Archives for June 2019

Woke up at 5.30 again without an alarm even though I had gone to bed a little late. Was gripped by overwhelming dunnwannas right away, so no writing, nothing. I figured I’d do that after breakfast. But then my husband showed up at 6.40 because he had found a tick that he couldn’t remove without help. He had gone into the woods to reap nettles the day before, all bundled up in clothes and smeared with tick repellant but still.

He trundled off to bed again after that and I made breakfast. Had a quiet breakfast with the boy and then waited for my husband to show up again. He came over rather late, which I should have expected.

There was talking and knitting and reading and dishes, all the usual stuff. Then I went to the pharmacy to get my antihistamine, uploaded the podcast video and helped to make lunch:

That was the last spinach from our garden.

More dishes.

I had a hard time getting myself to move after lunch. I wasn’t really looking forward to doing the taxes. I did think that all the receipts would be in their usual spot and that listing my income would be a breeze but it turned out that I had been a little sloppier than usual and that my husband hadn’t given me any of his receipts.

So I spent a couple of hours just finding pieces of paper and making a list and then my only student of the day was due.

I had hoped to be finished with all the tax stuff by then but I will need another afternoon or so.

Then the boy and I did some bodyweight training, I hung up a load of laundry, my husband and I decided to skip the concert tonight and that he would make pizza dough but I would make the pizza itself. And then I fell into bed after a bit of journaling and making a list for today.

Today will be a typical Friday, cleaning, pizza, lots of teaching and then the ritual watching of Star Trek.

And then it will be two weeks of school break.

I woke up at 5.30 without an alarm, procrastinated a bit but managed to get a pomodoro of writing in before breakfast. My husband had planned to get up early so I did not write after breakfast but in the end he showed up the same time as usual.

It was one of those rare days where the kitchen is too warm to comfortably spend time in. Not too warm for knitting, though, so that was good. I did finish book seven in the „Emma Schumacher“-series and started book eight right away.

Then I went running. I tried to stay in the shade as much as possible:

With all this green it does look cooler than it felt:

When I came back home I thought there was ample time to go grocery shopping before making lunch so I did that. And when I cam back – a little later than expected – my husband was knee-deep in freshly reaped spinach. We made lunch in a panic because the spinach plants were rather small and dirty and just managed to get lunch on the table in time for the boy’s lunch break:

Lamb burgers, kritharaki with spinach, pine nuts and feta. It was rather good but not quite worth the amount of work.

Then I hopped into the shower (no dishes) to get ready for teaching. My studio was sweltering and all the students were looking a bit wilted at the end.

After that I worked on the podcast for a bit, decided that I was too hungry to skip dinner completely, ate a bit of cheese and went to bed. And rescheduled the pizza dough for today.

Today looks pretty empty which is good. I only teach a little bit but want to do the taxes in the afternoon. And make pizza dough. And catch up with writing.

I woke up at 5.30 after eight hours of sleep, so that was a good start into the day. Meditated, wrote morning pages and a bit of novel. Got up and made breakfast on time, ate with the boy in silence while reading and when he had left I wrote some more words on the novel.

My husband showed up and we talked at length about something I don’t remember now but then I told him about something I found out about the Thunderbolt ports on my laptop which led to a lengthy discussion of how to clean said ports. I ordered caps for them and almost a can of air but then remembered that the boy might have one already. And then I stressed out because I had promised to help choosing a digital piano for a new student and didn’t quite know how. Last time I bought a digital piano was in 1990 and the last time I helped a student buy one there still was a local music shop.

Then we talked through a project of my husband’s, putting some see-through roofing over one of the wood piles and part of the deck. He held the material while he was trying to cut it with a handsaw. Fortunately it worked, so we won’t need to buy new tools for this.

I went to the health food store in the heat, came back and helped peeling potatoes and then I dealt with all the laundry. The boy had asked in the morning what was wrong with the laundry. Well, what was wrong was that I hadn’t had the time or energy to deal with it. There were two loads hanging there dry and clean and another one sitting in a hamper that was already folded but not put away. Always remember that laundry has three steps: 1. Wash, 2. Dry, 3. PUT IT AWAY GODDAMMIT! I usually follow those rules but there was some serious overwhelm and the hamper full of folded socks to be put away sat on the dresser for two weeks and accumulated more clean laundry. At least it was clean but the poor boy didn’t have a single clean t-shirt in his room.

Putting all that laundry away made me seriously happy.

