Vacation Results

 We just returned home from a visit to children and grandchildren in the midwest.

I gained weight.

That's to be expected - these trips invariably involve doing an awful lot of NOTHING. When I'm home, I have my Wii Fit to do, and I guess I do a lot more moving around than I realize. I know this, because when visiting family, I end up in pain from sitting. It's the arthritis - lack of movement causes everything to stiffen up. I sit so much on these trips, that sometimes I end up in tears at night, at just the thought of laying in bed for several hours.

Sleep is out of the question. And the plane ride home is a nightmare.

We did take a walk one day, but with snow, and temps in the teens or lower, outside activities didn't happen much.

But it's over, and I'm on the road to recovery. And back to eating vegetables and other Real Food. I did have some vegetables on this trip, because I ordered a veggie omelet for breakfast twice. That was my vegetable allotment for the day, except for the day I cooked spaghetti for everyone, and steamed a big batch of spinach. When we got home yesterday, we had a bowl of homemade potato soup loaded with greens: spinach and kale torn into little pieces and simmered in the soup.

Then we celebrated a late Valentine's Day by having a bit of chocolate cheesecake, followed by a glass of absinthe, properly diluted with ice water until it was cloudy.

It all works out.

Running behind

People are finding "Meals by Marlene" and I'm quite happy about that! Welcome to all my new clients and almost-clients! I hope your dinners and breakfasts add happiness to your days!

This means that I'm busier than ever, and with my new writing "career" demanding that I sit down occasionally and write, darn it - well, I'm spinning in circles, right now! I hope everyone will be patient with me.

I've often wished the Earth spun a little more slowly and gave us longer days. Spring is one of the worst times for this, because while the days are getting longer, they still aren't long enough.

On a typical non-cook day, I get five minutes with the newspaper in the morning, ten minutes in the garden, 30 minutes to exercise (which I haven't done yet, today), blog entries, responding to other people's blog entries, paperwork for upcoming cook days, networking meetings, updating my website (yes, I hear you calling for attention, I hear you!), bookkeeping, working with the board of my professional businesswomen's group, and I haven't even started working on the writing side of things.

I'm having a blast. But with all the kids grown up and gone, and college finished, and no full-time job for four years - I've forgotten how to be organized. You can say I've gotten lazy, but I might raise an eyebrow at that. I think I'm disorganized. I know how to fix that and I'm working on it.

But it would sure help to have a few more hours everyday.