Dancing Weather

The weather almost everywhere is unseasonably warm.  The last week of March is approaching and rather than wondering whether to dress for thunderstorms or rainstorms people are walking around campus in shorts and bikini tops trying to get their tan on.  After being the cranky pants who walks around talking about how this is global warming and unnatural and aren’t any of these people just a little bit concerned?  I got the flu.  Stuck in bed, hacking out a lung 100 degree Fahrenheit Flu.  I couldn’t go outside, I could barely roll off my effin couch to make my way into the bathroom and even doing that would work up a sweat.  It’s been 3 or 4 days now, I’m feeling a lot better even if my lungs still aren’t on board with the whole ‘healthy moving around’ thing yet.  I put on my headphones and I realised all my music was summer related from last year, or from my trip to New Zealand last year.

This is weather that I normally embrace, I live in Canada, unseasonable? Yes. Un-enjoyable? Only when being a killjoy. 

So I’ll stop being a killjoy,  I’m going to go outside and play frisbee and chase my boyfriend around a field after a soccer ball like I did in highschool when I was young and stupid and lived every minute with extremes!  (I’d say with joy and love but would be overlooking the natural teenage tendency to fall into utter despair when things don’t go exactly as planned).

This is dancing weather, this is bbq weather, this is living life with frisbee in hand weather.

There are 4 weeks of class left, I don’t have a job, and my sister is trying to plan her wedding.  Right now I am wired on cough meds and wishing someone here would run around outside and dance with me.

May I have this dance?

Falling off the internet

I avoided my computer this weekend.  I pretended that like some bad disease it would suck me under in terrible ways I couldn’t and wouldn’t understand.  Sometimes being on the computer and internet for school is too much, and then we go and have social media, and blogs and podcasts that we want to listen to and they all require the internet and I wonder how I got on before my family got the cursed thing when I was in grade 7. 

This weekend I got to remember. They were/are called books.  I used to read all the time. I always had a book on the go, I would often even be reading them while watching TV which baffled my family a little.  I devoured a new one this weekend and realised I’m getting slow, I used to finish a small novel this size in a day, two tops and here I am on Monday still trying to finish a book I started Saturday afternoon.

I fell off the internet this weekend.  I got no school work done, but it felt great, and I can’t wait to do it again.

Before…

Before I ate wheat.  I was addicted to bread, pasta, baked goods, cereal, couscous.  It was in multiple meals in large servings, it was my snack it was everything.  So in December I tried a detox, I gave up wheat (and a bunch of other things) and then I slowly re-introduced things I had gone without and saw how my body reacted.  The answer is that my body DOES NOT like it when I eat wheat.  It now tells me in no uncertain terms each time I eat wheat that I shouldn’t, I get zits, I get upset stomachs I get sluggish and gross feeling.  So I tried to keep wheat out, but I haven’t been doing a very good job.  So I’m going to try and be better about it, because  I think it is tanking my immune system as per being plague ridden.

So I’m sick, which means that I’ll be home a bit. So I’m going to set some goals.  Here are the before photos of the areas I want to clean… providing I don’t you know curl up into a ball and pass out.

Culinary Disaster

So I tried to make a lava cake thing tonight.  It tasted AWFUL!  It seemed really simple, I halved the recipe to save on some butter, and baked it in little spring form pans.  I bought raspberries and blueberries to serve it with, thought about making whipped cream, (but am glad I didn’t, it would have been quite the waste).  It was to be the end of a great valentines out.

The end result was sugary and gross.

I usually have great success with baking and new recipes.  However this was just a disaster.

I find myself asking was it the cocoa being old?  Was it the flour?  Did I not mix the sugar and eggs long enough?  Not clarify the butter right?  I have mastered angel food cake, cream puffs, breads and pretzels but this simple recipe seems to have eluded me.  So for now I ditched the left overs and will not try this recipe again.  Though maybe I’ll keep my eyes out for a new version with less sugar.

It also might be time to buy new cocoa.

Grateful continued

I haven’t been updating with everything I am grateful for.  I guess I’m not very good at staying on top of things here on the blog. 

