life

And it was glorious!

I went to bed on time, woke up from the alarm and decided to – skip my morning routine completely in favor of reading „Neanderthal seeks human“ which I can not recommend highly enough. It was wonderful to lounge in bed and not do anything for a change.

The there was breakfast with my husband. I worked on weaving in ends on the Starbright blanket, only two more squares to go. Then my husband and I started talking about things being a little too much (yet again) which triggered some old stuff for me and so we ended up having a rather emotional 2 1/2 hour conversation. Phew. We obviously hit on something important but could both have done without that kind of energy drain on a regular Thursday.

Then I took my bike and went to the far away, much nicer supermarket to buy all the things. Went to the pharmacy and the drugstore as well and hauled three big bags and a package of toilet paper home after.

At home my husband started the frozen green beans I had brought right away and helped me put everything away. I’ve rarely spent so much money on groceries but then the pantry, fridge and freezer are now all filled to the brim. (Unfortunately, the fridge was so full that something moved the dial for the temperature. Good thing I had bought ice cream and ate it after dinner because that make me notice the ice cream was pretty melted.)

So lunch was a little late but very good:

I had a bit of time before teaching and used it to read, eat chocolate, and work on the web design course for a few minutes.

I was teaching lots of very nice students, and for once I was really happy with the lessons.

When I was finished I met my husband in the kitchen where he was doing the dishes, so I helped with drying. And then I sat down to eat potato chips, drink an alcohol-free beer and chase all of that with ice cream. And that was when I realized the ice cream wasn’t frozen anymore.

So I turned the dial on the fridge/freezer up and enjoyed my meal.

Afterwards I started writing this post, did Duolingo, and went to bed.

And now Friday.

I woke up half an hour before the alarm for some reason and felt super exhausted and tired and was in no mood to do anything. I forced myself to write morning pages but kept looking up stuff on my phone (and that is why we put the phone elsewhere when we try to focus, kids) and then had a hard time making myself write some new words on the novel. For 15 minutes. And then I skipped both yoga and meditation.

My husband and I had breakfast together and discussed our riveting plans for the day. Which consisted of lots of errands, mostly.

But first he went out and I started the project of installing WordPress locally on my computer so I have a sandbox to play in for the course I bought the day before. I gave in to being triggered by the course and the possibility of learning some new computer stuff and went all in.

And then something went wrong and I got stuck. Of course.

And I ran out of time and did the dishes, woke up the boy for his exam, and then it was time to leave the house.

I took all the empty bottles that need to get returned to the health food store and stuffed them in my backpack and then I set off into gorgeous weather, the sun shining thought it was freezing. First I went to one supermarket for yogurt and vegetarian bratwurst and then to the health food store for all the veggies, frozen meals and chocolate.

I came back home, put all the many, many, very expensive groceries away and waited for lunch.

Just as we were sitting down to eat I got a text from the boy, his train was sitting on the tracks, not moving. For ten minutes. We started eating anyway, there was nothing we could do:

The boy’s train was 15 minutes late! Now this is the lecturer who has loads of rules that no one else has. One of the rules is that you have to be there for your exam 5 minutes before it starts. If you come later you’re excluded. Now, usually the lecturers will tell you it’s your own loss if you come late and have less time but not this one.

Then he had to change to the subway. He reached the subway in time. Phew. Most of his margin was gone but he could still make it.

Only.

The subway was late as well. For a whole 8 minutes. He might have had 4 minutes to dash all the way to the other side of campus. That was the last I heard while we were trying to calm down and enjoy our meal. It was very good. But my husband was unable to focus on eating.

I told myself if I didn’t hear from the boy in the next five minutes it would probably be fine.

The next time he texted me was hours later.

He had made it!

Unfortunately, he didn’t have a good feeling. I mean, with all that excitement…

After lunch I took a break, ate some chocolate and read a bit but the botched WordPress install was bugging me so I tried again. Very slowly I did all the steps again and – it worked! So I tried installing the super fancy WordPress theme but I got an error message. I tried again, no change.

I tried for a while but had to give up because it was time to teach.

