Archives for April 2021

Everything is good if you get enough sleep!

Alas, no yoga, meditation or morning pages, it seems I have to choose between sleep and the full morning routine.

I had deleted most of my silly iPad games and it actually made my morning better, so that’s something. Instead I read „Marriage and Murder“ and almost finished it.

I walked to the supermarket through sunshine and balmy weather and on my way back I met the family of one of my students, that was nice. I’m finding that with the whole thing of not meeting people in person for months and months I’m getting increasingly grateful for those moments when I meet someone I know in the street and we greet each other and smile.

My husband made pancakes with spinach and they were very good:

We also tried Cheddar instead of the feta and that was delicious as well. The boy showed up after school and we talked a bit. Until he said, „Wait a minute, I need to check when I have to go to PE, I think it’s earlier than 3.45.“

Yep. He was already late. Since this was his last ever PE lesson and the grade won’t count for his final grade he just sent the teacher a nice message saying that he was sorry to have missed the lesson because he had forgotten it would be earlier.

Then I taught my students and for once I used the thirty minutes in between to do lesson prep. Wrote all the emails and listened to songs that one of my singing students would like to sing next and sent her my feedback. Phew.

I also wanted to do something nice for the poor stressed boy, found out that one can get Spotify gift cards and ordered one so he can listen to Spotify ad-free for the next three months. Don’t tell him, it’s a surprise.

After teaching I started writing this post, had dinner while watching „The Devil Punisher“ (I decided I didn’t want to continue with „Ice Fantasy“ after 2 1/2 episodes, it’s a bit too epic for me right now), practiced Chinese and went to bed.

Since today is Friday there will be the cleaning of the house, the changing of the sheets, a bit of teaching and then „Torchwood“, I think. And then the weekend.

Well, I went to bed way, way too late, past midnight so there was not enough sleep. Especially, since the boy had to get up super-early because his test had been rescheduled to first period and he needed to come in half an hour early for getting tested for covid. Fun times!

But. I did do yoga anyway and am slowly thinking my way through a new version of the novel-in-progress. I also formatted the first in that series in a way that I can start revising it on my tablet. It might be slow but it is progress.

So I’m back in a headspace where I can think again and where I have ideas and plans and a little energy to deal with the things that bug me, like how reluctant I am to practice Chinese with the Fluent Forever app. I thought about it some more while going for my run and then canceled my subscription and started researching how to use Trainchinese. I’m using several of the Trainchinese apps already and am finding them rather good so we’ll see how that goes.

Oh, pictures from my walk/run:

The weather was beautiful and warm enough to go without a jacket:

And on my way back I tried taking a picture of some of the myriads of small flowers in the woods:

My husband made lunch. The idea to this lunch came about because I bought some tofu, so he made sprouts to go with it:

Funny thing – there is no tofu in this meal. He forgot to add it… It’s no big deal, the tofu will keep.

The boy had come home from school with a rather good feeling about his test, seemed he had studied the exact things he needed.

Then it was time to teach and that was more fun as well. I just breezed through the hardest teaching day of the week. Maybe the lack of sleep elevated my mood.

Then I started writing this post, had dinner and watched some Chinese TV, finally practiced Chinese, did the dishes and went to bed.

Today will be the usual Thursday stuff, grocery shopping, teaching and such. And maybe even a bit of writing, we’ll see.

Rolled out of bed slightly too late but managed yoga and five minutes of meditation. Made breakfast. Didn’t hear anything from the boy so I went upstairs while the tea was steeping. For once he was already up. The way he looked I asked him if he had fallen asleep in his clothes but apparently that was his ‚freshly dressed‘-look.

Breakfast. Video games. Feeling awful for no apparent reason.

Talked with my husband, poor thing, who couldn’t help me. Did the dishes and went to the health food store. Still didn’t feel well and I wasn’t even sure if it was in my body or in my mind.

My husband made lunch:

We did two load of laundry. The boy slept through lunch, I woke him up around 2.30. And then I hung around doing nothing again until it was time to teach my students.

While singing along with my first student I suddenly had an epiphany about the novel-in-progress. I need more thinking time but I might be onto something and it might explain why I am so super-stuck on this book. Hm. A silver lining is shimmering on the horizon.

One thing that I did get done in the morning was trying to use a school photo of the boy for renewing his ID. Because of the pandemic we don’t really want to go somewhere to have his photo taken so I looked into places where you can get your photos online. It didn’t work but now I know what needs to be done and I have a note with all the info he needs for the whole process of getting the photo and getting his ID. Phew.

It still all needs to be done but at least now I have a plan.

After teaching I started writing this post, had dinner, watched some TV, looked at the dirty dishes sideways and went to bed.

Today is there will be running and my usual Wednesday teaching marathon, then nothing, I guess.

I don’t even want to recount my whole day. Though I have to say I was on a video call-thingy last night and got some very good tips for getting unstuck. Now I just need to find the energy to tackle those.

