Playing Piano

I am practicing a classical piano piece again. Wow! I haven't done anything like this in DECADES! A friend of mine is revisiting his flute after a long dry spell, so he is taking lessons and is interested in performing a few pieces publicly. A few weeks ago, we went to hear him play a couple of Teleman duets with his teacher. He sounded GREAT! The other thing about Jonathan is that he has almost no eyesight left. He can see some things if they are very large and very close, so he looks at the music briefly to study it and then tries to memorize it right away. It's such a hard thing to do. I really admire his tenacity.

He asked me a few weeks ago if I could accompany him on a Faure piece. I said that if he had asked in 1972, I would have said SURE! Instead, I said I didn't know. I took the piece and I have worked on it a half hour each day for the last 8 days since I got the music. I have surprised myself really because I'm not doing too badly. My left hand has sort of forgotten what to do sometimes. I can play everything with the right hand, but not always with the left hand and definitely not always both hands together. Of the six pages, I'm good for the first three but making plenty of mistakes on the last three. Still, he came over this afternoon, and we practiced together for ninety minutes. Wow! It was fun. I'm not ready for a public performance, but he and his wife are snowbirds. They are leaving for the north at the end of April and will return in October. His idea is to find some time to play this somewhere in the fall, maybe October. I think I should have it pretty good by then.

He and his wife are joining us for the first seder on April 6. I invited them to come early so we could practice. Hopefully, we will find one more time together before they leave. I'm pretty proud of myself for being able to come close to playing this after only 8 days practice. I'm sure I'll have it by October!

I went out this morning at 8 a.m. again and walked 39 minutes. I walked a smidge faster, too. I have tracked my calories on the LoseIt app for three days now. I'm averaging about 1400-1500 calories. According to this program, this amount of calories would allow me to average a loss of 2 pounds a week and hit 200 by October 13. If I don't stick to it entirely through the summer, which is a HUGE possibility, I guess I'll still have gotten to 220 by mid-summer. My doctor will be happy if I hit 220. My appointment with her is July 17. According to this app, I will weigh 226 on that day, so I think she'd be really happy to see that. Of course, there are LOTS of opportunity to go off track between now and then. I hope I don't! I really like both the RunKeeper app and the LoseIt app. I find them very helpful and motivating.

I want to thank Debbie and Joan, as well as Evey, for their wonderful emails. I found their comments on my last few blogs to be very helpful and motivating. It's heart-warming to me how many friends I have who care so much about me.

Here is a part of one of the emails:
Becky, I was reading your blog and I totally agree with your daughter. It is terrible watching the weight go back up and I only have your best interest at heart. So.... I am totally astounded at how often you and Mark eat out. With portions being what they are in restaurants, anyone eating like that on a regular basis can only expand their waistline (except for Mark)

And here is some of the other email:
I am so glad that you and your daughter have the type of relationship where she can tell you things, and you are ok. That is great to have that love and respect for each other.

I would add my encouragement! You know that I know. I think Evey's points about eating out are well taken, I know that it always affects me. Having to do so much work training lately and meetings with the clincal users, I still carry my lunch bag to the sessions so that I can control what I do. Because I know that I will be out of control otherwise. Even when I think making wise choices when out, the places and menus often fool you with trying to describe things in a heatlhy way, that really aren't. But that is another discussion. You do have a dilemma now that you are able and entitled to enjoy life there.