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Random Monday

March 26, 2012 by Susanne Leave a Comment

I know that it’s most often Monday when I get in the mood to do a random post. I think that’s because every week on Monday I try to re-start my life. Get back on track with the things I want to accomplish, make time for the things that matter. I still have a hard time with weekends but I seem to be getting better at them.
I’m thinking about weaving a lot at the moment. That doesn’t mean that I’m weaving a lot, just that I’m thinking about it. I already own three weaving books so far, and I’m looking at the pretty pictures, and try to decide which loom I’d want to buy. Okay, to be honest, I know exactly which one I want to buy, now I only have to save the money for it. Until then I will make do with my homemade backstrap loom. Have I told you about this yet? Here’s a picture:

As you can see (and I think I actually posted this exact same picture before) one end is tied to our kitchen table, the other end is tied to me (hence the name backstrap). I made it myself out of a few dowels, and a broomstick from the grocery store. And a ruler. It works very well, and is not as limited as one would think. Also it can be rolled up and stored in a bag in my closet. Yesterday evening I warped it for a striped band.
I’m also looking at my new spinning wheel, which isn’t new at all, and slowly I’m learning about how to oil it, and put a new drive band on so that I can use it.
I’m still running and doing yoga, only I seem to do it a little less often, mostly once or maybe twice a week.
About two weeks ago I stopped using shampoo. I’m using baking soda and vinegar instead (not together, one after the other). My hair seems to like it. I’m still a bit on the fence about pouring cold water over my head.
I seem to be going out a lot more often than I used to. About once a week I find myself heading to Munich to meet people. This week it’s tomorrow morning, and then again next Sunday.
I’m still playing my ukulele every day. And I still love it.
On a related note, last Saturday my husband and I went to a friend’s birthday party, and we did play and sing a few songs. It was a lot of fun, and the people seemed to like it. When they wanted yet another encore we played “Corcovado”, a song that we haven’t played together for years, and years, and that we hadn’t played at all, apart from when we taught it to students which is not that often.
That song might have been the one where we didn’t make a single mistake.
I leave you with a picture I took on Saturday:

Winterkatze did a meme-like thing a while back, and I thought it might be fun to play along. It’s an 8-things-to-1-topic-thing. And the topic is “book or audio book”. Now, I almost wrote audiobook or real book here, just so you know.

I didn’t really know this about myself but I seem to not like being read to. I remember when I met my husband and I had these lovely visions of us reading passages of our favorite books to each other. Then he said he doesn’t like being read to. I was miffed. Then I found that I don’t like being read to as well.
It seems that when I only hear something it immediately starts to slip my mind. Like a 3-year-old. Tell me to do this and that, and chances are I forget at least one of them.
When I first found out about audiobooks I loved the idea. A friend of mine had just recorded her first novel as an audio book, and I put it on my iPod, and thought how brilliant it was to be able to knit and ‘read’ at the same time.
Then I started listening. And found that my mind started wandering. All of a sudden I had missed a whole paragraph. And then another one. And then I tried listening really hard. And then it happened again. And again. It doesn’t have anything to do with that particular book, I tried several others as well but I could never follow, I had to wind back too often.
While my attention often wanders, and I find that I’ve missed a passage in an audio book, at the same time they go way too slow. I kept listening, and thinking, “If this were a real, printed book I would have been two pages further by now.
I also don’t like the fact that audio books are often abbreviated. I think it’s been getting better with MP3s, but I distinctly remember the very first audiobook I got. The very same Winterkatze gave me a copy of “The Fifth Elephant” by Terry Pratchett as a German audiobook. She said the narrator was really good, and that she loved the book. Now, I had read “The Fifth Elephant”, of course, because Pratchett is one of the authors I buy every single book from. In hardcover. As soon as it’s out. So I started listening to the audiobook – then still on CDs – while puttering around the room. Well. I didn’t like the fact that it was in German. I didn’t like the narrator. He was doing funny voices. I don’t like funny voices when being read to. I didn’t like the translated names. But all of that is not really the fault of the audiobook. Or Winterkatze, nope, not at all. And then there came this passage. And I realized that something that I had liked tremendously in the book had been cut out. That was when I stopped listening to that particular audiobook.
I didn’t give up on audiobooks right then. Nope. I got myself a trial Audible-membership, and downloaded two more I think. I got something by the Dalai Lama on happiness which I’m slowly winding my way through, over the years. I also got “Getting Unstuck” by Pema Chodron, and two of the Yarn Harlot’s books, “At Knit’s End”, and “Stephanie Pearl McPhee casts off”. Plus a German book from the library. The happiness one and the German one were quite hard to listen to. The German one was abbreviated again, so it didn’t take quite as long. I still haven’t finished the happiness book even though I’ve had it for years and years.
The audiobooks I like best are the ones that are either lectures, like the “Getting Unstuck” one, or shorter, humorous essays like the Yarn Harlot ones. So the nearer an audiobook is to actual speech the better I can understand it. I have no problems at all listening to podcasts, by the way, only audiobooks. Also radio plays work better for me as well.
Trying to get used to audiobooks made me also realize that I often hop back and forth on the page when reading a ‘normal’ book. When I’m reading something I don’t find as interesting, I skip ahead, look how long it will be, and then go back to reading again. Also I’m a really fast reader. At my normal reading speed I just zoom along. Whoosh, and the book is done. Not so much with the audiobooks.

