creative.mother.thinking

But I think that was the wrong impression.

First of all I went to bed later than I wanted and then woke up an hour before my alarm unable to fall back asleep. Which might have contributed to the persevering feeling of meh.

Husband and I talked about things over breakfast that would have needed more time and space but I just started talking and went on in the same direction. A good conversation but cut short because of all the stuff that needed doing.

I might have to revive my Trello board.

On the other hand, I do have lists. In my bullet journal.

I dawdled and was late to go to the health food store but first I did the dishes and started the pretzels for lunch. Look what we got this time:

My guess is that they thawed at some point, while the box was stuffed somewhere and that made the pretzels into an almost amorphous lump.

I let the, thaw while I did the dishes and managed to rescue six of the pretzels for lunch. Then I toddled off to the health food store and my MIL’s bank but not to the two other shops I wanted to go to. I came back home, fumbled most of the pretzels apart and baked them. I had also bought fresh ones and another package of frozen ones. This time I opened the box right away and they looked fine. I also found yet another boy in the freezer. I should keep my mouth shut about other people’s pantries and overbuying of groceries.

The pretzels were still delicious if a bit misshapen and the white sausages were okay, I’m not a big fan:

That is just half of my lunch, white sausages don’t really taste great when they are lukewarm which is why normal people put the pot on the table and you just pull out one sausage at a time, but my husband – of course – let them on the stove.

I taught my students, then used a break to dust, clean and move two shelves of craft book to a different bookcase. I also realized that I had a ton of morning pages books and pulled them out. No idea where I want to store them. Or throw them away, that’s a possibility too, I mean, who wants through dozens of notebooks with all your blah thoughts.

I cleaned the doorhandles after teaching and played a bit of Czerny. I still have to decide what to do with those notebooks.

I ate dinner and talked with he boy an we did bodyweight training. 

We ate, I ate quite some sweet things and then it was time to teach.Almost half of my students either rescheduled or canceled, the student who never shows vowed to come in on Thursday and ask her mother to remind her.

After lunch I played my video game, I’m still busy leveling characters and weapons by throwing all my in-game money at it. I also bought another monthly pass for 5 €.

I canceled my mother-in-law’s doctor’s appointment, she is at the care home, in a different town and right now she is in the hospital so I’m guessing she is in good hands, medically.

I ate dinner, talked with the boy who had spent the whole day at uni and we did bodyweight training. Without the new weights which are still in transit.

The plan had been to start sewing in earnest that day but we were both completely knackered. So we moved the sewing to today.

And then I was so tired that I did not open the manuscript again. Sigh.

Yeah, going to bed at midnight does me no favors but then we knew that already.

I still managed to do things and was not as slow as I would have expected.

There was the complete morning routine, breakfast, talking with my husband (we had both calmed down and were good again), some dishes and ten minutes in the manuscript. I did an online order for him and decided to delegate choosing a new bedspread right back to him. I was feeling so tired that all I wanted to do was lie on the floor and sleep but I went walking/running anyway:

The weather felt gray and dreary at first but looked up later.

I came back home to a husband who was stressed from cooking, took a shower and ate:

This was supposed to be soup, but well. It was delicious.

Then I did some of the dishes, read a little, played Genshin and started teaching. Between students I had planned to get started on moving books in my studio but ended up running out of time because I was playing the piano.

I taught some more, then cut out the pockets for the boy’s costume, set the sewing machine up in my mother-in-law’s kitchen and started pressing the white fabric. I also started teaching the boy how to iron and he finished the second half of the fabric.

Then it was time for an excellent coaching session with my writer friend after which I started writing this post, played some more Genshin, made a list for today (another long one) and went to bed with a book.

Now I just need to figure out how to fit costume-sewing, bodyweight training, errands and writing into today but, well, piece of cake.

I went to bed past midnight. Meh.

I found an interesting statistic:

So, obviously I got less sleep than the week before but what I find super interesting is the pattern of median sleep throughout the week. You can see that on Mondays I decide that sleep is important and I need to go to bed earlier, so I turn the lights out at 11.15. Which is still too late.
Then my bedtime creeps back by 15 minutes every day, until I try to turn things around again on Friday with not much sucess, and on the weekend I apparently tend to go to bed around midnight (definitely too late) and sleep about fifteen minutes longer than during the week.

Also, I seem to get about7 hours of sleep on average. I’m pretty sure what I actually need is 8 1/2 but I’m not quite sure because the last time I slept that long for more than one night was on our trip to Verona. Two or three years ago.

So, yes, I do need to change something.

I did a quiz about my bedtime procrastination type a while back (by Dr. Vanessa Hill who I heartily recommend, I love her YouTube channel. I actually don’t remember which type I was but I think there was something about being an „Autopilot Procrastinator“, my self-regulation runs out and then I just stay up on autopilot.

I’ve called this being too tired and exhausted to get ready for bed before.

The cure is to set on concrete cue to stop what I’m doing. Like the „get ready for bed alarm at 9.15 that I turned off 75 minutes ago as I’m writing this part.

