Archives for July 2025

Late to bed, yada yada, morning pages, yoga and meditation, no time to open the manuscript. I thought I could do it later. Yeah, very funny.

My husband and I talked at length, for the first time in a while, then there were dishes and I walked to the supermarket.

I came back home a little late for lunch but all was well:

I had a brief break before teaching that I used for eating chocolate and cookies. Yes, buying cookies was a bad decision. They are all gone now, though, so no temptation left. Ahem.

Speaking of temptation, I saw this yarn on Instagram on Sunday and it was on sale so I clicked and bought it:

My excuse is that I have run out of self-striping yarn and need a new mindless sock project. I think I’ll make Vinovia socks from it.

Then there was all the teaching with an unexpected break because one student canceled. By the time my last student left I was fried.

I ate junk food for dinner. As always the food didn’t taste quite as good as it had promised at the beginning.

I started writing this post, made a list for today, did Duolingo, spun in front of TV for a short time and went to bed.

Today is cleaning day, a short teaching day and maybe I’ll continue with taxes. Maybe there will be ice cream, we’ll see.

Since I went to bed at midnight I did not get enough sleep. My plan had been to get up right away and speed my morning routine up because I needed to wake the boy up and my husband had an early dentist appointment.

Well.

So there was no yoga, meditation or writing before breakfast and I cut my morning pages in half. After breakfast, when my husband had gone out and the boy had decided to go back to bed instead of uni I wrote the second half of my morning pages about the fact that I felt like I’d never get a grip on my life and about all the almost-finished things around and all that jazz.

Seems that if I want to finish things I will have to actually work on them which is a shame.

After morning pages I realized that I’m really missing my morning knitting sessions. See, usually my husband and I talk after breakfast and I knit. But lately there was always something so that I did not get my daily knitting and conversation time. So I decided to sit, knit and read for a bit and felt immediately better.

And then I realized that one of the things that is weighing me down is the impending tax deadline so I decided to spend my break between students in the afternoon on slowly starting with tax stuff.

I did the sizable pile of dishes, had help from the boy at the end, even, and then went out for my walk/run. Somehow the transition between wiping the counters and getting out the door takes half an hour, no idea why.

On the way I met my husband who was coming back home from his run (he went running after coming back from the dentist) and it turned out that when he asked if we had enough frozen pizza he thought I’d be the one making it. I thought he would do it. And I was just about to frolic through the woods for an hour and come back home late for lunch.

Apparently, making frozen pizza is hard if one has never done it before. And can’t find one’s reading glasses.

But he didn’t want me to cut my run short either.

So I went out, did cut my run short by fifteen minutes and at the end it was me who put the pizza in the oven and rotated the three of them to get them to bake as evenly as possible. Husband then thought I would hop in the shower after starting the pizza but I can’t shower in the four minutes before the timer goes off for pizza rotation.

It was all very fun, I ended up hopping in the shower 1 1/2 minutes before the pizzas were ready, telling my husband to watch them and take them out when they were done, and he ate most of his meal alone. When he was almost done both the boy and I descended upon the kitchen at the same time shuffling pizza, salad and glasses of water around. Very cozy.

For the record, the pizza we made from that YouTube recipe was actually much better. But it did take way longer.

After lunch I had exactly half an hour before my first student. I read and ate chocolate and played a quick game. I taught two students, then went to the basement to try and connect the new computer to all the things for playing and recording audio and failed, then came back upstairs and started prepping taxes. I found that past me had already listed all my income in a neat excel sheet, then I gathered invoices and then it was time for my last student of the day. I taught her (very nice, just started this week), did some more invoice gathering and met the boy for more exercise.

The boy had spent part of the afternoon going out for a walk/run of his own, for the first time in years. He had been discussing and researching Couch to 5K-programs, unfortunately, the one I use is no longer available. He didn’t want to pay for a subscription.

He did manage to do Day 1 of on of those programs and then had face the fact that he is not in good shape cardio-wise. He also had to modify one or two exercises during bodyweight training because, well, his legs were already somewhat sore.

I was basically in the same boat, I have been sore from top to bottom for almost a week now but I still dialed my strength exercises up a little.

After that it was finally time for dinner, I read some more, then talked briefly with the boy and with my husband again, did Dulingo, started this post, made a list for today, did my foot exercises, spun for 15 minutes while watching C-drama and went to bed.

Today I will teach all the students, rescheduled ones, regular ones, and ones who only come in every other week and then I’ll probably crash.

On the bright side I went to bed on time and my alarm seems to be working again, so that’s good.

