14 Pounds of Pilgrimage

I am packed! Here's my gratuitous photo of all my stuff laid out before it goes into my trusty Osprey.

Here's a close up of my favorite thing. It's the cover that holds my silk sleep sack. Now I have a little love letter every night. 

Don't tell my doctor. I'm wearing my pack, and it feels pretty good. I'm going to see how I feel after wearing it for a couple of hours. If that's good, I'll try a hike.   M a y b e,  I'll be able to wear it - :)

2 Fat Pilgrims

Early on in my training walks, I came across these guys. Then I started to purposely walk by them and visit. They make me laugh. So of course I found and ordered them on Amazon! The box had a name for them: 2 Fat Pilgrims. Perfect. Now they grace my front porch, and they still make me laugh. 

I lost my Camino clothes

It wad s time to start packing. I've had all the stuff that I've set aside to take lying on the spare bedroom bed, strewn everywhere. And when we cleared out the dining room and kitchen to paint, stuff when there, too. I got all my stuff back together, except for my clothes. I've been stressing about this for about two weeks, when I was coming down off my drugs and wanting to get back to normal. I woke up this morning about 5:30, with another place to look for my clothes. They weren't there. I re-looked everywhere. My bedroom closet was a mess. There are so many things I can't wear any more because I've lost too much weight for them to look okay (baggy on short people isn't a good look), and they were in piles on my bed and the floor. Couldn't find my clothes, Steve came in the room to get a shirt, pulled some folded clothes off his shelf and handed them to me: these don't belong to me, he said. THEY WERE MY CAMINO CLOTHES! I lost 50 pounds of worry just then.

My Camino has gone North

First of all, on April 25, I fell and broke a rib. I fell while getting up out of my recliner and landed on a toddler-size rocker made of wood, very. hard. wood. So what have I been doing since then? For the most part, lying around on drugs while my husband tore the rug out our living room and dining room, and then painted the dining room and kitchen. It looks amazing! - and that is not the drugs talking. I've slowly, frustratingly slowly, gotten better. Physically, that is.
When I fell, it seemed that all my excitement for the Camino broke with my rib. I didn't care any more. I realized I wouldn't be having the Camino I was expecting to have up until then. I had to make some changes.
With advice from my mentor, and a discussion with my husband, I decided to walk the Camino del Norte. This was the one I originally was going to do, and then changed to Camino Frances so I could do the more traditional, or common, one. The northern Camino doesn't have the extreme walk over the Pyrenees, nor does it have the crowds that Frances has.
Today I walked with the American Pilgrims on the Camino, Puget Sound Chapter - eight miles around South Seattle. It was difficult at first, then I felt really good. And being around fellow peregrinos was uplifting. I feel better now!
I've one week to go. Time to get in gear, literally.