Rewarded then Scolded.

I love it when I'm rewarded for good behavior.  This morning I am down almost another two pounds to 283.3.  I did water aerobics class for forty minutes in the morning.  I ate only the foods that I had programmed, although that did include a delicious Shabbat dinner with wine and challah.  I ate just about 1600 calories exactly.  Wonderful.  Still have another four pounds to go just to get back to January 1 before  all the cruising started, but I'm heading in the right direction finally.

I programmed my new weight into the phone app, so now my daily calorie allotment is 1607.  That should still be easily attained.  As it gets down into the 1500s and even the 1400s, it obviously will become a lot harder.  Hey, I lost the weight in 2009 by sticking to about 1200 calories a day virtually every day, so I know it can be done.

Today we skipped shul after all.  We are going to Publix to drop off a large bag full of expired medications, both OTC and prescription.  Apparently, this is a once a year nationwide push to get expired drugs out of homes.  Happy to oblige!  I was surprised how many there were actually.

Then off to Sea World to meet our friends for lunch.  We plan to see the new dolphin show while we are there.  I'm not sure what else we might do or when we will leave, but we are definitely eating dinner at home.

Yesterday afternoon I shared several articles about the current political situation on my Facebook newsfeed.  I try not to do it too often, but I just couldn't help myself yesterday sitting by the pool.  Sigh.  Flyn took exception to one of the articles and made a reply.  Well, if you read this and you are on Facebook, you know that if you  make a reply, you should expect to get one back.  She and I then went back and forth several times.  Two of my other friends chimed in briefly.  She is a Republican who voted for Trump.  I already knew that, so I know our ideas are not on the same track.  Sadly, I did not realize how far apart we are.  She thinks I'm out of touch with reality and have lived in a "rarefied" (her word) environment my whole life so that I don't know what's really going on in the world.  I think her University environment is far more rarefied than my 37 years in Baltimore county public schools, mostly black with high percentages of kids on free and reduced lunch.  Not sure that qualifies as a rarefied existence.  Whatever.  I'm for social programs and helping people.  She's for stopping them and having people work for everything they get.  I believe the best in people and that it's only a small percentage of people who scam the system and take welfare illegally.  She believes the opposite and thinks that people who take welfare are all cheaters.  She hates the Clintons and would not vote for Hillary because she read a book called Clinton Cash.  It was written by the senior editor-in-chief of Breitbart and was soundly panned as promoting mostly false information.  I hate the Clintons, too, and did not want to vote for her, but I could never bring myself to vote for a con man like Trump. Wow.  I just did not realize where she was coming from.  Sad.

Resisted temptation

I am down two more pounds since Wednesday's report, down to 285.  I had two more perfect days, Wednesday and Thursday.  My calories Wednesday were 1611 and Thursday were 1197.  There was no real exercise either day. Now that I've programmed my weight at 285, my daily calories are lowered to 1618.

The best thing I did was resist temptation last night.  I went to the synagogue Sisterhood event, Bunco.  There was a snack table with everything I love on it, including Twizzler's, every kind of chocolate candy in the fun sizes, Entenman's chocolate donuts, a huge chocolate cake, and even Moscato wine!  There was also a veggie tray of broccoli, carrots, and celery.  Originally, I thought I had better not even walk over to that snack table, but there was a long break between the first round of play and the second.  I had already said no to the wine because I figured I did not need to drink if I had to drive an hour home in the dark, so I made a decaf coffee in their Keurig machine instead.  Then I looked at everyone loading up plates of goodies, and I loaded up a plate ONLY of veggies!

Yay me for resisting temptation!

Seriously, that kind of situation is usually my downfall, so I was pleased that I actually felt in control.  It was a good feeling.

Wednesday I saw my medical oncologist and all was well.  I attended the luncheon at the Italian restaurant with the Hadassah group.  It was very hard to estimate those calories, but I guessed about 1,000.  There were garlic knots in a basket in front of me, and I ate two.  The lunch was eggplant parmesan and linguine in marinara sauce.  It was so delicious, and dessert was a bowl of sherbet with a cookie.  I did not resist eating two garlic knots, but I did resist eating a second bowl of sherbet even though it was offered to everyone.  That night we had an excellent choir rehearsal with a new soprano joining and the Rabbi attending the entire rehearsal to work with us.  That was awesome.

