Archives for April 2019

Well, I did what I could but it definitely wasn’t enough.

Woke up around 5.30, meditated, wrote morning pages and worked on the novel for 25 minutes. Got up around 7.30 and my husband showed up at 8. There was a note from my mother-in-law in front of the door saying that we’re crazy to sand all the paint of the balcony and that everybody says a light sanding should be enough.

Unfortunately everybody is wrong and they didn’t see the state of the wood.

Also very unfortunately one of the sanders died the night before and so I had to bike to the hardware store yet again. I bought two sanders and found sandpaper specifically for removing paint. Which turned out to make the work somewhat easier.

Not easy, mind you.

When I got back from the hardware store I finally got to join in the sanding. I had two hours before we had to stop working for Mittagsruhe. In Germany you’re not allowed to make noise between 12 and 2 (or in some regions between 1 and 3). These days professionals seem to be exempt but I have to say I do like when it’s quiet around lunchtime.

Just before noon a friend of my husband’s showed up feeling the need to point out that we should just go with the flow and that everything will decay in the end, even the balcony. So if we don’t manage to finish it before my trip to Hamburg we just have to be content with it.

That was a bad moment for remarks like that. We are completely aware of the Buddha’s teachings and if we don’t manage to finish the balcony in time, so be it. But it would be much better if we could and if we could finish the whole project before the next rain, and that means we are not laid back about the work right now.

I was still much slower than my husband but not as awfully slow as the day before.

While my husband was talking to his friend I started making lunch. I managed to let the rice boil over, not put enough salt into the baked beans and I left cooking the eggs and bacon to my husband because I’m all out of practice with frying:

After lunch I immediately went grocery shopping. To a nearer store this time. We didn’t need much (I hope the list was accurate) but we did need some things for Easter.

That is the thing we didn’t think about when starting our little renovation project. We won’t be able to work on the balcony on Good Friday, Sunday or Monday. I think Saturday should be alright, at least.

Then I taught the first student of the day for thirty minutes, did about forty minutes of housework, taught the second student, changed back into work clothes, helped to send for about 1 1/2 hours, changed back into regular clothes and washed the dust off my face and taught the last student of the day.

My husband, on the other hand, started sanding (standing on the ladder) when I left for the hardware store, stopped for lunch and took a nap, then went buying soda and beer, went back to sanding non-stop with a short dinner break while I was teaching and when I was finished he was up there again.

I haven’t even finished a quarter of the inside while he has finished three quarters of the outside. But we’re not done yet, we need to do nooks and crannies and take more of the bad wood off.

Out big hope is that with unrelenting sanding all day we will be able to get the whole thing ready for painting tonight.

Wish us luck.

I’m not quite sure if I can wield the sander for hours and hours and hours. Yesterday I did about 3 1/2 hours and playing guitar afterwards was no fun.

So today there will be a lot of sanding. Nice and easy.

I did have a nicely productive day but unfortunately the balcony renovation is not going as fast as I hoped.

I woke up at 5.30 without an alarm and since I had taken the precaution of turning wifi off until 7 am for once I meditated first thing, then wrote morning pages and spent fifty minutes with the novel. Phew.

Then breakfast and after that I spent ten minutes on the book cover workshop. Mind you, I spent most of that time looking for pictures to practice with and then on how to open two pictures at the same time in Affinity photo but it was a start.

My husband showed up and then we talked and talked. It was a pleasure and I plied my sock yarn at the same time.

Then I decided since I had to go to the tea shop anyway I could get the things for our lunch as well and that took 45 minutes. Afterwards I proceeded to the hardware store for paint and such and it took me so long to buy paint that my husband was worried something had happened to me.

You see, buying paint for balconies is complicated. I did know which brand of paint I wanted to buy from the start but there were about four different kinds that might be the right ones. So I had to read all the descriptions on all the paint cans. Then I realized that they didn’t have that paint in white. Which meant deciding between the other, inferior brands of paint. And then I had to read all the labels for those and calculate how many canisters we’d need and put everything on my shopping cart. And then I looked around the corner and there was the paint I had originally wanted, in white.

