Archives for May 2020

I woke up early, got out of bed and saw that my Fitbit watch was showing a heart rate of 190. And had done so all night. Now, I wasn’t having a heart attack or something, it seemed the watch was acting up so I spent half an hour on that.

I did manage to do yoga but then spent more time with the watch issue. Had breakfast, watched a video and then my husband showed up. I did feel rather depressed and low and like I’d never get anything done ever.

We talked while my husband was having breakfast and then the waiting for the boy began. And there was more waiting. He was twenty minutes late and by then I had started doing the dishes. He did help, though. More talking with husband and then I called my mother on the phone. We talked for too long so I was late for helping make lunch. We were planning something special:

Those are veal cutlets, homemade gnocchi and tomato sauce. I made the gnocchi which does take some time. They turned out very good this time, if I say so myself.

Then I procrastinated a bit because I was feeling so low but finally I did prepare the podcast. And then even recorded it. I never managed the lighting or the makeup or anything but still:

I pulled out my whole spinning stash for this episode. I hope I’ll manage to release it soon. The iPad cut me off after an hour but I did record the outdo as well and then, just for a few minutes, I thought that there was nothing saved for that one hour. I thought I had sat down, talked for an hour and held my spinning fiber and projects into the camera and had nothing to show for it.

I was pretty relieved to be wrong on that one. I left the iPad there so it could upload the videos to the cloud and went off to have dinner.

The boy and I ate in front of TV (I know, very classy). We started watching ‚Firefly‘. I’m happy to say that he really loved the first episode. That show is still amazing with excellent storytelling, great camera work, wonderful actors and superb setting and tone. That made for a very pleasant evening. And we both needed that, both the boy and I had been all cranky all day. Um, for several days to be honest.

Funny how recording the podcast and watching something really outstanding did lift my mood.

Then I decided to order a new smart watch. It’s really my husband’s fault. Every time I complain about something and tell him that I’d rather get something new because the old thing is starting to fail he tells me to go ahead and do it. I did have to restart and re-sync the watch constantly all day so it wasn’t without reason. I’m still feeling a little weird about spending the money. I will be able to re-budget, though, there is money left that we don’t really need right now, so things will be alright.

I tidied the kitchen, started writing this post and went to bed. A little too late.

Today there will be running and teaching and maybe some work on the podcast. I might have recorded it but that doesn’t mean it’s out.

One more week until Pentecost break. With the boy home again. He says he has a ton of homework.

Managed to do about two thirds of my list all in all.

I did wake up around six, did yoga, meditated and wrote morning pages. I was set on working on my novel but that didn’t happen. After breakfast I went down another research rabbit hole. I don’t even remember what that was about. Oh wait, knitting podcasts!

My husband came over a little late but his breakfast was pleasant and I made good progress on the cardigan I’m knitting. The sky looked rather gray at that point and like it would be raining any minute now. It took ages for me to get out the house for running. The boy was almost on time with his breakfast and helped me do the dishes. Then I decalcified the electric kettle. I did email and answered messages and then I went out to deliver some sheet music to a student. Put them in their mailbox without meeting anyone.

I went running and met quite a few serious runners. Rather unusual. Most of the folks who populated the fields during lockdown seem to have gone back to where they went before. I did intervals of 2 1/2 minutes of walking and running each. I have to say that I find 2 1/2 minutes of running rather long and tedious. I’m actually contemplating going back to a Couch to 5K-program. It all seems too hard and a little pointless. As if I’ll never be a real runner. Anyways, I didn’t get wet when out even without a jacket and was listening to a really pleasant episode of „20-minute delay“ about kits and lists and then to a Creative Penn-episode.

It was surprisingly warm and humid.

I wasn’t sure if I should include this selfie, I tend to look tense and dorky in pictures, apparently:

The hat was more against possible rain than anything else. And that is my „self-rescuing princess“-tee that has seen better days.

