daily journal

It’s all way more reasonable than it sounds! I swear!

I had another no-good, unproductive morning. No, I can’t just pick up my cell phone real quick, nope. So my July yoga streak didn’t really get off the ground. Breakfast was had nonetheless and on time, the boy went off to school, the usual. I did plan the upcoming month but did not get far enough to actually think about when all those wonderful things will happen. Looking at my current schedule my only hope is to make the best use of the next four weekends and the five times off at the end of the month.

I finished a cowl for my husband and am really liking it:

When I checked my email just before breakfast I read one that mentioned the summer sale on WMG workshops. That email also mentioned that they have a new Publishing 101 course. And that there will be on going from the beginning of August to mid-September. And that felt like exactly the thing that will help me to maybe publish something. And I just got some extra money from teaching. And then I realized that there will be another course that I’ve been wanting to take since last year and that one will take place next summer. (The courses are all online but there is the question of finding the time for it.) So I enrolled in that as well.

The third one happened when I was doing the lunch dishes and listening to a podcast with David Gaughran and there was mention of his free course about book marketing. Now, I have no idea when I will look at that one. On the other hand, the other two courses I will most definitely take. First, they are far from free and even at 50% off they are not exactly cheap, and second, the have very specific dates when they will take place and they have homework that I will have to hand in on time.

I did go running but it was already super-hot when I went out and that resulted in a lot of very sweaty walking:

The weather was gorgeous but it would have been a much better idea to start two hours earlier:

I came back home, took a shower, tried working on the novel but fought with my husband which threw my focus off. Husband was stressed out because there have been new COVID-19 cases in the next town over, cooking alone is stressful and there are flying ants trying to take over the annex. I should have helped him more, definitely. Flying off the handle when he came back to tell me that the vacuum is already in the annex hallway was not well-timed.

Lunch was tasty even though the mood was a little low:

I taught all the students. Had two conversations with my husband because of what happened earlier. Finally managed to eat dinner at 7.40. Went online again, started writing this post, decided to leave the dishes (there weren’t that many), spun a bit while watching Youtube, did ten minutes of yoga in bed to make up for the lack of morning yoga and went to bed at an almost sane time.

Podcast? What Podcast?

Today there will be the grocery shopping plus the walking to the garden center to acquire more ammunition in the battle against the ants. I will be teaching lots of students, one after the other all afternoon.

Woke up on time and managed the whole morning routine minutes working on the novel. Got the boy out the door in time, talked with husband, almost finished a cowl.

Then we did some chores and I went to the tea shop and the health food store. I did not buy any chocolate bars or potato chips which made me rather proud. It’s a bit sad but these days that’s major achievement.

I didn’t have to help with lunch, okay, I did chop a few herbs and green onions, which meant that I had time to actually sit down and read through a few more pages of the novel. I got to move a task on the Kansan fridge to ‚done‘ even!

Lunch was a family favorite, pasta e fagioli:

I took a little break, folded some laundry and taught all the students, including one who will start lessons next week. Then I ate dinner, talked with my husband some more, procrastinated doing the dishes, started writing this post, shuddered because my list of things I needed to do was too long and decided to push them all to another day. Apart from the dishes.

I read a bit more of book five in the „Death before Dragons“-series which I’m really enjoying and went to bed.

Today there will be running and quite a lot of teaching. I guess I can just give up on my other to-dos. I’d like to plan for this month, spin and do something with the podcast episode but things aren’t looking good.

No idea why but I totally overslept. Until 6.10. Something is wrong with the smart alarm on my watch. I did manage some yoga, though, but no meditation, no nothing. Then breakfast, my husband’s breakfast, some knitting and a lot of talking and then the waiting for the boy. With more knitting.

Then finally dishes and such. I did call my mother and mostly told her why we won’t come to visit in September. I looked the train schedules up and the whole thing would be madness. Since they live in a tiny town there is no way to get there Friday evening after teaching so I would have to leave here at six to be there at around 2.30 and there is no way to leave there early enough on Monday morning to be back in time for teaching again so I would have to step on a train Sunday afternoon at 5.30 to be back home again shortly before midnight. Um, no.

Meanwhile my husband started cooking. He had big plans. Well, even bigger than usual. We have these wine leaves growing in our garden. The wine used to grow up the balcony but it got all moldy and was starting to destroy the balcony so my husband cut it back. It still wants to grow back so every year my husband lets it get to the point where we can use the leaves for cooking.

