Archives for May 2024

Let’s see: went to bed too late again and was basically half-asleep all day. Skipped the morning routine. I had a list as long as my arm but was very determined. Then my husband said, „You know, I thought I could make pesto from scratch today, wouldn’t that be great with homemade pasta?”

Yeah. It would. But also you just upended all my plans for the day.

So I called my mother on the phone as always on Sundays and acknowledged Mother’s Day. The boy had been so stressed out all week that I told him he didn’t need to do anything, by the way. My mother and I talked mostly about my health and hers but I also told her about my plans to make a skirt and dress until next week. And she went, „You do know that sewing clothes isn’t really cheaper than buying them, don’t you?“ Um, yeah, I do. That is not why I sew. „You can go and just buy things at times.“ I am perfectly aware. I do buy clothes all the time.

I’m not quite sure why she felt the need to make that asinine argument, especially since I already bought all the fabric and notions for the two projects. Cost doesn’t factor in at this point. So I said, „Sure I can buy clothes. And if you can point me towards a brown corduroy skirt with pockets that reaches down to my calves and fits me I’d be happy to buy it.“ To which she said, „Midi skirt? Who wears skirts this long?“ Um, they are back in fashion? „And why corduroy? Won’t that drape in a weird way? What kind of skirt are you making? Are you sure?“ Fun times.

Then I went and made pasta dough. As always I forgot the water at first and then wondered why the dough was so crumbly. For the first time I put the dough in the fridge for 5 minutes which turned out to be a great idea. And I followed some other tips on how to handle the dough that I found and that really made a difference. I could have kneaded the dough a bit longer, it was not as smooth as I would have liked but the pasta was really good:

These and the pesto that my husband made from fresh basil, roasted pine nuts and almonds, really good olive oil and some parmeggiano reggiano was just so good, best pasta with pesto I’ve ever had:

And totally worth the argument in the middle and the one-hour delay of lunch.

The boy only showed up late, again, and we talked briefly about the Eurovision Song Contest again. (In my head it’s still the „Grand Prix d’Eurovision de la chanson“, guess I’m old.)

I actually did the dishes right away which almost never happened because I was so set on sewing. And so I did sew. I only started at 4.30 and I was supposed to watch ‚Doctor Who‘ with the boy at 6 so I had to get a move on. But. Actual sewing happened! I connected the skirts to the body pieces, then found I had managed to cut out the pockets three one way and one the other which shouldn’t even have been possible, decided to not care if the wrong side of the fabric showed inside a pocket, especially since I had to squint in good light without my glasses on to see which side was which, sewed the pockets to the skirt parts and then would have had to press something, looked at the clock and realized I didn’t have enough time to get the iron out before it was time for dinner.

The boy and I ate in front of TV. That episode was, um, something. It’s not that I didn’t like it but it was definitely weird. There were a lot of parallels with the episode where Rose gets to a space station the first time which was nice but the whole baby storyline was extremely huh.

After that I watched a bit more than one episode of C-drama, fell into a bit of a social media rabbit hole, decided to not make the same mistake again that I make every evening, did the bare minimum of Duolingo, brushed my teeth and went to bed.

Today there will be sewing, taking a shower and teaching. And going to bed on time. I hope.

Let’s see. I had turned the lights out at 12.30 and woke up at 7 from the alarm. Not enough sleep yet again. So I was very slow in the morning and while I did write morning pages and then rolled out my yoga mat a glance at the clock showed me I didn’t have enough time. So I rolled the mat up again and made breakfast.

Breakfast had me in full on hyper focus on the logistics of our excursion up to the point that my husband got angry at me for not even looking at him and swiping on my iPad constantly. Which is completely understandable.

I did a few of my usual morning chores but not all, packed everything from my usual purse into a backpack, added some almonds, a water bottle, a cap against the sun and an umbrella. I also loaded my power bank but then forgot to take it with me. Which I only noticed after I came back, so I guess that was alright.

We left only ten minutes late which must be a new record for this event and set off on our bikes. We had the wind against us all the way which felt pretty demoralizing. Half the way is pretty nice, through fields and woods and small streets and the rest is a bike path next to an expansive street as straight as a ruler.

We left out bikes near the entrance of the park unlike the years before and that turned out to be an excellent decision. The festival is always packed and it is hard to find a space to leave the bikes. This way we could lock our bikes to an almost empty bike rack and stroll leisurely through the park.

We arrived just in time to see the lion dance and all the performers filling the stage for the opening act. After that we went to get something to eat first thing. Unfortunately, the place with excellent Thai food where we ate last year wasn’t open yet so we had some Vietnamese fried noodles and spring rolls. Should have used more sauce (there was a selection of sauces to add but I didn’t really take any):

The cardboard box had some Chinese writing that I took a picture of because I could only read a character or two:

This apparently says „good appetite“ (好胃口）and „lunch box“ (饭盒). I am certainly no expert but Germans say „Guten Appetit“ (good appetite) to each other before a meal. As far as I know nobody else does this, so maybe someone German used Google translate to design this because the grammar on „good appetite“ is all wrong, at least for Chinese. But who knows.

