Today will be a bit of a challenge

But nothing like yesterday. It's raining today, so I might have to use the elliptical instead of walking outdoors. Everything else is manageable, just as it was yesterday. Amazing how things work when you have both priorities and accountability. Thanks to both of you for being my conscience!

Ta da! Here's the bridal gown. The photo, of course, doesn't do it justice. You can barely see the layers of tulle overskirt. But I had to get it to the post office by 2 p.m. in order for it to begin its trip south yesterday, and I wanted to walk to the post office. Thus, the crappy photo.

Can you believe I wanted to walk?

I started sewing at about 6:15 a.m. and took this photo at 1:23 p.m. I then carefully wrapped it stuffed it in a Priority box, changed shoes, grabbed the Garmin and started walking. Fast. The post office is eight-tenths of a mile from our house. I made it with plenty of time to spare.

The veil was supposed to be a couple layers of gathered tulle glued to a purchased, padded headband. My fabric glue wasn't sticking and I couldn't find the glue gun (the search used up a precious 20 minutes!), so I ended up hand-sewing it at the very last minute. The veil was the first thing I started on, thinking it would take all day for the glue to dry. It would have taken a week; I think my glue must be 10 years old. (So why did I put it back in the craft closet? Why didn't I throw it away? Hmmm.)

And speaking of the veil … a quick-and-dirty picture. My husband refused to model it, but the chair didn't mind.

In spite of spending most of the day in a sweatshop-like setting, I managed to

• drink a gallon of water (supplemented with lots of coffee),
• eat breakfast and dinner (lunch went by the wayside, but I had an apple and peanut butter mid-afternoon),
• walk five and a half miles (went ahead and walked my usual four-miler after I walked to the post office and back),
• do my upper-body strength-training (squeezed it in before dinner), and
• journaled my food (right after dinner)

And then I went to a meeting last night. When I got home at about 8:45 I went straight to bed, did not pass GO, did not collect $200. I did read the paper on the Nook before I went to sleep. I love the Nook.

What I did collect was a good, good feeling about how I managed to stick with the program yesterday when it would have been so, so easy to cut myself some slack. It helped that I had leftovers in the freezer, and thus didn't have to prepare an evening meal. Believe it or not, it helped to have that water pitcher on the kitchen counter, as a visual cue to take care of myself amidst my self-imposed chaos.

It helped that my husband was gone most of the day. Heh. It also helped that when I got back from the post-office portion of the walk, I could see him walking about a quarter-mile ahead of me on the road. I decided instead of turning into the driveway and saying 1.6 miles was enough, I'd just try to catch up with him, which I did about a mile later.

It actually helped to have this last-minute deadline, as the rest of this week is pretty full and I might be going out of town next week. I guess, in the end, it all worked out the way it was supposed to.

As it always does.