Archives for February 2019

Because I set my alarm half an hour earlier. I figured since I had tried and failed for months to not waste the first 30 to 60 minutes of my day, why not build time in to waste. And I knew that I had to be on time to get out of bed because I needed to shovel snow before making breakfast. My husband had offered to make breakfast instead of me but the earlier the snow is shoveled the easier it is.

So that’s what I did. Spent half an hour on the internet and such, meditated for five minutes and started writing even though I didn’t want to.

Went outside and shoveled. The snow was way less wet than the day before so that was pretty easy. There had been quite a few people walking through it, though, which makes getting it all off the sidewalk near impossible. At least I was the first one to shovel on our side of the street. Win! And I only did the sidewalk, not the inside.

My husband had been a little later than planned because he didn’t hear his alarm. Yes, I’m shocked too, my husband who didn’t use an alarm on principle has now started setting one.

The boy was downstairs early too. And his coffee wasn’t ready yet. I mean, who could know that he’d be five minutes early instead of his usual eight minutes late?

Breakfast was had. My husband and I talked a bit. The boy left for school early. We talked some more. We did the dishes. I folded laundry. My husband said he’d shovel the rest of the snow instead of going for a run and since we were so early I decided to write for another 25 minutes before leaving for my run.

So I sat down and wrote some more and then changed into running clothes and went running while listening to „Can’t Hurt You“. I really do love the book, I’m neglecting all the podcasts for it at the moment.

The weather was gorgeous. I couldn’t stop taking pictures:

My husband went running after all, I met him at the edge of the woods going in when I was about to leave.

Took a shower, made deodorant (that had been on my list for several days in a row), took a shower and helped my husband make lunch:

When I felt the after-lunch slump coming on I immediately got up from the kitchen bench (new trick, it has been working three times in a row now) and did the dishes. The boy helped and we talked a bit about drawing and his math test.

Then I got ready to teach, went over to the studio and practiced a bit. Then I prepared most of my lessons for the week, including finding new songs for several students. That took almost all the time until my first student.

That should have been a new student but she had to cancel because she was sick. She’ll start next week. Then I taught a lesson, then another student called in sick, then I saw a potential new student that will become a new, regular student starting next week. And the new guitar student that came on Friday came by to fetch her guitar that we (well, actually my husband) had repaired over the weekend.

Oh, and I sent an email to yet another new student. I’ll see her on Friday. That will mean teaching late which I don’t like but new students are good. (Old students are also good.) I am currently remembering that I do love doing my job. Most of the time. There was a point where I was so focused on the writing that teaching seemed almost like an afterthought. And then I remembered that a) I will have to sell a lot of books to make the same amount of money as teaching a lesson gets me and b) if teaching starts to be less interesting in any way I can always change things up and make it more interesting. I’m the teacher after all. Though I have to say students can change things up the same I can. And, maybe most important of all, c) I really love music and I love teaching and teaching people how to make music is a really, really great job.

And now I’ve started to prepare the lessons in a slightly more organized way which means I’m not scrambling to get everything ready last minute or with the student standing next to me. Feels much better. And right now seems to take about 1 1/2 hours per week. But I won’t have to do it every week.

Then I made the boy practice piano, started writing this post, finally listened to the piece of classical music for the day (I really liked it, „Fantasie nègre“ by Florence Price. A piano piece hovering between jazzy and very romantic.) then got ready for bed, wrote some more and enjoyed reading the current novel. (I’m still charmed by the “Unlikeable Demon Hunter“-series. I’m currently reading the third one.

I managed to turn the lights out early which is good because of my earlier wake-up time now.

Today there will be errands and the health food store. We’re going to the town hall to register for the petition to save the bees and might stop by the former music store owner’s house on the way, we’ll see.

Then there will be quite a bit of teaching and I’m hoping for strength training. Not much else, I guess.

Woke up from the alarm, did my usual morning things and wrote for half an hour. Win!

Made breakfast, my husband showed up around eight and the boy even got downstairs before 9.30.

There was loads of snow outside and my husband was nice enough to shovel it all away while I was talking to the boy and doing the dishes.

Then my husband and I talked and talked and talked. He was still waffling about getting that new guitar. You see, a student of his had brought an Epiphone Casino along about two weeks ago. We both immediately loved it. So my husband started thinking about getting one of his own, especially since it’s not that costly.

