Archives for June 2019

And failing, of course. I’m still thinking that getting enough sleep trumps everything else so without an alarm I woke up at 7.30 and had breakfast at 8.30. I did manage to finish the book I’ve been reading and I knitted a little on my purple cardigan but didn’t do much else. There was a lot of talking with my husband what with us having spent five days apart.

I skipped running in favor of getting groceries and decided to move the podcast recoding to Thursday because I first wanted to unpack and feel like myself again. I did help with making lunch:

Very tasty homemade Thai curry with fish and shrimps.

I taught three students, talked some more with my husband, took a shower, put most of my belongings back into their places and tried getting everything in line for the boy’s wisdom tooth extraction later today.

I also ordered a new iPad mini. I had been thinking about this for ages now, my old one was bought in 2012. It is still in working order but rather slow and a little cumbersome. I did decide to get the 64 GB version even if I’d rather have the 256 GB but alas, 180 Euros more or less do make a difference to me. And it will still have way more disk space than the old one.

After me teaching the boy and I watched the finale of „Good Omens“ and went to bed early to be bright and shiny for oral surgery fun.

Which will be the main thing to deal with today but I also will be teaching two students.

I slept until eight, got enough sleep and still felt tired all day. There was no meditation or anything, I only thought about packing and getting home. Had breakfast with my parents, packed everything up and then it was almost time to go. Literally, we actually walked to the train station which was nice. Another perk of packing light-ish:

One of these days I will manage to travel with a purse only.

The weather was hot and I regretted wearing leggings and socks. I got rid of them once we had stepped on the train.

A two-hours ride to Hannover, then Chinese for lunch and onto the next train and six more hours to Munich. The train ride went smoothly and it felt shorter this time. For the boy it was the other way around.

When we reached our house we were a little puzzled that my husband wasn’t greeting us but then heard him playing drums in the basement. Bad timing. The boy immediately unpacked his new Switch, my husband had already set the table and dinner ready:

We talked a bit and then we scattered again, the husband watching soccer, the boy trying out his new toy and I just sat there and finished reading my novel.

I am really happy to be back home again.

Today I will be doing all the things again, there will be running and teaching and maybe the recording of a podcast. And lots of talking for sure.

I actually managed to sleep until 8 this time, got enough sleep after going to bed around midnight for once. Very good. I still feel as if I need a week to decompress and get back to myself.

We woke up, I didn’t meditate and such but wrote the blog post, took a shower and then we went to have breakfast at my parents’. There was much talking. My mother asked me to play the ukulele for my relatives in the afternoon and I started panicking because I haven’t played a lot lately and have forgotten all the lyrics. So I spent fifteen minutes trying to get the lyrics of one particular song onto my iPad. I succeeded.

My mother remarked that I was looking all winterly with my denim skirt and long-sleeved t-shirt. I was confused because the main difference between that outfit and the one I wore the day before was the long sleeves. Not quite what I’d wear in winter. (Later that day I was reminded that that generation is rather convinced that dark clothes are way warmer than light ones, so if you’re sitting in the sun on a hot day in white pants you will be nice and cool but dark pants will be way too warm. Whatever.) I almost considered wearing the orange dress with the red polka dots a third day in a row but decided against it. I like that the skirt has pockets. And if my mother feel warm when looking at me she is perfectly free to look away.

I did a singing warmup and then we went over to my parents again to go out for lunch.

We were at a place that had been recommended to my mother for plentiful, cheap asparagus but it turned out that that was a one-time thing. The vegetarian options were limited but there were options at least and our waiter was charmingly young and inexperienced. My beer took about half an hour. I should just have ordered a regular one but I am a sucker for „Kellerbier“. (Sorry, I couldn’t find a translation for that.) I had asparagus and schnitzel:

The boy had fried camembert:

And then a big cup of ice cream to offset the fact that his main course was just an appetizer. My mother ordered the salmon steak (great move, ordering fish at a farmer’s restaurant nowhere near the sea) and then complained that it was dry. Since my mother only ever eats cooked salmon at restaurants she didn’t know that fried salmon is almost always dry. No way around it as far as I know.

When we left the restaurant we met a friend of my aunt’s that I hadn’t seen in decades which was kind of nice.

We went back home, helped my mother a little with setting up for the kaffeeklatsch and retreated to our apartment for a bit again. We returned fifteen minutes before the guests were due and helped a little more.

