Archives for April 2025

I have reached that stage where I have to focus to walk in a straight line. And I don’t even have the excuse of being a new parent or anything.

I did fall into a ‚just one more short YouTube video‘-hole, not a good idea. In the morning I felt like my whole body was made of lead and I spent about 45 minutes in complete mental paralysis unable to make myself move. I also did not go back to sleep. Of course.

The good news is that the boy’s new alarm clock works, so yesterday was probably the last day I had to get up at 6 because he needed to go to uni.

My husband’s mood tanked right away when he saw that a) the bread he had planned to eat for breakfast was moldy, and b) there was no honey in the house even though he had put it on the grocery list. Twice. He ended up eating a small cookie and rejected my offers of going out and buying something more suitable.

I do count the fact that I managed to make myself write for thirty minutes after breakfast as a big win, I did the dishes and all the usual stuff and left the house actually on time to go to the health food store. Since Thursday will be a public holiday I also went to the supermarket afterwards.

I did come back with honey this time. I also managed to buy the wrong kind of risotto rice which meant that my husband used sushi rice instead. Good thing I brought another package of risotto rice from the supermarket.

Before grocery shopping I sat down to start knitting the fingerless mitts in earnest. I am happy to say that the days of thinking and planning and math-ing have resulted in the beginning of an actual, wearable mitten. Behold, skulls:

And then there was risotto for lunch:

I didn’t have a lot of time afterwards but still managed to eat a chocolate bar and a whole package of peanut snacks. And then I also wrote sheet music for a student. I have a piece that he really, really wanted to play that’s much too hard for him and I’m transcribing the melody.

Then I taught from 2.30 to 7 without a break. Well, unless you count the five minutes when a student was late but I used those to answer texts.

When I was done for the day I printed new grocery lists, helped the boy with his form yet again, finally ate dinner, started writing this post, put the bread I bought into plastic bags and put it in the freezer, did Duolingo and my foot exercises, watched some C-drama while knitting and went to bed.

No opening of YouTube this time. Phew.

Wow, was I tired! I helped the boy the night before and only turned the lights out past midnight, which was bad enough, but then I needed to get up at six again to wake him up in time for uni. I did order him an extra loud alarm clock because I don’t want to get more sleep deprived. I mean, going to bed at 9 and getting up at 5.30 would be great but not when I often teach until 7.

So the rest of the day I had to make do with only half a brain. I still wrote my morning pages and worked on the manuscript but that was basically it.

My husband and I ate breakfast but only talked briefly because he had so much stuff to do. And yes, it was our wedding anniversary and we did acknowledge that but will celebrate on Friday.

Then I spent a little over an hour re-designing the fingerless mittens I want to knit for the boy. The pattern I bought was neither test-knitted nor tech-edited. I played around with the motives on the palm side and I think I found a pleasing way of arranging everything, now I just need to make a decision on the thumb increases and then I should be good.

I did the breakfast dishes while listening to a YouTube video, completely forgot about my classical piece of the day, and then went running. Well, mostly running. In my sleep-deprived daze I accidentally started a training that was a bit too hard for me but for that I’m pretty happy with how I did.

The weather was very warm, I was wearing shorts:

The boy was back home before lunch so we all ate together, mmh, pasta and veggies:

I did the dishes right away, then took my customary break and then a shower. With time to spare for my first lesson. I had a rescheduled lesson so I ended up with a generous break between students which I used for researching stuff for publication. Then another student and ten minutes of playing the piano before it was time for bodyweight training. I pulled up the wrong program, we should have done military presses but, well.

Then I finally could eat dinner. I read a bit, talked briefly with the rest of the family, played a silly game for 15 minutes, hunted for the fountain pen I had been using in the afternoon and finally found it inside the notebook I had used, did Duolingo and my foot exercises and then watched a short episode of C-drama before going to bed.

Today will be a very long day, I already know as much, but hopefully with an early bedtime.

And wow, am I tired.

There actually is no real reason why I went to bed an hour late again. But it tied in with another afternoon of waiting. I was very determined to get stuff done and actually completed the whole morning routine. Alas, writing went very slowly.

