At least there was pizza and the pizza was good

I went to bed almost on time. Which I count as ‚on time‘ in my journal, by the way, for motivational reasons.

I slept pretty well, woke from my alarm and promptly lost half an hour, so I guess I fell back asleep. And then I was very, very slow. I wrote morning pages, opened the manuscript, stared at it, felt paralyzed and gave up for the moment, did yoga and meditated and was very happy that my blood pressure is still in the ‚optimal‘ zone. If that continues I might think about trying to cut the blood pressure medication out.

It was much cooler but not really cool and so humid that it felt like walking through a wet wool blanket all day.

My husband left after breakfast do run some errands, I opened the manuscript again, stared at it for two minutes and closed it again. No idea if I’m making excuses or a valid effort.

There there were the breakfast dishes, I started a load of laundry, did Duolingo, dropped the adapter that doesn’t work for us off for a return, and went to the nearer supermarket. I actually got most of what we needed, the only thing I couldn’t find was peanut oil which is not something we need all the time. I also resisted bravely and did not buy snacks, chocolate, gummy bears or ice cream. Gold star!

When I came back home, twenty minutes before lunchtime the kitchen looked like this:

This is pretty far from being ready for lunch.

As my husband used a YouTube recipe (this one, it’s in German, I don’t like that he uses sugar and that’s too much water but there is a newer version on his channel as well). The problem with video recipes without written text is that you can’t scan the recipe to see what comes next.

So he made the dough the day before (with the flour that has more protein), did all the folding and such, stuffed it in the fridge for 24 hours as it said in the recipe, then pulled it out about an hour before lunch should be ready and saw that, um, he should have divided the dough into nice little balls that – again – need to be folded just so and then need to rise at room temperature for – two hours.

We decided to leave that step out, by the way, and my husband was way too stressed at this point to follow any fancy folding techniques.

I out the groceries away in record time, changed into sweatpants (because I did not want my skirt to become all sticky and full of flour), chopped all the ingredients for salad like a champ, while my husband was making tomato sauce and the pizza stone was heated in the oven.

My husband tried making the first ball of dough pizza-shaped. He mostly succeeded but ended up with a hole in the middle. We put the sauce on, decided to ignore the instructions to wait with the mozzarella and put it on right away (tastes much better, sorry, not sorry) and then ran into the problem that the pizza was sticking first to the silicone mat we had put on the table (just like the last time we did this). We managed to transfer it really carefully using two sets of hands.

Then the pizza stuck to the pizza shovel. Oops.

We strategically applied some flour. Phew. The pizza wasn’t round anymore but it also was not a sticky mess so we called that a win.

So I tried shaping the second one. I was doing a little better, mostly because I have been making this kind of pizza for longer (the recipe I used was not as involved, though) but I ended up with a hole in the middle as well.

This time the whole transferring process went better, even though I had to chase the pizza around in the oven. I think next time I’ll start lifting it from the side.

We made the third pizza as well, finished the salad and cleared the table, and voilà!

So, this doesn’t look too bad and it was delicious and very satisfying.

Husband said he had promised himself not to make dishes that were so stressful that he isn’t interested in eating them afterwards, and we were speculating if the result was worth the effort. Especially since we found that new brand of frozen pizza that is really, really good.

But then we also decided that this pizza was definitely more satisfying and the boy said that frozen pizza usually leaves him wanting more (he actually made himself two pizzas on Saturday when we were away) but that this pizza was just enough.

That’s something I’ve found with pasta as well. When we make it ourselves it leaves us more sated. Not quite sure if that’s just in my mind but I don’t think so.

By then it was already past 2 and my husband started teaching at 2.30.

So the boy and I did the dishes (the kitchen was a wreck but again, better than last time), I asked him to hang the laundry up that I had started earlier, I had a short break and then it was time to teach.

I thought I’d teach basically non-stop until past 7 but one of my singing students canceled at the last minute because they couldn’t bear facing the heat again. So I had a one-hour break that I used to watch all kinds of YouTube videos. After the first three minutes of the first video was interrupted twice, at length by two different people, my focus was shot and I just faffed around. (I had left the door to my studio open so that it would cool down a bit.)

I taught some more, talked briefly with my husband, ate dinner, talked with the boy, then I ate some chocolate and read a bit.

The boy had found a couple of summer clothes on the internet, we looked at his choices and discussed sizes, I ordered them, played some iPad games, started writing this post, did Duolingo and then it was time to get ready for bed again.

I compromised by only watching a teensy bit of C-drama and then I went to bed.

Is it the weekend yet?