Archives for June 2019

I had turned my alarm off in an attempt to get more sleep and woke up at six all cranky. Opened all the windows wide and sat in bed reading for a while.

I had a late breakfast before my husband joined me, made a list for the day and knitted a bit.

We tried going running early but I didn’t leave the house until after ten. Fortunately it wasn’t as hot as expected. I ran another 5k which was fun:

I did forget my hat:

Back home I immediately headed out again to run some errands. I wanted to get a binder for my HB90 planner. I’ve been using the planner to plan quarterly all year but hadn’t printed it out yet. The selection of binders wasn’t the best so I got a plain white one. I also bought some bread because we wanted to have salad for lunch and only had sourdough on hand.

This time I did most of the cooking:

It turns out that making Salate Niçoise means needing three pots to cook potatoes, beans and eggs in. It was pretty good, though.

I made the boy help me with the dishes afterwards and then took a little break. I finally took a shower and tried the boy’s hair products. I have to say that I didn’t have any frizz after using them but I’m still not sure if I like them. In the afternoon I printed the planner and put it into the new binder and wasted a lot of time on the internet as usual. No writing again.

And then my husband informed me that the red currants were ripe and needed to be transformed into jam. I had totally forgotten about that and was angry at losing my evening. My husband didn’t realize that making jam on Sunday means doing the time-intensive work of cleaning the berries and making the juice the day before. While I am not all that keen on the making of the jam itself it is actually the fast and easy part of the jam making-process.

On the other hand we won’t be making as much jam this year as we used to do, first of all there isn’t that much fruit and also the only one who eats and likes it is my husband. And we can always give fruit to my mother-in-law who makes jam for the annual bazaar.

I did some strength training, I still got to watch Star Trek with the boy and I also ate some dinner because I was just so hungry.

And then I made red currant juice and went to bed.

When I woke up from the alarm at 5.30 I felt like I had barely slept but my Fitbit told another story. Seems I spent almost nine hours in bed with the lights out.

I opened all the windows immediately and it was blessedly cool at that hour.

I meditated and made breakfast, the boy got up and ready for school. I got an email about my rewards for the „Diving Kickstarter“ and had fun choosing a workshop and lecture. At current count I have 16 lectures and 2 workshops from WMG-Publishing alone and so far have only watched two of the lectures. I want to make time in my life to learn more about writing, so that will go into my plan for the next quarter.

My husband showed and I knitted on the cardigan for a while. We got going soon after that, though, because it was starting to heat up again. My husband always runs on Fridays and I was so motivated by finishing „Running is my Therapy“ that I decided to do the same:

And this is how I look after 500 meters of walking and 2 kilometers of running in rather warm weather. I took way less walking breaks than usual:

Yeah, I don’t do heat well. But it was great. That was the half-way point, by the way.

Back home I did the usual weekly cleaning and heated frozen pizza:

It was okay but the boy and I both felt less satisfied as if we had eaten homemade pizza. It doesn’t taste as good, there’s sugar in it and I never want to stop eating afterwards. So I guess next time will be homemade again. Tastes much better as well. And there are no weird ingredients in it.

Then I got ready for teaching my first student early. Between the first and the second student I hung up a load of laundry and practiced. Before the last student I had a longer break which I used to eat some sandwiches and talk with the boy about some stuff I needed help figuring out. You know, the thing that’s called ‚rubber-ducky debugging‘. But the boy can actually make suggestions too so it’s better than that.

Meanwhile the boy was in the basement whittling some more chess figures. They need to be done by next week so they really have to push.

After my last student we sat down in front of TV and watched some Star Trek and I spun a bit. Then watched the Alliance of Independent Authors’ Advanced Salon and turned out the lights.

Today there will be more running and I want to think about my goals for the next three months. And do all the things but we all know how that will go on a hot Saturday.

I woke up from the alarm at 5.30 and immediately got up to open all the windows. The ones in the basement were already open, it turned out that my husband had woken up at 4 and taken care of them. By seven I had to close everything up again because the heat was starting to creep in.

My husband showed up for his breakfast early, while the boy was still at home. We talked about something I had read on the internet for an hour while I knitted on the purple cardigan.

Then we did the dishes and shortly afterwards I rode my bike to the big supermarket. I did an epic grocery run that I could barely lift so taking the bike trailer was definitely the right choice. Also, if I had walked all the way everything frozen would have been totally melted on the way even with the cooling bag.

We started making lunch early, waffling between mashed potatoes and gnocchi until the end. The potatoes we used weren’t the right kind for either but not nice enough to be eaten as is:

The whole morning the phone had been ringing and of my three students for the day two had canceled. And I had a reschedule for today. It seems the crazy phase of the school year has started up again. July is always a mad dash with students having to reschedule all the lessons.

After lunch I did the dishes and asked the boy to go to his oral surgeon appointment without me. It was just to remove the stitches and I didn’t think I was needed.

He came back after fifteen minutes with everything being fine and we went off to a jeans shop in town that was going out of business. My mother-in-law had seen it the day before and had wanted to buy two pairs of pants for the boy but didn’t know his size (neither did we). Since buying clothes for a 16yo- without consulting him is always a bad idea I had talked to him but he refused to go there with his grandma. He actually didn’t want to buy anything but had to concur that owning just two pairs of pants (one with holes) might be considered a reason to go out and buy more.

He asked me to accompany him which I was honored to do. Even if that meant I had to change my plans for the day. The shop was almost empty but the saleswoman was as professional as ever. One look and she had an idea about his size and after trying out half a dozen pairs of pants we left with two pairs of jeans (one blue and one black) and a black knitted cotton sweater. Everything was so deeply discounted that I had to pay only 50 Euros instead of the regular 200 or so.

