Adventures in walking

I spent Saturday with my daughter and her friend. We started with lunch in a cute café in old town Redlands. While they got sandwiches, I ordered the three-mound salad, with tuna, chicken, and egg salad. I was able to eat about 4 bites of each before my tiny tummy filled. Luckily, we weren’t far from my workplace, so I was able to stash the leftovers in the work refrigerator to have for lunch a couple of days this week. This café also has a bakery with some of the most beautiful food porn I’ve seen in months. I got a sample of the chocolate cake in a piece about the size of a pair of dice, and it was paradise after the hearty lunch.

From there, we went to a bird farm to buy could get specialized items for our birds. It was hard not to acquire another bird or two, but our parakeets are so bitchy, we don’t need to add any more estrogen to their cage. The farm has a large walk-in aviary and lots of other places to see their featured feathered friends. An adjacent area features larger animals, such as goats and turkeys, that will eat corn out of your hand. Lots of walking.

After that, I took the girls to a deli market that’s been in town since the 1930s. This market features high-end cheese and cold cuts. We walked up and down every aisle, sampling the cheeses and salami and scoring house-made guacamole in the produce aisle.

More walking accompanied our trip to Petco for turtle food to take back to my workplace so we could feed the turtles that live in our koi pond that sits between two of our buildings. I miscalculated when I parked and we had to walk halfway across the campus to find the pond.

By then it was late afternoon, which means coffee time. I’ve wanted to sample a local coffeehouse that roasts its own beans. The bold roast didn’t disappoint as we sipped brew in the coffeehouse’s funky back room filled with quiet types hunched over their laptops.

The coffeehouse is adjacent to a shopping area of revitalized old shops repurposed to new uses. We strolled to a former department store converted to an antiques mall and explored all three floors.

Our final shopping destination was a fabric store so we could buy plushy flannel to make blankets for our Chihuahua. And we managed to walk every aisle.

You may have noticed a pattern here. We did LOTS of walking on this Saturday, and I managed to fill up with high-protein food. The next morning when I stepped on the scale, I was down 1.8 pounds from the day before. This shows me that if I were exercising all this time since I got the band, I’d probably be done by now. But I know I can’t work movement into my schedule because of the long hours I spend in my car or at my husband’s bedside. But, I also know that doing it on the weekend is almost as good. I usually have to park in a distant parking lot, and my office is on the second floor of a building with no elevator, so it’s not like I’m sitting ALL the time.

See you tomorrow.