Three Happy Things

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm feeling a lot better this morning than I was yesterday or the day before. I know we still need to be patient, but I am feeling more and more confident that we'll have a good outcome.

To keep my mood up, I've been trying to focus on good, happy things as much as possible this week. It's Thursday, so I'm joining Carole and friends with three things that have been improving my mood this week.

1. Daily exercise
I will fully admit that I've been consuming more junk food the past several days (whose idea was it to have Election Day fall right after Halloween?!), but I've also been making a point to get out and exercise just about every day. I have been trying to keep up with my running and generally do a schedule of run two days, walk one day, which my knees seem to appreciate. We all know exercise is important in general, but I've found that it really makes a difference in reducing my stress level and improving my sleep. I guess I really did a good job of it on Tuesday -- this is what my FitBit recorded:

I normally get about 12K steps per day lately, so that was a really surprising number to me!

2. Good weather
This time of year is when I start to feel the effects of seasonal affective disorder because the days are shorter and are more likely to be gloomy. Last week was definitely a gloomy one. But this week has been fantastic -- it's not only sunny, it's unseasonably warm!

Look at that weekend forecast! We haven't seen my in-laws in a while because it hasn't been warm or dry enough to be outside, but it looks like we'll definitely be able to manage a get-together this weekend.

3.  Design inspiration
Yesterday morning I made the point of listening to knitting podcasts while I was out on my walk (I also listen to a number of non-knitting podcasts that tend to be longer and thus often accompany me when I exercise). I wanted to focus on happy stuff, and knitting is definitely happy stuff. All that knitting talk got me really excited about starting a design I've been thinking about for a while, so when I came home I dug these two skeins out of my stash:

These are from Marianated Yarns, and I'm planning to use them for a brioche cowl. Yesterday I also realized I could do a hat to match. I'm not sure I can get both items out of these two skeins, but nevertheless I am excited to get going. So far I've restrained myself from winding the yarn (because I really want to finish my sweater before starting something new), but depending on how the day goes I might break down and do it later today.

I hope you can find some happy things to distract you from the waiting and the stress of uncertainty today. Keep breathing, friends! I think we're almost there!