So we had a Greek extravaganza. Two kinds of stuffed wine leaves, vegetarian and with ground lamb, tsatsiki, skordalia and tomato rice. It was very good and demanded a glass of wine to go with it:

Oh, and I forgot the zucchini from our garden and the salad.

After that I read a bit and set up a Slack channel for my online writing group. Then I sat around a bit and read a little and spent way too much time on social media and then I finally recorded the podcast. Phew. I did it in three parts because of the camera time limit. I hope it will turn out okay.

The boy and I watched the very last episode of ‚Firefly‘ while eating dinner, then I spun a bit of BFL:

I helped the boy transfer some files from my old laptop to his computer (he couldn’t find a thumb drive and the laptop thought it didn’t have a keyboard, things like that) and then he helped me do the huge pile of pots and pans and plates.

Today there will be an early breakfast for the boy again because he will go to school again, running for me, quite a bit of teaching and maybe some work on the podcast, we’ll see.

In a way it was a very good and productive day and in another it wasn’t. I got up at a decent time. Set a timer and found that it took me 16 minutes from getting out of bed to being dressed and ready to start yoga. Did yoga for 4 1/2 minutes before the boy showed up for his breakfast at 6.25. Um. I knew that he wanted to go to the climbing gym early but not that early.

So I made him tea, helped him look for his water bottle, fetched another one when it seemed the other one was lost. Almost started to work on the novel then waited for my husband to show up.

I knitted on a sleeve. It’s going super-slow. My husband decided to skip running again in favor of things to do in the garden. I did the weekly cleaning-thing. By the way I spent 1 1/2 hours on housework in the morning and another twenty minutes in the afternoon. Okay-ish, I’d say. That included making new deodorant. That takes 12 minuets, by the way.

It was only 11.30 when I was already done with the cleaning. I opted to skip changing the sheets, should definitely do that next week. Since there was still time and since I had been having a craving for potato chips since Tuesday I decided to go out, get gas for the lawn mower and buy some chips and chocolate on the way. As one does.

I really dislike getting gas. Since we don’t have a car I usually ride my bike over to the other side of town, lock the bike around the corner because strangely enough there’s no place to put your bike at the gas station, then walk up to the pump with my little canister, fill it, carry it inside to the cash register, pay, pack it on my bike and leave.

And I suddenly realized that I dislike the whole thing. And especially having to deal with the bike. The locking and unlocking and getting the panniers  out and all. So I decided to walk instead.

I like walking much better. I’m not as fast but I don’t have to deal with a heavy piece of equipment, I don’t encounter the cards as directly and I can listen to podcasts while I’m out. So I put the gas canister in my backpack, went to the health food store, got my snack foods, walked on to the gas station, behaved like an idiot because I only ever buy gas once a year or so and had completely forgotten how to do it properly, put everything in my backpack and walked back home again in peace.

My husband had just started cooking. Things weren’t going well. It had been one of those things. You start with, „We need to eat the chicken we took out of the freezer the day before that we ended up not eating because I got duck at the supermarket,“ throw in a bunch of Romana salads that need to get eaten as well and end up with the plan of fried Romana with goat cheese, fried chicken and bread. All very well.

If you’re my husband you then decide that since there is freshly harvested garlic and a handful of cherry tomatoes you will make bruschetta instead of just eating bread. Very well. You then proceed and find that you need two frying pans for the salad. And one for the bread. And that you’re all stressed out and have two handfuls of herbs in the fridge that need to get eaten as well. In the end you are super-stressed while your wife is frantically mincing herbs, slicing garlic and grating parmesan and keep saying, „I don’t have time to deal with the chicken!“ You resign yourself to having a vegetarian meal for lunch because now there really is no more time and put the chicken back in the fridge. And then you have to dice and fry the chicken after dinner so that it will keep.

And that gives you another challenge for your meal planning: what will you cook with the chicken the next day? Oh! Indian food would be great. Yes it would. Only the fact that we don’t have any spinach never made it onto the grocery list.

Fun times.

Here’s the obligatory lunch picture:

Don’t worry, I didn’t starve. I had seconds and two chocolate bars as dessert.

Then it was time to teach. Two students online with a short dishwashing break between and one student in person that I hadn’t seen in three months. That was fun. We had a lot of catching up to do.

Then I wrote a couple of emails, teaching admin, and then the boy and I watched an episode of Voyager and one of Firefly. Both pretty good. We pigged out on potato chips, caramel ice cream and beer in my case. The boy still prefers soda.

Then I started writing this post and went to bed slightly too late.

Today there will be the running, some folding of laundry, maybe the recording of the podcast (wish me luck) and the watching of TV.