On the not so bright side the boy seems to have this new and shiny habit of getting himself something to eat around 5.30 in the morning which means he needs to pass my bedroom, I wake up every time and then have a hard time falling back asleep.

Oh, and my feet hurt again. But then I’m still sore all over, so maybe it’s just more of that.

I had a slow start and so I did not open the manuscript in the morning. I did the rest of my morning routine, had breakfast with my husband and he showed me the guitar he had been working on for the past few days.

And then I got ready to leave the house as early as possible because I wanted to do all the errands.

I took the train to the next small town over and got the prescription for my allergy meds renewed. Went to the nice health food store there but they didn’t really have what I wanted. I took the train back, went to the supermarket for yogurt, to the pharmacy and to another health food store.

On my way home it started raining but I was only a little damp.

Husband had just started making lunch and had also started a load of laundry. So I folded two loads and hung the new one up before eating a scrumptious lunch of pasta with zucchini from our garden:

Then I had about an hour before teaching that I spent eating chocolate and finishing the Jessica Pan book. I really liked it.

There was quite a bit of teaching, then a 30-minute break that I spent reading and eating something sweet, then more teaching.

Afterwards I sat down at my piano and took a look at the Chopin I want to learn. I think I started learning the beginning at one point in the past but after that things become hairy. That will take ages to learn but it will definitely be worth it.

Then there was dinner (and more reading) and then I had a hard time getting moving again. The boy showed up and told me about a new game he is playing but he also seems to be studying.

I did Duolingo, had one of those evenings where I feel stupid because it feels like I’m not making progress (partially true and partially just a normal feeling when learning something), read a newsletter about doing a review halfway through the year, tried finding my goals for 2025 and found that – I hadn’t made any.

I mean, that’s not quite true, I still have the same goals I’ve had for years. And the only one I could cross off the list is „publish book 1“.

So, not very uplifting.

I decided to leave the dishes for today, spun and knitted a little in front of TV after doing my foot exercises and went to bed.

Fingers crossed I’ll use my time better today.

I didn’t expect that.

I went to bed almost on time, my alarm didn’t go off again but I was prepared and had a second alarm. Because the boy wanted to go to uni and needed me as backup.

I did look up how to fix the alarm issue and did everything suggested, we’ll see how that goes.

I did my morning routine sans writing because I was busy waiting to wake the boy up and to wait until he left the house too late.

There was a very nice breakfast with my husband and then we both went to tackle our diverse to dos.

But first I got obsessed with a new language learning app and trying to test out of everything up to a B1 level. Turns out B1 is really too much for me. I only got 60% right on that test. So, not that much further.

I did a surprising amount of dirty dishes while listening to Mahler, Gershwin and Vivaldi. I am very sorry, I don’t know what it is but Mahler just doesn’t do it for me. Well, most of the time. There is some Mahler I liked but not enough to go and seek it out.

Then I waited for a package and my new fan for my studio arrived. I haven’t even unpacked it yet. And then I finally went out for my walk/run. In the rain:

(Sorry, no alt text today.)

I was a little late for lunch, and I was afraid the beans had turned to mush because I turned them off too late but they were okay.

My brain was distinctly mushy all day, though, and I think that might be because of the coffeeklatsch the day before.

One of these days I’d like to be a person who does not need a day off after each day of socializing.

Unfortunately, I did not get a day off, I still had to teach. Not too many students, though. In between I decided I needed junk food for dinner because I was feeling so bad (solid argument, right there) and walked to the supermarket to get ‘bananas“.

Okay, I did get bananas but I also got potato chips and marshmellow mice. And toilet paper, as one does.

I came back in time for my last student of the day who has decided to maybe learn guitar in addition to piano. I’m all for it, I can definitely see the appeal of learning multiple instruments.

After that I was completely out of energy, I did Duolingo, started writing this post, asked the boy to do the dishes, let the Tour de Fleece be Tour de Fleece and went to bed.

Somewhere in between all of that I also wrote four emails and decided to change my plans for today.

I might be just a little bit tired, no idea why.

I went to bed too late again and overslept. I think I didn’t wake up from my alarm again but I’m not quite sure. I think I need to change the kind of vibration alarm I use on my smartwatch.

So I was late and that meant I did not open the manuscript in the morning. Which meant no writing the rest of the day either.

Husband and I had breakfast but only talked briefly because there was so much to do. I sorted the dishes for washing up, then it was time to call my mother. We talked about our weeks and losing and gaining weight.

