On the other hand both today and tomorrow should be little busier so who knows, maybe I’ll do better with that.
I did get up somewhat earlier and I actually did my complete morning routine. Writing continues to be hard and I can’t decide whether I need to re-read the last 10,000 words or so first or just write on, so of course I do nothing instead of just deciding on one or the other.
One thing I did get done was exercise, 10 minutes of yoga, some walking and running and bodyweight training, so that was good.
But first I talked with my husband about the depressing state of the world. Again. I have decided I’d like a few days where we don’t talk about climate change, politics or how much late-stage capitalism sucks for a change.
I did the dishes and went outside. And there was no rain! At all!
I had decided on a shorter walk/run so I would be back home in time for lunch. Well, lunch was late so I could take a shower before eating:
At lunch and afterwards my husband wanted to talk more, I think the topic was responsibility and overwhelm or something. I pulled my knitting out again and then continued working on it until I finished the body of the striped cardigan I’m making:
Next up I need to weave the ends in and join the shoulder seams, then I get to knit the sleeves around and around and around.
I am hoping to finish this before leaving for my trip to see my mother but that would mean not only knitting the whole thing and weaving in all the ends but also buying buttons and sewing them on. Like, I already have another one, two, oops make that three cardigans lying around that just need the buttons attached.
Yes, I know how to sew a button on. Yes, I also have all the necessary tools and thread. I mean, I even have a brown cotton cardigan, the buttons, needle and thread right next to where I sit as I’m typing this.
Sigh.
So after finishing the body I took a break and ate some chocolate while reading. Just as I was about to get up and do something else the boy showed up. We talked, he ate lunch and we talked some more. When we were finished talking I had ten more minutes until I was to meet with my husband to look at my mother-in-law’s extendable awning. The seams holding the fabric have come apart and we’re thinking about mending them ourselves. My mother-in-law already asked some company to install a new awning but they never got back to her.
Now, doing that repair ourselves might just be possible if we could figure out how to get the fabric out of the whole mechanism. Because I can’t really sew something together if I can’t reach both sides of the fabric. And using a sewing machine might not work either because I just have a small regular machine and bunching up several meters of fabric between the presser foot and the body of the machine might not work.
I did found a sewing awl online that might work but that would mean many, many, many stitches by hand. On the other hand it really bugs me to throw away a perfectly fine awning just because some thread broke.
When I came back downstairs I talked with the boy again who is very much into a mobile game that really baffles me. My husband showed up at one point but turned around without a word when he found us talking. So I went to look for him a little later, found him standing on the balcony railing cleaning the awning and since he didn’t hear me coming I did not say a word and turned around again. I did not want to startle him in that precarious position.
I waited a little, went back upstairs and back downstairs, let my mother-in-law in who always has trouble turning the key in the lock when the weather is warm (I mean, we all do but she doesn’t have the strength to actually turn it anymore when the door warps in hot humid weather), then I talked to my husband briefly and told him there was a voicemail for him (after writing the message and the phone number of the person leaving it on a piece of paper because I knew he’d be too busy to check himself), let my husband’s nephew and his wife in because my husband was still upstairs, maneuvered the wife upstairs to wait with my mother-in-law while the nephew had his guitar lesson, and then I had about 40 minutes left to do anything productive for the day.
It is rather sweet, by the way, said nephew first had guitar lessons with his uncle twenty years ago or more. At that point my mother-in-law kept ferrying him back and forth for them. He stopped lessons at one point and then a couple years later as an adult he started them again. I’m told he is very good these days. He brought his wife this time because they were planning to go out for dinner with my mother-in-law.
Anyways, I wasted some more time, did twenty minutes of bodyweight training very reluctantly (it feels like I’m not getting better at all while a lot of my muscles are screaming at me that they’s rather have a week off), then ate dinner while talking with the boy again, then ate all the chocolate because I was so frustrated. (Did it make me less frustrated? Well, yeah, for about a second.)
I did Duolingo, went on social media, started writing this post and the dishes were still dirty, funny enough.
On the bright side the boy then showed up to take a shower and offered to do the dishes, so that was helpful.
So what I’m doing right now is definitely not working. I am very low on energy and am falling into a huge slump after lunch and then I never get out. It also feels like my husband’s buzzing overwhelm and his hustling around the place tackling tons of small projects and being in motion all day is making me more paralyzed. Which is definitely not his fault, I should be able to work around that.
It also feels like I get interrupted roughly every twenty minutes, no idea if that’s true.
So, I need to do something differently. Having the best intentions is clearly not working. My American writer friends keep recommending I leave the house but unfortunately the library in town is drafty and loud and I hate working in cafés. I’m not quite sure it’s a question of environment either. I am perfectly able to sit alone in a quiet room without any outside attraction an not get anything done there either.
I mean, I guess I could give up but I’m not quite there yet.
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