Archives for October 2023

On the other hand, who am I trying to fool here, my whole life is an ongoing experiment. I’ll just try out changing things about my blogging process until I hit one that works. As in life.

So yesterday was not quite as good as I had hoped. I was very determined to do everything really, really early and make use of the fact that I didn’t have as many students as usual so I would have all that time to do all the things, specifically novel revision.

Well. I did wake up at 7 and only dawdled a bit so I could squeeze the complete morning routine in. Which is always good because the journaling, yoga, meditation and taking my blood pressure before breakfast is very good for me. Then I did even put the granny square-in-progress aside without finishing the last round so I could get started on the day early as well. I did a covid test (which was negative), I checked Ravelry, wrote my blog post and this time the blog became unresponsive just because I refreshed the posts from inside the blogging software. Um.

I spent half an hour trying to wrangle everything into submission and had to stop because I ran out of time. So no Duolingo in the morning, no novel revision, nothing. The plan had been to do the dishes first and then work on the novel so that the kitchen would be ready for my husband to cook but it turns out that by the time the dishes were done and I was sitting in front of my computer in my studio all hungry I couldn’t focus on noveling anymore.

No problem. I could just use the time between teaching and dinner. Because I only was teaching until 5.

Lunch was delicious, by the way, exactly the kind of food that I had wanted to eat:

I even did the dishes right away and took a bit of a break before teaching.

My last student canceled but instead of exercising or revising or taking a shower I sat down to play a couple of Tori Amos songs at the piano instead. I’m regretting nothing, I haven’t played the piano in a while and since I mostly play the cheap keyboard during lessons because the students get to play the piano I find that I have to take care not to let the joy get sucked out of playing.

Then I sat down in front of the computer and looked at some of the issues on the back end of the blog. It’s been years since I installed or changed anything and I don’t even remember how to do that stuff. I think I have repaired the most glaring things but who knows.

I’m actually writing this post the evening before so that I have more time to get stuff done tomorrow morning. The plan is to go to the doctor to renew a prescription and finally get my flu shot and then do the weekly supermarket run.

So we’ll see how this works. I’ll tell you tomorrow.

Even though I didn’t get enough sleep I did all the things yesterday. Until I ran out of steam in the evening.

I did the morning routine, had breakfast, blogged, opened the manuscript and did half an hour of revision, did the dishes, a load of wool things and got on my bike for cardio for half an hour. Picture of me in my bike helmet and very much not stylish clip-on sunglasses:

And this is where I ended up to turn around. The whole ride was through fields and trees and I just turned around when I reached the next town over in that direction:

(Sorry for no alt text today, I’m pressed for time and am hoping the text includes all relevant information.)

When I came back I thought it was early enough to take a shower before lunch and/or get something else done but husband was in complete cooking overwhelm/chaos. We did have a long and heated conversation about whether it is possible to cook a meal like this on your own. He started the beans at 11 and I was gone for about half an hour and when I came home something was burning while he was getting the parsley ready.

The food was delicious, burgers, red beans, roasted potatoes and fried slices of eggplant:

He almost forgot about the potatoes in the oven until he suddenly wandered what he had planned as a starch. Well. The empty salad bowl was meant to hold red beet salad which he didn’t have time to make. I was all fired up after eating and made the salad after lunch. It did take all of ten minutes. Though I know that all those five and ten minute things do add up.

I did have a quick shower before eating, so that was good, and after the meal I went into full on overdrive, made the salad, did the dishes, folded some laundry and hung up all the hand knitted socks and wool things. Ate some chocolate, and played some games and then went on to teaching.

After work my energy totally flagged which was not unexpected. The boy came downstairs and told me he’d go out with friends which he never does. Good for him, and I’m crossing my fingers he won’t catch any viruses.

Then I sat there for hours, first eating, then playing games, looking at social media, doing Chinese, watching some TV and then I was really unwilling to leave my comfy chair and warm blanket. I did turn the heating on early in the evening so at least the house is slowly heating up.

I went to bed way too late and only realized that I had been waiting for the boy to come back home without realizing it. Dumb mistake.

So. Today I woke up at the usual time, fetched my phone and that was it with my morning. Right now I’m waiting for windows guy which is not ideal. He is supposed to come at some point between 11 and 2. I also want to get yogurt and go to the health food store. There is only one grocery store in town that still carries my favorite Greek yogurt and all the others are clearly inferior. I bought a new brand last Thursday and I can barely make myself eat it. Nope, not going to happen.

Again with the not sleeping well and going to bed way too late and such. Also with the sitting around not doing much for most of the day.