So, what about you? Book or audiobook, or both? I’m curious.

Random Saturday

October 29, 2011 by Susanne Leave a Comment

I didn’t really mean to not write any blog posts for more than a month, but there you go.

Life is quite good, I have more students than I had in a long time, I’m busy playing the ukulele, teaching my knitting, and spinning classes, and have stepped up to do a bit more of the chores around the house.
Today I’m packing for a trip to Frankfurt to visit Winterkatze and Katho for a couple of days. I’m going sans family and am looking forward to it very much. I’m also looking forward to coming back home afterwards.
At the end of next week I’ll be meeting yet another friend I haven’t seen for some time.
The weather is sunny, and quite cold, and I love it.
This week I actually managed to go for a run with my husband. When I run on my own I always run in the hallway, and yes, I know that’s a bit weird. But last week, since I didn’t have to go on my own, we went out and ran though the woods, and had a great time. Also I’m just about as fit as my husband.
I’m still tired all the time because I’m still not going to bed early enough. On days when I could sleep in I wake at 7.30 regardless of when I went to bed. One of these day’s I’ll manage to get at least 8 hours of sleep every night.
The day before yesterday I started a somewhat crazy spinning project. I’m planning to spin for a hat on my spindle, and finish the yarn until next Wednesday.
I’m very pleased to say that in the last two days I have managed to spin half the yarn I’ll need. I will take the spinning with me on my trip, and hope I’ll make progress while traveling.
At the moment I’m not writing any fiction. Also I won’t be participating in NaNoWriMo this year. I do plan to start writing again soon, though.
There’ll be another podcast tomorrow or so, and after that I’ll post the story I wrote for this month’s writers meeting.
Now I have to see if the clothes I want to pack are dry yet.

See you.

All journaled out

February 14, 2011 by Susanne Leave a Comment

In my quest for self-improvement I have started quite a few journals: morning pages journal, food journal, practice journal, exercise journal, gratitude journal, writing journal, control journal (for housework), tarot journal, weight journal well, I think that’s about it. Oh, and a notebook to capture my project ideas, and then I also have a general notebook, and a knitting notebook, and a small notebook to carry in my purse, and another one next to the computer. And a record of books I buy and read. And a notebook to jot down musical ideas.

I also have to-do-list software. Then I found myself, after running, checking “running” off in three places. And then I thought that my journaling had gone a bit too far.

I started to record all these things in order to measure improvement. I wanted to achieve certain goals and I started of actually measuring whether I achieved them or not. Otherwise one can think that one exercises at least three times a week only to find that, oops, a week has gone by, and then another. That’s all very valid. I also love my morning pages, so I sit down and write them almost daily. And then I don’t for a few days, and then I go back to them. No problem.

I do love putting my exercise time in my calendar, and with the toggle of a button I can see all the days that I exercised in one place, and then I feel all virtuous.

The food journal, that’s another thing. I have started writing down what I eat many times in my life. And I started again on January 1st. At first I was all good, but then I missed a day here and there, then a whole week, and now I find that I’m really not all that interested in keeping a food journal. I don’t count calories or anything. I just write down “1 piece of toast with almond spread, 1 glass of orange juice, 1 cup of black tea with 1 piece of sugar”. Of course food journaling can help when you want to know what’s going on but I don’t need to write down “ate a whole bag of potato chips because I was bored and angry” to see why I have gained weight. There are people who eat better when keeping a food journal, I’m not one of them. I have food journal entries laying around the house from years ago that go, “Was completely pissed and therefore ate a bag of chips, one bag of gummy bears, half a chocolate bar, and two beers. Feel lousy and bloated. Half an hour later: finished the chocolate.” (Just typing this makes me nauseous these days. I think I have come a long way.)

So I try to be good with the food journaling but what’s the point. It helps to show me that the treats I give myself are not exactly treats because they happen just about every day. These days I’m rather good with food, mostly, and so I will skip the food journal.

