life

I fell asleep a bit early but only turned the lights out half an hour after bedtime. I never quite know how to count that.

In the morning I tried relaxing the ‚no reading‘-rule (again) and it turns out when I read in the morning things take longer. I know, shocking. I wrote my morning pages and spent half an hour on the manuscript dealing with a freshly turned vampire (as one does), then decided I’d rather eat first and do yoga later. And, also as expected, later turned out to be much, much later.

I did wake the boy up in time for yet another exam. He got there without any train delays or chaos, apparently, and said the exam was pretty much exactly what he had expected and prepared for. Fingers crossed.

My husband and I ate breakfast together and talked about people and how to deal with them for an hour. Which then made everything else that day late again.

I did the breakfast dishes while listening to some classical music I’ve already forgotten and then to something on YouTube. I have abandoned the publishing and writing courses again in favor for click-bait YouTube.

Then I went for my walk/run, this time it felt as if my legs weighed twice as much as usual. I’m hoping that is because they are busy building more muscle. I kept myself going for those long, endless 3-minute running intervals by listening to BTS and thinking about how great it will be not to have spontaneously broken bones in my 80s, also to be able to get up from the floor unaided in the future:

When I came back at lunchtime my husband was still in the big cooking crunch. I got to help a bit by peeling and slicing a few carrots. Lunch was very tasty:

After that I wanted to take a bit of a break, then a shower and be at my desk to work on proofreading or the website by 3. What happened instead was that first the boy came back home and told me about the exam and other things. He had planned to visit a friend in Regensburg some time this week but the friend’s plans changed and they’ll meet here in town for drinks instead.

After that I finally took my shower and when I was all dressed again my husband had already been looking for me to make the special pizza dough we had talked about. He is following an Italian chef on YouTube and we had talked about making his pizza. The dough needs to be made 24 hours before and needs stretching and folding and several rounds of rising in between.

Of course things went wrong but we did not fight and there is now some dough in the fridge that feels a bit too runny but, well. The whole dough-making took longer than expected, of course, and we did the dishes in between and when we were done with all of that I had exactly 22 minutes left before the Zoom call I wanted to attend.

I used that time to proofread my reader magnet, then realized I had already done so before. This time I checked it off the list so that I’ll remember next time.

The Zoom call was lovely and interesting, I even took two pages of notes. I also knitted the twelve rows I needed before starting the shoulder shaping.

After that my husband and I met in the kitchen to get something for dinner, the mini baguette that was the only bread left felt very unsatisfactory (I’m the only one in the family who doesn’t like white bread) so I stole some of the boy’s chocolate. I had given some of mine to my husband earlier that day and had run out.

I did Duolingo, my foot exercises and made a list for today after starting this post, watched C-drama while the boy was taking a shower and went to bed.

Today there will be pizza-making, a trip to the health food store and hopefully a productive afternoon.

This time I did better with my new rules. So far I haven’t adhered to them completely even once, but, that’s not really necessary. There is a reason for the rules. As long as I do the thing the rules are supposed to help me with I don’t really care about the letter of the law.

I did my complete morning routine, working on the manuscript is going pretty well. Exciting things are happening. I hope.

My husband has reached that stage of exhaustion where self-doubt and general anxiety raise their head which is never fun. And then I got angry at him for reaching that point which also doesn’t help but we got things sorted within a reasonable time frame.

Then it was time to call my mother on the phone who told me what she did last week but also every single story she had already told me the week before. She isn’t usually that confused but she spent the day before with former colleagues so was probably exhausted as well.

My husband and I had plans to make pizza from scratch following a YouTube video but decided to postpone. The new and improved plan included eating all the leftovers in the fridge which is a very good and sensible plan. Then we looked through the leftovers, decided to discard the soggy penne with tomato sauce and the lentils that were both under- and overcooked (not in the same lentil I’d guess) and were left with just enough potatoes to make fried potatoes for two and a lone wiener.

My husband then decided to divide the potatoes by three and leave some for the boy which led to our lunch being a bit sparse:

I was still pretty hungry after and made up for lack of calories with very delicious mango ice cream. Not the most nutritious, though.

I took a break and spent so much time playing a silly iPad game that I then deleted it. (I later re-installed, we’ll see how that turns out in the long run.) Which meant I did not work on the website even though it was on my list for the day. I did the dishes and then went to my studio just in time for another Zoom call.