Thursday I played Mah Jongg and won only one game, but I had fun.  Then I did some chores in the house, worked a small jigsaw puzzle, and did some reading before heading out to play Bunco.

Today my cleaning lady comes, so Mark and I are heading out at 10 a.m. to go to water aerobics.  We are packing lunch to eat at the Cove.  Mark will work in the library from 1-4 like every Friday, and I plan to play Mah Jongg between 3-5 p.m. as I often do.  It's going to be in the mid to upper 90s today, possibly breaking records, so hanging out by the pool all day sounds like a marvelous plan! All of our meals will be at home or packed to take to the pool.  As long as there are no slip ups over-snacking at night, it should be another great day.

Tomorrow we are having lunch out at Sea World with friends Barb and Al.  I am not at all worried about it because of the miles and miles that will be walked before and after eating.  Also breakfast and dinner will be at home and controlled. There are no other times that I'll be eating out this week, so I think I'll be down more than these two pounds by the time I report it on Wednesday. Should be a great week!

Another week has flown by.

Let's start with the weight.  After all, that's the point of this blog.

This morning I weighed 287.  That is officially a 2.6 pound loss for the week.  Two pounds a week is always the goal, so I am content with that.

Unfortunately, it's still half a pound UP from March 29, before Passover happened!  But it's close.

The good news is that I logged in all my calories in the Lose It! app on my phone every single day for the week.  I made some effort to take a short walk three days and swam twice.  On Monday I actually did twenty minutes of water aerobics and 10 minutes of laps.  For my New Year's resolution this year I resolved to move more.  I didn't even bother to say lose weight.  I say that every year, but move more seemed like a good resolution and easier to do.  I figured if I did that then I probably would also lose some weight.  Another good thing I did was eat every meal at home except for one breakfast.  Even on the few days when we weren't home for lunch, we packed a lunch and ate it in the car or at the pool.  We did not buy any food out except Wednesday morning's breakfast last week.  That was at Denny's on the way to take Frank to the airport because the morning after Passover there is never any non-Passover food in the house.  Denny's has excellent nutritional data on their website, so it was easy to know the calories and compensate for that meal through the rest of the day.  We also took a good walk that afternoon.

My calories for the week were as follows:
Wednesday  1572
Thursday     1542
Friday         1583
Saturday     1578
Sunday        1511
Monday       1404
Tuesday       1514

I was very consistent all week in the calories.  The Lose It! app gave me 1649 calories per day at the 289.6 weight that I put in last Wednesday.  According to the program, I can lose two pounds per week eating that amount.  Guess it's right!

I just programmed today's weight, 287, and it deducted 27 calories from my daily amount.  Now I must have no more than 1642 a day.  If I eat at home and stick to similar amounts as this week, that's not a problem yet.  As the weight goes down, so does the daily calorie allotment.  Understandable.

This week I have to eat two lunches out.  Today is the first one.  I am going to an Italian restaurant with the Hadassah group. It's a prepaid, pre-planned menu that will include eggplant parmigiana.  I don't remember what else comes with it.  On Saturday we are eating lunch at Sea World with friends. We will be using our free pass holder meal deal, so we'll have either cheese pizza and watermelon or vegetarian chili and watermelon.  I don't think either will be too bad because there will also be miles and miles of walking that day.

Yesterday we saw the new Disney Nature film, Born in China, and then went to Hollywood Studios for three hours.  We saw a preview for the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie and had a Fast Pass for Toy Story Mania, where Mark beat me for the first time ever.  Guess I was off my game yesterday.  LOL!

This morning I am heading out soon for my every six month check up with the medical oncologist.  I already got the blood work results back and they are excellent.  The tumor marker number is 18.  It must be lower than 38, so that's excellent.  All the other numbers were excellent, too, including the non-fasting blood glucose, which was 97.

