creative.mother.thinking

I didn’t sleep well and felt like crap when waking up with an actual fever. Definitely sick:

This is my first time ever. Not something I had been looking forward to.

In addition to the headache, everything ache and sore throat I also got a developing cough.

So I did nothing all day besides sitting around. Husband and son are both negative, at least that is something.

Since I’ve been definitely contagious at least since Thursday we decided it doesn’t make much sense to isolate myself but we’ll keep on testing before meeting other people, including my mother-in-law.

There was lunch:

I did go to bed somewhat earlier than the days before and that was it.

Because I’m sick. I have a cold and a sore throat and am trying to rest my voice. Fun! I’m cold all the time and my energy is extra low.

I still did morning pages and manuscript time and yoga but that was mostly it.

Not doing anything all day also involved all the dishes, folding all the laundry and teaching three students. And playing video games.

We had asparagus risotto for lunch:

I spent most of the day sitting around feeling miserable and shivering. Should have fetched myself a blanket but that only occurred to me at the end of the day.

Speaking of blankets, I rooted through my stash to see if I had enough yarn for the Wildshore blanket CAL and I hadn’t:

So I made the snap decision to order the yarn pack. In actual merino wool. From the UK, which means I will have to pay another 19% on top of the price because of Brexit.

The boy went out the second day in a row to meet a friend at the local Christmas market.

I watched a bit of C-drama while working on the current blanket-in-progress and went to bed.

Today will be more doing nothing, I guess. Fingers crossed I won’t get laryngitis again.

And I did get the next version of the book cover and it looks much better.

Another very busy day and no time to write here, sorry, but I went to the optician who advised me to not wait with cataract surgery  much longer because my eyes are getting worse and worse and glasses with my prescription are eye-watering expensive. I bought the last (not quite as expensive pair) 14 months ago.

He also answered all my questions such as „why can’t they just do one eye and not the other?“ And the answer is that since my lenses need to be very strong and since after surgery one of them will be inside my eye and the other one a few centimeters on front of it in my glasses the images those lenses produce will be different sizes. And the difference would be too big for my brain to compensate. Huh. Which is why the eye that is mostly okay will need to have surgery as well.

The other question was about what I would do between surgeries (because they do one eye first, then wait for a few weeks to do the other one) and he said I could get a contact lens for the untouched eye that could stay in round the clock during that time. Neat.

So I guess I’ll talk to my eye doctor in a few months again.

I also went to both the health food store and the supermarket, had comfort food for lunch:

I played some Genshin, talked with the rest of the family, took an enneagram test, and got the new version of the book cover. Oh, and I changed my workflow for proofreading and it’s so much better!

Still very tired but I’m working on it.

I was again very, very, extremely tired. But the fact was that I really didn’t want to go to sleep the night before. This is a problem, so after doing my morning routine I did a bit of research and found this video again. Where Dr K says – and I agree – the problem is not the bedtime routine, the problem is how you spend your day.

So I decided to a) get the most important things done for the day and b) feel my feelings instead of trying to push them away. Always fun.

I went for my walk/run (exercise helps with sleep as well):

I took a shower, folded a bitof laundry and had lunch:

The boy is diurnal at the moment which is a bit unusual but nice. We talked a little after lunch and then I decided to play some Genshin but all twenty of the minutes I had were taken up with downloading the new content, so I read instead.

I taught some students and used the break in between to finally write the email to the cover designer. Which meant my most important task of the day was done. And I finally printed some grocery lists, that had been on my to dos for more than a week.I taught some more and then the boy and I did bodyweight training and talked some more.

There was lunch and then more Genshin and I made huge progress on that as well.

By then I was late again, oops. I did the dishes, made a list for today, started a new knitting project while watching TV and went to bed at a reasonable time.

And today I get to choose new glasses, I guess.

It’s not that I was anxious about that doctor’s appointment but since I’ve been waiting for the verdict when my cataracts will be bad enough for surgery it’s always a bit fraught.

Spoiler: no surgery yet, the doctor told me to come back in a year or two. Slightly weird.

I went to bed after midnight, always the best life choice when you get up at 6.30, which dominated the whole day. I did my morning routine, switching to the slightly longer and more demanding 30-day yoga challenge, and I spent some time on the manuscript. In this case mostly time trying to figure out the weird problem Scrivener seems to have with smart quotation marks.

Boiling water for tea on the wood stove took ages and we were quite late with breakfast even though my husband had started early. The boy was awake in the morning which threw us all off a bit as well.

I had plans to do the dishes before leaving the house but in the end my husband did them which was helpful.

I took the earlier train and ended up being so early that I could pop into the drug store for some errands.

The doctor’s visit went pretty fast and I left with a piece of paper that said I need stronger glasses. Something I had been suspecting for a while now. The weird thing is that they measured my glasses and wrote the current prescription down as well and that doesn’t match the numbers I have saved at all. And there was no talk of the cataracts at all. Huh.

I have an appointment with my optician tomorrow, so we’ll see.

On my way home I bought my husband’s favorite pastry and passed the health food store.

At home my husband was very stressed but lunch was almost ready. We were out of parmesan which constitutes an emergency for sure. I offered to go out and get some but he doesn’t like it. So we grated some Manchego. Shrug:

The boy even ate with us which was nice.

Before leaving the house in the morning I had decided to try my luck with Genshin’s gacha system to see if I could get the Arlecchino character with 80 wishes and – I could. So then the boy tried to teach me all I need to know going forward in one conversation. I might need another one later.

Then it was time to teach which was very nice. I used a break between students to hang up laundry, then taught a bit more and then I attended yet another Zoom meeting, this time with Jessica Abel. I had thought I wouldn’t have time but a student canceled.

By then I was very, very tired, ate dinner, did the dishes, played some Genshin, was very determined to watch some C-drama and spin but got stuck on classical and jazz musicians reacting to BTS videos on YouTube. And went to bed too late again.

And next I will pull my old glasses out and see if they work better because they are stronger than the newest pair. This might become an expensive month. But then December usually is.

Well, not quite. Some things are the same every day, others change.

I worked a little on proofreading, did yoga and morning pages and such and had a very nice conversation with my husband. The boy was even awake at daylight and went out to buy yogurt right before lunch.

I did lots of dishes and then went out for a walk/run that was about an hour, a little longer than the past few days:

I stuffed the paper recycling into the bin but it didn’t all fit. And then it was time for lunch:

This was way yummier than it looks.

Then it was time to talk to the boy while he was eating lunch, play a bit of Genshin and start on the annual projected income report for the Artists’ Social Security Fund. I finished that one after teaching and then had to wait for my husband to be done with his last student so I could report for him as well. I was lacking a document that was in his studio.

I ate dinner, played some more Genshin, did my Chinese app, started writing this post, finally did the dishes, made a list for today and went to bed.

I spent quite a bit of time thinking about the cover of book 2 but never quite got far enough to write it all down for the designer.

Today looks equally busy, I’ll head off to the eye doctor soon.