Down, Up, Stay the Same

Tourist Tuesday was great, and I thought I was making okay food choices.  At lunch I had the same thing I had the last time I was there, the soup and 1/2 sandwich.  The matzo ball soup is fantastic and I paired it with half a hot corned beef sandwich with a shmear of chopped liver.  It came with a lot of fries.  Then I had a big cookie for dessert.  Dinner at the Enzian theater included a cocktail, brie with toast, and a flatbread veggie pizza with apple stresusel and ice cream for dessert.  I definitely should have skipped the two desserts.  LOL!

So yesterday I was up five pounds.  That's depressing to be up five after just going down 8.5. 

Yesterday when I saw that I was up five, I thought it would be a good day, a day to drop some or all of those five.  I had yogurt for breakfast, did my 40 minute water aerobic routine, and lifted weights.  I had lunch out, a tuna salad sandwich and potato salad, which was the special at the pool bar yesterday.  Mark made spaghetti squash with real meat laced with beef bacon in a spicy sauce.  Fabulous dinner.  Then we went to a Shalom Club meeting where I ate two really BIG cookies at the social hour after the meeting.  Unfortunately, that put me in a mood to be craving things, so I had more snacks watching TV after we got home.

So this morning I am the same as yesterday, still up the five pounds.

Today I'm going out to lunch with my friend Judy P.  She's taking me to a place called Egg City.  I guess we'll have eggs.  LOL!  I have no idea what else we'll have.  Breakfast and dinner will be at home.  Who knows if I'll behave in the evening?  That's often a difficult time for me. 

Meanwhile, here's some pictures from our great Tourist Tuesday adventure with Susie and Ed.

After lunch at Brown's Kosher Deli, we went to The Art Center, but it was actually closed for renovations.

They told us we could wander around the outside gardens free of charge.

Then we went to the Winter Park boat ride because Ed and Susie had never done it before.

The lakes are natural and connected with these manmade canals.

The lakes are lined with huge homes and Rollins College.  Most of the homes were millionaire's summer residences.

We ended the day at this really cool theater.

We got some cocktails outside at the restaurant which is part of the theater.

We were allowed to take them inside to have with our meal.  The movie was The Double, a very strange film.

Here's to Tourist Tuesday!

Tourist Tuesday

Mark and I are trying to institute a new thrill in our weekly routine, Tourist Tuesday.  Not counting the Tuesday in Vero Beach, this is our first one.  It means doing something touristy in our state.

Today, after morning line dancing, we are picking up friends Susie and Ed for a trip to Maitland.  First stop is lunch at the kosher deli.  Mark and I ate there on the day we took the autotrain home from Maryland in April.  It is fabulous.

After lunch, we are going to do some museums and walking around in the area.  Then we have tickets at the Enzian Theater to see the movie The Double.  We will be having dinner while we see the movie.  It's a fun place, and it always shows movies that are very hard to find anywhere else.

Yesterday was great.  I sang with the Guys and Dolls at the Memorial Day event.  It was delightful.  It's so "home towny" feeling.  It was great to hear the speeches and see local ROTC HS students get scholarships.  Then I won four games of Mah Jongg!  We did everything we planned to do: sing, play Mahj, do water aerobics and weight lifting.  Rain was threatening, so we skipped the walk.  I got a bit out of control in the later afternoon and night time, grabbing two handfuls of peanuts and extra squares of dark chocolate, so my calories rose up to 1750 for the day.  According to my app, the exercise accounted for the extra calories, so I wasn't over my allotment.  I usually don't like to add the exercise calories back, but this time I was glad I had them.

I didn't put the scale away, so I got on this morning. I stayed the same.  I'm ok with that.

Today's calories will be ridiculous. I'm not going to try to record them in the program.  It's just too hard with unfamiliar restaurant food.  I will try to make reasonable choices and do some line dancing and a lot of walking around in Maitland.  I hope that means that I'll still be the same tomorrow. Of course, the higher sodium amounts could mean a brief gain in water weight.  I'm not worried.  I know that Wednesday will be another great day with all my meals at home, water aerobics, weight lifting, and walking.  Any extra water weight will be gone by Thursday morning.

