creative.mother.thinking

I slept for eight hours and it was glorious! Woke up at 5.30 and just lounged in bed for an hour or so. Meditated and got up around 7, had breakfast and read. I am making my way through a box set of the first eight books of „Samantha Moon. Vampire for Hire“. Slowly.

Then I sat around reading some more while icing my knee once an hour knitting while first my husband and then the boy had breakfast. I did not go for a run but instead did the dishes. The knee is much better, still feeling tight and swollen but not hurting. Climbing stairs is uncomfortable but I don’t have to do that often.

I started peeling and dicing vegetables for lunch early because I wanted to watch the start of the Tour de France and spin. And I did:

One of these days I will pick up the TV room before I take a picture…

We had chili for lunch with the first homegrown chili of the summer:

And then I went back to sitting in front of TV alternating spinning and icing my knee until it was time for the women’s soccer World Cup that my husband wanted to watch at which point I moved to my studio to watch the rest of the cycling.

Then I finally got myself writing for a bit, waited until soccer was done and watched a Star Trek episode with the boy and went to bed early. Not too bad for a Saturday.

Today will be more of the same. No exercise, lots of spinning and watching TV.

So for day now I’ve been doing that thing where I am all pumped up to be super-productive but then I don’t get enough sleep, don’t really do much all day but wish I were asleep, eat too much – especially at night – then get all motivated to do at least something in the evening and end up just sitting there with no energy to get myself to bed.

Yeah, that was basically my whole week.

I did get up early but it didn’t really help, the boy’s cheek is looking better but not back to normal, he came home around midnight the night before and had to get up earlier than usual because his class had to help with the yearly sport thing (Federal Youth Games) at school („Bundesjugendspiele“ for my German-speaking readers – it’s a thing).

My knee was both better and the same as the day before. I consulted Dr. Google, have deemed that it is most likely overexertion (dumb me) and that any real doctor would probably tell me to use the RICE protocol. Which I’m doing and it is starting to feel better. Which also means that I won’t be running today. Or Monday, I think.

I did clean the house and make pizza from scratch and fought the urge to start practicing drawing right away. I found a tutorial that looks promising and am itching to get into using my new iPad mini for this. Urges like that are usually a sure sign that I committed to something different. The minute I announced that music was my most important thing and that I’d spend all my free time and energy it was when I started this here blog, by the way.

And now you know why I usually avoid sweeping statements like that.

But. Pizza:

One of these days I’ll manage to actually make them round as well.

Then there was the teaching, one student after the other all afternoon.

I had published the podcast before my first student but only managed to announce it everywhere after teaching. Then I started writing this post, did a bit more planning for Q3, watched Star Trek with the boy and then I did a whole lot of nothing and went to bed on time for once.

Today there will be the start of the Tour de France and the Tour de Fleece which will find me in front of TV all afternoon. I am also hoping to write thousands and thousands of words, wish me luck.

I’ll alternate icing my knee with spinning. Sounds like a good idea.

Woke up at 5.15, not enough sleep yet again. Still, I did manage to do all the morning routine things. (Is it still a routine if you only do it once day out of three?) I was all pumped to write like the wind and do all the things.

And then the boy showed up. His right cheek had puffed up to twice its usual size overnight. Probably something to do with the wisdom teeth pulling. But he was feeling well enough to go to school. Not that he loved the idea of showing up there looking that asymmetrical. At first he said he wanted to leave it for a day before calling the doctor but I outvoted him. Well, vetoed.

So when he was off to school I called the oral surgeon’s office and got an appointment for him for 4 pm.

I still managed to get a few more words in which was a marvel in itself. My husband showed up and had breakfast and we talked and I knitted a few rows. By then I had entered the state of catastrophizing, where every minuscule problem becomes monstrous and huge. My painful knees meant that I would never run again, the boy would need surgery and die on the operating table, you know the drill.

I pulled myself together, somewhat, did the breakfast dishes and started tackling the list. I made sour cherry jam and forgot to take a picture (imagine twelve glasses of sour cherry jam here) and then we made a Persian lamb dish for lunch (Khoresh Abaloo, if I recall correctly):

Very, very tasty. Next time we might even try to cook the rice like they do in Iran. On a weekend.

