Quality Time

The original Sunday plan was a 6k Volksmarch up in the hills of Italy. It didn't work out because of illness, so I had a bit of a different kind of Sunday. And it was nice.

Penny decided to use my MacBook. Evil laser eyes aside, I'm relieved to discover she's a Mac, not a PC. Yeah, suck it Windows folks. I love Apple. Deal with it.

Too much World of Warcraft can break your eyes.

Even though my plans were cancelled, I still wanted to take Penny out for a 4 mile walk. She needed the exercise... & so did I. But Hermione, AKA LittleDog, looked up at me with that too-cute face & I felt horribly guilty for leaving her behind. She loves walks; the problem is that she can't keep stride with Penny. But I felt so bad, I couldn't leave her. So I grabbed her leash & changed my plans to a simple walk around the neighborhood. After about a mile, LittleDog needed a break.

Penny says,"Come on, keep up!"

Hermione replies, "What can I do? I am small!"

After a short break, we kept going & I had to make a decision: push it a bit farther or take Hermione home? I decided to push it a bit farther to make the walk "worth it" for all of us. I took us down a road that separates houses from farm land. I normally love this part of the walk. Even though it's right next the main road, it's so quite in Italian farm land! And Sunday morning was exactly like that...

And then I heard shots ring out. Yup! I forgot it's Italian hunting season. Hunters were out shooting birds, so it's not like any guns were actually pointed at us. Even so, I was glad Penny & I were wearing orange.

Hurray for orange!

About 2.25 miles later, we were back at the house. And Hermione pretty much collapsed. Penny still had some energy left, but she still took a nap. I had a doggie-free afternoon because of their napping ...& I took a nap, too. Then I had to get ready for dinner at a friend's house... where there was an early-birthday cake waiting for me!

Brown Red Velvet Cake

Let me tell you about my friends: they're awesome. They'd get together all the time for dinner, but I was never able to go because I'm so strict with my meals. When I finally explained why I couldn't join them, they started "cleaning up" the meals so I could join them...how sweet is that? So they asked me my favorite cake type & I said Red Velvet. My friend combined a few different recipes to try & make me a clean-eating Red Velvet Cake. But when you cook with whole wheat flour, there's really no way to put the red into the Red Velvet. No matter how many beets you use for coloring. And it didn't matter because the cake was FANTASTIC! Moist, fluffy, & cream cheese frosting...which wasn't clean, exactly, but entirely worth the splurge. It's simply awesome that my friends respect me & my choices enough to help me stick to my food goals.

Another weekend down. Next weekend, it's an actual volksmarch for Penny & I. And more orange. :D