We are also excited this morning because we booked our RT flights to South Dakota for our summer vacation visiting Deadwood, Mt. Rushmore, Custer National Park, the Badlands, and other historic places.  Mark and I have really been enjoying our driving tours of western states.  This is our fifth one.  We have completed our tours of Kansas, Nevada, California, and Arizona already.  Next summer is probably going to be Oregon.  Lots of fun!

Memorial Day

This morning I am heading out early to participate in the Solivita Memorial Day pageantry.  This was one of the first things Mark and I saw when we moved here.  About 60 members of Guys and Dolls and Starliters were sitting there singing all the songs for the different branches of the military.  I turned to Mark and said, "I want to do that."

Now I've done it a few times for Memorial Day and also for Veteran's Day.  There are a lot of excellent things about Solivita, and this is one of them.

After that, because it will be short, Mark and I will go to water aerobics, followed by lunch at home, and then Mah Jongg, followed by weights at the gym and a walk if it's not raining by then.

Good Memorial Day!

As for the weight, it's great.  I am 247 this morning, a loss of 8.5 pounds. 

I hope to have another excellent week, but there will be three lunches in restaurants: Tuesday at the kosher deli with our friends Susie and Ed, lunch at Egg City with Judy, and lunch out Sunday somewhere with Mark after a movie.  There will also be dinner out Tuesday at the Enzian theater with Mark, Susie, and Ed.  Many challenges!

I know there is no way that I can lose this much again.  Now I'll be happy to lose two or three with all these challenges.  There should be no reason why I don't do water aerobics four mornings and line dancing one morning, plus three days of weights and some walks. 

Meanwhile, remember all of our loved ones who have passed on and the soldiers who gave their lives for our freedoms.

Double Feature Sunday

Mark and I are doing a double feature today at AMC Downtown Disney.  First we will see Million Dollar Arm and then the new X-Men.  In between there will be about two hours, so our plan is to take the boat over to Saratoga Springs for lunch at Artist's Palette.  We might walk back if it's not too hot or raining.

Yesterday we went to the funeral of a lovely lady that I knew from Guys and Dolls, Chimers, and the New Year's Eve cruise on the Ryndam.  She was 75.  She has already been cremated, and the actual internment will be later up in NY somewhere.  This funeral mass and reception back in the ballroom was just for her Solivita and local church friends.  There must have been over 200 people there.  I have never attended such a beautiful and elaborate celebration of someone's life before.  She was a lovely, busy, tough, remarkable woman.  All who knew her loved her, so it was a wonderful day being around all of her family and friends and hearing more about her life.  Someone had made a great video tribute of her life to show after the luncheon.  Just incredible.

I have not gotten on the scale all week until this morning. I broke down and got the scale out of the bathtub.  LOL!  Mark his it in the big bathtub where I could see it but it would be hard to get.  Well, today I got it out.  I have lost weight for the week, but I won't report how much until tomorrow when it's official.  Anything could happen today.

I have also learned a hard lesson.  Do NOT eat so many almonds all at one time.  Thursday I did report that I ate a lot of BBQ almonds.  I did not report on Friday that I both went to bed and woke up feeling terrible.  My gut was NOT happy.  Well, I stupidly did the same thing last night, and this morning I have been paying for that mistake again.  I have been in the bathroom all morning and now my hemorrhoids, which have not been a problem for about a decade, have popped out.  Ouch.

This is just STUPID.  I need to go back to the caution against popcorn, nuts, and seeds.  I NEVER eat popcorn because it scares me after sending me to the ER once.  Seeds have just never been anything I eat much unless there's a few on a bun or in a cracker.  I used to stay away from nuts entirely, but little by little I have been eating them again.  Now, with these delicious flavored almonds in the house, I've been out of control with them.  I can NOT have another day like today.  Nuts MUST GO!  LOL! 

I hope I remember this the next time the grazing urge comes over me and the nuts are looking at me in the pantry.  Mark buys these fabulous blueberry flavored one, dark chocolate ones, and the BBQ.  Whoever invented these flavored almonds should be SHOT!  LOL!

fugeddaboutit

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, all perfect days.  Thursday?  Fugeddaaboutit.

