• Life is quite good, I have more students than I had in a long time, I’m busy playing the ukulele, teaching my knitting, and spinning classes, and have stepped up to do a bit more of the chores around the house.
• Today I’m packing for a trip to Frankfurt to visit Winterkatze and Katho for a couple of days. I’m going sans family and am looking forward to it very much. I’m also looking forward to coming back home afterwards.
• At the end of next week I’ll be meeting yet another friend I haven’t seen for some time.
• The weather is sunny, and quite cold, and I love it.
• This week I actually managed to go for a run with my husband. When I run on my own I always run in the hallway, and yes, I know that’s a bit weird. But last week, since I didn’t have to go on my own, we went out and ran though the woods, and had a great time. Also I’m just about as fit as my husband.
• I’m still tired all the time because I’m still not going to bed early enough. On days when I could sleep in I wake at 7.30 regardless of when I went to bed. One of these day’s I’ll manage to get at least 8 hours of sleep every night.
• The day before yesterday I started a somewhat crazy spinning project. I’m planning to spin for a hat on my spindle, and finish the yarn until next Wednesday.
• I’m very pleased to say that in the last two days I have managed to spin half the yarn I’ll need. I will take the spinning with me on my trip, and hope I’ll make progress while traveling.
• At the moment I’m not writing any fiction. Also I won’t be participating in NaNoWriMo this year. I do plan to start writing again soon, though.
• There’ll be another podcast tomorrow or so, and after that I’ll post the story I wrote for this month’s writers meeting.
• Now I have to see if the clothes I want to pack are dry yet.

See you.

I also have to-do-list software. Then I found myself, after running, checking “running” off in three places. And then I thought that my journaling had gone a bit too far.

I started to record all these things in order to measure improvement. I wanted to achieve certain goals and I started of actually measuring whether I achieved them or not. Otherwise one can think that one exercises at least three times a week only to find that, oops, a week has gone by, and then another. That’s all very valid. I also love my morning pages, so I sit down and write them almost daily. And then I don’t for a few days, and then I go back to them. No problem.

I do love putting my exercise time in my calendar, and with the toggle of a button I can see all the days that I exercised in one place, and then I feel all virtuous.

The food journal, that’s another thing. I have started writing down what I eat many times in my life. And I started again on January 1st. At first I was all good, but then I missed a day here and there, then a whole week, and now I find that I’m really not all that interested in keeping a food journal. I don’t count calories or anything. I just write down “1 piece of toast with almond spread, 1 glass of orange juice, 1 cup of black tea with 1 piece of sugar”. Of course food journaling can help when you want to know what’s going on but I don’t need to write down “ate a whole bag of potato chips because I was bored and angry” to see why I have gained weight. There are people who eat better when keeping a food journal, I’m not one of them. I have food journal entries laying around the house from years ago that go, “Was completely pissed and therefore ate a bag of chips, one bag of gummy bears, half a chocolate bar, and two beers. Feel lousy and bloated. Half an hour later: finished the chocolate.” (Just typing this makes me nauseous these days. I think I have come a long way.)

So I try to be good with the food journaling but what’s the point. It helps to show me that the treats I give myself are not exactly treats because they happen just about every day. These days I’m rather good with food, mostly, and so I will skip the food journal.

But you know, every time I write a paragraph here I remember yet another journal of mine, and add it to the first paragraph. It’s clear that the record-keeping has gone out of hand. I’m not quite as insane as that list of journals implies, though, because there are quite a few of these journals that I no longer keep. But right now I’m on the verge of giving up on record-keeping altogether. These journals were meant to be helpful for me, not something to occupy me all the time. I think I might get rid of one or two.

It’s not like I bought about twenty notebooks one day and thought, “From now on I’ll record everything!” I just bought a morning pages book in 1999, well the first of many. And I’ve had general notebooks even longer than that. I remember going into the one big store in the small town where I lived until 1986 to buy a notebook because my life had reached a level of complexity too high for keeping it all in my head. That was about the same time that I started using a calendar as well. Until then there was the family wall calendar for things like doctor’s appointments and that was it.

Let’s see – the morning pages stay because I like them. Having several general notebooks makes it a bit hard to find things later but still I like it. And I have a system. Sort of. So they stay as well. Also the knitting notebook, and the place were I record my reading. I started cataloguing my books when I had bought the same book twice one day. I hadn’t remembered that I already had it. The gratitude journal didn’t really work out for me. When I read back it only made me realize how unhappy I really was. the control journal for housework never really worked either. I do know that I have to clean the house at least once a week. I don’t really need a checklist because a look at the house itself will tell me what to do.

I’m quite attached to weighing myself daily. I even have an iPod app that gives me progress reports on how I’m doing with weight loss. I think I’ll keep that. Apart from that I think I might take some time off from journals. I have taken a bit of time off from trying to improve myself in all areas at once anyway.

So for now I’ll accept that I’m both journaled out and self-helped out. I take a break. And I won’t create a new task on my electronic to-do-list that’s called: take time off from journaling, repeat daily until further notice. I promise.

My ta da-list for today so far (that’s what you already have accomplished):

I find that these “happiness reports” depend very much on how a feel in the moment I’m writing them. Which is what everybody will tell you, that happiness is fleeting and can’t be fabricated. But I still think there can be a thing like lasting happiness, and no, I don’t mean contentment.

Yesterday I had one of those dreary teaching days where I felt that every student was slow, and clumsy, and a waste of time, and then I remembered one of Gretchen Rubin‘s mottos, “Act how you want to feel.”, and I was so successful in telling myself how much I enjoy teaching, and what nice and brilliant students I have that by the end of the day I was positively beaming.

Now you might say, “But those weren’t you’re true feelings!”. I have to confess that I’m not that sure about feelings being true at any given moment any more. With all those hormones racing around in my body, and with things like being hungry or tired making such a huge difference it might be hard to get to the bottom of a situation. Slowly I understand what buddhists mean when they say that feelings aren’t permanent, and ever changing. I have days when something tiny like taking a nap or reading something or deciding to act how I want to feel can turn my whole day around. So, since it’s possible to do that why not use it to my advantage. And in my case I had the additional advantage that my students are really lovely people, and so I know that it’s me when I feel like I can’t stand to hear another mangled version of a tune that’s not that great to start with. I don’t complain, I know that comes with the job. When you’re teaching people how to play an instrument you mainly sit there all day and listen to people play things they can’t play well yet. And every time they master something you go on to the next thing.

I only have to remind myself to sometimes listen to some music that’s played by a master to remind myself where we’re all going with this.

But back to my report. As you know by now I made yet another list of things that I want to change in order to become a happier person:

1. Go to bed on time.
2. Pick up after myself.
3. Write 500 words of fiction at least six times a week.
4. Think about the things I love about my family, students, and friends.
5. Exercise three times a week or more.
6. Play the piano every day.
7. Wear clothes that make me feel good.

Usually I add something to this list every month. But this month I didn’t. I’m still thinking about the part where my mood is bad because of hormones. It’s now definite since my mood has been much more stable while I’m on chemical birth control. This is not a permanent solution since I have no desire to have a stroke in the near future but it helps isolating the problem.

1. Now for the part where I tell you how I did. There’s no surprise there, I’m doing mildly blah again. Still I feel better for trying:
2. Going to bed on time hasn’t happened much but as long as we were still in summer break I managed to get almost adequate sleep. It’s still the same, every day I have slept enough is much better than the ones I have after only six or seven hours. For the past few days I managed to go to bed almost on time, a step into the right direction. I’m also giving myself stickers for that again. (So far: 2 stickers in 8 days. There still is room for improvement.)
3. I have been getting much better at picking up after myself, and my husband just told me yesterday that he has the feeling that housework is currently divided equally between us. That is great news, Finally some improvement. Of course, right now I’m sitting here typing while he is cooking…
4. The writing of the fiction hasn’t happened. But again I managed to write today and on Tuesday. I’m hoping to get into the groove again.
5. The exercise has happened. Not exactly three times a week but at least two times. I also have been going to the pool twice already so that my son can work on his swimming skills. The first time I even managed to swim a few laps in the kid’s pool. There have been an astonishing number of times when I did my walk/run-routine for an hour or more. And I can proudly tell you that I can now not only climb stairs again without getting out of breath instantly, I can even run them up if I want to catch a train, then jog about 50 meters, and all of that without keeling over or thinking I’ll die the next minute. That thing alone makes me very, very happy.
6. There was no piano playing whatsoever apart from what happened while teaching, I’m sorry to say. But my husband and I played a couple of songs in front of an audience, and learning how to sing a new song and performing it with my husband made me very happy. I’d like to do a little more music with him in the near future. Without going back to trying to emulate a cover band if possible.
7. Buying new pants has made dressing much easier. The funny thing is that I bought both pairs a size too big. They don’t really look all that great but the comfort of un-pinching waistbands is almost worth it. One of these days I’ll even make myself a new denim skirt. I love wearing my corduroy one. The only thing I haven’t solved yet is how to wear a skirt with leggings and woolen socks while teaching without looking ridiculous. I don’t wear shoes indoors and I have yet to find a stylish slipper-boot. Maybe I’ll compromise, buy a nice pair of Birkenstocks and wear tights. We’ll see.

The other thing I have been doing is to think about the way I eat again. I have been starting to re-read “Outsmarting the Midlife Fat Cell. Of course I did remember most of what Debra Waterhouse wrote about in that book but seeing it again was very good for me. I found that some of my new habits that I started in order to lose weight were quite counter-productive. Also that I don’t exercise enough. And that my portions are way too big. The thing is, I have been going to eating frequent small meals, and drinking like a camel that reaches an oasis after weeks in the desert, and all of a sudden my weight seems to creep downwards again. We’ll see how that goes in the long run, especially since I still tend to counter exhaustion with too much food, but I’m optimistic.

So eating like a sane person who enjoys food is my new goal for October.

The other thing that I started, and you surely have noticed by now is my knitting podcast. It’s in German because there is dire need for a German knitting podcast out there. Doing it makes me ridiculously happy. Especially since people seem to like it. I have plans of doing a sort of “best of”-edition in English at some point, we’ll see when that might happen.

Phew, that was a long one, wasn’t it? Anybody else out there striving for more happiness by making rules?

Well, I managed to follow it back to a couple of fashion bloggers but was unable to find it’s origin, sorry. Nonetheless there are of course rules to this award which are to tell you about ten things I like, and to name ten more bloggers for the award. I will gladly show you ten things I like but I won’t be tagging anybody, sorry, I have this feeling that I have done enough tagging for the moment.

