Archives for June 2024

Well, turning the lights out past 1 AM kind of set the tone for the day.

I did wake up somewhat rested from the alarm at 7, did my stretches and got out of bed right away, then picked up my phone and, um, lost an hour? Wrote morning pages and skipped yoga again. This picking up the phone business has to be stopped. Really.

I did finish eating breakfast before my husband showed up, at least.

Then there was talking with my husband (very nice), calling my mother on the phone (also very nice) and then, instead of waiting for lunch to be ready I just went to my studio and played piano for a bit. Ha! Playing the freshly tuned piano was great! Only there is a key that makes just the slightest rasp of wood on wood. And then there are a few places in the deeper range that are a little off. Not that they’re actually off key, they just, I don’t know, resonate wrong?

I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it, maybe because I don’t quite trust the younger piano tuner yet but my husband heard it too. I said, „There is this one tone that is just slightly off. I tried playing a chromatic scale and everything was fine, and then I played octaves and fifth and everything was fine as well but when I played the tune it sounded wrong.“ And while I was saying this he chimed in saying that he had heard it as well.

So I guess I might call the piano tuner again and ask for a correction. I mean, it’s not a big deal, nothing is actually out of tune and the poor guy had to sit there tuning for three hours. And my piano is fickle in places, one can tune it well and it still sounds off until one gets those few notes just right.

And as my husband said, most people won’t even hear any of it. While he and I are almost at that stage where you can tune a guitar just like that. Sometimes a student of mine starts tuning and I go, „Nope, that is way too low!“ Without a reference. To be fair while I’m mostly right when I say things like that, sometimes I’m not.

Anyways, lunch was only half an hour late and super tasty:

Then I played some games including Genshin Impact, scrolled through social media, ate too many snacks, and then planned out my week.

I ate dinner, did the dishes, decided to skip my second Duolingo session of the day, started writing this post, watched some C-drama and went to bed.

And now off to a new week.

It feels like it lasted all day but that’s not exactly true. I overslept again, then had to listen to my husband admonishing me about always eating while he is busy making his breakfast (believe me, it’s more uncomfortable for me than for him) and why I can never do things at the proper time, spent a lot of time playing silly iPad games, wrapped a return package for the shoes I ordered that don’t fit and put it in the mail, did bodyweight training, wanted to take a shower before lunch but needed to sit and hold my husband’s hand while he cooked instead and had a perfect risotto:

Then I took an extensive break after listening to my husband explaining to me several Miles Davis and John Coltrane albums (again), then downloaded Genshin Impact and started playing it on my iPad (nice, will definitely play again). At around 4.30 or so I had enough, found that I was really, really cranky and pissed and low on energy, decided that I really wanted to pig out and walked to a nearby supermarket for potato chips, ice cream and licorice. In between me playing and trying to summon enough energy and willpower to tackle the dishes and taking a shower my husband came to me for help with his new computer twice. It’s not so much that he needs my help, it’s more the way that he is extremely angry that things on the new computer are not completely identical with the old one. One of those emergencies was that he couldn’t type the @-sign. That is in the exact same spot as before, by the way, no idea what went wrong there.

Just before I left for the supermarket I met my mother-in-law who whined that something was wrong with her camera. When I told her that I’d look at it after coming back she gave me her usual, „It’s not urgent, just do it whenever.“ Since I was pissed already I told her that doing it right away would be much easier for me than trying to remember it for several days. Also, when do you think I have more time for things like that, a Saturday afternoon or during the week?

I walked to the supermarket which was great, listening to my usual BTS album, came back, put a beer and the ice cream in the freezer, looked for my mother-in-law’s camera, found that the display was switched off, had to look through every single menu and press every single button on the whole camera to switch it back on, went outside to tell her everything was fine and to show her which button to press in the future but was held up by a friend of my husband standing in our yard with my husband telling him about her vacation in Italy. Since I had been wanting to ask her about the health scare she had and didn’t want to seem rude I said hello, only to see my mother-in-law vanish after ten minutes or so.

There had been a brief moment before I went shopping where I had thought it might be nice to sit on the porch with my junk food and enjoy it but with three other people in the yard, all of them working and/or talking animatedly I ate in the kitchen again.

By then it was already dinner time. I really enjoyed my food and for once did not have stomach problems after (yeah!), briefly talked with the boy (who did not have time to watch the next episode of „The Dead Boy Detectives“, sadly), and then sat there, unable to get started with anything.

