Mexico

Walking
My weight remains stubbornly high. However, I can tell shapes are a changin', things are shifting about, and my arm fat and belly fat are lessening, so I'm happy (enough). I seriously doubt I have any chance of hitting my goal of a 20 lb loss and giving myself that little reward I had in mind, but that's OK. I'm happy I'm being active and motivated to be healthy. I feel much better, so even if that number doesn't change as much as I'd like, I'm OK.

On today's walk, I ran portions of it and that felt good. I have no plans to eventually make my daily walk a daily run. I can see myself walking and tossing some running in there when I feel like it, but a successful walk will be just that: a walk. I think my pace, distance, the terrain combined are aggressive enough for me to consider it a good daily workout.

Packing and Mexico
I just finished most of my packing for Mexico since we leave tomorrow. Each time we leave, I'm convinced this will be the last visit of lugging down a bunch of stuff to leave at the casa, but that's yet to be true. At least this time we have packed in such a way that we'll be able to do carry-on only on the way back.

I incorrectly thought that the flight schedule was the same as the February one. I was wrong. It's the 6:55 am flight out of Portland. Then, on the way back, we have a 5 hours layover in LA. Ah well, one should not complain about bad connections when going on a vacation. Plus I'm just grateful I've figured out that it makes absolutely no difference whether I try to go to bed early or go to bed late the night before an early flight. It sucks royally either way, so I might as well just do whatever I feel like.

Mom's back!
I picked Mom up from the airport on Thursday night. Then I treated her to a lovely dinner at ... wait for it ... IKEA! Because that's the kind of stellar daughter I am. I think she had a lovely time in Colorado, but I guess she'll blog about it eventually. *Ahem!*

Barkley is happy she's back and I'm happy to no longer be walking Barkley. Which is funny because Barkley is WAY easier to walk than were Turtle and Eddie, at least when I walked the two of them together. One of the reasons Barkley is easy to walk is that he walks at a leisurely(ish) pace, so there's (usually) no pulling on the leash. The problem with this, for me, is that I then start to slow my pace and that's not as good of a workout for me. Barkley also likes to stop and smell the roses. I'm not a stop and smell the roses kind of person. I'm a run past those suckers and get back onto the couch where I belong kind of person. The fact that he likes to stop meant that I would break concentration when walking and then it was just harder for me mentally. Hmmm, this is all taking me back to my dog walk hey days where I'd do a big ass post about walking the dogs and think that was totally normal for this to be my entire world. I am one to document the small details of life.

It's also nice that Mom will be here while we're gone. It makes it easier knowing the house is in good hands. Not that it was difficult leaving the house before, but it's a level of comfort knowing she'll be here.