So. Deliberate pause. Tomorrow, I think.

Yesterday went a bit off the rails. There were about three incidents of getting into an argument with my husband, I did do my morning routine but way late and then there was no time for talking with him after breakfast and knitting because he needed to call his aunt and he wanted to mop the kitchen floor. Which did take care of that task. The task that was on my list as well.

It’s a bit embarrassing. He is so easily triggered that you can just mention a thing that you’re dreading, like cleaning the rim of the bathtub or mopping the floor and he will just go and do it. And then he will resent it massively and tell you how awful his life is and how exhausted and stressed he is and that things will never be better than the horrible mess that life is right now.

Life is not a horrible mess right now. It is exhausting and things are definitely quite a bit too much, and taking responsibility for our mothers, his aunt, the house, the garden and the finances is really a lot but it’s not impossible. I mean, other people do these things every day as well. And while yes, the fact that his mother is in a care home (well, the hospital right now, but same difference, makes more responsibility and work for us, I feel that it’s also a chance to chart our own course. And sorry, I think that dealing with housework and gardening and finances and work and people is just something we should be able to do as adults.

Husband, on the other hand, thinks these things are objectively too much for one person (or two, he keeps forgetting that I do stuff as well. Until I travel and am not home for a few days and he drowns into the part of housework that I do most days.)

Anyway. I did part of the dishes before calling my mother on the phone this time so that lunch might still be on time.

Lunch was not on time. I started talking to my mother around noon, we talked for 20 minutes, then I went back to the kitchen and the only thing that had happened was that he had picked a zucchini, some tomatoes and herbs from the garden. Fine. He made penne with zucchini in tomato sauce. I waited for quite some time and then it turned out that he thought I would be doing the dishes and tell him when I was done. I told him I was done before calling my mother.

Around 1 pm the pasta water was slowly getting warmer and he started cutting the veggies.

Next up he was super stressed because he was cutting the zucchini while the pan was already way too hot while the pasta water was boiling. He asked me to put the pasta in the water. As he usually does it there was way too much water in the pot. When I out the pasta in it was clear that the water would boil over soon. So I asked him if I should pour some of the water out. He answered that he couldn’t really think about that at that point because he had the stressful job of cutting veggies.

So I poured some of the water off and that was apparently completely wrong. He had put the exact perfect amount of water in and pouring some off was not acceptable.

Never mind that he has pasta boiling over so often that I am conditioned to run to the kitchen, pull of the lid and wipe overboiling water from the stove in autopilot. I have at times run to the kitchen to take care of this while being completely focused on something else.

I folded laundry. I went downstairs and set the washing machine on tumble because it hadn’t worked. Again. I hung up laundry.

We started eating lunch at 1.37:

About 90 minutes after he had gone outside to pick one zucchini.

And he told me that he had planned to fry some bacon as well but hadn’t had the time for it.

Yes, I find that puzzling as well.

Sorry for complaining so much.

We ate lunch, we got into another argument. I did the dishes, more argument. The boy and I were set to work on his costume at 3.30. I ended up having roughly 25 minutes to myself.

I played some Genshin and got pretty frustrated.

Then we talked about the costume, designed some more, the boy cut the last pattern piece out and I started cutting the fabric for the cowl and hood.

At one point I held the back of the coat to the boy and we had to realize that piece was too small. Quite a bit too small. Turned out we had just taken his measurements and used them for the pattern pieces. No ease. Duh.

Husband came to apologise – more argument.

We found that we had another length of fabric because it was wider than expected, so we cut the body pieces again. And that was bascially it, no more time (or energy) for more cutting.

We did twenty minutes of bodyweight training and ate dinner. Not in this oder.

I wandered off trying to get the kitchen sink back to normal at one point.

And then there were more talks with husband and more arguments. One of the arguments was about the fact that we couldn’t find the jacket my mother-in-law wants us to bring. The clothes she brought with her in August aren’t cutting it anymore.

I packed a bag that the boy can drop of today.

More arguments but before there was the rather nice gift of a bottle of beer he had bought just for me.

I talked with the boy some more who had grievances about one of his things at college, I started writing this post, I played a tiny round of Genshin and went to bed.

Phew.

I should really stop thinking I have more time on the weekend. Somehow it never works out that way.

On the other hand I had a very productive week, so it’s okay.

I went to bed too late again and while I slept well I was super slow in the morning and skipped yoga and meditation. After the boy wrote me a long list of things to help me improve my Genshin account I had a bit of a hyperfocus on implementing all of them, ahem, and started playing before breakfast even.

I still went out for my walk/run and the weather was very nice:

I came back a little late but there was still time to take a shower before lunch.

There was an excellent Swiss chard risotto with Swiss chard fresh from out yard:

Then I read a little and threw myself back into playing my video game. I leveled all the things and spent in-game money like a drunken sailor. Not real money, though.

Then the boy and I reluctantly worked on his costume for a bit. If I can call it that. We had a lot to discuss and then I cut some pattern pieces out and drew a half-circle on a piece of paper. We decided that we need to make better progress tomorrow but it looks as if the pattern construction phase is coming to an end.

