Archives for May 2019

I’m still off and not getting anything done.

I started the day with meditating and morning pages and then it was time for breakfast. The t-shirt I’m knitting is making progress. No running, no writing, no music. I spent quite a lot of time reading „The Bride Test“. So far I’m absolutely loving it.

We made lunch:

I hung up a load of laundry and taught all the students while feeling like crawling back into bed.

I had read somewhere that there are people saying they can’t participate in MeMadeMay because they don’t have a new handmade outfit for every day of the month. Well, I am wearing clothes I made myself every day this month and I only have four outfits. Which didn’t get washed in time for yesterday so I was wearing this:

Martha dress with self-drafted leggings, hand knit Glomerata socks and my handspun Cria. The cardigan’s color and shape doesn’t really go with the rest. The dress is too short and I usually wear it for lounging around the house. I only have three other outfits that I made myself plus two dresses that don’t really fit anymore and that I haven’t worn all month.

So someone who doesn’t really sew can wear all handmade clothes but then has to be content with very little variety. Or as a student of mine said today, „You’re always wearing purple.“ Only this month. Interestingly nobody ever said, „You are always wearing the same pair of jeans!“ Even though I usually do.

I felt so off that I declared the day to be over somewhat early. I wasn’t good for anything anyway.

I am hoping that today will go better. I am planning to hobble to the health food store and then there will be some teaching, including a potential new student. Maybe even actual progress on a project, who knows.

I slept in until 7.30 because I only turned out the lights after finishing „Top Secret“ at 1.30. Dumb move. I need a new rule that I can’t start a new Sarina Bowen novel after lunchtime or something. I still fell that it was worth it but it didn’t bode well for Sunday.

So I had breakfast a little late, talked to the rest of the family, did dishes, started reading „The 5th Gender“ by G.L. Carriger and basically sat around doing nothing but reading (and finishing) that, making my way all through the „Kiwi Blitz“ webcomic and watch the Giro. All while elevating my leg and cooling it.

Every other hour I felt that my calf was doing wonderfully and didn’t hurt anymore at all. Then I would get up and walk a few steps only to find that, no, it was not doing wonderfully. But all the resting, cooling, elevating and anti-inflammatory painkillers were doing something at least. I do doubt that I’ll  go running the next few days, though.

On the bright side that should give me a little more time for other stuff. Not that it did yesterday or the day before. As usual when something goes sideways I was thrown completely off track and didn’t do anything productive at all. It was especially weird to be watching the bike race without my spinning. I mean, I could have made progress on the spindle project but I didn’t.

I am really hoping things will go better today. I did warn the boy that he might have to go to the health food store on Tuesday instead of me.

There was lunch:

I didn’t even help with it. Even though my husband is still feeling under the weather. He seems to have some virus that makes him feel meh and a little weak but not sick enough to stay in bed. On the other hand he never feels sick enough to stay in bed. I remember one winter when he was complaining about feeling bad for weeks and I kept thinking that he should either just stay in bed or not complain as much and then it turned out that he probably had had pneumonia without really realizing.

I’d rather stay in bed a little too easily than going full tilt while having pneumonia, thank you very much.

When the Giro was over and I had finished the Gail Carriger book it was time for dinner. I usually try to skip it. I haven’t been all that successful with that lately but since I was taking ibuprofen I decided that eating something was sensible:

That’s fried potatoes with egg. And ketchup. And the painkiller.

Today there will be teaching. No running. Possibly the recording of the podcast but I might reschedule to Thursday even though that will mean scrambling to get it published on Friday. We’ll see.

And I started reading yet another novel, „The Bride Test“. I also have the new Patricia Briggs but I’m saving that a little. Not to mention the 199 unread novels on my ebook reader.

I woke up from the alarm at 5.30 but couldn’t even be bothered to turn on the light and spent the next house just lying there trying to will myself into being awake. Then I ended up reading „Kiwi Blitz“ until I finally got up at 8. Nope, no writing.