It was an okay day all in all. There was breakfast (though not for the boy because he woke up late (twice)), walking and running:

Leftover lasagna for lunch:

Washing the dishes, teaching students, finally prepping at least some of my lessons, said video-call-thingy, more internet, starting to write this post, a bit of cheese for dinner and a beer or two.

The boy had the idea that I could switch between English and Chinese subtitles when watching series, that is an interesting idea. We’ll see.

Today there will be the walk to the health food store, if I’m feeling adventurous I will also go to the bakery. I will teach a handful of students. Other than that I’m not sure.

Well, it was edible and it did taste good but still.

I slept late, until 6.30 which meant no time for morning pages again. But I did yoga. Breakfast, all the usual, calling my mother, doing the dishes and then it was time to start making pasta dough. That went well.

We attempted to make pansoóti con salsa di noci. While I was waiting around my husband was busy cutting herbs in the garden. He found out that 100 grams of parsley, or basil, or whatever are way more than he thought. Which meant we didn’t have enough. Bummer.

I hadn’t read all the way through the recipe before because the cookbook had been somewhere else and my husband had looked at everything in depth. Only when I looked again I found out that we were supposed to skin the walnuts. That was the point at which the pasta should have been in the pot, boiling. Um. So we set out to skin walnuts. And improvise around the lack of herbs. Spoiler: we ended up eating lunch at 2.30, ninety minutes too late.

Only when we were right in the middle of the walnut-skinning did I notice that we didn’t need those for the filling, they were for the sauce. So I rolled the dough out and my husband put a jar of pesto Genovese into the filing so we would have enough and I set out to make the pansoóti. They looked horrible and I was completely sure they would all open and loose the filling in the cooking. (They didn’t.) Behold the meal that took two people 3 1/2 hours to make:

There should have been decorative walnuts on top but we – didn’t have enough.

As I said, it doesn’t look like much. It did taste great, though. By the way, we ended up with three quarters of the filling left over. Maybe I was doing something wrong but in my experience you can only put a tiny amount of filling in if you don’t want it all to squeeze out on the sides. Might be my lack of technique but I don’t know.

So, we decided that we probably won’t make this recipe again, and if we ever do so we’ll make way less filling.

When I started writing this post, Sunday evening at nine I still hadn’t done the huge pile of dishes and pots from the whole cooking endeavor because I was just so fed up with everything.

After lunch the boy talked at me for ages and showed me memes on his phone. (Note to self, the boy gets talkative after drinking wine.) Just when he had left my husband showed up to tell me something I had already read before.

I had lofty plans for my afternoon but did nothing at all. I did practice a bit Chinese but not much. At dinnertime the boy informed me that he was too busy to watch anything together so I watched two episodes of ‚Accidentally in Love‘. I’m actually happy to be finished with that series. It is nice but was going on my nerves on and off. Then I started watching ‚Ice Fantasy‘. I made the mistake of turning the subtitles to Chines as well and that made the whole thing feel rather surreal. Not only can’t I understand anything I hear, I also can only read one character in every six or so and reading, „I something something something of something something something very of something (particle that means something in the past)“ is a bit tiring and doesn’t help immerse you in the whole experience. So I switched to re-watching „The King’s Avatar“ with Chinese subtitles. I still don’t understand much but at least I have watched it before and know what happens.

I am rather frustrated with my progress learning Chinese. I only do the bare minimum on the Fluent Forever app because it is so irritatingly hard. I do more on Duolingo but while that is fun it doesn’t really teach me anything. And I completely neglect practicing Chinese characters and the Pinyin trainer. Pinyin is the official way of transcribing Mandarin Chinese with the Latin alphabet and the app I have helps you to learn distinguishing between sounds that don’t make a difference in meaning in any of the languages I learned before but are crucial in Chinese. And the tones. It will take some more time for me to actually understand that the same syllable said in a slightly different way, like the difference between „What?“ and „What!“, can be two completely different words.

And then you hear people talk in real life – or rather in TV shows which is not quite the same – and all the words run into another and sound completely different yet again.

Well, what was I expecting. Chinese is very hard to learn for someone growing up speaking German. If I had wanted something easy I could have done French or Italian. I’m still thinking about the guy who is behind the Fluent Forever app, though, he started learning all these languages because he wanted to become an opera singer (completely normal, by the way), did a few weeks of full immersion German in the US and then ended up in Vienna. Ha! I’m guessing here but I bet he didn’t understand a single word at first. (Same happened to me when I moved to Munich from Westphalia at the age of 18. I couldn’t understand anything.)

Sorry this is so chatty. I mostly listened to other people all day, had two beers and am trying to avoid those dirty dishes.

Then I put the „We’re not so different“-podcast on and powered through. Great podcast, highly recommended.

So no, I did not prepare any lessons for this week, I did not plan ahead, I did not write anything, nada. My to-do list looks awfully unchecked. But now it’s a new week and everything will be so much better. For sure!

Since today is Monday I will be running and teaching. There will probably be lasagna for lunch because there is still a lot of it in the basement. Wish me luck that I will make use of the one-hour break in between students in the afternoon. I have a long list of stuff I promised my students.

At least the crochet blanket is growing at a steady pace.