When I came back home it was almost lunch-time and my husband was still in cooking-overwhelm so I helped making salad. It tasted wonderful:

Fetucelle carbonara.

For once there was no Saturday slump, I did the dishes, took a short break, started preparing the podcast and then it started raining hard. Which meant – no podcast recording that day because you don’t want that sound of rain on the roof in the podcast. So I finally took a shower and went to install the new wifi router. Which went quickly and smoothly with only a short bump when I couldn’t remember how to connect the phone to it.

The boy reports that his wifi up under the roof is twice as fast as before so that’s something. And it will all get really speedy with the new plan on June 9th.

And that was it because it was time for dinner already. In between my husband discussed several things with me, as he is prone to do in the afternoon. Then the boy and I finished the endless extra long Voyager episode about the Hirogen and holograms. Near the end we almost missed the twist because we were both busy scrolling through twitter, ahem.

The day before we decided to pause watching Enterprise for now. We’ll start watching Firefly tonight and do that and Voyager until we’re through with Voyager and then we’ll pick up Enterprise again. We need a bit of change and the other two series are dragging a little at the moment.

After that I spent some time online, the whole family came back to talk to me, I started writing this post, wrote in my bullet journal and went to bed.

Today there will be: yoga, homemade gnocchi, maybe a phone call to my mother, the recording of the podcast episode and the watching of Firefly. Early to bed, I hope.

Funny, how doing more things makes me feel more energetic. It doesn’t always work but often enough.

I did start the day by oversleeping again until 6.40 or so. So no writing, no yoga, no nothing. But I did make breakfast on time. Didn’t feel good, was in a bad mood and feeling sluggish. The boy went off to school on time with a big case of the dunnwannas as well.

My husband had more things to do than he reasonably could so we hatched a plan. He did go running but only for a short round, then got soda, water and beer, mowed the lawn and did quite a bit of other garden stuff. Meanwhile I cleaned the house and – ordered take-out. In between dusting and vacuuming I decided that I had enough of my technical problems with the podcast, talked with my husband about it and ordered a new camera. I’m declaring it a very early birthday present. I got one that is refurbished so not too pricey. I’m really hoping that that will make podcast-recording more fun again.

The new wifi router came while I was vacuuming. It did take heroic efforts but I didn’t try to install it right away. For once I took into account that something will always go wrong in a project like this and did not attempt to get the new device up and running in the thirty minutes I had left between lunch and my first student.

Lunch was very good, by the way:

My husband had duck with Thai curry sauce and the boy had vegetarian sushi.

Teaching in the afternoon was more pleasant than anticipated. I only had three students and breaks between them all the way. I did fix the sink stopper in the kitchen. We are now the proud owners of a stopper that fits and is actually connected to the sink itself with a chain. It was with great satisfaction that I put the pliers I had been using to pull out the broken stopper back into the drawer where it belongs. It had been years. (You do all have kitchen scissors, kitchen pliers and a kitchen screwdriver, don’t you? Or is that just me?)

I did a load of whites and hung them up before dinner. The boy and I decided to only watch one episode of „Enterprise“. It was alright. Then I watched the news with my husband and set the TV up so he could watch the soccer match on Amazon Prime.

I started writing this post, wrote in my bullet journal and got ready for bed. I’m extra-determined to get another podcast episode out soon, even without the new camera, because a very nice listener sent me a message on Ravelry that made me realize that there are actually people out there who look forward to my silly little knitting podcast.

So today there will be running and something podcast-related. We will not speak of the newsletter, the novel, the sewing or the piles of stuff everywhere..

I totally overslept and woke up at 6.30. Did my yoga but not much else. I read a bit and knitted. Talked with husband and son. Did dishes. Broke a 3 mm wooden needle tip when trying to pick up something from the floor. The needle got caught between me and the table. Oops. Which meant I started the cardigan a third time. This time will stick, I hope. I also ordered new needles because the one I’m using now will be too short to hold all the stitches soon.

