I left the house a little after six o’clock this morning, I got home at 7:30 and finally sat down to dinner at 8 o’clock tonight. I have no idea where my day went, and I am exhausted. But it feels good, I guess. I feel like I accomplished a lot.

I got to work before almost everyone in the whole building this morning and had a quiet morning sorting through e-mails, voicemails and making my to do list for the day. There was a decent amount to sort through seeing as though the last day I was in the office was 11:30 AM on Wednesday morning of last week.

I was at work for at least an hour before I finally got around to having breakfast:

A whole grain english muffin toasted with Barney Butter.

At 10:30 in the morning I stopped for a morning snack, a 2% Chobani mango yogurt. At noon I went for my half hour walk. It was a cold, brisk day but it was great to walk, get sunshine and fresh air and catch up with one of my best friends. We had a lot of holiday stories to catch up on and we talked about the great food that Thanksgiving is all about… both of our Thanksgivings were immensely successful.

I had lunch a while after getting back from my walk. On Sunday I made a small batch of homemade macaroni and cheese. I made the mac & cheese on the healthier side. Low fat cheese, 1% milk and whole grain pasta. I added some great panko bread crumbs, too! It made for great leftovers. I had intended to start the work week off with an uber healthy eating day. Instead, I had a ‘healthy-ish’ version of mac & cheese along with blueberries and carrots to make up for it 🙂

Oh, but doesn’t that plate look good???? It was! I topped off the mac & cheese with some hot sauce.

Over the weekend I started reading the book Wild by Cheryl Strayed. I love books about folks heading out to hike the AT or the PCT. I also have to say that reading this book made me appreciate my lunch so much. Right now I am pretty sure Ms. Strayed is very hungry because her small camp stove isn’t working…. and I really enjoyed my warm mac & cheese along with the fruit and vegetable.

I had a busy day at work. After work I ran out the door with all three of my bags (my work bag, my gym bag [it’s too cold to leave it in the car during the work day now] and my lunch bag] in tow and drove straight to the gym. At the gym I did the elliptical machine and read Wild. For some reason I felt like I deserved so much credit for making it to the gym today. I really do not know why. But that is how I felt….

After 35 minutes on the elliptical, I packed up my stuff and headed out to the grocery store. I had to take a small cart through the store, normally I simply grab a basket. Lots of fruits, vegetables, a grilled chicken breast, yogurts, english muffins, Amy’s low sodium soup (2), a baguette from Seven Stars, and two frozen meals went into the cart [last resort]. Groceries came to $60 dollars. I think I might be able to get through most of the week with what I bought.

I then drove home, unpacked the groceries, brought in my work, gym and lunch bag. I begged mom to throw together the soup I had planned for dinner (she had to stir for 15 minutes, slice bread). Once I was clean, I headed into the kitchen too. Mom made the soup and I chopped vegetables, threw lettuce into a container, sliced up part of the grilled chicken breast and made a salad for tomorrow’s lunch.

We then ate dinner, watched Brian Williams (an hour and a half after he was actually on air – I love DVR!), I shopped for some gifts on line, drank some tea and wrote a blog post. Where did the day go???? I have not finished packing tomorrow’s food, and I do not know if I have the energy to. At least I am off to a decent start for tomorrow. Now just to organize the gym bag for tomorrow. I hope to get a little bit of reading done and I would like to be in bed by 10 o’clock. I do not think I am going to get any of my recipe cataloging done tonight – hopefully tomorrow.

I hope you all had a good day, too.