Because I’m sadly behind with the posting of my daily picture I thought I’d combine the ten things I like with that (for the rest of my daily pictures please visit my flickr):

1. homemade tortillas with guacamole
2. watching my son sleep (this was a picture he wanted me to take, he is actually posing)
3. blue skies
4. knitting a new hat for my husband
5. roses
6. beer
7. me
8. watching my son read
9. fiber
10. books

]]> http://creativemother.de/2010/10/05/it-really-must-be-2006-again/feed/ 2 http://creativemother.de/2010/09/26/what-to-do-when-your-computer-goes-boink/ http://creativemother.de/2010/09/26/what-to-do-when-your-computer-goes-boink/#comments Sun, 26 Sep 2010 15:03:45 +0000 Susanne http://creativemother.de/2010/09/26/what-to-do-when-your-computer-goes-boink/ [...]]]> Last weekend I had a case of Computer! Emergency! Panic! It came to me after a week of regular “first week of school”-panic, and on top of “first live performance in five years”-panic. Really, it was lovely.

So, Saturday morning (more than a week ago) after breakfast I went over to my studio to “just check my e-mail” which usually is code for “plop down in front of the computer and lose myself in the depth of the webs for an hour or two”, and when I tried to turn on my laptop all I got was the grey screen of doom. The second attempt got me as far as the “grey screen with blinking question mark”. Bad sign, not good at all.

That was the beginning of 2 1/2 days of me sitting in front of the machine, trying things, doing research on my husband’s computer, rushing off to get spare parts, and dismantling and re-assmebling my computer. I didn’t sleep properly in days and found that there is indeed one thing in the world that makes me lose my appetite, and that’s a computer emergency.

Now, I am a bit embarrassed that my computer is that important to me, and I have indeed contemplated going analogue again, I’m not sure – for example – if my electronic calendar is really worth the hassle; but it was my husband who got me to ponder this question even further.

Let’s face it, we might think that computer emergencies are the exception, and fortunately they are, but I find that there are enough of them to warrant a plan on how to deal with them. This past hiccup caused me to spend about a week thinking about not much else, and I had to spend quite a bit of money as well.

Granted, not everybody has three hard disk failures in four years (and I won’t get another re-furbished machine, that’s for sure) but I had them. And there are quite a few more of the smaller crises like software updates going wonky, or user error, or mysterious ailments that cause half your calendar to disappear.

So I’m making some rules for computer emergencies for myself. And I’ll print them out and put them somewhere I’ll find them again. Before I write about those, though, there is something really important to remind you (and me) of – you’ve probably heard it before – BACK UP. OFTEN. When my first hard disk crashed I lost about half a year’s worth of family photos, digital music, and some other stuff. This time I was fortunate: the computer broke the morning after my regular Friday backup. I’ve been using ibackup, and that has been the only reason that computer failure didn’t turn me into a small ball of whimper. My new computer comes with time machine, and I really hope that works. So, the rules…

… when I get to my computer and something is wrong the main rule is: remember real life first

1. Do I have any pressing things to do like feeding my son or being somewhere else?
2. Have I taken a shower already? Chances are that fiddling with the computer will let me lose my sense of time completely. Yes, fixing the problem might only take twenty minutes but what if it takes two days? Which it usually does.
3. Do I have something to drink nearby? Have I been to the bathroom? Last Sunday I got so mesmerized by working on my dead computer that I only drank my morning tea and a small glass of wine with lunch. Nothing else.
4. Is it past six o’clock in the evening? Wait until the morning.
5. Tell my family that there is a computer emergency and ask them to come and look for me once and hour or so.
6. Don’t panic. It’s just a device, it’s not my life.

The other thing I did was that this time when I bought a new computer I got an extended warranty. So for the next three years whenever anything goes wrong with my computer I’ll go to the nice computer shop, bat my eyelashes and say, “There is something wrong with my computer, please fix it.” And I actually bought locally because of this for once.

I could have fixed the computer in the end but I would have needed a new hard drive (which I already bought), and on top of that a new keyboard/trackpad/top case-part because I managed to break that while installing the new hard drive. And yes, one should be able to install a new hard disk in a Macbook without opening the whole computer but you can only do that when the guys who installed the last hard disk (after the first one broke) put back everything including the white tab that you use to pull the broken drive out. So I would have ended up spending another 130 € on a four year old laptop with a broken optical drive.

So in the end I got a new shiny computer which I really love and have wanted for quite some time now. But it took me almost a week to restore everything, and there are still about three programs that won’t work. Of course, I bought those years ago, and now with the shiny new computer, of course, comes a shiny new version of the operating system.

Next thing I’ll have to get my audio interface work with the computer. Wish me luck.

1. Actually go on vacation for about a week.
2. “Spring” clean the whole house.
3. Prepare knitting classes for fall.
4. Relax.
5. Teach my son to swim.
6. Edit my 2007 NaNoWriMo-first draft.
7. Paint kitchen.
8. Learn background vocals for songs to be played at friend’s birthday party in mid-August.
9. Learn how to bake bread.
10. Take a picture every day and post it on the internet. For details on this you might want to check out Sue Snaps.
11. Play the piano every day.
12. Sing every day.
13. Play the guitar every day.
14. Finish spindle spun sock yarn.
15. Spin yarn for Vine Yoke Cardigan.
16. Try my hand at doing a knitting podcast.
17. Renovate my blog so that it looks nice again.
18. Meditate every day.
19. Exercise.

Out of these 19 projects I did – eight.

1. We went on vacation for three days instead of a whole week because those there never were more than three consecutive days without rain. We made the most of what we had. Next year we might want to pitch our tent abroad, we’ve had enough of rainy Augusts for now.
2. There was quite a bit of cleaning and tidying of the house but there was no “spring” cleaning as such. Still, it looks much better than before.
3. I did start preparing my knitting classes, then I got distracted, there is still one book I want to read – maybe I should just accept that procrastination and mad-dash improvisation is my style and go for it.
4. I did relax. Yeah me!
5. My son knows how to swim! With the bad weather I didn’t know if he’d ever learn it but then I took him to a gorgeous indoor pool twice, and he did paddle several meters without help. He still looks a bit like a poodle while swimming but he’s clearly getting there. Yay!
6. Editing my first draft? What first draft? Oh, that draft – oops – that must be some where in that pile over there on the desk that’s buried in other piles. I didn’t even take it out once. Don’t know if that’s ever going to happen.
7. The painting of the kitchen was only a faint hope when I put it on the list. We have to have new wiring in the old part of the house, and we don’t want to paint the rooms before that, but we still don’t have the money (or time) to have the wiring done (or even to ask how much it would cost) so we might live in these unpainted rooms for decades. Who knows.
8. I did learn the background vocals, and performed them at said birthday party. For most of the songs I did not have a microphone because the percussion player hijacked it while I wasn’t looking, and so I could have sung anything, nobody heard me anyway. It still was fun but brought back memories of all the bad gigs I have played in my life *shudder*.
9. Bread didn’t happen as well. I wanted to make the famous “No-Knead-Bread” but the thing is you have to make the dough about 24 hours before you want to bake it, and that means planning, and having two days in a row where you have time for baking at the same time of day. That didn’t happen. I still have the flour sitting right there on the counter, and one of these days … I did make cinnamon rolls for the first time, though. They were delicious.
10. I did indeed take a picture every day, and posted it on the internet (not every day). I only forgot once.
11. Not much piano playing.
12. Not much singing either.
13. No guitar playing at all. Teaching on Monday will be great, Mondays it’s almost nothing else but guitar. My fingers will hurt like hell in the evening.
14. Spindle spin sock yarn is done. And it might even be fine enough.
15. I started spinning the yarn for the Vine Yoke Cardigan even though I’m still not that satisfied with it. I spin it to what I think is the right thickness, then I ply it, everything looks great, then I wash it and – bang – it’s twice as plump as before. I think I’m getting it right this time but I’m afraid I will spin it all up and then won’t be able to use it for the cardigan.
16. Knitting podcast is up and on the way.
17. Blog layout is still wonky, sorry.
18. Not much meditation happening but I did write morning pages most days.
19. I did quite well with the exercising, have been running and walking and riding my bike.

I might have to re-think my lists and goals approach one of these days. I still have the feeling that making lists is a good thing but then looking at them to see that most things didn’t happen – not so nice. I might have to check them off more often. Or something. The summer does feel like a good one. Despite the rain that fell most days.

A thing that wasn’t on my list but that happened is that we as a family did a lot of nice things together. We had barbecues, and bike rides, and we went camping and all. That was great. And we all had quite a bit of time puttering around the house as well. That was great too.

1. Actually go on vacation for about a week.
2. “Spring” clean the whole house.
3. Prepare knitting classes for fall.
4. Relax.
5. Teach my son to swim.
6. Edit my 2007 NaNoWriMo-first draft.
7. Paint kitchen.
8. Learn background vocals for songs to be played at friend’s birthday party in mid-August.
9. Learn how to bake bread.
10. Take a picture every day and post it on the internet. For details on this you might want to check out Sue Snaps.
11. Play the piano every day.
12. Sing every day.
13. Play the guitar every day.
14. Finish spindle spun sock yarn.
15. Spin yarn for Vine Yoke Cardigan.
16. Try my hand at doing a knitting podcast.
17. Renovate my blog so that it looks nice again.
18. Meditate every day.
19. Exercise.

Sounds all very reasonable and do-able, doesn’t it? [Insert mad laughter here.]

Summer break starts next week.

I like to travel light as much as the next person, and I’m always making fun of people like my mother who always takes about three times the clothes I do, and ends up bringing things home that she didn’t even wear on the trip. Of course, the secret to packing light is not to mind if you look the same every day, and to have comfortable shoes that you can wear day in and day out. (Sometimes I think wearing shoes like that might be one of the secrets of happiness but this is not about shoes.)

Still, when I’ll be getting out of the door to travel my luggage will be quite a bit heavier than the one described on the minimalist blog. Why is that so?

Well, for one I’m not staying in a hotel so I will bring shampoo, and soap, and a hairdryer (a tiny one but still), I will bring an emergency travel towel (something that really comes in handy more often than you think), I will take a second cardigan, and contact lens solution, and my cell phone charger, my camera charger, my ipod charger, and my PDA charger.

Why do I need all these gadgets? Well, I won’t bring my laptop, and my PDA with its foldable keyboard is my means to get my 500 words a day in.

I will also bring more clothes than her because while I could wash my clothes while away I don’t like to do so when I’ll be only gone for a little more than a week so I’ll bring four tees, a cardigan, four pairs of socks, and four changes of underwear in addition to what I’m wearing the first day. Depending on the weather forecast I might also bring a pair of sandals in addition to my grey walking shoes, and I’m contemplating to add a pair of slippers since we will be spending quite a bit of time sitting around indoors.