My husband was rather surprised when he showed up at 8.30 and I had just started eating my breakfast. And we both were equally surprised when the boy came down at 9.28. Yes, I did look at the clock.

We talked and I knitted and I did the breakfast dishes and finally managed to leave for my run after ten. I had planned to do another 11k run. Everything went fine, my heart rate was not too high, I felt light and good and was running quite a bit instead of my usual walking most of the way. My left calf was a little cramped but I often get that and it usually goes away if I focus on loosening the muscles.

But then it hurt a little more. And some more. And so I had to start walking again. And the it seriously hurt and didn’t get better so I decided to turn around after 2.6k:

Yes, it is little dry yet again. I’m still in good spirits here:

Okay, reasonable good spirits, also the sun shone in my eyes. I need to get myself running sunglasses.

And then I hobbled back home. Painfully. My husband was immediately concerned when he ran past me right before our house on his way back. I have been looking at other runner’s pace a lot lately and for anybody interested my pace yesterday was 8 min/k for running with a little walking thrown in and 14 min/k for hobbling.

I think I pulled a muscle. I helped to make lunch:

Very yummy if a little spicy, and spent the rest of the day sitting in an easy chair with my leg elevated on a cooling pad. Which might not hinder a normal person from working on her novel or work on the website or anything but since I’m me I just sat there watching the Giro d’Italia with half an eye while reading some more „Kiwi Blitz“ on my laptop. (I have to say that I like „Sleepless Domain“ by the same person even better but I’m all caught up with that one.)

I also skipped bodyweight training and went from sitting in the chair watching the bike race to sitting in the same chair and watching Star Trek with the boy without even getting up in between. Interestingly I seem to have become a person who gets antsy just sitting around. Huh, former couch potato me would never have guessed.

So today the agenda is mostly sitting around some more with my leg elevated and iced and then I’ll see.

I woke up fifteen minutes before the alarm even though I had gone to bed an hour too late. Weird. I did manage to write morning pages, meditate and write some words for the novel (not enough but progress).

Claudia asked about morning pages. Morning pages is something I and lots and lots of other people learned from Julia Cameron’s „The Artist’s Way“-book. You sit down first thing in the morning and write three pages stream of consciousness. So, basically everything that’s running through your head at the moment as fast as you can. It’s one of Cameron’s tools for getting creatives unstuck and she uses it as meditation.

I started doing these in the fall of 1998 after reading the book. I did them faithfully for years but these days I do them if I can but I don’t write them every morning. I find that they’re helping me process everything that’s going on and when I write them I don’t need to talk about everything with my husband which is good. The other bonus is that they get me started writing for the day.

So after all of that I made breakfast. I finally started knitting the gauge swatches for my husband’s sweater. Sorry, that I didn’t take any pictures. After the first swatch with 3 mm needles I was sure that the yarn I had made was way too heavy and wouldn’t work at all but the second swatch looks like I’m gettin gauge after all.

I’m still thinking because the fabric is much denser and bouncier than what I usually knit. It also feels a little weird to knit what’s basically a worsted weight yarn with 2.5 mm needles. I might make the yarn just a little thinner and keep the needle size. Which is an interesting balancing act. I will swatch again, I think.

Then it was time to start the weekly cleaning and for one I actually did all of it including changing the sheets. Very good. In between I started the process of making pizza from the new kind of dough I was trying. The recipe said to shape the dough into firm balls and let it sit for 1.5 hours:

That’s how the ‚firm balls‘ looked after I had returned after getting a towel. Not very firm.

Throughout the whole process the dough was more like pudding than dough so I’m thinking to use less water the next time. My husband has declared once again that he won’t make pizza for the whole family anymore. It is a bit much with the running beforehand and the teaching after. So I decided to make enough for all of us for a change. I did leave off the salad, though.

The result tasted good, I’m not quite sure if I like this dough (it’s the one by Peter Reinhardt) better than the one I usually make. The process is certainly messier but I’ll tweak it a bit and we’ll see. This was the resulting pizza:

Of course the boy got mushrooms on his, not tuna and anchovies.

