Can you believe it? 200 days of daily blogging. Yeah.
And as I had hoped this daily blogging thing has made blogging more fun again. The only thing I miss is writing long rambling posts about one topic. But they might come back in the future.
And I keep reminding me when I whine about not writing enough that every day I am indeed writing about five hundred words here. That is something. It doesn’t count towards gaining mastery in writing, though, because it’s not really deliberate practice. More like jamming around.
So the travel to my parents went very well. All the trains were on time and not as crowded as usual. I guess most people who were visiting family over Easter traveled the day before.
I didn’t take any snacks after all which made me hungry for most of the train ride. Do you have that too, that the minute you start traveling you want to eat? I’m not quite sure if that’s because there’s nothing to distract and not much to do, or if it’s because travel makes hungry. My father once told me, „You’re like your grandmother. The minute the car left our street she started unpacking the sandwiches.“ Well, not yesterday.
I did have a huge portion of Asian noodles for lunch, so that was good. And I bought a new hair tie.
I have decided to keep my hair up all the time while around my parents because my mother hates it when my hair is long. Now she will know that I have it long but not how long and it doesn’t flow all over the place. This is just one of the weird things I do to try and keep my mother pleased. Which she never is, by the way. It’s one of those relationships.
The weather is nicer than predicted, so that is good. I only got rained on once today, and that was right in the morning when walking to the train station. I carried my damp gloves around in my pocket all day, and they are drying right next to me as I type this.
The train ride was not as productive as planned (and yes, I should stop making these plans). Even though I was sitting in the quiet zone there was a group of people going to a Christening, and I can now tell you most of the life story of one of them. And the other one who is working on her PhD in art history. I really need to get myself noise-canceling headphones. But I think I’d feel weird not hearing what’s going on around me. It might make me more productive and less irritated, though.
I did write 500 words on the train, each one harder than the last. Fun! That’s what you get if you don’t write for several days.
I also had to rip back most of the knitting I did on the train because I hadn’t looked at the instructions properly. It said, „knit to marker two, then knit 58 stitches, wrap and turn“ I knitted 58 stitches and started the wrap and turn and ended up with a rather lopsided object. Then I spent another hour knitting back. Also fun. But now I’m back on track.
I have to say that I only want to knit the Carbeth cardigan right now but that one is at home. I didn’t feel like lugging around 500 grams of bulky yarn.
Deciding to put my clothes and toiletries (and the spare yarn) into the messenger bag, and everything I needed on the train into the backpack was a great decision. All the heavy things were in the backpack. I put the messenger bag up on the luggage rack and had the backpack at my feet. With tea (I ended up taking mint tea after all), and water, and knitting, and the laptop, and the notebook, and the tissues, and the almonds, and the chocolate all right there.
I think the next time I travel I’ll try to make do with just the backpack. If I put my mind to it I could probably travel with a purse but that would severely limit the knitting and spinning I could take. And sitting on a train without knitting is just sad.
I deleted another book from my e-reader. I started reading „The Perfect Fit“ because it sounded interesting, and an author I follow has read it and liked it. I kept reading and yelling at the book in my head, and thinking, „Why is this scene in the book? This doesn’t actually do anything.“ And so I decided that life is too short for books like that and just didn’t finish it. That makes it three books I didn’t finish this month which is a new record.
It also shows that people are more invested in a book if they actually paid for it.
The good thing about it is that now I have a free spot in my KU library so I can read the next Chloe Adler novel when it comes out on Monday. Ha!
And I didn’t bake anything after all. My husband already reminded me that when you mention things in front of my mother she keeps feeling like she is the one who has to do them. So when I tell her that I spun some yarn she feels bad because if she had to spin she’d hate it. And so we decided on not baking. Because if I bake she gets exhausted, or something. (No, that was not said out loud.)
When I left after dinner I took a bottle of beer with me, as one does, and she said, „I did put two glass bottles in the fridge but there is beer in plastic bottles too.“ And I was, like, so what? „Well, the glass bottles are so heavy. You wouldn’t want to carry those back to your hotel.“ Um, when I left home this morning I was carrying a thermos full of tea and a full stainless steel water bottle with me. I left the thermos at your house. Also, I used to lug about twenty more kilos around on my body. Carrying a bottle of beer in my backpack will be perfectly fine. Geez.
Today there will be writing before breakfast, I hope. (My mother said, „Well, I’m usually up around eight and have breakfast between 8.30 and 9. But you can totally sleep in if you want.“ We agreed on nine for breakfast and I thought, „Yeah! That means I have a little more than two hours for writing and meditation and reading and relaxing before I need to go over to them.”
I might be a little hungry by breakfast time, though.
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