I will bring a bathing suit because we plan to go swimming, I will bring a lace shawl or two, and I will bring a bottle of wine and some dark chocolate as presents for my parents.

I will bring a notebook for my morning pages, and another one for just general notes, I will bring my best pen, and a book to read, and I already bought three new books for my son to read, and I will bring a pack of Uno cards to play with my son. Last year I took three books for me but this year I decided to only take one paper book, and I have a couple more on my ipod. But I can think of a lot of situations where you don’t want to bring an electronic reading device, or where you can’t charge your ipod, or just imagine what if it falls to the ground and breaks, and then you’re stuck without a book to read.

We will have two eight hour train rides to fill, and a whole week’s worth of evenings sitting in our rented apartment while out son is already asleep.

I will also take a bottle of water or two, and sandwiches and cookies, as you do when you’re traveling with a child, and a husband who is lactose and fructose intolerant. We will also take tea, so that my mother doesn’t have to buy some that she’d never drink anyway.

And of course I will bring knitting. You didn’t think I would forget that, wouldn’t you? I already started a pair of socks who’ll come with me, and I will start another lace shawl, one that’s intriguing but not as complicated as the one I’m currently working on. I also will bring a spindle or two and 100 grams of fiber, and if everything goes according to plan I might have a nice pair of socks made from that fiber upon our return. If everything doesn’t go according to plan I will have lugged around 100 grams of fiber, a 15 gram spindle, and a set of double pointed needles.

I will also take some sheet music since my husband plans to bring both an electrical guitar and the violin with him, and since the guitar is already there I might finally get around to practice the songs I’ve been teaching my students lately. (That’s the “so you’ll have to play it this way, only much faster, and as you can see you have to look out to not make this mistake I just made”-school of teaching. In my defense I have to say that they are playing quite well.) So. Sheet music, picks, guitar tuner, and a capo.

And two yoga DVD’s. I’m not taking my running shoes though. See, I’m sensible. And I will exercise in my pajama bottoms.

And before you think I’m totally crazy I might have to add that when my husband and I went to Brazil for two months all the luggage we had were our two backpacks (one is about the size of a carry-on, the other is a bit bigger), and each of us had a second backpack in addition to that. We could easily carry all out stuff around. So, the clothes I take for ten days would be enough for any amount of time, I only would have to wash them.

We didn’t bring a guitar, though, we bought one there.

So I can never decide if I’m a light traveler or not. I try to be prepared (sunscreen, water, a hat, an umbrella, a pocket knife) but not overloaded. It’s a tricky balance. What about you? Do you travel light or not? How many pounds of knitting do you usually take? Or books?

You know, there are people who do “100 things to do before I turn 40″-lists but really, I have a “100 things I absolutely have to do until next Tuesday”-list. It comes with an attached “list of things I wish to do with my life” that’s enough to keep me busy for the next two or three decades, and that has such nifty points as “write and record an album of original songs”, and “write a novel”, and “edit the first draft of a novel I have sitting in my file cabinet and get it ready to be read by other people”.

I have heard of people who are bored, I’m usually not one of them, unless you make me sit and listen to small talk for more than thirty minutes in a row. But even then I usual take out my knitting, and then I’m fine.

Back to the list:

1. Sew a bag to hold my two new spindles: I solved this by buying two zippered pouches that are intended to keep bottles cool. They are neither beautiful nor particularly suited to the task but they are better than ziplocks and already assembled. I tested them on Sunday, and yes, they hold the spindles and fiber, the spindles didn’t break.
2. Weave in ends, sew buttons on, and block every single piece of finished knitting that’s on the “knitting to be finished”-pile: I did sew the buttons on my new Tappan Zee cardigan. It took me all of five minutes. I didn’t want to show up at the spinning meeting with a cardigan lacking buttons.
3. Darn socks, and other items of clothing: Very funny. I almost feel like my mother-in-law when she was getting rid of her old bedroom furniture in 1995 and there was a pair of jeans in need of mending in there that had fitted my husband some twenty years earlier. I have to say, though, that I cull the mending pile on a regular basis so that all clothes in there still fit someone in the house. Well, apart from the pair of corduroy pants that belong to me, and that are now two sizes too small. But I’m working on it.
4. Clean the house including windows. Again, very funny. I did keep the kitchen in pristine condition throughout the weekend, though. I just didn’t cook.
5. Sew a skirt. Nope.
6. Finish knitting clues 4 to 7 of the Alhambra-Shawl. Knit eight rows of clue 4 on Monday morning. Haven’t touched the shawl ever since.
7. Get enough sleep. Partial success, I did sleep enough one day, not nearly enough the next. I’m on a new, improved, and very strict “get ready for bed at 9.45 pm”-routine though. Already managed it once. (Pat on the back.)
8. Go to spinning meeting on Sunday. And I did. And it was a lot of fun. And I spun, and spun, and talked, and spun.
9. Bake a cake to take to spinning meeting. Did it. Just barely in time but it was a huge success, I didn’t take any of it home again even though there were only four of us.
10. Exercise. Well, I took a long walk.
11. Do something special with my son. We went to the toy store where he bought himself a new toy, and we went to the farmer’s market and got some greek food. We don’t eat that any more because my husband can’t have it. Since he was away it was the perfect treat for my son and me. After eating that he spent the rest of the weekend with my mother-in-law.
12. Take pictures of all the finished knitted items. Again, very funny. The sun still has only been seen from afar in these parts.
13. Write a story for the next writer’s group meeting. Still have to do this one, has to be finished by tomorrow. Fun.
14. Finish doing taxes. And again, taxes are sitting here, mocking me.

All of this is not much of a problem. The problem are all the things that were on my to-do-list before, that have gotten on the list since then, and my brain going on overload because of all that.

One of my problems (and I told you about that, I know) is that every problem immediately creates a set of sub-problems and -tasks. Like my son got invited to a birthday party next week. There is:

1. Talk to mother who invited him, tell her that he would love to go.
2. Tell her that she can give my number to another boy’s mother so that only one of us has to make the half hour drive.
3. Think that it might be nice to make a family outing of that. To go there by train, and spend the afternoon in a café while my son is at the party.
4. Talk to my husband about that. He agrees.
5. Think about the fact that we will have to bring birthday presents for the twins, think about when to get them, and what to get.
6. While out doing errands today, go to toy store and buy presents (that was very efficient of me, most unusual).
7. Make a note that presents will need to be wrapped but only after my son has seen them.
8. Look up trains for getting to the party and back, and look up ticket options.
9. Write a post-it note for my husband to put date into his calendar.
10. Put date into my own calendar.
11. Put date into family calendar.
12. Hope that there is still suitable wrapping paper in attic.
13. Make note to look for wrapping paper before going to the grocery store next time.
14. Go and look for wrapping paper.
15. Put wrapping paper on shopping list.
16. Buy wrapping paper.
17. Wrap presents.
18. Get ticket.
19. Get family to station on time.

And I’m sure I have forgotten something. Like telling my mother-in-law that we will be going there so that she doesn’t make plans for my son on that day.

One part that makes organizing this household such a big task is that every single thing has to be talked through with three other people. Often repeatedly. Everybody has to have every information. I should make hand-outs. Like the sheets of paper you get from the school. You know what, I think I just had a perfectly brilliant idea.

One part is that the flow of information heavily relies on a seven year old. He said to me that he needed some brown or green clothes to wear to a school event. Then he told me that he had already chosen the right clothes with the help of his grandmother. I didn’t ask her about it but just today when he was on his way to the event my husband found out that the particular pair of pants he had planned on wearing were not in his closet. That’s because they have been to small for more than a year. My husband didn’t know that. I’m the only one who has any idea what clothes my son owns, and I was busy teaching during this particular crisis.

And so it goes on and on. Tell somebody about an event, then remind that somebody about the event. The writing group I attend is organized through a yahoo group. We meet every second Thursday of the month, except when we don’t. Keeping track of dates seems to be really hard, so I’m using the group’s calendar to send out reminders for the meeting. Three days before, and one day before. But then there’s one member of the group who is not on the yahoo group so I try to remember to send her the dates through e-mail. And then there’s another one of us who sometimes doesn’t check her e-mail for ages, and so if I haven’t heard anything from her I text her.

I also talk about the meeting with my mother-in-law because I can only go if she’s free to take my son, and I talk about it to my husband, and I mark it on my calendar, and on the family calendar that’s hanging in the kitchen. I remind my husband about a week in advance, then again three days before the event, and on the same day. In between reminders he will forget all about it because he likes his head nice and uncluttered. Just like me.

And in all of this the thinking about the things I have to do takes more energy than the simple doing of the things would do, only you can’t do all the things at once, and so you have to think about them, and make lists and stuff.

I might be doing something wrong, though. What do you think? Are your lives and to-do-lists feeling as overwhelming as mine?

1. Sew a bag to hold my two new spindles.
2. Weave in ends, sew buttons on, and block every single piece of finished knitting that’s on the “knitting to be finished”-pile.
3. Darn socks, and other items of clothing.
4. Clean the house including windows.
5. Sew a skirt.
6. Finish knitting clues 4 to 7 of the Alhambra-Shawl.
7. Get enough sleep.
8. Go to spinning meeting on Sunday.
9. Bake a cake to take to spinning meeting.
10. Exercise.
11. Do something special with my son.
12. Take pictures of all the finished knitted items.
13. Write a story for the next writer’s group meeting.
14. Finish doing taxes.

That’s pretty do-able, don’t you think?

• iPod cover
• yarn
• paper to print business cards on
• pajamas
• pants
• map?

You know what I brought home with me? A bottle of wine and two bags of chips, and this is why.

I had added the map at the last minute because as I was looking up the way to get to my meeting (new location this month) I found that our current map of the big city had a price tag that still read “DM”. It’s been Euros for nine years now, a whole new highway has been built since then, also about a dozen new train stations.

The one thing that I didn’t put on the list was “bottle of wine”. I forgot to but I still had to buy one because I had promised to bring one, then found that for reasons I can’t fathom we had only one bottle of red wine left in the house which – while very tasty – looks like a cheap bottle of wine. And while I can tell people to “Just go on and taste it, it’s really good.” at my house, it just doesn’t look good as a gift.

So I left the house with a full wallet and the intention to pick up a bottle of wine on my way to the train station at the local health food store. Which hasn’t gone out of business, woohoo, though it had been a close call. I went in there, looked for wine, couldn’t find the one I wanted, found that all the other brands were wines we had tried and found inferior and decided to just get a bottle of wine in the city.