Thursday started off very well.  I had a normal breakfast, and I went to water aerobics.  Then I came home for lunch, but Mark wasn't back with the groceries yet.  Because we were going out to an early dinner at 4 p.m. with the Solivita Disney Fan Club, I didn't want to wait to have lunch too late, so I didn't have tuna on salad as planned.  Instead, I had several kinds of shredded and grated cheeses on there.  It was delicious, but more calories than a little can of tuna.  Then I screwed up.  The old urges to graze came over me.  I found the bag of BBQ Almonds and started eating mindlessly out of the bag while I watched Survivor on the DVR. Afterwards,  I estimated I ate about four servings, 680 calories.  Then after all that saltiness, I craved a sweet.  I ate some dark chocolate and some Jolly Ranchers left over from the airplane trip.  All in all, lunch added up to about 1300 calories.  Unfortunately, that is my whole day's allotment.  Ridiculous.

Then we went to Disney's Hollywood Studios and met up with the club for dinner at Mama Melrose.  LOL!  I wasn't even hungry, but it was a Fantasmic Dinner Package, so it was a prix fixe type of thing: appetizer, entree, shared dessert, non-alcoholic drink.  I ordered the vegetarian minestrone soup, which was delicious but way too salty, as the appetizer.  For the entree I ordered the margherita flatbread pizza.  It was just okay, but bigger than I expected.  I took one small dessert and gave Mark a bite.  If you know me at all, you KNOW I didn't leave anything left over.  I started out not hungry since it was only 3 hours after I ate 1300 calories for lunch, but I ate it all anyway.  I was so full that I could barely walk away from the table. 

Geez...another failed day.

The rest of the time we had a blast!  We went to Muppet Vision 3D, the new 15 minute special 3D preview of Maleficent, Star Tours, Great Movie Ride, Captain Jack Sparrow, and Fantasmic in amazing seats with the dinner package tickets.  Our group was about 25 people.  After dinner, we stayed together with a few of them, including a new person who had never been to the Studios.  It was fun to do these old favorites with someone seeing them for the first time, especially Fantasmic.

You know you can tell you ate too much when you can eat at 1 p.m. then at 4 p.m. and nothing else the rest of the night, go to bed feeling full, and wake up not hungry.  At least for me. I almost never feel like that! 

Today I will be doing water aerobics again.  Then tonight we are going to see a production of High School Musical here in Solivita by a local high school.  Should be fun.

I have programmed today's calories, and if I stick to the plan, it will be 1100 calories, including a delicious Super Food Chicken Salad and skinny Whiskey Sour Mark is making for me for dinner.  Not too shabby!  I haven't looked at a scale, so even though I had a bad day yesterday, I'm hoping that the next three days will make up for it.  I hope to show a nice loss on Monday.  We'll see!

Wanting to know...

I'm trying to do it all right this time, so Mark hid the scale for the week.  I'm dying to know how much weight I might have lost in the last two days, but I will have to wait.

I've had two good days.  Yesterday I ate about 1400 calories, a bit on the higher side of the allowable amount, but I did an hour of line dancing and a few laps in the pool.  Hopefully, it was okay.

Today I am going to water aerobics at 10:30 and also to the gym for weights and a little walk past the ponds to look for alligators.  If I stick to my plan, the calories should be in the 1300 range.

As I said yesterday, the first day is the hardest.  I did not notice as much hunger yesterday as on Monday.  Today should be even better.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday had all my meals eaten at home and plenty of activity.  Starting tomorrow there are more challenges.  Dinner will be out at Mama Melrose's Italian restaurant at Disney's Hollywood Studios with the Solivita Disney Fan Club.  At least there will be lots of walking with that.  Sunday will probably include lunch out.  Restaurants and parties or meals at other people's homes are still my downfall.  I will do my best in these two restaurants.  I really want some weight gone before the wedding!  Of course, I've been saying that for more than a year.  That's sad.

Doing the right thing

I did the right things yesterday for sure!  I ate 1330 calories.  I logged it all into the Lose It! program.  I walked 25 minutes (15 after breakfast and 10 in late afternoon).  I did 12 minutes of weight machines.  I did 40 minutes of water aerobics and swam three laps right afterwards.  There's really nothing else I could have done.  Great day!

