Archives for April 2024

I’m not sure I’m happy with what I got done, though, or not.

I had gone to bed slightly too late again, slept well and woke up at six with a start remembering that I hadn’t bought mozzarella for the pizza we had planned. The mozzarella was on Thursday’s grocery list. I also went to another grocery store on Saturday because we didn’t have enough flour for the pizza after baking the muffins. But the first time I remembered that I had somehow completely skipped the mozzarella on the list was – Sunday early morning.

For those of you who don’t know, shops are closed on Sundays in Germany. I mean, I could have tried the gas station but I doubt I’d get mozzarella there.

Since I was awake already and since I hadn’t managed to take a shower the day before I then decided to do my morning routine quickly and take that shower before breakfast. Great plan.

Then I proceeded to read stuff on my phone until it was too late for almost everything and when my husband showed up for breakfast I was still in the shower. To get ready a little quicker I skipped the whole lotion and creme step. Two hours later I wondered why my face was itching. Yeah. It’s good to be reminded, why I buy that fancy expensive anti-itch, sensitive skin, eczema stuff.

We ate muffins for breakfast. In my case I ate two which was too much. After breakfast I pulled out my notebook to write morning pages but the boy showed up and we talked so I put it away again.

I talked with my husband and with my mother. My mother told me about every single admin task in her life in excruciating detail. Mostly stuff she had already told me the week before. We also talked about my upcoming surgery. She is clearly flustered which is understandable but I have to say I hope I’m not the kind of parent who needs to be calmed down by their child when said child has something happening that is a little scary. Oh, and the two most important things are a) I really need to buy a new jacket and b) when I lave the hospital I should tell them that nobody can pick me up and get a piece of paper so that I can take a taxi and will be reimbursed by insurance. Sure. I’ll tell them that with my husband right there.

I mean, to her walking, taking the subway, changing trains and then walking for eight minutes home from the station would be very exhausting. And if I feel too weak for it that day I’ll gladly call a taxi. And then I’ll pay for it myself because when we sold the car we realized that we can take a lot of taxis for the cost of a car.

So that was fun! I spent half an hour googling how fit people usually feel two or three days after thyroid surgery. I mean, I already know that I shouldn’t lift things heavier than 5 kilos, that I’m not allowed to drive and that I shouldn’t move my head around too fast (though I imagine that’ll be pretty self-explaining) which is why I asked my husband to pick me up and carry my luggage.

As I said, my mother is not the most calming presence in the world.

Since my husband had been complaining that we never sit outside me I made the whole family eat lunch on the porch. We even brought the outdoor furniture upstairs:

After lunch I had an hour before the boy was planning to make onigiri. I read and played games and started doing the dishes twenty minutes too late. I almost texted him to say I was sorry but then decided to just wait when he’d show up and it turned out he was even later than me.

I removed myself to the living room because I did not particularly want to make onigiri. He still came in every other minute to ask where things were or how to do things. He doesn’t really know how to cook but wants to learn. He did pretty well but things take him rather long. He also needed to make furikake which meant crushing sesame seed and roasting it and chopping nori sheets. When it was almost dinnertime I went in and did help a little, he doesn’t always know which tool to use. I also helped form the rice balls, well, triangles. Here are the two that didn’t fit in the box that we ate right away:

And then the kitchen looked super messy and there was rice and pieces of dried algae everywhere. Unfortunately the boy still needed to clean his room and finally get all the recycling downstairs and so I offered to do the dishes.

Which was interrupted by an almost hysterical boy telling me that he had broken the vacuum. Spoiler: he hadn’t. But when you suck a bottle cap into the vacuum cleaner and it gets stuck in the right way the vacuum will suddenly no longer work that well. Once I saw where the blockage was and had moved into the garden shed for a stick the right size I managed to unblock the vacuum smoothly and get back to doing the dishes.

I finished those, started writing this post, watched some C-drama while the boy took a shower and went to bed.

Today will be extra long, the boy needs to get up at 6.30 am and I’ll teach until 7.30 pm. Fun times. And then it will be evening shower time again because I need to leave for a doctor’s appointment at 7.30 tomorrow morning.

And a little too late to bed again. But I slept very well. Woke up from the alarm, still tired but couldn’t fall back asleep. I dawdled for half an hour, did morning pages, yoga and meditation and still was on time for breakfast. Had an enjoyable conversation with my husband. Found that I had used the wrong colors in the crochet cushion, debated ripping back and decided to start a second time with a smaller hook because I had been thinking the whole thing might be to floppy and full of holes.