I hopped on the train, and made a plan of how to buy everything on my list without having to go into too many stores, and without crossing back. Just like a puzzle, like you do. First thing I went to the yarn shop. I knew what I wanted, two balls of yarn to knit my husband another hat because he accidentally felted the one I made him before. (Our son is very happy with his very cool new hat, though.) I also wanted another ball in the same color and some turquoise or so to make matching mittens. I went into the shop, looked at the shelves, found two balls of the light grey I wanted, and then I started looking for a contrasting colorway. I stood there for about ten minutes, pulling out balls of yarn and reading labels because their yarn is sorted according to color which makes finding the same yarn in different colors really slow. In the end I didn’t find a color that I liked, there were only two balls of the grey though I need four, and so I left the shop without buying anything.

I briefly thought about going into another shop for the yarn but then I came to my senses again, and remembered that that’s always what I do, and inevitably the other stores have even smaller selections of yarn.

To relax a bit I then went on to find myself a bottle of wine, and succeeded, and then – because I was so frustrated already – the two bags of chips somehow found their way into my bag. I’m really proud that I didn’t buy any candy, though, I’m trying to go candy-free at the moment, and I thought that would be a bit counter-productive. (Whereas buying potato chips is entirely reasonable, of course.)

Next I went to the apple store where I had never been before in my life, and tried to buy a case for my iPod touch to use when I’m exercising. I wanted something with velcro I could fasten on my arm or some such thing. I entered the store, and thought, “Where is all the stuff?” I only saw a lot of computers on tables, and a lot of people playing with them. I started looking around for the accessories. I also would have bought a nice little cheap lightweight external hard drive if I had seen one that had caught my fancy. After a while I gathered that maybe what I was looking for was upstairs. So I went up, and right there were things to buy. And I have to say I even did find a case just like I had wanted but, sadly, about double the price I had been willing to spend. So I thought to myself, “I’ll just buy some velcro and make myself a case out of leftover fabric.”

I didn’t really want to go into the paper store after that so I tried to find what I wanted somewhere else – and failed. And I thought, “I’ll just use that old orange paper I have lying around, who needs fancy business cards anyway.” (I know the faulty thinking in that but I thought it anyway.)

Next the dreaded clothing store. I need to replace both pajamas and pants because of the two functioning pairs of each that I have one is falling to pieces. Literally. Both my comfortable jeans and my not-as-loved pajamas have big honking holes in them, and are not really fit for wearing anymore. What bugs me the most are the jeans because I bought them only about a year ago, and they were quite expensive. Now, I don’t mind spending money on pants, especially if they fit, but this amounts to 12.9 € a month I spend on jeans. And that’s not considering that I have been wearing this pair of jeans with holes in it for a couple of months now. They are my “home jeans”.

So I decided to buy some cheap jeans instead. Nothing fits me right anyway. One thing that quickly wears out on my pants these days is the place where I always grab them to yank them up. I’ve seriously considered wearing suspenders. It’s annoying. I get up from a chair – yank. I sit down – yank. I walk a bit – yank. It’s completely automatic right now but sometimes I wonder what it would be like to wear something that doesn’t threaten to expose my underwear. So, this time, cheap jeans.

I really tried. I looked at everything. I wanted this to work. Black pants would have been fine, jeans would have been fine, pinstripes, no matter, something that fit me. You know, in the end I didn’t even try anything on. I looked at the cut of almost every pair of pants they had in there and instantly I could see why I had started buying more expensive jeans.

Next to the pajamas. Pajamas are easy. They can be baggy, they don’t have to look particularly smashing, I’m content with everything if it has long sleeves and pants, is made from a stretchy, jersey material, and is not pink or has any cute animals on it.

I’m sorry to say I didn’t find pajamas either. Everything was pink or with bows or beige or had horrible things printed on. So I thought to myself, “I’ll just buy some jersey and make myself some pajama bottoms, and use the top that I have from the pajamas I bought last time where I didn’t bother to try them on first, and now I have pajama pants I can’t even pull up properly.”

The only thing left on my list was the map. I already felt quite dejected by the consumer culture, and so I thought the book store would cheer me up. One can always find a book, right?

Well, I went all through the store, I went to the section where they keep the maps, I looked into self-help books, and novels, and life style and whatever, and I left with – nothing. Of course, this might have had something to do with the two dozen or so books I bought in the past months but then it also might have had something to do with all the heaps of “I’m a bestseller, buy me!”-books there that I don’t have any interest in reading. You can’t really browse because the things they have in stock are mostly “the book of the day”, and that’s it. When I complained to a saleswoman at my local bookstore about how few books they had there she said, “But we can get every book within a few days.” Yeah, you can but I also can get every book through the internet in a few days, and then I don’t have to leave my house (twice, once to order, and the second time to pick the book up), it’s faster, and I don’t have to spell the title for somebody, or have a debate on whether this particular book exists or not. I was polite that time (that was a long time ago), I didn’t say, “I know it exists. I could have ordered it on the internet and have it here faster and cheaper but I wanted to support local business.”

It’s also worth noting that with all the time I spent in shops clearly looking for specific things to buy not one sales person talked to me. None. No one asked me if they could help me, or what I wanted or anything. I just wandered around on my own, getting more and more frustrated.

So, what have I learned through this? I really should never expect to find anything I need in the city. Or at most local stores. I used to love to go shopping with enough money. At least for a bit. But these days I always seem to come back empty-handed.

So now I’ll have to make another list. It’s titled, “Things I have to sew:” I hope I can get around to it before my one pair of pants, and one pair of pajamas wear out as well.

Oh, and an interesting fact: I couldn’t find a map of the city in the city. Well, not the one I wanted anyways. There are very small ones without some of the suburbs, and I found one of those. (Not in the book store, not next to the other maps, though. I could have bought one of Madrid, or Hamburg, or a travel guide to Siberia. All great things to have but a map of the city? Much more practical for me.) I won’t give up though. One day I’ll have everything on my list, plus a fabulous bottle of wine.

• I have a new piano, and one of these days I’ll show you a picture. One of these days when it’s not raining or snowing or totally grey outside (or dark, like it’s now).
• I took part in the ravelympics. That’s like olympic games for knitters. I knitted and spun almost day and night, and I have medals to show for it.
• Also, I have designed a new lace pattern, and have high plans to make the pattern available for the public, plus “publishing” the other lace pattern I made. You know, the one I finished in November.
• One day in the future you might even hear me playing my new piano on this here blog. Who knows. A friend of mine has already been complaining that there are no new songs to listen to.
• I finished a kick-ass story last month which you will be able to read here shortly. (At least that one is finished.) It’s all very exciting because it’s something I really considered finished. And the writing is quite unusual for me. No la-la-la-sort-of-chick-lit but it actually has adjectives.
• At the last spinning meeting I tried a friend’s spindles, and I really, really loved them. I even loved them better than my beloved Golding spindle. I was good though, I didn’t snatch them from her and took them home, I didn’t even go home and ordered some right on the spot, no, I sold two of my spindles first to raise the money for buying new ones. (People who buy new pianos should practice a spot of restraint in spending money.)
• Especially since both the car and the heating broke in the last weeks. Both just after I ordered the piano, of course. But all is well now.
• I signed up for NaNoEdMo because I thought it would be a good idea to edit one of my attempts at novels. I hadn’t thought about the fact that in order to successfully edit it I will have to spend something like 50 hours with my manuscript this month. So far I have done nothing but unearth the manuscript, and finding the editing pen that a friend gave me at the celebratory dinner after my first NaNoWriMo in 2006. Finding the manuscript was easier than I had thought. I opened my file cabinet, looked for the folder marked “NaNoWriMo novels” and pulled the manuscript out. Actually I thought I would have to spend ages digging through piles of paper but no.
• I’ll give you an update on my “year of happiness” as well.
• Some day.

So there will be at least something on this blog in the near future. How have you all been?

I don’t want to go on adding one unhappy year to another. The question of course is “why so unhappy?” and there isn’t really an answer. My life isn’t particularly hard, all my loved ones are healthy and safe but you can see that I’m unhappy, you see it when you look at me and there are about 16 kilos of unhappiness on my frame that weren’t there before. Of course my first impulse was to focus on “do better, use more willpower, never eat sugar again”-plan but then that one never works. A case in point being that the two words I chose for 2009 were “discipline” and “abundance”, and by august I had already forgotten about them. Though I have to say, the “abundance”-part did happen. So that was nice. And I did find out what was wrong with me which helps with the healing (word of the year of 2008).

So, while I’m obviously doing something wrong with the whole word of the year concept I still want to chose one, like a motto for 2010 and I’m focusing on happiness. I have this feeling if I concentrate on being happy the rest of my life will fall into place as well. Now, first thing I did was order a book – well, okay, several. I bought “The happiness project“, of course. I have been a longtime fan of Gretchen’s blog and with that theme I had planned for this year, how could I not? I also bought “Refuse to Choose. A Revolutionary Program for Doing Everything That You Love”, and for good measure “Unclutter Your Life in One Week“.

I also made a couple of resolutions because only thinking yourself happy is not enough, I know from experience that there will be some doing in the process, and that the road to feeling happier is also plastered with tiny little baby steps that might make me feel worse in the short run. So my resolutions so far are:

1. Go to bed on time: (Yes, I know, what else is new.) I know that this has been on my list forever. But I actually managed to sleep enough during winter break. Since school started, though, I had one night with adequate sleep. Out of seven or so. But I’ll do better, I promise.
2. Pick up after myself: Already my own room (maybe I should start calling this my studio, sounds so much better) looks almost civilized and my husband likes this new/old habit of mine very much already.
3. Write 500 words of fiction at least six times a week: This is working great. That’s because there is a group, or at least a banner, so every night when I think that all I want is to sit and watch “Torchwood” for the fourth time I push myself to write my 500 words or more. And – surprise – having written them makes me really happy.
4. Think about the things I love about my family, students, and friends: I tend to focus on negative things, like most people, I feel much better when I happen to remember how much I love my husband and son, for example. Generally I try to focus on the positive rather than the negative. And it is working already.

So, I wish you a very happy year 2010. Have you made any resolutions? Broken them already?

But then it occurred to me that if my pile of unread books is really that low, why is it that every flat surface of the house is littered with books? And why do I never finish reading anything? And why does it take months for me to finish a book, even one that I borrowed? And why am I running out of bookmarks? Well, meet my PPUB, my Pile of Partially Unread Books:

(After taking this picture I found another one innocently hiding on a shelf. And then, after writing most of this post I found yet another one in a pile of knitting books sitting on the floor plus at least two unread knitting books.) I used to have a shelf dedicated to unread books, and I used to have only one or two books in progress. Now there is this pile on my desk, and the pile in the kitchen, plus the extra shelf in the kitchen. (What, you don’t have a shelf in the kitchen for books that you are currently reading? How odd.)

