Archives for June 2024

The day started with me oversleeping. My alarm went off at 7, the next time I looked at the clock it was 8. I had hopes of moving the morning routine after breakfast but that did not work out. It never does.

My husband was again very occupied with the two major life crises he has so we talked about that at length. Without me even being able to knit through it because I need to figure out how to proceed with the cardigan first. It all feels a bit exhausting.

I spent most of the rest of the morning waiting for the boy’s new cell phone to arrive. UPS said they’d be here between 10.40 and 12.40, which did seem a bit too early for UPS. Or any delivery. Most of them usually arrive around noon or if it’s Amazon mostly in the late afternoon or early evening. But it said so in the app.

So I kept reconsidering my plans. I had hoped for an early delivery so that I could pick up my thyroid meds and buy some chamomile/fennel tea. And licorice. And I kept doing the „if they arrive before 12.45 I will go to the pharmacy before lunch but if they’re later I’ll go tomorrow. If they come before 12.15 I can also go to the supermarket but if not I will go after teaching at 7“-dance.

Meanwhile my husband had promised his friend who helps him with the garden to be at her house between 1.30 and 2 to let the electrician in to mount her solar panels. We were already pretty skeptical about the window being only thirty minutes but we still tried out best to make lunch early (I helped with chopping):

When my husband left I asked him to take his cell phone which led to another back and forth about how he didn’t know where his phone was because I had borrowed it on the weekend to set up his new computer. It was right there, on my desk, next to his big, fat computer charged and ready.

At 1.45 there was a message on our voice mail. The electrician was very sorry but the technician who was supposed to meet him still hadn’t arrived. It would be a little longer. So I called my husband on his cell but he didn’t pick up. I sent him a text but that only meant a couple minutes later he was standing right there in the kitchen, huffing and pudding.

He had never used his phone for calls ever (or for texts) and hadn’t been able to take the call. (He had no idea about the text message, of course.) So I told him everything, we practiced taking a call on his cell and he went back. I tried calling the electrician who didn’t pick up either, then sent him a text saying that my husband would be back at the house soon but could only stay until 3.

Later I learned that the whole situation was made even more confusing by some solar panel guys being at the friend’s house when my husband arrived but it turned out they were there for her neighbor’s house. In the end the electrician left another message saying the technician had let him down and the whole thing would be moved to July. My husband still wasn’t picking up but eventually did meet the electrician who swing by the house because he knew someone was waiting.

Which means we might have someone for installing our own solar panels, maybe next year.

The whole kerfuffle lasted way into my first lesson of the day and the boy’s cell phone arrived just after I had sent him upstairs to tell his grandmother that we were expecting a delivery that needed to be signed for. (Often delivery people ring her doorbell and then she could send them to the annex.)

I taught until I dropped, including a potential new singing and piano student who is the sister of the new guitar student I saw two weeks ago. I really like the family and this was the first time ever I had a potential student sit down and accompany herself on the piano. Also the first time someone used a tablet for sheet music. I hope she’ll start with me this could be a lot of fun.

I had plans to exercise and/or watch the video for the course I’m taking but turned out to be super fried. I walked to the supermarket following a short exchange with my husband where I told him I was about to keel over and he took that literally.

I picked up tea, licorice, toilet paper and my husband’s new favorite cheese, came back home, had dinner, almost fell into a major slump but managed to move myself in front of TV instead of sitting there with my phone. I did eat all the licorice but well, it was premeditated.

I had asked the boy to do the dishes beforehand but he was in a really bad mood and rather reluctant so I decided to just let them sit. His bad mood turned out to be due to a really bad decision in the video game he was playing and he debated going back and losing ten hours of progress.

He came back downstairs a bit later in a much better mood and offered to do the dishes which I happily accepted. I brushed my teeth and went to bed at 11 sleeping like a log.

I am having slightly more energy today but will definitely need it because today I’ll teach even more. Hurray!

Since I had gone to bed too late (again) I didn’t get enough sleep. The boy was in the same boat so he decided to skip his first lecture and only go to the second one. I had set my alarm for 7.30 to see if he was already up.

