Archives for October 2019

There was a lot of teaching. I did record the podcast on Monday and then had technical problems with iMovie that had me occupied until Wednesday evening. It took a lot of googling and trying things out to get the podcast ready.

I also tried installing a software update on my ebook reader for days. It should have been installed automatically but didn’t for days and every attempt at doing it manually failed. In the end it was probably due to weak wifi. I’m not sure, though.

My husband worked on our kitchen table for several days, sanding it and painting it. It took several coats of paint and we found that the nights are already cool enough to leave the table – that was sitting outside on the porch – completely drenched in dew in the morning.

Running went pretty good, I reached the point in the Couch to 10K-program where I was supposed to run for 45 consecutive minutes. Not that I actually did but I came pretty close.

The weather was warm and gorgeous.

Since the boy had a lunch date with my mother-in-law on Friday my husband and I decided to go out as well:

We had a very nice lunch with interesting conversation.

I finished a sock and started the second one, I didn’t write quite as much as I had hoped but enough to finish the current novel before November.

All three of us were exhausted by the end of the week and are looking forward to a week off. Well, mostly off. I still have three days of light teaching, want to make progress on that teaching website and will start NaNoWriMo on Friday.

Sunday afternoon was a special highlight, my husband and I went to the local museum. It’s tiny, just one room with a few artifacts that were found around town. It was pretty interesting and completely empty. The guy manning the counter seemed happy to have company and gave us a private tour.

They even had a replica of a warp-weighted loom that looked pretty authentic and had properly labeled warp and spindle weights. With a replica spindle completely with thread and something that looked like flax or hemp.

We bought a book and an amulet as a birthday present for a friend.

She grew up in our town, doesn’t live here anymore and we were looking for something special for her. Which was the main reason for our museum visit but it was nice to start fall break with doing something touristy in our hometown.

Now, the upcoming week is not looking as open as I thought it would but then they never do.

The week started out with me waiting for the boy’s return. It was a little weird not to hear anything from him until about lunchtime. I decided to take that as a good sign. If he had missed his 10.15 train I probably would have heard something. The waiting did not mean no running, though:

In the end he came home safe and sound and was unusually talkative when I finally finished teaching for the day. On Tuesday we made kale for lunch because the boy really likes it:

Wednesday morning saw me running really early because the piano tuner was due at 10:

It turned out to be a good thing that I left my husband home to open the door because the piano tuner decided to come quite a bit early. We had chili for lunch. And in the evening the boy and I did some bodyweight training for once.

Thursday saw the culinary highlight of the week, home made Kässpätzle:

The boy had a career info thing in the evening. His week was rather busy with studying, trying to make up for the two days of school he had missed and that extra career thing.

On Friday I actually cleaned the house again, did more bodyweight training and then crashed more or less.

More running on Saturday:

With pizza for lunch:

And I finished my Crazy Tee:

The thing I planned to do but then didn’t was a virtual writing retreat on Saturday. The plan was to spend some time writing in the morning and then a lot of time in the afternoon. It turned out that staying up too late four night that week resulted in the most epic Saturday afternoon slump ever so I just focused on getting through the day somehow and finally going to bed early.

Meanwhile my husband did all the yard work.

There had been plans to go to the pool on Sunday because the boy needs swim coaching for PE at school but he decided that he was too swamped for that with Inktober and three tests to study for the upcoming week.

So I spent the day mostly reading „Off the Clock“ (excellent time management book), helping with making a big Greek lunch and mulling things over. Here’s another picture of food:

That’s bifteki, rice with tomato sauce, Brussel’s sprouts, fried eggplant, zucchini and bell peppers and some leftover red beet salad.

This week will be the one before the week of fall break. I have high hopes of getting enough sleep, writing like the wind and doing all the things.

That week felt a little whirlwind-y.

It started with my husband having a medical checkup. He had to leave the house at the same time as the boy and then was gone for hours and hours. I tried not to panic and reminded myself that Monday mornings are always super-busy at the doctor’s office. And that he would probably have to do a stress electrocardiogram.

Everything checked out fine and he came back home with a clean bill of health.

Then I recorded the podcast episode wearing my new cardigan for the first time:

Tuesday was rather confusing because the boy didn’t know if he had school or not until the last minute. (Turned out he didn’t, in the end.) Then I had to rearrange all plans for the day, teach a lot of students and ended up not writing the second day in a row. The not-writing continued most of the week, by the way.

Wednesday was the day the boy had to pack for his upcoming trip which meant he texted me repeatedly while I was teaching all the students again, and then we spent the evening getting stuff ready. I did do some writing in the morning, though. And then ran through muddy woods:

On Thursday the boy left for his weekend-workshop-thing, I got the podcast ready for publishing and taught all the students again. We had celeriac root soup for lunch (notice the decoration my husband added for Instagram):

And on Friday I taught even more students after running in the morning instead of cleaning the house because I knew I’d be away on Saturday. I decided to frog the Advent calendar knee highs and make regular socks instead:

The highlight of the day was having lunch with my husband at the Asian restaurant around the corner:

Saturday saw me leaving for the Vaterstetten wool market later than planned because when you’re expecting overnight guests it is a good idea to prepare at least a little. I went to Vaterstetten, looked at the pottery market, got three beautiful bowls:

Walked around the wool market twice, pondered all the yarn and fiber and bought – nothing.

