I slept for nine hours or so until after 6. No writing, no meditation, no morning pages. I was just too exhausted.
We had a leisurely breakfast with some talking and planning and I spent most of the morning making a packing list for my trip to Hamburg next week and made a pile of things I want to take with me. I even washed a bra by hand.
We did need that time off to lick our wounds. On top of my full-body soreness I also had painful wrists that felt like I shouldn’t do anything with my hands at all for at least a day. Since I can’t stand doing nothing I did try plying more yarn and managed to finish the first half of the sock yarn I’m making. Which is very good because I will need a travel knitting project. Plain socks from handspun would be perfect. But for that I will need to ply the second half as well. We’ll see how that goes.
Then we had shrimp risotto:
Afterwards we took a short break and then it was back into the dusty, paint-stained work clothes for a round of hand-sanding. Fortunately that didn’t make much noise and so we did that all afternoon. We accessed all the little crannies where the sanders don’t reach. My husband also excavated a patch of rotten woods right in the middle of the big weight-bearing beam that holds up the front of the balcony. We will have to shore that up eventually for safety.
The depth of the hole and the sanding that felt completely futile – I was sanding and sanding with hurting fingers and the moss still remained on the wood – I promptly broke out in tears right there sitting on the balcony floor. I knew that it was mostly exhaustion but still.
My husband took pity on me and sent me downstairs so I could bake Osterzopf after all. Baking that is basically the only Easter tradition I follow and it had looked as if that wouldn’t be possible this year. My mother-in-law had already gotten some store-bought Zopf and wanted to give us half anyway because she can’t eat a whole one by herself.
Still. I changed into cleaner clothes and washed my hands, made the dough and went back upstairs to do another round of sanding.
By 7 I had enough, just after my husband had declared that he would sand for as long as it would take, until it was dark, or even by lamplight. I almost burst into tears again but instead we just went downstairs for dinner.
Meanwhile the dough hadn’t properly risen. That had never happened before. My husband thought the kitchen was too cold. So we turned the heating on, placed the bowl with the dough in front of the heater and just an hour later it looked much better.
Dinner was had, then I made the Zopf and baked it and did all the dishes for the day.
I went to bed too late because of the baking and such but it was totally worth it.
Today there will be – wait for it – more sanding. This time with loud machines that make your arms vibrate. Yeah!
We are hoping to finish the sanding by lunchtime and maybe even to start painting with primer.
Best case scenario would be that we finish priming today and paint the first and second coat of the actual white paint on Sunday and Monday. It would be perfect if we could also make the special, planned Easter lunch and be done with painting before the boy comes home Sunday evening.
Right now the prospect of just using paint brushes feels like vacation but I’m sure we’ll think otherwise in a day or two.
If we could finish everything on Monday I could take Tuesday off (with only three students to teach – piece of cake) and go on my trip all rested and energetic on Wednesday.
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