Daily Journaling Experiment – Day 26: Off-kilter Friday

Deciding to become calmer and more stoic didn’t turn out to make a difference yesterday. I tried, though.

The day started well enough, I made a list, and even put the weekly cleaning into my schedule but then shortly after my husband’s breakfast things went off. First there was a note from my MIL that my husband’s uncle and aunt would be visiting the day after. Which would have been unfortunate because for that day – today – my husband is expecting a friend over, the boy is invited to a birthday party, and I was planning to record the next epic English episode of the podcast which always takes a few hours.

But then, just as we were trying to calm down from the excitement of totally changed plans, there was another phone call from the uncle. Change of plans again! They would come over the same day! Yeah!

So. My plan of preparing the podcast and working on the novel in the morning, and cleaning the house after teaching went mostly out the window. I tried swapping things around, and clean in the morning but didn’t get far.

The funny thing is that in the end I didn’t even see the two of them. They came after I started teaching, and I didn’t have a single break until after they left. But that feeling of having no control over my life, and that someone can come at any time and change my plans for me is something I really hate.

And yes, I know that the feeling of control is an illusion. I still like it.

So I did not clean anything yesterday, and did not prepare the podcast. Meh.

The other thing was that my husband found a guitar in his guitar magazine that he really, really wanted. He does own a lot of guitars already but he loves every single one of them, and he plays them all. He doesn’t have one like this, though, and the sound and make would be a great addition to his setup. He isn’t someone who buys new equipment all the time just for kicks. In fact he had been sure that he had all the guitars he’d ever need. (When he told me that some time ago I pointedly refrained from saying anything. I knew that that’s not how it works.)

Of course he doesn’t really need it. We’d probably better off spending money on a new sofa. But then I reminded him that this is one of the things that he’ll regret later if he doesn’t do it. The guitar is not too expensive, it’s just a little irresponsible. But if you look at things that we value nice furniture scores way lower than musical instruments.

We talked a lot about this guitar yesterday, and in the end I told him to go ahead and order it.

And then, just when we felt like we had had enough of the day we went out to see a band. One of our students was playing at the local youth center. Which was fun because we were the oldest people there, including the band member’s parents.

The concert was fun too, though I couldn’t quite shake off my music teacher perspective. I really, really wanted to have a word with the singers (there were two bands with a total of five singers). Each one of them would have sounded so much better if they had just set the mike a little higher and – this is very important – actually had sung directly into the microphone. They were all too soft, and you couldn’t really understand the lyrics. Sometimes it’s a little weird watching these things as a music teacher. Also almost none of the musicians every looked up from the floor, or talked to the audience.

It wasn’t that the bands were bad, they were pretty good actually, especially the second one, only when you’re standing there, seeing the potential, and feeling that if they just changed a few things they would be so much better – that’s not easy.

We were very happy with our student, by the way, he did well.

Then we went home a little later than we wanted which means I didn’t get enough sleep yet again. Today will be insanely busy, I guess. Unless I break down and spend the afternoon slumped in front of the computer doing nothing. We’ll see how that goes.