My husband and I ate breakfast together and were happy to talk about the last few days, then I decided I did not have enough time to do a second writing session and ultimately had to scramble to call my mother on time.

The fact that I pulled out one of my knitting projects in progress and got hooked on redesigning the chart didn’t help. (I started a pair of „Chaos Mittens“ for the boy some time in October, found that there was an error in the pattern, tried correcting it, found even more errors, decided to redesign the whole thing and got stuck.

That morning I did some more math, changed the number of stitches significantly and started over with the full intention of winging everything. (Spoiler: winging it probably won’t work either)

Since a lot of stuff had happened in the last week both for me and for my mother we talked for a whole hour and then I helped a little with lunch:

Lunch was a little late and afterwards I took a break. I did plan the week ahead but then got stuck in indecisiveness. Somewhere in between I hung up a load of laundry, vacuumed the old part of the house and tried finding some elastic to replace the one that prevents the bathroom door from crashing into the one leading into the apartment.

Turns out the reason I haven’t replaced that yet even though it’s worn and no longer very elastic is that there was no suitable elastic in the house. My subconscious might have known, the rest of me did not.

I did the dishes again, ate dinner, watched an episode of ‚Filter’ and then it was time for another Zoom call. Signing up for a call from 9 pm to 10.30 was not the best idea, by then I was tired enough to fall flat on my face.

The boy showed up with some questions about how to fill out a form for work and other stuff, I made myself a cup of tea, started writing this post, did my foot exercises and went to bed. Too late again, of course.

Guess who needs to get up extra early today?

Yep. The boy needs to be at university early.

I have ordered an alarm clock for him that is supposed to raise the senior citizens, the deaf and even teenagers, so we’ll see if that works.

So I went to bed an hour late but slept surprisingly well despite the beer I had in the evening.

Fed up with my excuses and not getting anything done I wrote morning pages, spent half an hour on the manuscript and did yoga for the first time in ages. Very good.

My husband and I had breakfast together and for once our timing lined up in a way that we both had our breakfast ready at the same time. Nice.

We talked a bit, about his rehearsal the day before and about my usual „how do I find more time for the things I deem important“-problem.

I decided not to wait until I had thirty minutes just lying about somewhere, set my timer and wrote for the second time that day. Yes! Then I wrote my blog post, did the dishes and only then did I finally brush my teeth.

I still was too late and my husband lamented the fact that he would have wanted to start cooking half an hour earlier. But he couldn’t because I was still doing the dishes. So this new routine will need a bit of, ahem, fine-tuning.

So, instead of going out for my run/walk I found myself sorting through herbs and arugula leaves. I worked as a high-speed kitchen helper for thirty minutes and then set off for my trot through the woods at the time I would have liked to eat lunch.

My mood was not the best and even though I had chosen an easy routine I found myself walking a lot more than planned. But that often happens when I’m really hungry while exercising:

(Sorry again for no ALT text today.)

That is my purple „meh.“-tee, very appropriate.

I came back home and found that my husband hadn’t started eating either, after the ordeal of cooking against the clock he wasn’t hungry and had taken a nap. So we ate together again and were even joined by the boy.

(And I seem to have forgotten to take a picture of my lunch. There was pasta and ragu and a mixed salad that was more herbs than anything else. Very fresh, though, everything had grown in our backyard until a couple minutes before.)

I took a nice leisurely break after that for 40 minutes or so and then the boy and I did bodyweight training. Fortunately, we only had to do 20 pretty easy minutes but we felt every single one because we both were still sore from our last training on Thursday.

I finally took a shower, ate something sweet, then did the dishes, all of that interspersed with social media and such, and just as I had dried the last pot my husband and his friends showed up for dinner.

So we ate together, this time without the boy, I sat and waited some more, even though I had plans to be productive, I decided I wanted a beer after all, then I started writing this post, watched some C-drama, made a list for today and went to bed.

And today is the last day of Easter break. Tomorrow teaching will be fall back down on us again.

Well, not quite.

My alarm found me so tense that I ached all over, mostly because I dreaded having to drop the rental car off. I’m such a clear-headed and rational person…

My husband and I set off a little early, I used my phone to navigate and everything went well. We didn’t ding the car, we dropped the keys off and I’m very hopeful that I’ll get my deposit back in time.

