creative.mother.thinking

Woke up at 5.30 from the alarm and actually managed to work on the novel for, um, all of seven minutes. There might be some room for improvement. My husband showed up at 7.30 and that threw me off so hard that I apparently forgot to close the boy’s windows. I did manage to go running before it was scorching hot, though, so I count that as a win:

Only 3.2 k at a rather slow pace.

Then there was still an hour before we had to make lunch. Yeah! I took a shower and afterwards my husband said, „The boy’s window is open wide!“ Since I distinctly remembered closing it earlier and closing the blinds we both got rather angry with my mother-in-law who still thinks that opening all the windows wide on a hot sunny day is a good idea.

I wasted another hour.

Then there was lunch:

There is produce from the garden even. Salad, herbs, a rather small cucumber and a really small green pepper.

The boy came home from school. We talked a little. I did the dishes. It was hot. There was teaching. In my big, fat break between two students I attempted fixing some layout issues on the blog. I ended up changing the style sheet and then changing it back. I also changed the header image up. All of this took a lot of time and now the type in the image is still not sitting in an aesthetically pleasing place and the image is still squashed up to the left and way too small. I don’t have the patience for fiddly work.

After my last student my husband wanted me to look at the roof he finally put up over one of the wood piles (splendid!) and then I happened to walk into my mother-in-law. Who is going away for five days next week. Both men in the house knew about this but nobody told me. I mentioned that she must have opened the boy’s window in the heat and she said, no, she didn’t. That she hadn’t been upstairs all day.

And that was the moment it dawned on me. I must have forgotten to close the window. And the memory I had of closing it must have been from the day before. And we all got really angry with her for no reason. Well, the reason was that I am a fuzz-head. Oops.

I did strength training for the first time in ages, started reading the new Sarina Bowen book („Superfan“) after finishing „Part-Time Gods“ (so good – I want to know what happens next right now), finally got my new microphone but haven’t tested it yet, decided that I was too exhausted to write more and went to bed an hour late.

Today there will be running and more heat and more students and hopefully one or the other productive thing.

At least we tried.

I had set my alarm for 5.30, meditated and read the „Daily Stoic“ (and checked my email, ahem) before starting to write. I made breakfast, briefly worried if the boy had overslept but he came down to breakfast right on time. He is still living on a constant diet of yogurt after the wisdom teeth-thing but is improving.

He left for school and just as I was starting to knit my husband wanted breakfast too. So we talked and I knitted and we decided to get going early because of the heat. Did the dishes and got ready to run:

It was very warm but a little windy, so running would have been okay. Unfortunately I didn’t feel like it and walked most of the way. Still. 6.4 k of walking are still exercise:

I came back early enough to go to the health food store before lunch, so I slunk from shadow to shadow while listening to podcasts. I came back with all the ingredients for lunch, took a shower and chopped things:

Then I fell into a deep slump but managed to do more dishes and talk with the boy on his lunch break. I lent a hand to my husband’s project of putting a bigger roof on the wood pile and did some printer maintenance, answered some emails and printed something out for a student.

Then it was time to teach my Monday students, then laundry, a little bit of dinner and bed.

Today there will be a short run, teaching and writing. Very exciting as usual.

Well, if I’m honest with myself getting a grip on my life will probably be an ongoing project for the rest of my life. That doesn’t mean my life is out of control, just that it is something that will need constant adjustment.

I did wake up at 6.30 and only faffed around a bit before meditating and working on the novel for 25 minutes. Phew. Getting back to writing after a week off is always a struggle. Then I had breakfast and had already started reading and knitting before my husband came over. (I’m reading „Part-Time Gods“ by Rachel Aaron, the second in the DFZ-series. I’m loving it.)

Having worked on the novel for a bit made me feel rather happy. I would love to finish this novel by my birthday but that would mean writing about 1,500 words every single day until then. Might not happen. Hadn’t happened in a long time. I think my current average is something like 500 words per day.

When I manage to write first thing in the morning the most important task of the day is already taken care of before I meet anybody else. However the day goes, at least the writing is already done. Now I just need to do this every day for the upcoming five weeks. Which means turning my alarm back to 5.30 again. Fun.

So there was knitting and conversation and waiting for the boy but I still did some yoga before helping with making lunch:

I played a bit of piano and did my singing warm-up. And then we made an actual recipe for once. Polenta smalzada trentina:

The boy got tomato sauce and mozzarella on his instead of anchovies and no salad. He is looking much better already but still not back to normal.

I had great plans for the afternoon but we did that thing where every time I am gearing up to write or start something my husband walks into the room and asks me something. In the end I just locked myself in my studio. And wrote for almost an hour. Which means I have 1,000 words in the bank for one of those days that I can’t be bothered to write.

I did want to sew but felt rather drained after all that writing and just wrote a letter to the neighbor who had offered a grand piano on loan. I also thought about the newsletter for a bit and did my plan for the upcoming week. School is starting again and I want to get back to regular exercise and regular writing. I’m also thinking about what I want to achieve over the next quarter, what went wrong the past few months and what I can do better.

