Archives for April 2024

I slept well and woke up from the alarm. Even with sleeping well and long enough I felt completely exhausted and tired all day.

I did write morning pages but was so slow that I did not do yoga and meditation yet again. Bad week.

I got up and had breakfast while my husband was busy with the wood stove, then crocheted a bit. Husband and I talked about the piano sheet music I had just bought (horrible book, do not recommend) and he showed me an article in his guitar magazine about a very nice 10,000 Euro guitar by Hopf.

I wrote my blog post, did the dishes, changed my sheets and all the towels, vacuumed the annex and played a lot of silly iPad games. Lunch was red beet risotto with gorgonzola:

It did not taste as awful as I had expected but the whole family decided we’re probably not eat that again. If I recall correctly this was our second attempt at red beet risotto and, well, let’s say there was a reason no one wanted the leftovers in the evening and I ate some cake and quite a bit of chocolate right after lunch.

I had planned to continue cleaning in the afternoon but somehow never got around to it. I did make a packing list for the clinic, spend a lot of time on Twitter and Instagram, started making a pile of things I need to take and folded a load of laundry. I also briefly looked at all the paperwork I need to bring on Monday. I still need to read through some stuff and sign it but it’s not that much.

I never got around to taking that shower but well, I’ll live. We had smoked salmon on toast with champagne for dinner, all three of us together, in part to celebrate that we finally paid off our mortgage! Yeah for being debt-free!

Then I did the dishes while briefly listening to a Zoom call. I had forgotten about it, popped in half an hour late and left before it was done again because I was pressed for time. Then I started writing this post, decided to do a second gauge swatch for the MKAL, this time in just one color because all I need is the gauge, I’ve decided the colors already, so I started that while watching a bit of C-drama.

Speaking of C-drama, I also resubscribed to Netflix because I want to be able to download shows while I’m away from home. And there are at least two series I want to watch on there, the next part of ‚Bridgerton‘ and „Dead Boy Detectives“.

Today will be mostly about packing. I’ll also take a shower, I guess.

The night before I had stayed up until 12.30, bad move again.

I had a slow start to the day, no morning routine or anything, but a long conversation with my husband. Then I did the dishes real quick while the boy got ready and then we braved the stormy weather and the supermarket.

We went shopping together so I could show him my process. Like, first you need to look in the pantry, fridge and freezer to see what is needed. Then you complete the grocery list. We try to jot everything down that occurs to us throughout the week, like, every time I sort the recycling I write down a replacement for every empty package I sort. These are all the things that somehow didn’t appear in the fridge by magic when I was traveling over the past year. We’re still working on, „when you want something from the store you can just write it on the list“.

There are so many small things I do. Like, my husband wrote pecorino pastore on the list which I had found the week before. There are two different places in the supermarket where you might find that cheese but they don’t have it all the time. So I write it down in two places on the list. Otherwise I forget. I also found myself saying things like, „I always buy this pound cake your father really likes it but don’t buy this one, it doesn’t agree with him“. Buy the big package of brie, not the small one. Count the probiotic yogurt drinks in the fridge to see if we’ll run out before next week. (For the record I think buying these is a waste of money but my husband claims they are making him all better, so whatever.)

Yeah, we’re very particular about our food.

We came back almost in time for lunch which was already on the table:

I did not do the dishes after lunch even though I had time, I was just too tired.

I did finish the swatch for the Kate Davies MKAL that morning and I really like it:

I taught all the students in the afternoon, then went to a Zoom meeting half an hour late that went on until 7.30. It was really nice and helpful (about burnout and writing).

At one point in the day I had signed up for the Knitsonik bullet journal course and in my overwhelming fogginess had managed to make a second account for the Teachable platform. I spent about an hour trying to fix it and merge my two accounts but failed and then decided to just go to bed with a book, leaving the blog post and the dishes for today.

At some other point in the day I also decided that I needed six Josephine Tey books. In my defense they were less than a euro each but still. I should stop to buy emotional support books. I also briefly toyed with the idea of getting a book about mental math but while that is fascinating and mental math is something I really would like to get better at I just don’t think I’ll have the mental capacity for that in the near future.

I actually turned the lights out on time, slept well and enough, wrote morning pages this morning and skipped the rest of the morning routine.

Today I will attempt to get all the Friday things done plus a packing list for the clinic and looking at all the paperwork for Monday.

After going to bed at a reasonable time I woke up from the alarm after getting enough sleep. Wow. Still a bit fuzzy but getting better.