And then we had some ice cream and walked back home.

There I waited for my student and we had a really great lesson.

After that the boy had to leave, he is going to the theater in Munich to see Macbeth with school and then I finally could test my new microphone. I am very pleased.The setup was really easy, and the sound was good. There are still a few things I need to tweak and I will probably not be able to plug my earphones directly into the microphone but that’s something I can work with. Phew.

I had hoped to spin a little, again, but when just sitting in the coolest room of the house is making you sweat spinning doesn’t sound appealing.

I almost forgot to do strength training but remembered eventually.

Since I was super-tired I just declared defeat and went to bed. This time I actually did turn the lights out early.

Today there will be the cleaning and frozen pizza because my husband is meeting his friend who lives in Spain and they are going out to the Greek restaurant. I didn’t really want to cook so I decided that eating frozen cardboard once in a while won’t kill us.

I’ll start teaching early but have lots of breaks so I’m hoping that I won’t melt and then I’d like to watch some Star Trek with the boy. And then it will be the weekend.

I woke up at 5.30 but was not happy about it, I felt the lack of sleep right away. I did meditate and write morning pages but isn’t manage to work on the novel. On the other hand I did open all the windows and made breakfast early. Next up I need to remember to open the basement windows in the morning as well because by the time my husband gets up it’s already getting too warm outside.

I also had totally forgotten how the heat always saps my energy. The kitchen only had 25 °C but still. I stopped knitting after half an hour because the yarn was starting to stick to my fingers. I did the breakfast dishes and got ready to run right away. Running through the woods was fine but on the fields it was already a little too hot for my taste:

My heart rate soared up to 190 beats per minute at a point, that was when I decided to walk until it was down again.

I came back home, took a shower and wanted to write a few words but again, no chance. A few minutes later the boy came home unexpectedly early. We had Brazilian food for lunch:

I did the dishes, read some more of the current novel, watched a few videos about writing, did a singing warm-up and some scales on the piano and taught my students (the studio, by the way, was at 29°C, not the best temperature for focusing on making music). After that it was still really, really hot. I started writing this post, found a cool and shady room in the house and read for a bit, read some more and went to bed. On time for a change.

Today I will take the bike trailer to the big supermarket and buy all the food. I also want to try my new microphone out and there will be teaching. It is supposed to be a tad cooler today, so there’s hope.

Woke up at 5.30 from the alarm and actually managed to work on the novel for, um, all of seven minutes. There might be some room for improvement. My husband showed up at 7.30 and that threw me off so hard that I apparently forgot to close the boy’s windows. I did manage to go running before it was scorching hot, though, so I count that as a win:

Only 3.2 k at a rather slow pace.

Then there was still an hour before we had to make lunch. Yeah! I took a shower and afterwards my husband said, „The boy’s window is open wide!“ Since I distinctly remembered closing it earlier and closing the blinds we both got rather angry with my mother-in-law who still thinks that opening all the windows wide on a hot sunny day is a good idea.

I wasted another hour.

Then there was lunch:

There is produce from the garden even. Salad, herbs, a rather small cucumber and a really small green pepper.

The boy came home from school. We talked a little. I did the dishes. It was hot. There was teaching. In my big, fat break between two students I attempted fixing some layout issues on the blog. I ended up changing the style sheet and then changing it back. I also changed the header image up. All of this took a lot of time and now the type in the image is still not sitting in an aesthetically pleasing place and the image is still squashed up to the left and way too small. I don’t have the patience for fiddly work.

After my last student my husband wanted me to look at the roof he finally put up over one of the wood piles (splendid!) and then I happened to walk into my mother-in-law. Who is going away for five days next week. Both men in the house knew about this but nobody told me. I mentioned that she must have opened the boy’s window in the heat and she said, no, she didn’t. That she hadn’t been upstairs all day.

And that was the moment it dawned on me. I must have forgotten to close the window. And the memory I had of closing it must have been from the day before. And we all got really angry with her for no reason. Well, the reason was that I am a fuzz-head. Oops.

I did strength training for the first time in ages, started reading the new Sarina Bowen book („Superfan“) after finishing „Part-Time Gods“ (so good – I want to know what happens next right now), finally got my new microphone but haven’t tested it yet, decided that I was too exhausted to write more and went to bed an hour late.

Today there will be running and more heat and more students and hopefully one or the other productive thing.

At least we tried.

I had set my alarm for 5.30, meditated and read the „Daily Stoic“ (and checked my email, ahem) before starting to write. I made breakfast, briefly worried if the boy had overslept but he came down to breakfast right on time. He is still living on a constant diet of yogurt after the wisdom teeth-thing but is improving.

He left for school and just as I was starting to knit my husband wanted breakfast too. So we talked and I knitted and we decided to get going early because of the heat. Did the dishes and got ready to run:

It was very warm but a little windy, so running would have been okay. Unfortunately I didn’t feel like it and walked most of the way. Still. 6.4 k of walking are still exercise:

I came back early enough to go to the health food store before lunch, so I slunk from shadow to shadow while listening to podcasts. I came back with all the ingredients for lunch, took a shower and chopped things:

Then I fell into a deep slump but managed to do more dishes and talk with the boy on his lunch break. I lent a hand to my husband’s project of putting a bigger roof on the wood pile and did some printer maintenance, answered some emails and printed something out for a student.

Then it was time to teach my Monday students, then laundry, a little bit of dinner and bed.

Today there will be a short run, teaching and writing. Very exciting as usual.