Archives for October 2020

I woke up at six, got up right away, did not pick up my phone for a change, did yoga, meditated and spent 25 minutes on the novel!

Then I promptly thawed blueberries for both my husband’s and my muesli. On a Thursday. My husband eats muesli on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Not Thursdays.

So yeah, I’m all serene and calm here.

I crocheted a bit, I read a bit, I talked with my husband and also a little with the boy, I did some housework and then I went running to make up for the run I missed on Monday:

It was wet and cold.

There weren’t all that many people out there, I wonder why.

When I came back home the chicken was already in the oven. Unfortunately, that chicken turned out to be so big that it took twice as long as we had thought. Which meant lunch was late by thirty minutes and we were super-hungry.

And then I taught all afternoon. And in between I wrote emails about teaching. Online teaching went mostly well but I’ll be happy to teach in person again next week.

Then I had dinner, started writing this post, read some more and dropped into bed.

Today there will be the cleaning of the house, some writing (I hope), the boy will get his second COVID-test and I’m only teaching three students. And then it will be the weekend. Where I will finally answer all the messages I got when I stopped the podcast and will start to organize the big virtual knitting meeting for my podcast listeners. And finish that novel that has been grating on my nerves for almost a year now.

I did wake up early enough to do yoga and meditate for five minutes, so that was an improvement. I spent most of the morning doing all the grocery shopping. I usually spread it out over two days but decided to cram it into just that one morning for a change. I’m hoping that that will give me some more time on Thursday.

The boy is still staying mostly in his room because of quarantine. Later today I will call to ask for the result of his test. Since they had him do his own swab (I am livid about this!) I don’t think it would come out positive even if he actually had COVID-19. He’ll get another test on Friday or so. It’s mandatory anyway.

Since I don’t want him to go back to that doctor I will find some other place to get him tested later today. The only alternative would be going to the test center by bike. All 14 kilometers. And back.

But back to yesterday morning.

With the boy not going to school right now our normal schedule is a bit upended. I had no idea when he needed to get up. I did know that he has to sit in front of his computer during normal school hours. So I got breakfast ready for 7.30-ish and waited. When he hadn’t come down by 8.10 I went upstairs. Turned out that he was a) still sleeping and b) already five minutes late for online school. Oops.

So he started his computer while still in pajamas and I fetched his breakfast. Rough start to the day.

The health food store was a lot busier than usual, probably because I went earlier, but the supermarket was almost empty. I guess Tuesdays are good days to shop there. I tried getting all the food but since it was rather easy to carry everything I probably didn’t get enough.

For the first time ever I talked to someone who didn’t wear her mask properly. Her nose was hanging out. I have been angry at every single person who doesn’t cover their mouth and nose properly for months now. I never said anything because I was afraid of conflict. But then I saw a post on Twitter re-tweeting several posts from a woman who obviously thought not wearing a mask was a good idea and something to be proud of and she had said that nobody ever said anything about her lack of masks apart from a few millennials. And that she would never have talked to someone older and wiser when she had been that age.

So I decided the next time I see someone without mask or who doesn’t wear the mask properly I will say something. And to avoid conflict I’ll stay polite and say things like, „Excuse me but you seem to have forgotten your mask,“ or like today, „Excuse me, you mask has slipped down.“ I was totally prepared to her jumping in my face but instead she said, „Oh, sorry, I didn’t realize. Thanks for pointing it out to me, this mask seems to be too big for me I really need to do something about it.”

Huh.

And I have to say that it never occurred to me that people might actually forget to check their masks. I mean, the whole mall is plastered with signs but – okay?

I came back home just in time for lunch. My husband built it around the leftover, homemade aioli:

That’s the rest of the fish we had a few days ago, some shrimp because there wasn’t enough fish, tomato rice, parmesan and aioli. The boy had scrambled eggs. I didn’t eat the chili but my husband thought it looked nice and he ate about half of it.

After lunch I slumped around until I took a quick shower. All my lessons were online again and in between I did the dishes. Only four students.