But you know, every time I write a paragraph here I remember yet another journal of mine, and add it to the first paragraph. It’s clear that the record-keeping has gone out of hand. I’m not quite as insane as that list of journals implies, though, because there are quite a few of these journals that I no longer keep. But right now I’m on the verge of giving up on record-keeping altogether. These journals were meant to be helpful for me, not something to occupy me all the time. I think I might get rid of one or two.

It’s not like I bought about twenty notebooks one day and thought, “From now on I’ll record everything!” I just bought a morning pages book in 1999, well the first of many. And I’ve had general notebooks even longer than that. I remember going into the one big store in the small town where I lived until 1986 to buy a notebook because my life had reached a level of complexity too high for keeping it all in my head. That was about the same time that I started using a calendar as well. Until then there was the family wall calendar for things like doctor’s appointments and that was it.

Let’s see – the morning pages stay because I like them. Having several general notebooks makes it a bit hard to find things later but still I like it. And I have a system. Sort of. So they stay as well. Also the knitting notebook, and the place were I record my reading. I started cataloguing my books when I had bought the same book twice one day. I hadn’t remembered that I already had it. The gratitude journal didn’t really work out for me. When I read back it only made me realize how unhappy I really was. the control journal for housework never really worked either. I do know that I have to clean the house at least once a week. I don’t really need a checklist because a look at the house itself will tell me what to do.

I’m quite attached to weighing myself daily. I even have an iPod app that gives me progress reports on how I’m doing with weight loss. I think I’ll keep that. Apart from that I think I might take some time off from journals. I have taken a bit of time off from trying to improve myself in all areas at once anyway.

So for now I’ll accept that I’m both journaled out and self-helped out. I take a break. And I won’t create a new task on my electronic to-do-list that’s called: take time off from journaling, repeat daily until further notice. I promise.

Random Monday

January 24, 2011 by Susanne 6 Comments

I have a kind of blogger’s block because I still think I should have started the year with a “How my year of happiness went”-post, and a “My big goal for 2011”-post. I will do those some time before 2011 ends, but it is starting to get ridiculous.
I also promised to make an English podcast episode, and I will, as soon as I find some space in my head.
We had a very nice weekend, and went to some family brunch thing where we met other gifted families, and it was a lot of fun. But, very pricey, and no housework got done for the weekend.
Which is why my husband have spent the day so far, furiously cleaning all the things. Floors where mopped. With water. Laundry got washed. There is still one load in the washer which I will have to hang up in the next 25 minutes.
I’m typing as fast as I can.
I got a new spindle, and I love, love, love it. Still, to show it I would have to take a picture, and it’s started to snow again which means – no light outside.
I am also a bit grumpy because so far I’ve had my period not once but twice this month. In fact since the beginning of the year I’ve only had a week off.
I went to see a specialist on menopause, and she thought it might be early-onset menopause. Then she asked me if I were okay with that. And what about if I couldn’t have any more children.
I would be totally okay with that if I could please reach some hormonal equilibrum in the near future. Interestingly I’m totally done with having babies, and I don’t think it would make me feel old, and undesirable.
I am quite sure that I have asthma after all. In addition to being triggered by allergies it might be triggered by exercise as well. Fun times! I already have a doctor’s appointment for that the week after next.
I haven’t managed to write much this month either, and that makes me grumpy as well.
It’s snowing like crazy, and I should be shoveling right now on top of everything else.
It was my husband’s birthday last week, and we had a fabulous day, having lunch at an Indian restaurant not far from us, and in the evening we went and had some beer, just him and me. We almost never do this because whenever we go to Munich we think we should be doing something really special, like seeing a concert. But this very low-key celebration was exactly the right thing to do.
I’ll leave you with a bad picture of the spindle. One day, when the sun will come back I’ll take a better one:

Ta-da and To-do

December 8, 2010 by Susanne 3 Comments

I’m still thinking of you and the blog and everything, only it’s December, what can I say.

My ta da-list for today so far (that’s what you already have accomplished):

went to the health food store by car so I could get to the bigger one
bought a small loom for my son as a Christmas present
bought eyes for Sheldon
bought beer and juice
went to the post office
untangled my MILs cell phone trouble
ordered photo calendars for all the
grandparents
ordered Christmas presents for my sister and my brother-in-law
taught two students (two canceled)
knitted on my husband’s mittens for half an hour

now all that’s left to do is:

teach two more students
somehow manage to make Star Wars-themed birthday party invitations
relax
write half a story for tomorrow’s writers meeting
get off overdrive
have a beer and knit some stockinette in the round