So, first to the unread books. There is from top to bottom (The links go to librarything, this post took ages to write because my nifty little Amazon helper plugin isn’t working. Otherwise there would have been pictures as well.):

1. Odd and the Frost Giants – well, it’s by Neil Gaiman that’s reason enough for me to want to read it. It’ll probably get read very soon. It’s also a very short book.
2. The Lake of Dead Languages – I think that Meno recommended this. Several years ago. It has been sitting around since then and I just didn’t feel like reading it.
3. Until I Find You – I bought this because I used to eagerly await every new John Irving novel. Then I read the first paragraph and since then haven’t felt compelled to really start it. Especially since a friend told me she didn’t like it.
4. Buddhism for Mothers of Schoolchildren – Received this two days ago. I have shown restrain and not started reading it, despite wanting to.
5. Mein Urgroßvater und ich – This is a book I used to love as a teenager. There was some talk about it in the German blogosphere a couple of weeks (or months) ago, and I decided to buy it. It will be great to read with my son but not now. I’d like to reread it on my own, though.
6. Green Lantern 47 – what to say, I have a subscription to Green Lantern comics. It will take all of 15 minutes to read it but my problem is that I can’t have my comics lying around where my son can see them because he gets scared very easily. (That’s a topic for another post, by the way.) So “Blackest Night” with pictures of people fighting and zombie-like aliens, well, I better keep that in my room which means I never read it because in my room I only read stuff on the computer. I’ll find the fifteen minutes eventually, though.
7. Respect the Spindle – When I heard that Abby Franquemont wrote a book I absolutely had to have it. This one is likely to be read first. (And it’s a great conversation piece. I have showed three students how one makes yarn on a spindle because the book has been lying around on my desk. That means I showed them how I make it, they didn’t want to learn themselves, but still.)
8. The Craftsman – it did sound interesting when Jo wrote about it on her blog. It was a birthday present from my parents.

My problem is the pile of books that I started but never finished. The problem is similar to having a lot of UFOs (that’s UnFinished Objects in this case) in knitting. You get all excited and start something new, and you do this so often that you never get around to actually finish anything. As for my knitting UFOs I sat down in October and finished almost all of those things whether I felt like it or not, and now I’m down to very few works in progress and feel much better for it. I have this gnawing feeling that it might be time to try something like this for books. I buy a new book, I get all excited, I start reading it, and then it gets stuck in a pile or two and another, newer book sits on top of it. Part of the problem is that books are so stackable. My pile of partially unread books contains (again from top to bottom, well almost I forgot some the first time):

1. Off the Page – recommended by Jo again. I love books about writing, and I thought this one would be great. It is so far, I took it with me on a trip in May, read one or two chapters and never got around to it again.
2. A New Earth – recommended to me by Christine Kane years ago. First my husband read it and since then it has been sitting here because it requires me to actually think while reading. That requires specific reading arrangements.
3. The Power of Now – I thought I’d start at the beginning, and read this before “A New Earth”. There is a bookmark somewhere in it, I guess.
4. Anger – I got this for my husband and after reading it he thought it might be a good idea for me to read it too. And it is. But – the thinking again.
5. Schulz and Peanuts – I read an official Charles Schulz-biography some years ago, and enjoyed it very much. I have been loving the Peanuts ever since my father brought home six volumes of collected Peanuts strips from Canada. I learned English reading these. (My English teachers were quite baffled by my unusual vocabulary.) Oh, and this one was given to me by my sister. I think for Christmas – last year, I hope.
6. Zum Buddha werden in 5 Wochen – this was a bit of a joke. I expected to read it through in about two days. That has been month ago. Oh, and the title translates as “Become a Buddha in five weeks”
7. Use of Weapons – a friend brought this because she thought I would like it, and she is right. I’m dragging my feet though because I resent the “look I’m making this suspenseful in a clever way by mixing the timeline all up, and now you can guess what’s when”-strategy of this book. Of course, if I had read this in my usual state before becoming a mother I wouldn’t even have noticed the cleverness because I would have read it fast enough to not be bothered by this. I’d have raced through the book, and at the end all the pieces would have fallen into place. Like I didn’t realize that “Pulp Fiction” isn’t told in chronological order until my husband asked where the two people from the beginning went. (He meant the couple who robbed the diner.) In my head everything had unfolded in perfect and timely order.
8. Fatal Revenant – I’m having a bit of a problem not only with fiction these days but especially with epic fantasy. I love, love, love Stephen R. Donaldson and especially the Thomas Covenant books but I’ve been reading this for ages because it’s not exactly an easy read, and – well – I have to look up names all the time which is the thing that happens when you go for weeks without reading it and then want to come back, and then I’m not always in the mood for something that moves rather slowly. I’m sure it is me, again, because I read the first six books of this in no time flat.
9. The Wisdom of Menopause – I bought this for obvious reasons after my last visit to my ob/gyn. I’m actually reading it at the moment, and it’s getting a bit better since I gave myself permission not to read every single word of it. I am allowed to skip parts that don’t interest or concern me.
10. Lick the Sugar Habit – this was recommended by Mel, and it is an excellent book. Probably. Only it has been hanging around the house for too long already. And somehow I’m not that thrilled to read about all the ways sugar wrecks havoc with my metabolism. And to be frank, the message is: “Sugar is bad, avoid it.” Maybe I won’t finish this one.
11. The Mindful Way through Depression – I have written about this before. It is an excellent book, and the only reason I’m that keen to finish is that I no longer think that I am depressed. On the other hand mindfulness helps with several things, not the least life as a whole so maybe it’s time to read this already.
12. Inside Songwriting – I’m always reading books about writing and writers and then sometimes I hope for more books about songwriting. This was recommended by Vikki on her blog. I saw her post about it and immediately bought it. I took it with me to a writer’s group meeting two months ago, felt incredibly inspired and then sat it down on top of a pile on my desk. I keep moving it to the top of that pile because a) it’s a pretty color, and b) it looks better to my students than having Green Lantern comics sitting there.
13. Batman – Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? – What can I say, it’s by Neil Gaiman. And I did read the beginning but then my usual “comic problem” kicked in, I can’t have this sitting around where my son or my students can see it. So I basically had to stuff it in a drawer. Or at the bottom of the pile of unread books. It’s nice and big …
14. Head First HTML- I bought that back in the day when I got serious about blogging, I think it was just before going from blogger to wordpress. It’s not exactly light reading material, more of a course. I did quite well doing the homework for a couple of weeks, and now I’m at the part where I should start learning CSS. With a wordpress blog, and being unhappy about the layout hereabouts it would be a very good idea to learn CSS but then – there would be the thinking again.
15. Handbuch Buddhismus – a book that my husband gave me for my birthday years ago when I started being interested in buddhism, I am not sure if I like it or not, it is very German, a bit dry and academic, and I never can remember anything (that’s not the book’s fault, it’s me I have read numerous books about buddhism by now and all the names and dates and crucial facts keep slipping out of my mind.

Seems reasonable, doesn’t it? In fact there are more partially unread books in my possession but those are the ones that I have made peace with never really finishing. The books you see here are the one that I still think I will get around to read anytime soon. So what to do? I won’t burn the books and I won’t throw them away. They really do interest me. I think I will organize the books, I already cleared the “unread books” shelf (well, part of a shelf) and now it actually holds unread books only. I will keep one fiction and one non-fiction book in the kitchen, and find a nice clear spot on the floor for the rest, I think. Oh, and please remind me not to buy any more books on Buddhism for me.

Yes, I decided to do NaNoWriMo again this year. First I was all sensible and only wanted to use it to get back into a regular writing habit, and write about 500 words a day. And finish a story I had started in June. Then I thought that not starting something new was like cheating. And then I thought, “Well, I can try how many words I can write comfortably without stress during fall break, and then I can decide later.” And – I think I’m hooked again. For now it’s really enjoyable if a bit crazy, I have managed to write mostly in the mornings so I could do other things later in the day without having to live with the dread of unwritten words all day long. In the past I have often procrastinated until bedtime and then written in a very bad mood and very tired.

If it weren’t for my husband the house would be a disaster, and I’m still working on this “go to bed on time”-thing. Also on the “put things away”-thing, and on “complete things on time”.

So, what is it that I’ve done?

1. I have designed and charted a triangular lace shawl:

I used traditional Estonian stitches from a stitch dictionary for this. The lace knitting class I’m teaching is already half done, only two more weeks to go.

2. I also am teaching a class on mindful knitting that is more fun that I had hoped for. I’m not really knowing what I’m doing but I’m very used to the “learn by teaching”-method and it usually works well for me and the students.

3. I’m knitting up a storm, trying to finish the UFOs lying around (Un-Finished Objects).

4. I’m transferring one of my stories from notebook to computer. I wrote this in June, back when I decided to write 3 pages every day. I’m still not finished with the typing, and for the last few writer’s meetings I only had this story to read to my writer friends. Since the story is now standing at 3,000 words, and they are still sitting on the edge of their seats waiting for what happens next, all is well. But I better finish the story.

5. On the same note I have decided (yes, I’m big on decisions today) to participate in NaNoWriMo again this year, only I’ll be “cheating” by setting myself a goal of a mere 15,000 words. That will be like going to a marathon to walk 5k very slowly but I know from experience how I feel after having written the full distance. I’m no good for at least the rest of the year, and won’t be writing either.

6. I wrote two half blog-posts. Unfortunately two halves don’t make one finished post. One of these days there will be sunshine and free time at the very same moment, and I’ll take some pictures and tell you about the joys of knitting with handspun. And some time this year you’ll get an account of my son’s first day of school. Which happened a month ago. Oops.

7. I’m also thinking a lot about being intelligent and school. Of course, one reason for this is my bright son who now reads as well as the average third grader (as far as I can tell, I only teach three third-graders at the moment), the other reason is a conversation I had with a woman I met in September. And I remember how bored I felt all through school, and it only got better in grad school. How I didn’t do homework for the last four years of school. And how I really want my son to have a better school experience than I had. Unlike me I’d like him to learn how to study and manage time some time before he turns 25.

But I already found myself telling him that when he is bored in school he better sits there quietly and politely, and that there are other places to learn things. At home for example. My husband and I decided that he needs something a bit more challenging and are turning lunch breaks into informal teaching sessions. (No, we’re not pushing him. We’re just having regular conversations with a bit more explaining for him.) So he’s getting a dose of stories about Italy or Brazil, a bit of history and politics, and also throwing a ball, salsa dancing, and crafting.

8. I have also turned inwards once again, so if you happen to be a friend of mine, or someone to whom I owe an e-mail, or someone who used to know me through comments on her blog: “It isn’t you. I’m not communicating with anybody right now.” Part of this is due to the fact that I’m teaching a lot these days. Which means that I see people and talk with them for hours each day. While I’m reading blogs, and tweets, at the end of the day (and in between as well), I just want to sit there quietly. Well, as quietly as you can when you’re part of a family.

