Archives for February 2025

I had gone to bed too late again and then let myself be thrown off by the fact that my husband was leaving the house after breakfast to meet a friend. I was a bit afraid that I’d spend the whole morning just sitting there waiting for him to come back but, while I did not do the things I had planned, I ended up getting other stuff done.

First was a quest to find the LAMY pen that lives with my notebook. It’s a twin pen that is both a ballpoint pen and a pencil and very slim. I love it. And it was nowhere to be found. I, of course, suspected my husband because I remembered offering the pen to him to fill out the ballot, but no. So I looked everywhere (or so I thought) and emptied my laptop bag completely:

When I showed that picture to a friend she said that she’d usually take less with her when traveling.

Me too, by the way, this is just all the stuff I regularly use around the house, my portable office, so to speak. It turns out when you let a bag stand around for years, open, in the kitchen, it does get kind of disgusting. This is how everything usually looks, it’s also what I take with me when I teach:

The bag fits a 13“ MacBook, so it’s not that big.

I also finally wove all the ends in, so the blanket-in-progress looks all tidy and neat. Unfortunately, I was rather mushy yesterday and ended up weaving ends in on the right side instead of the wrong one but, well, it barely shows:

By then it was high time to make lunch, and I did the traditional frozen pizza because my husband isn’t home to cook:

The boy slept until the afternoon again, so I ate alone. I’m very close to finishing the tea princess trilogy. And I can’t wait to start reading the next book. And the next. Downloading all my Kindle books has really shown me how many exciting reads I still own, so I can’t wait.

I did the dishes and listened to a week’s worth of „Another Year of Wonder“-pieces. Looks like I will be able to catch up on that. I’m not sure about „War and Peace“, though, I am woefully behind at this point, and while I certainly am able to read 137 pages in a day or two if necessary I’m not sure if I want to. And unlike the classical music pieces I can’t just skip ahead and go back, I need to read the book in order. We’ll see what I’ll do. The first step should be to spend more time reading, I guess.

I had high hopes of starting the weekly cleaning or change the sheets before teaching but then the boy got up and wanted my input on something related to preparing for his exam on Monday. We ended up doing print tests all through the afternoon whenever I had a break.

I only had two students which could have meant that I could tackle the cleaning then but, again, print tests. And we ended up skipping bodyweight training again because the boy was meeting some friends at the cinema to watch the Monte Christo movie.

I ate dinner pretty late, in between talking with the boy and scrolling social media, then talked with my husband longer than we both wanted, saw that it was just slightly too late to watch something, decided to watch half an episode of C-drama anyway, somehow ended up on YouTube and went to bed at 11.

Fun times.

So now I have to run (literally) to make up for yesterday. On the other hand, it’s not like I sat around doing nothing all day. Sometimes side quests are necessary.

My jaw was still hurting all day but it’s getting better.

I went to bed a little late and felt exhausted enough in the morning to skip writing, yoga and meditation. And then I had a very slow morning. I did start weaving in ends on the blanket-in-progress, so that was a win.

I also skipped both walking/running and bodyweight training. Took a shower, at least, tried watching course videos but got interrupted each time I tried. The boy was in full „last day before exam“-mode.

Lunch was early and tasty:

As you can see I forgot to take a picture before I started eating.

I took a short break during which I talked with the boy, then taught all the students all afternoon. Afterwards I talked with my husband briefly, also with the boy, ate dinner and a huge amount of Marabou licorice chocolate, did Duolingo, and then was asked by the boy to wake him up at 5.30 the next morning which meant I had to go to bed extra early as well.

I guess I’ll never get enough sleep ever.

Nevertheless I’m crossing my fingers for him today.

And while I went to bed almost on time I was nervous enough about my dentist’s appointment that I gave up on morning pages and such after one page. No yoga, no writing. But then that is definitely a reason for an exemption.

With skipping both writing and yoga I ended up eating breakfast together with my husband, so that was nice. And then it was almost time to get going.