After eating we went back to the open air theater and watched Thai dance for a while. The sun was shining and it was really hot by then. There were no empty seats on the shadow side so we sat right in the sun. I was very happy to have brought an umbrella to use as a parasol. It really makes a difference. I did end up with a heat rash on my thighs anyway. (Note to self: don’t wear jeans on hot, sunny days when you sit in the sun for a long time)

During the next break we got up and wandered over to catch the last few notes of Japanese flute music, looked at all the stands and the Chinese garden and then decided to head home again. I did take some pictures. They are not very good (as usual) because I took most of the one-handed, and I can’t show most of them here because I can’t crop the audience out. But here is the Thai consul greeting everyone at the opening ceremony:

Some Thai dancers:

And a rock and some greenery in the Chinese garden:

We didn’t stay all that long, we arrived at 12.30 after an hour of biking and were back home at 4.15. We’re not used to mingle with masses of people anymore.

Back home I fell into a bit of a slump, my legs were sore, my back hurt, I had that rash and was exhausted and tired. Which was alright, though.

I spent the time until dinner playing silly iPad games and scrolling through social media, the did more of the same even though I had other things to do. In the morning my husband had found that the water in the BRITA filter was looking iffy so we had drained it and I had promised to clean it later in the day. Also, my husband had started a load of laundry some time in the afternoon (right after I had decided to leave it until today) and then didn’t have the time to hang it up so I said I would do it.

When I finally got moving again at 9 the boy showed up saying he wanted to take a shower, so I hung up the laundry, did the dishes and cleaned the filter, then took a really quick shower, started writing this post and put the filter back together.

By then it was already after 11 and too late for watching something. I read a bit and went to bed.

Today I’m hoping to finally make progress on sewing the dress…

I had gone to bed half an hour late and didn’t really sleep all that well because of the beer I had in the evening. I woke up from the alarm and actually did my complete morning routine including yoga for the first time since thyroid surgery. It was so lovely to move again.

I ate breakfast, talked with my husband and started a swatch for Fitton’s Dynamo on bigger needles than this:

I did Duolingo and the breakfast dishes and then started the weekly cleaning. I was a little later than my husband would have liked, as usual. I got about halfway done before it was time for lunch:

I had a short break talking with the boy and playing silly iPad games, then vacuumed the old part of the house and took a shower before it was time to teach. I asked the boy to hang the load of laundry up that I had started earlier. I also got the mail which included the histology report on my thyroid. I didn’t understand a word of it except for „no indication of malignancy“. Which made me super happy.

After my first student I went on a Zoom meeting for intuitive authors, then another short break where I ordered two more balls of yarn for Fitton, then two more students.

Meanwhile my husband had been very kind and did the dishes. I cleaned the washbasins and toilets, had dinner, played some more games, talked with the boy about the Eurovision Song Contest that I had completely forgotten about, started writing this post with a increasingly fuzzy brain, did Duolingo, watched an episode of C-drama without having appropriate knitting (the horrors) while drinking another beer to celebrate, and went to bed.

Today there will be Vesakh festival and not much more. I’m really looking forward to it.

After turning the lights out at midnight I got up before seven. I wrote morning pages, took a shower and had breakfast. I had to drink my big mug of tea real fast because I had to leave at 9.20 for my doctor’s appointment. Which meant I could not check if the boy heard his alarm which led to him oversleeping and not going to uni. Again.

My first stop of the day was my GP because I thought he might know whether my thyroid nodules were benign or not but he didn’t. I also talked with him about testing my thyroid hormone levels at the end of the month and got a prescription renewed and a new asthma inhaler so the visit was not a waste of time. Still, I think I need to figure out who to ask about the whole nodule report thing.

Then I went to the train station just two minutes after the train had left to go to the next town over for more visits to doctor’s offices. I waited 18 minutes while listening to BTS and reading Margery Allingham, took the train and went to two different doctor’s offices to renew two more prescriptions. Then I walked to the nice health food store, bought a handful of things including frozen ground beef and veal cutlets only to find that I again had missed a train by two minutes. When I got home I also realized that I had forgotten to stamp my ticket. Oops.

Back in my home town I walked to the pharmacy for all my medications, got the usual „We have to order these two but they’ll be in after three“, went to the other health food store for a few things including chocolate and walked back home.

There was still half an hour before lunch and I briefly toyed with the idea of opening the manuscript but ended up just taking a break.

Lunch was very tasty, pasta e fagioli:

The boy showed up shortly before it was time for me to start teaching. Then I taught all the students, used a short break to sprint back to the pharmacy to pick up the remaining two medications, went back, taught two more students, had dinner, looked at the choices for the EU parliament elections in June, ended up agreeing with the party I would have voted for anyway, talked with the boy a bit, started writing this post, did one short session of Duolingo, made a half-hearted attempt at doing my foot exercises, watched half an episode of C-drama, and fell into bed.