I played silly iPad games, did the dishes, listened to Wagner’s „Tannhäuser“ overture and was pleasantly surprised. I don’t usually like Wagner much but this one was fun. I vacuumed the old part of the house, cleaned washbasins and toilets and started the first load of laundry for the day. There was a bit of a misunderstanding with my husband regarding the laundry. He wanted to help me and offered to start the first load but I had to think first because I had wanted to put a rag in it that I still needed to use. Husband was pissed because of my „aggressive silence“ and that spiraled into a longer discussion on and off lasting well after lunch.

But we did eat together and the food was great, near perfect:

The boy came downstairs a little later and we spent some time showing each other stuff on social media. I had a bit of time to myself, then talked to my husband again, hung the first load of laundry up, did the dishes and then waited for the boy to show up for half an hour. We had plans to make blueberry muffins.

That took a while. And the next time I’ll look up the recipe first before buying ingredients. They don’t look much but they tasted delicious:

While the muffins were in the oven the boy unpacked the new clothes he had ordered and tried them on. He kept everything but one t-shirt that we repacked right away.

Looking for flour in the cupboards I had to find that while there was enough for the muffins there would not be enough for the pizza we had planned to make today. And the boy still needed sesame seeds for the onigiri he wants to make so we sent off to drop the package off and walked to the nearby supermarket. Bought flour, tomatoes, sesame seeds and salad and walked back home. Without buying any sweets even though I had seen an advertisement for a new flavor of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream that I had tried the week before and had really loved. But no, there were cupcakes at home.

We ate dinner, I started writing this post, put half the muffins in the freezer, hung up the second load of laundry, did the dishes including the many bowls from cupcake making, started a third load of laundry, did the dishes and took a shower. I almost didn’t do the mobility exercises that I had hoped to do but then remembered I have an „express“ routine that only takes eight minutes. And that made me feel so much better!

Today there will be the usual Sunday things and the boy wants to make his onigiri. I don’t think I’ll help, I need to do other things instead.

But it definitely looks like doing something new and different every day is working well.

Yes, I went to bed too late again. Yes, I only got 6 !/2 hours of sleep. No, that was not a good idea.

But for some reason I was actually wide awake, excited about the day and full of energy. I think it’s because I was almost done organizing the week off and having that epiphany about needing more „new, different and exiting“ things in my life so that I can get the routines on track.

Oh wait, I’ve talked about this everywhere but not here. So. On Thursday I was thinking about why I can’t seem to get my evening routine (or any kind of routine, to be honest) locked in anymore. I mean, there is a huge part of me that loves routine and sameness and predictability. But. There is also a part of me that needs things to be new! and different! and exciting! And I suddenly realized that my life is lacking those qualities. Also joy. Totally falling through the cracks. I try to be sensible and get things done and not dive into chaos. And floss and clean the house and keep on top of laundry, you know the drill.

And I remembered how when my son was in kindergarten I did an experiment where I did one thing differently than normal. Take a different route to kindergarten or buy a different ice cream flavor, just something. I had read about it in a women’s magazine where it was advertised as a strategy for weightless. And it actually worked. For a while.

And revenge bedtime procrastination is about the feeling that you don’t really have control over your life and that your day was lacking and so you try to grab some time for yourself at a time where you should be asleep.

So I’m trying to revive the „so something different every day“-strategy. Who knows, maybe I’ll even lose some weight through it but that’s not my main motivation here.

Anyways, I woke up, felt much better than the whole week and did my complete morning routine. Yes! That yoga was sorely needed. When I was doing the breakfast dishes I had to stop listening to Strauss „Metamorphosen“ first because my husband showed up just as I had started listening (that happens a lot) and second because that piece is 27 minutes long. I didn’t have that much washing up to do. But I’ll listen to it today.

Instead I switched to a YouTube video about temperature. And that brought me to building a weather station using a Raspberry Pi (that is a kind of small, cheap computer). And now I want one. I spent a happy twenty minutes researching how to do that. And finding out what kind of Raspberry Pi the boy owns and if we could use that. That was exciting!

I also researched thyroid surgery and now I have a better understanding of how that all works and what to expect. And then – still looking for something new and exciting – I decided that if I ever lose my voice and can’t teach anymore I’ll become a programmer or maybe I’ll help people with their WordPress sites. And then I went off researching Udemy courses on Java, Python, WordPress and SEO.

I am very proud of myself. I didn’t buy anything. But I might.

Anyways, I had a lot of fun. Ha!

