Big Muscles

K,

My garbage disposal is being fixed at the moment! I called my Dad, and we tried to figure it out. My word, I even put my hand down there once and came up with a peice of metal. Finally we called the landlord, who drove out an hour last night to check it out. Such a nice man. Together we realized that the garbage disposal had imploded on me.

You ask, how can a garbage disposal implode? Well, we pulled out a few pieces of rusted metal, and then, eventually, an entire ring of rusted metal. You see, whatever this ring did (and I suspect it kept the disposal from leaking, as that is what the sink does now) it had taken all the food and water it was going to, and it had rusted away. Suddenly, that one day I was sending just water down? Too much! "No more! No more!" it shouted, and gave way like a confused biochemistry student with too many metabolic pathways to memorize. Then, the garbage disposal began to try and dispose of itself, to eat itself. Obviously this was not good. This is why it wouldn't work anymore. But TJ came, we figured this out, and he bought me a new garbage disposal, and he's in the process of putting that in right now! Which is really nice of him, since he had a family emergency today, and is busy with that, too.

Speaking of biochemistry, Karen, I'm a bit ashamed of you. Do you remember when we raced to put the entire metabolic diagramma pathway on the whiteboard? So you're feeding James lots of protein. This is good. However, he needs more than protein! I know you're giving him more than protein, but I also know James. He is not fat. I mean, there's that poster you have...with the unmatched socks. He's not fat. That means at the level he was working at, he had the correct sugar and diet level. Now he's working harder. He needs different levels. The body first consumes sugars, then fats, then proteins. Now, we know he doesn't have many fat stores, that's just his nature. If he doesn't have enough sugar, then his body will go right into breaking down protein to consume, and this isn't good. Remember the Atkins diet=starvation? His body will start breaking down his own muscle to get energy if it needs it. To me, it sounds like you're doing really good at getting him enough protein, but he needs more long-lasting sugars to get him through the day. Aim to get him on a mix of a swimmer's/Asian/body builder's diet. What I mean is this: swimmer's before a big meat eat starches: pastas, potatoes, things like that. Keeps you going for a while with long-term sugars. Asian cuisine, contrary to what you experience at the chinese resturaunts, are composed mostly of rices and noodles as well, also for long-term energy, with just a little bit of meat thrown in. Body builders eat meat, meat, meat. So keep him on a high meat, high starch diet. Dieters don't eat the starches because they're trying to dip into their fat stores to lose them, but James doesn't have the fat stores. There is a lot you can do with rice and a lot you can do with noodles. I'm not talking about pasta every night, just a pasta or rice side dish. There are entire books devoted to making purely different kinds of rices.

Then his body could use that during the day and save his protein for muscle building and not energy.

I hope that helps.

I found buttons for my cardigan! Remember the lace cardigan I'm knitting from Vintage Knits? I went to what I thought was a fairly large fiber and yarn store today, and it was truly just a corner within another store. However, the store it was within was fabulous! It had beautiful well-preserved antiques at good prices, which is hard to find. But I found buttons and jewelry!

The color is completely off. This is my bad camera. This is a gray teal color:

This is a royal blue color:

They are antique dyed pearl buttons. I think pearlized, but I'm not sure. They're not plastic, not bakelite, but I have a hard time believing they are actual pearl...maybe mother of pearl? I don't know.


And they're gorgeous! I also picked up 2 old pairs of earrings and a crazy necklace. I'll see if I can get some better pictures later. Maybe now that I have buttons, I'll finish the sweater? It would be really nice to have a light sweater for fall. It'll be my next goal! I also picked up some cotton roving to try and spin...short staple length=difficult, but I think I can get the hand of it eventually. I might make a mini-spindle to spin even faster! It'll be exciting. I'm dying the cotton now.

I know. I dye everything. It's just so hard to work with white...so dull, but so full of possibility. I understand about not getting things done. In the hour before TJ came last night I freaked and cleaned the apartment. Not my room but the rest. I've been trying to force myself to do that for a week. It's quite the quandry. Going to a picnic!

Love,
A