I sort of knew my to-do list was too long

I didn’t know it was about twice as long as feasible.

It was the usual thing, I had been pushing a list of things that need to be done from day to day, and today is the hard deadline. Because we’ll be traveling tomorrow.

So. I did go to bed an hour late but slept for a little over eight hours again. Score! Of course that made me late in the morning. I still did my complete morning routine, not manuscript time, though.

There was breakfast with one of those conversations that husband and I both would have loved to have skipped, we’re both a bit stressed at the moment.

I did the breakfast dishes, sorted recycling, folded a load of laundry and hung up part of another one and then, just as I wanted to go out for my walk/run there was a thunderstorm.

I’m not dumb enough to run through the woods in that on purpose. But my husband had just come back from his run and said that the storm was passing us to the south. If I waited for ten minutes I would be good.

Well, I did get rained on a bit but he was right, no thunder and lightning, phew:

When I came back we were already late with lunch but there was still time to take a shower before eating:

This was the rest of the lamb from the other day (the boy got tomato sauce only) and pasta from my mother-in-law’s pantry. We still had leftover capellini from another day, so there is a lot of leftover pasta in the fridge right now.

My husband had spent most of the morning and all of the afternoon going through his mother’s kitchen. Several weeks in he is still finding more perishables. And we haven’t even gotten started on the freezer but that will keep a bit longer.

I did help him a little with decisions, and I also advised him to just put all the bits of paper into a box to look at later. It is important to get all the spoiled food out of the house but if we look at the papers this week or not doesn’t make much of a difference.

After lunch I sat down to play some Genshin again and came away extremely frustrated having failed spectacularly fighting the same boss as the day before. In the end I gave up and handed the boy the controller. Who determined that the problem was a) I was using the wrong weapon, b) said weapon wasn’t leveled up enough, and c) the controls on the controller make playing that kind of fight extra hard.

Anyway, he did manage to slay the boss for me, phew.

I did more dishes, carried all of my mother-in-law’s paperwork back into her living room and put it in neat piles, preparing to sort it later.

But.

I also was determined to do at least a cursory cleaning of the house. I had vacuumed the old part before (thought it was already looking dirty again) and my husband had said he’d do the annex. But he was so tied up in all the decluttering that I just took the vacuum and ran it through the middles. And I cleaned the washbasins and toilets, phew.

Meanwhile my husband did a second round through the garden to show the boy what and how to water.

And then we all met for dinner and the penultimate episode of ‚Columbo‘. I had high hopes for this one about a composer and conductor for the movies but it did have some lengths.

After that my husband took over the kitchen to make baba ganush from the eggplant he grilled the day before while I sat in the living room at my dedicated writing desk and started writing this post. I also did a teensy bit of revision, made a list for today and played more Genshin.

I did not refill my travel toiletries and have reached the stage of packing where it feels like it will never come together. I have a big untidy pile of things on the spare bed and need to compare that to my list. I also need to move stuff around from my purse. I’m not quite sure if I should take the purse or a lighter and smaller sling. I will definitely not lug everything around that is my everyday carry.

So, today is packing day. And started the travel knitting day. But we already decided against making wine jelly and apple sauce. There is just no time.