Archives for November 2024

Actually, there were two.

I woke up at 6, wrote morning pages (into two different notebooks because one was full; the new one hadn’t arrived yet but I have a smaller one for traveling) and then made a valiant attempt at writing. Lots of thinking about backstory and some research on sofas. Turns out when you write a vampire who is really old (well, several) they also have a lot of backstory. I don’t really want to do too much research so right now I’ll just let it sit and percolate.

I did yoga, I think, talked with my husband briefly after breakfast and then sat there paralyzed because I had too many things I wanted to do.

In the end I went with biking to the hardware store to make another attempt at getting a new living room lamp. It took me ages to decide but finally I brought one back. It barely fit my bike’s rack.

When I opened the box it turned out the form of the fixture would make it extremely hard and unpleasant to mount so I just looked at it briefly and decided to not try. I’ll return that one later today. When I told my husband the story he reminded me that he really likes the current lamp and that maybe a floor lamp might be the answer I’m looking for. We’d have the really bright white overhead light and (hopefully) a warmer, adjustable light. So I ordered a floor lamp with a reading light. I’ll put it in the spot where my current reading light sits. I barely ever use it. Stay tuned.

Because my husband was out for lunch with a friend the boy and I ate frozen pizza. I mean, we didn’t eat it frozen:

I had asked the boy to get us some gummy bears, licorice and yogurt on his way home, so dessert was blue and pink gummy bears. Very fitting to eat mermaid candy while reading about shifters, specifically a merman and an otter shifter.

I am re-reading Gail Carriger’s San Andreas shifters series in preparation for the next book.

My web hosting company replied to my support ticket and told me how to install an SSL certificate. I tried twice but it didn’t work. Ack. I guess I need to try the support chat at one point. It’s offline at the moment, though. Maybe email, no idea.

I felt like I hadn’t done anything all day (always funny that one), taught my two students, changed the sheets on my bed, did bodyweight training with the boy, ate dinner in front of TV (half a bag of potato chips and half a bag of licorice with an alcohol-free beer) watched two episodes of C-drama while knitting, nodded off in front of TV, brushed my teeth, did my foot exercises and fell into bed.

Sleeping for 8 1/2 hours is awesome, by the way. And now I’ll be off to do all.the.things!!

I went into that stage where you feel like you can burst out in tears at the drop of a hat and feel cold in your bones yesterday so I made some emergency changes.

I got stuck with writing, tried anyway but then my husband showed up five minutes in. I did research couches for twenty minutes and started thinking about backstory for my vampire so the day was not lost.

Instead of doing a huge supermarket haul and go to the hardware store for a new living room lamp I instead walked to one of the nearby supermarkets for bread, bananas and toilet paper.

There were many, many conversations throughout the day again. We found out that one of the things my husband does that makes me super defensive and has me blow up regularly is actually meant to soothe.

He made the cabbage stew I meant to cook and it was very good:

Then I ate a pastry on top of that. And a bag of coated peanuts in the afternoon. And a bag of licorice after dinner. Probably 1,500 calories more than I need. No beer, though.

I talked with the boy about vampires and old people and how a person would turn out after actually living hundreds of years if that were possible. Would they bitch at people not wearing proper dress anymore, running around in suits like degenerates without a hat and gloves? Would they end up watching TV round the clock ranting at the screen? Become very zen?

It’s fun to think about. (I decided to make my main vampire only 130 years old so writing him would be easier, by the way. And I don’t want to spend ages researching stuff.)

I had looked forward to watching C-drama all day but never actually made it to the TV, I was just too tired and instead sat reading in the kitchen until the boy came downstairs and said he wanted to take a shower. Then I brushed my teeth, made myself a mug of chamomile and fennel tea, skipped everything but 3 minutes of Duolingo, read in bed and turned the lights out slightly too late anyway.

And today is cleaning day, yeah?

Let’s see, not enough sleep, slow morning routine sans meditation (but yeah writing), endless conversations with husband, some knitting, and then we mounted the new, new living room light.

The good news is that it works totally fine. The not so good news is that this lamp also couldn’t be dimmed or anything because this one didn’t even come with a remote. I know I said I’d learn to live with it but I might just be pissed enough to get yet another lamp. (For the record, there was the new lamp that got smashed, the next new lamp that had a faulty remote and now this one that doesn’t have a remote at all. Even though it should have.) I see a visit to the hardware store in my future and another return. And then another day where we curse and chase fallen screws all over the living room floor in between balancing on stepladders and chairs.

There was a late lunch:

And then teaching all of the students all afternoon with a short break because one student canceled.

After that I waited for the boy to come down for bodyweight training, started doing Duolingo right when my husband was showing up the second time in a row to tell me something, made the mistake to tell him that I had forgotten he had said he’d be back which he didn’t take well, finally did bodyweight training with the boy, which was briefly interrupted by my husband coming into the kitchen irritated that he was disrupting something yet again, ate a quick dinner, then went over to the annex to talk briefly with my husband, then that turned into a 75-minute conversation after which I felt as if both my brain and my eyes stopped working properly.

