creative.mother.thinking

Well, not really because I didn’t really try to fight it.

I slept in until 6.30, lounged around in bed for an hour and then started doing all the dishes from the day before. Had breakfast, talked with my husband, did dishes again, cut my husband’s hair, reprimanded the boy for getting up at eleven, went running for a short (but not quick) 5k:

Came back and helped to make lunch. Since we were starting late we decided to have just appetizers so there were fried zucchini blossoms filled with cream cheese (and a lot of other stuff, I mean we’re talking about my husband cooking) and some bresaola:

Then my husband and I realized that we knew nothing about futurism or expressionism so we had to look it up on wikipedia and when we looked up again it was 3 pm.

I then sat down to read and eat all.the.chocolate (Literally. Of the two bars that I had bought at the beginning of the week there was half a bar left and now there is none. The boy has a separate stash of chocolate.) When I looked up again from my computer it was 5 pm and the lunch dishes were still sitting there on the counter. Oops.

Of course I had hoped to do something productive with the day but I have to say I rather enjoyed sitting around doing nothing. I’m just hoping to spend today a little differently.

I read some more until it was time for watching Star Trek with the boy, then hung up some laundry. My husband was kind enough to do the dishes.

Today I will do mostly nothing with a bit of fun and productivity thrown in. I want to make music and write and set up my bullet journal for the week.

I also want to try out if I have more energy when I do more. I usually find that that is the case, up to a certain point. A point that I almost never reach, by the way. But we’ll see.

I woke up from the alarm and lounged around in bed for half an hour. I really want to get back to the habit of writing first thing in the day.

Made breakfast, talked with the boy, was disturbed by my husband while meditating.

Did the weekly cleaning and changed the sheets on my bed, made pizza and was a little frantic because the pizza dough was way too soft. I think I put in too much water the night before.

Took a shower.

Put some more flour into the pizza dough but it was still too soft and there were holes in it through and through.

The pizza turned out fine in the end, though:

Very tasty.

Then I spent some time ordering the sign for our music business but got an error message. ::Clue sad face:: I will have to deal with that next week or so.

Because of the sign ordering screw-up I did not do the dishes, also there was a load of laundry to hang up. I got that done just in time to get ready for teaching.

Taught four students in a row and was fried. I need to get used to teaching again, it seems.

Then the boy practiced piano and made himself some sandwiches for dinner, and we watched some very good Star Trek.

Afterwards my husband and I opened some champagne (it did end up over half the kitchen but not by design) to celebrate the finishing of my novel and the finishing of his guitar recordings. I don’t know if any of you remember his music blog but there actually might be some new posts in the near future. (That blog consisted only of an error message for months but it is up and running again. I’ll put up a link as soon as there is something to see and hear there.)

And then I had to do the dishes and I had planned to start writing a new story. I almost let exhaustion win but then decided to start the story and do the dishes this morning. Not ideal but I wasn’t up for half an hour of dishwashing, ten minutes of writing seemed much more doable.

Today there will be the running, and the cutting of my husband’s hair, and the writing, and the music, and the pulling out the sewing machine first time in months.

I actually slept until my alarm went off at six. I then walked around in a slight haze for the rest of the day. As one does after several nights of not enough sleep followed by one restful night. So my plan continues to turn the lights out before ten, better before 9.30.

I did not write first thing in the morning which made writing much harder that day,

I did go to the grocery store and then to the health food store again and we’re now all stocked up.

We made paella for lunch:

Definitely not authentic paella, just our own approximation but very yummy.

In the afternoon I wasted two hours. I’m not quite sure where they went, them I sang a bit and taught some students. One student didn’t show up and later it turned out that he had not been able to figure out how to open our new garden gate. I had left it open before the first student came but he must have closed it behind him. Poor student. I’m hoping to re-schedule.

The sign advertising our music lessons is also taking shape, a friend offered to help us with it and so we now have something we are rather happy with. I’ll figure out how to attach it to our fence and then I’ll order the sign. Soon. (I want to know if the size I want works with our fence before spending the money on an actual physical thing.)

At the end of the day the boy got a short piano lesson and then we did some very short strength training.

I wrote some. I wrote „The End!“

I regretted that I hadn’t put any champagne in the fridge in the morning and then decided to leave the champagne for today. A good start into the weekend.

I drew another picture and had a beer. I went to bed.

Today there will be the cutting of my husband’s hair, the cleaning, and a lot of teaching. I want to start writing a new story. Then Star Trek. And then the weekend.

Woke up at 5.15 after not quite enough sleep. That’s what I get from doing the most important things of the day late which means that I am too tired to go to bed and end up not getting enough sleep. (Why yes, I tend to wake up earlier if I go to bed later, no idea why. I’ve never really gotten then hang of sleeping in anyway.)

I did force myself to write right away and produced about 600 words in 25 minutes. Interestingly, I’m usually quite a bit faster when I write in the evening. Even though I am definitely a morning person.

There was breakfast and getting the boy ready on time with the usual fuss of having to fill out forms and find money and envelopes for school. (We pay a materials fee once a year and there was money for the excursion in October.) I have to say that the fact that his new teacher has already planned the excursion for October leaves me rather impressed.

