creative.mother.thinking

Woke up a little too early, finished reading „Night and Silence“.

Had a slightly late breakfast after which the boy showed up again and then my husband. It was a day off after all. We all talked for half an hour, I did the usual housework and then went running:

I’m really liking the new contact lenses for running. Much nicer than using the glasses which always slip and fog and are heavy. The only drawback is that it’s hard to rad anything on my phone but I usually make the text bigger before leaving home.

I like the glasses better for everything else but with the two pairs of glasses, the possibility of sunglasses on top of them and the contacts plus another pair of glasses for reading with the contacts I will be totally set.

On my run I had an idea about learning Latin for the boy because he had complained that the way they learn in school is not how you actually learn a language. He’d like to be taught how to speak Latin as well as read it. So I looked on youtube for „Latin as a living language“ and „Latin as a spoken language“ and found all kinds fo resources. I love living in the future.

Then we made lunch:

Very yummy.

And then I spent most of the afternoon getting ready for the podcast, recording it and starting to write show notes. My one student showed up on time and after that the boy and I watched another episode of Star Trek. Then I wrote for half an hour and went to bed.

Today there will be grocery shopping and the optician’s appointment where we’ll look at the contact lenses and will talk about possible new reading glasses for me, I will finish getting the podcast ready for publication, write and teach. I would love to fit some sewing in there but I doubt it.

My throat hurts a little, I think I’m having the beginning of a cold but I hope it will just pass with minimum fuss. At least my back and hip are much better just because of Sunday’s 27 minutes of yoga.

Woke up super-early again, lounged in bed. Got up almost on time and made breakfast. I started reading „Night and Silence“ by Seanan McGuire yesterday and found it hard to put down.

After breakfast I meditated and wrote (phew).

A comment on yesterday’s post made me realize that there might be a misunderstanding about my writing at the moment. After whining and a lot of teeth-gnashing and such over the past months I seem to have turned a corner (knock on wood) twelve days ago when I decided to do the „100 days of writing“-challenge on instagram. I like to get the writing out of the way early in the day if possible but when something happens – or I’m just totally not in the mood – I just write later. Ideally I have three or four windows of opportunity. The first one is right after waking up but I only wrote that early once and it gave me half the words that 25 minutes usually give me so I’m not sure forcing myself at that time of day is worth it. The second one is right between my breakfast and that of my husband. That one is ideal, so at the moment I make sure that I don’t dawdle it away. Sometimes there is a third one between whatever I’m doing after breakfast and the time when we need to start making lunch but that’s rare, and then there is another window of opportunity in the evening before I go to sleep. Interestingly, I often manage to write pretty fast and easily at that time despite not being a night person at all.

With the added incentive of the challenge I managed to write more than 6,000 words last week even with skipping a day. I do have the secret hope to finish the current novel until the beginning of November but that is just crazy talk at this point. It would be very, very cool, though.

After talking with my husband I decided to try my new soft contact lenses because it was raining, and running in the rain with glasses is not my idea of fun. And they worked. It was great:

And then I went to the health food store because we had run out of chicken breast and there was still time, and there was lunch:

Tasted better than it looks.

Then I had some time before the first student and used it for writing emails and sewing. The Kew dress is now actually dress-shaped. Next step is to clip some seam allowances and press them and understitch things (which I’ll need to look up again but that will take just a minute) and then I have to make 15 buttonholes and sew 15 buttons on, and stitch the hem and then I’ll have a dress.

I tried it on today and it is a little snug round the bust. It might work with a non-padded bra. I’m pretty sure that I will love wearing it next summer.

Then I put on makeup and taught my students, wrote some more words and read a lot more and went to bed early.

Today I want to run some errands, and write and make good use of my one-hour break in the middle of the afternoon.

I woke up early feeling a little timid and angsty. I’m blaming the not-writing the day before. No, I have no idea when I’ll learn. And of course I didn’t start writing right away as well. It was Saturday! No need to get started early!

Yeah. About that.

I did get up at a reasonable time and had breakfast and then, just when I was about to start writing, I swear, the boy showed up. At eight. On a Saturday. „Oh, I went to bed at the usual time last night,“ he said, laconically.

