creative.mother.thinking

Turns out when you only sleep for less than six hours two nights in a row you get really tired. And also prone to communication mishaps and moving very slowly.

I did set my alarm for six and instantly regretted it. Took me half an hour to wake up, then my husband came over and showed me a poem he had written at 5 am. We talked briefly and then I wrote my morning pages and new words on the novel. After 15 minutes I was completely stuck because I had no idea what happened next to I called it good enough.

True to form I then skipped yoga and meditation again.

There was breakfast and talking with my husband, then I wrote my blog post, planned the week and the day ahead while my husband had an appointment to get a new passport.

I did the dishes and listened to some very, very sad music for strings by Samuel Barber, figured out what to do about my story, and then went for a 30-minute walk in my five fingers. I’m not quite sure if that was a good idea or not. I would love to eventually wean myself from orthotics. Stay tuned.

The weather was lovely, I even wore sunglasses. And my feet only started hurting at the end.

There were some raised voices and some slammed doors again around lunch which was exhausting. Lunch itself was not as bad as I had feared, another meal my husband had been wanting to make for quite some time and another one that is not my favorite:

 

Eggs in mustard sauce.

The new new living room lamp arrived around that time as well, so we might even put that up later today.

I took a short break after lunch and then a shower before teaching all the students. After that there was dinner, more dishes, I started writing this post, watched some C-drama and went to bed.

Today will be the usual health food store and such and all the teaching all day.

But it all turned out well in the end. Nothing major.

I started the day with morning pages and writing and then – skipped yoga again. That has been a pretty consistent theme lately, when I drink and/or go to bed too late I will skip yoga the next morning.

There was a lot of talking in the morning, I called my mother on the phone, more talking, the usual chores and then I helped a little with lunch:

Mmh, comfort food. Although the beans were’t quite cooked all the way through.

Then I took a break, the boy showed up for his lunch and we talked and then I tackled the fridge. It’s been 1 1/2 years since we defrosted the thing and it showed. So we turned it off after lunch and let it sit. My husband said he’d clean and defrost it and I could do something else.

Well, at around 3 I couldn’t stand waiting anymore and started emptying the fridge out. I didn’t want to risk the meat in the freezer part thawing. I put everything in the basement freezer and all the food that needs to be refrigerated outside on the porch.

Then I did the dishes. While I was doing those my husband came over, all ready to start with the fridge but then he had to wait for me being done with the dishes so he went away. I finished the dishes, waited some more and then took all the shelves out the freezer and washed them.

At that point my husband took over, we talked while he was working and I was starting to wander off. But he wasn’t done with the conversation. So we ended up with him working and me sitting on the kitchen bench listening and talking. Which meant I didn’t get the stuff done that I had wanted to do in the afternoon.

Husband started getting really into the cleaning thing. Which is good, I mean, he even cleaned that corner of the kitchen that’s always filthy because some people can’t be bothered to not just fling their veggie peels and such in the general direction of the green waste bin.

The boy and I had agreed to do bodyweight training at 5 and that time was fast approaching. We ended up moving exercise to half an hour later because of the fridge cleaning and because the boy had started tackling his room as well and that took way longer than he had thought as well.

I was in a bad mood at that point because I felt robbed of two hours or so of me-time that I had wanted to use for planning and maybe proofreading or just chilling.

At 5.30 the boy and I did bodyweight training. I was still a little sore from Friday but, well. Then there was dinner and after that all three of us met for caipirinha. The boy had never had a real one and my husband had wanted to make some for nostalgic reasons. We both have a special connection to Brazil and Brazilian music so we used to always have a bottle of cachaça around.

The boy and I got real talkative from the alcohol which stressed my husband and – boom! – conflict.

That went on for some time. The husband and I had planned to do a little dancing in his studio that evening but first we needed to talk and yell at each other and shed some tears which is always very exhausting. We ended up dancing anyway which was nice.

Because when we first met and exchanged phone numbers we did so because we wanted to go dancing together. And then we never did. Turned out, my husband isn’t really the dancing type, I just met him in the short phase of his life where he tried getting over his inhibitions in that regard. He certainly has a great sense of rhythm.

The other thing that was interesting was how dated a lot of the playlist he had made years ago sounded to us. Huh.

Anyways, I drank two beers during and after, watched the last episode of C-drama, then another short episode of some other C-drama and, like, half a dozen YouTube videos, nodded off during that last part and moved myself to bed at 12.30.

Why yes, I am rather tired today.

And I even went to bed on time the night before! These two things might be related.

I did most of my morning routine, including writing new words. It was one of those days where writing feels like wading through treacle and then once I look at my word count I find it went really fast.

