It's Show Time!

The Cove Singers have their performance of solos, ensembles, and choir tonight.  There is a dress rehearsal this morning at 10:30 and show time is 6 p.m.  I plan to stay around the Cove all day in between the two and enjoy the pool.  It's going to be 91 again today.

Despite eating mac and cheese and a gigantic salty soft pretzel for lunch and a pretty big peanut butter milkshake from Twistee Treat on the way home from rehearsal, I'm actually down another pound this morning to 285.  I shall not complain.

Gatorland was so much fun yesterday.  We did, indeed, see nesting birds, chicks, and eggs along with panthers, bobcats, thousands of alligators and crocodiles, giant tortoises, deer, emus, vultures, and so much more.  Here are some fun pictures from the day.

The iconic Gatorland much at the entrance.  Unfortunately, there was  fog on my lens from humidity, so it's blurry.

Mark's favorite exhibit is the group of four white alligators.  They are leucitic gators, not albinos.

You can see his blue eyes, not red!

These birds stand on the gator's back and move along with them as they swim.  Fun.

We've seen the Gator Wrestling show many times, but today's selected gator was quite feisty and not interested in cooperating.  Very exciting.

Breeding pond.  Hundred of gators and nesting birds are here.

Eggs.

Chicks!

Waiting to ride the train.

Ed and Susie in the seat in front of us on the train.

Love the shady porch for watching the two panthers.

He obviously loved getting his head scratched!

11 year old brother and sister pair.

Gator pile up.  LOL

Going to Gatorland!

We haven't been there in a year or so.  Guess we've just been too busy going to other places.  LOL!  Tomorrow I will post some pictures here from the day with Susie and Ed.  Originally, she picked this place because they had never been there.  Yesterday, Mark remembered that they may have recently  gone with some others just a few weeks ago.  i gave her an out to pick another place, but they still want to go back.  It's going to be a nice summery day of 90 degrees, but at least the true summer humidity hasn't hit yet.

As for the weigh-in report, this morning I am 286, which is just a half pound loss.  i could have done better, but I did have those binge-eating episodes.  Yesterday I also ate too much at lunch and dinner.  I ate at home, but I ate more than I should have.  I'm just happy that I can say I'm down a little instead of up.

As I wrote yesterday, this upcoming week is full of times when I will eat out, starting with lunch at Gatorland today.  It will be challenging to stay the same or even lose a little bit.  We shall see.

Meanwhile, time to get ready to go to Gatorland!

PS.  I think I forgot to mention that Evey and Eric flew off to Iceland on an overnight flight Monday night, nonstop from San Francisco.  They spent one night in a town near the airport and ate a great dinner and rented a car.  Today they are visiting the Blue Lagoon and driving around a bit and eventually checking in to another hotel for three nights.  What a trip!

A good day

Yesterday I did not record my calories into the phone app, but I did eat well and all meals at home.  I am down a bit this morning.  Today should be a good one, too, with all meals at home, so I'm going to be excited to report a weight loss for this week when I officially weigh in tomorrow.

It was also a good day yesterday because I won two games at Mah Jongg at my neighbor's house.

AND, it was a good day because the NEW Mahj card came in the mail yesterday afternoon.  It looks quite entertaining with a few of my favorites from the past restored and some fascinating new ones added.  It will be a lot of fun to play with it next time.

Today we have a long afternoon rehearsal at the Cove for the chorus/soloists show Thursday night. I'm not singing, just coaching and directing, so there is no stress at all for me!

Tomorrow we are going to Gatorland with the Goldbergs.  Somehow in their 40 plus years of living in Florida, they have NEVER been there.  That means we are eating a high sodium, high fat lunch out at their fast food place.  There are never too many reasonable choices there, but there's really no other option if you get there in the morning.  It always takes 4-5 hours to see everything.  We have to get home in time for dinner because we have the synagogue choir rehearsal tomorrow night.

The good news for tomorrow is the the weigh in will take place long before we eat out at Gatorland!

Unfortunately, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday will all have several meals out because we have dinner Thursday night at the Cove and then we are checking in to a Marriott near Disney for Friday night with breakfast and lunch on Saturday out.  We are also eating dinner out next Tuesday, so next week's Wednesday Weigh In could be sad.  We'll see.  Meanwhile, tomorrow's weigh in should be great!