I finished the dishes while my husband was already starting to cook. The plan was red beet risotto with these tiny red beets from the yard. And then he put jasmine rice into the pot and only realized his mistake after. At this point the pot already held onions and butter and cubed red beets so he just went on as usual and when he saw that the rice wasn’t enough he added some risotto rice as well. The food was rather nice but could have cooked a little longer for my taste:

I took a break, shortly contemplated doing something useful but couldn’t and then started overthinking meeting new people. I knew I wanted to wear my new red dress. So, red shoes that give me blisters or black shoes that are too small for my orthotics? Makeup or not? Which jewelry? Sadly, my favorite silver necklace is completely out of fashion at the moment and looks just weird. I have a silver medallion from Iraq that is nice but the chain is too long. Or I could wear the very thin sapphire necklace but from afar that one looks as if I’m not wearing any jewelry at all. And when getting ready for an event I have to confront all the wrinkles, thinning hair and dark circles under my eyes. Also, which bra and undershirt or not?

I went with undershirt but it was bunching up. What I really need is a shift, of course, that would make all dresses and skirts look twice as good. No idea where one gets something like this these days, the last one I bought I got at Woolworth in the early nineties.

We walked over to our neighbor’s house with my mother-in-law with our bottle of wine and jar of homemade pesto. There were lots of people, most of them living in the area, so there was a lot of pointing towards our house and telling people that our garden is just behind those trees over there.

There was very nice cake. I had hoped strawberry season would already be over but no, there were two varieties of strawberry cake and a raspberry cream roll. There was some coffee but not enough for all the guests because apparently their coffee machine was broken and the replacement was very slow.

That was the point where my husband quietly got up, went back home and came back with the thermos of black tea that had been sitting in the kitchen.

There was a lot of the kind of conversations you have when you’re thrown into a meal with people you don’t really know. We did leave after about two hours, just when our hosts grown children started getting rather busy preparing dinner.

We were about half an hour later than expected but I did meet the boy for bodyweight training. I also solved my pull-up (or rather chin-up) problem of not getting anywhere by taking the kids chair from the living room upstairs so I can use it as a starting point for jumping up, getting my chin over the bar and do negative chin-ups.

The boy couldn’t believe I can’t jump high enough to do this without a booster but, well, I can’t.

I might be sore allover right now, ahem.

Then I finally ate dinner, read a bit more in „Sorry I’m late, I didn’t want to come“ by Jessie Pan that I bought on an impulse in the morning, did Duolingo, spun for fifteen minutes in front of TV and knitted a little, made a list for today that includes planning this week and went to bed.

New week, new beginnings!

Well, the start wasn’t smooth at all, I overslept by half an hour but then that made up for the time I went to bed too late.

Still, I managed the whole morning routine including a bit of working on the manuscript (lots of looking at pictures, mostly, for setting), some yoga and such and then breakfast with my husband.

After that I did the many dishes and listened to all the classical music. I’m behind with my classic music project again but almost back on track. The one piece that I really, really loved was „Let Nothing Trouble You“ by Roderick Williams the author of „Another Year of Wonder“ says, „I find in both the music and the words intense solace indeed.“ Yep, same.

I tried getting out of the house as fast as possible because we had planned to make all the pesto from all the basil and that takes time. I still wanted to go for my walk/run. I was out for more than 73 minutes and 7.7 kilometers. All I know is that I went through the woods and came out right before the next town over:

And then I went back the same way again.

At home the whole kitchen was full of pesto-making stuff:

There were still two more containers with basil elsewhere.

So I washed my hands, drank a glass of water and started mincing. I found that each portion of basil leaves took about 10 minutes between picking out bad leaves and stems and the actual use of the mezzaluna knife.

All in all I worked for almost 90 minutes. My husband was busy doing everything else and trying to make pesto in an actual pestle. It’s there in the photo, very small in the back, made from olive wood. We bought it at the Christmas market.

The texture of that portion of pesto turned out to be very different. Unfortunately, he put too much salt in, so it was basically inedible.

Lunch was a bit late:

I took a break after that, decided to not do the dishes, finished cleaning, took a shower, decided to make a paperback version of my book after all, bought 100 ISBNs, tried to figure out the mystery of Amazon keywords, and then ate dinner in front of TV with the boy while watching a pretty nice episode of ‚DoctorWho‘. It was the one called „The Story & The Engine“.

After that the dishes looked at me sadly but I didn’t want to. Which I will regret today but on the other hand I felt like I had spent enough time in the kitchen for one day.

Today we will go out and meet actual, real life people in the neighborhood. And I’m planning to wear my new dress.