Does he need another guitar? Not really. Does he have one like it already? No. So we have been talking about this on and off for the past two weeks.

We are expecting a little money in the fall and my husband has also been thinking about getting something really special then, maybe a Gibson hollow-body or something. But there is a certain difference between spending 500 Euros on a guitar and spending 3,000.

So we started looking at different models of that kind of guitar. For about two hours. And found one that we had missed before. This one was a little pricier than the Epiphone but also looked like better quality.

But. That would be quite the chunk of money. For a guitar that we don’t really need. But.

Then we started cooking. And I remembered that I had all forgotten about doing yoga. So my husband continued cooking and I did yoga for half an hour. Lunch was exactly what I wanted:

Then dishes again, and a little break and then the sidewalk was in need of shoveling again but first I talked with my husband some more. For about an hour.

We ordered the guitar, by the way. (My husband often gets asked what his wife says when he plays music every evening, or when he buys another guitar. Well, his wife usually says to go for it.)

Then I did.a bit of sloppy snow-shoveling.

Then I forced my husband to help me choose birthday presents for his aunt and uncle who will both turn 80 next week. Since I knew that my mother-in-law still hadn’t settled on a gift I thought she might be interested to join us. So I went upstairs with my laptop and showed her the two nice coffee table books we had chosen. They’ll be getting books with pretty photos of Munich where they lived when they were young. I’m hoping that that will bring up many happy memories for them. (I have had great success with that kind of present for people a certain age. It’s best when the pictures are from a time in the past that they remember.)

Well. The conversation with my mother-in-law did feel slightly surreal. Turns out that we have completely different thoughts about the whole thing, about how much to give, about when to give it and about what makes a good present.

We also talked about all kinds of things and I asked her how she feels. Seems she is feeling better. (I already suspected because she has been more active lately.) She even walked home all the way from church this morning. And makes good use of the bus system.

When I came back downstairs I had to realize that my opportunity for moving any project forward had long passed. Poof!

So the boy and I watched an episode of „Deep Space Nine“ and then there wasn’t much left of the day.

So, only a bit of writing, no music and no sewing. I did make a plan for the upcoming week, though.

But there will be another week and I can do more things then. I hope.

Oh, and I had another potential new student contact me. She is coming through students of my husband. This is all very exciting. And today an actual new student will have her first regular lesson. I’ll get to teach recorder again, something I haven’t done in years.

Other than that there will be running, or rather wading through the sticky snow, I suspect, and teaching and I want to prepare my lessons for the week (new feature – I want to get away from all that spur-of-the-moment-last-minute stuff).

I slept almost until the alarm. My sleep is definitely getting better again. This not drinking much alcohol does seem to make a difference.

I spent a cozy hour in bed, then made breakfast and when my husband showed up at eight I was deep in migrating my bullet journal. I started a new notebook a few days ago and now I’m finally all set up with the new one.

I started uploading the podcast video around seven. When it started it said that it would take approximately 45 minutes. The video was fully uploaded around two in the afternoon. Note to self: uploading to Youtube goes much faster if it’s not the weekend or evening.

My husband had a ton of stuff he wanted to talk about, he is still thinking about getting a new guitar and if so which one. And he wanted to tell me about the amp he worked on during the week. And we talked about his blog and the recordings he did in August. And then the boy came down for breakfast as well and he needed help with his new speaker setup. He needs a new cable and we weren’t sure what to get and where to get it.

All of that took a lot of time and so my husband went running too late. And I left even later. I tried running in the woods again because it was raining and I thought the paths would be muddy but clear of ice. Yeah, not so much. No idea how my husband runs on that but I just couldn’t and so I took the next path out of the woods and kept to the streets again.

And I forgot to take a picture.

I came back home and immediately chopped vegetables for goulash. By that point my husband was rather exhausted and had a hard time with all the moving parts of cooking.

Which resulted in him burning himself twice and about a quarter of the pasta either burnt or on the floor and between the stacked wood.

Lunch was late but tasty:

We agreed on new rules after that: on Saturdays we need to go running no later than 10.30 and there will be no complex dishes. Because Saturday is the day where my husband does longer runs and that with getting away later means that he is totally weak and almost dizzy when it’s time to cook. Especially now that he is having breakfast earlier.

