Archives for October 2025

At least I went to bed on time and did well with all my morning stuff. Proofreading is progressing at a satisfying rate and the second mitten is growing.

Husband and I had a pretty long conversation over breakfast and then I helped him make his TV do what he wanted.

I did Duolingo and the dishes and then went off to my walk/run a little late:

Lunch was ready when I returned home so we ate right away:

I took a short break, then jumped in the shower, played a bit of Genshin (first progress, then complete challenge failure) and then there was not enough time to do anything else before my weekly Zoom call.

Writer Zoom was nice and very good for my knitting progress, I managed to finish the ribbing, do the provisional cast on for the palm stitches and got quite a bit of that done as well. I mean, it’s clear that a fingerless mitten is not as big a project as a sweater or so, not even a sock.

Which should mean I can totally finish those mittens I started for the boy at some point in the near future as well.

I ate dinner while the whole family went in and out of the kitchen repeatedly, read and was online, started writing this post, finally did the dishes, hung up a load of laundry, did more Duolingo, some spinning and watching C-drama and went to bed.

Will I finally clean the house today? Only time will tell, so stay tuned.

Ugh. After going to bed too late I woke up too early and couldn’t get back to sleep. I skipped parts of my morning routine because my husband was eating breakfast early so he could meet his friend for a little excursion.

Which meant I had a nice morning to myself that I used mainly to finish the first  fingerless mitten for my mother:

And then I did some dishes and made frozen pizza for lunch.

My husband came home an hour earlier than expected because the restaurant where they wanted to eat was closing early. At least they had seen it before going on their walk, so they were back in time to eat lunch there.

There was some teaching, and some proofreading, and the changing of the sheets and towels but otherwise I couldn’t bring myself to do anything. That is what you get when you stay up too late all the time. Hmpf.

The boy and I did bodyweight training. After researching how to improve my pushups I decided to scale them back and put my hands on a chair again, and lo and behold, I could almost do those with correct form and my muscles are sore in the right places.

I had crackers and cheese for dinner, played Genshin for an hour (I forgot to set myself a timer and it was really fun), started this post and the usual and spun a little in front of C-drama.

So I guess I’ll clean today, then. And do a few other things, of course.

Note to self (again) don’t do the dishes last because that usually leads to watching YouTube and that makes you go to bed late.

Apart from that the day went pretty well. Husband and I were talking a bit longer than usual, and then, while I was doing the dishes, I saw my brother-in-law and his mother return. He had driven her to a shop where she bought a rollator. finally.

So we talked briefly, I finished the dishes, got ready to leave the house, remembered that I had promised my mother-in-law to ask her if she needed anything and went off to the nearby supermarket.

As usual I didn’t get everything. All the talking with various people had meant husband and I were both late for lunch. Not too bad for me because I didn’t start teaching early but my husband had to hurry. At least lunch was tasty:

I tried to install the new wifi router thing. I did manage to connect it to the network but I am not sure where to place it and if it’s really necessary. I guess I’ll try around some more maybe on the weekend. The part of the house where I want it has very few electric sockets.

I taught two student, then I started putting my new office chair together:

Sorry, I forgot to take a picture of the finished chair but I can assure you that it is a proper chair now, works and seems to be more comfortable than the old one. After that it was time for my last student of the day, then dinner and sitting around reading, I started this post, did the dishes first, then Duolingo and everything else.

And today it’s almost the weekend!

I went to bed way too late but slept well, and while I snuggled in bed a bit after the alarm I did do my complete morning routine. Which includes yoga.

Husband and I talked again about the conversation that went wrong the day before. He is really stressed out at the moment and is easily triggered.

I almost finished the ribbing on the second try for a fingerless mitten. I continued downloading books onto the new eReader. I did the dishes and then went for my walk/run:

The weather was gorgeous but not as warm as it looks.

I came back just in time for lunch:

Then I took a quick shower and a nice break.

I started teaching early and then went non-stop until 6. I had a potential new student, a lesson where my student was accompanied by three other members of his family because they wanted to discuss something, and by the time I was done I was pretty low on energy.

The discussion went very well, by the way, that particular student feels a little overwhelmed with playing two instruments and soccer (which went up from two practice sessions per week to three) and so they decided to have his sister step in and take his lessons. Which is fine with me. The student is still learning an instrument, I gain a new student who seems very nice and all is well.

My new desk chair arrived but I haven’t even unpacked it yet. Also the new wifi-router-thingy which I might try to install today.

After teaching I was super hungry, so I ate dinner first. The plan was that the boy walked my mother-in-law to the dentist and back but she apparently decided she would be fine walking on her own, so that’s what she did. And it worked.

The boy and I did bodyweight training, and I felt like I was making backwards progress.

Then I had to wait while the boy was making himself more tomato sauce for his dinner. I used that time to set up the palm stitches for the fingerless mitten.

