i fell down a virtual rabbit hole late last night, and i was more than an hour deep into watching videos of people making different types of Asian noodle soups before i managed to crawl back out. naturally, that is ALL i have been thinking about today.
my appetite has been a bit lacking of late, so i have been spending most of the last few days with a hot beverage always close at hand, and really only having one meal for the day. as a result, i had a cappuccino and one or two cups of tea during the earlier part of the day, but i was saving my appetite for a bowl of noodle soup.
naturally, i was not going to make the thing. it is near impossible to cook for one, and the last thing i want is to spend the next three days looking at the same pot of soup every time i open the fridge. i left the soup-making to the experts.
so, i ordered my soup, and i proceed to take the necessary steps to keep the interaction to an absolute minimum at the door.
payment method? check. phone in hand so i can buzz them in at the front door? check. then there was that other thing.
i should point out that it was post-sunset at this point, and i had made a point of closing the drapes because the rest of the world did not need to see me wandering around in a t-shirt and not much else.
i did not want to traumatize the delivery person, so i grabbed a pair of pajama pants and tossed them over the arm of the sofa, so that i could pull them on as i was walking toward the door. then i waited.
i had this all planned out: the phone rings... i grab it and say "hello, all the way upstairs"... then i press the button to open the door... then i pick up my pajama pants and quickly pull them on while i am moving toward the apartment door. no problem!
what could possibly go wrong... right?
so, i sat cross-legged on my favorite sofa with my computer in front of me on the table, and i proceeded to engage in what i usually describe as "minding my own business" until it was time to answer the door.
finally... the phone rang, i answered and said my bit, then grabbed the pajama pants in one hand while simultaneously unfolding my legs to place my feet on the floor.
that is when it happened.
in my overzealous attempt at standing, i managed to send one foot racing just a bit too quickly from atop the sofa, and i miscalculated the precise trajectory required to make contact with the floor. what it did make contact with, however, was the side of the solid-wood table.
not gonna lie... i screamed when it happened. it hurt so much!
so now i drop the pajama pants and go into some sort of reflexive-protective-position, with both hands trying to cradle the injured part of that foot. this was not a run-of-the-mill toe stub. it was the kind of impact that could easily result in a broken toe, or at the very least, in a bloody, dislodged toenail, so i fully expected to see something oozing when i moved my hands away from the affected toe. it looked okay at this point, but it was still hurting more than anything ever should.
this was when i remembered that i needed to answer the door.
i grabbed the pajama pants from off the floor, and gingerly managed to get the injured foot through one leg, but i had to sit back down on the edge of the sofa to do the same for the other side, as there was no way i could stand on one leg with that throbbing foot.
so i start hobbling toward the door, wincing tearfully every time i have to step on the injured foot, while also trying to pull up my pajama pants which are somewhere around my knees at this point.
it was magical.
i heard footsteps out in the hallway, so i unlocked the door and opened it a bit to save him the trouble of ringing the bell or knocking on the door. naturally, i managed in doing so to bang the lower edge of the door right up against the might-be-broken toe, so i dropped down into the reflexive-protective-position and started whimpering once again.
and that is where the delivery guy found me.
crouched over by the partially-opened door, holding my foot with one hand, while struggling to pull the waistband of my pink-and-black snowflake pajamas up past my hips with the other.
i am sure that there is now a special symbol next to our address in their records, and we may be banned from ever ordering food from them again. but, on the plus side, i am fairly certain that my toe is not broken. it hurts very much, and i have to walk on that heel to take the weight off the front of my foot. still, i can move the toe, so nothing appears to be broken, although that toenail will likely pop off in a day or two. joy!
and, yes... the soup was really good.
oh, and while i am on the subject of 'protective positions', i almost forgot what i intended to talk about today.
we decided to keep the trough of strawberry plants indoors following the work on the balcony. i was fully prepared for the leaves to start turning yellow and dropping after having been removed so abruptly from the sunny outdoors, but they just kept on growing...
and so did the fruit. i seriously had no idea that a couple strawberry plants could be so productive. there is more fruit in those two little clusters that i have gotten all Summer so far. and there are heaps of other such clusters of fruit in various stages of growth all over the plants. when i think of how many strawberries i could have been enjoying all Summer, i just want to find the nearest squirrel and punch it in the nose.
i am even doing the pollination bit with the feather, but the plants seem to keep producing strawberries even when i forget.
and the Little One has even more places to get into trouble now. i am going to pretend she is not sticking her tongue out at me. the nerve!
i want to blow this up to billboard-size, then plaster it on the exterior wall for the squirrel to see.
this was my first time growing strawberry plants, and i was not sure what i would do with them when the Summer was through. i know that strawberries grown in the ground can be covered up with a thick layer of hay/straw (hence the name straw-berry), and they usually bounce right back come Spring.
however, with strawberries in pots, there is simply not enough insulation in a container of soil to protect them from the worst of Winter (especially in a place like Canada), so people usually either wrap up those pots and store them in a garage or shed over Winter... or they just plan to buy new plants come Spring.
i really hate waste, and i enjoy the challenge of growing things, so i did a bit of googling, and it turns out to be pretty easy to keep strawberries as indoor plants over the Winter. the biggest concern is ultimately light. as long as they are getting enough light—and water, or course—they can be treated pretty much like you would any regular indoor plant, although a few site did stress not to keep them too near to a heat source.
i was sharing all of this with him, and i was so proud of myself for having taken the initiative to figure all of that out, when he proceeded to burst my bubble.
me: so i walked around the whole apartment, trying to find the most ideal spot where they would either get enough light from a South-facing window, or where we can rig up a plant light. but i also have to make sure they are warm, but not too hot. i weighed all the options and i am thinking maybe...
him: oh, i already decided that they're going on the shelf over the water heater.
me: that's what i was about to say.
and he did not even waste an hour of his life reading articles and watching You Tube videos from leading garden experts to come to that conclusion. i hate when he does stuff like that.
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