Finally, we met the new family doctor, Dr. Dunn.  Mark had an appointment yesterday to discuss the odd headaches he started having in early March.  Every day it bothers him at least a few times.  He is now scheduled for a head CT scan next Thursday.  I'll put those results in the blog when we know them.

It's about to start a heat wave here, going above 90 degrees tomorrow and staying there for five straight days.  Not breaking records but certainly going to feel like summer!

Passover is over and Frank is heading home this afternoon.

The eight days of Passover concluded at 8:35 p.m. last night.  We went to the synagogue in the morning, including Yizkor service, and then spent the afternoon turning the house back from Passover to everyday.  At 8:10 we drove to Denny's to eat a normal meal.  Since Frank is gluten free, we could not go to any normal pizza places, which has been our tradition.  Last year we went to the local Pizza Hut because they have a gluten free pizza. It's a carry out place only and no one liked the pizza, gluten free or regular, so we decided to do something different this year.  Mark and I ordered pancakes with eggs for our dinner because we knew the pancakes would be cooked fresh right then, after Passover.  It was delicious!

Of the eight days of Passover, we went to shul five mornings and then napped, read, and watched TV the rest of the day.  On Sunday morning we took Frank out souvenir shopping, although it didn't go very well.  Orange World, where we went last year, no longer ships things, so he had to pick out only very small items that could fit in his suitcase.  Unfortunately, the first THREE times we told him that, he somehow didn't catch it.  He had a cart FULL of big things, hundreds of dollars of things.  Then we go to check out and once again remind him that he has to carry all of that home in his suitcase.  He was suddenly SHOCKED. "Why didn't you tell me? I can't do that."  No matter how many times we told him that we told him three times, he kept saying he only thought we meant the four fridge magnets he was holding in his hand at the time.

Yeah, 84 and 1/2, blind, barely mobile, and although he claims his hearing is sharp as a tack and he can hear a pin drop, he could not process the information that the store no longer shipped.

So Mark had to go put it all back and Frank started over.  He kept the four fridge magnets and got some small candy bars and pens, maybe $40 worth of stuff.  But then he made us drive to four other gift shops to go in and ask if anyone shipped.  No.  None of the gift shops on route 192 will ship things home for tourists.

World of Disney at Disney Springs will ship, but we did not offer to take him there.  First of all, it would be impossible to get him in there because it's such a long walk from the parking garage.  He moves only a few inches per step, so it would just take too long.  Then the store is super crowded, especially when we would have gone, which was EASTER SUNDAY!  Disney at Easter Sunday is as bad as Christmas Day.  We did not think we could maneuver him around and describe all the items he could choose from.  Sigh.

So that was Sunday.

Thursday we went out to the Solivita movie, Arrival. It wasn't as good as I had hoped, and neither Frank nor I liked it.  Mark thought it was okay.  It was a dark movie and the sound was poor, so there really wasn't that much that Frank could get out of it.

Friday afternoon Mark took him to the pool, but they just sat at a table under an umbrella and never went in the water.  I was getting a mani/pedi at the time, so I wasn't there for that.

Mostly, we just stayed home, napped, watched TV, and napped.  Frank naps a lot.  I suspect most people in their 80s nap a lot.

Returning home from Denny's last night, Frank nearly fell twice walking from the car to the house.  That scared both of us.  He is already talking about coming back next year, but I'm not sure he will be up to it or we will want the responsibility for that frail of a person.  I don't know what I would do if he fell and hurt himself while he was here.

Meanwhile, we are leaving soon for breakfast at Denny's.  We have stuff we could eat for breakfast here, but none of the bread products are gluten free.  Mark was going to make scrambled eggs with frozen waffles, but Frank couldn't have the waffles.  He could have eaten more gluten free matzah, but really no one wants to eat matzah for breakfast the morning after Passover ends!  He insisted we go to Denny's for breakfast, and he's buying.  So we will leave soon.  Then we will take him to the airport.  The timing will work out well.  His flight leaves at 1:45 p.m., but we have to drop him off by 11:45.  If we leave Denny's by 10:30 or so, it will be perfect.