So I put all the cans back on the shelves, pulled out the other paint, the one that I wanted, did the reading and calculating thing again, and then had to decided which kind of primer to get and how much.

I went to the cash register and paid a surprisingly big amount of money. For two big cans of paint, a bucket, a flower pot, two paint brushes and two pairs of rubber gloves. Weird. And that was with the 10% off-card that my mother-in-law had given us. I looked at the receipt and found that the cashier had thought I had two identical cans of paint. I probably wouldn’t have said anything if she had taken the price of the one on sale but she didn’t.

So I waited until the next customer was done, talked to her, had to go to the information desk, had to wait and then I got my money back.

So we had lunch an hour later than planned because of this. By then we were both pretty hungry so it tasted good:

(I was too hungry to think about the picture before I started to eat, sorry.)

Then we took a bit of a break and then we finally started sanding again. Well, I did. My husband had already sanded away for an hour in the morning.

It isn’t going well. It seems I’m wielding the sander like a madwoman and all I get is dust and there is still paint on there.

And we were running through sandpaper pretty quickly. But we had more! Only that one only lasted for about five minutes before breaking. Oh no! But wait, there might be more in the basement! Yeah!

And then I had to stop sanding because I had to get ready to teach a student. So I worked a total of maybe 2 1/2 hours on the balcony and spent about two hours shopping. Not the most efficient use of my time, I must say.

I taught the student, got ready for bed, watched the monthly Orna Ross webinar and turned out the lights.

Today there should be a day of much sanding, only…

I might have scheduled lessons at 2.30, at 4 and at 6.30. Which basically means I can only help sanding in the morning. Because the sanding is dirty work and getting in and out of the work clothes takes time.

I might start doing the taxes just because I feel so bad about leaving my poor husband alone out there.

Didn’t get enough sleep yet again because I didn’t want to stop watching that „Alive and Kicking“-documentary. No writing in the morning and I don’t remember if I meditated or not. This is clearly not working at the moment so I’ll change my morning routine and get up right after the alarm goes off. At least that’s the plan.

I was happy to see that I’m not hopelessly behind on writing yet, if I manage to write 1,200 words five times a week until the end of June I will be able to finish until my new and improved deadline.

Mind you, all I wrote last week was 2,000 words so maybe I am already hopelessly behind. Who knows?

There was breakfast and my husband got up late. I spent the time he ate breakfast winding plying balls for the sock yarn that I’m currently spinning. I started the last step of plying and the yarn is looking really nice right now.

Then we went and measured the balcony and found that there will be about 24 square meters to paint. Since we had decided to use the better brand of paint and since there is a shop that sells it one town over I had decided to take the bike trailer and pick up a prescription for thyroid meds at my doctor’s office and go to the nicer health food store while I was there.

It was rather cold and windy and there is a hill between this town and the next that is quite bad for motivation because you have to go up and down both ways but since I had skipped my run for this I was okay.

So I got my meds and then looked for the paint shop. Which was closed. Their website had said they would be open in the morning but the sign on the shop itself said they’d open in the afternoon. Also, that the shop will be closing for good in two weeks time.

I briefly thought about waiting for two hours and then I briefly debated coming back in the afternoon but I wasn’t all that keen on it. Going there takes about half an hour by bike, and it was windy and then there’s that hill.

So I went to the health food store, bought all the meat and all the sweets and bananas and lip balm and potato chips and went back home again.

My Fitbit, by the way, thinks that I was totally not doing anything. Of that hour of bike riding I did today it counted twelve minutes and when I was working on the balcony I took it off.

I came home – without paint – and diced a carrot for lunch:

That tasted really great.

Then I ate some chocolate bars and some licorice that I had bought. It is a little hard to get licorice here (thought I have found out that my regular grocery store does sell my favorite kind, so there’s that) and I really wanted some. It did look a little squished but the taste was alright. Unfortunately I later noticed that the ‚best before‘-date had been at the end of last November. Oops.

