creative.mother.thinking

So yesterday I got up even earlier than usual and left for Bielefeld. I love going by train. I could spend all morning reading and knitting and looking out the window.

The only thing I didn't like is that the restaurant car on the train didn't have real, hot food. Due to a technical difficulty with their cooling they only served sandwiches and chocolate bars.

Now this has been the fifth time in a row or so that there was either no food or only very little food on a train I've been on so I might revert back to taking all my own food from now on. I don't know what changed, everything else is excellent, the trains are mostly on time, the conductors and everyone are nice and polite, and tells you what's up, and the trains are mostly clean.

Then I found my hotel which is fine, and right next to the train station but not noisy. And then I started walking. First to my old Gymnasium, then to the castle on the hill where I used to spend days and days looking out over the city and daydreaming, then I walked all the way back to where we used to live, to my old elementary school, and then all the way back.

It is a little weird, things haven't changed as much as I thought they would. Almost every house I passed was the exact same as in 1982 apart from a coat of paint. And where once was a big field of wheat there are now houses and houses. Which look like they are decades old too.

This part of Germany is rather different from the one I live in now. Where I live, close to Munich, construction is booming. There are loads of jobs in Munich, and not enough housing, so the town I live in is constantly changing. Everywhere I look an old family home gets torn down and a much bigger house with several appartments, or several houses will appear in its place.

That's not what happens here in Bielefeld. There is construction, and newness but where I used to live looks almost frozen in time.

I'm very happy to be here. This still feels a little like home but I'll also be very happy to go back home where I live now. I love it there, and the life I made for myself.

And today is ravelry meeting time! I get to meet some of the people in person that I only know through the computer, and I'll be taking a spinning class that I'm looking forward to, and I will look at all.the.yarn and all.the.fiber.

I can't wait.

So yesterday I was so tired that I couldn't even think straight. I also managed to drop a bottle of beer in the basement, and the glass and beer went everywhere. Just before that I had tripped on the stairs and almost tumbled down. Well, better the bottle than me.

And this teaches us that I shouldn't go traveling in the first week after summer break. I guess I'm so excited I couldn't sleep. Silly.

But now I am sitting on a train. The weather is gorgeous here but where I'm going it's supposed to rain this afternoon. Right when I want to go look at all the places I used to live. Go figure.

I'm going to Bielefeld. That city is nothing real special, I guess, but I used to live there. And the rain is no surprise either, it is a very damp part of Germany after all.

As usual I'm thinking that I'll get all kinds of things done on the train, and as usual I will probably only sit and knit.

But for now I'll be looking out the window a little, and check my e-mail, and wait until it's time to eat lunch (about three more hours but I'm already hungry).

I'm thinking about quite a few things at the moment, not the least being how I can move things around in my life so that everything I want to achieve fits. That's nothing new for me, though. I guess I'll always keep doing that.

I'm also thinking about whether I like traveling or not. I have a dawning suspicion that I like the idea of travel better than the travel itself. On the other hand this weekend away is starting pretty mellow. Despite the excitement, packing and getting on the train is a fairly routine experience for me. There was no mad scramble, no frantic search for things I had forgotten, I basically just packed what I always pack, and did what I always do.

Which is a little funny because this is only the third (and last) time this year that I'm traveling. But then three trips is a lot, at least for me.

I'm really enjoying checking in here daily, I hope you enjoy it too, until tomorrow.

So yesterday went rather well. Even though I was real overtired. Staying up late is definitely a bad thing.

But the best thing was that I actually managed to work on that novel for an hour after breakfast, and I finished the next step of revision!!! So now I only need to type all the changes in (and yes, I’m feeling I can easily do that in an hour or two, yes, I’m delusional), and then I’ll be done with it. Except for another read-through.

I’ll start doing that today, and I will run all.the.errands and buy all.the.groceries. And teach, of course.

Yesterday was also a day that showed me how things usually get derailed around here. I was a little behind after lunch already, and then my husband needed help with printing something out (I know), and then the printer acted up, and there went another hour. And the boy came home from his first day of school and wanted to talk about it and about the teachers he’s going to have this year. Which is just how life goes. Which means I always need to leave a buffer somewhere because otherwise I’m screwed.

I got a little more sleep last night so I’m not feeling quite as zombiefied which is good, and if everything goes well I will even paint my toenails.

Exciting times.

But first meditation and type-in.