Then I left the dishes because it was time to get ready for teaching. I taught all afternoon, student after student after student.

And then it was the beginning of the weekend with knitting and watching Star Trek and kicking back with leftover pizza.

Today there will be running and either a humungous slump or maybe some progress on the to-do list. I’m hoping for some sewing and some spinning this weekend and also bodyweight training and yoga. The boy and I decided that we were just too limp to exercise on Friday night.

So, I’m not quite sure why the day felt so super-busy but I barely had time to sit down all day. That was probably it.

Woke up from the alarm and still felt without energy. And that translated into me not writing and not meditating and not writing morning pages first thing. Boo. Which was a mistake because I’m sure I would have felt better if I had done all of these things.

Then breakfast and meditation and knitting. Talking with my husband. Who told me to go and write right away after breakfast but I declined and thought it would be a better idea to go grocery shopping first to get it out of the way.

I walked all the way and went to the hardware store as well to find the right screws for the trellis my husband wants to install for the apricot tree. There is a lot of insulation between the brick of the annex and the plaster which makes it hard to fix anything to it. I did find special screws and anchors but they were quite expensive.

Then the grocery shopping and when I came home and had put everything away it was time to have lunch. We didn’t have to cook because we were eating leftover lasagna and some red beet salad that my husband had made the night before:

And then I had a long list of things I wanted to do before teaching but – the boy and I got to talk about getting him a new rain coat and some other clothes and things and so we looked at lots of ugly and boring rain coats online and the ones that were nicer were out of the price range. I don’t want to buy a 250 Euro raincoat for my 16 yo. son who will probably grow some more. (Though it might be a good idea, if he grows out of it my husband can inherit it. They’re wearing the same size at the moment. But nah, too expensive for us adults as well.)

So there went most of my lunch break. I did the dishes and was waiting for my first student. This is the last month he’ll be taking lessons with me and his father hadn’t paid for May yet (payment is due in advance). We had emailed back and forth and he had told me he’d send the money with his son in cash.

I was a bit disappointed when the son knew nothing about the money. So I went with him after the lesson and talked to his father.

Not a fun conversation. I might have raised my voice. We were both pissed at each other beforehand anyway. He said he’ll send the money to my account. Yeah. Sure.

My next student was already waiting when I came back. The rest of my teaching day was delightful as always. I do have a lot of very nice students. No need to get hung up on the outliers.

Then there was bodyweight training. And I still had most of my to-do-list ahead of me. Including trying a new way of making pizza dough.

I did turn the lights out on time, so that was good.

Today there will be cleaning and the aforementioned pizza and lots and lots of teaching and then knitting and Star Trek.

As I said. Phew.

I knew that in advance, I had seen my teaching schedule already.

I woke up at 5.30 from the alarm and only lay there unmoving for about twenty minutes or so before meditating and writing short morning pages. And then I spent 45 minutes writing on the novel and I seem to have succeeded in making a pretty boring scene more interesting. I still would have needed another 30 minutes to write enough to stay within schedule but by then it was time to make breakfast.

Breakfast was had by all and in between I read and then I knitted some more on the t-shirt. I am starting to run low on the second color, I might have to spin some more soon.

Then I went running and this time I actually enjoyed it, even. And was a little faster than usual as well. (For those of you who are interested, I ran 6.5 k with an average pace of 8:52 per kilometer. I told you I’m walking a lot.)

These are pictures of my halfway point:

My husband thought making lasagna would be a good idea so we spent the rest of the morning doing that:

It was rather good.

Then I hit the slump and barely managed to take a shower and put on makeup before I had to teach. No dishes.

The afternoon was one student after the other but that was okay. With my energy being a little better I was able to make the lessons a bit more fun as well.

I had planned to skip dinner but after work my stomach was growling so I did eat some bread and cheese. Then piles and piles of dirty dishes and bed.

Today there will be grocery shopping and a little light teaching. I might knit a swatch with the yarn I spun on Sunday. The yarn has too much twist and I’m pretty sure it’s too thick for what I want to make. We’ll see.