Like every day I picked up my phone first, then ran into something book-related and bought three books? The details are also fuzzy. Started reading right away, managed to focus long enough for some quick morning pages and then ran out of time for yoga and meditation again.

Worked a bit on the gauge swatch for the MKAL and then had to leave in a hurry to see the ENT doctor. She had to look at my vocal cords and declared them to be healthy. And wrote a report. On the way back home I went to the pharmacy for throat lozenges and allergy medication for my husband.

Back home I helped with making lunch and then we actually ate lunch together, all three of us:

We ate lunch on time as well which meant there was also time to do the lunch dishes and take a shower before teaching. Yeah!

The first student told me that her daughter was thinking about taking piano lessons again. The second one told me she one some kind of chess championship since the last time I saw her, the next one wanted an online lesson because it was pouring buckets, the next one didn’t show up without canceling, the next one after that did cancel because she was sick and the last student of the day was a delight as always. Right in the middle of her lesson  the no-show student showed up with his mother in tow. They came to tell me that he wanted to quit lessons which was a huge relief. I only saw him three times since February and that is not a good basis for learning an instrument. So I told them I was okay with waiving the eight weeks notice period and to please just stop the automatic payment and they gave me my guitar back. Phew.

Last student was gracious about the interruption and had time to stay a little longer so that was good.

And then it so happened that the three of us were also eating dinner together. No idea when that happened last. And it was very nice. Afterwards the boy and I talked some more and showed each other Twitter posts as one does until I shoved him out of the kitchen because I still needed to start writing this post, do Duolingo and watch some C-drama.

And today the boy and I will go grocery shopping together. Because he will have to do the shopping for me for a while after surgery. And since we all are very particular about our food and since the supermarket I like going to is a bit hard to navigate I thought I’d show him around.

Like I also took him by the hand yesterday because he had asked to start a load of laundry with someone nearby. I had shown him several times but he hadn’t done it himself and that always means it’s easy to forget.

I kept thinking about why he is so bad with house-and yard work but a big reason is that he was never around when we did it. Since we work in the afternoons and he went to school in the mornings most of the time we were doing housework and such while he was not at home. Also, who need to learn how to do housework when you have magic fairies that make your dirty laundry show up all clean and folded a couple days later?

Yes, there’s theme here. I don’t think it will change soon.

At least I had gone to bed at a reasonable time. Because I didn’t do the dishes. Which I then had to do in the morning, of course.

I woke up from the alarm, felt fuzzy and slow but did manage morning pages and five minutes of yoga. It was a session that focused on arm strength and at the moment my arms are wet noodles so I hoped out.

Then the boy showed up, he had overslept and I had forgotten to check on him. He rushed out the house without breakfast, expected to be 15 minutes late but the magic of the starting time being ‚cum tempore‘ made him exactly on time. He also found that if you sit in third row not only can you understand the lecturer, you can also almost read the stuff he writes on the whiteboard!

Meanwhile I ate breakfast with my husband, crocheted a bit, confirmed my fuzziness by having to start the current round on the crochet cushion three times in a row, every time making a really dumb, big mistake.

The weather was awful, almost freezing and raining down hard so I was very happy to stay indoors. Did the dishes, folded three loads of laundry and then waited for lunch to happen. Husband said lunch being late was my fault because he had to wait for me for twenty minutes. I’m not quite sure how that translates into lunch being almost an hour late but okay.

He did cook on the wood stove and did not start the fire first thing so when he did start cooking the dried beans around 11 he first had to get the stove going and then the water for cooking.

By the time lunch was ready the boy was already back from uni. Lunch was very good:

After lunch I had twenty more minutes before teaching. I taught all afternoon, still fuzzy and slow and tired.

After work I talked with my husband and the boy, then did a halfhearted round of Duolingo while still talking with the boy (I had started a 15-minute XP boost and didn’t want to lose it), then did the dishes, watched something, did not drink a beer but instead a nice cup of tea while watching C-drama and went to bed.

Today brings another doctor’s appointment and lots of teaching again.

As you can see my enthusiasm for the „do something new and different every day“-challenge is already waning but I think that’s mostly because I’m pressed for time at the moment. I do count my public transport adventure as something new and different, though. I’ve also debated going back to the „Superbetter“-concept, I am rereading the book at the moment at least and I re-installed the app but don’t want to try a 14 day trial just now.

Went to bed at midnight, woke up from the alarm at 5.45. Not enough sleep again.

