creative.mother.thinking

Yesterday was a rather busy day again. I tried to work on the novel in the morning after breakfast but my husband was up extra early. Then I ran all the errands, and got all the food.

I also found that my bank does not change British pounds into Euros. I’m not quite sure what to do about the 15 pounds I still have lying around. Maybe put them in a drawer and wait until the next time I’ll need them. Since the last time I visited the UK before this summer was 1989 that might mean I’ll be 78 until then but then one can’t really extrapolate a trend from only two data points.

Before all of that I found that there was something weird going on with my daily posts from the last few days. Day 6 had the wrong date, and day 9 wasn’t showing up. I tried fixing it but every time I fixed one of the two posts the other one would go wonky. In the end I refreshed everything in the blogging software I’m using on my laptop, and then the post for day 6 was gone.

I’m not quite sure what happened but it must have something to do with the fact that I’m using two different pieces of software for blogging, one on my iPad, and the other one on my laptop. And maybe I took one of the posts as a template for the other, and then the blog thought those two were one post only, and so I lost a post. Of course that one was the one with all the nifty links and everything about the German Raveler Meeting in it.

I will write it again as well as I can but not today because today I’m swamped.

I also found that I didn’t get a message when there was a comment on the blog so I didn’t see a couple of comments, and therefore didn’t reply to them. Sorry.

I will clean everything, teach loads of students, and then I’ll rush into the city for my very first meeting of the „Selfpublisher-Verband“. I will mend my purple dress so I can wear it, and apply makeup, and I’m feeling all professional now because I managed to print business cards even.

And yes, I am fully aware that real, printed business cards would be much more professional, and a website that’s not a free wordpress blog, and a book funnel-link to the actual books I published. But one step at a time.

I am pretty excited about the meeting, and a little scared. I’m also not happy about the fact that I will have to go to Munich during Okotberfest. That’s something we usually avoid. It means being on trains that are packed with loud, drunk people who might lose it at any time, or get in your face for not being drunk and loud.

I’m planning to walk for twenty minutes from Marienplatz to the venue so that I won’t have to change trains at the main station which is really close to the Oktoberfest location but there is no avoiding the whole thing completely. Unless I bike but that would be a little too far for the time I have.

And the whole family is elated that my husband finally found what is wrong with the guitar amp he was trying to repair for a student. He’s been working on it in mounting frustration for weeks now, and had promised the student to have it ready today but couldn’t find what was making that horrible noise. Until last night. If I weren’t going out tonight we’d probably have champagne to celebrate that achievement.

And now I’ll start my day of go, go, go.

The good thing is that the laptop straightened itself out eventually, no story, though. But those computer problems meant that I didn’t manage to work on the novel yesterday morning, and there really was no time in the afternoon because I did quite a bit of teaching, and so the novel did not happen. Again. I’m hoping to make up for it today – stay tuned.

Turned out that running with sore muscles from unfamiliar bodyweight exercises is no fun. I stumbled through my run and walked much more than I wanted. Part of me feels like a failure for it but the rational part of me knows that I can’t expect myself to power through everything. I’ll see how running goes on Saturday.

Today is my big errand day, I’ll zoom all around town getting groceries. The weather is gorgeous and supposed to be rather warm so I should maybe bike to the next town over to go to the really nice health food store where I can get all kinds of things that aren’t available here in town. But then that depends on how much time I’ll have.

I also want to go to the post office. Very exciting, this life of mine.

One thing that is out of the ordinary is the meeting of the „Selfpublisher Verband“ tomorrow. I am already a little nervous. I don’t really know what to expect. I’m thinking about printing some business cards for author-me but I’m not sure. I only have this website that I haven’t updated in ages (and it does look like I slapped it together in an afternoon because that’s exactly what I did), and a funny email address. On the other hand you never know.

I will have to head out immediately after finishing a long teaching day tomorrow, that will be fun.

I’ll keep you posted.

So yesterday was the day that all that traveling around and not sleeping enough caught up with me. For once I had gotten enough sleep, and as a result I was all tired all day.

 

I still got quite a few things done but after four pm or so I was just a yawning mess.

 

I was still pretty pleased with how much I got done on the novel, and we had a spectacular Greek lunch. The best was our homemade babaganoush from the eggplants my husband grows in our yard.

 

The most fun thing was that the boy and I tried some new bodyweight exercises. Because of the boy's new school schedule we have had to move our exercise days around, and so we ended up with strength training on Tuesdays when I'm teaching extra late in the evening. None of us wanted to do forty minutes of strength training at a time that would usually be after dinner so I decided to just try a quick workout from the bodyweight app that we use.

 

We ended up doing tabatas which are apparently sets of four different exercises, each done for twenty seconds followed by ten seconds of rest. At first we misunderstood the instructions so we ended up doing squats for several minutes in a row.

 

It was pretty hard to do but it was also fun to shake things up a bit. And we only did twenty minutes so it was really doable. Today I'm having sore legs and abs which will be fun for my run later.

 

Despite the late dinnertime I did manage to go to bed on time, and so I'm hoping for a little more energy today. And there will be more of the usual.

 

I love having a routine but it doesn't make for a good story.

 

But then I'm typing this on my iPad because my laptop is acting up. I really hope it's nothing but maybe that will become a story to tell.

 

There isn’t much to talk about yesterday. I did everything on my list, and went to bed early. Which makes it a really good day.

I went running for 65 minutes with very little walking in between, I think I’m getting better. I’m still pretty slow but that’s getting better as well. We had beets from our own garden for lunch, and then I taught some very nice students, I made a little music, worked a little on my novel, and went to bed early.

I’m still pretty exhausted from all the travel but right now I feel like I will have my energy back some day.

And I’m hoping today will be more of the same.

And I’m back home, and very glad about it. The weekend away was great but I like being home best. Now I can make music again, and wrestle the novel some more, and be with my favorite people in the world.

The trip back home went very well, this time they even had food on the train. Delicious food even. And then there was even more delicious food for dinner at home.

I’m thinking I should eat a little less from now on because – as I might have mentioned – I ate so much in the past few weeks that I gained about ten pounds back. Now I have two options, either I give up, shrug my shoulders and lament because I just can’t keep my weight down, or I eat less than I need until I’m back where I feel best. And then, maybe, I will manage to only eat as much as I need so that I don’t have to have all this drama again. We’ll see.

I also found that I will have to flip my exercise schedule around. I do strength training together with my son, and he has PE on Wednesday now which means Wednesday is a really bad day for him to do strength training on top of that. Which means I will probably go running Monday, Wednesday, Saturday, and do strength training Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday. Which then moves my grocery shopping day to Thursday which is good. The only really inconvenient thing is that Tuesday is the only day in the week that I work until 7, and when we do 40 minutes of strength training after that it will mean dinner will be really, really late. We’ll get used to it, I hope.

Last night I decided to rewatch „Firefly“. I really love this show. I’m looking forward to it with much anticipation even though I’ve already seen it at least twice.

I still haven’t figured out how to fit everything I want to do into my days but then I don’t need to get that all done today, it’s an ongoing process anyways.

Daily blogging seems to suit me well, by the way, I found myself thinking how much I like it just before starting to write. Who would have thought.