Archives for August 2025

In the morning my husband and I talked for two hours, plus he had huge plans for lunch.

I still went walking/running. There were loads of people out in the woods, no idea why:

I returned back home 15 minutes before lunchtime. The baked potatoes were almost ready, the tsatsiki was made, the rice for the stuffed vine leaves was on the stove and that was it.

So I chopped some herbs, and then stuffed the vine leaves. Spoiler, they did not get done in time for lunch:

Here is a picture of the stuffed vine leaves:

The smaller ones are only as big as my pinky finger.

I took a short break, then the boy showed up and we talked, more talking with husband but only briefly, and in the end I had only twenty minutes left until my weekly writers Zoom

We talked while I knitted, then it was time for watching ‚Columbo‘ with the rest of the family, more knitting, then half an episode of C-drama, Duolingo, bullet journal and bed.

And today is packing day!

I mean, not that I expected to get much done.

I had gone to bed too late again but overslept which resulted in getting enough sleep and no time for writing. So a mixed blessing. There was yoga and morning pages and such and a nice conversation with my husband.

We’re thinking about changing our morning routine around so that we can have breakfast together earlier which means we might both get a bigger chunk of time between breakfast and lunch to get stuff done. We’ll maybe try that at the end of the week.

I called my mother on the phone and we mostly talked about the things we’re planning to do while the boy and I visit her. I’ll probably be already on the train when you read this.

Husband had been hit with a bout of time blindness while I was on the phone, plus the big clock in his studio stopped because it needed new batteries, so he started cooking at lunchtime. I helped a little and in between I got started on packing.

I put everything on my bed and then wasn’t sure which backpack to take. Here is everything I’ll be taking except for the pair of sneakers:

I forgot to put my toiletries on the bed and decided to not bring the rain jacket. Her you see my choice of backpacks. The burgundy one or the new olive green one:

The burgundy one is 16 liters, has a nice, bright interior with quite a few helpful pockets. The green one is 25 liters and can be expanded to 30 (I think), has a dark interior and while it also has extra pockets they feel weird to me. I did buy it for the cavernous main compartment because that will come in handy when grocery shopping but I find that the smaller backpack feels better.

So this is where I ended up:

On the left is what I’ll wear on the train (plus black sneakers), there is the backpack and my purse. This time the toiletries are included.

And yes, I did pack everything and then unpacked everything that I still needed the rest of the day like my notebook, iPad, eReader and the toiletries. I did very carefully leave all the cables and chargers in there because forgetting one of those is a huge hassle and I happen to have other cables and chargers that I can substitute. One of these days I will only need one charger and one cable for everything but right now, while I can make do with only one charger, I still have to bring three cables and the charging station for my smartwatch.

My husband found it very strange, by the way, that I packed everything only to unpack half of it right away but I wanted to see how everything fit. If I didn’t have to bring my house slippers with the orthotics I could have fit the raincoat in there as well. But well, not having foot pain is worth it.

After that I tried focusing on the manuscript but there was a lot of interruption, then the boy and I did bodyweight training. We used heavier dumbbells and I can already tell that I’ll regret that choice later today.

I ate dinner, took a shower, did Duolingo, wrote this post, made a list for today, watched a bit of C-drama and went to bed.

And now off to Northern Germany!

And the morning went very well but then things went a little sideways.

I did the complete morning routine, including yoga for the first time in days and even opened the manuscript. And then I did my weekly cleaning and finished before lunch, so that was spectacular. And all of this on way less sleep than I would have liked.

Meanwhile my husband was thrown off by me dashing all around the house while cleaning and always getting in his way. He was trying to be in the garden while cooking while taking care of all the fresh produce that needs to be eaten ASAP and so things went the usual way.