Then I surprised myself by doing the dishes right away. I was afraid of the fabled Saturday slump and determined to evade it this week. Then I went over to the annex, saw that the podcast video had finally finished uploading and published the podcast and announced it everywhere.

Then I slumped a little but made some music too. And then I cut the fabric for a pair of yoga pants:

Hung up a load of laundry and watched some Star Trek with the boy while working on the Sweet Pea Posy blanket.

I wrote for a bit while my husband was playing drums and then guitar in the basement and turned the lights out early.

As I said, good day.

Today there will be yoga and some sewing and more writing and some music. No idea what else but we need to order a new cable for the boy and a birthday gift for my husband’s uncle and aunt.

And I will look back at the week and make plans for the upcoming one.

Woke up ten minutes before the alarm and didn’t anything useful until I rolled out of bed a little too late to make breakfast.

No meditation, no classical music, nothing.

Made breakfast and ate it with the boy. My husband showed up at 8.30. Before then I started setting up my bullet journal for February and migrating the things from the old journal that I still want to keep in the new one.

And I listened to the podcast and wrote the show notes. And found that there is an issue with the sound quality. Nothing I can do anything about. It seems to be a computer issue, not something to do with the new microphone. But still.

I finished part four of the Sweet Pea blanket and started part five. And I cast on for a new hat for the boy but didn’t get far.

Then dishes and cleaning and such.

And then we made lunch. No pizza this week:

Then I worked some more on the podcast, did some dishes, practiced a bit and taught all the students. The potential new student became a new student.

Then I had planned to do strength training with the boy but he had received his new speakers and had tried connecting them to his computer and had run into problems. The cable we ordered was configured in a way that he could only connect one speaker. And that one made weird noises every time he moved the mouse or did anything on the computer.

So that won’t do. We’ll have to send the cable back and get another one.

So we skipped strength training because of the time and watched an episode of “Deep Space Nine“. A very good episode.

Then I got ready for bed almost immediately and didn’t work on anything for the rest of the evening.

I’m hoping for slightly better results today. I’ll get the podcast ready for publishing and publish it, and I’ll go for a run and I’ll write and make a little music and cut out the fabric for a pair of yoga pants.

Wish me luck…

Woke up half an hour before the alarm, that’s what you get from going to bed at 9.30. I had a nice, lazy hour in bed and then my husband showed up to start the fire at 6.45.

I meditated quickly and got up. There was breakfast and crochet. The boy got ready for school. Breakfast for me was a little later than usual, the boy was not talking – as usual in the mornings – my husband was feeling a little under-appreciated what with him getting up early to save on fossil fuel and make the house cozy for us and meanwhile we were slightly cranky because of our disrupted morning routine. Also, we had to talk to someone first thing in the morning. And didn’t get to read while having breakfast.

So, my husband and I talked for a long while about this. He wanted to do us good but we didn’t really want it. And actually, it takes about an hour until the wood stove warms the kitchen. When my husband opened the kitchen door saying, „Leave the door open! I’m doing this so that the warmth can get over there!“ My feet became instant icicles and stayed that way for about an hour.

Now, I do want my husband to be able to come over whenever he wants but we realized that in order to actually heat the house with the wood stove he’d need to get up at six. And we would have the stove going all morning until it was time to cook lunch. That’s a lot of wood.

So we’ll see how that goes.

It makes me all the more determined to start going to bed around nine so that I can write for an hour first thing in the morning. I only need to make myself do it. Yeah. Piece of cake.

Then I went grocery shopping, and helped to make lunch. Yummy veal cutlets:

I did not do the dishes but started to get ready for podcasting right away:

Good thing that I did because I managed to not turn on the video recording the first time through. A very nice 47 minutes-podcast – for nothing. I still have the audio but, well.

So I tried again and botched the second attempt after six minutes. And then I tried again. That one had to be a little shorter because I needed to be ready in time for teaching.

I taught a student. And started working on the podcast again, and my son forgot his piano lesson again but showed up twenty minutes late and at least played his piece, and then I taught two more students and had fun singing „Chop Suey“ from System of a Down with a singing student.

Then I – worked some more on the podcast. And got ready for bed and turned the lights out.

Today there will be cleaning and more podcast-stuff and lots of teaching and strength training and then the weekend and Star Trek.

And maybe I’ll cast on a new hat.