My aunts were only fifteen minutes late which is a sort of record. (I know that it’s confusing when I talk about ‚my aunt‘ and ‚my aunts‘. The thing is that when I say ‚my aunt‘ I mean my mother’s younger (and youngest) sister and the other aunts are her older half-sister (there was another sister but I never met her because she died when she was young) and my mother’s sister-in-laws of which there were two.) One of my cousins came along. She lives in Munich but we never meet. Not because we don’t like each other, just because we never get around to it, mostly.

We had cake. And some more cake. And tea and coffee and then champagne. And then they left after a few hours of incessant talking. The boy remarked that he had never met that particular style of conversation before, the one where several people always talk at the same time and switch around between conversations right and left without losing a beat. Where my aunt talks about something to my other aunt who then turns around to answer her daughter’s question while the first aunt never stops but instead turns to the boy and continues her story without even taking a breath.

Well, I explained to him that that is the kind of conversation I grew up around, where everybody always talks regardless of anyone else listening and where you often take part in two or three conversations at the same time. My husband finds that intolerable and insists on people taking turns when talking and really listening and being interested.

I have to say that there is much to be said for his kind of conversations, for one they are way less strenuous. And there were many points that afternoon where I wanted to hear what someone was saying but couldn’t because someone else was blaring into my ear at the same time. Still. That whole taking turns-concept takes a lot of restraint for me. I was raised as a multi-tasking conversationalist (and I was knitting the whole time, of course).

My mother made me fetch my ukulele and I sang a song. I had expected to play at least two and maybe an encore but it turned out when I stopped singing and playing after the first one and just looked what happened they were asking me a ton of questions about the ukulele, like „Um, so is this like that instrument they play in Russia?“ „No, this is not a balalaika,“ and then we were done with music. And the chatter continued.

Everybody was finally gone by 7 pm, we helped putting all the chairs back where they belong and get all the dishes into the kitchen an then I realized I wasn’t all that hungry and that I’d rather not talk for an hour or two so I asked the boy if he would be okay with ‚skipping dinner‘, told my parents we were too full to eat and would just have a few nuts (which in reality was half a bag of potato chips each and some licorice) and watch more „Good Omens“.

We watched some quality TV and enjoyed there being only the two of us and went to bed.

Today we will leave here at around eleven and then do the trek home. We will arrive about an hour after dinnertime and I am really looking forward to it.

I’m starting to wake up later because I’m going to bed so late so I woke up at 7. Spent a bit of time alone, writing morning pages, meditating and reading through my feed reader before waking the boy up.

There was breakfast with my parents and a bit of chatting and then the boy and I said we want a bit of a walk and went to get more candy. Also to actually walk. These walks are really great, we are talking a lot. Yesterday mostly about fashion and being cool and about whether I need a new iPad and if so which one I should get.

We had cabbage stew for lunch, something my husband never makes. In these parts of the world it is all about the stew, in Southern Germany not so much.

The boy and I took a little break and watched the next episode of „Good Omens“ together. Visiting here with our apartment right next door is working very well, we can pop in and out. I think my parents like it too, they aren’t used to being with people all the time either and this way we can sit and talk for a bit and then be alone a little and then repeat.

It had rained in the morning and was rather windy but in the afternoon turned nice and sunny again so my mother drove us to a little lake nearby. We walked a bit together and after the first bit my mother sat on a bench while the boy and I walked all the way around. When we arrived at our starting point again she was just getting there too.

The boy doesn’t do well in the heat and was feeling a little dizzy and nauseous so we went to the café and he got a bit of soda. What we really wanted was to eat some ice cream so we got back into the car and over to one of those little towns there and had very good ice cream.

Went back to my parents place, talked a bit, my mother told me that nobody had managed to pull out their sleeping couch (everybody who knows me knows that I can’t let a challenge like that go unaccepted), I looked at it for a bit and managed to pull it out after a bit of fiddling and then we had dinner.

Sat around some more until it was time to go to our nightwatchman tour. That was really great. I’ve been visiting this town all my life because my mother’s family lives here but there are a lot of things I didn’t know and had never seen.

(And I just realized that I can’t show you any pictures of that tour because there are all these people on every one of them and I don’t have their consent to publish them. Pity. The tour was great and we tramped all over town, up and down these steep alleys that are so narrow and sloping that they are called something like ‚stairs‘ (Stiege) by the locals.

