Unwound

The holidays are here! After many long weeks of hard work, with the last few weeks spent furiously marking exams, writing reports, and making sure everything was all set for next year, my colleagues added a new layer to that stress by inventing an 'office/row of desks decoration competition'! It proved to be a wonderful bonding exercise, since for most of the year the people in my row are too busy to socialise, and reminded me that very little of our lives and choices are in a vaccuum - there is almost always a support system there, waiting for your call of help. It was all hands on deck for the last week of term, following my theme of 'recyclable & hand made White Christmas', building a tree out of paper, wreaths out of old plastic bags, putting cellophane on the windows, making snowmen out of wire and cotton wool, and grabbing shredded paper to scatter on the ground to look like snow. Other rows/offices let one or two people do all the work, spending lots of money at fabric and decoration stores, and some didn't bother to do much at all.

My row won! We celebrated as a team, and now have the newly-generated inaugural banner hanging at the end of our row, to remind us throughout 2011 how we worked together to create something beautiful and very personal.

Now that the working year has finished for me, and doesn't start up again until February, I can return my attention to participating in my other tribe - the paleo/primal community. I have been reading all of my blog and news feeds throughout the busy year, but have given very little back of late. I intend to make the most of my Summer outside and getting lots of sun, air, and activity, but at the moment it is SNOWING in parts of Victoria, suggesting we will have the cool festive season of 2006. Boo! I'm already betting that we won't get the scorching hot weather until school resumes in Feb and we're stuck in classrooms with piddly little fans or broken air conditioning. Bleeeeurgh... Just give me a few weeks of perfect weather in January, please?

So, how's the primal living going, Jezwyn? Well, I'm glad you asked. I was continuing my experiment of having a few carby days a week, enjoying mashed sweet potato and lots of berries. However, as of today I'm cutting those foods out again for a while, as I was starting to crave sweet foods almost constantly. Now that I'll be home most days (going out at night, usually, since the beau only gets one week off work), the pull to grab tomatoes and carrots out of the fridge for constant snacking is dangerous, so I'm going to start monitoring carbs again to see if that kills the cravings. I suspect higher carb days (especially starchy carbs) are quite good for me physiologically, but perhaps they do mess with my blood glucose/insulin too much and affect me psychologically. With Christmas lunches and dinners coming up, I don't want to be falling face-first into the Fruit & Nut balls I've been asked to make! I also wanted to try making a lower-GL dessert in the realm of fruit puddings to share at Christmas, but I would have to be tasting the recipes as I played, so that one will have to wait until next year too.

So, although it'll be hard to fast since I'll have few distractions, I will be eating more meat (yay for Christmas!), eggs, and fats, plus leafy greens which I will track to be sure I'm not going to be breaking out of ketosis too much. I've found myself turned off from meat a bit lately, but hopefully the variety of roasts and seafood that are synonymous with this time of year will help shake that feeling. I'm usually fine once the food is ready to eat, but getting uncooked beef and lamb out of the freezer doesn't inspire me at all. Weird...

My belly dancing class is on a break as well, with no classes for two weeks, so I'm looking at the other group fitness classes to go and play in. They have circuit training, so I think that's probably a good choice since I could use some strength work and a bit of cardio given I'm not walking/riding to school every day nor lugging around great tubs of books.

Blatant plug: As a stress-release activity in the past few weeks, and now as a creative outlet to keep me inspired during the holidays, I have been making jewellery again. I love getting feedback on my designs, so if you like jewellery you can look at my Facebook Page where about 150 of my pieces are currently visible in albums, or you can look at my Zibbet store, although I can only list 50 items at a time. I feel a bit dirty mentioning it here, but jewellery making has been a big part of my life of late, and is the main reason I haven't been updating this blog as much as I'd like. It's also a great way to stay busy whilst trying to ignore carb cravings! ;)

I have a couple of recipes that I've been waiting to share with you, so I'll end this post with a little comic strip that summarises so neatly the problems the world is faced with in terms of food: