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Plague Diary

A 2119-post collection

Disorganised today...

...datorganised tomorrow. Of course, tomorrow never comes because it's today when it gets here.

I have PLNs to make some wholemeal loaves, starting tomorrow. I shall be gifting one to Chaos' teacher. What happens to the other one all depends on who puts their hands up for a loaf first.

I've asked MeMum. Next, I shall ask Capt. S. After that, Chaos' bus lady gets her chop. If all refuse, I might offer to neighbours, IDK. Or I might enjoy some toast with personality every morning. Who can tell?

Not me. Not now. Not for sure.

Today's PLN involves only my Instant and 100 words in my novel. I've been consistently approaching or passing 200 every sweep, so next week will have the goal of 200 words per diem, Monday to Friday.

Bit by bit, I shall get back to my former goal of 3K per week. My brain is still healing. I'm easing back into my normal workload. No pressure.

If I fall short during the easing process, I fall short. It's no big deal.

If I repeatedly fall short, I extend the easing. This is my healing process and I need to monitor myself for mental aches and pains.

For now, though, 'tis almost bus o'clock. I shall chance the slings and arrows of novel writing whilst waiting for a bus to arrive.

Wednesday (doonk doonk)

Halfway through the week and how does being busy help the time fly?

There's still a LOT of bread at home and I'm wondering whether to start gifting loaves to people [would they be grateful?] or just... keep the starters alive until we need bread again.

I'm pretty sure I can mail a loaf to MeMum with an overnight parcel. That'll be fun to watch.

I'll have to ask ppl if they actually want a loaf before I try sending them to

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From Mission Impossible to Yakety Sax

Today's PLN includes a trip to my shrink, a mission for cream and maybe strawberries, and the usual nonsense that is what passes for a life in my neck of the woods.

Thusly, I shall be posting what there is of my Patreon offerings first. I know I'm writing in my novel again, but there's still not a finished chapter because the chapter in progress isn't long enough.

I do not have more of much. Sorry Patrons. At least I should be

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Monday Morning Extended Version

Toasty has moved her stream times to Monday Morning at Fuckoff AM, my time. So I face the beginning of the week with lack of sleep as a bonus score. Fortunately, my Beloved did some of the good math and figured out I should fall asleep REAL early so I could get enough rest to face my long-arse day with at least vigor.

It's worked. I have some tinned caffeine to imbibe when I flag later on today. I have yet to

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I learn a lot, I do little

Yesterday, I spent most of my time just waiting for my dough to grow. It didn't, really. So I gave up and did the proofing basket thing et cetera.

As I explained it to beloved, prepping the dough for baking from the proofing baskets goes like: Fold... fold... fold, fold, fold... foldfoldfoldfoldfold... gotcha!

A process made even more interesting by the fact that the liners for my improvised proofing baskets freaking disintegrated and I had to make do with tea towels, which

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Two-parter Bread Days, I guess

So here's the thing with sourdough:

  1. You need to give your starter time to rise before you use it.
  2. This takes a majority of the morning.
  3. When you do use it, there's still mixing the dough and letting it sit for a while (aka Autolysing) before you add it to your stuff.
  4. Then there's stretching and folding at set intervals [1/2 hour to 1 hour depending on your mood, what the dough likes, etc] which you do a minimum of four
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Friday. It's time for bread

So. This morning so far is:

  • Feed cats
  • Consult with Beloved visavis bread making [it's white loaves this time]
  • Feed starters
  • Make pancakes out of harvest for Chaos
  • Realise that Chaos wants to eat them at home (fml)
  • See Chaos off to school
  • Finish making the pancakes
  • Prep for bread [weighing, sifting, containing]
  • Finally have coffee and pills
  • Unfuckening the house
  • And now I get to sit down and work for a change

It's been a busy morning, and I still haven't

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So Far...

It's headed towards the end of the week and I'm incrementally progressing on getting things done. This week, I managed to get all of my scheduled output online on time instead of derping out and forgetting for a majority of the time.

Tomorrow promises to be bread day(tm) and I'm actually pondering doing a wholemeal run and a whitebread run consecutively because some dough just rises quicker. The problem is - I no longer have proper lining for my proofing baskets.

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Good News, Bad News, Meh News

Good News: We have found a place that sells the good stoneground flour.

Bad News: I have less than $20 in the bank, so a purchase is going to have to wait.

Meh News: Two weeks after France opened its schools, the plague is having outbreaks again.

Schadenfreude News: The Muppet is reportedly taking Hydroxychloroquine.

You know, that non-supported drug that he has a financial interest in that turned out to kill more Covid-19 patients than it saved? Yeah. That.

So he

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I feel better about today

I didn't get my coconut milk, yesterday. I was just too darn exhausted to drive to Costco and get it. Beloved could drive me there, but I had to remain conscious for two further hours.

Nope.

I fell the heck to sleep.

After a decent night's rest, I shall be venturing to the shops later on in the day. Costco doesn't open before ten and, now that I can stay awake until the afternoon, I shall do that and go get my

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It's an INTERESTING day!

Woke up at a quarter to midnight and realised - hey, Toasty's having a stream and if I go back to sleep, the alarm is just going to wake me up grumpy and useless.

So I got up and pootled around [finished a chapter of Lust of the Demon Lord, to be posted on Patreon this week. Yay] and enjoyed some GOOD GOOD THIRST ART which is tickling the shipping receptors in my brain. This is a good thing.

Also today -

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Beautiful to Look At...

I finally made a beautiful-looking loaf:

[Shown here: A sourdough loaf still in the Dutch oven. It has risen like an angel]

The downside is that it feels worryingly dense and I fear we will be making some very pretty bruchetta with it. Ah well. I did everything "wrong" but at least it looks like it turned out lovely.

I used up the last of the White Wings wholemeal flour making this, and this is a list of the things I did:

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Happy Birthday, Chaos!

Miss Chaos is fifteen today, and we have cake, noms, and no rules because the world is ending. I'm deliberately avoiding news today because I don't need any more anxiety.

I don't want to learn what additional fucked up shit is happening out in the world. People are filling up their entire card for Apocalypse Bingo. The hell with that noise.

Today is a day to feast and be happy. Therefore, I am not searching out things that make me feel bad.

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Hello, Rock. Hello, Hard Place...

The two week grace period is nearly done. If there's no signs of coughs or sniffles, I am sending Chaos back to school and doing the decontamination noise when she comes home.

I've encountered a further embuggerance as my Medium account is under investigation and I can't post until things are fixed. I'm moving as lickety-darn split as I can, but I'm also editing THREE YEARS OF INSTANTS so that the sig no longer contains solicitations for funds.

Honestly, it might be

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Sideways!

I'm late for putting up my Wordpress Wednesday, so I should dig up a li'l something-something for y'all. I hope you like chapter 2 of Beauties and the Beastly.

I've had enough of disparaging the administrations as they continue to mess things up. I've had enough of complaining about how scared I am. I've had enough of being scared and hunkering in my bunker and I'm certainly not going to whine about how much freedom I don't have because idiots everywhere are

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