Poof. Second window of writing opportunity gone.

Then my husband got up, we talked, I crocheted (the blanket is the only thing I’m working on at the moment because it’s so big and warm), we did the dishes and then I packed the birthday present for my BIL and sent it off.

Then running. Well, mostly walking, but some running:

Then a shower and cooking. My husband had plans to make veal cutlets and homemade gnocchi. I was in charge of the gnocchi. I did follow the recipe and told him to not put an egg in and was stressed out and confused and hungry and only remembered that it had said, „Add salt to the dough,“ when the gnocchi were already in the boiling water and I hadn’t read the recipe carefully and we might have had a teensy argument.

This was the result:

Each part of those mashed potatoes had once been a lovingly handcrafted piece of pasta that I pressed a fork in for nice-looking lines.

At least it did taste good. After putting some extra salt on it.

Then a huge washing up.

The boy needed some rubber gloves and I sent him to get them himself. Mostly to teach him a lesson but also because I’m a little tired of him coming down to the kitchen declaring things like, „Mama, I’m out of toothpaste,“ or shampoo or cleanser or lotion or whatever one or two days after I went grocery shopping.

To sweeten the deal I told him to get himself some candy. And he brought some for me to. Only, it was not the candy I wanted and so I ate it and then went out and got some more chocolate. And some for Sunday as well. And then I sat down and ate it all.

Note to self: be more strict about the no-buying-candy rule. No matter how much you eat it never feels enough anyway. Thanks.

And then I sat around reading, surfing the web and procrastinating. ::head desk::

I did manage to work on the dress a little, at least, and I also managed to give myself a kick in the butt and write some but still.

We watched some Star Trek while more crochet happened.

Today there will be: no candy, all the writing and all the sewing. Also, the laying out the bullet journal for October which means looking at my September goals and setting new ones for the month. I did pretty well in September, so that’s good.

Since I had turned the lights out around nine the night before I woke up at five.

For once I actually did write first thing in the morning. Okay, second. Still. I wrote before leaving the bed.

The boy apparently liked going to school ten minutes earlier than usual the day before and has decided to do this everyday. (Why yes, I had been suggesting that maybe going a few minutes earlier might make mornings less stressful for years. What do I know.)

So I had time to write some more between my breakfast and that of my husband:

I decided to work on the crochet blanket while he was eating because it was so cold in the house. I also decided to turn the heating on, at lest in the old part of the house. The annex heating is dripping so we better leave that off until it has been repaired.

Then I went to the pharmacy, the health food store again (our grocery list discipline is seriously lacking), and to the bike shop. Where I not only got my bike back with a new lamp and stand but I also remembered to get a new pump. I spent loads of money today but I have to say that small things like proper lighting on bikes and a stand that doesn’t have you lifting the whole bike with all the groceries for a week on it do make my life much better.

We had a really nice lunch and the weather was warm enough to sit on the porch for it (figures since I turned on the heat):

Then I ate chocolate and fell into a slump. The two might be related, or maybe they aren’t. I did manage to pull out the sewing machine and sew some more. The dress is starting to look vaguely dress-shaped, I have a top and a skirt-like thing and facings.

Then I taught a student. And then I sewed some more. There wasn’t time to get the iron going to press all the seams open, alas, so that will have to be left for another day.

Then I taught some more. My last student didn’t show, weirdly enough. And I had the second cancelation this week (one yesterday and one for tomorrow) because of the student having a cold. What can I say, it is Oktoberfest-time…

And then (and that was certainly one of the highlights of the day, a student of my husband’s came for his lesson and when he closed the door he was holding the door handle ins hand. This has been happening every few days for years now. We tried fixing it but couldn’t get the cover off. So we just put the handle back ever so often.

Now this student happens to be a carpenter. He started by saying that you just need an Allen wrench to fix it. Ha! As if. We’re not that bad with mechanics. But. Having more experience with things like this he managed to use my husband’s tools and fix it. No more students being unable to leave because they can’t open the door! No more small kids afraid that they have broken the door! A thing that has been on my list to have fixed for ages was just taken care of.

Phew.