I taught two students had one of them tell me they wanted to stop taking lessons because he needed more time to see friends (apparently they are sitting and doing homework all afternoon right into the evening), refilled the water in my piano and then I wrote a note to those of my students who are still paying the old prices.

So, it used to be that every time I raised the price for lessons I’d raise it for all students at the same time. But then my husband said what he does is he gives the new students the new price and just lets everything else go unchanged. Way less work, so I started doing that as well.

The drawback is that you end up with a lot of students paying a really, really low price. Like I had someone start with me a while back who told me another teacher that she had before was taking twice the money for the same length of lesson. Oops.

I’ve been thinking of raising all the prices to the same level again for many months now but I was always too busy and had no idea how to write that note, bla.

But my husband wrote the same kind of letter back in January. And I am trying to get into the habit of asking for help.

So I asked him for a copy of his note, changed it a bit, looked at how many students are still paying the old price and made a list, printed the appropriate number of copies and started handing them out right away.

I taught the rest of my students and since my last student of the day had canceled I decided to get back to my little WordPress sandbox where I had gotten another annoying error message. I googled the error, I found a solution on StackExchange, I went very slowly and carefully, watched some more of the course, and managed to change things in a way that means I can actually start learning things now.

I always get super nervous when I start typing lines of code because I have no idea what I’m doing. But I did know that I could put everything back to the way it was by just re-installing a new version. And I was not working on my live website which is a plus.

Then I finally ate dinner while reading a Sarina Bowen book, ate a ton of crackers, started writing this post, did Duolingo, fell into a social media rabbit hole, decided to start re-reading „Neanderthal Seeks Human“, didn’t make myself stop in time and went to bed almost an hour late.

Today is the teaching day without a break in the middle, so onwards and upwards!

I guess that’s what you get when you try being over-productive the day before and go to bed way too late.

I wrote very distracted morning pages and then could barely make myself spend 15 minutes on the manuscript. My husband was supposed to leave the house early for a dentist appointment and so I skipped yoga and meditation again.

He went out and I stayed right there on the kitchen bench reading and writing and making my online rounds. My husband came back before I was finished, telling a story of a rather irritating appointment. Insurance hadn’t cleared his treatment plan, so the dentist told him they’d try again and in the meantime he should just get a dental cleaning. The second one this year, only two months after the first one, and also, hey, you’ll need to pay for that out of pocket and also, we just raised the price by 30 euros.

My husband did not get the dental cleaning. He did ask about some tooth ache that he had been having, though.

After that uplifting conversation I wrote some emails, procrastinated the dishes all the way until noon, then finally did them while listening to the piece of classical music for the day (and the day before) and then to some more of the publishing course I’m trying to take.

And then I finally went out for my walk run. I felt very low on energy and grit so I decided to just take it easy and repeat day 2 of the 5K-program instead of doing day 7 or so, like I had planned.

I felt about twice as heavy as usual (I did gain some weight in the past week but not that much) but the sun was shining and I was listening to music. When I came to the train tracks through the woods I was just in time to see the start of this:

It went on for some time, I think I stood there for two minutes or so, it felt like it would never end.

I only had a couple of minutes left until it was time to turn around and I was briefly thinking about turning left instead and taking a different path but I didn’t want to.

I went back home where lunch was ready on time. Very yummy:

There wasn’t all that much time until my first student but I still read a bit and ate some chocolate. My husband got first shower. The boy came downstairs and was a bit disappointed that he had to take care of his own fake meat, we talked a bit but I had to run so I could still shower before work.

I taught many students until almost dinnertime, met the boy for bodyweight training, finally ate dinner while reading and talking to the boy after which I started writing this post while the boy was frying himself some potatoes. We did the dishes after he had finished eating, and then I had just the tiniest bit of time to watch some C-drama before going to bed. Oh, and I helped him study as well.

And yes, today will be just as busy. Not quite as mushy-brained, though, I hope.

No Monday start energy, though.

I did almost my complete morning routine, writing went rather slow but at least there were new words. I found an article about bedtime procrastination that I found very interesting. I need to implement some of those suggestions soon.

