creative.mother.thinking

First of all I did get eight hours of sleep, yeah!

And then I was very determined to do everything in time which meant I even could open the manuscript before breakfast. Only for a few minutes and when I did open it on my computer there was a sync error that needed to be fixed but at least I tried. And did 5 minutes of yoga again.

There were dishes and such and I went for my first walk/run since my eye surgery:

And I’m happy to report that 1-minute running and 4-minute walking intervals were no problem at all.

I returned home and took a shower before eating lunch:

Those beans were picked just minutes before by my husband.

I would have liked to do the dishes right after eating because I made a resolution to do the dishes earlier from now on but I couldn’t because my husband still needed to take a shower.

So dishes had to wait until the evening but I folded some laundry instead.

And then I played a bit of Genshin before I started teaching.

One student canceled but I did not use that time well.

After my last student I ate dinner and played more Genshin. Originally I had wanted to attend a Zoom call but then I found I was too tired to listen to anything properly. I can watch that call later and I hope I will actually do that.

And then I realized that something game-related had only two hours left and got a move on. I did not do a good job and when the boy came downstairs and saw what I was doing he ended up grabbing the controller and doing a full run himself, ahem.

I did some more Genshin while I waited for the boy to finish his shower, then we did the dishes together, I started this post and wrote a list for today.

I will go to the supermarket today and am hoping to plan the month ahead, and I finally want to teach my friend who kept rescheduling.

I was basically late with everything all day which led to lunch being late as well.

I went for a walk instead of my planned run/walk because I still have the sniffles and a bit of a cough. I also did not take a shower because I had one the day before and there wasn’t much time.

Husband made tagliatelle bolognese:

Teaching was nice, so there was that with a break in the middle that I used for admin.

In the evening my writer friend rescheduled her piano lesson so I could quiz the boy earlier. And then I immersed myself in Genshin for a while. The started writing this post and did all the dishes.

I went to bed too late again because I was determined to do the dishes before bed.

Yawn.

And more busyness today.

I did write morning pages, did five minutes of yoga and meditated for another 5 minutes, so that was good. But I was so tired! Only went to bed at 1 am.

Husband and I talked about his phone call to his aunt after breakfast and I started researching different car rental companies. It’s not as easy as it seems. I also tried to connect my husband’s new phone to my account and succeeded but only in theory because it’s still not connected in the app.

I went grocery shopping and to my MIL’s bank for her bank statement. I also reconciled my accounts, so that was fun.

Husband was rather busy so there was only frozen pizza. Which was rather good:

Yes, I only ate half the pizza.

I did teach some students and was rather nervous for the boy’s exam. He had left the house before lunch so he had a bit of a buffer. The exam was an oral one which made im very nervous.

He did well, got a good grade, and was asked to apply for a place in the institute master’s program.

And yes, I am proud.

Two of my students canceled, one because she was sick and the other one sent me a text that they couldn’t find their capo and if we could reschedule.

Um, no, you can just come in and I will give you a capo to use during that lesson.

Since she has skipped quite a few lessons this year I offered her two time slots to make up for that lesson.

I was rather determined to go to bed at a reasonable time and not let myself be drawn into non-essential stuff.

And today is go, go, go and back to teaching.

I went to bed super late yet again and then decided to leave earlier than planned. Which was a very good idea because while the first bus was on time the first train wasn’t. I also had been waiting for almost 20 minutes at the wrong bus stop (I was half an hour early, ahem) before realizing that the bus left at the same stop it arrived at. It makes a loop and doesn’t come back the same way.

I got myself an avocado arugula bagel at the station and that was the best thing I ate all day. There were veggies! And greens! Hurray!

At least the train to Hamburg was not crowded and I had a lot of time before my next train. I bought all the junk food and then proceeded to the platform. Which had lots of construction going on and was so filled with people that you couldn’t really get anywhere.

There was another train to Munich at the platform and everybody kept wondering if that was the train they should take. The answer, of course, was „it depends“ but while that train had the same destination it usually takes quite a bit longer to get there because it’s taking a longer route. Where it can’t go as fast.