I turned the heel on a sock. I did a load of laundry. My to-do list held such lofty goals as recording a podcast episode. Turned out I definitely was not in a podcast-recording mood. Had a bit of a headache again. I think these are tension headaches. Might be stress-related.

My husband made a very yummy lunch:

Stereotypical German food.

There was some folding of laundry. And a lot of snack-eating. And reading and knitting.

In the evening the boy and I watched some Star Trek and weren’t all that convinced yet again. Right in the middle the boy asked, „Is it us or is it the show?“ Good question. We stopped the Voyager episode after fifteen minutes when we saw that it was extra long. We can watch it tonight.

Today there will be the cleaning of the house, lots of teaching, more Star Trek. Also, more snacks and more beer, I guess. Extra knitting and reading.

Woke up at 5.30 and promptly dozed off again. Started to do yoga and stopped after a mere three minutes because I just wasn’t feeling it. Had to use the one lonely yoghurt that was still in the fridge that was the only one I could get the week before. Didn’t like the taste and felt awful after eating. I wasn’t sure if I was sick or had eaten something that didn’t agree with me. Might have been a fructose overdose, maybe. I felt nauseous, didn’t have any energy, had a light headache and was cold all day.

The boy came down for breakfast on time and by then I decided to not work on anything. There was some knitting and some talking. I did dishes and some housework and then had to go and get all the groceries.

The nearby supermarket where I don’t go often was completely closed. I had forgotten that there was water damage. Apparently the store hasn’t opened yet. So I went to another supermarket around the corner. I did get almost everything I wanted but I won’t forget the cashier who coughed into her hand before handing over my change. Ugh. Yes, she did wear a mask but still.

I took a picture while out because I was listening to Joanna Penn’s podcast and she was asking listeners for pictures:

Back home I put everything away and then went out again for round two. Off to the health food store.

When I came back my husband was in a big cooking panic again, things went wrong but we did eat on time:

There might have been too much salt in the food. Then there was dawdling. I still didn’t feel good and I might have dozed off while sitting on the kitchen bench reading.

I also restarted the wifi router and in the end decided I’d rather get a new one. The one we have appears to be going a little flaky and I don’t want to risk it breaking down right now. Even our landline is connected to it. So I did some quick research and ordered a replacement. I am really, really glad for a budget where I put a certain amount of money away for replacement devices. Never mind that the constant replacement of smaller gadgets means there will never be enough money in there for a new laptop when I will need one in a few years.

Then there was teaching. Only a few students and lessons were nice. There was also construction work at one student’s house and a really, really bad connection at another one’s. That bad connection made me look up the internet speed at our address. I spontaneously decided that I’d like something faster, found that the fastest that I can get here would only cost about fifteen euros per month more and changed my plan. Come June we will have really speedy internet.

I had something to eat and tried starting a new sweater but was not quite in the right mood for thinking the whole thing through. So I grabbed the mindless shawl in progress and my spinning wheel and went back to my studio for the virtual knit night:

There were fifteen of us who sat and talked and knitted or spun. It was rather nice but I wasn’t really in talking and listening mode. By then I was feeling quite a bit better but still tired. I left pretty early, talked with my husband a bit and came into the kitchen to this:

Not the best conditions for this morning’s breakfast. So I did all the dishes. I was pretty cranky about it too. Made the mistake of telling my husband exactly how I felt about it which made him storm over and help. Somehow he was pretty cranky too. Funny that. All the cranky talk at least reminded me that I needed to put out the trash can. I met our neighbor while doing that. Turned out that he takes his cues about trash day from my mother-in-law. Who is still in the hospital. That morning we had almost forgotten about setting out the egg cartons and money for the weekly egg delivery. We were almost too late.

Then I started writing this post. I read a little and by then it was way too late.

Today there will be running and some teaching. I’m hoping to prepare and record another podcast episode. But the day will be pretty full and busy without it, so we’ll see how that goes. And tomorrow will be a day off. Phew.