I am overall feeling more positive.  Though I still catch myself in strange dark moments, where things seem bleak and I don’t know why.  Today I am grateful for the simplicity of things like red lentil curry, and wheat free cinnamon crunch granola on plain yogurt. 

For flowers on the valentines day weekend, and for home made muffins (I might have made a lot of these).

For taking the time to have coffee with my sister, for the creator of black bean chips (and the chips themselves), for a cat that knows just how to suck up to her owner caretaker.  For ravelry and the world of awesome people it opened up, for loose leaf tea that makes a galaxy in your cup when you steep it right (the key is you aren’t supposed to use a disposable tea bag… just a strainer or you filter out the sparkles)…

I need to find something amazing for my swap partner on the Pi/Pie Swap… I mean more awesome than what I already have.

Being Grateful – Day 2

Yesterday I was supposed to post my first three things I was grateful for and I got so tired after finishing my proposal for class that I shut down my computer and refused to even check if I had class today.  It just wasn’t worth knowing, I was too tired to go.  However, determined to think of three things I was grateful for I spent a bit of time thinking about it before bed and just wrote it on a piece of paper.

Here they are… I am grateful for knitting because it keeps me calm and sane and busy.  I get to make beautiful things for people I love and in a zombie apocalypse I will have the ability to loot yarn stores and create clothing for myself and loved ones.

Next I am grateful for two people and they each count as one thing I am grateful for.  My dear roommate here at school who listens to me bitch about my program and laughs with me (and sometimes at me, I can do stupid with the best of them).  Also my res program friend, who chills with me, shops with me, and also bitches with me about the program.  Those were my three for Tuesday.

Today is Wednesday and to be perfectly honest I am struggling for the my three gratefuls.  I guess the first one is easy.  Every other Wednesday is Knit Night at a coffee house in downtown St Catharines and I am grateful to have a group of people who love to craft, accept my youth and are open and accepting.  Five months ago I had never been near downtown St Catharines and I was terrified to venture into a strange shop, to meet a group of strangers.  They were so open, accepting and supportive!  They shared the excitement of finally getting my spinning wheel and finishing projects.  They enjoy nerdy things and I learn as much from them about their jobs as I do at school about the one I want.

I guess my other grateful is going to be puppies!  We had therapy dogs visit residence tonight.  It ended up solidifying my determination that I will one day have a dog of my very own.  Particularly a dachshund, they are adorable.

Lastly I am grateful for cooking blogs.  Yes that’s right I am grateful that other people cook like crazy and blog about it.  Why?  It’s very simple really, if someone took the time to create a beautiful step by step blog post for me to follow it is likely that the food will be very tasty.  Also things I never thought I would be able to make like these delicious looking pretzel dogs (hello treat for a valentine!).

They seem like trivial things to be grateful for, but I guess if we don’t take joy in everything small and large we will be very depressed.  So I will continue to smile stupidly at wonderful signs and take joy in puppies and knitting.  The people are big though, I think any person that takes the time to be a friend is a big deal. 

Positive Energy

So my dear friend Amie keeps a wonderful blog, it is much more complicated than my own little setup and she is much more dedicated.  So she posted this link to a TED Talks lecture. Shawn Achor : The happy secret to better work, is a talk that is both humorous and motivating to change the way we think.  If you aren’t familiar with TED Talks browse the website take some time to browse other talks, they have a ton innovative ideas.

The idea behind this talk is that you function better when you are positive, and that the happy has to come first, then your brain functions more effectively.

One of the tasks set to help create the positive brain energy and increase how you function is 3 Gratitude's. For 21 days find 3 new things to be grateful for every day.  This is my February challenge. Starting later today (because it is midnight on February 7th) I am going to try and think of 3 new things to be grateful for every day for the rest of the month.  I feel like after I should turn it into a tumblr blog, maybe that will come next.

For now (this counts as one of my Feb 7 grateful) I am grateful to have a group that is flexible for my year long project, it would be brutal if they weren’t.

Goodnight blogosphere