I walked to the dentist through beautiful winter weather, very cold but sunny. Everybody at the dentist’s was nice and I keep thinking how great it is these days that everything is explained and you can take a time-out if you want. I didn’t want because that just makes the whole thing last longer but still.

The only thing I really, really dislike is that the assistant patted my shoulder while the doctor was injecting the numbing stuff. I know that most people are soothed by touch and that it’s meant to distract me from the unpleasant experience and that it probably makes people less likely to jolt away from the needle but, well, for me it just makes the unpleasantness more unpleasant. The injection is bad enough but I can deal with that. Having to divide my attention between what the doctor is doing and someone touching me without warning? Makes me want to jump into the assistant’s face. I mean, it’s bad enough that two people are crowded around my mouth and I get that some touching is unavoidable, especially when some of us are a bit, well, voluminous, but no, I don’t like it.

But did I say anything? No. There never seemed to be the right moment. And while I hope I’ll remember next time I probably won’t. The last time this happened I complained at length as well and then said nothing.

Anyways, please don’t try to distract me from unpleasant sensations, it doesn’t usually work and I just end up feeling more unpleasantness all around.

So. Apart from that the whole thing was okay. I mean, emotionally exhausting as those things always are and, well, most people don’t enjoy dentist things, but my dentist is actually very nice. I bonded with the assistant earlier over the dreadful tinny „Für Elise“ sound from the x-ray machine. I mean, that thing swivels around your head while playing a really awful beeping synth version of that piece. I found it pretty awful but I don’t have to listen to that thing several times per day.

Apart from all of that things were actually nice. I practiced my deep breathing and contemplated how vampires are made in the world I’m writing and relationship dynamics between my characters. As one does.

The doctor took the old crown out (last upper molar on the right, so not the most accessible), cleared everything up and then took some fancy 3D-photos that he then used to design a new crown on the computer right next to me. And then they put a piece of ceramics in a machine right there in the room and that machine cut the new crown completely on its own. Wow.

That gave me time to read a bit. Because I had been fairly sure the whole process would involve waiting at one point I had put my phone in my pocket. Yeah, for ebooks!

When the crown was finished the doctor put it into my mouth to see if it fit, which it did, and then it was heated to 900 °C while I was let free to do what I liked and told to come back 40 minutes later.

I went to the health food store for the food that I forgot the day before and more chocolate. Of course. And then I walked home, surprised my husband, talked with him briefly and went back.

The dentist put the crown in, took some of the material away, polished it and I was done. By then sensation in that part of my mouth started to come back which was good but also a bit painful.

I walked home and felt like I was done for the day.

My husband had done the dishes and cooked lunch from my favorite Chinese cookbook, „Every Grain of Rice“. Mind you, the tofu with green peppers is the only thing we have cooked from the book so far but it is delicious:

After lunch I ate the chocolate I had bought before, the boy finally showed up and ate while we were both scrolling through social media, and then I was almost too late for teaching.

I ended up having two breaks between students, I used one to watch a course video and the other to eat dinner.

The plan was to do bodyweight training after teaching but my mouth hurt and it was pretty clear that I shouldn’t do exercise at that moment.

So I went online and read some things, I talked with the boy several times – he is in panic mode because of exams right now, started writing this post, did Duolingo and my foot exercises and watched some C-drama.

I think today should be a little less full but then I thought it would be a good idea to tack yet another lesson onto an overfilled teaching schedule. But yeah, money.

I woke up from the alarm after only 5 1/2 hours of sleep and was pretty tired all day. No surprise there. I did my complete morning routine including measuring my blood pressure. It was a little higher than the last few times but still in normal range.

My daily yoga session was all about „toned arms“ which was no fun after attempting some form of pull-up the day before. So I just did what I could.

My husband and I talked after breakfast and while I had been pretty good with time until then I hit a very slow patch and that led to me being somewhat late. I still managed to wake the boy up almost on time and then go for a walk/run. The weather was really nice, frosty and sunny with a layer of snow everywhere.