At around 11 I had heroically managed to not drink a second beer, decided that it was already too later to watch C-drama, started doing the dishes at 11.30, finally took a quick shower, skipped applying lotion and such because it was too late, made myself a soothing cup of tea and drank it reading in bed.

I turned the lights out after 1 am, great start into Sunday, for sure.

I mean, I did manage to write morning pages this morning but that’s it so far. And next week will be, um, rather full?

(This morning I told my husband that my head was too full to properly listen to more fun facts about The Rolling Stones. He asked me what it was full with. Well, all the projects, including publishing my first book, the fact that I didn’t manage to clean the house and whether to just skip it altogether or maybe do a thing or two, wanting to practice handwriting Chinese and why I’m never using the workbook I own, if I have already reached half of Clue 1 of the MKAL or more and how to navigate next week.
He asked, „Why, what is next week?”

Me, „Well, I have a doctor’s visit and coaching on Monday, a mammogram that involves a two-hour train ride on Tuesday, a fitting for orthotics on Thursday but that’s mostly it.”

Him, „That is a lot. If you want you can send me some of your students. Not the beginners, though.”

If you look at my list you’ll realize that teaching wasn’t even on there.)

Anyways, fun times!

Yeah! And not much more, boo!

I had turned the lights out really late and woke up a few times because there was a mosquito in my bedroom that I couldn’t find. Still, my smartwatch insists that I was totally ready for the day.

I tried doing yoga early and write morning pages but again I picked up my phone at one point and everything took more time than I thought it would and with the piano tuner expected at 8 I just made myself breakfast instead.

The piano tuner came at around 8.15. My husband showed up half an hour later admitting that he had forgotten about the piano again. It’s pretty surprising when you sit there, reading in peace in the morning and then someone starts banging the same key over and over in the next room.

This time we didn’t have our regular piano tuner but his son instead. My husband came to the kitchen at one point very concerned that he wasn’t tuning the same way his father does, in octaves, fifth and fourths but instead kept going from tone to tone in a chromatic scale. I told him that he probably was just adjusting the piano’s regulation before doing the actual tuning. And yes, that’s what he did.

Anyways, having someone in the house meant I didn’t get anything done again. Once my husband came back from his run I did go out to get some ground beef substitute for the boy and pick up my new book, „The Complete Pianist“. The book looks great but is massive. Now I only have to read it.

Meanwhile my husband made duck ragout to go with the special pasta we had brought from Verona. Bigoli are a Venetian specialty that we had never heard of before we went to Verona this year.

The food was excellent. One of the top meals I’ve eaten, ever:

I had a feeble intention of cleaning in the afternoon because my first student canceled but ended up just playing silly games and eating chocolate. I started late and taught until after 7, ate dinner, talked with the boy about video games, did Duolingo and procrastinated the dishes. Mostly because my husband came up to me after dinner and said he had already done the prep for doing the dishes. He has the best intentions and does this to make things easier for me which I appreciate but the way he does the prep is soaking everything and just filling every pot and plate with water, dunking all the cutlery in it. Which means I need to fish everything out again and deal with cold soapy and greasy water before I can finally wash things in fresh, hot and soapy water which is way less icky. Also all the soaking and such spreads all the things out over maximum of counter space which makes everything look like way more work than it actually is.

(I am a big fan of only soaking things that really need it and making neat stacks that take up a minimum of counter space and leave at least one of the sinks completely empty. It is super interesting how different two intelligent people who both value efficiency can go about the same simple task.)

I did get over myself and clean all the many pots and few dishes, then started writing this post and then watched some C-drama even though it was already bedtime.

Oh, and the boy spent quite a bit of time trying to find some video games I would enjoy. I only play the kind where you push a few things around, merge or time manage and are done with the round after five minutes, also the kind where you’re not required to think. He, on the other hand, is the kind of gamer who things nothing of sinking a couple hundred hours into something and plays quite a few that are rather involved and hard to play.
I mean, not that I’m not sinking a lot of time into those silly little games but only ever ten minutes here and there.

Surprising no one I went to bed too late. I’m actually a bit unsure if I should just skip the weekly cleaning this week, a big part of me feels like shrugging her shoulders about the whole thing right now. I guess I’ll see.

I went to bed only half an hour late, slept well and woke up around 7. I had to cut my morning routine short again but at least I finally figured out one reason why I never do all of it: I added a few stretches for my feet before getting out of bed and that seems to be enough to throw the whole thing off. Huh. So I wrote morning pages but skipped yoga and meditation.