And then my husband started tackling the clogged sink in the kitchen which was as great idea but a little disruptive. We let that sit for a bit while eating dinner in front of TV. We watched our weekly episode of ‚Mobius‘ and again we enjoyed it a lot.

Then I played some more Genshin, debated strategy with the boy, realized that all his tips and lectures were the result of a remark I made that made him think I really wanted to get full stars in one of the endgame thingies in the game. I mean, it would be really neat to manage that but both my character built and my gaming skills are not quite up to that. I did try the thing anyway and he watched part of it and got to tell me all the ways I can improve my gameplay. We also tried different team compositions and I now have a note on the kitchen table telling me not to forget that I swapped the weapons of three characters around. For just regular play with my regular team that would be a bad idea, so I need to swap it all back after.

Then it was already time for bed but I still needed to start writing this post, make a list for today, do all the dishes and put the kitchen back together. So no, I didn’t get enough sleep last night either.

I went to bed too late again. Because I couldn’t bring myself to brush my teeth and change into pajamas. For real.

I didn’t dawdle (much), though, because we had plans. I did the usual morning pages, yoga, meditation and breakfast and then we went to my mother-in-law’s bank to get some info and cancel her credit card. That she never used, she didn’t even know she had one.

After that we caught a train to Munich to visit her in the hospital. When we arrived she was alone in her room and crying. But it turned out she was just very moved by something the hospital priest had said to her.

We had barely said hello before a nice young man showed up and introduced himself as her physiotherapist. He told us that we were on the geriatric ward, that she would probably stay for about two weeks and get physio and other therapy. Which told us that she was not in any acute situation. Also, that she’d need some more clothes and stuff. She had just gone on in an ambulance, she had not packed a bag or anything.

We left a few minutes later so she could get her physio and went back home.

Where I did the dishes, folded a load of laundry and ordered and picked up Chinese takeout:

I just realized that I usually let my water sit there all through lunch and only drink something at the end. Huh. When we were kids we were not allowed to drink with meals because that would wash the food right out of our stomachs. Interestingly, that did not seem to have been a problem for when we drank cocoa with breakfast or herbal tea with dinner. Huh. Not that we drank plain water then. It was all soda all the way.

Lunch was pretty early so I read a bit while eating a bit of licorice chocolate and then I played a little Genshin. I had to cut that short so I could teach. I used the break between students to clean washbasins and toilets and hang up a load of laundry. While talking with the boy.

My last student canceled, so I played piano, changed the towels and ate the second half of my lunch for dinner. Then bodyweight training with the boy, then I ordered a new set of 5-kilo dumbbells because one of the other pair broke apart, and then it was time to meet my writer friend for a writing sprint. This time we were more focused than the day before and I managed to write half a scene, hurray!

After that I was pretty exhausted. I started writing this post, made a list for today, read some more (I’m really liking the second Clocktaur War book), played some more Genshin and went to bed.

Phew.

Today there will be exercise, sewing and watching TV with the rest of the family. And some rest is in order methinks.

I di go to bed at a reasonable time, at least, but woke up early again, sigh.

And then I saw that someone from my mother-in-law’s care home had left a voicemail on my cell. Which I hadn’t gotten because my phone is turned off during the night.

My mother-in-law had gone to the hospital the night before. We were not told why but we at least knew which hospital.

My first reaction? Not again.

I tried reaching her on her cell and failed at first but (not to draw this out too much) I did reach her around lunchtime, she is well, she fell nothing really happened but she wanted to go to the hospital anyway because she was feeling so dizzy.

We also got a call from the care home again in the afternoon and they said, she fell, her knee is really swollen and painful (though the boy said she already had trouble with her knee when he visited her the day before) and also her blood levels were off.

Anyway, we briefly considered visiting her but decided to move that to today. First, because that fits better into our schedule, and second, there will hopefully be results from the tests they do at the hospital.

Then I wrote my morning pages, did yoga and meditated. And then breakfast with my husband.

I wrote some emails, I did the dishes, I talked with my husband and started the heel turn on the sock that I’m knitting and I went grocery shopping.

Came back, put the groceries away, folded some laundry and had lunch:

I played Genshin very briefly and talked with the boy and then it was time to teach.

In between students I vacuumed the annex, sorted my files back into the drawers that my husband had repaired earlier, and talked some more with the rest of the family.

After my last student I played piano, tried eating dinner in 8 minutes (and failed) and then I met online with my writer friend, we talked about learning Chinese a lot because she had her first lesson right before (and I got to try speaking Chinese out loud which I never do) and then we spent half an hour working on our manuscripts.

Afterwards I started writing this post, made a list for today, said hello to my husband, asked the boy to do the dishes, played some more Genshin and went to bed with a book.

Phew.

Today will be similar, the plan is to go to the bank, then the hospital, lunch, teaching, some cleaning, bodyweight training and another writing meeting.

Allons-y!