Back to Blogging

I haven't written a blog since Friday morning.  I hope that's okay for all of you.  We were gone, as you know, and then I just didn't take the time yesterday to sit down and write.  I guess today will be the day to get back in the game.

Mark was busy yesterday for several hours putting up our succah.  The holiday of Succoth begins Wednesday night.  Back in Maryland, if we were home, we used to eat all our meals in it for the entire eight days.  In fact, we would invite people for dinner every night, up to a total of 12 sitting in the succah for dinner all 8 nights.  Sometimes we would get invited to someone else's succah, but there were years when we literally served dinner for 12 at our house for all the nights.  It was amazing.  Mark would shop and cook something different every night.  Our fridge was PACKED with food!  LOL!  There used to be lots of young families with little children.  Then we were slightly older families with 'tweens and teens.  Eventually most of the kids went off to college and weren't around anymore.  Finally, we were all older adults with few or no children left to attend our dinners in the succah.  Sigh.

Now we are in Florida with new traditions.  Our backyard is scary at night!  There are all manner of critters out there who could come wandering up.  We also have no outside lights in the backyard, so we would only have the little "succah" lights (a few strands of small outdoor Christmas lights) to brighten it up.  In fact, we have not put those lights up at all since we moved here. Also, now we have a very small succah that barely seats 4-6.  The poles for our old, giant succah never made it to Florida in the move.  We still don't know exactly how that happened.  We have invited a few people over in the past, but since we don't want to eat out there at night, it just doesn't feel right. 

New traditions.  Now we will eat breakfast and lunch out there and maybe early dinners before dark.  This year we did not invite even one family to join us.  Sigh.

Today we have another busy day.  I'm driving up with Mark to All Cars to drop off his car for some work.  We can pick it back up tomorrow.  Then we are going to Beginner Line Dancing and then swimming a little while to cool off.  We will eat picnic lunches near the pool and spend the rest of the afternoon relaxing until it's time to go home for dinner.  Tonight I have a rehearsal for Guys and Dolls while Mark goes to the Travel Club meeting.  It's going to be a great day.

Tomorrow I will weigh in.  Yesterday I only ate 918 calories and burned 180 doing weights and walking.  Today I plan to eat only 901 and burn 758 in line dancing and swimming.  On the Fast Day, Saturday, I only ate 600 calories for dinner after sundown with no exercise.  I hope that makes up for the day before and after the Fast Day.  On those days I ate between 2000 and 2500 calories.  I hope it averages out for a decent week.  We shall see tomorrow morning!

Hope you all have a wonderful day.