At least morning pages helped me realize why I’m stuck on the skirt-in-progress. Since the pattern pieces were too small and the seam allowance was 1.5 centimeters I decided to just make the seam allowance 1 centimeter instead – voilà: bigger skirt. I also made the waistband wider by 2 centimeters. My reasoning was: four skirt panels, each gets half a centimeter wider equals 2 centimeters.

Well. When I tried pinning the waistband to the skirt it didn’t fit. The instructions said that the skirt might stretch out a bit and if that happens to gather the top. I did a lot of gathering but the skirt still didn’t fit. Then I went to Italy, came back and spent a couple of weeks thinking I really should finish the skirt without doing anything. So. If you have four panels and make each of it wider by half a centimeter on each side guess what? The waistband needs to be 4 centimeters wider, not 2.

So the next step with the skirt will be to see if I have enough fabric left to cut a second, wider waistband (plus interfacing) or if I need to put the new waistband together from pieces.

But, of course, the waistband and the rest of the skirt didn’t fit together.Duh!

Other than that I did the usual breakfast, talking with husband, dishes and such and then rode my bike to the supermarket and back. My husband made comida caseira with fish:

The boy came downstairs at the end of lunch, ate and talked and I was left with only fifteen minutes to myself before teaching. Which was not a problem because I had that lovely one-hour break in between. The plan had been to fold all the laundry in that time but I didn’t.

Teaching was lovely, then I ate dinner in the middle of two people frying stuff on the stove one after the other (before waltzing off and leaving me with the dirty dishes), then the boy declared that he wanted to take a shower first, so I waited for an hour until he finally was ready (more than enough time to do the dishes, ahem) while playing Solitaire on my iPad. I found (not for the first time) that while playing Solitaire is soothing in a way it also makes me feel weird, almost desperate so I deleted the app. I think I’ll pull out the real physical playing cards again instead. That’s much better.

I have a bit of an uneasy relationship with Solitaire, my father used to play it on his laptop non-stop the past few years which always felt like life passed him by and his mother did the same with actual physical cards. So much so that she even had a dedicated Solitaire table in her apartment.

I myself started playing when I was in third or fourth grade, I got the set of playing cards I have on summer vacation, I think, maybe in Cornwall. My father taught me the way of playing he learned from his mother, a teacher from school taught me a slightly different one at summer camp and then I played on and off for many, many years. That was all before computer games, of course.

Playing with physical cards is nice because it’s tangible but it’s also a little frustrating because there is nothing to help you. No automatic sorting, no undo button and no hints. Still, it can be very meditative if frustrating at times.

Anyways, I started writing this post, did Duolingo, watched something and went to bed.

Today is the day my piano finally gets tuned. It has been overdue since November and the piano tuner needs to fine-tune the mechanical parts as well so that the keys feel less uneven when playing. I can’t wait to use an actually tuned piano again.

Since I had actually gone to bed at a reasonable time I did get enough sleep for once. Funny how that works!

I had great hopes to do yoga in the morning but then was too afraid the plumber would be early and so I just ate breakfast a little earlier than usual.

The plumber was not early but he also was not late. He took one look at the faucet that had been leaking so hard that we had permanently installed a container underneath, declared that he could change the seals without turning the water off, proceeded to do so and that was that. Yeah!

On the other hand, if he hadn’t told us he couldn’t change the seals without turning the main water off in the house last year we would not have lived with the drip for so long. But let’s focus on the positive. He also thinks that the big pipe from the toilets upstairs in the bathroom is not leaking but that there is mold growing on it from condensation. So we need to clean that mold off and re-paint the pipe first, then open the windows properly for ventilation and that should be that.

The plumber also showed me how to open and clean the antiflooding valve in the basement, so that is good.

After he left there was still a lot of time left in the day. I talked to my husband, walked to the pharmacy and the health food store and then chopped all the things for salad and sauce:

Since my first two students canceled and the last one I thought I would pull out the sewing machine and make progress sewing the skirt. Well, I didn’t. I just spent that extra time reading and looking at Twitter and I regret nothing because it really felt good to just do nothing for a bit.

After teaching I went online again, ate dinner, talked with the boy, did the dishes and started writing this post. Then Duolingo, I watched some „Handsome Siblings“ and that was mostly it.

Oh, and I almost forgot, I called my GP’s office because the other doctor recommended testing for rheumatism. So now I have an appointment for Monday for another blood draw.