Archives for September 2024

I went to bed somewhat late yet again and slept through my alarm. Again.

Started writing morning pages, wandered off after one page and somehow couldn’t bring myself to do yoga. It was just too cold. The simple act of going to the kitchen and back barefoot had me warm my feet back up for fifteen minutes or so.

There was breakfast and talking a little with my husband. No fire in the wood stove because we’d leave the house for lunch and it was supposed to be warmer throughout the day.

The boy was up early as well, more talking.

I did the breakfast dishes and my morning rounds and then it was time to get ready tp leave the house and walk 20 minutes to the Greek restaurant near the cemetery. Because we were supposed to meet his aunt there, together with friends of hers who drove her and my mother-in-law.

All of us were totally on time, my mother-in-law had taken the bus there because she can’t walk that far anymore.

There was food.

I only took a picture of a tiny portion of appetizers. I ate way more than that plus a nice salad, souvlaki, tomato rice and tzatziki but no picture, sorry.

It was nice, the food was very good and then I had to leave in order to get back for my first student. The boy and I walked back while the rest of the party went to the cemetery to visit my husband’s uncle’s grave. Which was why the aunt was visiting in the first place. And to see us, of course.

We bought some chocolate and gummy bears on our way back and I had a full ten minutes before I needed to teach.

I ended up with two unexpected short breaks because two students canceled, so during the first one I started a load of laundry and during the second one I ate dinner. I had wanted to use that break to hang up the laundry but it wasn’t done yet.

I watched some YouTube while hanging the laundry up, fell into a video rabbit hole, then started writing this post, did Duolingo, watched half an episode of C-drama with a beer and went to bed.

Today will be the optician’s appointment, all the teaching again and then bodyweight training. At least that’s the plan.

I went to bed almost at 1 and did not sleep well. Eating a whole pint of ice cream right before bed turned out to be unhelpful. Also, I just learned how many calories there are in a pint of ice cream and it is about three times the amount I should eat for dinner. And that was on top of dinner.

Still, I had set my alarm 15 minutes earlier and while I was sluggish and slow I still did my complete morning routine before my husband showed up for breakfast.

It was raining like crazy and also very, very cold so his mood was not the best. He did build a fire, so the old part of the house got real cozy in the course of the morning. Then it turned out that he was out of milk for his coffee. I had tried to find lactose-free coffee creamer at the store the day before but failed and I thought there would still be some milk but no.

So he offered to drink his coffee black, all martyr-like and noble whereas I put on my winter coat, grabbed an umbrella and braved the pouring rain to get some creamer. And chocolate. And licorice.

The good news is that I managed to find lactose-free creamer. And also that they have restocked their chocolate. The bars on the shelf said best before February 2025 so I had to get some.

When I finally came back my husband was as good as done with his breakfast.

I did the dishes, sorted some recycling, decided that taking the recycling stuff outside could wait another day, changed the sheets on my bed, changed to the winter duvet and put the summer one away and then proceeded to clean the house. Ish.

I managed to finish the cleaning in time for lunch but my husband wasn’t done with cooking yet. As usual the wood stove takes much longer to get hot enough for cooking.

So I took a shower and then there were pork cutlets, potatoes and red bete salad for lunch:

The food was very good.

After I started doing the dishes right away and then set myself a timer for my break. I did sit playing games and reading for twice as long but still.

I found that I had yet another email about the shoes I returned in June and resigned myself to having to use the phone on Monday. I finally sent the feedback to the cover designer. I told them that I don’t want any AI art on the cover and got an answer back that they don’t use any. Which is very good.

The only reason I managed to finally send that feedback was that I had a Zoom meeting at 5 with a couple fellow authors and I didn’t want to tell them I hadn’t gotten anything done.

I had quite the list of changes I wanted and I specified that I do not want any Ai-generated images and promptly got the answer that they don’t use those anyway. Which is good.

The meeting was very nice even though it suffered from all the usual moderator people being absent and everybody else more prone to listening than to speaking. On the other hand we were done faster than usual.

After that and thinking a bit more about my shoe return problem because the finance company wants a return number that I can’t find anymore because the whole thing was in June and everything just vanishes from the post app after 21 days I tried looking at the email exchange with the seller again, found that the package arrived on the 25th of June, went through all the emails I had from DHL and found a tracking number that matches that date. Fingers crossed the thing will be cleared up soon.

Then I started writing this post, saw the boy for the first time that day, decided not to do bodyweight training yet again because he had just rolled out of bed and went on to have potato chips and a beer in front of C-drama.

I decided that I need to stock up on sleep so I can weather the upcoming week better, we’ll see how that goes.

And the plan for today is to make trofie from scratch again. I’ll probably regret that decision soon but last time they were delicious.

If I had thought about it some more I could totally have predicted this.

I went to bed half an hour late, slept well, woke up a little sluggish but still finished the complete morning routine. And decided to set my alarm 15 minute earlier starting today because I’m slow and sluggish often enough that having a couple minutes more time in the morning will be a good thing.

Since it was cold enough to feel like winter my husband decided to start the wood stove which meant everything took longer. I had a rather enjoyable hour reading and knitting between my breakfast and his, though.

With the threat of impending eye surgery gone I decided it was time to make an appointment to get yet another pair of glasses and also to book a dermatologist appointment. Those always take months, anyway.

Most of the time. This time both of them will be next week. The week that was bonkers busy even before that.

I looked at the grocery list, saw that it was very short and decided to go grocery shopping first instead of starting with the cleaning and such. So I walked to a closer supermarket than the one I usually go to and just when I came back the doorbell rang.

