Week 11 - Stress and Yarn

It was a stressful week at work. Lots of trickle down stress – boss is stressed so supervisor is stressed and everyone shared down. Yikes! A co-worker and I vented over Starbuck’s one afternoon and I did some stress yarn shopping at lunch one day too. Something worked because by the end of the week, things were calming down. I had a nice dinner with the water aerobics gang on Thursday after work and it was looking good. Until I got a rush data request from the Vice Chancellor right at the end of the day Friday. Needless to say, I was ready for the weekend.

I had nothing scheduled for two whole days so vowed to dig in at home. My goal was to go through all of my clothes AGAIN and tackle the yarn mess in the spare room. The bed was piled with both clothes and yarn so they pretty much had to be tackled together. Luckily I had neatized most of the house early Friday when I woke up at 4:30 and couldn’t fall back asleep (how’s that for cup half full thinking?) so went home to an already picked up house, which meant I could start all the sooner.

After a quick trip to the bank Saturday, I started slogging. I cleared off the spare bed, dumping clothes in my bedroom and yarn in the front room. Since I wanted to do laundry sooner rather than later, I went through clothes first. I tried on at least 50 shirts, deciding as I went between hanging what fit, saving what would fit soon (hopefully) and splitting what was leaving the house between Goodwill and Helen. By mid-afternoon, I was done with the clothes and so started sorting yarn. I petered out late afternoon but still had all day Sunday.

The petering out coincided with some TV and knitting. Well, I got sucked into a pledge special on PBS by Dr. Mark Hyman. I had read and liked one of his early books – Ultra Metabolism – so was gripped by his new book – Eat Fat and Get Thin. He’s all about MUFA’s (monounsaturated fatty acids) and his new book was taking it a step further. He was espousing adding large amounts of fat to your diet on the premise that our bodies need fat and the whole low fat era has left our bodies starved, which he said has slowed our metabolisms and lead to binge eating in an attempt to replenish the fat we’ve excluded. Everything he said resonated with how I feel after a 3 week rotation where I’ve eaten almost no fat. The overeating and subsequent weight gains I’ve been experiencing on my off weeks were exactly what he was describing. I was going to have to find out more about this.

Anyway, I finished the rest of the yarn sorting and storage Sunday morning so spent a cozy afternoon cooking for the week. I made sloppy joes, cranberry walnut cole slaw and tapioca pudding for lunches, 2 pies for Pi Day (Monday) – one for work and one for knitting – and made hamburger stroganoff to eat for a couple of suppers. I was even a big girl and did all the dishes when I was done cooking. So all in all, it was a very satisfying weekend. I’d made it through my projects and chores, had a fridge full of food for the next week and had recuperated from the stressful work week. Nothing like playing with yarn to bring me back to center. : )