Archives for May 2019

Woke up at six, meditated and wrote morning pages, then breakfast with the boy who had a presentation due.

Since I really wanted to publish the podcast episode that day I started working on it right after breakfast. My husband showed up just when I had finished writing the show notes.

I knitted a bit until he complained that he didn’t have anything warm and wooly to wear which made me remember that his two decent wool sweaters had both been sitting in my mending pile for months. So I pulled out the gray sweater with the frayed neck band and sleeves and the gauge swatch I had made for it, pulled out the frayed edges, looked up the right needle size in my project notes on ravelry and re-knit a few rounds. And voilà! There was a sweater for my husband. Her’s a picture of one of the frayed sleeves:

I also pulled out the second sweater whose problem is that the sleeves are way too long, made my husband put it on and marked the right length. That pullover had spent more than a year on the mending pile because I had no idea how much sleeve to cut off.

Of course I can’t just chop the length off, there will be careful snipping of a single stitch, the equally careful unraveling of one row, then I’ll put the live stitches on a needles, unravel what I have cut off and use that to knit a new ribbing. A little advanced sweater surgery. I’m hoping to get that done soon. Two sweaters gone from the mending pile will make it shrink considerably.

Then my husband went running and I decided to get the podcast ready before cleaning. Which ultimately made lunch late. But I managed to get the video ready. Uploading takes much longer on Friday afternoons or evenings than in the morning.

I started cleaning, ended up having a bout of paralysis for no apparent reason but joined my husband in pizza-making later.

We had pizza:

I did the dishes, cleaned the rest, published the podcast, taught quite a few students, watched some Star Trek with the boy, talked to my husband a bit who had been teaching late, read a bit and went to bed.

Not going out that evening had definitely been the right decision, I started yawning some time around 4 pm that day.

Today the boy will go to Munich because there is a thing where people can check out the physics department at the Ludwig-Maximilimans-University. He had planned to go with a friend but the friend opted out. For a brief moment I considered going with him but then I realized that I’d rather do other things with my day. I still need some more time to recuperate and with me wanting to wear more me-made clothes I need to make some more.

On the other hand I’m having so many plans for the weekend that I’ll probably not get anything done at all.

I want to go for a run today and write and maybe sew and make music and will have to deal with mountains of laundry. My husband did two loads while I was away and that plus the clean clothes in a pile need to be folded and put away. And there will be two more loads today, I’m sure.

Weekends are exciting!

Woke up at six after a long sleep and didn’t feel tired for once. Made breakfast and ate it, did not meditate or anything but was instead thinking about the day ahead. And I did all the lists and took all the pictures in preparation of the podcast.

My husband slept a little later than usual so I went out to the bakery and the butcher while he was making his breakfast. I wanted to get there before they were out of Brezen.

And then I decided to try and get the podcast recorded before out guests would arrive. I put on makeup, set up the lights and microphone and the old computer, found that I had to configure GarageBand again and had some technical difficulties that meant I ran out of time for recording. But. Everything was set up already.

Our friends showed up exactly on time and we had a nice chat and later some Bavarian food:

They left pretty early which meant I now had some time left for the podcast. Recorded that on the old laptop without a hitch. The video quality might be a little worse than on the new one but at least everything was working.

Then I taught my students, started writing this post, had another Breze for dinner and worked on the podcast some and went to bed early.

Today I want to finish the podcast, clean the house and teach all the students. And watch Star Trek with the boy tonight.

I turned off my alarm and woke up at the ungodly hour of 6.30. Meditated and wrote morning pages. No novel-writing yet again.

Had a late-for-me breakfast and was finished right before my husband showed up. We talked. And talked some more. And did the breakfast dishes and lo and behold – the boy showed up as well.

My husband headed out for his run while I was doing some urgent book research and thinking which made me late for running. I mostly walked anyway and cut the run short to only 5k. The weather was beautiful:

And yes, things are still rather dry despite the rain we had.

Then we made lunch. It was rather delicious:

That’s spaghetti with peas and ham in cream sauce and a glass of wine. Here’s the bottle:

Unfortunately, lunch was a little spoiled by a heated family discussion along the lines of punctuality and showing up for meals on time and such that went on for quite a while after the meal was finished.

Pity.

Then came the time that I had planned to record my podcast. Well, first prepare it and then record it. I had it all there in my calendar. Prepare podcast, record podcast. Only. I felt so exhausted and really didn’t feel like putting on a show that afternoon. I mean, even my husband is still without energy and he didn’t travel after the renovation shenanigans.