I only did half of what I wanted to, there was another long conversation with my husband after breakfast, I ordered a replacement living room lamp, I did the breakfast dishes while listening to music and a podcast, I folded two loads of laundry at one point and helped to make lunch:

I’m not a big fan of spaghetti alla puttanesca because I don’t really like olives, capers and anchovies. I had some chocolate and cookies afterwards.

Then I sat with the boy while he ate lunch, did the dishes, did a quick vacuum of the old part of the house and waved a rag in the direction of the washbasin and toilet before jumping in the shower. I hit my weekly Zoom check-in with other authors two minutes late with wet hair but I was there.

The meeting was really nice, as always, and wasn’t overly long this time.

After that the three of us had dinner together, some frozen samosas and falafel and prosecco. Not quite a classic combination:

We had a rather enjoyable meal with a conversation about language learning and fluency and then went to the living room to watch our weekly episode of ‚Columbo‘ which was excellent, as always.

I spent most of that episode knitting one measly row only to find that in my excitement during the afternoon meeting I had started the next color on row too early. (I kept wondering why the main color was hanging off the other end but never stopped to really think about it.) So for the second half of the show I unknit two rows at once which turned out to be a mistake with that grabby a yarn:

It took 45 minutes to untangle that yarn and wind it back onto the ball. At least then I could continue knitting.

And after that I made the dumb decision to get myself a beer and watch some more TV which ended up with lights out past midnight. I knew it was the wrong decision while I was making it and the boy looked at me with that slightly exasperated expression and said, „Mom, better don’t have that beer.“ He was right, I also knew it and then I went and did it anyway.

I mean, I wasn’t drunk or anything but the better course of action would have been to turn the TV off, get up from my chair, maybe make myself a cup of chamomile tea and read a bit. Not watch 1 1/2 episodes of C-drama and then falling down a „just 5 more minutes!“-YouTube rabbit hole.

Well, I still got up at six this morning. I am expecting a massive afternoon slump today though, ahem.

I woke up early after only seven hours of sleep yet again, wrote my morning pages and some new words on the novel-in-progress and decided to skip yoga because I was lazy.

There must have been the usual breakfast and talking with husband and such but I don’t really remember at this point. I did the breakfast dishes and then we were scheduled to mount the new living room light.

Which we did. Not without frustration, of course, the place where one has to put the screws in to close the light are in a place where it’s really hard to reach. I tried a couple of times because my fingers are way narrower than my husband’s and still the screws fell down to the floor three or four times before we finally succeeded.

So yeah, we have a new ceiling light in the living room. But boo, the remote control for the light doesn’t work and so we have a glaring, white eye-searing amount of light there that we can’t dim at all. I mean, I really like my ceiling lights to be bright and I’m the one who turns on all the lights at all times but this light is so bright and cold it hurts my eyes.

We also hung the cupboard that used to be in the kitchen and that will hold some of my yarn in the future:

I will add the shelves and doors once I’ve cleaned it a bit.

So we had to think about whether we want to return the living room light or not. Husband actually likes it better than the one before, the boy and I both hate it with a fiery vengeance. So this morning I made the executive decision to return it. (Husband said, „But it’s used! We can’t return a used light fixture!“ Um, yes we can, if it’s not working. And you can’t figure out if it’s working or not without mounting it. And then he said maybe it’s due to our old wiring. I really don’t think so.) I’ve ordered a replacement (that costs 7 euros less because of Black Friday week) and if that one’s remote isn’t working either I’ll just learn to live with it.

After all that home improvement I didn’t really have time to clean anymore, so I helped a little with lunch:

This is basically the easiest Chinese meal ever, you need green bell peppers, tofu and rice, start by cutting th bell pepper and tofu into strips (husband cut the tofu into chunks, oops), dry-fry the bell pepper, take it out when it’s almost done, heat some oil, fry the tofu, add the bell pepper, salt and soy sauce and eat it with the cooked rice, the end. Husband couldn’t help himself and added black pepper which works well but I had to step in before he added garlic and ginger as well. Interestingly enough this tastes better without.

After that I wanted to take a break and then do the dishes and get started on cleaning but instead the boy showed up, back from uni, we talked and I didn’t look at the clock until it was time for my first student.

After that I had a break. Now, cleaning, proofreading or vegging out? Well, I did some online shopping for my husband, answered a few texts and did an online puzzle.

Then one more student and after that I did bodyweight training with the boy. After which we shared a bag of potato chips and one of licorice. I added a beer and ate it all in front of TV. I had looked forward to that for days and really enjoyed it.

After that I decided I was too tired for the whole foot exercises, bullet journal, Duolingo, start the daily blog post thing. The boy tried talking to me but I was thoroughly zombified at that point and just went straight to bed. With all the dirty dishes still in the sink.

So I guess today will be extra busy with the cleaning and maybe some walking, taking a shower and such. But well.