receiving by the bagful every other week:

I added a bunch of whisked up eggs and milk, poured it in, and I had a large, fluffy omelette to share... kind of like a frittata. We always say, "fritataaahhh" when I make one:

Veggies: 1. Phone: Zero.

I did pick up the phone to browse through Pinterest figure out what to do with another zucchini later on that afternoon. It's the glut of zucchinis that inspire ridiculous recipes like chocolate zucchini cake... or double chocolate zucchini muffins. I figured I might as well join in with all of the ridiculousness. Besides, this is the best vegetable dish I've ever made:

When I finally worked through a few zucchinis, I decided I'd tackle some spinning. I simultaneously wanted to and didn't want to work on it this week. I guess I was stalling because I don't have the tools I want to work on it. I still have grand designs of making myself my own lazy kate, but in the meantime, I decided to make do with this:

This is what comes of sitting at the dinner table drinking coffee and letting my eyes wander around the room. I think this is along the lines of what I want to make out of wood, but I would make it slightly wider to accommodate "bobbins" from longer spindles. In the meantime, cardboard contraption it is.

I can truly say that spinning this roving has been a learning experience. I spun it using one of my Golding spindles, which rotates SUPER fast. It's really designed for shorter-stapled fibres that need the extra twist to keep them together, but I was so eager to use it that I started on the material I had closest to hand. As a result, I think I overspun these singles a bit: they keep kinking as I pull them off the bobbins, and when I try to straighten them out, they sometimes break. I think it'll be ok once I wash and set the yarn, but I don' think I'll try to spin silk blends on such a quick spindle again.

In the meantime, I'm going to go put away the mountain of beets I roasted this evening. Between them and the zucchinis, they have me exhausted. I'm the only one around here who likes beets... and I LOVE them roasted slowly on the barbecue. I decided to cook them all up and eat them throughout the week as a snack. I could always eat them with one of these. That would practically be a salad:

I'm off to NOT look at my phone and perhaps enjoy some evening yoga and some actual conversation. Imagine that. Happy weekend, all.