So I made an executive decision to not record the podcast episode which means there won’t be a new one up on Friday. Sorry. But I felt like I was sick and – well, it is something I do for fun, mostly, and while I’m committed to my bi-weekly podcast schedule I won’t kill myself to adhere to it.

And then I spent the rest of the afternoon waiting for the day to end.

I did try to call my mother because she had made it clear that she wanted to hear about my trip. She wasn’t home so I actually talked to my father on the phone which I never do. Usually it takes about two hours minimum and is filled with topics that I usually avoid or am not interested in at all. But this time we did have a real conversation about computers and renovations and their lawn, thank Bob for shared interests, and he informed me that my mother would be back an hour later.

So I sat around some more and read before calling my mother. She kept the call to 33 minutes which is rather brief for her as well. She wasn’t clear on why I had been visiting Hamburg and interrogated me about the trip, mostly if I had stayed in a hotel all by myself, not with any group, and if there were people I knew, and if I had done my sightseeing on my own or not.

I think that she thinks that I’m not social enough, she also finds the idea of traveling alone rather alien plus she is pretty lonely herself. So I assured her that I met loads of people, that I knew quite a few, spent time with a friend and was socializing like a pro.

Only afterwards did I realize that apparently my mother is one of those people who don’t go somewhere when they don’t know anyone. While I am a big introvert I don’t have problems meeting people, starting conversations with strangers or going somewhere alone, especially not if I am going there as the member of a community where we all have something in common.

For me the biggest drawback of traveling alone is going to a restaurant or café without having someone to look after your purse while your using the restroom and such. And after a day or two I tend to avoid the hassle of finding something suitable to eat and resort to a steady diet of potato chips, sweets and beers alone in my room. (And many thanks to PiaPessoa who told me that there are pills that help with digesting fructose. I knew that they existed but last I heard they weren’t available in Germany.)

The boy and I had dinner in front of TV watching a ‚Voyager‘-episode that started promising but had a disappointing ending.

And then I went to bed early after reading a bit more. I’m more than halfway through „Good Omens“ by now. I like it much better than the first two times but that might be due to me reading it in English this time. I have to pull out my German hardcover version but that means moving a few pieces of furniture. I think the old version I had might be abridged.

Today there will be the usual routine things plus running errands really early, guests at noon and then teaching. Bonus points for doing bodyweight training and an extra gold star for noveling.

I woke up at six and felt without energy already. I guess I’ll need a few more nights of enough sleep.

Breakfast was had, my husband and I talked at length and I finished the heel increases on the current sock.

I went grocery shopping instead of running because our pantry was rather empty and I won’t be able to shop on Thursday because we’re expecting friends from out of town. I did get quite a few steps in by going to the health food store first and then in the other direction to the supermarket and to buy shampoo and conditioner for the boy. My Fitbit tells me that I got 42 minutes of exercise in, so that’s alright. I call it cross-training.

When I returned home my husband was almost finished with cooking lunch. He had let himself be inspired by the picture on the polenta package:

We had them with fennel and tomato sauce:

Then I taught my first student of the day, the woman with the baby. The baby was totally quiet and slept through the whole lesson. The mother has been practicing and is making good progress. I am in awe.

After that I tried finding the list of things our friend can’t eat because she’s allergic to them. They weren’t in my computer’s notes so I recharged the old PDA. That was devoid of any data whatsoever so I turned the eMac on, the one I bought when I was pregnant with the boy.

(The monitor just looks stripy in the picture, it’s fine in real life.)

I connected the two devices, synced the PDA and voilà! List of things our friend is allergic to. (She has to eat strictly vegan, nothing with sulfur, nothing from a tin or package, no kiwi and no pineapple. And something else that I didn’t write down.) The good thing is that she will have already eaten beforehand. But since we will have to eat lunch while they are visiting we’d like to have at least something on hand that she can eat if she wants to.

Then I taught another student, called a potential new student back, taught three more students until eight o’clock, started writing this post, refilled the water in the piano, finally did the dishes from most of the day and keeled over.

Today there will be the preparing, recording and cutting of the podcast. Also, running. Maybe watching a bit of Star Trek.

We did get an invitation for another free improv concert on Friday with an additional party to celebrate the 200th concert. My husband won’t be able to go because he is teaching until 7.30 at the least and we would have to get the train at 7.15 to get there.

We briefly thought about me going alone. And then I remembered that these days I tend to fall asleep during the concert some time before the intermission and that I really don’t need another night of not enough sleep. I’ll stay home.

And here I thought school starting would mean some kind of routine, ha!