Since the house is still rather cold I went to bed early.

I have to confess that I am actually hoping to finish the current novel (book two in the Eva Mandel series for those of you following along) by the end of October. Which is ridiculous. It would mean to write 2,500 words per day. The first book went extraordinarily slow with an average of 480 words per day. 2,500 might mean 1 1/2 to 2 hours of writing each and every day.

Hm.

But I’m trying to use the deep want of writing something else for energy to make this one go faster. And with all those students canceling I should be able to find an additional thirty minutes in my day here and there. So we’ll see.

If I extend my deadline to mid-November it would be a more reasonable 1,700 words per day. And yes, I am perfectly aware that a few years ago writing 1,700 words per day every day for a month left me totally depleted of energy with my whole life falling to the wayside. But that’s the great thing about practice.

And if it doesn’t work I’ll change things up. As usual.

Today there will be the cleaning, and the pizza, and quite a bit of teaching but not as much as I hoped for. Then the watching of Star Trek and then another webinar, “3 Steps to a Bestselling Author Platform“. Yeah, I don’t know why I keep doing this when I’m still at stage 0: ‘write book’. And all the stages that come between ‚finish book‘ and ‚publish book‘. I mean, I don’t think things will go the bestseller-way if I only throw up a PDF on Amazon. (Actually I don’t think this book will become a bestseller. Not because I’m making myself smaller than necessary, only because a) I am only starting out, and b) the whole thing as is can only appeal to a small niche-audience.)

So I’ll be watching the webinar like a TV show, mostly, but with my notebook and pen ready and focus on a) writing the book, and b) reading „Let’s Get Digital“ with a pen and make a list of next steps for book one.

Woke up from the alarm after nine hours of sleep which is a little weird. It did feel good while I was sleeping but it seemed I never really woke up throughout the day.

I got up late. And the boy actually did remember to send me a message and got up really early. Which meant I was still in pajamas and scrambling to get breakfast ready when he showed up.

I’m not complaining. But I think I maybe should up my game.

Because I felt so sluggish I didn’t manage to write right after breakfast either. Boo.

I did make progress on my husband’s cowl. It isn’t quite long enough yet, though.

I phoned my ob/gyn to ask for my prescription renewed. Something I had been procrastinating about for two weeks or so. I do still have pills left until the end of next week or so, but still.

Then I went out to the bike shop and ordered a new front light and stand. They are swamped, apparently, so I will have to wait until 5 pm this afternoon before I can have my bike back. Since I’ll be busy at that time that means I’ll get it Thursday morning, just in time for grocery shopping. The young man whom I talked to even changed the 35 € lamp to a 15€ one when he realized that my dynamo was different than he thought.

I bet he hasn’t seen a bike this old in ages. I bought it in 2003 which I remember because there is a picture where my husband sat the boy in a striped onesie in a basket on the carrier.

Then I went on to the health food store to buy less groceries than expected. Since the fridge is still full to the brim I guess that was right. (Funny, how the cheese is still sitting in the fridge a week after I bought it. Seems the binge-eating got better. I advocate brushing your teeth right after work. Well, in case you want to skip dinner.)

Then we had risotto for lunch. Very, very yummy, and very fitting for the cold weather:

And then I fell into a bad slump. All day I had felt like I had a headache, only without the pain. I decided to take an ibuprofen right after lunch and I think it helped. About half an hour later I felt like myself again. I did not do the lunch dishes (there weren’t many) but I did fold a load of laundry and put it away. I did not make any music, and I still hadn’t written anything. More boo.

Then there were lots and lots of students, one after the other. I inadvertently let the boy wait for almost half an hour when I didn’t finish my last lesson on time. My student and I were talking a lot and I didn’t think he would be on time without me reminding him. Oops.

So no strength training because it was already so late.

My husband did all the dishes after dinner which I really appreciate. He and the boy had leftover risotto and an omelette for dinner and afterwards all I did was dry a few forks and knives.

Then the boy wanted to talk to me, lots.

And then I still had to write my daily 25 minutes.

Oof.

Early to bed nonetheless.

Today there will be running and only two students and some sewing and writing and music, and a little less other stuff.