Archives for July 2019

I slept in again until 6.30 and lounged in bed for more than an hour before having breakfast. My husband joined me after I had finished and I knitted on the sock-in-progress for a bit. The boy got up at ten. We did an epic pile of dishes.

I did manage to write a few words after that but just barely. And then we made lasagna. I was late for that because I wanted to write a little more so lunch was about and hour late all in all:

Yes, it was that dark. The weather did clear up later, though.

I sat down and spun in front of TV. Tried a few writing sessions with no success. Call me queen of procrastination. The knees are doing okay, not much improvement but then that was to be expected.

The boy and I watched some Star Trek, I did the washing up, wrote a few more words and called it a day.

Today will be podcast day. I still can’t decide whether I should try to do some exercise today or not. I could definitely walk a bit or ride my bike but I’m oddly reluctant. There will be some teaching. I hope that I will go to bed early. And maybe get over the novel-writing slump.

Wouldn’t that be great?

Not all that productive, though.

I slept in until six or so, no alarm and managed to work on the novel for 25 minutes. I had great plans for the day.

Had a late breakfast, shortly before my husband showed up, knitted on the Comodo sweater while talking with my husband who is still feeling rather overwhelmed.

While my husband went running I did the dishes, took a shower and mended my favorite weekend dress by hand:

And I did a load of laundry. The boy came down very, very late and we talked a bit. Then I helped my husband make lunch:

Talked some more with the boy while doing dishes and then I sat down in front of TV with the spinning wheel:

First time at the wheel again after my knee acting up. It only hurt very little all day which made me happy, happy, happy. (Husband actually asked me if I would go running as well. Um, not right now, thanks. I thought I’d wait for the knee to stop hurting completely and then I’ll start by walking first.) And apart from the pain the knee is not moving freely yet. Nope, not running at the moment. The exercises I’m doing are leaving me sore all over by the way which is rather interesting.

I tried writing in the afternoon but couldn’t settle down. It’s a shame because I was really looking forward to writing the next scene.

After the Tour de France was over and I had filled my second bobbin we made dinner:

And then we did something my husband had wanted to do for ages, we watched „Pulp Fiction“. That really is a weird film. The boy liked it. And then it was already too late for bed but I still wanted to journal and brush my teeth and do those knee exercises.

Today there will be more of the same but I want to write a little more than yesterday for sure. But then I always do.

Woke up from the alarm, wasted the first hour of the day, meditated for a bit, opened the writing program, stared at the novel, deleted a few words and closed it again. Being all motivated didn’t really make a difference.

I made breakfast and the boy got up and I started reading „Resilience“ by Linda Graham. Very interesting. After the boy left for school I finally managed to get writing and had so much fun that I went on until my husband showed up.

While he was making and eating his breakfast I spun a bit of sweater yarn:

That’s the cob of a full spindle and the start of the next. With mint tea in my favorite mug.

When I had planned for the day I had been sure that I would have another hour or so to write between breakfast and lunch. Well, it turned out that that hour was needed for conversation with my husband and cutting his hair. We did the breakfast dishes together and then my husband went running while I wanted to clean the house.

But first I did some research on the internet. Which meant that cleaning somehow did take more time than planned. Weird that.

I also read this eye-opening post about the question if it is possible to make a person change. Spoiler: No, it really isn’t. But what he wrote after that was really, really helpful for me and very timely. So in order to help people you can:

1. Lead by example
2. Give them better questions and
3. Offer help unconditionally

Yes, you should go and read the article. Because this list doesn’t make sense without it. I’m only typing it out so I remember it myself. I especially like the advice to lead by example. Because that usually helps at least one person. And that would be yourself. If it has an effect on someone else that’s even better.

Which reminds me of the advice the school psychologist at my son’s school gave when a father asked her how to make his son read more. „Read more yourself,“ she answered, „show him that reading is fun.”

And reading that article on making people change led me to another one, you know how these things go. Yes, I will finish writing my novel eventually. I’ll just go down a few more rabbit holes first.

I did manage to clean all the things and get the pizza ready for lunch but nothing more. Pizza was good, though:

The boy was happy and excited that his new cell phone arrived. He had expected it a day later. The new phone is rather big and shiny and he loves it. We ate and talked and he showed me the phone repeatedly until I had to get ready for teaching. Because I was a little late I asked the boy to do the lunch dishes which he did. Eventually.

My first student had a breakthrough and that made me really happy. Teaching was actually fun. While I had a short break the boy told me that the SIM card he had was too big for the new phone so I decided to go to the phone store after work. Which we did.

And I walked all the way without my bandage and had only minimal pain. Yeah!

When we came back it was time for dinner and Star Trek. The bread and cheese looked rather inviting so I had some. Then I did my knee exercises and got ready for bed. No more writing even though I had really been looking forward to it.

So, today there will be writing and then some more writing (I hope) and spinning and I want to watch the Tour de France for a bit and that will basically be it. Oh, and reading of course.

Well, almost.

The news that my knee was hurting because of a torn meniscus had hit me hard. Until my next thought was, „I wonder if there’s anything I can do about it. Which led me to Google. Which led me to a series of videos and a website. Which led me to trying a few exercises.