After that, we are eating lunch out at Moe's in the airport, then I have to go to Staples to make more copies of synagogue choir music and buy some folders.  I have a new member starting at tonight's rehearsal. I also need to sit in the Quest waiting room as a walk in for a non-fasting blood draw.  My appointment with the medical oncologist is next Wednesday, but I didn't remember to make an appointment for today in time to get one at a decent time at a close location.  Sigh.  My fault, but there's just been so much to do.  I forgot.

And it's Wednesday, so the weigh-in report is ready.  This morning I am 289.6, which means I have gained three pounds during the holiday.  I guess things could be worse, but now I really must get back to normal and start dropping some of this weight.  The good news is that we have no more company coming until the end of June when Lowell and Emily come down.  We are going up north over Memorial Day weekend, so that might be a challenge some of the time.  Until then, I should be able to exercise more and eat less.  Let's hope I do just that.

Two seders down. Four pounds up.

It's amazing how much weight I can gain and how quickly I can gain it.  It's also now Wednesday, so it's Weigh-in Wednesday.  This morning I was 290.5.  Horrifying.  Now that the seders are over, I really need to monitor what I am eating and get out for some more walks.

We invited one of my choir members, Wendy M., to join us for our seder last night.  She made it so much more festive than had it been just the three of us.  It went really long again.  The second one starts at 8:30 p.m., but she was late.  We didn't start until 9 p.m. and ended at 12:20 in the morning.  I was so exhausted that all I did was fall into bed.  I didn't even clear the table.  We got the food put away and then went right to sleep!  So much food in your stomach and then go to bed.  I'm sure that contributes to putting on weight quickly.  I will have to clean up when we get back from shul.

This morning we are heading off to shul soon for the second day services. Mark is reading haftarah today, so we have to get out earlier than yesterday.  Then we'll be going to a play reading tonight and even get a part!  In between we will just barely have time to eat a light lunch, clean the dining room and kitchen, make and eat dinner and get out of here to the play reading.  If we are very lucky, we can get a little nap, too.

We made plague plates for everybody, a food to eat for each plague after dipping out the bit of wine as you name the plague.  I put what food went with each plague in the previous blog if you need to go back and look, but there's a picture of a plate here with other pictures from the seder.

I hope everyone who might read this had wonderful seders.

Table set for first night.

Our friend Rudy brought us this mole cloth back from Panama because he saw the Jewish star on it.

Jonathan and Susan Shapiro with Frank Pearlman and Mark.

Mark with Susie and Ed Goldberg on the other side of the table.

I made the chocolate frogs and they came out pretty nicely.

The plague plate of food for each plague was a hit.  Each person had  a plate like this, although I accidentally took this picture before I put the tenth plague on it.

Second night with Frank, Mark, and Wendy.

I had Mark take a picture from his end of the table to prove that I was also there!  LOL

First Seder tonight.

Happy Passover to all my family and friends who are celebrating this holiday of Freedom.

We got all of our work done yesterday. and even though it was exhausting, it is still very satisfying that it's all done.

We picked up Frank at the airport without incident yesterday, stopped at a few stores looking for parve margarine, which we finally found at the third store, got gas, and went to a Chinese restaurant for dinner.  Despite eating Chinese food for dinner, I am down half a pound this morning.  With the seder tonight, I'm sure I'll be back up that and more tomorrow morning.

Tonight we are going to do the plague foods again, although six of them are different this year from last year.  Last year we bought a plague kit that had a candy for each one.  Everybody had a good time.  This year we wanted to do it again, but we didn't think of it until too late to order one because they were all sold out.  Instead, we tried to come up with things on our own that we could buy at the store.  Here's what we have:
Blood:  cherry applesauce.  It's RED!
Frogs:  chocolate frogs that I made myself last night using a candy mold.  They look great.
Lice:    mini-marshmallows.  Hey, they're small and white.
Wild Beasts:  gummy bears
Pestilence:  chopped liver on matzoh crackers.  We are calling it liver disease!
Hail:  lemon ice pops
Locusts:  small gherkin pickles with toothpicks stuck in for legs.
Darkness:   dark chocolate squares
Death of the Firstborn:  cherry preserves.  That was what came in the kit last year.  We are guessing because it's red.