Then dinner and a beer and some reading. I have finished three quarters of the main body of the crochet blanket. Sorry, I didn’t take a picture. I also bought the next book in the Westcott series. I’m finding those very enjoyable and wonderful escapism. Thinking of the books as fantasy is making them much more enjoyable because otherwise I would be squabbling over every minor historical inconsistency.

I have no idea when I will have the headspace for writing again, or for answering email and such. Right now my thoughts are a tired jumble.

So. Today there will be running (I seriously hope), all the teaching (I still haven’t heard back from two students about the video lessons) and then early to bed, I hope. Also some reading and some crochet. Oh, and phone calls.

Maybe it was a good idea that I never got around to making a list then.

Although. That’s wrong, I did make a list. Some time in the afternoon.

I did spent most of the morning finding out all about what it means that a fellow student in the boy’s grade has tested positive. Turns out the whole grade is automatically in quarantine. Not their families, though, which is a relief.

We did make the lunch my husband had envisioned for ten days or so but it was a little late and the boy ate it up in his room:

That’s homemade aioli with some veggies.

In the afternoon I read a bit and then I went and emailed and texted all my students to change all the lessons from in-person to video. I never found out what the rules about this are but I thought it would be a good idea.

Then it was time for dinner and I watched some ‚Miss Fisher‘, watched another Facebook thing, started writing this post, read some more and went to bed. Oh, and I planned the upcoming week.

Today I will buy all the groceries, the boy will have school online, we’ll figure out how to get him to a testing place without using public transport and I will spend all afternoon in front of my iPad teaching. At least I can leave the windows closed when it’s just me.

I woke up early and did yoga for the first time in ages. Had breakfast, talked with my husband, crocheted a  bit and then I actually mended a pair of leggings and two dresses:

I wanted to wear one of them that same day and so I had to fix the torn seams. I opted for sewing them by hand because it is quiet and fast and doesn’t require pulling out the sewing machine. I can just do it while I talk to the rest of the family – or rather watch a video or two in this instant. I mended everything purple in this round plus the pajamas I wanted to wear that night.

The morning had started out sunny and pleasant but it did turn a little nastier later with rain. And it never got warmer all day. So I went running and loved it:

You have to remember that I grew up in a region where the joke goes: „How do you know that it’s summer in Bielefeld?”

„The rain gets warmer.”

Not only was there a lot of water from above, the paths were all muddy too. There are quite a few trucks going through those fields at the moment. The train tracks are being repaired and they are doing something to the fields to make them into some sort of nature-flower-thing. Mind you, heavy trucks can do a lot of damage to a road that’s just packed dirt.

Of course I did not take a picture of the bad roads. Instead you get a few impressions of my halfway point. It did 68 minutes, I walked for five minutes, then did intervals of 2 1/2 minutes of running and walking each, followed by 5 more minutes of walking. I have to admit that I skipped the last running interval but other than that things went well.

It’s funny, my husband ran all around the same field and complained that the mud was so severe that he had to walk way more than usual. My husband, by the way, did not grow up in rain country.

He did make lunch all on his own, all I contributed was to set the table and grate parmesan. Lunch was very good but I still have no idea how to eat macaroni:

The afternoon vanished in a haze of reading stuff on the internet, a Facebook live, a lot of crochet and intermittent reading. I might have bought the second in series and have read half of it so far?

In the evening the boy and I were just getting ready to watch ‚Eternal Love‘ when the boy got a message that another 12th grader at his school has tested positive for COVID-19. So the whole grade is supposed to quarantine and get themselves to the test station ASAP. School will be online starting on Monday. It’s only for a week because the window for infection started at the end of September.

Oops.

Now, it is still pretty unlikely that the boy is infected. I was freaking out about how to get him to the test station without having a car and without using public transportation but a friend of his stepped in and offered to take him. Phew.

Also, I would feel better if he hadn’t had dinner with his grandmother on Thursday. But we didn’t know and it is what it is.

So I guess I’ll think about what to do with this information later today.

I did a load of laundry because we were running out of masks and the boy and I watched an episode of ‚Eternal Love‘. This one seemed a little slow. We are now almost half-way through the series, maybe this was deliberate before the start of the second half. We’ll see.