There are a few changes now that he is in tenth grade. With the excursion, for example, they are supposed to meet in Munich directly. No meeting at the school beforehand. He doesn’t need a signed permission slip for leaving the school grounds at lunchtime anymore, and some other things. Nice.

I did run yesterday, 6.4 very, very slow miles. I think it was the heat:

The sun was directly ahead for this picture. It’s time that I get some sunglasses:

When I came back my husband was busy trimming the front hedge and my mother-in-law was sweeping the sidewalk. So I jumped in to help. She is still not feeling a hundred percent and was wearing a 24-hour heart monitor.

I have to say that spending 45 minutes sweeping and picking up hedge trimmings after running is a little exhausting.

Since my husband was way more tired than me, he had trimmed the whole hedge in the back the day before and had reached a point where he could barely lift his arms, I offered to make lunch for a change. I made Salade Niçoise inspired by this recipe (in German). It was an instant hit. And we’re usually not a „salad as a main course“ family. But then all the potatoes and beans and fish and eggs do make is less salad-y.

My attempt was not as photogenic as the original:

Then dishes and teaching and music. By dinnertime I was pretty spent and decided to not try and finish the novel that day. Instead I opted for an early bedtime. I did do my daily beginner drawing, though. The day before I had shown my koala attempt to my husband and while I found it horrible he deemed it ‚not bad‘.

By the way that is one of the most irritating things that adult beginner students do. They have a constant stream of self-talk that focuses on the ways their artistic thing is unlike professional master pieces and beat themselves up for it. As a teacher you can sit there telling them that, actually they are making wonderful progress and that you’re very happy with how they are doing, and that, sorry, but they are a beginner and this is what beginners sound like, but they never really believe you.

Seems I’m one of those irritating adult beginners. Which means I have two options, really, I can either stop to learn how to draw, or I can just be content with my beginner drawings as they are. Both options come with optional negative self-talk.

And no, I am too timid to show you my drawings. Some day. At the moment it is all about cubes with distorted shadows and balls and yesterday’s koala with fur was a big exception.

Today there will be the grocery shopping and all the usual stuff and if I manage to sit my butt in the chair for long enough I might end up with a finished story. Or it might need an epilogue. I don’t know yet.

I totally forgot that it was 9/11 until someone mentioned it on ravelry. I did sit in silence for a minute then.

Yesterday was all in all a rather good day. I did write for ten minutes first thing in the morning and was reasonably on time for the boy’s first day at school. He was slightly disorganized, he will need some time to get back into his routine.

After breakfast things started spiraling out of control. First I got an email that had me thinking and debating a lot (nothing bad, just something that needs some thought), then the mother of one of my husband’s students called my MIL because our phone seemed to be offline. I zeroed in on the tech problem and found that the problem was with the phone company. We still had internet and we could call people but nobody could reach us and our voice mail was offline. Which is a rather bad thing, especially at the beginning of a school year when a lot of students need to reach us to move lessons around.

My original plan had been to run, take a shower, order a second pair of glasses and go to the health food store. Instead I went to the optician.

I had a long list, I wasn’t sure about the frames I had picked the last time and wanted to order ‚work glasses‘ for teaching and working on the computer and reading, and I also wanted to ask about contact lenses and clip-on sunglasses.

I was lucky and got my favorite optician who answered all my questions and will order the same frame again that I am wearing now, only in a slightly different color. It will be a little more expensive than the one I had originally picked but I like it much better. And it will be for the pair of glasses that I’m wearing the most.

There was still time to go to the health food store.

I helped to make lunch:

It’s fish.

Then I did the dishes and prepared for teaching, taught all my usual students and mostly called it a day. I did write some more and drew my daily bad practice drawing as well.

Today there will be: running and music and writing and teaching. There are several things I could go to tonight but I’ll rather stay at home. I’d like to have more days like yesterday and the day before. Even if they sound boring when I retell them I have made significant progress on some things that are really important to me.

And that makes me feel very happy.

Thank you all for reading this. I hope there are still a few of you left.

I started this exactly a year ago. On September 11th I decided to give daily blogging a try. My goal was always to do it for a whole year. And I did. I know that there is no Day 6 post but you have to believe me that there was and that the blogging software ate it.

So. Yesterday.

I woke up late at 6.30 and had a rather lazy morning. I did manage my ten minutes of writing first thing, so that was good. But I need to speed my morning routine up again starting today because school is on.

I finished knitting the Cria sweater and went for a 6.44k-run:

And helped to make chili for lunch and forgot to take the picture before taking the first bite:

And I wrote an email to our web hosting provider about my husband’s blog and worked on that blog for an hour but finally managed to get it up and going again, yeah!

And I taught four students and did some work on marketing for our music lessons and did a short round of strength training.

The boy and I watched some more Star Trek because it wasn’t exactly a school night for him.

Today will be his first day as a tenth grader and I will run errands and teach and write some more.

And I think I’ll keep on writing here daily for now. It suits me.