Then I did some admin, worked on the podcast for an hour, taught all the students, finished the podcast to get it publishable, had a bit of dinner (because I’m taking an anti-inflammatory for my poor knees), made pizza dough and went to bed too late.

The boy showed up when my next student was conveniently late, said that he must have gotten a bit of food into the wound and that the surgeon had cleaned it out and cared for it. He has a follow-up appointment in ten days or so. Things should be back to normal shortly.

Today there will be the cleaning and the pizza-making and all the teaching and more writing and loads of things.

Oh, and the cool packs were one for the boy and one for my knees. And no, I’m not quite sure what I did to them, it might be a combination of damage from the balcony project combined with not moving enough and then too much and then stretching too hard too sudden. As I said, I’m not quite sure. They hurt after resting and after movement but not while I’m moving. Icing and the anti-inflammatory seem to make things better.

::shrugs shoulders::

I woke up at 5.15 from the alarm but it didn’t do me any good because I hadn’t gotten enough sleep. Which meant nothing happened before breakfast. It would have been better to sleep longer.

Then breakfast and after that I finally used my time properly and wrote 800 words. I had to trick myself into thinking that I was just playing around:

When my husband showed up I knitted a few rows. Did the dishes and went running:

Came back home after 7.2 kilometers with a spectacular 8’45/k average (not kidding, anything under 9 is really good for me; I’m still walking a lot), turned around and hopped on the bike with the trailer to go grocery shopping.

Got everything I needed, put the groceries away, enrolled the boy in a workshop thing in the fall and helped to make lunch:

Very good. Oh, and I googled Persian dishes with lamb and sour cherries, as one does.

Then I fell into a kind of slump and researched train connections to the boy’s fall workshop thing. Did the dishes and started preparing the sour cherries my husband had picked in the morning for jam-making.

Taught one student who brought a friend who turned out to be a former student of mine. Very nice lesson.

Went back to the cherries and pitted them all and cut them in half because this time I’m very determined to not have jam full of cherry pits. I put the cherries and the sugar together and stored them in the basement. I’ll make the jam later today.

My second student of the day canceled because of work and I was spent anyway so I had dinner. My husband and the boy showed up a little later and when the boy had finished eating we looked at the train connections some more and I helped him decide which workshops he was actually interested in. Lots of interesting topics like machine learning and neural networks and WOOP.

I then started writing this post and contemplated the things I had wanted to get done that day like getting the podcast ready and writing at least 1,000 more words. Instead I made a new list for today, did more dishes with the boy’s help and finally took a shower. The day had been so packed that I didn’t have the time earlier.

Guess who went to bed too late yet again?

Today there will be the jam-making, bodyweight training that I forgot about the day before, writing like crazy, getting the podcast ready and some spinning. Also quite a bit of teaching because one of my Friday students rescheduled to tonight. Oh, and a new student (she was already here once and got dizzy in a singing lesson) and the boy will go out tonight with his classmates.

We are a little busy around here at the moment methinks.

I slept pretty well and woke up rested from the alarm at 5.15. I was figuring getting up a little earlier still would improve my chances of getting some writing time in before breakfast. And it did. I wrote 1,000 words on the novel before getting up to make breakfast.

The boy had first period off so he came down later than usual, and since the morning was cool and wet my husband slept a little longer too.

There was knitting and talking and reading. The dishes were done and then I went off for a 4.8k run:

By then it had mostly cleared up again. I came back home and turned around immediately to go the the health food store. Then we made homemade pesto Genovese:

Fresh basil from the garden and most of the salad came from there as well. It was really good.

More dishes, folding a little laundry and I had managed to squeeze my shower in between chopping and eating.

I taught all afternoon, did a bit of email, had dinner, spun a little while watching a lecture on writing and went to bed.

Today there will be more running and teaching, and getting the podcast ready so I can publish it on Friday. Also, the sour cherries are ripe…