9. I have bought a ton of books, and am reading, among them one on writing songs. Yes, I’m still thinking that one day I will be writing songs again. Maybe even this year, who knows.

After all it’s fall, and that’s always the time to make plans, and get more grounded. I do it every year, some years I’m better at following through other years I’m worse, who knows. Even though we had snow today. Snow. It’s freezing (in a literal sense). Still, snow or not for me it’s fall, and time to get things going again.

I have been doing things but posting here hasn’t been one of them. I’ve been playing computer games on my ipod, I’ve been ordering and receiving a new spinning wheel, a couple of weeks ago I found out that I probably have ADD, we’ve been making the most of every single non-raining day that we had so far, I found out that not only am I weighing as much again as just after I had the baby (I never was heavier, btw), I’m also completely unfit so that a hike that seemed like a breeze last year left me panting and with sore muscles for days this year (well, I wasn’t panting for days).

I’ve been reading books, watching Torchwood all through for the second time, and Farscape, finished two pair of socks, started two other pairs of socks, frogged back a quarter of an intricate lace shawl only to start something new with the same yarn, decided to also rip back a turtleneck sweater that I’m making (half-finished), decided not to order any books, CDs, DVDs, computer games, yarn, or spinning fiber ’til the end of summer break, only to buy four comics, and another game (it was only 4 Euros I swear).

I have a long list of things I want to do until the middle of September:

• work out again (see above)
• design and knit a lace shawl for a class I’ll be teaching next fall
• install a new version of WordPress on my blog and that of my husband
• sew some pillow cases and coasters
• write a story about summer in the next ten days
• ply the Corriedale I spun up, and spin up some lovely hand-dyed BFL I bought (that’s a sheep breed for those who don’t know, Blue Faced Leicester -I doubt that they really have blue faces, though)
• write at least one blog post about “How to be idle” and “Idle Parenting” – for the record, these books are marvelous and eye opening, and very helpful. Now I feel like a revolutionary instead of a lazy person
• tidy and maybe clean the house so that some flat surfaces will be visible again
• pick up the guitar and play once or twice
• ditto with singing and piano
• have my piano repaired (which means that there won’t be any piano-playing for a week, since parts of it need to be removed)
• go on at least two more hikes
• go swimming with my son often so that maybe he will be able to swim at the end of summer
• go to a party in Bamberg in two weeks
• attend the first German raveler meeting in the middle of September and before that to prepare my class there
• use the hammock and enjoy the garden as often as I can

Right now it’s raining, I have to answer a gazillion e-mails, and phone a handful of people but my son is upstairs with his grandma and my husband is recording bass lines. Oh, I’ll do some singing for him soon, too.

You know why I love vacationing at home? If I were somewhere else right now I’d have to sit in a tiny ugly hotel room with both my husband and son, sitting on uncomfortable beds with nothing to do but wait until it stops raining.

It’s the dress that I bought the pattern and the fabric for in 2007, that I cut out last September, and that I put away because the top and the skirt didn’t fit together. This year I decided to just finish it any which way, and now I have a dress that I’m really happy with, except for the fact that it would fit me better if my boobs were smaller.

The cardigan is one that has been in the making for more than year too. And the yarn even was supposed to be a sweater in 1994 or so. The sweater spent the next years in the attic, almost done except for one sleeve. I ran out of yarn and suddenly realized that I don’t like bobbles. The pattern for this is Something Red, and I love it. It’s a bit short for wearing with pants because I got impatient (also it’s heavy cotton and if I wear it long enough it won’t be too short anymore) but it’s perfect with a dress or skirt.

As with these two garments (and the picture that should have been something else), I now have to be content to do a blog post, regardless of whether I like it or not since today will probably be the only day I have any time to post until the week after next. I’m busy as usual, and also packing for a trip to my parents next week. I’m happy to leave the house for once, and also woefully unprepared. Also, the weather is changing from day to day so I don’t know what clothes to bring. My experience tells me, though, that regardless of what I pack it will be wrong. If I pack for summer weather it will be cold enough for woolen sweaters and vice versa. (No, I won’t pack both, I’m a woman traveling by train with a single backpack. And I need to bring knitting with me.)

So, the posts I wanted to write but haven’t (you know how I love lists, don’t you):

Around the world in 80 clicks: the lovely Beck had tagged me, I thought about this post with reasons why I love being a mother and a list of other mothers to tag for weeks.

Treats that aren’t: how a lot of things that I treat myself to aren’t really treats but things that make me feel worse in the long run.

Explaining my life to strangers: how I end up explaining my life on a daily basis so that I even have to discuss it with random people I meet at the grocery store. And how I should make this into the new tagline for my blog

Gold: a picture of my wedding ring that is the only piece of golden jewelry that I wear, with a sappy post about why I cherish it even though it’s not that beautiful and how I haven’t taken it off since 1995 (except for x-rays and such)

Gardening: a post about an interview I heard on Craftsanity with Jenna Woginrich who wrote the book “Made from Scratch”” together with my feelings towards gardening and how I realized I know more about it than I thought (I’m still not gardening as such, in case you wondered.)

Nostalgic Liesl: a post about a purple sweater that I knit in September out of yarn that I bought in 1988, the memories of the vacation where I bought it, and the people I went with

Parts 2 to 4 of the beach-story: the parts have been written but need minor adjustments before posting

Be calm: the only song I wrote last year, it still isn’t recorded though, and I’m without voice again since hay fever season is in full swing

Idle parenting: a post about the book “The Idle Parent”“, why I love it and why it helped me to see that my parenting is rooted in ideas I believe in instead of mere laziness as I had suspected

Life or Death: a story about a girl backpacking through Europe who encounters terrorists at a mall (I still have to write this one)

Why fashion is important to me: stemming from an ongoing conversation between my husband and me (he doesn’t get why somebody can be that interested in clothes; what I don’t get is: if I’m that interested in fashion why don’t I dress better?)

So, to answer a question my sister asked me in the last post: Yes, one can be too busy to play around with a new camera. I’m not quite sure why I suddenly am that busy but one thing is that these days I opt for having quiet evenings instead of sitting in front of the computer until midnight. And for long conversations with my husband. And I have about five more students which is great but leaves me no spare time in the afternoons. For example I wrote the first part of this post just after lunch, and this part between students. And Thursdays are the only days when there is a “between students” otherwise it’s all students all the time. And my husband is crazily busy with gardening on top of working on his music and doing housework. And my head is full of things to and places to go, and people to call, and all the busy, busy little details.

At least there won’t be as many busy little details next week when we spend the week with my parents near Holland. I probably won’t be able to spend much time on the computer there.

Again I’m very sorry for not reading or commenting on your blogs, or twittering much but then – as we have often told each other – this should be for fun, not an obligation. See you later.

• I spent the whole weekend dreading the dolphin costume (you know, the one I’m making for my son for carnival), and then cutting and sewing. The good news is that the body of the costume is done, and it looks great so far (after I had erringly sewn the dolphin’s back fin to the inside). The bad news: I still don’t know how I will make the head, I’ll figure that out next weekend.
• just when I had the feeling of almost recovered health my son has a cold – again – with fever and everything.
• my son having a fever equals him sleeping next to me, or rather him tossing and turning, and rousing me about every fifteen minutes (no kidding) by tickling my nose and asking, “Can we get up now?”
• after the second night of this I was a bit, um, irritated today; also I can’t seem to stop eating
• the Finanzamt send me a letter claiming that I hadn’t paid my tax for December, and it turns out that I indeed did pay it but I, myself, was stupid enough to label it “January 09″; argh. Of course something like this has to come up now of all times, not last week or the week before – and of course they can’t just think about it for a bit like “Why is she sending this in when a) she hasn’t paid for the month before, and b) the month she is paying for isn’t over yet?”; I know there aren’t many people who get paid to think on their job
• for once I wanted to get grip on my monthly story deadline, so I had planned to write my monthly story – which is due next Thursday – today; then all of a sudden I was on 24/7 mommy duty (on the other hand I get to write this because my mother-in-law is having my son right now)
• while having a sick child is bad for things like blogging, writing, and making music it’s really good for knitting; I’m finishing things right and left
• at least I’m really happy that I had the brilliant idea that I can watch DVDs on my laptop in the evenings while I’m waiting for my son to fall asleep; he falls asleep earlier because he knows I’ll be there for a while, and I don’t have the feeling of being on the job forever; also I can watch two episodes of Farscape at night instead of just one
• now I have to sign off because I have an unexpected feverish kindergartener sitting on my lap.

See you in a few days, I hope. How are you?

On the other hand I can barely close my yarn drawer, and there are projects, patterns, yarn and needles everywhere in the house. How can those two things be true at the same time?

So I decided to a) think about it, and b) pull out the wool and have a look at it. I haven’t gotten as far as actually looking at it right now but thinking about it helped a little. I think I might start to understand what’s going on here.

1. I usually put my leftover yarn in the attic. Sadly the “leftover yarn boxes” are full. More knitting means more leftovers. This is one of the reasons why there is a lot of yarn in my yarn drawer.
2. When I ordered the yarn for my last two sweaters online I, of course, ordered a bit more than I thought I’d need. Since the shop isn’t nearby I can’t just go and get more. Actually, with the last sweater I ordered the exact amount of yarn needed and I have about 2 1/2 skeins left over. I know, it’s a mystery. That accounts for 400 g of yarn between the two sweaters. The leftover yarn would make great mittens or hats (I don’t knit scarfs, hate making them). Only the colors don’t match anyone’s coats.
3. Even though I thought I don’t have any more sock yarn there is in my yarn drawer: a) an almost finished pair of summer socks, b) leftovers of two pairs of socks, enough yarn two knit another pair out of the same yarn, c) between 40 and 60 grams of each skein of Wollmeise sock yarn that I’ve ever owned (which might become either striped or fair isle socks at one point).
4. There is leftover Wollmeise lace yarn, enough for a lace scarf, or if combined with the two other colorways of Wollmeise lace that I have (that accounts for two of my currently active projects), there might be enough for yet another stole,
5. There is yarn I bought in order to make yet another lace stole, this one will be for a friend.
6. There is leftover yarn from making a scarf and hat that will eventually become a pair of fair isle mittens for me. (
   And it would be nice if I finished those before August. So that I can actually wear them.
7. There are three balls of cotton sock yarn that I wanted to design socks for. They have been sitting in the drawer, untouched since July. I had an epiphany last week, and have declared that I will just make socks following a pattern. Designing should be fun, not a chore. The pattern is sitting on my piano at the moment, the yarn is in the yarn drawer. And I won’t start them soon, since it’s not summer yet.
8. There is enough cotton from 1994 to make yet another preemie blanket. Only I hate working with cotton.

