alexist

This morning, I went out to get the papers. I tripped on the bottom step in front of our block of flats, fell, and twisted my ankle. I then did my usual thing of staying there in shock for a moment then managing to get up, whereupon I discovered that my ankle was rather painful. I thought I'd go back upstairs and rest for a bit. So I fumbled in my pocket for my keys, and guess what? No keys. I realized that yesterday, when I came in laden with packages, I must have just put them down. And of course when I put my coat on this morning I thought "keys?" and then "Oh, they must be in my pocket".

So I had to hobble into Islington to get Neil's. And then back. Whereupon I discovered that (again) I hadn't shut our flat door properly, so I wouldn't have needed the key to get in anyway. (Our door is very stiff, and it's easy to miss closing it that last inch.) D'oh! Would've needed my keys to get into the building, of course, but easy enough to go in as someone's coming out.

My ankle is now lovely and swollen. :-( I'm half considering having it taped, which I know I should do as it helps healing and prevents further injury to the ligament, but I can't be bothered wasting my afternoon in Finchley Hospital Minor Injuries Unit.

Today, I made chicken & mushroom pie (filling all done, just need to pop the pastry on top and bake it). Procedure:

- Soak dried morels
- Combine chicken broth (5.5 cups) and the mushroom soaking water, bring it to a boil, and poach chicken thighs
- remove the chicken, boil liquid down to 1/2 cup
- add 1 1/2 cups white wine, boil liquid down to 1 cup
- add 1 cup milk and 1/3 cup cream, set aside
- bone chicken, cut in pieces, set aside
- chop carrots, onion, and mushrooms; cook in 1 oz butter till soft
- remove, add to chicken
- melt further 2 oz butter, add 4 Tb flour to make a roux, whisk in cooking liquid, cook till thickened
- add to chicken and veg, along with parsley, thyme and salt

This is a ridiculous amount of work for a Tuesday night dinner. It's a good thing I'm using bought ready-rolled pastry. :-) (I found an all-butter brand. Sorry anam, it's puff pastry not shortcrust. Ideally it would be American style pie pastry, which is made like shortcrust but with more butter (3:2 ratio instead of 2:1) and the butter left in bigger pieces so it's somewhat flaky.)

It does look and smell fantastic, though. :-)

Also this afternoon, I wrestled with Windows AND WON! I needed to install a language pack. The Windows CD is a "recovery" CD, and all the files are compressed. When Windows went to look for the files, it saw "file.dl_" and barfed. The Recovery CD lacked an option to install language packs. Finally, I copied the whole directory to the hard drive, expanded all the files, and installed that way. It seems to be working. ;-)

One, our damp problem is now at the point where there's water on our ceiling. And it's dripping. I don't know what to do about it or if it's even our responsibility (this flat is leasehold, and we think the problem is the balcony above us).

Two, I now can't walk on my ankle and it's swollen up like a balloon. Neil's leaving work ASAP to take me to hospital--hopefully we'll make it before Finchley closes. If not, it's either wait in Barnet A&E, where I'll be low priority because I'm not in imminent danger of death, or trudge to the Whittington's minor injuries unit. I have doubts about parking near the Whittington (it's near Archway). And given that I CAN'T WALK, public transport is not going to cut it. (I can just imagine trying to hobble up the hill from Archway station....) Yeah, yeah, I could've taken a taxi earlier, but I was thinking "it's just a sprain, you get them often enough, you can move your toes and turn your ankle a little, so it's not that bad...."

And because I'm in England I don't have any bloody ice in the freezer!! Pah!

Nurse said it probably is a soft tissue injury, but there is a chance i broke a bone as it's so swollen and tender. Unfortunately, Finchley's X-ray department is only part time. So rather than make me trek to Barnet, she said to come back in the morning if it's still swollen.

Poor Neil, he has to do the sink full of dishes...