The weekend after New Year’s Day is ending, and that means I have no excuse: I need to get back to my regular routine. There are just a couple of problems, and they both stem from celebrating the new year with a tango marathon.
1. Illness
When you bring together 250 people from all around the world for about 36 hours, have them partner up in a close embrace for 10-30 minutes at a time, and then have them switch partners … well, that must be a virus’s dream. I don’t think we ever come home from tango marathons and festivals without bringing along a virus or two.
So far, I’m staying healthy (knock on wood!) but my husband has been sick all weekend. He has been drinking lots of tea, watching movies, and lying in bed. I have been washing my hands obsessively.
Although I can’t really use my husband’s illness as an excuse, it completely interrupted our weekend plans. I threw out my idea of getting organized for our first German tax return (eep!) and going out for a nice long hike. Instead, I fiddled around on some new projects that I am getting off the ground. It felt good, but it didn’t help me transition into any semblance of normalcy.
2. Sleep Schedule
My sleep schedule is also completely wonky. One fun thing about tango events is that they go late, late, late into the night. In the case of this marathon, they went all the way through the night and continued the next day, which made it very hard for us to tear ourselves away to get to sleep at a decent hour. (I think we fell asleep around 5 AM on New Year’s Day…)
So of course the lingering tango schedule, coupled with mid-afternoon naps (see problem #1), means that I am completely unable to get to sleep at a proper time. I am naturally a night owl, which doesn’t make things any easier. The clock on my laptop tells me that it is now past 2:30 AM and I am just starting to feel a teensy bit drowsy. But I am determined to wake up tomorrow morning and get back to work on a normal schedule!
It’s times like this I wish I had a coffee maker with a timer.
Expat Linguist 