I think that’s all, apart from the hat that needs seaming that sits on top of the fridge, the lace shawl and pirate scarf that need blocking that sit on top of the dresser, the two pairs of socks, and two lace shawls in progress that sit on the kitchen bench, the unfinished cotton sweater that sits in the knitting basket in the living room (it only needs another sleeve and a button band to be finished), and a ziploc bag with the cast-on for the aforementioned baby blanket that probably will never happen.

So, you can easily see why I have the feeling that I’m in desperate need of wool, can’t you? O already ordered yarn for another sweater (one that I really need), a knitted doll, and a pair of socks. I’m desperately waiting for them to arrive. Before I run out of yarn and things to knit.

I feel quite virtuous, though, because only half of the drawer is full of wool. The other one is occupied by my fabric stash. That somehow overflows into the rest of the bedroom too…

P.S.: I just remembered the spinning stash, and the handspun. And the yarn that was a hat that was too big for me until half an hour ago when I wound it on the niddy-noddy to re-knit the hat. Ouch.

January: As you probably have noticed I didn’t feel much like blogging these past, ahem, weeks.

Well, same old, same old. But I will get around to it someday.

February: It’s time for the just posts again.

Which means that I didn’t post anything for the first nine days of February, oops.

March: I think it was Terry Pratchett who said that if you read enough books you’ll eventually start writing because all the words filling up your brain will start seeping out.

That’s a good one, don’t you think?

April: Time for the Just Post Roundtables again!

See February.

May: The writer’s group I’m in has gone from writing really short pieces once a month to writing a story before each meeting.

This was an introduction to the first story I posted on my blog. The “Story of the Month”-category did not make a monthly appearance, though. I’m still trying, though. (I have to write another story until Thursday, stay tuned.)

June: First, thank you very much for your comments on my post about feeling fat.

Nice one, that.

July: I just spent fifteen minutes on my computer, changing the color scheme of my blog.

Changing my blog’s theme has been on my to-do-list for quite a long time because this one takes ages to load. Sorry about that.

August: Welcome again to the Just Posts.

See February, and April.

September: As I told you I ordered it the day that I sold my congas.

To understand this one you have to know that the headline was “I got my spinning wheel”. I’m still happy I traded the congas for it.

October: and I missed them both.

Again, this doesn’t make sense without the headline which read: “So, yesterday was Blog Action Day and Love Your Body Day”.

November: Again it’s the time of the month where we meet at our virtual round table and share what we found about social justice.

Just Posts again. That’s the fifth time in one year that I did the first post of the month on the tenth.

December: Sorry to let you hang for so long but just in the next 2 1/2 hours I should: take a shower, exercise, go grocery shopping, do taxes, write a real blog post, write a story for tonight’s writing group meeting, cook, and eat lunch.

This about sums up a) my life at the moment, and b) my enormous tendency to procrastinate and do things at the last minute. Needless to say that I didn’t accomplish all of this. I think I did taxes, took a shower, went grocery shopping, and ate lunch which my husband had cooked while almost keeling over because he was so unwell.

I really have high hopes for 2009. Who knows, maybe I’ll even get around to dusting the house once a week again. Or exercising. Or writing. I did quite well for the first few days this year, exercising, playing music, and doing housework but yesterday I hit a wall, and spent a lot of the day sitting around doing nothing. As I did today. when after a few hours of this I realized that, wham, it’s PMS-time again! Knocking me out for half the month. So I better get out of the house and get me some Vitamin B, and hope that will get me moving again.

1. Link to the person who tagged you.

2. Post the rules on your blog.

3. Write six random things about yourself.

4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.

5. Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.

6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

So, I’ve followed rule 1 and 2 already. So far so good. (Ha! I’ve managed to use the word “so” three times in two sentences without making it extremely awkward!) I had a feeling that I already have done some “random things about me”-posts, and a quick search tells me there seems to be a “random things about me”-inflation going on because it was 8 random things about me in August 2007, and 7 random things about me in December 2007. Now it’s only six. And I always love reading what people are writing about themselves, randomly.

1. Just today I did find out why I’m blogging less and have the feeling that I don’t accomplish anything. Today I spent two hours getting my son to go to bed (and stay there), and I also talked to my husband for three hours. Three hours! No wonder we both have the feeling that somehow we don’t have enough time. On the other hand the time we spend talking is well spent. We have been feeling closer, and happier. We have been taking the time to look at the things we have in common instead of looking at how different we are.
2. For the last weeks I have spent much more time and energy thinking about the fact that I feel too fat than I feel comfortable admitting even to myself. This has not led to weight loss, I have gained another pound. I’m a bit sick of the whole thing (which I might have mentioned before). I’m hoping for my renewed enthusiasm for exercise. Maybe I can exercise while talking to my husband.
3. I will be meeting a handful of local bloggers on Thursday. Immediately after leaving a comment saying that I will attend (after a lengthy conference with my mother-in-law detailing the logistics of her day and my son’s day, and everybody in the family), I started panicking and wondering what to wear. Which is really pathetic because in the end I’ll wear the same thing I always wear. Only I do have a new turtleneck. (Which is funny because in my random things post from last December I lamented the lack of a “very classy and elegant turtleneck sweater” made of thick wool. Guess what I finished two days ago? A classy, elegant, thick, woolen turtleneck in red.
4. Leaving a comment on Frau Kaltmamsell’s blog regarding the meeting led to an immediate spike in blog traffic on my own blog. While that’s nice it’s always a bit weird when people coming from a very witty German blog reach my blog only to be greeted by a post called “Hail the gauge swatch!”. My guess is that most of them won’t come back, and that even people who might have been both interested in the content, and willing to read something in English, nevertheless will have felt the strong need for a personal translator. (When I told my husband about that particular post, the only word he could understand without an explanation at first sight was “the”.)
5. While I love knitting, and haven’t been doing much else these past, ahem, months or so, I have the feeling that I’m using it to retreat into my very own fiber cocoon. And while sitting quiet, and doing something meditative with my hands that helps keeping me and my family warm is really appropriate for the season, it might be time to do other things as well.
6. It’s only December 2nd but already I feel as if my head is spinning. I have to make three batches of muffins, and at least one batch of cookies for the kindergarten Christmas party, my son’s birthday party in kindergarten, and his birthday party at home. I have to buy a scooter, a satchel, and several other assorted birthday, and Christmas gifts for my son. (My son not so conveniently chose to be born exactly one week before Christmas, just like most of my husband’s family whose birthdays fall between December 13th and January 20th.) I don’t have anything for my parents yet, and just today I realized that the universe doesn’t end with my son’s presents, there are other people to consider as well. Also this year I will have to attend then kindergarten Christmas party alone because my husband found that re-scheduling those particular four students that he teaches on Wednesday afternoons was impossible. I, on the other hand, managed to find a way to move four students elsewhere and will be rushing from teaching to Christmas party in festive attire (cross your fingers for me that I can wear the new sweater with the red skirt, otherwise I will have to wear jeans), with guitar, sheet music, two dozen muffins, and a music stand in tow.

Now I’ll have to tag six people. Um. It’s not that I don’t know six bloggers, it isn’t even that I’m not interested in reading six random things about them, but please, it’s almost midnight, and I’ll have to get up at seven. How about everyone who wants to do a six things about me post just does it and says so in the comments? Please? And anybody who doesn’t have a blog like “luzilla” can leave six random things in the comments. That would be cool.

1. only eat at mealtimes. That is: breakfast, lunch, afternoon snack, and dinner.
2. exercise at least three times a week for at least 30 minutes. Walking while doing errands doesn’t count.
3. play guitar or piano for at least ten minutes a day.
4. post on my blog 3 times a week.
5. write at least 100 words of fiction every day.
6. meditate every day for at least 10 minutes, and write morning pages.

I did quite well for about five days by the way. I went walking almost every day, I played guitar and piano, I wrote my words, and I was quite consistent with the meditation and morning pages. Meditation and morning pages has been something I have been doing for years, and so it wasn’t that hard to get back into that. Playing music and writing fiction was a bit harder because I found I never got around to it until late in the evening, and so I really only played for ten minutes, and I stopped writing after 120 words or so. But even when I felt like I was much too tired for writing or playing I enjoyed it nonetheless. And a 100 words isn’t much. It takes me less than 10 minutes. Also I never got the feeling that the story was making much progress at that rate. But then I wrote about 700 words on it in five days.

And then I felt terrible because of the coughing, and then, and then, and so I let everything slide. I’m still doing quite well with points 2 and 6. You can see for yourselves that the blog-posting three times a week did not happen. I may have to resign myself to the fact that these days it’s more about twice a week if that.

You might have noticed that I didn’t write about the first goal on my list. Ahem. This is the goal that I didn’t reach once in the past two weeks. Not once. I definitely won’t be making any rules around food and eating for the moment. I don’t stick to them anyway. Which is extremely frustrating. But it doesn’t help if I pretend that it’s different.

So, I’m suspending the setting of goals again. What I did find out about myself was that I can only concentrate on one thing at a time. Before setting my new goals I was on the way to get a better grip on housework again, but the minute I concentrated on my new list, I got lax about housework again.

And then I got sick, and then I started knitting a sweater that I want to have right this minute, and that meant I have been doing nothing but knitting for the past week. I started it last Sunday, and if I can go on like I did last week it will be finished by next weekend. And while I really would like to accomplish other things too, there is something very, very nice about sitting around and knitting a warm ruby-red sweater while reading Miss Marple novels. So I’ll just do that for the rest of the weekend.

So for me, obviously, public accountability doesn’t work.

In response to my post about goals PiaPessoa said she wanted to work on exercising two times a week. I’d like to hear how that went. And Anne said that I should strive to reach the point where a new habit is like brushing your teeth. She is totally right with this, of course, and when I strive to form new habits it always helps me to remember how long it took me to brush my teeth twice a day without fail. You know, as a child I was taught to brush my teeth in the mornings only. And I did so for years. Then it occurred to me that brushing them in the mornings and evenings might be a good course of action. I think I tried to bring myself to brush my teeth in the evenings too when I was about eight years old. I never succeeded until I was about twenty. And then I lost the habit again, and had to re-install it when I was about ten years older. These days I never would go to bed without brushing my teeth first. So I finally reached that stage of forming a new habit where I do it every day without fail. But it took me about 22 years to reach that stage. 22 years!

There must be a way to speed that up. Really.