I tried helping but there was only chopping some parsley and setting the table left. And then he proceeded to unpack all his overwhelm. I did not react very well to that. In my defense I was overtired, exhausted, stressed and very hungry at that point. But lunch was delicious:

Husband continued to unpack even more stress and overwhelm. The garden is producing all the things at the moment and someone has to make those into food. There has been a bowl of apples standing around for days that is supposed to become apple sauce, one of the bell pepper plants fell over, its stem broke and now there are a dozen green peppers that need to be eaten, a very dissatisfying red beet harvest needed to be cooked and then there are the vine leaves my husband picked and blanched so we can stuff them. Possibly today.

So I totally get the stress but then the plan to take care of all of these things while packing away the two tents he pulled out and set up in the garden, going for a run, do general garden maintenance, pick up the detritus of two weeks of being at home way less than usual and repairing a broken valet stand while cooking might not have been the most realistic.

We were both a bit tense while eating. Afterwards I took a break, reading, eating chocolate and drinking tea when my husband came back earlier than expected. The stress was still there, so I agreed to help, did the dishes real quick and also offered to prep the apples but my husband didn’t let me. At the same time the first of the talks I wanted to watch that day was about to start.

Later I helped packing away the tents. I think I might be the only one in the house who knows how to get the big tent back in its bag. By then it was clear that my vision of a calm afternoon watching talks, sewing buttons on the cardigan, and maybe writing a bit was not realistic.

The boy and I did bodyweight training and played around with the dumbbells. We might try changing things up a bit, the whole pull-up progression that we’re doing isn’t actually progressing anywhere right now.

After that I went upstairs to show my mother-in-law the newest picture of her triplet great-grandchildren (while her soup was slowly cooking down in the kitchen as we realized later), my husband and I put our sleeping mats in the attic, and then I could finally eat dinner. Phew.

I finished reading „A Case of Mice and Men“ which was excellent and immediately started reading the second book in the series.

At that point it was already rather late, again, but I still started this post, did all the usual things, realized that I had forgotten about the load of laundry I had started earlier, so I hung that up while watching YouTube (unfortunately, I can’t watch C-drama without reading the subtitles), still watched a little bit of C-drama and went to bed.

And now it feel like the next time I’ll come up for air will be next Friday but that is certainly an exaggeration. 

No, I did not open the manuscript.

Since my husband needed to leave early for his colonoscopy (everything went well) I didn’t really have the headspace to write, and then I sat around waiting for him to come back home. Of course.

At one point I did manage to do the dishes, and after he came back I finally went out to the supermarket. I got lucky, the rain had just stopped.

Meanwhile my husband made lunch. He was very, very hungry at this point:

Unfortunately a lot of the cucumber was very bitter.

I took a break, then taught my first student of the day, used the break between students to pick up the two pounds of tea I ordered and some things I had forgotten before, then I talked with my husband and watched another video.

I got really lucky because I had thought the tea shop was open until 5 but in fact it was officially closed since 2. But, the salesperson was still there working and had the door open. It was very nice of her to help me.

I went back and taught my second student of the day, then decided it was time to count all my cash because my budgeting app was claiming I had a negative cash balance which was blatantly untrue. There wasn’t much but I could clearly see some banknotes and lots of coins in my wallet.

After counting it all and correcting the balance in the app I felt much richer than before.

I ate dinner, talked with my husband again, the boy went out for a run, came back with his shins hurting, so I did a quick online search and then unearthed my foam roller and a band for stretching.

I started writing this post, did Duolingo, made a list for today, watched a few minutes of C-drama while knitting and went to bed.

Today is cleaning day (and folding laundry day), there are more educational videos to watch and I still haven’t given up on finishing the novel-in-progress until the end of the week.

Speaking of which, the paperback for „Masked in Ice“ is live! It’s only on Amazon for now, but hey!

Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk

Amazon.de

Because of the beeping freezer I went to bed too late. 

Oops, I didn’t mention the freezer in yesterday’s post because I didn’t have time in the morning to adjust the post I had written the night before but just as I was lounging in the living room watching C-drama my husband showed up, all flustered.