It didn’t have any ill effects, though.

I had done the dishes right after lunch (I’m trying to reestablish that habit.) and then folded some laundry and hung up some more and then we finally got started with the balcony.

The first step, of course, is the sanding. This is how I was kitted out:

I still had dust in my eyes but not a lot, and after a while I also remembered to use earplugs.

Both of us sanded for a little more than two hours and this is how it looked afterwards:

Looks good doesn’t it? Now here is the balcony in all its glory:

You can see on the left how my husband used the stepladder and how I didn’t. Also, in my defense I ended up with the inferior sander again. We have two and one is working quite a bit better than the other one. Maybe we’ll change tomorrow. Or maybe not, if my husband has to work on the ladder all day and I get to just stand on the balcony for work.

Now, two hours is not all that long but after that my arms were a little limp and my hands were tingling and numb. That will be fun over the next few days, I’m sure.

Tomorrow I will take the bike trailer to the hardware store and get paint for real this time. Not the good one but we have used that brand before and it will have to be enough.

We had to stop sanding at six because my husband had a student coming but I’m glad for it.

Today there will be the buying of the paint and the sanding and more sanding and then the teaching of two students.

I didn’t set my alarm yet again and slept in until almost 6! Then lounged in bed until I got up for breakfast.

The boy showed up around eight which was good because he needed to get out the door around 9.30. I helped him cram all his stuff into the big backpack and we both hunted for the case for the old ebook reader he was taking but didn’t find it.

He will be gone until next Sunday and packed most of his clothes, two big notebooks, loads of pens and about two pounds of hair and beauty products. In his defense both his sensitive skin and his thick and curly hair need special attention but if I had been in his shoes I’d have left some of it home.

He was horrified to learn that two of the four trains he would be taking would not have wifi and had neglected to think about his phone’s battery life. This is something I see a lot of teenagers doing, they are using their phones constantly without taking care to have battery left for vital things like navigating an unknown city.

But the boy heeded my advice and spent some time reading a book. On the ebook reader, of course.

I did walk him to his train and had him take an earlier one because the ones going from our town to Munich are often late and my inkling was right, the train was late but he still caught the one he was supposed to be on.

He had to change trains twice after that and I was checking the train app every ten minutes to see if everything went right and got updates from him like, „I’m on the train now.“ Very helpful.

Everything went alright even though his next to last train was late and he only had something like two minutes to change trains. The only thing that could have gone better was that he didn’t have any lunch. I had suggested to him to take a couple sandwiches but he refused and said that he’d get a burger after arrival.

Well, apparently he met some other camp participants at the train station and they walked directly to the youth hostel where they are staying. No lunch.

Meanwhile here at home I spent most of the day watching the Paris-Roubaix bike race while plying some sock yarn:

Sorry for the mess.

The only thing I did to help making lunch was peel the potatoes and set the table, my husband did the rest:

It was really good. That’s chicken underneath the veggies. I managed to do the dishes right away which was good.

Afterwards I went back to watching the race and spinning. I did finish the plying ball in progress, had a snack, changed into pajamas, shortly thought about writing and instead started watching Fred Astaire-videos on Youtube and then the „Alive and Kicking“-documentary on Netflix. I’m rather proud of the fact that I managed to stop watching that after an hour so I could turn the lights out before 10.

Today we will start preparing for the balcony thing, we will measure and calculate and see what supplies we need, I will take the bike trailer to the next town over to get paint and I’ll go to the health food store there (it is much nicer than the local one) and get things like meat and mint tea and lip balm and potato chips. As one does.

There was also talk of a hardware store run, I guess I’ll do that too.

So no running. I am actually hoping to start sanding the balcony already because tomorrow and the day after I have a couple of students coming so I’d like to get a head start.