And that train sat there. And sat there. And my train couldn’t get into the station because there was no space. In the end it stopped on the other side of the platform and I could finally get on.

At this point we were already 15 minutes late. And the train was so crowded that you were not supposed to get on without a seat reservation. There were people sitting on the floor in the space for luggage next to me.

Forget about the quiet car.

My original plan had been to open the manuscript and write, read a bit, and knit while watching the episode of „Shine on me“ I had on my phone. I did do quite a bit of reading because „Swordheart“ by T. Kingfisher is really great but otherwise I just couldn’t focus.

In the end we arrived in Munich 45 minutes late, and just as my next train was pulling out the station so I had to wait for 20 more minutes.

My husband and the boy were already waiting for me, I got homecooked food and talked with my husband for a bit, started writing this post and went to bed.

May I have a weekend now? That was a bit more exhausting than I had thought it would be.

And I didn’t take a single picture all day, so here is another one from Schwerin on Saturday:

I only got 5 1/2 hours of so-so sleep and got talked at all day but I also saw a lot of beautiful buildings and talked with nice relatives, so that was fun.

I need to catch another train so I‘ll make this short. Here‘s a picture for you:

This is the fabulous Schwerin castle. We had a tour there, and a boat tour on the lake and another tour through the city, as I said, it was a bit much.

It was great but I‘m looking forward to being back home again tonight.

I mean, I‘ve had worse but not by much.

But first I had to get up super early and catch a train at the time where I usually start opening my morning pages notebook. And I did it.

I even finished my whole big pot of tea before leaving the house which meant I could use a regular water bottle instead of the thermos I use for tea.

The trains went smoothly, and the first two were even pretty empty. The high speed train was super cold, though with the a/c at full blast. I wished I had brought a scarf or shawl, and I did wear my fingerless mitts part of the way.

I had lunch in the dining car where I caught one of the last two empty seats. The burger I had decided on as the least unappealing option from the menu was out, so I had currywurst:

And I was still somewhat hungry afterwards. So I thought I‘d get myself a pastry or something in Hamburg but at that point my train was already a little late.

Apparently there was a big technical difficulty around Hannover which meant my train got diverted. I didn‘t have to change there this time so it didn‘t make much of a difference for me.

All in all we were only 15 minutes late which is not too bad.

But in Hamburg there was no time to look for a bakery or something, I just went straight onto a very, very crowded train.

And tried to figure out how to reach my hotel. Good thing I looked at the map in detail before deciding to walk for half an hour because that walk was right next to a big road with lots of traffic. Instead I took a bus and in order to get a ticket I installed an app over train wifi and connected it to a way to pay and then I bought that ticket online while waiting for the bus.

When I arrived at the hotel the reception area was already full of relatives of mine and there was quite the line for check-in.

I even made a friend in line, there was a young man in front of me who was there for a job interview and he asked about the throng of people.

My room is nice but freezing cold, blasting AC again. I think I might have figured out how to turn it off.

I went downstairs for dinner which was a rather overpriced buffet with no good options. I‘ll try to buy something at the supermarket tomorrow because I won‘t eat that food again.

After dinner we all met in one of the conference rooms, seems there will be 39 of us in attendance. It‘ a little sad that most of the older generation is gone by now, there‘s just two brothers left of all those many cousins now.

But the younger ones are making up for it, there were even quite a few babies and kids around.

We talked a lot, I had a hard time getting food and drink and when I asked about how the payment would go they were very surprised that we wanted to pay individually.

I‘m just hoping that nothing went wrong putting everything on my tab, I guess we‘ll see.

I went back to my room rather early, I was just done for the day and tired of being talked at. So I started this post, opened Genshin Impact on my phone, ate some almonds and chocolate I had brought with me, and went to bed.

Today we‘ll be doing all the things, a boat tour, a city tour and a castle tour and we will sit and talk for hours again, phew.