Registering our car and playing Mahj

This morning we have to go to the Solivita Village area and register our cars.  The community is switching from a system that uses a transponder that is held up to a reader to a new system that will use a license plate recognition system similar to the toll booth systems.  We have been away or busy almost all of the days available to go up and register, so we must do it now.  This week, M-W-F from 9 to noon, are the final three possible chances.  Then we joked that if we fail to register our license plate and car then I guess we will be trapped forever inside Solivita because if we left we wouldn't be able to get back in.  LOL!

After that we are going to our Family Doctor office to sign papers to have our records moved to a new Family Doctor.  The old one is very close to us, which is why we picked it back in 2010 when we were up in MD.  The reality is that the office hasn't been that great.  There was a male doctor there for the first year that we didn't like at all, but he left and a woman doctor came in who we did like, so we just stayed out of inertia.  Then she left last summer.  We saw the temporary woman doctor for our appointments in October, and she was barely okay.  We didn't care because we had already made up our minds to move to a Family Doctor up in Kissimmee because she has received a lot of rave reviews from people we know.  Hopefully, they are right.

This afternoon I will play Mah Jongg with my neighbors, which I have not done in a month.  I'm looking forward to that.  Soon the new card will arrive, so this might be the last time I play with the 2017 card.

Yesterday the Winter Garden show, Destiny of Desire, was FABULOUS!  Every show at that theater is outstanding.  We have only one left for this season, but they had next season posted this time.  We have bought a 7 show season pass to Doctor Phillip's Center for next season, so we said we wouldn't buy the Garden Theater season. HAHA!  That thought lasted just until the moment that we saw the list of shows.  The final show of the season will be the live stage version of Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame!  It started in Germany and then went to San Diego and died.  It never really got off the ground.  Mark has been wishing we could have seen it.  As he said in the theater yesterday, he would have paid the price of the entire season for two people at the Garden Theater for just ONE ticket for Hunchback AND flown to San Diego to see it.  So....that made the season pass seem cheap.  LOL!  The other shows are Jesus Christ Superstar, Annie, Odd Couple (choice of male or female version so we want the female), Hunchback, and two unknown plays that seem like they will be very weird, one a comedy and one a Gothic drama.  Whatever....they will all be GREAT!  I'm very excited for another season of the Garden Theater.  Our last show is Into the Woods, which we have never seen live on stage and the reason we bought this year's season ticket plan!

I have not been paying attention to my diet at all.  This morning I was 287, which is about where I've been hanging around.  Nothing is official until Wednesday morning.  In theory I am eating all my meals today and tomorrow at home, so there should be a great opportunity to drop a bit before Wednesday.  As long as I don't over-snack at bedtime, I could have a good two days.  We shall see.  Binge-eating has been winning lately.  Sigh.  One thing I plan to talk to the new doctor about is if there are any new pills to curb appetite and stop cravings.  I have seen one advertised on TV, but I never remember it's name.  I also don't know if it has bad side effects or is too expensive or whatever. I'm not really a fan of wanting to take some drugs, but currently, I just can't seem to get control back for more than a day or two.  Well, a day or two is all I need this week to show a little loss by Wednesday.  Wish me luck!

Shabbat Shalom and Happy Birthday, Lowell!

We had a great dinner party last night.  Everyone ate up a LOT of challah, so there is far less in the house now.  It was a congenial group, lots of great conversation, just so much fun.  Of course, I ate too much.  I weighed 287 this morning.  I can only say that I'll try to get back on track today.  So far this whole week has been off track.

Tonight we are going with four other people to see the opera Don Giovanni at Dr. Phillip's Center in Orlando.  It is supposed to be an updated, re-imagined sort of production, so I guess that means WEIRD. Still it's one of my favorites, so it should be fun.

Today is Lowell's 38th birthday.  I can hardly believe it!  I made a photo album for Facebook this morning of some old pictures, which I am also posting here for fun.

Four generations.  Great-Grandma Eva holding baby Lowell along with the two of us  and Grandma Bernice, Mar'k's mom.

Why a cutie!

With Granddaddy at the farm in Weston, WV.

His Superhero phase!

Excellent big brother.

Maryland City Little Leaguer!

With his favorite character a WDW.

Part of a collage that I made for his Bar Mitzvah.

