Yes, I went to bed too late again. I also fell back asleep after the alarm. Not for long but I only managed morning pages before it was time for breakfast.
I had a very long list for the day and was very determined to get through it all the way. (She did not get through it all the way.)
I did yoga after breakfast, then Duolingo and listend to some Josquin des Prez (highly recommended), did the breakfast dishes and then started the weekly cleaning of the house. I changed the sheets on my bed and actually finished cleaning before lunch. Yeah!
As usual my husband was thrown off by me rushing through the house with recycling bins, cleaning tools and the vacuum and complained that everybody was giving off the wrong energy for focusing on cooking. I was not happy to be told I was vibing wrong while scrubbing the toilets and might have been just a tad sarcastic when saying, „Oh, thank you Susanne for scrubbing the toilets!“ After lunch we actually talked about the whole thing again. We both managed to stay calm and reasonable and I asked him to please tell me what he wants me to actually do while he is cooking.
He didn’t really have an answer but said that I really wasn’t the problem, just the whole world. Everybody rushing around, driving their cars, whatever. That no one actually takes the time to cook a proper meal for lunch.
I mean, yes, it is always very busy around lunchtime. We live on a fairly busy street, people drive to and from school and work in their lunch break. I told him that there are probably a lot of people staying home and cooking at the same time as him but he doesn’t get to see them because they are at home cooking.
I think the only way to deal with this kind of thing is to learn not to be bothered as much by the world and also to practice better focus. I’m also perfectly willing to do the cooking myself or help or whatever makes things better because constant conflict is really no fun. We definitely both agree on that.
And then we ended up with our old difference in opinion on, „But this is not a thought, it’s instinctive!“ versus „But the Buddha said there is a gap between what you perceive and your reaction, however small, and one can learn to react differently.”
I’m not saying it’s easy, though. And neither says the Buddha.
Since it was Friday and he went running and knew I would be cleaning lunch was pretty simple. On the other hand, picking and cleaning and washing and dealing with arugula from the garden does take a bit of time:
Not only had I finished cleaning I also had started a load of laundry.
My plan was to do something productive between lunch and teaching, then use the 1-hour break between students to look into blurbs for other urban fantasy books, then teach two more students and do bodyweight training.
Well.
After lunch the boy came downstairs and ate his lunch and we talked. I totally forgot the time and had to enlist his help for doing the dishes. In my defense we were looking at Derek Guy’s posts on Twitter, specifically this thread about „you have to know the rules to break them“ which then led to us talking about clothes, which led to us talking about the dismal state of the boy’s wardrobe and thinking about things he needs to buy.
In my one-hour break I had planned to answer texts, hang up laundry and finally do blurb research.
Well, while I was hanging up laundry the boy showed up again. We had talked about maybe buying him a summer shirt or two and he had found some that didn’t break the bank but were looking nice. He needed help figuring out his size (yeah for always knowing where my tape measures are) and then I just ordered them.
Somehow I ran out of time and had to get back to teaching.
The next student texted me she would be late.
Ten minutes later she said she was sorry but had to cancel because work was running way over time.
So I did my blurb research. Well, I started on it with some help from a writer friend.
Last student of the day texted me to say he would be late as well. (It was the last day of school, of course everything went slightly off the rails.) We had a very nice lesson that ran pretty long and then it was time for dinner.
By then I really didn’t feel like exercising anymore. I played some silly games, started writing this post, did Duolingo, watched C-drama while knitting and drinking a beer, put the cake from the freezer into the fridge and went to bed.
And now summer break!
(We’re just not talking about the teaching I’ll do the next few weeks, okay?)
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