He was and showed up right away, clutching a bloody tissue to his left thumb and asking where he could find the band-aids. (No, I don’t know why he doesn’t know this, apparently the drawers in the bathroom are confusing to everyone except me.) His knife had slipped when cutting out some figurines.

The scissors were not where they are supposed to be, so it took a moment and then I helped him put the band-aid on. While I was fumbling around with the whole thing he started leaning very heavily against me and it took a moment until I realized he had fainted.

He is too tall and heavy for me to prevent him from falling over but at least I managed to prevent him knocking his head. I was almost trapped under him, though.

It only lasted a moment and he was fine right after but I am still a little flustered. Turns out the boy has a tendency to faint when seeing blood. Not always and not when he is watching a horror movie or something but I now remember two instances where he fainted because of a blood draw.

And then it turned out the lecture he had wanted to attend had ended the week before.

I’m not quite sure what I did all morning but I did walk to the health food store and when I came back my husband was making pizza and salad which needed immediate assistance. I tried putting the groceries away without getting in his way and doing it very quickly so I could jump into cooking mode, so when my husband thought this was a good moment to talk about how he feels he is getting slower around lunchtime due to his advanced age of 64 years and that he also doesn’t want to stress himself out all the time I just snapped, „I’ll take care of it!“ at him which resulted in a 2-hour sulking cum argument. Fun!

I slapped the salad together, chopped the big bunch of herbs he had picked and put the pizza together all while trying to talk about his „I’m so old I need more help“-thing.

Here’s the pizza:

After that I deflated a bit, then taught all the students until dinnertime, munched down another piece of pizza and attended another online presentation. Very interesting and helpful.

I spent another hour online answering all the messages that had come in while I was busy and reading a bit around, then moved back to the kitchen to do the dishes and then it was already bedtime but I didn’t want the day to be over. I planned the week, checked in with my online writing group, did my foot exercises while eating a ton of snacks and went to bed feeling nauseous and bloated. And yes, too late again.

My sleep app tells me my sleep schedule is pretty consistent. Yawn!

I knew the day would be a but full beforehand. Decided to move the morning routine to after breakfast because lack of time and I wanted to take my shower as early as possible so my hair would have time to dry.

In the end no morning routine at all, instead I did the breakfast dishes before calling my mother. Whom I cut short as well so we could go and vote before lunch. We had to walk all the way to the edge of town, all in all I walked for more than an hour. I taped my feet and they don’t feel unduly aggravated, so yeah! I guess the new foot strengthening regimen works. (Fingers crossed!)

Since I hadn’t even done my usual internet morning round at that point I took myself to the living room while husband was cooking. Turned out what he was making was way more complicated than I thought, we ate way too late and there was conflict which flipped a switch in me and I spent the rest of the day sitting around feeling paralyzed playing Solitaire on my iPad. Something I know makes me feel worse (internally shakes head).

Here’s lunch, first course was fried and stuffed zucchini blossoms (when the boy and I saw the blossoms on the kitchen table we already thought conflict would be unavoidable):

And the second course was fried chicken breast with potato wedges, peas and carrots:

I spent the rest of the day sitting in the trashed kitchen thinking to myself I’d get up and do stuff any second now. This was the kitchen at 10 pm:

That sink on the right is full with dirty plates and cutlery.

The boy also wanted to take a shower and said he’d help me with the dishes soon but by the time he was downstairs again I was already done. Then he put two dirty thermoses, two plates and a mug in the sink. Meh.

Then I watched some C-drama, drank a beer and ate half the Japanese snacks I had bought for the boy and his friend and went to bed too late again.

This morning started with a bit of a kerfuffle as well but I’ll tell you about that tomorrow. Great start into the week, I can just hope things go better from here on. On the other hand, it’s nothing major or life-threatening, just slightly irritating.

 

I did go to bed on time and slept well and managed to o my complete morning routine. The daily yoga makes me very happy and the morning pages do help thinking stuff through. I was even early enough for a quick meditation session. And my blood pressure was in normal range. I think tackling the stuff that has been bugging me for a while plus making some progress on my most important tasks is helping me de-stress.