I have to admit that I was hungry and a little cranky and tired all day, though.  When the body is used to eating whatever and whenever it wants, it rebels a little when two hours go by and it doesn't get fed.  By 5 p.m. I had eaten only 500 calories, so I was definitely hungry.  800 calories came from 6:30 at dinner and then late night snacks.  That's something I need to work on.  I should probably have more breakfast and lunch.  I know I'd feel better all day, but I always crave snacks at night watching TV.  If I eat the calories early in the day, I'll be cranky and miserable between 8 and 11, or worse, I'll be eating more calories than I should when I start eating snacks past my allowable calories.

Today we are heading out to do an hour of line dancing and then a little swimming to cool off.  I hope to take a walk or two in the late afternoon or early evening, also.  I am planning my calories, and I hope that I stick to it.  One thing I do remember from all my years of dieting is that the first few days are the worst while the body tries to adjust to less food.  After a few days, I won't feel as hungry all day.

Time to head out to line dance1  Enjoy your day wherever you are.

Wedding Shower and back to reality

We finished up our trip to Vero Beach with a naturalist walk down the beach Friday morning before Mark drove me to the airport for a quick flight to Baltimore.

There were a lot of phone calls and shuffling of who was going to drive me here and there because I was supposed to stay with one friend, but that fell apart when she went into the hospital.  I ended up having Lowell drive me to almost everything and staying in a Laurel hotel on my friend's free points.  It all worked out very well and my friend is better and went home from the hospital yesterday.

I had dinner out Friday night with Lowell and Emily.  Saturday morning Lowell drove me to Rudy's house, where all my shower gifts were waiting to be wrapped.  Phyllis drove me to the shower and then she and Saul took me out to dinner at the vegetarian restaurant Great Sage.  It was delicious, but I ate too much at all those meals.  Lowell and Emily took me out to lunch Sunday at Red Robin and then dropped me off at the airport.  The flight was about half an hour late, but I got safely to Orlando where Mark picked me up and took me to dinner at Moe's in the airport food court.

It was good to be home, and I slept like the proverbially log last night.

Before I post some beautiful pictures from the trip, I will discuss the bad news, my weight.

It's so easy to delude myself.  I knew I was eating too much.  All the restaurant meals were delightful, but I did not always make good choices.  I had cocktails and desserts frequently.  I took walks, but clearly not enough to compensate for the food.  Still, I kept telling myself that I was staying the same.  I am such a fool!

The weight is 255.5.  UGH!

That's the highest I have been since last summer.  I was upset a few months ago when I hit 251 and then got back on track.  I went from 251 down to 232 last fall.  Now I'm at 255.5  That's a five pound gain for the week since last Monday when I reported I was 250.4.

None of this is at all good since the wedding is now only 54 days away.

Nothing to do now except my best. I've clearly NOT been doing my best, so I've got to change my habits.  As always, there are many challenges between here and there.

OK, enough doom and gloom over gaining more weight.  Here are some more pictures from the trip.

Emily was radiant at the shower, so I can only imagine how beautiful she will be at the wedding.

Emily and her mom

Phyllis, Evey H., Emily, me, and Kim

Lowell and me at lunch

The Happy Couple!

Last day at the resort, waiting to go on the nature walk

The naturalist, Barbie, passed around an egg casing from a conch shell

Mark and I are standing by one of the two loggerhead turtle nests on the beach.

Love this painting in the lobby.

Another beautiful day at Vero Beach

I'm glad I didn't bring my scale.  Although I'm walking a lot up and down the beach and around the resort, I'm also eating plenty.

We had another three or four hours on the beach Wednesday morning.  We ate lunch in the room around 1:30 and then spent the rest of the day at the pool.  Mark and I both tried the pool slide and played mini-golf.  Last night we had dinner at another resort restaurant, Shutters.   They had a white tile fish, and although we had never heard of it, we loved it.  Mark had it blackened and I had onion-crusted.  Spectacular. 

Enjoy some pictures of yesterday's fun.

After breakfast walk around the resort.  This sign points to all of the other DVC resorts, including the one I'm pointing to, Aulani.  Hopefully we'll be there next summer.

Lunch on our balcony

Mark loves these slides!

I made a big splash.

Mini-golf is Peter Pan themed.

Mark won by 2 strokes.

Dinner at Shutters Wednesday night.