I am becoming pickier and pickier regarding yarn and fiber. Here I didn’t like the fiber content, there the color was just a little off from what I wanted, there the color saturation was a little low, it went on and on. I really enjoyed the market anyway. They even had some Bavarian music (not my favorite but they were looking so nice there):

So I took myself back to Munich again to get something to eat.

Excellent burger. For once I was brave enough to ask for no tomatoes and onions.

I had this romantic notion of sitting in a café writing but in the end I just finished editing the Eva Mandel short story that is supposed to become a freebie for my newsletter, read a novella, went on to get ice cream but was thrown off by the queue going halfway around the block and just stepped back on a train home.

I had had plans to go to an exhibition about the German Vogue magazine on Sunday but just was so exhausted and in need of a recharge that I stayed home instead. My husband, his keyboarder friend and I went out for lunch:

And this is what my husband had:

I spent the afternoon watching Youtube videos and doing research for novel stuff. I’m trying to find out what sub-genre the trilogy belongs in. So far the answer seems to be ‚none that exists already‘ – oops.

So. Tomorrow afternoon the boy will be home again and then I’m really hoping that things will be back to normal. (I can hear you all chuckling from over here.)

My main focus will be to do more writing and especially more sleeping, two things that always go hand in hand for me.

So this is the first time I’m trying a weekly format instead of the daily blogging. It does free up some time, of course and helps make me a little less tense. It remains to be seen if I’ll actually do something with that time.

Writing:

The week felt rather busy. (I might just leave that here and put it in every weekly review from now on.) I went back to writing with renewed vigor. I changed my goal so that I might be able to finish the current novel until the end of October and that meant about 4,500 words per week. Which comes down to roughly 900 words per weekday. At the same time I decided that I really wanted to write for two sets of 25 minutes per morning, one before breakfast and one after. When I actually do that (which means no internet until 8.30 or so) I can usually write around 1,200 to 1,500 words so that gives me a bit of a buffer. My goal for the week was 78,738 words and I actually got to 80,927. I’m calling that a win.

I also finished reading „How to Write Dazzling Dialogue“ which I liked and watched week 2 of the workshop about pacing. I did not do the week two homework – boo. I actually put the reading of the book and the watching of the videos on my daily to-do lists and that helped.

Exercise:

I did not quite do the exercise I had wanted to do (which is three times of running, three times of bodyweight training and some stretching thrown in) but I’m happy nonetheless with three times of running, two times of bodyweight training and my knees not hurting.

Teaching:

Teaching is going well, I saw another potential new student who will sign up with me next week. I have quite a few of these new students at the moment which is the main reason that exercise and other things did not progress as much as I had wanted. I’m not complaining.

Health:

I slept well and got enough sleep five nights out of seven. That’s good but I’m still aiming for seven out of seven. I did manage to eat less sweets, less cheese, almost no snacks and managed to lose 700 grams of weight. Even with having two flavors of Ben & Jerry’s for dinner on Saturday. It was the highlight of my week (and the boy’s). It also was a little too much ice cream. And it might have been better not to plan that extravaganza for one of the coldest days so far.

Other stuff:

The boy’s toilet broke and I got as far as removing the cover of the flushing mechanism and teaching him to wiggle that plastic thing to close it all the way. Then I looked up how to fix it on the internet but never quite got around to actually watch those videos or read those websites. Fortunately, the boy tells me the toilet is now working fine so I just put the cover back.

I called the piano tuner. Anybody telling me how convenient and fast the telephone is compared to email can hear my tale of trying to reach potential new student and the piano tuner’s office for five times each and playing tag with voice mail before agreeing on a date. And when you agree on something by email you have it in writing and can refer back to it later as an added bonus.

Because of the holiday last Thursday I crammed all errands and grocery shopping into Tuesday. I did not manage to make good use of the extra day off, first, because I taught a student and second, because I was rather exhausted by then. That’s one of my problems at the moment, when I start my days early and write first thing I’m basically toast by lunchtime. And if I have to teach students back-to-back until it’s time for dinner I’m basically a zombie afterwards. Which is fine.

I did have some good ideas about things I was stuck on, so that’s good. While cleaning on Friday I had to jot down stuff in my notebook four times.

And on Saturday I spent the afternoon catching up with a friend via video chat, that was rather nice.

Next week:

So, next week will be at the same level of busy, I think. I want to continue writing every morning, running should happen on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and bodyweight training on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday.

The boy will be away at his workshop-thing from Thursday through Monday, I want to go to the Wollmarkt Vaterstätten on Saturday and a friend of my husband will visit with us on the weekend. I’m hoping that he won’t arrive on Friday because Friday I will be teaching all afternoon, adding another singing student to an already full teaching schedule. Oh, and it is podcast recording week again. And I have a list of four songs to go through for students. (I want to play and sing them so that I can teach them how and can accompany them.)

I’m sure this will be fun!