After that I was very hungry again and made myself dinner from the last three very dry and small pieces of sourdough bread. The thing I’m doing these days is I throw that stale bread in the toaster and it comes out delicious and crunchy, the butter and brie melting on it, yum!

Then I planned the week, wasted some more time on silly games and avoided doing the rest of the things on my list, talked briefly with the boy who made himself fried potatoes while I started writing this post, did Duolingo, watched some C-drama and went to bed.

And today Easter break starts for real

I thought watching YouTube videos on my laptop instead of a show on TV wouldn’t make much of a difference, but it definitely did, and then I somehow never quite got around to brushing my teeth. The good thing is that I turned the lights out only half an hour late. The bad thing, well, half an hour late. And I have a dawning suspicion that my bedtime should be half an hour earlier than it is now anyway. I think I might need 8 1/2 hours in bed instead of just 8.

Then I started reading something in the morning right away, oops. But, again, the good thing was that I turned it around pretty fast and did my complete morning routine. Working on the manuscript is going well, there are things happening, even.

I think my husband and I had a good conversation after breakfast. I had a busy day planned with all the exercise and an afternoon filled with meetings and such. I talked to a friend about my plan to walk/run and do bodyweight training in the same day (not to mention the bit of morning yoga) and she said that would just show how fit I am.

I don’t think I’m that fit but then it’s always fit compared to what or whom. I am not as fit as I was ten years ago but I’m definitely much fitter than I ever was in my twenties. I also told her that doing both forms of exercise in one day often leads to me half-assing the strength training and she meant then maybe it would be a better idea to do them on different days.

And of course, in an ideal world that is true. In the reality I live in it is either doing the two of them in one day because the boy doesn’t have time for training today, or just not doing one of them. Also, having gone for a run doesn’t really affect my pull-ups and pushups much. It’s just that I feel a bit weaker when squatting. Which reminds me that I need to upgrade my squatting movement. I’ve been hoping to get to a point where I can squat deeper but so far I haven’t been able to without my back hurting so maybe it’s time to upgrade and do some stretching exercise for the deep squat.

So, I did the breakfast dishes and went for my walk/run. A little late but that turned out to be not much of a problem because lunch was late as well. I was so deep in thought that I just jogged through all the running intervals without thinking about it. Which tells me I am indeed fitter than I think I am. I can jog for three minutes without a break, even:

I had found green asparagus at the supermarket so we had asparagus risotto with fresh asparagus:

After that I took a break. I am rather exhausted all in all, definitely at the point where I need a break. I went on social media, read and played games, all the time waiting for a reply from the boy. We had agreed to do bodyweight training that day but I was pretty sure he had no idea about my schedule. Since we also wanted to watch ‚Columbo‘ together and I wanted to go to my weekly writers Zoom and I wanted to take a shower before the meeting but after training there was only a short window of time for the whole thing.

In the end I went upstairs and woke him up. I mean, someone who has an exam at 11 tomorrow should maybe not have a sleeping schedule that means sleeping until late afternoon every day.

He was pretty groggy but agreed to train with me at 4. Which we did. I had been feeling bad about my lack of progress with pushups. I only ever dip for a few centimeters and when I try going further I just start slouching my back. Well, yesterday for the first time I realized that the fear of falling flat on my face onto my glasses was holding me back. And of my glasses falling off my nose. Huh. Turns out, when I take my glasses off I can do deeper pushups. Who would have thought?

I had to rush to take a shower and showed up at my meeting with my hair dripping but, well. The meeting was nice enough that I stayed until 6.30 which then made me late for our ritual watching of ‚Columbo‘. This was another episode (Mind over Mayhem) that was nice but slow. If someone had cut out most of the middle it would have improved a lot. The motive for the murder was a bit meh and the fact that the murderer thought he was much smarter than everybody else and that made him sloppy could have been shown a little better. Also, I’m finding it fascinating how there are only ever three or four characters in each of these episodes. Well, not counting the basset.

After that my husband reminded me that there were still dishes which threw me off completely, then I offered to help him but he declined.

I decided that per my new evening rule I did not have time for any of my evening things but Duolingo and my foot exercises but first I watched an episode of C-drama that was very good. I did start reading just before my ‚get ready for bed‘-alarm and all the way through getting ready for bed and turned the lights out just eight minutes late which is acceptable.