That’s a very common pattern with me, I feel lost, I want to change something, I buy a book. Only this time I’m quite proud of myself because I didn’t buy the books but got them from the library. And I’m glad that I did because while they did help me with the thinking I don’t need to have them here to look things up or anything.

Anyways, I decided to set some goals for November, and so I made another list. For the next week (maybe longer) I will:

1. only eat at mealtimes. That is: breakfast, lunch, afternoon snack, and dinner.
2. exercise at least three times a week for at least 30 minutes. Walking while doing errands doesn’t count.
3. play guitar or piano for at least ten minutes a day.
4. post on my blog 3 times a week.
5. write at least 100 words of fiction every day.
6. meditate every day for at least 10 minutes, and write morning pages.

I’m very tired of thinking about food and being fat all the time. And I’m not even sure if I want to do something to lose weight. So the first goal is my attempt at minimizing the energy I’m spending on thinking about eating. Also it’ll minimize mindless stuffing of food into my mouth.
I know that 30 minutes of exercise three times a week doesn’t sound much. But it’s doable. And by not specifying what I will do I leave room to just go for a nice walk if I’m not motivated to do “real” exercise. By the way, since setting that goal two days ago I already have been going on walks twice.

Playing guitar or piano for ten minutes a day likewise really isn’t much. But I know from experience that I do much better with setting small goals so that I don’t feel like a failure. Often when I sit down to play I will play longer than ten minutes. Actually, once I have started I often enjoy myself very much. Getting myself to sit down and start playing, on the other hand, is quite hard.

I have been struggling with writing on my blog. I feel that three times a week is about the perfect frequency for me both as a blogger and as a reader.But often I spend so much time on the net reading that I don’t sit down to actually write down the blog posts that are floating around in my head.

It’s time for NaNoWriMo again, and it does make me kind of sad to not participate this year. On the other hand I’m also really relieved that I’m not doing it this year. So this is like my “Ersatz-NaNo”. I’m using the same kind of energy to get some writing done.

The last point is something I have been doing for years but I found myself slipping, and skipping more often. So I’m re-installing this habit.
Of course I’m writing this to make myself accountable. You, my dear readers, are the ones who will be helping to keep me on track. I’m doing this because next week will be fall break (yeah, I know there are a lot of breaks around here) which will give me about two additional hours in the day to do what I want.
I’ll tell you how it went at the end of next week. Anything you want to accomplish? You can post your goals in the comments, or on your blogs and I’ll link to them.

I had wanted to write posts about how to learn to love exercise, about me and my son, how we had weeks of fighting and yelling, and now it’s all getting better, about how this same son wakes up early every single day now, so that my poor husband who doesn’t respond well to the traditional fighting over getting dressed, fighting over breakfast, and fighting to get out of the house on time, especially when he had been woken an hour early, resigned himself to sleeping in the guest room, well, I wanted to write about the usual things.

Also I have been on a finishing frenzy, knitting-wise. I’m just about to finish a cardigan, and a huge lace shawl, and then, today, in the middle of the day, just a few minutes before my first student of the day was to arrive I decided to do something wild and crazy and start a completely irrational project just like that.

But then I looked at the yarn and saw that it needed to be wound into balls before I can use it, and while I might be crazy enough to try and start a project in ten minutes, I’m clear enough to see that ten minutes doesn’t work if you have to wind the yarn first.

Time for the next weekend to-do-list, I think.

I think my tendency to make endless lists is stemming from a deep desire to live my life as best as possible. It also stems from the experience that if I don’t make lists, if I don’t write down things nothing will get done, and by the end of the weekend I will feel bad about that.

I wasn’t always like this. Back in my twenties I spend weekends mostly alone, in bed. I kept the lists and the things to do for weekdays only, unless I had a big paper to write or something. I remember when I decided to make Saturday a workday, and felt almost shocked about this. Still, Sundays were spent in bed, reading, doing nothing, with a solitary walk in the afternoon.

Now, my life is much fuller than it used to be, and I have begun putting things on my lists like: “talk with husband”, “play with son”, “read comic”, and “take a shower”.

So, on Friday I made a list, and I did almost all the things I put on it, and now I feel quite good about my weekend and myself, only I have this feeling that I shouldn’t be making these lists all the time.

This was my list:

• seam, wash and block green cardigan
• spin
• block scarf that I made for my husband (has been lying around since April)
• clean house
• buy groceries
• go to hardware store
• play the guitar
• continue knitting Mystic Waters shawl
• read Flash and Firefly-Comics

I did everything on my list apart from cleaning, but then my husband vacuumed the whole house so he did my chore for me. What I didn’t put on my list but what I should have put on there was:

• practice recorder with son
• give son a bath
• exercise

It wasn’t on the list so I didn’t do it. Oops. On the other hand I did spend about an hour on Saturday teaching my son how to crochet. It was all very sweet. He had been studying a children’s catalogue full of clothes and toys, and suddenly he said, “I want to knit a bag like that.” Of course I was interested, and after telling him that it was indeed crochet, and that yes, I would teach him how to do it but only after breakfast, I fetched some yarn and a crochet hook. He’s becoming quite good at the actual crocheting part that you do with your right hand but he is completely unable to hold the yarn, and the piece he’s working on in his left, so for now he needs me to be his left hand. Which led to some frustration on his part when he wanted to work on his bag a little more after lunch, and when I couldn’t help him immediately he tried on his own only to discover that he can’t do it without me. Not the best for building self-esteem.

I don’t remember it being so hard. When thinking about how I learned to crochet and knit, I’m left with a feeling that my mother showed me briefly and then I got it. I remember that learning how to purl was a bit more complicated because I taught myself out of a book, and got it wrong but that was that.

On the other hand I was eight when I learned how to crochet and my son is only five years old. He will learn eventually. At least I hope that he will.

But, back to the list-making, I do find it a bit sad that I have to put things like “read comic” on a list to get them done. It’s only because I’m wading through heaps of unread books, comics, magazines, and blog posts.

So, while the weekend to-do-list does work for me, I still have the feeling that I shouldn’t be having one. And, of course, if my life were in order, I’d do the grocery shopping and other errands during the week.

So, what do you think about weekend to-do-lists? Do you have them? Do they work?

I also love going back to a more regular life, I only hope that it won’t turn out to include only housework and teaching. We’ll see how that goes.

At the start of summer break I posted my to-do-list here on the blog. I thought it might be interesting to see what I managed to do. Here we go:

1. I did not read the books I borrowed from a friend (“Those Left Behind”, and “Quicksilver” by Neal Stephenson) but I read all the books of the “Twilight”-series (sorry, Mad), and a couple of mystery novels.

2. I did play my piano once or twice.

3. I did play my guitar a bit more often than the piano.

4. I spun 200g of combed merino top with my drop spindles. I’m quite pleased with how it went in the end. I would have spun more if I hadn’t decided to get me a spinning wheel. I’ve been waiting for that for ten days now, not wanting to start spinning something on the drop spindle.

5. I almost sew the dress I have been wanting to make since last summer. I spent an afternoon sewing it, then I found that the part where the top and the skirt connect (you know, the waist seam) are not the same width (that’s what happens if you just eyeball everything, especially seam allowances), and use marker that fades over time), I got frustrated and since then I have been waiting to have a bit of free time together with enough patience to fiddle with the seams for as long as it might take to somehow make those two things connect.

6. I sew two reusable grocery bags. One for a friend of mine, and one for me. Now I only have fabric and notions for one more bag around, a bag that will match the summer dress.

7. I went on vacation.

8. I didn’t take my son to the zoo. But we did a couple of other things together.

9. I didn’t visit the botanical garden (I wanted to see the roses in bloom, in fact I have been wanting to see that for years now but never managed.) I think the roses will be blooming again next year…

10. I went swimming two times. In actual natural water.

11. I had my eyes checked, and had my contacts cleaned so that I can wear them again.

12. I didn’t finish the red and the green cardigan I’m working on. But I finished another lace shawl.

13. I didn’t design socks for red cotton yarn and knit them. But I knit my “Poisoned with Chili“-socks, and I even got an award for them. I belong to a ravelry-group for German sock knitters who have a competition for “sock of the month”. What can I say, the winner got one more vote than me. But I’m happy and proud.

14. I didn’t have dinner at the Osteria Italiana.

15. I didn’t see a movie with my husband in an actual movie theater

16. I did more exercise but not quite as much as I had wanted.

17. I didn’t read my two NaNoWriMo-novels

18. I wrote two stories that might turn into something longer. I’m really excited.

19. I did get back into the habit of doing housework but not cooking.

20. I didn’t sing and record any improvisations.

On my husband’s list there was also:

1. We didn’t go to the mountains with our son but decided to postpone the mountain hike until next year.

2. We didn’t go to the Olympiaturm with our son, but we went to a Buddhist celebration.

3. We did harvest our own potatoes. They are already eaten up (and they were delicious).

4. We did take a walk to the Andechs monastery with our son (and have some of their delicious beer of which our son doesn’t get any). We had considered this something like a long-ish stroll but to our son it was enough for one day. That was the reason we didn’t go to the mountains this year.

I did spend an awful lot of time dealing with my broken computer, first making sure it was broken, then taking it to the shop, getting my old computer out, setting that up again, looking for backups, and software, and updates, then I had my new computer fixed, and had to do the whole software, update, backup routine again since all data on my hard disk was lost. (Folks, please backup. Everything. regularly. And see if your backups work. I have a nice DVD labeled “iTunes music May 2008″ that won’t load.)

Computer problems not withstanding these were about the best summer months we’ve had in years. We also bought a new bed for our son, spent quite a bit of time as a family, sat in beer gardens, and took it easy. It’s summer break, so it isn’t so much about to-do-lists.

Now I’m ready for fall.

And today isn’t only the last day of summer break, it’s also De‘s birthday. Happy birthday to you, De.

I didn’t quite know what to write about her but then I found I had said it all when I wrote her a letter last year. So, let’s drink a bit of champagne again, to a new school year, and another year of bloggy friends.

Number of unread posts in my feed reader as of now:
crazymumma: 17
liv: 8
meno: 8
nomotherearth: 14
oneplustwo: 5
De: 2
Hel: 9
Mad: 3

Bea: 7
Chani: 1
Flutter: 15
Beck: 14
Her Bad Mother: 15
Rae: 1
Julie: 1
KC: 7
Denguy: 3
Mir: 16

Number of minutes that I spent making music since I came back: 0
Number of gummy bears that I ate since coming back: 5
Numbers of beers that I drank since coming back: 7
Number of short stories that I have to have written until Thursday: 1
Number of blog posts that I had wanted to write the last week, and didn’t: 5
Number of minutes until I have to go to sleep: -40

So, now you know why I didn’t stop by your blogs. I hope you’ll have a fabulous week.