After that we walked all the way back, just shy of an hour’s walk. Since we were out of potatoes and a few other essential things we made a short detour to the nearby supermarket.

We were pretty early at that point, which was good, and my husband started making lunch early as well:

I waited for the boy to come back home from uni, and then I was waiting for my husband’s friends to arrive. They had agreed on 5 in the afternoon even though my husband would be teaching from 6 to 6.45. The plan was that the others would eat dinner in the kitchen with me in the meantime.

But since my husband had fed them cantuccini just before they weren’t hungry yet. So I waited some more. I did talk with the boy at length who is thinking about getting a part-time job this semester. At one point I gave up trying to get anything done but seaming Wever B.

Oh, by the way, I finished the I-cord seams all around, now I just need to weave the ends in and such:

I did eventually manage to move myself in front of TV and watched C-drama for the first time in almost a week, interrupted the viewing to talk with my husband’s friends when they were eating dinner in the kitchen for a bit, succumbed to the temptation of having a real beer because my husband and his guests were having some as well and went to bed an hour late.

And yes, my stomach is unhappy with me today, why do you ask?

Today there will be all the things and more friends coming over and making music in the basement underneath the master bedroom.

P.S.: I’m thinking of prioritizing fiction writing more and that might mean my blog posts won’t be quite as daily anymore. Sorry, but if daily blogging means I’ll never finish another book I’m sure you’ll understand.

You can call me the heroine of erranding, phew.

I was so tired the night before that I got ready for bed at 9.30 and turned the lights out at 10. Slept well, woke up from the alarm, wrote morning pages and – got stuck. There was no chance I would do any other part of my morning routine.

I lounged in bed doing research until almost 9 o’clock and then my husband and I made breakfast. We talked a bit and ran into several miscommunications in a short amount of time. Which made it clear that we were both stressed and exhausted. On the bright side we did manage much better the rest of the day.

I only did half the dishes before it was time for our first excursion, stuffing the rental car with all the things we needed to take to the recycling place that only fit into a car. Funny enough, my husband’s mother and her sister had also taken some stuff there right before.

We managed to cram about half the things into the car and without scratching anything or making it super dirty. My husband drove us to the other side of town, we sorted everything with the kind help of the people working there. They also helped us figure out how to open the tank cover. We decided it was a better idea to figure it out in a place that was pretty quiet instead of right at the gas station.

Which was our next stop. First time buying gas in twelve years.

Then we went back home and turned the stove off. My husband had started to cook dried beans, I had tested them at one point, they were super hard, so I hadn’t turned them off, but by the time we returned they were decidedly mushy.

Then we turned around, returned empty bottles and bought lemonade, alcohol-free beer and ‚real‘ beer. After that I borrowed my other-in-law’s battery-powered small vacuum, we cleaned the car on the inside and my husband started making lunch.

In the meantime I went right out the door again to the supermarket where we buy our yogurt, then the health food store and then back home for lunch.

The boy had finished his lab thing successfully this time and was home for lunch as well. There was rice and beans:

My Friday student canceled, I exchanged texts with my husband’s friend who wants to use my MIDI keyboard today because he needs a way to connect his tablet computer with it. Fortunately, I have a lot of adapters, plugs and cables and it looks like we’re all set.

After a short break I then went out the door yet again, to the nearby supermarket for the rest of the things we’ll need until next week. Well, except for deodorant. And potatoes. I might pick some potatoes up later today but the deodorant is not urgent, it was just the spare bottle.

I came back home, put everything away and was just in time to take a shower before my first student of the day.

I taught my two students, then ate a few almonds before bodyweight training with the boy. Who had fallen asleep again after lunch and woke up only a few minutes before we started.

Bodyweight training was really hard. It was the 40-minutes workout with extra ‚dynamic effort‘, phew.

By the time we were finished I was toast. I ate some dinner, read a bit, hung around and then finally made myself change the BRITA filter. While starting to write this post.

Today there will be the return of the rental car, maybe a walk back home (will take about an hour), maybe some cleaning and then my husband’s friends will come over to make music again.

And then the weekend.