Bless my heart...

OK, in my quest for quirky ways to get motivated, I've found www.flylady.com which is supposed to help me clean my house and improve my health. Cool, huh?

Anyway, May is move in May month or something like that. When you log in your minutes, they add it to everyone else's and tell you where you've gone. Cute, but I want to know where I've gone, not the 10 billion other people.

SOOOOO... I am walking to San Francisco. I can't find a cool Internet thingy that will let me pick where I live and where I want to go and let me fill in the miles as I go. Someone ought to make one of those. For free.

I have a map & mileage on an Excel spreadsheet. I am going to track my miles. Today I plan to walk about a mile. I think it will take me three years to get to San Francisco, but who knows, I might have some longer walks along the way. I don't want to blow my wad on the first day. :D

In other exciting news, I cleaned the bathroom while Gabe played in the tub. I feel soooo very GOOD, I think I'll take a nap.

A journey of a thousand miles ...

... begins with a single step. Or in my case, 5647 steps. That's what I ended up with last night. I took a few more before and after the pedometer, but that's close enough.

Part of that came from a quick walk around the yard at work. The yard is about an acre. The day was pleasant, the birds were singing, the snakes were still sleeping. I stomped around, aerating the yard with my red high heel boots. It was nice.

Last night we ate sour cream chicken enchiladas from a recipe I found on Cinnamon & Spice and everything nice. It was a big hit and has made it to the "have again" list. This dispels any rumors that I am on a DIET. I only use real sour cream. I do try to eat a moderate amount of the food though, and this was filling. With a nice salad on the side --- I had planned to serve a rainbow three bean + salad (canned yellow wax beans, canned green beans, canned dark red kidney beans, grape tomatoes, chopped canned beets over romaine & radicchio) but didn't. We were in the middle of a RISK game (with a real board and real people) and I forgot about it.

I also made Rainbo Gumbo.

• I started with the Cajun trinity --- chopped celery, chopped green bell peppers, chopped (purple) onion sauteed in olive oil.
• I added red pepper (cayenne), garlic, and chili powder.
• I added chopped chicken and chicken sausage. Andouille is usually used, but I was keeping the meat to chicken and shrimp.
• More pepper-type spice.
• Next, I added chopped tomatoes (I used canned) and okra. To make it a Rainbo, I added shredded carrots and yellow squash.
• Stir, smell, taste and... more pepper spices.
• I needed chicken broth to make the gumbo the right texture --- somewhere between soup and stew. The last thing was the peeled shrimp.

Note: When we put the food up, there was a good bit of broth. My darling husband put it in a glass & drank it. He said that it was like V-8 with spice and chicken broth, and that was what V-8 had been missing. I'm not recommending that necessarily, but....

Shredded carrots are a real go-to food if you are trying to sneak in veggies. They can be added to chili, gumbo, casseroles, salads, even pancakes (although that might be weird). Just mix 'em in. Carrots are a sweet vegetable, so most kids like them if they don't think too hard.

Today's walking goal: let's break 6000! I am sooo close.