Lovely tile fish and a glass of Riesling

Vero Beach is beautiful

Mark and I like beaches, and we've gone to many.  So why did we both get sunburned yesterday?  LOL!  Stupid.  I've had worse, and so has he, but we were still stupid.  I sprayed him, but missed spots. He's blotchy on his back today.  I sprayed my arms and legs a bit, stayed under a hat all day, and sat under my umbrella most of the day.  Haha!  My chest is bright red because I forgot about it and took three long walks up and down the beach during the day.

Needless to say, I have already put on lots of lotion this morning before I even venture out of the room.

Our room is spectacular, very big, L-shaped, views on three sides.  Spectacular.  We would definitely come back here and request the same room again.

We went to a lovely, hour-long lecture on sea turtles last night.  Loggerheads, leatherbacks, and green sea turtles all use these miles of beach along Florida's Treasure Coast, which includes Vero Beach, to lay their eggs.  This is the time they start coming up at night to lay the eggs.  Then the babies hatch 60 days later, late summer into fall.  We actually saw a marked nest yesterday on our walk.  That was cool.

There are also three restaurants, mini-golf, and a pool here.  It's beautiful.  And best of all, the internet is FREE!  I think the info we heard about it costing was outdated.

Here's a few pictures from the last few days.

On the way down we stopped at the McLarty Museum to see about this.

Then we went straight to the resort.

Beautiful lobby

View of bedroom area from the balcony door

Crazy big entrance hall, making the L shape with the bedrooms.  Mark is stocking the fridge with our breakfast and lunch food.  This just shows the place needs more furniture!

Dinner Monday night at Green Cabin with a pomegranate mojito.

Mini-golf has a small fee and is Peter Pan themed.

We went to the campfire sing-a-long.

Setting up our campsite on the beach Tuesday morning.

Fun in the waves and sun.

Happy Mother's Day and Kosher Crab Cakes

250.4 this morning, staying the same.

OK, enough about that.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Mother's Day; I sure did.  Mark made me a great breakfast of low carb pancakes, veggie sausage links, and scrambled eggs.  We did some laundry, packing, and shopping to get ready for our trip to Vero Beach today.  Then we headed over to Epcot for our last trip to the Flower and Garden show.  I had the grilled tilapia from the vegetarian kiosk and a mushroom/cheese quesadilla at the Mexican kiosk for lunch. Mark and I split a kumquat pie from the Florida kiosk near Germany for dessert.  It was hot and humid yesterday, and we felt sweaty and exhausted after the lunch.  Once our friend Barbara texted me that Chubby Checker wasn't performing, we bailed on the park and went home.  For dinner Mark made me something I had not had in well over 10 years, kosher crab cakes.  Mmm...Mmm...GOOD!  We had them with corn on the cob and broccoli.  Spectacular dinner.

If you have never had kosher crab cakes, here's the trick.  Get a container of Old Bay Seasoning and be sure the crab cake recipe is still on it.  Some of the containers do NOT have it anymore, so check.  Then follow it with two exceptions.  First, substitute a pound of poached haddock for the pound of crab meat.  Poach the haddock the day before or the morning of and let it get good and cold.  Then just flake it up with your fingers.  Works perfectly!  Second, the new boxes contain the directions to broil the cakes.  What?  I guess it's healthier, but the old way was to fry them in oil in a pan.  We fried them last night, but maybe we'll try the broiling another day.  Spectacular!  Crab cakes are not really about the crabs.  They are about the frying and the Old Bay seasoning!  Trust me on this.  Another perk to this is that haddock is a LOT cheaper than crab meat!

Today we are going to Vero Beach for four nights in an Ocean View Deluxe Inn Room.  We are also starting our trip with a tour of Sebastian Inlet State Park and the McLarty Treasure Museum.  Mark found these looking up stuff to do in Vero Beach.  Many of the museums are closed on Mondays, but these are open.

We are checking in after 4 p.m. at the Disney's Vero Beach Resort with our DVC points.  The next three days will be spent at the resort and on the beach, I hope!  It's going to be plenty warm, but the afternoon thunderstorms are always a possibility on hot days.

The internet is not free there.  I KNOW!!  What's up with that?  It's like going on a cruise ship, so Mark is buying an internet package of a few minutes each day.  I don't plan to waste any of them with trip reports or blogs, so you might not see anything from me for a week.