It was also a bit icy and I have to confess I’m rather wary of slipping on ice. So last week when someone online mentioned Yaktrax and I had wanted to get some for ages I ordered a pair. Running in them was a bit uncomfortable and I have since learned that there are special ones for that but they cost way more and I only need them a handful of times per year.

I really liked it, though, and wasn’t afraid of slipping and falling.

I went back home, took a shower and then sat down for lunch an hour late:

Lots and lots of chicken breast with oven potatoes, peas and carrots and some water. The boy came down just after we finished and ate lunch while I was reading and then we ate the rest of the licorice.

And then it was time for teaching. My second student canceled and I used that time to look into some self publishing stuff, then taught the rest of my students, and after that I braved the darkness and cold to get yogurt and stuff from the health food store. When I came back home my husband was surprised at how heavy my backpack was. Well. Two kilos of yogurt, more than a liter of tomato puree, a glass of honey, two glasses of liverwurst, and four bottles of alcohol-free beer. And everything but the yogurt was in glass bottles or jars.

I even met someone at the store whom I hadn’t seen in ages. There was smalltalk before I trudged home again.

And then I finally could eat dinner, wrote a few messages, started writing this post, did Duolingo, made a list for today, watched some C-drama and went to bed.

Today there will be a 2 1/2 hour dentist appointment, hence the late grocery shopping. Not my favorite thing to do but then that doesn’t make me terribly unique.

As will be today so I’ll keep this short. (And everyone feels relief, I’m sure.)

I woke up on time after going to bed a little late again, did most of my morning routine and then talked with my husband after breakfast. That went longer than expected which made me a little late for my weekly phone call with my mother. While I was talking to her, mostly about her two sisters, my husband did the dishes and started making lunch.

Meanwhile I figured out what had me stumped about the next step publishing and I started the next round of research.

We ate:

And then the boy and I dug into more of the licorice I bought the day before. We’re still not convinced, thought and talked about it several times over the course of the day and all of that culminating in me ordering some Marabou salt licorice chocolate online. Unfortunately, my very favorite licorice in the world from Katjes is no longer made.

I had great plans to spend the afternoon doing more research and also writing new words on the novel. But first I sat down to play some games, not the silly, seemingly free kind but instead I fired up „Neva“, gave up after ten minutes of trying to scale the next few obstacles, and then I opened „Summerhouse“ which I had just bought the day before. And found that I didn’t have the patience to figure out how it works, so I closed that after ten minutes as well.

And then the other members of the family kept descending on the kitchen. Where I was sitting which was a mistake. The boy had eaten lunch and I had asked him to shovel the sidewalk because it had snowed, my husband kept coming in and out of the kitchen, the boy wanted to talk about politics, my husband started unpacking his new futon and needed help because he also has been having trouble with a trigger finger, so I helped him carry the futon and researched how to tape a trigger finger and waited until he had vacuumed his bed, and made slings out of old bedsheets to make it easier to carry the old futon, and asked the boy to help my husband carry it out because he was just about to come in, and some other things.

And then I took my stuff, went into my studio and closed the door. Which apparently irritated my husband because he had planned to do some things around the annex and was afraid he would disturb me. I did more research about publishing in Germany and the copies one needs to send to the national library and ISBNs (the price structure on those is insane, by the way), spontaneously decided to make the ebook and the paperback two different projects and just focus on ebook for now, messaged with a couple of friends, opened my computer and – was definitely not in the mood for writing. My head felt like I had had to do taxes or accounting, not a creative space for me.

Then it was time to do bodyweight training with the boy, I ate dinner and read, then watched an episode of C-drama and then was just in time for my monthly coaching call on Zoom. An hour before I usually need to get ready for bed is not my preferred time for things like these, but well. I managed to stumble through my bit, sounding more German than usual and fumbling for words but the call was lovely and very encouraging.

And then I somehow found myself hungry again, I made myself a cup of tea, decided opening another bag of potato chips was a good idea, ate half of it and some more licorice, met the boy again around midnight and turned the lights out shortly before 1 am.

So yes, I might be a bit tired today.