His mother had apparently stuffed the top drawers of the freezer so full that the door didn’t close fully. Which is a bad thing. Since or freezer is still pretty new and shiny it then will start beeping as a warning sign. Which did alarm my husband. He rearranged the contents of the top two drawers and closed the door.

Problem solved.

Not.

The freezer kept beeping.

He thought it might stop once it had reached the correct temperature but the beeping went on, intermittently for quite some time.

So he fetched me because I’m the default tech person in the house.

I opened the door, saw the temperature warning on the display (5 degrees Celsius warmer than it was supposed to be) and closed the door.

More beeping.

I tried tapping the display and looked for another switch or button but there was none.

I went back to watching C-drama and my husband said if the beeping hadn’t stopped half an hour later he’d get me again.

Which he did.

I looked through the manual (something I had already done the first time, of course), couldn’t figure anything out, thought about maybe just unplugging the freezer to restart whatever computer-thing is in there. The temperature was still the same.

I tapped on the display, I closed the door, nothing changed, the thing was beeping.

I opened the door again (at this point my husband was mad at me because I kept opening the freezer which kept making the inside warmer). The display said the temperature was too high. I tapped it and it told me how high the temperature was (same as before). Out of ideas I tapped in various places again.

The display went back to black and white from bright red and the temperature went down one degree.

The beeping stopped.

By then I was fully awake again and it took me a while to go to bed.

In the morning I had a very nice timetable with all my morning things on it in a way that I could do the complete, complete morning routine in time to leave the house at 9 and still take a shower as well.

I woke up at 6.30 after having gone to bed at midnight, got out of bed, took my thyroid pill, said „screw it“ and went back to bed with a book.

I did manage to leave the house on time, freshly showered with everything I needed, at least.

My annual gynecologist check-up went well, we also talked about HRT, playing guitar and our kids, as one does.

I took the train back home, went to the pharmacy and the health food store and came back home.

I waffled a bit about my walk/run, my legs still felt a bit weak from strength training the night before and it was very warm and I didn’t really want to but I went out anyway:

You can see how tired I was in this picture.

Shoutout to my husband who actually cooked lunch for the boy and me even though he couldn’t eat any of it because he had already started prepping for today’s colonoscopy. Lunch was very good:

After that I didn’t do much. Well, I did take a shower and I watched two videos in a free online author summit thing. The first video was somewhat interesting, about goal-setting, the second one was a waste of time.

I dealt with laundry, I ate dinner, I started writing this post, did Duolingo, and made a nice list for today and in between I gave my husband my alarm clock for his 5 am wakeup today. Another manual to read because I only use that alarm to tell the time, not as an alarm.

I am really hoping today will be more productive but part of my brain is already in next week, mentally preparing and packing.

So yes, another very busy day but also very productive!

I managed most of the morning routine (no writing), talked with my husband, did some of the breakfast dishes and left the house to do errands.

I got a phone call from my husband while in the drugstore. On top of everything else we had run out of peas which just doesn’t do. The good thing was that the drugstore was my first stop (disposable gloves and band-aids), then the supermarket for yogurt and then the health food store for the rest.

I tried my new backpack and I really like it, though I have to say I’m not sure about the roll-top. It makes the backpack nice and roomy but you basically fish blindly for things in a dark hole. We’ll see.

Husband was a little late with cooking but the only thing I could help with was chop the marjoram:

I took a nice break, read a little and played some silly games.

I was supposed to meet a friend over video call in the afternoon, and just before that I tried finding the formatted ebook file that I had trashed the day before on my backup hard drive. And I succeeded.

Talking with said friend was really nice, we talked about books and editing, and how we use our time, C-drama and K-drama.

After that I tackled formatting the paperback of „Masked in Ice“, uploaded it to Amazon (it will take a few days, I guess), ordered a proof copy for myself, started an account on another book retailer site, proofread two chapters of book 2 and called it a day.

The boy and I did bodyweight training, I ate dinner, did all the many dishes, started writing this post, did Duolingo, made a detailed plan for today because I need to leave the house early, watched some C-drama while knitting and went to bed.

Phew.