I started cleaning a little earlier than usual but didn’t get finished. I did order and pick up takeout, though. It was very yummy and we even ate all together and had a nice civilized conversation:

I contemplated ordering something different from what I always order but decided I had enough excitement for the day:

I had plans of finishing the cleaning before and in between students but I didn’t. I played silly iPad games instead and I regret nothing. There were only four students, all very pleasant and I might have found a new book explaining how to play bar piano that might actually work which is very exciting. The ebook is even in Kindle Unlimited so I’ll check it out over the weekend.

I ate the second half of my noodles for dinner. I used to do that all the time, every time I had takeout I’d eat a little more than half for lunch and the rest for dinner but the past few years I always ate it all for lunch. 

I started writing this post, almost forgot about Duolingo, watched some C-drama and went to bed.

I guess today will be more cleaning. And something new and different. And fun, I hope.

Which comes as no surprise after another too short night of sleep. I’m really trying but you wouldn’t know by looking at me.

And again I did not do my morning routine. I’ve been thinking a lot about why I can’t seem to go to bed on time or do my morning routine at the moment and there are several things at play, I think. I also keep forgetting that for all my thinking that I’m actually not doing anything there is quite a bit that I do every day.

Still. But first sleep.

No conflict with my husband, though, so that’s good.

I had breakfast and then started the first ever crochet blanket of my life. I’m aiming to make the Blooming Flower Cushion by Lucy from Attic24. The pattern is not hers but she wrote a very comprehensive guide on how to make it. You should be able to see her version using her Sungold palette by clicking here.

So far mine looks like this:

As you can see the weather was rather nice.

After that I did the breakfast dishes and then biked to the supermarket. I bought many things including a pound of Tyrolean bacon, some rice and nori for onigiri and vegan Weißwurst. The supermarket was rather empty but there were two couples and an older woman who managed to be in my way all the way through. It was also the time of day when the supermarket employees restock the shelves. Still, I decided not to get angry because other people aren’t as fast as I am. I did get a little impatient, though, when the same woman blocked my access to a freezer the second time in a row, completely unaware that I as waiting behind her while she was studying the writing on a package of frozen fish.

The queues at the two open cash registers were long and I made sure to not stand in the same one as that woman but I couldn’t help overhearing when she started complaining about the fact that we had to stand there for ages. Which was about one minute at that point. They opened a third lane and she started joining that three times in a row but every time someone else went first. Because she was rather slow. Which she complained about as well. She also complained loudly about the cashier in her lane being way too slow, she thought the other queues were moving much faster. Which was true but then she stood in a queue with several people who had full carts, like me and her, while the newly opened one had mostly younger people with two or three items. Of course that was faster.

Anyways, it made me realize again how complaining can sour the mood for everyone around and accomplish nothing.

I came back home through a throng of students coming out of school (my bad, don’t pass the local gymnasium shortly past 1 pm) to a husband who complained about something as well. I think I need to check myself. Do I complain all the time as well? Probably. Everybody does and it is rather easy and makes one feel a little better in the moment.

My husband had made chervil soup. It’s funny, every year I have to look up how to say Kerbel in English. It’s traditional for the Thursday before Good Friday but my husband only got around to making it now. He grew the chervil himself:

The boy only came downstairs half an hour later. I did a covid test (negative again, phew!), the taught my first student of the day. My second student canceled. I almost went and did the dishes then because I thought I’d have a 60-minute break, looked at my schedule and found that I didn’t have that much time because of a rescheduled Monday student and then ended up having a 90-minute break all in all because that student and the one after just didn’t show. I did a lot of scrolling through Instagram because I kept waiting.

Then I had three more student which was rather enjoyable, ate dinner while my husband kept getting in and out of the kitchen, then the boy came in for dinner and we talked briefly, I started writing this post (it was 8.45 at this point, 90 minutes after my last student had left), I did the dishes, wrote in my bullet journal, finally watched the rest of „Shall We Dance“ (the second half has all the famous bits from this movie like the tap dancing on roller skates number „Let’s call the whole thing off“.

Fridays are for cleaning and then it will be the weekend. Which is good, I’ve had a bit of a week.

I went to bed at midnight again and that overshadowed the whole day. I was very tired. And I can confirm that drinking any amount of alcohol at any point in the day makes my sleep less restful. Yeah.

Since I was so tired and stressed out I did not do my morning routine. I find that I skip it most often on days where I need it the most but then I’ve complained about this enough.