I did skip my morning routine again but did spend time with my husband and then called my mother on the phone. After that it was a big scramble to get lunch on the table at a reasonable time and I dealt with a lot of laundry. Husband wanted to make paella and that meant a lot of herbs and veggies from the garden. He is very busy right now trying to save what he can since it might be freezing any day now.

After I felt too exhausted for tackling the dishes which was a mistake and then my husband and I had agreed to meet at three to repair the laser printer/copier. The problem had been that it wouldn’t turn back on when turned off in the evening. A round of internet research later I found the YouTube channel of an Australian guy who repairs printers and makes videos about it. The trick of unplugging, waiting, plugging it back in and then turning it on did work but the problem didn’t go away.

So I watched his video and after discussion a potential repair with husband (because I can’t solder) I went and ordered a replacement super capacitor. Well, I didn’t want to order it from Australia so I looked for the part on Amazon, ordered it and then realized my order would be delivered from – China. Ahem.

Husband and I were both pretty cranky and low on energy before we started but I’m proud that we only fought twice. Also, while the repair was tricky, my husband managed to rip off one of the legs he would have needed to solder the capacitor on and I almost managed to destroy the casing when we put the printer back together everything was in working order again. Yeah! The casing has a slight gap on one side but it doesn’t seem to make a difference. I wanted to take more pictures but in the heat of the moment this was the only one I took:

Speaking of pictures, for those of you who read this blog through a feed reader be aware that the feed doesn’t show the pictures. I have started researching a solution to this but it’s pretty low on the list.

The repair took us almost two hours which included watching the 30-minute video and also cleaning the printer, the table it was on and moving the table with the printer to somewhere with better light. (The perils of aging include not only needing reading glasses but having poorer vision overall.)

After that I basically sat there and waited for the day to end. The other two people in the family showed up intermittently and wanted to talk or make themselves something to eat, husband got all angry when he saw at 5.30 that the lunch dishes still hadn’t been done because he had wanted to cook chilis in vinegar to preserve them. Well, I hadn’t known about that plan, and I was very, very happy that he didn’t do it in the kitchen because my asthma had a hard time dealing with the smell wafting over from the annex when he moved his operation there.

I did manage all the Chinese and watching an episode of „Storm Eye“ but went to bed a little too late again.

Today will be a normal Monday but I will get off work a little earlier, my last student canceled. The week looks less tranquil than I would have liked but then it always does, doesn’t it?

When I stopped daily blogging one reason was that I wanted more time for writing fiction. When I started again a couple of days ago I thought it would be doable to do both half an hour of blogging and half an hour of novel revision in the mornings. Yeah, maybe not?

I always start with the blogging because it’s easier and I know there are people reading. I figure I can do the revision later if I don’t have enough time before lunch. So how has that been working for me?

Not all that well.

So I guess I’ll re-introduce something that I used to be doing all the time, I will try to write the blog post the night before.

So yesterday (actually today but I’m not posting this today) I went into complete overdrive until I ran out of energy.

I did the usual morning routine, all of it, the dishes, some laundry, dealt with the recycling and such, talked with my husband, wrote the blog post and started cleaning the house. At 12. Because even with no writing whatsoever everything that needed to be done in the morning took that long. Well, that and some time playing silly merge games on my iPad.

I did manage to do almost all of the cleaning before lunch, yeah. The meal was excellent, by the way, pasta with zucchini in tomato sauce and an exquisite rosé:

I did start to regret the wine immediately, by the way, my stomach didn’t like it.

After eating I immediately ran the vacuum through the old part of the house and cleaned the washbasins and toilets instead of taking a break. The boy was rather confused when he came downstairs. I also helped him find some tools for the Gundam/Hello Kitty model he wants to build. Five minutes before my first student was due.

I taught my first student, had a cup of tea and some chocolate between students, then taught the second student of the day and sat down to do novel revision.

Gave up after helping the boy find tools some more. Turns out we didn’t have sandpaper that is fine enough so I sent him to the hardware store which didn’t have any either. The model-building store that I found online apparently closed at one point so we ordered online again.

Started writing this post while waiting for my last student, had a nice lesson, put my studio in order, went to the kitchen, made myself a sandwich and talked to my husband again, then the boy, then my husband. Somewhere in between I ate dinner, then sat there on the kitchen bench with social media because I couldn’t make myself move.

Did Chinese, took a shower, did the dishes, watched an episode of „Storm Eye“ and went to bed.

Today we will meet my husband’s aunt and uncle for lunch. I should do some form of exercise but I don’t think that will happen. I would also love to spend several hours revising book 2 but I don’t think that will happen either.

I am looking forward to watching the last episode of ‚Good Omens‘ tonight, though, I’ve been waiting for that for a while now.