So yesterday went reasonably well but not good enough. I did most things on my to do-list – which is great – but I did not work on the novel. (Sometimes I think I should just stop talking about this thing, and either drop it or only say something when it's finished.)

I did waste quite a bit of time in the afternoon between students. I keep telling myself that twenty minutes is not enough time to pull out the big novel binder and all my index cards but of course that's bullshit. When I sit down to edit I often do so for only ten minutes at a time. It's not ideal but better than nothing. So my task today is to make use of those odd, small moments in between.

The other thing I did that was fun at the time but a really bad idea in hindsight was spending a lot of time listening to karaoke versions of old bossa novas in the afternoon, and singing my way through quite a few jazz songs in the evening. I only stopped when the boy came over to tell me he couldn't sleep because I was still singing at 11 pm.

I'm doing this not only because I want to make more music again (I always want to do more of everything, it's a sickness) but because I need a birthday present for my mother for her 75th birthday next month.

When she turned 70 I made her a wool jacket. I spun all the yarn and knitted the whole big thing. The idea was good but she never liked the cardigan. She's always hot, and the wool was heavy, and so she never wore it. In the end she asked me if I would mind her ripping it back and make the yarn into a blanket. So she got to knit with handspun (I guess the first time in her life), and now she has a lap blanket that she uses almost every day.

When my father turned 70 two years earlier we had gotten him a big case full of all kinds of sample beers to try. That had been a pretty good idea but it's not something you can repeat all the time. Especially since he saved those beers, and drank them very slowly and it took him a long time to finish them.

When he turned 75 two years ago I had one of those really brilliant ideas. We had been visiting my parents in the spring, and he had complained that the blanket he was using on the sofa was tickling him, and clung to the couch fabric, and since he spends a lot of time on that sofa under a blanket I though I should make him a new one.

I spent about the same amount of time that I had on my mother's cardigan. I spun some Shetland that was blended with silk in several natural colors, I designed the whole thing, wove it on my rigid heddle loom, and sewed the two panels together.

My father was thrilled. He loves the blanket, and is still very happy and grateful I made it for him. So that was good.

But now I need to make something for my mother's birthday that is on approximately the same level. And I'm stumped.

So I thought I'd take the easy way out, get a few karaoke versions of some songs that I know very well, and then record me singing along, and give that to her. She keeps complaining that she never hears me sing, and she loves that kind of music so I thought that would be a good idea. My original idea had been to learn how to play those songs on the ukulele as well, and record everything but that would have taken a year or more of work so that was out. Karaoke it was.

Of course when I had that idea I had thought I'd do all the preparation in August,,,

Well, I haven't. So now I have to move pretty fast. And most karaoke recordings don't really sound all that great. Still. I can do this.

But that's the reason I stayed up way too long yesterday. I am already curious what today's reason for not going to bed on time will be. I definitely shouldn't plan to get anything done after dinner today.

 

I have been wanting to blog more for ages, and I never did, and I also really enjoy reading those blogs where people just write about their day every day. So with the beginning of the new school year I'm trying something new, and I'm challenging myself to blog every day for thirty days. And then we'll see how that works, and if anybody likes reading it or not.

It's funny but I'm quite relieved that summer break is over. The first real day of school is tomorrow but my husband and I told our students they could come in today if they wanted. I think about half of today's students will show up.

And now I will have to find out how to work on my novel every day when I have to do all those other things as well. Though I have to say that working on it evey day during summer break, where I had much less to do, didn't work at all. It would be “work on the novel for ten minutes one day, skip two days” over and over and over.

I'm a little weary of my whining, and of my inability to stick to my plans. Reading a book called “Stick With It” didn't really help either. It is “do or don't”, there really is is nothing in between.

One thing I have learned for sure is that if I leave novel revision as the last thing on the list before dinner it usually doesn't happen because something else intervenes, or something takes longer than I thought it would, and with one thing or another I would tell myself, “Oh, I'll work on it after dinner!” And then the boy and I would watch some show on TV, and it would be late, and I would be tired, and then I didn't work on the novel and would tell myself that it would be alright because I'd do a little more the next day.

And then I wouldn't.

Meh.

At least today I know that I won't have time or energy to work on the novel after dinner with all that teaching in the afternoon.

This week is pretty full, I already made a weekly spread in my bullet journal – something I never do – because I have so many things that need to get done by a certain date.

I will travel on Friday, to the ninth German Raveler meeting, and I'm really looking forward to that.

Stay tuned, and tomorrow I'll tell you how all of what I planned today worked out in the end.