Afterwards we walked back to the apartment, read for a bit and went to bed around midnight.

Today there will be the making of the cake, lunch at a restaurant, then „coffee and cake“ with family, then a slow evening (more „Good Omens“ I supposed) and hopefully an earlier night.

And thus commences our last full day here.

I actually slept until 7 am or so. Still not enough sleep but closer. Since the boy slept on I tiptoed out of the bedroom and started my day in the living room, meditating and writing morning pages.

I took a shower and washed my hair and once the boy was all up and ready we went over to my parents for breakfast. Cue endless talking. It was decided that we needed more groceries and the boy and I managed to convince my parents that we did not need to be driven to the grocery store that is only 1.5 kilometers away and that, yes, we would be able to transport some veggies and gummy bears in my daypack.

My mother still thinks that I ride my bike everywhere when grocery shopping despite me telling her every single time that I mostly walk. And yes, I do carry all those groceries. Yes, I know that she can’t lift her shopping baskets after her weekly shopping tours for only two people. I am 25 years younger and work out a lot more than she has ever done. Also, I do all my shopping on foot which means I’m used to it.

Walking to the grocery store was very nice and Google maps showed us a shortcut I didn’t know.

Here’s a picture of a random sandstone quarry on the way.

The boy and I got to talk and then we chose loads of candy and chips and soda for the rest of our stay. We walked right back over the hill and my mother was pretty surprised that we were back already. (It’s funny, my parents’s house is at the foot of the one hill in the region, the local castle sits on top of the hill and every time you want to go to the middle of town or the castle or anywhere, really, you start out by walking up the hill.)

Then it was time to make lunch and I only helped a little. We had something with mushrooms, rice, crème fraiche, tomatoes and cashews. (No picture because my parents don’t do social media. My father has started reading „Facebook for Dummies“, though.)

After lunch the boy and I took a little break in our apartment and then went off to the castle. It has been ages that we last went inside and there are more rooms to see. It was lovely.

The castle peaking through the houses on Main Street.

View from the top of the battlement down to the castle park.

The weather was rather hot and I was happy to be wearing my orange dress with the red polka dots (got a compliment for that one from my mother, by the way, which surprised me; I’d have thought that it was too bright for her taste). We briefly considered getting ice cream but dutifully went back to my parents for „coffee and cake“. (You probably all know that „coffee and cake“ is a German institution, a separate meal taken in the afternoon not unlike British teatime.)

We decided it was too hot for tea (and the boy and I don’t do coffee) but had some water and nice cake my mother had baked.

After that and some chatter and phone calls with my aunt back and forth it was time for dinner which was sandwiches and then the boy and I retired to our own place to watch more „Good Omens“.

By now our plans are pretty set, we will do a nightwatchman guided tour tonight (unless the weather is foul), go out for lunch tomorrow, meet my aunt for „coffee and cake“ in the afternoon and then walk off into the noon sun the day after.

Woke up early, meditated and write morning pages.

Got up, had breakfast and started a new sweater, the one I wanted to take with me on the trip. I’m knitting it from some purple handspun.

Finished packing talked to husband and the boy, got ready and packed up. We decided at the last minute that the boy should take a bigger backpack because there was no way I could fit his slippers in.

I didn’t take a picture of my luggage but managed to get everything in a daypack and messenger bag. I did take the ukulele as well.

We walked to the train station and spent the rest of the day on trains. I did not manage to make myself write, I find it rather hard to write on trains. For once I was not in the mood for traveling at all and felt as if the train ride took ages and ages.

We had lunch early:

This will probably be the last picture of my food until I return home because my father doesn’t approve of people who post pictures of their food on the internet.

I finished one book and started another one („October Man“ by Ben Aaronovitch) and knitted and knitted until I didn’t want to knit anymore. Sitting around all day knitting and reading sounds nicer in theory than it feels.

Our train was fifteen mintutes late. (Well, the first one was ten minutes late but we had 45 minutes before the net one left, and the second one was fifteen minutes late.) My mother met us at the train station.

We have an apartment right next to my parents’ house. It is nice and big and has a nice smart TV.

We had dinner with my parents and then I was starting to yawn all the time, so we went back to our apartment. I had to ask for the wifi password but once that was sorted and all the devices were connected all was right with the world again. And we watched the first episode of „Good Omens“ and loved it.

I’m hoping for a little writing and a little music today, we’ll see how that goes.