Today there will be all the stuff because I didn’t really get anything done yesterday.

Meh.

Because that was the highlight of my week, going to the new grocery store for the first time ever.

I woke up pretty early after not quite enough sleep. (Yes, I’m having a streak. No, I don’t think it’s a good one either.)

After deciding that I needed to read something really excellent I had followed Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s recommendation to read Mary Balogh and was not disappointed. I started with the first in series. I made an exception from my rule of not buying new books unless I have pre-ordered for a book that’s only 1.50.

The book does not disappoint. I basically spent every free minute that day reading. And that despite me not being in a romance reading mood at all.

I find that since I read mostly for plot and character I end up devouring series of cozy mysteries and such that are fast to read, mildly entertaining and sometimes not all that well written. I enjoy them anyway but from time to time I need to step back and focus on the quality of the writing much more. Because an excellent book has both the interesting plot and characters and beautiful writing. Without screaming, „This is supposed to be Literature!“ Or boring me with pages of description. (That’s something I dislike about Tad Williams. As much as I love most of his books the pages and pages of description are not to my liking at all. Realizing that I can just skip those was rather freeing.) I also have a hard time giving up on a novel. I do often set something aside and then never get around to picking it up again but consciously deciding to no finish a novel that I started? Very tricky.

So I’ll be focusing on quality a little more.

Mind you, I do sometimes need to read mediocre writing to assure myself that one can be a successful writer without being a genius. People might still enjoy out stories. And something I just want to read something undemanding. Not that beautiful writing demands something as such. As many things this one is complicated.

But I wanted to tell you about the grocery store. Of course. Much more interesting than books. Or not.

So, our favorite grocery store was torn down some time ago, might have been two year, and now they have built a hotel there but with a grocer store on the ground floor. I was really looking forward to it. It was looking nice, and new and big. I had already seen that the new one belonged not quite to the same chain as the old one but that one is also pretty good. And it was clear that the bakery in there would not be up to my standards but then I can just go to a different bakery or two during the Tuesday health food store run.

So I walked up there, all excited, donned my mask and entered. It did look good but then I realized that what they have is huge shelves full of all the same things. The produce section was a little disappointing. And then I got that feeling of dread and disorientation that you get in a new grocery store where the music is too loud and the places where things are found make no sense at all.

And while the aisles are broad I find the store hard to navigate. Not like the big one where I have been shopping for the past two years or so where risoni are shelved with noodles used in soup and apart from all the pasta or where they have a canned fish isle that is far away from all the other canned goods, no, the store was laid out completely different from any other store I have every been to.

There were a lot of snack things and microwave meals and such which makes sense since both the nearby school and a lot of offices and such mean that they’ll serve a big lunch crowd. I also find that all the newer stores have bigger sections of food that need little prep. Of course. These days that we cook everything from scratch a lot of people just don’t. Which is legit, especially when you don’t have food intolerances.

The weirdest part was that it felt as if they had taken the inventory of a much smaller store and had just put it in this big one. And I looked for Q-tips for about ten minutes but didn’t find any.

So. I guess next week I’ll walk all the way to the big grocery store again. At least there I get almost everything I want.

The it was time for lunch cooked from scratch by my lovely husband. He even used a recipe. From the internet:

Chicken with cashews, peppers and rice. The boy got his with chopped up soy bratwurst. Not the best substitute but all we had and he said it tasted good nonetheless.

Then I taught and taught and taught until way past dinnertime, had something to eat, then some more and then a beer. And then I continued reading the novel.

Today there will be the cleaning of the house (Hurray!), maybe some laundry, a bit of teaching and in between, in that huge break where I never manage to get anything done, I’m planning to plan for next week’s lessons. Having a lot of students means I need to do more prep work as well. I don’t usually do a lot because most of my students are still at that stage where I just use one book of music and we go from one piece to the next but I have some students where finding the next piece takes a little more thought and I really dislike doing that on the fly. So I’ll try using my Friday afternoon break.

And one of these days I will do things like sew and spin and write again. Not today, though. But there will be some TV watching at night, at least.