Huh, near perfect Monday!

I had gone to bed the night before just slightly too late. I am a little disheartened by my failed efforts to go to bed on time but – my sleep app tells me that my median bedtime was 23 minutes earlier last week than the weeks before so I am very much heading in the right direction.

I slept well despite thunderstorms and rain and woke up from my alarm. This time I did not make the mistake of putting my phone on my nightstand, instead I put it on the dresser while writing morning pages and that made all the difference. I did yoga, meditated and took my blood pressure and then made breakfast.

I didn’t get to eat breakfast alone again but still, a way more grounded morning than most.

We talked a bit and I knitted a bit (the mystery shawl keeps growing extremely slowly). I did the breakfast dishes earlier than usual and then went out for a walk for exercise. I felt my feet are well enough for it. I got lucky, there was no rain during that time:

As you can see, the scar on my neck from the thyroidectomy is still very much visible but getting smaller and smaller.

I came back home just in time to wake the boy up. He had asked me to just four hours earlier before going to bed. He had to get out of bed at that time for his exam in the afternoon.

I took a shower, made sure the boy was still awake and folded a load of laundry. The boy came downstairs and got himself something to eat and went upstairs again. My husband and I had pumpkin risotto for lunch:

After we were finished the boy got ready and actually left almost on time.

I set myself a timer for my break so I could get some more stuff done.

Setting a timer for breaks is one of the things I’m trying out at the moment. If I remember it it works very well. Even of I set the timer twice in a row. I still remember time passes instead of just spacing out.

I got an email with the result of the placement test for Chinese I did the day before. I’m very happy because I am apparently at a higher level than I thought. I mean, I did some creative guessing at the end and the whole test was single choice but still. Apparently I could start studying for HSK 3 now if I wanted to.

Good thing I had just ordered the textbook for HSK 2… But no, I’ll work through it anyway, can’t hurt to actually get to that level.

I’m still thinking about taking an actual course but it would be around 600 € until the next level and I would need to either attend classes in person or online. There are intensive courses, some of them during school breaks but still. I guess I’ll study some more on my own. The problem with that is that I won’t learn how to speak that way and I don’t have anyone correcting my pronunciation.

When my timer rang for the second time I did some research of urban fantasy blurbs and jotted some ideas down and then it was time to teach.

While busy with my second student of the day the boy texted me that his exam went well and that he had passed! Phew. That made me very happy. Well, all of us.

I used my break in between students to do some admin, taught my last student, ate dinner, started playing silly iPad games and started writing this post a bit later than I wanted, then did the dishes, watched some C-drama and went to bed.

I am hoping for another near perfect day today. Let’s see how that goes!