I may be tacky, but I won't be fat.

My newest exercise chart, the 28-mile Duel, is hand-drawn and admittedly tacky. But I needed motivation and my stickers were packed away safely in the POD. I'm the queen of sticker charts, so I felt slightly handicapped without those stupid smiley faces or colored stars I love to have dotting my walls with just the right kind of tack. All we had to work with here was a tear-out book of half-size green paper and a few pens. Twenty-eight miles was the magical amount I could fit on the page. The main thing to note in the photo here is that I'm kicking the crap out of George, and it was his idea. Ha. I've been running four times and am already back up to 2-mile jaunts, which makes me very, very pleased. Next week, three miles. Maybe.

The house thing has been moving along at a snail's pace. We packed away most of our tax information, not even thinking we might need it to secure our next mortgage. Now we've been calling employers to have W-2 statements re-issued because of our mistake. Oops. Hopefully we'll get that wrapped up this week or I'm afraid for us. While we were slacking away, the current homeowner completed a termite inspection and we're cheerfully free of those. We have a fumigation planned for the day we take possession, and a lawn treatment to give our favorite fleas a quick death. When we did inspection, we noticed there were spider traps throughout the house and yet, despite the traps, webbing was everywhere. This being the land of the brown recluse, we decided pest patrol is in order.

Last weekend, we ran off to Kansas City again, loads of laundry in tow, to see friends. We ended up meeting a few more people than initially planned — which was even better! — and had dinner in Westport with five college pals, followed by movies. I saw and sang along with "Mama Mia" which I mostly liked, with my friend Janelle, who was nice enough to see it a second time with me. Meanwhile the five boys watched "Pineapple Express." Since "Mama" was done first, we snuck in and watched the last half hour of "Pineapple," which was violent in a funny way but also quite disgusting. The last scene is basically a recap of the entire movie, so I felt like I watched the whole thing. The one reason I didn't want to see "Pineapple Express" is that I adore James Franco and feared this role would ruin him for me. It did, but no more than "Mama Mia" will ruin Pierce Brosnan for everyone.

This adorable woman at George's office gave me the nicest present ever last week — a container of fresh-cut herbs from her garden. I have spent a bit of time finding recipes this week, aiming to use up the lovely basil, parsley, oregano, thyme, tarragon, sage and mint she sent over. Other than caprese salad, which I've made nonstop with the tomatoes she sent recently (love her!), I'm open to any and all ideas.