The only things that we were able to do that were the same as last year were the hail, darkness, and death of the firstborn.  All the others we had to get very creative about, but I think everyone is going to love it.

Tomorrow afternoon I'll post some pictures from tonight.

Enjoy your seder tonight.

Passover is coming.

I apologize for not writing a blog in nearly a week.  I had not even realized that I had let all that time slip by until this morning when I sat down to write this one.

It was a busy week full of meetings, rehearsals, get-togethers, and eating out.  My weight has fluctuated up and down during the week, but this morning I was 287, up one pound from the last report on March 29.  Knowing what I have eaten, I guess I should be happy with that.

And now Passover is going to start.  I never lose weight during that holiday. It's like being on a cruise on land, too much food and too little exercise!  The only time I did not gain during the holiday was the spring of 2009.  I had just gotten yelled at by the surgeon regarding my weight and his inability to fix my hernia until I lost it on the morning of the first seder!  I was scared, so I definitely ate less that holiday season.

Our friend Frank is flying in to Orlando this afternoon.  We will pick him up about 4 p.m.  Hopefully, I will  have the entire kitchen turned over to Passover before 2:30 this afternoon so that I can go to the airport with Mark.  If I don't, then Mark will go by himself.

We will have a seder for 7 tomorrow night and just the three of us the second night.  It should be fun. I enjoy the holiday and the foods once it gets started.  I just really hate the shopping and crazy stuff to do in advance to get ready for it.

And the expense.  I have often told people that we spend about $1,000 for one week's groceries. Non-Jews usually just do not believe me.  Well, I was wrong.  It's actually more like 9 days total, not just a week.  And it was OVER $1200 SO FAR.  We still have to stop to get more asparagus and a box of plastic cutlery today.

If you are reading this and celebrating Passover, I hope you have an enjoyable one full of great food and wonderful visits with friends and family.  I admit that I miss my kids more during this holiday than any other.  I really loved the holiday in 2014 when Evey and Lowell and their spouses were with us in Cindy's house for the first seder night.  Here are some pictures from that night.

Evey's birthday! Happy THIRTIETH while in Iceland.

It's a big day today.  Not only is it Evey's thirtieth birthday, but it's also Opening Day for the Orioles.  The new season has started.

We had a great time at Sea World on Saturday after Mark read his haftarah beautifully at shul.  A few pictures from the day are on this blog.

Sunday we did the first round of Passover shopping.  Over $500 for the first round.  Ugh.  Now I have the dining room table full of bags of nonperishable food that has to fit into the pantry somehow.  I guess that's a chore for this week before Thursday when Mark brings home the refrigerator items.  We do have the frozen food and cheese/butter type things already in the fridge.  I always hate getting ready for Passover, but once it starts, it's fun.

Today I weigh 286.5, which is up a half pound from last week.  I'd like to think I could lose that half pound, but tomorrow we are eating dinner out.  Anything can happen.

In honor of Evey's birthday, I posted a lot of pictures of her on Facebook. I'm including some of them here, too.

And last but not least, I played with the new Mah Jongg card on Friday and won two games.  I will be playing on that card again today!  It's an amazing new set of hands.

In the lobby of the Courtyard by Marriott where we stayed Friday night.

Heading to Sea World.  Nearly 30k animals have been rescued by Sea World, and they do not get enough credit for that.

Jack Hanna, age 70, TV personality, zookeeper, and animal advocate since 1973.

That's his daughter, also a zookeeper, holding a small spiked animal on the table.

Three baby cheetahs.

Hi there, bird!

Visiting the penguin exhibit.

Flamingos!

Mom and baby, photo taken by big brother Lowell.

And they are both still great singers!

Visiting Grandma Jack's farm in Weston, WV.

Always a fan of Chip.

Always an animal lover.

HS Senior photo

The beautiful bride in 2011.

Mr. and Mrs. Eric Gaertner

Having a drink with Evey as we cruise across Lake Tahoe.

Breakfast at Lake Tahoe just before we said good-bye.