I had turned the alarm off but woke up at 5.13 anyways. I did feel good, strangely enough. I didn’t want to start the weekend just checking off to-dos so I ended up not doing much of anything. I did enjoy myself, though.

I had a late breakfast after a lot of reading in bed and the rest of the family was a little late as well.

I didn’t quite know what to knit and so I started the second running sock without having finished the first one. The next step would be knitting the toes which needs a bit more headspace and quiet. Since the sock yarn came in two small balls instead of one big one I decided to just start the next sock.

I found that the only note I had ever made on the how I made the first one was, „Running sock, cast on 72 stitches on 1 mm needles.“ That was all and it wasn’t even in the index of my bullet journal. Seems I will have to count the rows on the first one. Later I found that I was pretty sure I had knitted the ribbing for 20 rounds and 55 rounds of the rest of the leg but I can’t be sure until I have compared that to the existing sock.

They boy showed up irritatingly late and immediately said that he needed more supplies for his trip. I really don’t like when he tells me he needs stuff just after I went shopping but that’s what always happens. So I have him some money and told him to get it himself.

While he was having breakfast we were talking about all kinds of things related to his trip, what to pack, how to get the ticket on his phone, when to do what and then I tried upping the balance on his phone to no avail. Tried it five times with two different modes of payment. Weird.

All of that meant that I was late doing the dishes and then way late for running. I had planned to do almost 10k but in then end resigned myself to a walk around the neighborhood.

When I came home my husband was busy cooking and then the boy showed up saying that he didn’t get anything he went out to buy. He couldn’t find his hand creme and lotion in the store. So I put my shoes back on after talking to my husband, told the boy that he had to come with me even though he really didn’t want to and we went to the health food store.

And the two things he had wanted to get were right there. In his defense, the layout of the health food store is rather illogical and weird. Good thing I’m used to it.

Then we had chili for lunch which was really good:

I indulged in a brief slump but then cut the boy’s hair, helped him think through his packing list, did the dishes, finally took a shower and – also finally – got up my kanban board for the second quarter of the year:

The smaller stickies are much better. I felt more motivated right away but didn’t actually do anything.

I did help the boy with his packing again but he didn’t finish it (of course). I think he spent all afternoon on getting half his packing list done. While trying to program some math equation into python.

Then we sat down together, all three of us and watched „The Big Lebowski“. My husband and I both had seen the film before but it was the boy’s first time. He did like it.

And then I went to bed a little late.

Today there will be the getting the boy ready for his trip and seeing him off on time, some yoga (I hope) and something productive. It is supposed to be real cold with snow.

Woke up, meditated, wrote my morning pages and was all set to start writing at six when the boy turned up to take a shower (he usually showers in the evenings but had so much school stuff to do the night before that he decided to get up early instead) and he also wanted an early breakfast.

So I decided to write after breakfast because there would be ample time then, got up and made breakfast. And then didn’t write.

My husband got up, we talked and I knitted a few rounds on the toe socks and then we got going. I changed the sheets on my bed and started a load of laundry and did most of the weekly cleaning. And then it was time to go out for lunch:

The food was rather good and the restaurant not crowded at all.

Then we went back home, I published the podcast and taught all the students.

After that the boy and I decided to reschedule bodyweight training and to just watch ‚Star Trek: Beyond‘. I liked it even though it is completely different than all Star Trek before. It bothered me until I reframed it into the ‚alternate universe‘-narrative. And made peace with how contemporary movies are structured. It’s all about the visuals and the action.

Then I went to bed.

Today marks the start of Easter break. I have plans but I am not sure if I should do taxes or sort wool first. Which is always a little dangerous because if I have two things that I want to achieve on a day off I usually end up doing neither. Oh, and then writing would be a very good idea, indeed. And I want to set up the Knaben board again. It has been bare for a week now and the pen and sticky notes are sitting there all ready.

Okay, I’ll decide right after breakfast and stick to the plan then. There will certainly be running and I need to cut the boy’s hair and help him pack for his upcoming trip.