Archives for March 2024

I finally got enough sleep and I also slept well, partly because I finally was warm enough. Travel always shows me how much I rely on extra thick fleece jackets and crochet blankets at home.

I did yoga, ate breakfast with my mother and had a somewhat leisurely morning. For lunch we went to a Chinese restaurant two towns over. They have an excellent all-you-can eat buffet. I did try figuring out what their Chinese name says but failed:

So far I’m at a stage where I read those Chinese characters as “something, duo, no idea, not sure, I think I should know this”. Not very helpful.

We ate quite a bit of fried food, I also had soup and a variety of desserts:

Sorry, no alt text today, getting the images in was hard enough.

After that we went to the bank and now my mother finally has online banking. We also got investment recommendations, something I always find really hard to judge. Afterwards we went back home and I took a walk under the pretext of wanting to go to the grocery store. One kohlrabi, a chocolate bunny and an assortment of licorice later I went back to my mother’s place. On the way I got a “10 minutes until your Zoom call”-alarm and I spontaneously decided to attend an online meeting about tropes in writing from my mother’s living room. It was super interesting and a rather nice change from dealing with computers, insurance, banking and such.

Afterwards my mother practiced using the banking app and the computer again, we ate dinner, I started writing this post, did Duolingo, watched some C-drama while eating licorice and went to bed.

I woke up around 7.30, I hadn’t set an alarm. Trying to get the blog post to actually post had made me late for bed again.

I lounged in bed, unwilling to get up. I briefly considered doing the morning routine but didn’t really feel like it.

My mother was up the same time as me, we ate breakfast and talked and made plans for the next few days and talked some more. I did help her with some banking stuff and with switching a DVDs audio to German. I took a shower.

I had been feeling low-key too cold all night so the shower felt great. We had fried potatoes, fried eggs and salad for lunch. I did some more tech support and finished the first Kaerlig mitten. There was cake. By the time we were ready to get to the computer so my mother could learn how to order something from Amazon my aunt showed up and we talked some more.

While my aunt had some coffee I found that I finally can do the tubular cast-on almost without looking at the instructions. By the time my aunt was ready to leave I had set up the ribbing for the second mitten. Yeah! My mother also found me a crochet hook that I can use later for the provisional cast-on.

My mother still has a hard time with the laptop, she tried opening her e-mail program to get to Amazon which did not really work. I helped her set up an account and order two things. I really hope she will be able to remember when she needs to later.

Then there was dinner, more talking, I started writing this post, did Duolingo, watched C-drama and went to bed.

I might have accidentally eaten most of the huge salt licorice chocolate that I had planned to give the boy when I return. It is delicious but I definitely ate too much. I guess I need to buy some more on my return journey and actually give it to the boy.

My aunt chided us for not doing anything special. I mean, helping my mother understand and operate her electronic devices is laudable but she felt we should do some fun things as well.
We were a bit undecided but in the end agreed to – go out for lunch today.

At least I went to bed a little earlier than the days before. Still too late, though.

I got up, did yoga, tried writing morning pages and gave up almost immediately. My brain was too scattered. I ate breakfast, crocheted a bit and talked with my husband but all of it quicker than usual because I had a train to catch.

I definitely had more luggage than I find comfortable, the big backpack was weighing 10 kilos (22 pounds).

The first train was a couple of minutes late but that didn’t bother me because I always leave plenty of time when changing trains. I did feel much relieved once I sat in the high speed train to Hannover, though.

The train was pretty empty which was nice. I had downloaded two movies and a couple of YouTube videos for the first time and it turns out, watching movies makes the time go by faster. It was my first time watching “Legally Blonde” and I really enjoyed it. I also knitted for long enough that my hands started to hurt and read a big chunk of “The Kingdoms”. I am enjoying the novel but not as much as “The Watchmaker of Filigree Street”. At least so far.

I didn’t take a picture of my lunch because I ate a sandwich and some roasted nuts on the train. I ate some more in the afternoon in Hannover, yummy noodles.

(At this point please imagine a picture of my left hand holding a box of mouthwatering fried noddles with veggies. I couldn’t figure out how to post a picture, there is some weird stuff going that I couldn’t figure out.)

The next train was 15 minutes late but also much emptier than usual. In the end I arrived 20 minutes late. Not good but not too bad either.

My mother and I ate dinner and talked a bit but by then I was so exhausted that I couldn’t people anymore.

I was too exhausted to figure out how to watch C-drama on the TV in the guest room, I just sat in bed with my tablet. I did a short Duolingo lesson to not break my streak and went to bed.

Today should be a somewhat slow day which suits me fine.