Friday, Mark will be driving me straight from Vero Beach to the airport. I'm flying to Maryland and will be staying with friends Rudy and Georganne.  Saturday is Emily's wedding shower.  Then I fly back Sunday.  I'll probably write a HUGE blog next week!  I'll have so much to say and tons of pictures.  Watch out!

Here are a few pictures from Mother's Day.  I hope everyone out there had a lovely Mother's Day as well.

Mark making pancakes!

Ready to eat and enjoying my bouquet.

My favorite spot at the Flower and Garden Festival.

Convention is Over, but we still feel in vacation mode.

Mark and I enjoyed the three days of the NARFE convention very much.  We attended all of the general sessions, 4 break-out training sessions (Mark actually led one of those.), and 2 banquets.  I sang the "Star Spangled Banner" to open the first general session, and "God Bless America" closed the entire convention at the end of the final banquet Thursday night.  I really felt honored to sing those at a state level convention.  I received a lot of compliments from many of the convention goers, but even more importantly, the lady who asked me to do this was pleased.  She is also the newly elected president of the Florida federation for NARFE.  Unfortunately, Mark was not able to get a good picture of me singing.  Oh, well....partly my own fault because I forgot to bring my camera, and the cell phone just couldn't capture it.

Yesterday we left the hotel around 10:30 after a leisurely morning.  We spent the afternoon at the Cove, working in the library for our usual 1-4 p.m. shift and then relaxing and swimming by the pool.

This morning we both decided we were still in vacation mode, so we are skipping shul.  We took the 15-minute, after-breakfast walk, and now we will settle down for some TV and more relaxing.  Eventually, we will go to the gym for weight lifting and more walking.

My weight is 250, so I was pleased with that this morning.  I just spent four days eating all my meals in restaurants, and I didn't always make good choices.  I ate both of the delicious desserts served at the two banquets, and except for some walking to and from the convention area and our hotel room, there wasn't much exercise.  To be down one pound after that isn't too bad!  LOL!

Today I feel in control and ready to behave and make good food choices.  I'm not sure about any days after that because there is Mother's Day, 5 days on vacation at the Disney Vero Beach Resort, and then a quick two night trip up to Maryland for Emily's wedding shower.  I will definitely record Monday's weight before heading to Vero Beach and then again the following Monday after all of that vacationing.  I'm hoping that there will be plenty of exercise on the beach to counteract some of the eating!  We also plan to pack our own breakfast and lunch food to eat in the room.  We will have a microwave and mini-fridge.  It will save money as well as calories.  

NARFE convention

Today through Thursday is the Florida State NARFE convention.  Mark and I are both going to be very busy there, and we are staying in the convention hotel Wednesday and Thursday nights even though it's only about an hour away from here.  Last year we did not stay overnight at all at the convention, and we regretted that on the nights of the banquets.  I think it will be a lot easier to change into fancier clothes and stay out late if we only have to ride the elevator back up to the room!

Mark and I also volunteered to help out, so today we are the Greeters on the 2-5 p.m. shift.  I think we will just be directing people to registration or answering questions.  I have been asked to sing the "Star Spangled Banner" this evening at the opening ceremonies and sing "God Bless America" Thursday evening during the closing ceremonies.  I'm honored and excited about that.  On Wednesday afternoon, Mark is leading a workshop, and it will be great. 

I do not plan to write blogs Wednesday or Thursday, but I'll check in with everyone on Friday and let you know how it was.

Meanwhile we had a great Cinco de Maya yesterday.  We shared two delicious entrees at San Angel Inn and some tequila.  We rode the Three Caballeros ride in Mexico and used our Magic Bands and FP+ to book Maelstrom.  We realized we had not ridden Maelstrom in at least four or five months.  It was fun. 

Despite a lot of walking around at Epcot, I am still up one pound today to 251.  I'm hoping it's just sodium from the lunch out.  Today we are eating breakfast at home, packed lunches in the car as we drive up to the convention, and dinner at Denny's after the opening evening ceremonies.  I hope tomorrow I'm down at least one pound again.

As we headed out yesterday morning, we were treated to a family of Sandhill Cranes.  They mate for life and have one or two babies every spring.  This family group had two babies.  They were slowly crossing the street in front of us, so I couldn't resist taking some pictures on my cell phone.  I couldn't get a shot of them all together, but here the pictures I was able to take from the car window.  So cute.