There was breakfast and talking with my husband, this time about the early Rolling Stones again because he is reading a book called „Rolling Stones Gear“ right now. I was working knitting along on my cardigan while talking. Then I wrote my daily blog post and did my usual internet rounds, did the breakfast dishes, talked with the boy on and off and then took my bike to the gas station to get gas for the lawn mower and picked up some yogurt on the way back. There was way less traffic than I thought there would be but then I keep forgetting that the farmer’s market has moved and also that it ends at noon. And I only left home at that time.

I did see a lot of families on bikes and those guys in spandex in small groups with their road bikes.

We had an early lunch because the boy was expecting a friend at 2 and we wanted to be done before then. My husband tried making his standard pasta in cream with peas and ham dish without cream and I’d say it was a success:

The cream doesn’t agree with him and none of us was convinced by any of the vegan cream alternatives that we tried.

The boy and I did the dishes right away, then waited for his friend. It was nice to see him again. The two of them have been friends since 5th grade, he moved away for university and when they meet here they usually do so at the friend’s house.

Only then did it occur to me that my plans for the day had involved spending most of my time either in the kitchen or the living room but it turned out the boy had planned to do exactly the same with his friend. They wanted to make sushi and watch something together.

So I moved off to the annex. My plan was to do a quick session of bodyweight exercises, take a shower and then do some book cover research.

Well. And then I saw my husband’s new computer. And realized that I hadn’t finished setting it up. So I turned it on, thinking I’d just do a few software updates and such. And there went the rest of my afternoon, trying to wrestle Microsoft Office into submission without subscribing to anything. It also turned out that I had to pay for the next version of Logic.

I finally managed to do my bodyweight training around dinnertime. I felt sore right away even though I had made most of the exercises easier than the last time I did them. I am spectacularly out of shape but then there’s nothing else I can do but try to get back into it.

I made myself a liverwurst sandwich and talked to the boys, waited for the photo library on the new computer to update, felt a sting of envy looking at that beautiful monitor and decided to just use the new computer to watch Netflix on.

I started writing this post, did Duolingo and watched some stuff while knitting.

Today we’ll go and vote. None of us is super convinced by any of the political parties but nonetheless voting is the only thing we can do.

Went to bed on time, slept well, wrote morning pages and did yoga. The sun was shining, so my mood was very good. I ate breakfast, knitted a bit and did the usual morning things, then lost fifteen minutes somehow. Might have been in a book.

I did the dishes that had morphed from one dirty plate and one knife when I went to bed to a huge pile of dirty plates, two bowls and a frying pan in the morning.

I biked to the supermarket, printed out some lovely pictures of our new windows, returned the Q-Tips that were the wrong kind and bought all the things. Biked back home, fifteen minutes late for lunch but then lunch was an hour late all in all because the asparagus was not properly cooked. We had to cook it some more. And I had to unearth the recipe for sauce hollandaise. On the bright side the asparagus was not as overcooked as it usually is:

In the end I had 17 minute left until my first student when the boy informed me he would not be able to hang the laundry up.

I rushed downstairs to get the laundry out the machine and hang up as much as I could but in the end we did it together and managed to hang it all up just before I had to start teaching.

I had another potential new student who will start lessons in the fall. I need to sit down and figure out how many students I actually have in September because I think I might be at capacity.

Speaking of which, I also had managed to double-book myself. In my trusty digital calendar I had an empty slot where I usually teach a very nice singing student. So I told one of my guitar students to come in at that time for a makeup-lesson. While I was still teaching the student before that time slot I got a text from the singing student along the lines of „sorry, I’ll be late but I’m coming!“ Oops. So I texted her back, asking if she could com half an hour later explaining my problem but she couldn’t. And I couldn’t send the guitar student home on his own because he was supposed to be chauffeured around by his grandparents. So I didn’t get to teach the nice singing student and I did not earn that money either.

But then it’s all my fault.

After that I ate too much, then, just as I was about to do the dishes, my husband showed up, angry about something again and started making himself some eggs which led to me sitting there scrolling through social media for an hour. Until I started writing this post, did the dishes already, watched some C-drama and went to bed somewhat late again.

Today is cleaning day. With two lessons canceled. Which always means that I think I have lots of time to do other stuff but the other stuff I end up doing is – the cleaning I was hoping to get done in the morning. If I’m lucky.