Larocque and Roll » braindeaditis

Not stress baking

Rebecca — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 04:30:33 +0000

In the fall when I was under a lot of stress, I would find myself in the kitchen lots of evenings looking for some sort of distraction. Mostly, I would end up baking something – breads, cookies, cakes and/or muffins – as a way to calm my frazzled nerves. Some of the stuff I would eat, but the vast majority I would end up giving away to friends, co-workers, the IT guys over at City Hall, and/or the woman who owns the local yarn shop. It gave me something to do, and gave me a way to show how much I appreciated the people I worked with or those who were putting up with my stress. ¹

The last two weeks, I’ve been feeling off my game. Mostly, I’m tired and unfocused and I just can’t seem to accomplish anything useful at all. It’s taken what feels like a massive effort to haul myself out of bed and get to work, where I get nothing accomplished. And then I have dance class or go to the gym or work and don’t make it home until after 7, at which point I’m too tired to make good food choices ². Finally, on Sunday I’d had enough and started thinking about how to snap myself out of it. While sitting at the kitchen table drinking my coffee and trying to make a list, I saw a bunch of very ripe bananas, and a light bulb went off. Baking!

Baking has many elements that I could use to yank myself out of the slump. There is a very precise list of materials that need to be assembled; there are specific pieces of equipment that must be used; there is a list of instructions that need to be followed; there is a time limit in which the task must be accomplished; and there is a reward upon completion of the task. A delicious, delicious reward (that I mostly give away).

Sunday afternoon, I whipped up a batch of classic scones and some banana bread (with the ripe bananas). Tonight I made dairy-free zucchini bread (because a co-worker is very allergic to dairy)³ It’s still a little too soon to tell if it’s working, but I have started to make a mental list of some small jobs that I can do tomorrow. Best to start small.

And have a slice of zucchini bread.

There was one memorable week where I baked three loaves of zucchini bread, two loaves of carrot bread, a chocolate zucchini cake, oatmeal cookies and chocolate chip banana muffins.
I realize this is probably part of the problem – and I’m working on it.
It’s the recipe in The Joy of Cooking, and it happens to not call for milk or butter.

End of the day

Rebecca — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 03:44:27 +0000

The nice thing about posting at the end of the day is that you can reflect on the events of the day, and draw on what you’ve learned or noticed or observed to add to your post. Or, maybe you’ve got something important to say, and you want to make sure you say it with clarity and forethought. You spend the day structuring your arguments and marshaling your evidence, and then are able to write something coherent and reasonable at the end of the day.

On the other hand, sometimes the end of the day comes really fast, and you’re not ready for it. Or you sat down to write and got distracted by Facebook or Twitter or YouTube or something, and then you realize that you are actually really tired and don’t have anything prepared to say, but you’ve got to say SOMEthing because it’s almost midnight, and didn’t you say something about trying to post every day? Oh wait, yes you did.

I realize I skipped last night. It was almost midnight, I was brushing my teeth and admiring the new and interesting shade of purple that the bags under my eyes have taken on, when it struck me I hadn’t posted. I did a really quick, almost throw-away post the previous night when the SAME THING happened, but I couldn’t bring myself to do the same thing last night. Ahhh… blogging about the frequency of your posting and blogging about how you have nothing to blog about. I’m pretty sure I broke two fundamental blogging laws, there. [1. Make that three - blogging about how you broke the blogging rules. Go big or go home! ]

Anyways… tomorrow will be the first day that I can watch the World Cup live and not live through everyone else’s Twitter updates. Slovenia/Algeria would be interesting to watch, but I’m aiming for Bosnia/Ghana, and Germany/Australia later in the day. (Originally, I’d planned to post about my soccer experience in my youth, but then, Facebook and Twitter and YouTube and something else got in the way.)

Ritual

Rebecca — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 04:03:06 +0000

This weekend, I was all set to write a post about what this year’s theme was going to be, as opposed to making resolutions. Sadly, on Thursday (or thereabouts), I was struck down with Braindeaditis. My ability to focus on important tasks was nil [1. While my ability to read reviews of romance novels was infinite. ], and making any sort of decision required at least fifteen minutes of navel gazing. Things that were at the top of my “To Do – NOW!!!!” list just kind of… sat there. Episodes of Braindeaditis always seem to hit when I have important deadlines to meet, and I can’t afford to sit around admiring the dust patterns on the stacks of things on my desk.

This is the conversation I had with myself earlier today:

Me: Um, Brain? Could you please pull it together? I have to finish a Very Important Presentation Including Handouts, plus write an update on the status of a Very Important Report That I Have To Redo. And let’s not forget the schedules that need to be examined.
Brain: Leprechaun giraffe sidesaddle!
Me: What does that even mean?!

So, making sense of anything is damn near impossible right now. In lieu of anything meaningful, I’m going to tell you about my new bedtime ritual. It’s all well and good to say that I go to bed shortly after 11pm, but all that means is that I make my way upstairs at that time; there’s still getting my pj’s on, brushing my teeth, remembering to go back downstairs to make sure the cat has water, going back upstairs because the cat is in the tub crying because he wants water from the tap, trying to remember where I left my book [2. Usually downstairs. ] and so forth. By the time I’m in bed and am ready to read a few pages, it’s well after 11:30 and it’s time to shut off the lights (and yet I read until midnight anyway.)

To cut down on the amount of puttering I do when getting ready for bed, I start much earlier. Around 10:30ish, no matter what I’m doing, I go upstairs and do the following:

Put my pajamas on.
Brush my teeth [3. This also means I'm less likely to snack right before bed because I don't want to have to brush them again. ]
Turn on the heating pad on my bed so it’s toasty warm when I get in.
Fill the humidifier and turn it on low.
Make sure the cat has food and water.

This way, when I meander up shortly after 11pm, all I have to do is hang up my housecoat and crawl into bed, making my reading time that much longer!