After that I started this post and played some Genshin even though I was too tired, finished the quest I started about a week ago, finally, after the boy helped me upgrade my weapons, started the next right away and failed spectacularly.
Then I finally did the dishes while listening to some YouTube videos and then I got sucked into a „jazz musicians react to BTS „ON“ video and ended up going to bed way too late yet again.

Today there will be way less teaching, I had a couple of reschedules and cancellations. So I’m hoping to get the other stuff done. (Usually this means I do all laundry all afternoon…)

I’m assuming that was not due to me having gone to bed on time.

I had lots of plans for the day because I had a light teaching day but first I started by picking up my phone and wasting the first hour of the day with scrolling. I couldn’t even tell you what I looked at.

I did manage yoga and meditation, then breakfast. I also managed to interrupted my husband when he launched into telling me a story in a way that he didn’t want to talk to me anymore at all, not the best start into the day.

I did dishes and then went off to the bank, the pharmacy and the health food store. The chocolate situation remains dire, but I still have a few bars that I bought online. We’ll see how that goes in the future. I think they are phasing out the 100g bars and will then restock everything with the new 80g bars but we’ll see.

I also spent most of the day trying to load my ebooks on the new eReader. Not all of them because I have too many but at least the ones I still want to read or reread. I started doing it one at a time but then I did some research and figured out that you can have the Kindle show collections, tap the 3-dot menu and tell it to download all items. Which I did but at the end of the day it still hadn’t finished.

That also showed me how aggravating it is that the wifi in the kitchen is really slow, so I decided to order another wifi-thingy for our network.

Anyways, before I did that my husband made lunch:

It was very tasty.

I also restarted the fingerless mittens for my mother. Tubular cast-on is always a bear and needs some uninterrupted time and focus but I am now at the point where I can just knit round and round.

I taught a student. I went online and fell down a „posing for photos“-rabbit hole. I finally opened the manuscript and proofread three more chapters. I taught some more students.

I felt cold and weak all day and as if the light was too loud. I mean, yes, the day before was a bit much but not that much. I don’t know.

I ate dinner and texted with a friend, and read a little, then talked briefly with both my husband and the boy, started writing this post, did the dishes, played Genshin and watched some C-drama. The boy went to university for the first time this semester which is why we rescheduled bodyweight training.

I’m hoping I’ll have more energy today but my afternoon is packed, plus I have both a walk/run and bodyweight training planned. I guess we’ll see how that goes.

And some rather delicious food.

I had gone to bed – wait for it – late yet again. I was doing pretty well in the morning but then managed to let myself get distracted by a text the boy sent me at 4 am. And there I was, pressed for time again.

I did the complete morning routine, though, and am now almost halfway through proofreading book 3. Yeah!

Husband and I had breakfast together and were talking and it was really nice. I was knitting while we spoke and getting more and more concerned about the size of the fingerless mitten I was making. I had my husband try it on and decided that, nope, it definitely was too big. So I had to rip it all back.

I’ll start it over later today.

There were dishes and such and then I went for my walk/run:

It didn’t go quite as well as on Saturday but still, I can feel a bit of progress.

I came home in time to take a shower before lunch. That was rather important because my first student of the day was a potential new one, and it’s always better to not have dripping wet hair in a professional business context. And no, I don’t own a hairdryer anymore.

Lunch was a veritable feast, lots of Greek food, all homemade by my husband. (Well, he didn’t make the feta cheese.)

While I was out my new eReader had arrived so I started setting it up. It was completely painless and easy. I like the color and that the screen is a bit bigger than the older Paperwhite. I also like the color of the case I ordered but was not too happy about the way it felt in my hand. So much so that I debated getting a different case.

In the end I was very taken with the color of the case and I’mm giving it another chance. My old Kindle Oasis is much thinner and I love the feel of the leather case but I don’t really want to spend the money on a leather case for this one, especially since all the color options are dark and drab. (I’m too lazy to take a picture of my new one but the back cover is clear and shows the raspberry color of the reader and the front flap is a fade from pink to orange which is very cool.

Then there was all teaching all afternoon. The new student is lovely, very curious and interested. As is the other new student who I first met last week.

I ate dinner between two students, then taught my last student of the day. We talked a lot about the new puppy he has, of course.

Then I met the boy to help him with some university admin stuff. In the end he managed to enroll in two classes for this semester and we brainstormed a solution to another problem he had. Apparently the university IT department is overhauling the whole website and course system and there are obvious bugs in there. So much so that the first thing yet get when logging in is two messages about things that don’t work at the moment. Fun times!

My husband had done the dishes which was especially nice, and had also done another load of laundry, so for now we are good on that. I started writing this post, did Duolingo, wrote a list for today, decided I was too tired for anything else and went to bed with a book.