And then we ate lunch:

The boy ate lunch upstairs with his grandmother. He and I talked a bit afterwards while I procrastinated about the piano research (the dishes had already been done) and just after he left did I realize that there was another load of laundry sitting in the washing machine. So I got ready for teaching and then quickly hung that up. Fortunately my husband could help me so we got done in time for my first student.

The boy and I had talked about the canned air-thing and he said he didn’t want to spend money on something like that and that discussion made me realize that I could also use the vacuum cleaner on those ports with the attachment for cleaning computer keyboards and such. Which I right before said first student. I’m not sure yet but it might have helped with the Thunderbolt connection issue.

There was another potential new student coming after that (and she will be starting lessons with me after Pentecost break) and then all the other students. I got the piano research done in a short ten-minute break before I needed it. Phew.

Then two more students, one got a list of pianos to look at and the other got a lengthy lecture about sound and overtones and sound in singing and then I was somewhat done with the day.

I started writing this post, got ready for bed and planned for today.

On that list is: running, quite a bit of teaching, maybe working on the podcast and making pizza dough for Friday. It seems to be one of those weeks.

The fun continues.

I only got about six hours of sleep which made me basically a zombie all day. So, while I did write early in the morning it was only for four minutes. Not quite the kind of writing session I’m aiming for. Still.

I got up and made breakfast in a seriously messy kitchen because we did not do the dishes the night before. The boy was still preparing for the math test he had that day and was a little unhappy about a biology excursion later in the day.

My husband and I did the humungous piles of dishes after his breakfast. And then I went on my first run/walk in two weeks:

Things went well.

Things with the blog did not go as well as I thought, I’m still having issues and I’m still troubleshooting. Hmpf. I think I have deleted all the old plugins that cause errors but we’ll see if I’m right.

Then it was time for lunch. The boy was still out with school and we both weren’t all that hungry so we went with something quick and easy (or rather my husband’s idea of quick and easy):

Then I decided to take a nap for once (and leave the dishes) because I was really tired and had planned to record the podcast.

Just when I had closed my eyes the boy came back from school. About 2 1/2 hours early. But it turned out that he actually liked wading through a small stream collecting specimens. Even getting his feet wet and dirty. Who would have thought?

So I got ready and recorded a podcast episode. Recording started with one computer freezing and ended with the other stopping the recording because there was no more disk space.

I did record a rather hurried ending, especially since my first student was due five minutes later, and saved the video to an external hard drive. And then I went on to save all the videos there which took hours and hours. The plan is to free about 100 GB of space on the laptop’s drive so that I can record in peace.

I also researched the „Thunderbolt cable slipping out of socket“-issue and found that that’s rather common. Unfortunately I didn’t know, otherwise I would have asked for a replacement socket when the machine was still under warranty. Meh. But there must be a way to fix this problem. Apart from buying a new computer.

Then I taught my students for the day. Started assembling this post, did my bodyweight training, did the dishes – finally – and actually did go to bed early for once.

Today the plan is to go to the health food store, maybe do a short run, teach all the students including one potential new student, write and go to bed early yet again.

I woke up around 6.30 and got up late. Had breakfast, knitted on the scarf, talked with my husband, talked a little with the boy, did dishes and did yoga.

I bought an upgrade to my website plan which immediately fixed my issues with image uploading. Sometimes throwing money at a problem does work, and since this is just 4 Euros per month more than before it will be totally worth it.

Then there was lunch:

Then I finally wrote my patreon newsletter for June and then it was all cooking all afternoon. Our guests showed up a little late but dinner was very good. First porchetta and bread:

And then minestrone con pesto:

And devil’s chicken:

And then strawberries with acute balsamico:

I didn’t eat any of those but instead had some cantuccinis. I don’t do strawberries.

The food was wonderful, conversation was rather nice and we ate and talked and drank and sat on the porch until eleven. My husband’s friend is a garden lover as well so he finally had someone to talk gardening with. She knew all the herbs and plants from one glance. They met back in the day when he was still studying agriculture.

We did leave all the dishes in huge piles so that will be one of the first things I’ll do today. And I want to record the podcast and will teach a few students. Bonus points for bodyweight training. And then I’m hoping for a very early bedtime because I’m done with sleep deprivation.

A full week ahead. The whole month will be rather packed, I had to write a lot of things into my calendar when setting up the new monthly spread in my journal the other day.

Definitely not boring.