I did finish the crochet blanket, ends are woven in and all but I didn’t take a picture.

I had an ambitious list that included taking a shower and exercising but again I didn’t feel like it. Did I already tell you that my knees have started hurting again? I really should exercise again. Not today, though.

Me not getting adequate sleep again sparked a slightly heated conversation about executive function. My husband can’t shake the feeling that if I just knew how good it feels to get a grip on life I’d just do it. Right. Very helpful advice, thanks. So I went and bought the book „Dirty Laundry. Why adults with ADHD are so ashamed and what we can do to help“. I’ll make him read it eventually.

My husband made a new dish. The Italian teacher he likes best on YouTube had talked about it and so he had looked for a recipe:

Doesn’t look like much, I know. It’s pasta with potatoes and provolone cheese. He used ditalini pasta. It did taste very good but a bit too rich almost.

I only had a short break before my first student, taught straight through to 6 including two of my Monday students. One of them had broken their leg over the weekend, poor thing.

In order to get a grip on my evening I made an actual list with the things I wanted to do and the times I wanted to do them on the suggestion of a friend. Well, in a way that was a big success. In another way I lost an hour somewhere along the way. I had put half an hour for unexpected things in my schedule but not a whole hour. Still.

I talked to the boy who wants to make onigiri soon and we also talked about baking. He’s interested in learning how to cook. Also, I told him about my rule back in the day when I was losing weight that I could only eat sweet things if I made them myself. So no store-bought ice cream or cake, just homemade. Which meant I wasn’t really feeling deprived because I still could have them but the barrier to stuffing my face with sweets was quite a bit higher. I mean, I was still eating chocolate every day but only really dark chocolate and not as much. Which I find much easier when there’s less sugar in it.

And he is interested in trying that rule out himself. Which means I’ll buy the ingredients for muffins today.

I talked with the Wednesday students about me not teaching the week after next, only two more batches of students to inform. I did decide to give myself grace for being stressed, that’s just natural.

Oh, and I derailed myself by getting inspired to look at yarn for the MKAL again. My subconscious had been busy combining colors in the back of my mind so right before bedtime I went and made a decision and ordered the yarn. Now the question is: how will the colors mandarin and cerise look net to each other in real life?

Stay tuned.

I woke up from the alarm and didn’t really want to get going. Not only had I had a beer the night before I had also gone to bed too late. So I decided to skip the morning routine. Again.

I ate breakfast, talked with my husband and pondered what to do when the rest of the morning. I did finish the last border round on the crochet blanket. There still are a few ends to weave in but then I’ll be done.

I sent an email to my GP for the form I was missing, did the breakfast dishes, got the answer that the doctor’s office had faxed the form to the clinic and that I could pick the original up any time. So I walked to the ENT doctor’s office, asked about an appointment, got one at the exact same time I already had a shockwave appointment for my foot, walked across the street to pick the form up and then walked to the health food store. I am very proud, I only bought a reasonable amount of chocolate.

My husband made fish for lunch:

And yes, that is a glass of wine. My mother-in-law had given us a bottle of wine that she had received as a present. She drinks very little so didn’t want it to sit in the basement forever.

The wine comes from a place near where I grew up, near a town where my husband’s parents lived around the time I was born. This is in Northern Germany, not really wine country. We had the Solaris wine, very fruity and rather nice. There’s a website as well. You can toggle the language to English but I advise against it. Although it’s funny, there is a call for „reading assistants“. Which made me realize the whole thing must be powered by something like Google translate. What they are looking for are „Lesehelfer“, people who help picking the grapes. Grape harvest is called „Weinlese“ in German. Most of the time „Lesen“ is reading. And this is why computers can’t rule the world yet.

After lunch I talked with the boy a bit. I also wrote a couple of emails, mostly about not teaching the week after next and also to cancel the shockwave appointment. That doctor’s office also responded within minutes. I had tried calling them on the phone before but didn’t get through.

Then I taught all the students, telling each and every one about the week after next. And then sending their parents texts about it after.

Teaching was actually nice and not as draining as I thought it might be.

Then I ate dinner, did Duolingo, started writing this post and tried to stare down the dishes but in the end decided to just wash them. That took so long that watching the rest of „Shall we dance“ would have made me go to be too late again so I decided to skip the movie for once. I did a brief detour looking at potential yarn for the MKAL I joined (knitting from leftovers would have been great but I only have about half the yarn I’d need), spent some quality time with a cup of chamomile tea and „Dune“ and went to bed.

Today should be a little less busy. Let’s see how that goes.