Cat-In-the-Box

Zara is a little off her feed. I'm not surprised, given the ordeal (in her mind) yesterday. I put the carrier away so Zara won't worry about my grabbing her while she eats. (I grabbed her while she was eating yesterday.)

I read an article about a couple who got student visas to go to Italy and study Italian for a year. That's another idea if I can't get a Lithuanian passport. If we go remote, I could work from Italy if I could get a visa. 8 AM here is 3 PM there, and I'm a night owl.

The Wanderlust in Berlin book looks good. It has a picture of a place on each page and a short description.

Zara popped out of her box (she's freaked me out by doing that when I've walked by) and polished off her food. Good.

I want to see the movie Drive My Car. I've heard good things about it, and it's available for $6 on Amazon Prime.

Got my library books ready to return. Ran out and picked up prescriptions, returned the library books, and bought cat litter. I've discovered that the local Farm and Home has cat litter cheaper than Walmart. They also have the Hill's weight loss food for a dollar cheaper than Amazon. But I want Mimi to eat the food that I have first.

Studied German numbers while Zara was eating.

Talked to Mom. The doctor said that her body was trying to make red blood cells, but then multiple myeloma was introducing errors into the cells. Her doctor wants to put her on an antibody treatment. So, it's better than I had feared. My aunt is still in the hospital with a partial bowel obstruction.

Hmm. I've been studying German, and I'm ready for my lesson with a half-hour to go. I need to study Italian, but I don't want to crowd out the German swirling in my head. Maybe I'll post. I know, I'll look at my book on Munich and Bavaria that just arrived. German went well. I'm learning slowly.

I watched a couple of videos on eating on a budget. It gave me some ideas. One person had a book that's free to me with Kindle Unlimited, so I checked it out.

I think that I'll get up early and study Italian before my lesson.

Italian Breakthrough

Zara appears to be meditating by her food dish. She didn't finish her food, but I think that she'll eat it later.

Italian went well. When I was reading aloud, my Italian sounded better. No one would mistake me for a native speaker, but my teacher wasn't correcting me nearly as much. And I was reading smoothly except for really long words. I even was rolling my R's. A breakthrough?

The Accademia di Italiano says "If Italy has stolen your heart, and you are a non-EU student, by taking one of our courses, you will be able to apply for a visa for foreign students and immerse yourself in the language and culture of Italy." Far out. It's in Milan. You can do it for two years with a renewal of the visa! It also looks like they have one in Florence. They also will assist in getting visas to live there.

I was looking at a Smart Garden. I can't afford one now, but it would be nice to have fresh basil, oregano, and cherry tomatoes year-round to make Tuscan Chicken. And I could use fresh basil to make quiches too.

After my nap, I started making a "Pasta Bake" from Aldi. The first problem that I had was that I couldn't read the instructions on the back of the box, which were in a tiny font in pale brown, which looked cool on the packaging but tough to read. I found a pair of reading glasses with one lens popped out and was able to read it. This led me to discover that I could buy reading glasses from my Flexible Spending Account. Ahem.

The next step was to bring a mix of water and milk to a boil. In English, we have a saying that "A watched pot never boils," and that's exactly what happened. I decluttered the counter next to the stove in the time that it took the thing to boil. (Not all bad; cleaning that space was on my list of things to do.) The bake is in the oven now, and I'm cooling off a little before finishing that area of the kitchen because I want to throw out the bag of garbage that I generated decluttering.

After all that, the food was barely edible. The noodles were really chewy. I don't think that I'll buy it again.

Got the garbage out. It's started raining. My new-to-me raincoat did a great job keeping me warm and dry. I think that we have a winner if I go to Florence (Italy) in November or December.

I did order a new set of reading glasses.

The pasta bake is also making me very sleepy. I'm thinking of going to bed early (for me, anyway) and writing in the morning before work.