I did get going pretty quickly, ate breakfast and even wrote rudimentary morning pages before leaving for Munich. It was cold and wet at that point so I really needed my winter coat, fingerless gloves and my umbrella.

The train was ten minutes late but that was not a problem for me because I had planned with margin. The trains are always late these days.

I had learned from past mistakes and had taken a screen shot of the directions on how to get from the subway station to the clinic so didn’t have to wander around half-lost this time.

Everything went well, I met a doctor whose last name is the same as the name of the city I was born which has never happened before. I saw four different people, one for admin, one for talking about the surgery in general, one for talking about anaesthesia, and one (or rather two) who took an ultrasound and measured some of the nodes in my thyroid. Everybody was very nice, really clear and explained things well.

Then I went back home. When I was changing from the subway to the train at Marienplatz there was a fire alarm. Everybody was to leave the station immediately. We all trekked up the stairs slightly confused. There was no fire or smoke anywhere, so maybe it was false alarm.

In any case it was clear we wouldn’t get back into the station soon so I decided to walk to the next station. I tried getting information about the trains on the way but the transportation app wasn’t working. At the next station I realized there wouldn’t be any trains there as well. I mean, it’s all connected through a tunnel and train tracks. When the whole system is blocked in Munich proper that’s just it. Which is why they have been building a second tunnel for years and years now.

So I took a tram to Pasing. Good thing that I know my way around because the app and even Google Maps weren’t working. In Pasing the monitors on all the platforms were just saying there were no trains running through Munich. At all.

I saw a train on the neighboring platform that would at least be going in almost the right direction. So I went down the stairs and up again and entered the almost empty train. And waited. Until I saw a train that belonged to the right line pull in on the platform I had just left. I sprinted downstairs and up again (all with my mask on and my glasses being foggy which is always lovely) and threw myself in the carriage. Phew.

Made a detour to buy yogurt (and chocolate) and went home. The trip home had taken at least twice as long as the way there.

At home my husband was making pizza and talking about all the many things he had to do in the morning. Including scrubbing the baking sheets. I did help with cutting veggies and salad and assembling the pizza proper. The mushrooms I had bought last Thursday were moldy so we ended up with pizza Margherita and it was the best thing I’ve eaten in a while:

We all ate together because the boy had realized there were no trains just before leaving for uni and had opted to stay home. It is theoretically possible to use the bus and the subway instead but that’s no fun when all the other people who wanted to take the train are all on the bus with you. Trains can hold way more people than buses.

Then I had about half an hour before I needed to teach. By then I was very low on energy, not the best lessons of my life. I had two short breaks between student and I used one to do a very quick round of mobility training.

After teaching I ate another slice of pizza for dinner, decided to leave the dishes for today, had a beer, watched some C-drama and went to bed.

So drinking a beer the night before and turning the lights out at midnight didn’t really give me the best start into the week. And I had to get up earlier than usual as well because I wanted to make tea for the boy in the morning and he had to leave at 7.

I was wide awake at six and that was it for wakefulness for the rest of the day. The boy missed his train but the next one was only ten minutes later, I started the crochet cushion for the second time and I had one of those days where everything takes twice as long as usual and all you can think about is sleep. You know that feeling.

The yarn for the Kate Davies mystery knit-along came and I think it looks very pretty and the colors will work:

I did the breakfast dishes while listening to the second movement of the second Chopin piano concerto. I really love Chopin. Should probably listen to the whole thing soon. And then I walked to the health food store through the pouring rain. My husband had biked to the nursery and pulled a trailer full of fertilizer and soil (is it called soil when it’s in bags?) and such through the downpour. That didn’t sound like fun. At least I could use an umbrella.

At the store I remembered why I don’t go grocery shopping on Mondays. There were people everywhere and most of them were the kind of shoppers who come in pairs, park their shopping carts right in the middle of the way and start a lengthy discussion about what to have for dinner. Whereas I’m more of a speed shopper with an itemized grocery list that is specific to the store just reaching out and putting stuff in my cart. This was the first time ever I had seen the shop open a third cash register.

Since we were both busy and had to start teaching early we ate capellini with pesto. My husband had tried making red beet salad but the beets he had pulled from the freezer were still somewhat frozen at lunchtime:

Then I had a short break before it was time to teach.

I had had plans to use my 60-minute break to work on the manuscript but then didn’t. Too tired.

I ate dinner, started writing this post, was very glad that my husband had done the dishes already, took a shower, did Duolingo, watched a bit of C-drama and went to bed.

Since I’ll be leaving the house at 7 today I’m setting this up the night before to post in the morning.