I started writing this post, made myself a cup of tea, did my foot exercises, read for a few minutes and went to bed.

Today there will be th supermarket run and not quite as much teaching.

Turns out when you only sleep for less than six hours two nights in a row you get really tired. And also prone to communication mishaps and moving very slowly.

I did set my alarm for six and instantly regretted it. Took me half an hour to wake up, then my husband came over and showed me a poem he had written at 5 am. We talked briefly and then I wrote my morning pages and new words on the novel. After 15 minutes I was completely stuck because I had no idea what happened next to I called it good enough.

True to form I then skipped yoga and meditation again.

There was breakfast and talking with my husband, then I wrote my blog post, planned the week and the day ahead while my husband had an appointment to get a new passport.

I did the dishes and listened to some very, very sad music for strings by Samuel Barber, figured out what to do about my story, and then went for a 30-minute walk in my five fingers. I’m not quite sure if that was a good idea or not. I would love to eventually wean myself from orthotics. Stay tuned.

The weather was lovely, I even wore sunglasses. And my feet only started hurting at the end.

There were some raised voices and some slammed doors again around lunch which was exhausting. Lunch itself was not as bad as I had feared, another meal my husband had been wanting to make for quite some time and another one that is not my favorite:

 

Eggs in mustard sauce.

The new new living room lamp arrived around that time as well, so we might even put that up later today.

I took a short break after lunch and then a shower before teaching all the students. After that there was dinner, more dishes, I started writing this post, watched some C-drama and went to bed.

Today will be the usual health food store and such and all the teaching all day.

But it all turned out well in the end. Nothing major.

I started the day with morning pages and writing and then – skipped yoga again. That has been a pretty consistent theme lately, when I drink and/or go to bed too late I will skip yoga the next morning.

There was a lot of talking in the morning, I called my mother on the phone, more talking, the usual chores and then I helped a little with lunch:

Mmh, comfort food. Although the beans were’t quite cooked all the way through.

Then I took a break, the boy showed up for his lunch and we talked and then I tackled the fridge. It’s been 1 1/2 years since we defrosted the thing and it showed. So we turned it off after lunch and let it sit. My husband said he’d clean and defrost it and I could do something else.

Well, at around 3 I couldn’t stand waiting anymore and started emptying the fridge out. I didn’t want to risk the meat in the freezer part thawing. I put everything in the basement freezer and all the food that needs to be refrigerated outside on the porch.

Then I did the dishes. While I was doing those my husband came over, all ready to start with the fridge but then he had to wait for me being done with the dishes so he went away. I finished the dishes, waited some more and then took all the shelves out the freezer and washed them.

At that point my husband took over, we talked while he was working and I was starting to wander off. But he wasn’t done with the conversation. So we ended up with him working and me sitting on the kitchen bench listening and talking. Which meant I didn’t get the stuff done that I had wanted to do in the afternoon.

Husband started getting really into the cleaning thing. Which is good, I mean, he even cleaned that corner of the kitchen that’s always filthy because some people can’t be bothered to not just fling their veggie peels and such in the general direction of the green waste bin.

The boy and I had agreed to do bodyweight training at 5 and that time was fast approaching. We ended up moving exercise to half an hour later because of the fridge cleaning and because the boy had started tackling his room as well and that took way longer than he had thought as well.

I was in a bad mood at that point because I felt robbed of two hours or so of me-time that I had wanted to use for planning and maybe proofreading or just chilling.

At 5.30 the boy and I did bodyweight training. I was still a little sore from Friday but, well. Then there was dinner and after that all three of us met for caipirinha. The boy had never had a real one and my husband had wanted to make some for nostalgic reasons. We both have a special connection to Brazil and Brazilian music so we used to always have a bottle of cachaça around.

The boy and I got real talkative from the alcohol which stressed my husband and – boom! – conflict.

That went on for some time. The husband and I had planned to do a little dancing in his studio that evening but first we needed to talk and yell at each other and shed some tears which is always very exhausting. We ended up dancing anyway which was nice.

Because when we first met and exchanged phone numbers we did so because we wanted to go dancing together. And then we never did. Turned out, my husband isn’t really the dancing type, I just met him in the short phase of his life where he tried getting over his inhibitions in that regard. He certainly has a great sense of rhythm.

The other thing that was interesting was how dated a lot of the playlist he had made years ago sounded to us. Huh.

Anyways, I drank two beers during and after, watched the last episode of C-drama, then another short episode of some other C-drama and, like, half a dozen YouTube videos, nodded off during that last part and moved myself to bed at 12.30.

Why yes, I am rather tired today.