Which made me feel a ton better.

So now I have done these two exercises two or three times and the result is that my knee is hurting way less than before.

See, there is this theory – that my orthopedist adheres to – that joints start to hurt because the constant use degenerates them. Sounds logical and when you look into my knee joints you will see some tears and some deformation for sure. But the funny thing is that when you start looking into the joints of people who don’t have pain you will often find the same degenerative signs. Which is puzzling.

Now there is another theory out there (and I did read a few books about it back when my hips were hurting) that the problem is actually caused by muscles being all tense which then pulls on the joints which then makes the brain think that having pain would be a good idea. (You do know that pain is actually a brain thing, don’t you?) And according to that theory you should feel better if you can get your muscles to loosen up. Which is why when I was stretching ‚into the pain‘ (no worries, I’m careful) things started to feel much better immediately.

Huh.

I am overjoyed, I can tell you. And I will continue stretching. (Me lying on my stomach while trying to catch the ends of a scarf that I tied to my foot so I can stretch the front of my legs is a sight to behold. The boy almost fell over laughing.)

I did wake up early and I also did manage to write for 25 minutes before breakfast. Phew. I did forget to meditate. Seems I need to build my morning routine back up.

The boy came downstairs before I had even left my bed. First, he wanted to order himself a new phone and second, he needed to leave early because they had a lecture about HIV and sexual transmitted diseases in Munich, as one does. It was a school thing.

So we ordered the phone, which he is paying for with his own money, by the way, had breakfast, I helped him look up the best way to get to the lecture (right in Munich) and off he went.

Then I finished „Magic Triumphs“ which has a really great ending. All the open ends neatly wrapped up and all. Loved it! And ordered „Resilience“ by Linda Graham. I feel that I need to get more resilient. Maybe the book will help.

My husband showed up, had a neat plan for the day but unfortunately had forgotten that his aunt would show up to drive stuff to the recycling place which threw his nice plan all off. Then I read a text from the boy that the trains had stopped asking how to get to the lecture instead. Then I saw that the boy’s message was already half an hour old and that he should have managed getting there by then.

Then my husband and I talked. About the last few days and what went wrong and how to do things better in the future. This might be one of those, „I did everything right and things went wrong anyway“-situations but I’m not quite sure yet.

By then I felt so good knee-wise that I opted to walk all the way to the supermarket. Walked there and back and the knee was only hurting about as much as it did at the start of the whole thing.

We talked some more and then we made lunch:

It was really good. I then texted the boy to ask if he would be home soon and he answered that they still had to pay. Huh? Pay?

Turned out that a typo in one of his earlier messages had bungled the meaning so that I thought he would come home for lunch while he told me he would not come home for lunch. Oops.

I ate some chocolate. I started reading „Iron and Magic“ by Ilona Andrews, and then it was time to teach. Not quite the two hours of writing I had hoped to get in that day. Well, at least I had spun a bit in the morning so that was good.

I taught all the students. I sat at the dinner table with the boy and we talked. He told me the tale of how he had to make a mad dash to the lecture, I told him about my day. We waited for my husband to be done with teaching. Then I sat at the dinner table talking to my husband while he ate dinner. I made pizza dough. And then I went to bed.

Today I will do all the things! Pizza-making and cleaning and writing and spinning and watching Star Trek. Typical Friday. And then it will be the weekend! With more of the same. No cleaning, though. Pity.

I did get enough sleep and woke up early but – surprise! – was too preoccupied with the knee to actually use that time. I might fare better with setting the alarm later and just giving up on getting any writing done in the morning. We’ll see.

Husband is still panicky. Experience tells me that this will go on a bit longer. He is still upset about the whole garage thing. Because when we say no to his friend’s request we force him to pay four times the money to store his stuff. Um, no. He asked us for a favor. We are saying no because storing that stuff in our garage would be a major inconvenience for us. It’s not our responsibility if his son decides to move to a place where there is no room for that furniture. Nope. That has nothing to do with us. We just happen to have a garage that’s not filled to the brim right now. We wouldn’t even be obligated if that garage was empty which it isn’t.

So that was fun.

After breakfast I waited a bit so I could talk to my husband and spin a little, and then took a shower and took off with my hair still wet.

At the doctor’s office everything went rather smoothly and I was out of there pretty soon. The doctor basically glanced at my knee sideways, told me that it was probably a torn inner meniscus, did an ultrasound, said, „You still have a knee bandage, don’t you?”

Um, no. I got that last bandage in 2013. Even if it were still elastic (doubtful because elastic ages) I was about 25 kilos heavier then. The last time I tried that bandage on it fell right off my leg. So I got a prescription for a new bandage and the advice to rest and cool while the doctor was halfway out the door. Oh, and a referral for an MRI.

I made an MRI appointment in the same building downstairs right away and then got myself a fancy new bandage to help my knee. Phew.

Then I bought all the chocolate to help with the emotional stress, as one does.

My husband had biked all the way to another doctor in the meantime to make a coloscopy appointment. And go to the nice health food store.

