It took me a good five minutes to remember how to spell soporific… and what do I do? I immediately purposefully mess it up for humorous reasons – lulz.

There’s not much going on today – I’m recovering from spending time in the sunlight doing outdoor things. Which is to say that my sinuses are pretty much rock hard, and my skin is dry. I don’t think I caught any direct burning, which is a blessing – I completely forgot to slather on the sunblock yesterday. I definitely don’t have problems with burning like many of my friends (in spite of my near translucent paleness!), but I’m still feeling a bit drawn out and wan.

But that’s okay – today is for indoor things, mainly! We’re curled up here in our lounge with our tiny A/C unit (which takes it from 30C to 28C. I add that its’ only 25C outside – we live over a shop, so the heat from their A/C units keeps our home overly warm. It’s convenient in the winter, but a nightmare during the summer. So between the fan and the A/C used carefully, we’ve managed to make summers not quite a nightmare.

I know, it’s not even summer yet – moving on!

The only things outdoors are good for today is drying laundry (done!), and partaking in a good southern American  (not Southern American, ha ha) tradition – sweet tea! I’m not doing it 100% accurate because I’m not in the mood to deal with bacteria – I boiled my water in advance and then cooled it slightly. We’re lacking a proper glass gallon jar, so we improvised and used a pasta jar that our friend Karinne bequeathed us before returning to her native soil. I left that outside for say… 40, 50 minutes in the sunlight, and upon determining that it looked ‘right’ (tea coloured!), I added sugar to taste. I put in what was probably about 2/3 of a cup for a rather large container, gave it a good stir, and left it be. I went back out after 15-20 minutes to check on it, and the sugar is dissolving apace – I’m going to look forward to putting that in my fridge and downing the entire lot in one go. You don’t think I can drink two liters of sweet tea? Oh honey, any good Southern gal can. 😉

We’re also going to dye some eggs tonight. This isn’t a particularly British tradition (no PAAS in sight!), so we’re going to have to do it with actual dye… and duck eggs. Srsly, our grocery store has no white chicken eggs! I don’t mind so much – I love how a brown egg looks, but it probably doesn’t dye so well. But the duck eggs are white, and I know my mother-in-law quite enjoys them (I think someone told her they were lower calorie, as odd as that sounds to me). I feel odd thinking of hard boiling such thin-looking eggs (the shells are slightly translucent, and therefore, look fragile to me), but I look forward to having more surface area to play with. We’ve only picked up green and yellow dye for now, but I know we can make gold with tumeric, and use string and wax crayons to make pretty patterns. We won’t get uber-fancy – my daughter is too young to really do this with is. But it’ll be good practice for subsequent years.

That reminds me – I’m going to need to discuss traditions with my mother-in-law so we can both know how we’re approaching this and other holidays. Obviously, the Easter egg hunt is a big deal for most children in the States. Same with the basket of chocolate and jelly beans – to me, it must be wicker, and none other. I’m not so fussy about my family-back-home tradition of Mexican for every holiday though; I love me some El Fenix, but as I can’t get it here… I’ll happily settle for roast something instead. *chuckles* Oh, what fun having multiple cultures to pick and choose from…

Right, it’s scalding here, and my laptop could use some cooling off… so off it goes. Have a nice day, yo.

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