Ready to head to shul for his Bar Mitzvah.

Grandma Jack lighting her candle at the Bar Mitzvah party.

His high school senior photo

At graduation

With his beautiful bride Emily

My handsome son.

Binge Eating

It has been suggested to me that I get counseling for BED, Binge-Eating Disorder.  I never heard of it before I started this blog in the fall of 2009, but the more I read about it, the more convinced I am I have it.

Here's my recent example of losing it yesterday.  I programmed my day's food.  For lunch, I planned to eat 8 crackers and two pieces of cheese left over from Monday night.  I wrote the calories into my Lose It! program, and it should have been fine.

Well, it wasn't.  First, Rudy was working on the Ritz cracker box at the time lunch came around, so I took the Triscuit box instead.  First mistake.  Second mistake was not recalculating and reprogramming.  i just started eating them.  I then proceeded to finish the box, which was at least five servings or more of the crackers.  I ate my two pieces of cheese, but the third mistake was not putting the cheese on a plate and back in the fridge.  The big plate of cheese and the box of crackers were on the kitchen table within easy reach.  Instead of two pieces of cheese, I ate TEN.  And the rest of the crackers in the box.

At that point, I was out of control and finished lunch with 300 calories of Blue Bell Vanilla ice cream, two of the small half-cup containers.  At that point, my estimate was that I had eaten over 1,000 calories just for lunch.

Sigh.  That's Binge-Eating.

The rest of the day went better.  Breakfast and dinner were as planned.  I went out to the rehearsal in the evening and ate only my banana when I got home.  I took a fifteen minute walk in the neighborhood.

It is entirely possible that I do need counseling for this disorder, but at this stage of my life, I just can't bring myself to do it.  Possibly, I should have had that bariatric surgery earlier in life, but I'm not going to subject myself to surgery now either.

Guess I'll just try to get back on the wagon today and do the right things.

Forgot to write yesterday!

Yesterday was going to be my new weigh-in day because we returned from the last cruise on a Tuesday.  Oh, well, it will stay as Weigh-in Wednesdays.  Last Wednesday I weighed 288 and this morning I weigh 286.5, so that's a drop of a pound and a half in one week.  That's a decent loss, but I admit I had hoped for more.  Unfortunately, there was Sunday with two big meals out at Universal Studios, the party Monday night, and two meals out yesterday plus a little out of control snacking last night.  So....lots of sodium, obviously.  I should feel happy that I am down a pound and a half.  And I'm down ten pounds since I weighed myself last Monday afternoon when we got home from the cruise.

Monday night's party was great.  Rudy really played the harmonica fabulously well, and everyone loved it. As always, I ate more snacks than everybody else, probably than everybody else combined!  LOL! I'm not bragging about that.  It's something I wish I had more control over, but I think it's part of Binge-Eating Disorder, which I'm sure I have and have written blogs about in the past.

Yesterday, we had a huge NARFE board meeting at Beef O'Brady's in Lakeland.  For some odd reason it went for almost three hours.  Then we drove straight to the Cove for our tech rehearsal for next year's concert.  I'm only directing, not singing, but Mark is singing in the chorus but no solo.  It was a lot of fun, but it also went over time.  By then, we had to shop after the rehearsal instead of between the two events.  So, we decided to do the shopping and then go out to dinner.  So....yeah, weight gain.

At least today we have cancelled eating out.  All of my meals will be at home, and hopefully, I can keep myself in control.  I've already planned and programmed everything I'm going to eat today, and it comes to 1265 calories and 1800 mg of sodium.  Maybe tomorrow I'll be down a bit.  For the upcoming week, I'm going to be hosting a huge Shabbat dinner for eight this Friday, kosher sliders on challah rolls and lunch out at the Thai restaurant Sunday afternoon before the theater.  At this point, we have no plans to eat any other meals out of the house.  I'm hoping that we stick to that plan since I usually control myself a lot better at home.  I'm hoping to drop two more pounds this week.  I'd love to get out of the 280s within the next two to three weeks.  We'll see. Passover starts in two and a half weeks, and in the past I typically gain weight during that holiday.  Sigh.  I want to avoid that this year, if possible.

Meanwhile here are some pictures from Monday night's house party.

My friend Barb brought home made Rice Krispie treats.  Fabulous, and I ate four.