And now for Sunday. You’d think that would be a not busy day but, um, no. But I’m looking forward to it. If I let myself off the hook too much I just sloth around and feel bad.

And then I derailed myself right away.

So, it turns out when I really set my mind to it I can actually go to bed on time and enjoy it. And also, not reading anything in the morning does make everything else go more smoothly. And I felt like I had already achieved something before breakfast and had more time all the way until lunch. Yeah!

I managed to do the weekly cleaning before lunch, every bit of it, then we had lunch a little late because my husband had put too little water in the lentils. We also had the „do pulses take longer to cook when you put salt in them, or not“-discussion yet again. Science says, nope, on the contrary, my husband (like tones of other people) says if you put the salt in right away they’ll never become soft. And no, he can’t explain how that’s supposed to happen, but what do I know, I never cook. Despite the undercooked lentils the meal was delicious:

After that I felt a big slump coming on. I have re-installed one of the silly iPad games and sat there playing it for some time. I think I talked with the boy as well. I was waiting for one of my students to tell me if she would come in that day or not. We had re-scheduled her lesson and she said, she’d get back to me about it. (A part of me knew then and there she wouldn’t come and wouldn’t contact me but, I mean, I couldn’t be sure and I don’t do well with uncertainty.)

In the end I decided to just ask her, even if that would make it more likely she’d come in. And, well, as expected she could not make it. (I mean, a Friday evening for a 16-yo on the last day of school before Easter break. Right.)

So I only taught three students, the second one I taught in my husband’s studio because they were very afraid of the wasp that flew in right when they showed up. With those hight ceilings in that room there is basically no way to get any flying insects out. The only chance you have is if they fly low enough that you can threaten them with a broom and swipe them out the window. What usually happens is that they either just sit on the skylight or they fly against it over and over until they fall to the floor.

Anyway, my husband was teaching drums in the basement at that time and everything in his studio was already set up for guitar lessons so we went there.

And then the slump hit me big time. I tried sitting down at my computer and working on that course that I’ve been avoiding all week but I guess my subconscious has already decided it’s a waste of time, and instead read stuff on the internet and talked to friends in my computer.

At one point the boy asked me questions about something with his banking account that I couldn’t answer, he came downstairs to figure things out and that was that.

I ate a small slice of stale bread with cheese for dinner. I mean, I popped it in the toaster and it was delicious but the main meal was half a pint of ice cream that I shared with the boy.

At one point I realized that I was too exhausted and tired to even attempt doing anything productive or even watch TV, so I decided to just go to bed very early and read a bit but then I – just sat there. The boy showed up again with more admin stuff (something about digital ID and a message to his thesis advisor), I woke up again a little, still contemplated getting some more stuff done, and sat there for another hour or so.

When my „get ready for bed“-alarm went off I thought it would not be a problem to watch half a dozen very short YouTube videos on minimalist packing, and – I don’t know how that happened, really – I somehow went to bed half an hour late.

Weird.

Guess who is all tired, exhausted and in a slump again today? Yep.

Or to enforce the old rules, at least.

I’ve been thinking a lot about something Kris Rusch mentions in her book „Writing with chronic illness“, she says that she doesn’t allow herself to read before she has written her words for the day. She also talks about the importance of sleep, nutrition and exercise, ahem.

As I said, I’ve been thinking about the ‚no reading‘-rule for quite some time. My first thought was nope, never. But then I have been making excuses for not writing lately. And while I keep thinking I can just move the writing and the yoga around as I please, funny enough, when I move them around they don’t get done more often than not.

So I tried to figure out how that rule might feel, if I could do it, if it would be a good thing or not.

Then, yesterday, I ended up going to bed past midnight. I was tired and low on energy all day. I barely managed to make myself write morning pages, work on the manuscript didn’t happen and while I did yoga I was slow and a bit grumpy.

And I kept thinking about that rule. Until I realized that as much as I like thinking this is something I can’t figure out by thinking about it. What I can do is just give it a try for a short time and see what happens. Duh.

So this will be my rule for the next two weeks or so, no reading, no consuming story in any form before I have either spent half an hour on the manuscript or written 500 words. Whatever happens first.

And then I realized I needed another rule to complement it. Because sleep. So the other rule will be that as soon as my ‚get ready for bed‘-alarm goes off I have to drop everything, get ready right away, not finishing anything or whatever, and if I’m fast enough I can read a bit before turning the lights out at 10.30. If I dawdle, well, pity.