The mother of a potential new student who had left a message on voice mail and hadn’t heard back. Well, yeah. You and the three other people who called. Because I’m still busy getting my ducks in a row with the schedule so I can see if I want to take on more students or not. (Probably not.) She also told me that she got my number from another student of mine, something that bumps people up on the waiting list.

(It’s like this: I prefer people who use email over those who call on the phone. Siblings of existing students and former students who want to start again have priority and if someone comes through personal recommendation I will consider them before those who don’t have a personal connection.

If you ring the doorbell at my house, especially during mealtimes, that will put you at the bottom of the list. Most of the time.)

I then unpacked the rest of the groceries, listened to my husband telling me how stressful cooking is and helped him cut up a few things. He made veggie saffron rice, dal, spinach and chicken. And two boiled eggs:

The kitchen looked extremely lived in afterwards:

I sat down in the middle of the mess to enjoy some of the chocolate I had bought that day. It looked rather gray and sad:

And then I saw the „best before“-date:

Um, no. (For those of you who are not German that means July 11th, not November 7th of this year.)

I briefly contemplated unearthing the receipt from under uncooked pieces of chicken, walking back to the store and getting my money back but I decided it wasn’t worth it.

I taught my first student, then went to the basement to get the load of laundry my husband had started earlier. The laundry wasn’t there anymore, so I rejoiced and went upstairs to fold the other load that was still on the drying rack in the living room. I briefly wondered where my husband had hung the laundry but there is another rack in the annex.

Well, when I went to the annex to put my husband’s folded laundry on his TV chair I found out where he did put the wet laundry. It was still in the hamper in the annex.

He often does that because he thinks taking it upstairs is a step in the right direction. Which it is. But I never think to look for a hamper of wet laundry in the annex. Now, if he had put it in the living room…

So I hung up most of the load in a hurry until I heard my second student of the day ring the bell. Taught him, though, „I’ll just sit down for a bit, then finish hanging the laundry, do the dishes, change the sheets and start cleaning before it is time for bodyweight training,“ and then I sat there reading. And eating a pastry. And reading some more and texting back and forth with friends.

Until my husband came over after teaching, wanted to tell me all about his day and I was completely unable to be social. Just poof, tank empty.

So I sat some more, started writing this post when it was already dinnertime, finally hung up that last few straggling socks, ate dinner, did the dishes but left all the many pots that still had food in them, watched some C-drama while knitting and went to bed.

So I guess I’ll do the book cover feedback today and clean some stuff.

I actually went to bed on time, woke up from the alarm and did my complete morning routine.

I knitted a bit while my husband told me stories from the Rolling Stones book he is reading at the moment and then it was already time to get ready. I did the dishes and took a shower and my husband kindly served me lunch an hour earlier than usual. Mind you, that was only what he cooked for me, he then went on to make a completely different lunch for the rest of the family.

The ball of yarn I had been waiting for arrived just before I had to leave.

For once everything went well with the trains and in the end I was at the eye clinic forty minutes early.

That thing is huge. There are three whole buildings on a big lot. There were more than a dozen patients sitting in the waiting area and several assistants walking here and there. First I had to fill out the usual forms and then I got a bunch of tests including one where the assistant said, „You’ll get this test now, it is necessary for cataract surgery but insurance doesn’t pay for it, it costs 200 euros, please sign here.“ I demanded to at least get my glasses back. I can’t see without them, and so no signing.

There were bright lights shining in my eyes and I was led from one machine to the next. Then I got to get back to filling ou t forms, and a different assistant gave me dilating eye drops.

Then I went to see a doctor. Not the one I had the appointment with, though. She shone more very bright lights into my eyes and asked me a few questions. I have to say I’m often somewhat unsure about what to answer. Are these lines crooked or straight? I don’t know, they are kind of bent a little? I think? Maybe a little crooked? Could we try this again without the fluorescent lighting, please? With those lamps overhead everything kind of flickers?

What do you mean, what bugs me about my eyes? That I can’t see properly? There is a part in my right eye, right there in the middle where everything is a bit blurry? I can’t read signposts properly and reading sheet music is more strenuous, and also I constantly need to change between my „computer“ and my „regular“ glasses and I can’t see properly with any of them.

So, she was really nice, I was just in a slight panic. With all that hullabaloo regarding my eyes I’m starting to get a bit skittish about eye tests. There are extra wiggly lines in the middle of the letters they show you. I mean, there aren’t really, I just see them and so I can’t really tell you what letter that is because it looks like there are criss-crossing, vibrating gray-ish line where there shouldn’t be any.

Interestingly, that is never a problem when I’m reading in real life. Reading just words, both on screens and on paper is not a problem at all. I can still understand everything even when things are a little blurry. Now sheet music is harder. Because sometimes small, squiggly lines in sheet music are actually meaningful. And you need to skip around the page much more. And often I have to read the sheet music from a side angle while being too far away from the page.

Anyways, she was nice and patient and wrote everything down, then sent me to get yet another test because of that membrane on my retina, then back to her and there she told me I’d see the professor next but that the membrane thing was not bad enough yet to warrant surgery and that while they could, of course, give me cataract surgery it was actually a little too early for that.

And also that at my age the risk of retina detachment after surgery was higher than if I had it done later in life.

The professor was very quiet, very calm and also very nice and said the same. None of them thought I needed surgery yet.

Duh.

So. I was told to come back in the spring for a check-up and then I went back home. Relieved.

I took the train back home, bought all the sweets and cookies, went back home, ate the cookies, taught three students, ate the stuffed zucchini my husband made (I forgot to take a photo) and all the sweets, sat around dreading doing the dishes for an hour, decided I was definitely too tired and exhausted for it, started writing this post, did Duolingo, re-arranged the dishes so that breakfast could happen this morning, watched an episode of C-drama while knitting and went to bed.

Today will be cleaning and teaching and bodyweight training.