Then we made lunch. (I decided that it is more than ‚helping‘ if one spends the same amount of time per day preparing the food as the actual cook. Even if one doesn’t touch the pots.) Lunch was really good, as usual:

After lunch I had quite a bit of time which I had planned to use for writing and spinning but while I did eventually end up in front of TV I found that I was so drained from all those emotions dealing with the knee and everything that just sitting there was enough for the moment.

I did pull myself together in time to teach my two students, started to write this blog post, did a bit of email and helped my husband think through some stuff.

And then I brushed my teeth and went to bed. I know that my goals for July are fading out of reach but right now I don’t care. I am hoping that the knee will get better and I will not need surgery but if I do I do.

Resting the knee also means that I should not carry heavy grocery bags around methinks, so I will take the bike to the supermarket today. I do have a bit of time after lunch but that break tends to vanish into thin air on Thursdays because my husband also starts teaching late and the boy doesn’t have school in the afternoon. So we tend to sit a little longer at the table and talk a little more which is nice but means that I can’t count on having two hours for whatever project I am working on.

Is it August yet?

Yeah, I know. The days are won’t to do that. No idea if it’s just me.

One thing is the fact that I’m doing everything at home. Work, creative project, exercise, everything. And all the time there is at least one other person in the house with me.

Because I’ve been thinking about all those time management videos and books and blog posts when they tell you to defend your creative time and defeat it against everything. „You should treat your appointment with yourself for your creative work as if you had an appointment for surgery.“ I read in one of Honorèe Corder’s books.

Right.

Because that’s why I work the way I work.

But let me back up a bit.

I did wake up from the alarm after not enough sleep because I had made the mistake of being fed up right in the middle of novel number four or so in the Samantha Moon series (another child in jeopardy and I can see the building conflict from a mile away and can tell you what the author will do with the story for maximum torment which means I’m out for now; I don’t really like books with children in jeopardy) and decided to start reading something really, really good instead.

So I started the last Kate Daniels book by Ilona Andrews („Magic Triumphs“). And didn’t want to put it down. Because it is that good. Which meant that I turned the lights out too late. Always a danger with good books and reading at bedtime.

In the morning I still managed to write a few words and morning pages and meditate and not turn the internet on first thing. Which was very good. Then there was breakfast. And then things started sliding a bit. I started something or other after breakfast and didn’t end it in time to do more writing before my husband’s breakfast. Mistake.

My husband was totally super-overwhelmed by everything, especially the whole balcony thing and also his friend’s request to store some of his currently unused furniture in our garage. My husband and I had agreed to look at the garage and maybe declutter that morning.

So there was talk about the balcony and about the garage and about people and such and the overwhelm kept on building. In the end, about two hours later, I went upstairs to talk things through with my mother-in-law while my husband went outside to start marking things for decluttering. And thought about shifting two bikes to the bike shed which is currently overflowing with other stuff like the barbecue.

The conversation with my mother-in-law went surprisingly smooth. We talked about the balcony and the fact that the sour is broken and we should lift her shiny, new flooring up to see what damage there is underneath and that we will need to find someone to fix this. Because after much debate my husband and I realized that this is something we need expert help with. So I will look up who made the balcony back in the day and will see if they can help us now.

We also talked about finances and the roofer who still hasn’t gotten back to us and the insurance company and train tickets and her upcoming travel in August and all the things.

Meanwhile my husband’s feeling of overwhelm started peaking because there is just so much stuff everywhere. We looked at everything in the garage and while we can shuffle things around a little and there are a few things that we want to get rid off (like the rowing machine that my husband’s friend gave us that I used once and decided was not for me) there still is not enough room. So we decided to tell the friend that, sorry, we found that there isn’t enough room for him to store his unused furniture in our garage, not even for money. Because we still need to be able to access all the shelves and yes, we need the pile of wood and the paint and the snow shovels and the bike trailer and the really long ladder that’s the only one long enough for cleaning out the gutters. And in the winter we will store all the rain barrels in the garage and then it will be full again.

Husband was a little afraid that his friend wouldn’t like our decision. I guess, yes, he won’t like it but we’re not responsible for his furniture. (Which was another thing that was bothering me. What if something happened to his furniture in our garage?)

So when we were done with all that we were already too late for making lunch. The boy came home early but he had lunch with his grandmother. We had something Thai-like:

And so my whole morning had gone sideways. Because my original plan had been to try and catch up on writing.

I did manage to do the dishes right away which was good and caved in to the craving for gummy bears that had been plaguing me for about a week. It was this feeling of everything being meh and wanting to have a little extra pampering. Never mind that gummy bears don’t agree with me. So I went out to the next supermarket, got a huge bag of Haribo and plunked down in front of TV watching Tour de France while eating it all. And then I felt miserable as I usually do when I eat things like these.

That has nothing to do with feeling guilty or anything, it’s just that there is so much fructose in these things that I often feel physically ill afterwards. As if I had a fever. Fun! (No, I don’t know why I’m doing things like this either.)

And then I taught all my students, started this blog post and mostly called it a day.

Today I will see a doctor about my knee, only teach two students and catch up with everything. For realz.