The boy and I watched some Star Trek and then I went to bed early.

Today there will be running and teaching and the writing of the newsletter and laundry. All the good stuff.

I woke up at 6.30, lounged about but at least meditated for a bit. I had breakfast and knitted and read.

I wanted to start the day a little earlier than the last ones because I still wanted to clean the house and go running as well. And I knew that I wouldn’t have time for anything in the afternoon.

The boy was rather late for breakfast but we did the dishes anyway. I started cleaning while my husband went to the health food store. With the boy not being able to chew just yet we need lots of things we don’t usually store. Then he went running and I cleaned some more. I was just finished when he came back from his run.

I also ordered a USB-microphone for podcast recording because I’m tired of all the technical difficulties. I’m hoping that that microphone will work better than my current setup.

I decided to start preparing lunch before heading out. I was too late for my run and considered skipping it again but I had been skipping too many lately. So I got out and ran:

My husband had said that it was windy and cold but I have to say that I really love the cooler weather.

We had lentils for lunch and they were yummy:

I did the dishes right away and finally took a shower. The others had had to wait for me with lunch so no shower before eating.

And then I had a lovely virtual knitting meeting with Eliandhra.

After that I was waffling about watching soccer with my husband while spinning or retreating to bed with a book. As often bed and book won out.

Today is a day for yoga and maybe sewing and sitting down and planning what to do next week. It’s supposed to be really hot so it might be a good idea to finish that summer dress that has been hanging around half-finished.

Hijinks continue.

I woke up early but again did not manage to do anything worth mentioning until after breakfast. My husband showed up ten minutes after his usual time on purpose because I had been so late the day before. I was late with breakfast but not that late.

I knitted a bit and it was clear that my day would be packed to the gills. The plan was to clean early so that I’d be done in time for the boy’s doctor’s appointment, then to eat lunch, teach a potential new student and then to record the podcast because my husband’s student was due an hour later.

But then I got a message from another student that she wanted a lesson that afternoon. Which was great but meant I had to move my schedule around.

While I was thinking about all the things I wanted to do my husband was agonizing about the fact that he had to call the roofer back again. We need a quote for insurance and he said to contact him again if he hadn’t sent it by Wednesday. Fun.

So I recorded the podcast in the morning, then went with the boy to an appointment where I wasn’t needed, walked back home, went grocery shopping because we were totally out of yogurt and some other things and then I ate lunch:

The boy had cauliflower soup instead. Puréed, of course. And eaten with a teaspoon. His pain levels are moderate but he still has a hard time opening his mouth. And chewing might be a bit too much.

After lunch I let myself get sucked into playing a new game on my iPad, then I did the dishes and didn’t have enough time left to do anything podcast-related.

I taught the potential new student and seem to have made a good impression because she is planning to become an actual new student starting in two weeks. I really liked her. She got a little dizzy from a combination of excitement and my studio being rather hot. I did finally haul the fan from the basement at least.

Then another student, starting to work on the podcast and then I watched some Star Trek with the boy.

I am rather fed up with my podcast setup. After cleaning out my Thunderbolt sockets and freeing half the hard drive I tried recording everything on the new laptop again. Which worked fine until it didn’t. The recording stopped five minutes before the end. So I spent about an hour researching USB mics that afternoon. I think I want to invest in that. I’m not thrilled with the sound of the current microphone and connecting via two adapters is not working so I might have to spend some money on this problem before it is driving me crazy.

When starting to work on the video portion of the podcast I also found that sound and image were out of sync on the QuickTime video. Which made synching the audio file to the video a bit challenging.

When we were watching TV I found that we had two messages on voice mail (I get a message on my cell phone when that happens)  which basically meant more stuff to deal with.

One was an old school friend of my husband’s who wants to get together today which would be nice if we had the kind of life where you sit next to the phone waiting for someone to call and the other was the offer of getting lent a grand piano until the owner has enough space to keep it himself. Which sound wonderful, especially if you play piano and have longed to have a grand piano for ages. Until you realize that a) you need enough space for the piano, b) you need to pay for getting the piano to your place which would be several hundred euros at least, c) when the piano is in your possession you need to pay for tuning and maintenance which can cost you a fair bit and you still own a piano that needs tuning and maintenance, and d) you have no idea if this is even a good piano or what condition it is in.

I guess I’ll call her, thank her for thinking of me and decline because we don’t have enough space. Which is true.

And then I worked some more on the podcast, published it and went to bed on time at least. Okay, almost.

And this is how I somehow never got around to cleaning the house.

Today is rather packed as well, I want to go for my first run in ages, take a shower and have lunch, then I’ll meet a friend in the afternoon and I have no idea what else but I’m sure I won’t sit anywhere twiddling my thumbs with no idea what to do next.

And I totally get why my husband dislikes phones so much.