My husband and I talked for a while about how my evenings tend to run off kilter and why. Which made our morning run off track. Well, a little.

I did spend that conversation time weaving in ends on the Starbright blanket that I had finished crocheting a while ago. There are a lot of ends and in my rush to get the crochet done I left most of them hanging. And that is now biting me. But I’m getting there.

Then I went for my walk/run. My legs felt like lead probably because of strength training the night before and also there were some heavily perfumed dog walkers out, that and the freezing air made breathing a bit hard. Maybe I should take my asthma inhaler with me when running, even for a very short while.

Still, with all the huffing and puffing, the chill and sweating like crazy while feeling like I’ll certainly drop dead if I have to run for even a second longer despite cutting every run interval short by half I was happy to be outdoors and moving:

When I came back home the fire was blazing and my husband was stressed from cooking. We were almost out of some key ingredients but he did manage to squeeze by:

After lunch I spent half an hour reading and scrolling through social media, then the boy came downstairs and we talked briefly, before I took a shower just in time for teaching.

I had spent some time in the morning researching possible places for us to stay when we visit my husband’s aunt during Easter break. Places there are horribly expensive so I ended up booking the one thing that was close to where we want to go and had a somewhat reasonable price. And then I started looking into rental cars. Fun!

I taught all afternoon with a short break where I talked with my husband about one of his students and completely forgot what I had planned to do. I did start watching the first few lessons of the course I bought the day before, though. So far I haven’t learned anything but then the course is not aimed at people who have been working with WordPress for – checks notes – 15 years.

My last student of the day canceled because they weren’t feeling well, so I spent some more time online. Then I talked briefly to the rest of the family (separate, not together), ate dinner, started writing this post, did Duolingo, made myself a cup of tea, did my foot exercises, watched some C-drama and went to bed.

Today there will be errands and the health food store, as usual.

I had gone to bed more than an hour late. I still did my complete morning routine around my husband tending the fire.

We had a long-ish conversation after breakfast that made me somewhat late for everything else, I then called my mother on the phone, and then leaned into the urge to hyperfocus on my newsletter and website problem.

Lunch was late as well, so I used the time to fold laundry and hang up another load and then we ate rice and lentils:

After that I was very determined to make good use of my time and I did, mostly. The boy didn’t show up in the afternoon at all, I finally tackled my newsletter/website authentification problem and I imported my subscriber list, phew. Oh, and the way I did resolve the issue was by watching the instructional video. Duh.

Next up I need to watch yet another video and read a book. Will that take time? You bet. Do I have that time? Well, that’s unclear.

I went online, I decided I needed more help with the WordPress theme question, saw that there was yet another Udemy sale, found a course that looked promising and bought it. These days I never pay full price for Udemy courses, by the way, I always wait for one of their frequent sales.

My husband and were set to meet so he could learn how to use his health insurance app and get recompensation for a dental cleaning. I am happy to say that we did not strangle each other, we didn’t even fight, and I forcefully stepped in and took over only once. I’m trying.

I watched some more of the publishing course that I’m taking and did all the dirty dishes. I wasn’t even quite finished when the rest of the family showed up for dinner. Or in the boy’s case for bodyweight training. We debated the merits of changing the training program up at length, then decided we’ll continue the current regimen through this week, then test the next cycle for two weeks to see if it’s really as dumb as the boy thinks and the re-evaluate.

We did bodyweight training. It felt like I’m not making any progress at all, right up to the point where I realized the exercise I was just struggling through were full on pushups instead of the ones on my knees that I had intended to do. So, there might be some progress after all.

Then the boy asked me to help him study. I was already faint with hunger at this point because it was past 8 but I didn’t want to eat in a rush so I prevailed, the boy and I talked a bit about a math problem I had found on YouTube that was baffling me (the answer was imaginary numbers, something I did not run across before), he sat down to solve it, got stuck, we watched the video, he got it, and then he tried explaining it to me.

