Archives for November 2023

Another day of just vaguely existing while constantly checking how my throat feels. I did walk to the nearest pharmacy again and got myself some lozenges that actually seem to help with the cough, so yeah! I also found out firsthand why it’s not recommended to drink alcohol when you have laryngitis, again, when I woke up at night and couldn’t stop coughing. Yes, alcohol is dehydrating, and yes, even if it’s just the one beer. Really, I don’t know why it takes so long for me to learn things. There are so many, many things where I keep thinking, „Oh, this once won’t make a difference,“ and then it does, every single time. But I keep thinking it’ll be fine.

::headdesk::

Good thing I’m an adult.

At least I didn’t use the pharmacy trip as an excuse to get even more sweets. On the other hand I still had a little more than a pint of ice cream in the freezer. Which I went on to eat after lunch so then there was no ice cream in the freezer anymore.

Lunch was pasta again, in a way, because my husband made goulash:

The boy got the same pasta, tomato sauce and some veggie sticks for some reason. I guess my husband thought there’s be some meat substitute around but, well, he hadn’t bought any. That’s one of the things that never makes it onto the grocery list. I just pass by the fake meat cooler in the store, do a mental inventory of what meat and fake meat we’re likely to have at home and then pick something up. Or not. Talking about mental load…

I spent most of the afternoon being cranky, playing silly games and scrolling through social media. Which reminds me, I think I disabled the time limit on those apps. Might be time to turn that back on. I also ate more than a pint of ice cream which took a while because I ate it straight from the freezer.

It took me all afternoon to get myself to do the dishes, then I ate two slices of cheese and some chocolate for dinner because I don’t care for the bread that was there, did Duolingo, watched three episodes of three different series again and went to bed too late.

Oh, and I finally got Duolingo music. I’m trying it out. I’m not taking any shortcuts because I want to see if this is something I can recommend to students who want to get better at reading sheet music. It is a bit weird but not to the extent of playing Guitar Hero when you actually know how to play guitar. So I’ll play around with it some more. It is an easy way of getting more XP. And yes, I know that playing for XP is not exactly helping me learn more but, well.

Today I will continue to knit and not do much. Right now I feel as if I have enough energy to do a little cleaning in the afternoon, we’ll see how that goes. I will definitely not call my mother on the phone today because I still want to rest my voice.

Last day of fall break.

So, yesterday I mostly did nothing, fell asleep in my chair at 9.30 and felt like I’ll never be back to normal.

Losing my voice always makes me feel awful. Though I have to say it is coming back but my family wants to talk, talk, talk so much and I feel that that’s not the best for me right now. I mean, usually I love talking but right now I better not.

I did knit quite a bit after starting the day with weaving in ends on the crochet blanket because the sweater-in-progress had reached a tricky stage. This moment I’m almost done with the front and I might join back and front some time today which means there will be a lot of knitting stockinette in the round after that.

I did not clean anything, instead I walked to the nearest pharmacy to get something for the never-ending coughing and then I walked to the second-nearest supermarket for the things my husband didn’t get the day before. While I was paying for my groceries my phone went off, my husband was calling me. By the time I could respond he had already hung up and while he says he left a voicemail I couldn’t find it anywhere. Just before I had left he had uttered the words, „I’m making gnocchi from scratch today with porcini sauce but I can do it without your help.“ Sure. I mean, I have never taken him up on that. Because I’m the one who does everything to do with dough around here. Which meant I had to change my plans for the day to include making gnocchi from scratch. So, having just finished grocery shopping I stood there thinking about what ingredient needed for gnocchi we might be out of. He already had started peeling the potatoes before I left so that couldn’t be it, I knew for a fact that we had at least two bottles of sugo left and so I went back to the store, got flour and parmesan and walked back home.

It was parmesan, by the way. I’m good.

All those grocery shopping shenanigans also taught me how much of the shopping I do without the list. I always check on certain things before leaving and there are a lot of foods that get added to the list by me when I sort the recycling. Empty carton of something in the recycling? That thing gets added to the list. But, of course, I’m the only one who does that so that’s why the grocery list was suspiciously empty. I also add snacks that I know family members like and vegan fake meat when I know I bought some real meat so that the boy has something to go with the side dishes.

Anyways, the boy and I decided that we need to go grocery shopping together in the near future so that he knows how to do it and how to find certain things in the huge and overwhelming supermarket. Husband was completely overwhelmed after. Which I totally get because that’s how I feel every Thursday.

Anyways, here’s the gnocchi:

I should have put a little more flour in the gnocchi but I was pressed for time. We did manage to get the food on the table at 1.30, though, so that was good.

Since I had done an extra supermarket run I also loaded up on sweets. I should change that habit because right now I go out and come back with chocolate, gummy bears and ice cream (it was on sale) and then proceeded to eat it all. Which definitely was too much. I tell myself that I’ll spread it out over the weekend but history tells me that I won’t. And then I feel sick. Also, for the record, eating a pint of ice cream in a sitting is not the best thing to do when you have laryngitis. Just saying.

I did eventually do the huge pile of dishes and then sat down to do the intricate next part for the sweater. I also saw that the way I picked up the stitches for the back was slightly wrong but I resisted the urge to rip that whole part out and redo it. It’s tidy and uniform it just doesn’t look quite as pleasing. It’ll be fine.

I did watch quite a bit of C-drama, three different shows that I’m all enjoying very much, even if two of them have comedy that is definitely too heavy-handed. Plus the romance part is pretty absurd. Still.

After falling asleep sitting in my chair I went to bed at a reasonable time, even, and slept pretty well. Elevating my head while sleeping helps with the cough and so does drinking a glass of water when I get up to use the bathroom in the night.

Interestingly, my sleeping app shows me all the long, deep sleep I have had and still tells me my readiness for the day is „low”, or in yesterday’s case „rest“ which tracks.

Today there will be another pharmacy run for throat lozenges (I keep forgetting the simplest things about being sick. Shows how used I had gotten to not catching colds the past few years), dishes, reading, knitting and a shower but that’ll be it.

Of course I’ll be magically restored to full health and energy by the time I need to get back to teaching. Sure.