You would think that forty minutes of activity wouldn’t be difficult to get, especially when working from home, but it is, oh, how it is. Forty minutes is the goal because that’s how much the CDC or some other health authority said we needed to get if we’re sitting for work all day.  I start work at 7:30/8:00 and it is still pretty dark. I get off work at 4:30/5:00 and the sun is heading down. My gym is closed, (Stupid Covid) so one has to be strategic. Like if I cut my lunch back to thirty minutes and add one of the breaks to it I have 50 minutes for a brisk walk. Then I have to find a time where I don’t have a workshop to teach, a student to talk to or another meeting to attend. And when I do all that, it’s raining. I know, I know, I won’t melt. But that’s still a lot of barriers to overcome for something you didn’t really want to do in the first place. It’s easier to just have another piece of pumpkin bread. However, forty minutes was my intention for the week, so I’m doing my best. Monday, I got out for a walk. Yesterday, I managed to get almost an hour of work done in the front yard. The weather looks great today so I’ll try to get out for another walk. Who knows, I may even jog a little. I’m just crazy like that.

I’m out on submission, so in order to stay sane and not cyber stalk editors or obsess, I’m breaking out my Save the Cat Writes a Novel book and plotting out the rest of my story. Sometimes plotting works for me and sometimes it doesn’t. Silly characters just go and do things that muck up the whole works. I’ve already got a solid synopsis, so I am going to go through it point by point and add beats and potential conflict. The plan is to barricade myself in the office for a few hours this weekend and see what happens😊

So far this week, I’ve made a turkey pot pie, elk meat chili with cornbread muffins and last night I made a simple pasta dish from a recipe by Gabriele Corcos, aka the Tuscan Gun from Extra Virgin on the Cooking Channel. He and his wife, actor Debi Mazer, recently moved back to his family’s estate in Tuscany and are remodeling the old farmhouse. I’ve been following their adventures on Facebook. Anyway, the pasta was just the right amount of everything and what a delicious way to get in some kale. Mom and I also threw together a roasted veggie dish that was amazing and a perfect compliment to the pasta. Here’s a picture I sent to my husband at work.

Obviously, I’m not a food stylist, so there’s that.

The nice thing about frontloading the week with cooking is the leftovers at the end of the week when I’m tired, though I do plan on making a white bean stew and a loaf of Italian bread on Friday or Saturday.

And you wonder why I really, really need to get in that forty minutes of activity a day.