Then I asked him questions about thermodynamics and made the same dumb mistakes as every time before, then I finally ate dinner, with the boy, who was in a talkative mood which meant I had to skip watching C-drama (repeat after me, „people are always a good use of time“), I did Duolingo and my good exercises (first time all week) and went to bed.

Somewhere in there I also finished reading „Guardian: Zhen Hun“, still excellent but the bonus stories in the back were a bit dragging, and I decided which noel to read next and started reading yet another non-fiction book…

The book is „Meditations for Mortals“ by Oliver Burkeman and I found it through a picture of the first page of Chapter 4 that someone posted on Instagram. From that picture I went on hunting it down through Google, and voilà!

And while this morning felt like it should be Sunday, it really isn’t, so I need to scram.

On the other hand I did get my complete list done, so there’s that.

I went to bed too late and was a bit slow in the morning but I still managed my complete morning routine, some of it while my husband was tending the fire. My blood pressure is a bit high again, not that bad but that plus feeling dizzy more often tells me I need to get myself to bed earlier.

Husband and I had a long conversation after breakfast about our mutual frustration with computer things. He is trying to learn to do things on his own but finds it hard, time-consuming and feels like he’ll never learn it. He valiantly tried installing a system update on his computer only to get the same error message each time.

Well, it’s not his fault. MacOS always claims it will install the update over night and then it never does. The trick is to start it during the day so that when it asks for your password to restart the computer you can put that in.

Anyways, I then vented my own frustration at being „the one who is good with computers and tech“ and „the one to whom all this stuff comes easy“. Because, yes I do know some things and yes, I usually get things to work, it’s not like that knowledge and skills are inborn. What I do is I decide that all of this must be learnable, I mean, all those devices and apps are made for just regular people to use so I should be able to figure it out and then I just go back to it over and over and over until I figure it out. And I google things endlessly and try things.

And my frustration stems from the fact that some people just lean back and say, „This is too hard for me“, a sentiment I can understand from the bottom of my heart and that means I’m the one who has to do the work.

And I’m a bit sick of it. From my mother-in-law who decided she can’t learn to fill her own car with gas to my mother who thinks I know everything about her Android phone. I get that most of these things are actually easier for me but that’s like telling me I have a beautiful voice and am very talented when my voice is the result of a lot of practice and lessons.

Anyways, we were both very frustrated and very intense but eventually figured out that the frustration was the reason we were upset, not necessarily the other person. And we have a strategy that hopefully means my husband will learn more of those skills and I will help him get there.

Then I was pretty late again.

I did the breakfast dishes, vacuumed the old part of the house, went on a walk/run that I found really hard (3-minute running intervals anyone?) but also very de-stressing:

My husband made lamb burgers with bulgur, tomato sauce and broccoli:

After that the plan was to take a shower after just a short break and then start working on website and newsletter stuff for my author website. I had it in my calendar and all.

And then the boy came downstairs. He ate lunch and we started talking about finances and investing. Since that is something I need to think about a lot as well, we ended up talking for an hour or so. I barely managed to get into the shower on time to be ready for my weekly author Zoom.

Or so I thought. Turned out I was an hour late because I forgot about the time change in the US. Oops. So the meeting was 30 minutes instead of 90 for me which left me an hour to try to wrangle website authentication for the newsletter provider into submission. I didn’t make it, by the way and it bugs me endlessly.

But I have. List of things to try next.

Then I was almost a little late for the weekly ‚Columbo‘-watching with the rest of the family. I had found the frozen spring rolls that I used to get at our local health food store in the one one town over and had asked my husband to make them. Well, at least that’s what I thought. Turned out the ones I used to buy were the mini spring rolls and those were delicious. These were bigger ones and they were, um, not as good. But whatever. We also demolished a box of Carr’s crackers.

The episode was good but a bit dragging, it was more than twenty minutes longer than most of the others and it showed. Not a bad episode, though.

After that I was very determined to finally watch some C-drama. Which I did but not before I had watched half of YouTube. And after I went back to – more YouTube.

Guess who went to bed more than an hour too late again? Yep, it me.

Sp today my list is again pretty impressive…