Thinking was not the only thing I did yesterday, though. My husband and I talked quite a bit again, about teaching and people and such. Very nice conversation. That took a little longer than we wanted. Again.

After that I did my online rounds and such, looked at everything I needed to do, looked at the grocery list, found that the list was a short one and that I could get almost everything at the nearby grocery store. So I went and mailed the return package first, then picked up my blood pressure meds at the pharmacy and then walked to the supermarket. I got everything I wanted including coated peanuts, ahem, and Ben & Jerry’s was on sale and there was a new flavor with mango. I mean, clearly I had to buy it.

I came back home to a super stressed husband who dashed around the kitchen and living room cooking while I tried putting away the groceries, then we had a delicious lunch. Mmh, zucchini:

I had quite a bit of time to myself after and used it to play a silly game, read a bit, eat chocolate, do the dishes and listen to some classical music.

I taught my first two students, the next one canceled and while I had the best intentions to use that time for something productive I turned out to be very hungry and so I just ate those peanuts I had bought. I taught my last student of the day, then met the boy for bodyweight training (only twenty minutes, phew), we talked a bit, he showed me some of the models he had painted the day before, I went online again, then started writing this post, did Duolingo and my foot exercises, watched some C-drama and went to bed.

One more teaching day until Easter break. Now the important question is if I’ll fall into a deep slump and get crankier and crankier next week or if I manage to maintain some structure, get some stuff done and feel better.

Stay tuned and find out.

I didn’t get enough sleep. And yes, I should just stop mentioning it but even though it’s a daily occurrence it still bugs me. And I am very tired.

I wrote my morning pages, opened the manuscript and balked. No chance of writing, I just felt like I couldn’t. I spent a bit of time staring at the manuscript and then gave up. I did yoga but didn’t want to meditate as well. I was super grumpy even before not writing, you can imagine my mood after.

At least we were pretty early with breakfast, so that was nice. I had a packed day planned so I was very happy about that. Then my husband started talking about one of those bigger grievances. The words „moral urgrund“ were uttered and we almost launched into an even lengthier discussion of ethics.

All those shenanigans ate a massive chunk of our morning, of course.

We still managed to get at least some stuff done. And that conversation meant I almost finished the cabled part of the sock I’m knitting.

I went for my walk/run, I copied an invoice for my mother-in-law, I got pictures of my husband’s niece’s triplets from said niece so I can show them to my mother-in-law from my phone, I got a text from my mother with the make and serial number of her kitchen sink so I could go hunting for a replacement part, and I waited for two packages that arrived with two different mail persons from DHL.

On the bright side, the yarn I need to continue with the sweater-in-progress is here. And here’s a pictures from my time outdoors:

My husband was super busy as well and made a yummy lunch. He is still a bit at odds with the cast-iron frying pan:

The burnt bits scraped right off, no problem.

Then I only had a little time for a break before I needed to take a shower and then teach. My last student of the day rescheduled, so I had an early evening.

Which was rather helpful because I had a workshop scheduled over Zoom. This time from a writing group that doesn’t meet often. We had a presentation from a „book mentor“. I have to confess that I left after only forty minutes or so because I was tired and the information did not seem relevant to me.

My tolerance for Rilke quotes and neuro-linguistic programming lingo that evening was apparently very low.

The plan was to watch something and do Chinese but instead the boy showed up in the kitchen. We talked and read parts of things we found online out loud to each other. Among these things from the new coalition agreement between the two German parties trying to form a government including the lyrical gem of “auf Freiwilligkeit basierendes Wehrdienstmodell“ which means a model of military conscription based on voluntariness that had us almost literally on the floor laughing for some reason. Or looking up the main language spoken in Tunisia (a local Arabic like I thought and not French like the boy thought) because I had mentioned Roberto Blanco (a Cuban-German schlager singer who was born in Tunis), all because the boy was talking about some kind of metal music (power metal?) and people whose first language was German pronouncing English completely wrong. After I again put the stress in an English word on the wrong syllable. After which he told me about his own deteriorating English last night when he talked to his American friend online.

Then I let myself fall into a YouTube rabbit hole and eat half a package of grissini. Which resulted in almost immediate hot flashes and a late bedtime again. Hmpf.

I’m sure today will be absolutely lovely. It’s T-2 on Easter break now.