Wednesday news

Last Wednesday I was 262.5 and also the same at the doctor's office on Friday, despite weighing 268 on my home scale that morning.  The news this morning is neither good nor surprising.  I'm back to 268.  I have not done anything to lose weight since Friday.  I overate in restaurants, at home, and at friends' houses.  I did virtually no exercise.  So this is what happens, a gain of five and a half pounds in one week.  I'm not even upset because I knew this was coming.  I'm not whining about it; I'm just reporting it objectively.

Yesterday Mark and I learned a valuable lesson.  At this stage of our life, we can do about six and a half hours of driving and shopping before we just crash!  We left the house at 11:00 a.m. and got home at 5:30.  We drove up to a Winn-Dixie in Maitland for Passover shopping because many people in our shul had told us that it had a huge selection of Passover items, including fresh meat.  We ran into our rabbi and his wife as they were leaving, and they thought that it was a pretty good place to shop.  That raised our hopes greatly because we had a HUGE list.  As we got to the Passover section, we ran into two others who told us we shouldn't have come because they had nothing left.  UH...that's a completely different story than we got from the rabbi at the other end of the store.  We saw two other shul families also shopping, and they both seemed pleased with their purchases.

As we began to look for ourselves, we found they were all sort of right.  We did get many of the basic necessities and some meat, including the turkey, chicken breasts, gefilte fish, and a kugel, but we certainly did not get everything.  We then drove further north to the kosher market in Longwood owned by Frank's friend.  She usually works on large orders phoned in so the store is not well stocked.  Still, we found some more items, including ground beef, pasta sauce, salad dressing, and a few more things.  It still wasn't everything, so off we went to the Publix in Altamonte Springs.  We found the ever important box of egg matzah, a few boxes of frozen things, and other items.   Three stores, over $500 spent, and our shopping list only half finished, we headed home. At least that was the half that included most of the really special Passover items.

We left the Publix around 4 p.m. and found the rush hour traffic to be a lot worse than we anticipated.  We made it home at 5:30.  Unfortunately, we were supposed to leave at 4:50 to go to a NARFE meeting in Lakeland that started at 6.  As we were inching along, Mark called and explained that we would be at least a half hour late, so we would probably not come at all.  Fortunately, the president, Pat S., was very understanding.  By the time we got in the driveway and emptied out the many, MANY grocery bags, and put all the refrigerator and frozen foods away, it was 5:45.  We wouldn't have gotten to the meeting until nearly 7 because the GPS said it was an hour and five minute drive.  We were both glad that Mark called Pat around 4:30 or so when he did to give her a heads up to our plight.

Instead we had a low key night watching TV and eating a nice dinner that I actually fixed for Mark.  LOL!  That almost never happens in our house!  LOL!

Today we are driving about an hour north again and plan to go Total Wine and the SuperTarget, both at Millenia Mall.  We also have to go to Mark's comic book shop and the party store for special pastic plates and table ware.  In addition, we have a Living Social coupon deal for a frozen yogurt at a palce near the party store, and we have to hit the health food store to find Passover artificial sweetener.  This is a total of six more stores for today.   It's gray and rainy right now and likely to stay that way all day.  We expect another five to six hour shopping event, and it still won't be over.  This shopping will still not include fresh fruits and vegetables, milk, eggs, or other things that can be bought normally right before Passover on Sunday, but with any luck, it will include everything else from our list.  Passover is exhausting and expensive.  In the Baltimore area, we would still have had to go to a regular store for the fresh things, a party store for the special pretty paper/plastic things, and a kosher store, but each of those would have been only ONE store.  We would go to only three places and probably spend a lot less on the kosher items, not to mention the extra gas for all the driving around down here.  Yes, I say again, Passover is expensive and exhausting.