not so good yesterday

I got off the ship on Sunday and felt in complete control over my food for four straight days.  Then yesterday, day five, I lost it.  Food won.  I had a sensible, small breakfast and then went to our buffet meeting.  I made a salad with a hard boiled egg, lots of fresh lo-cal veggies, some shredded cheddar, a little carrot slaw, and about quarter cup of what I thought was tuna salad.  That turned out to be chicken salad, but that's another story!  I also had about 3 ounces of baked fish, about half a cup of macaroni and cheese, and a little bit of cooked carrots.  For dessert I took a scoop of sugar-free chocolate mousse and about one bite each of banana pudding and tapioca pudding.  It didn't seem like such a bad lunch until I tried to estimate the calories later and came up with about 1100.

Hm...it adds up so fast!

Then dinner was fine, one piece of Mark's home-made deep dish pizza, 320 calories, but I had a nice green salad with it that I put way too much grated Parmesan on.  THEN, I got really out of control.  We went to the movie at the ballroom where they give out free popcorn. I should not eat the popcorn  because once it gave me a flare up of diverticulitis and sent me to the ER, and yet I took a container of it and ate it all.  It was so salty that it was ridiculous.  THEN, I went home.  At that point I was out of control and just looking to graze.  I ate two chocolate covered caramels, three double stuff Oreos, and a banana.  At least I did try to log everything in.  With no exercise whatsoever except walking around the grocery store, my calories were in the neighborhood of 2300 and over my allotment by about 700.  Ridiculous.  I know when I'm out of control, but it's so hard to put on the breaks.

My weight this morning was only up half a pound, which I'm hoping is the huge amount of sodium in the day.  If I can get back on track today, I will have a good day. I have already logged in everything I plan to eat for every meal and snack.  It should come to 1331.  Plus there will be weight lifting and a 20 minute walk, burning 126 calories, making me under my allotment today by 408 calories.  Now I just have to be sure I am IN CONTROL and do not stray from the plan.

Now back to the cruise.  After St. Lucia, we had our overnight stop in Barbados.  The first day was Easter Sunday, and most things in Barbados were closed that day, including the Harrison Caves.  That meant our shore excursion for the day had been bumped over to the next day. We did it on Monday, but they had not given us any notice that they did that.  We had purchased it online about five weeks before the cruise, so in our opinion it should not have been allowed to be purchased for that day.  Well, we only noticed the error the evening before because we usually get our shore excursion tickets out the night before to check on the meeting time and place.  That's when we realized that our Harrison's Cave ticket was now on the same day and time as our Beach Excursion, previously purchased for Monday.  Ridiculous!  Why would they give you two for the same day and time???  We were pretty pissed.  So we went to the Shore Excursion desk to try to switch the beach day to Easter Sunday and accept the Cave excursion for Monday.  Well, it was too late to do that now.  So they refunded our money for the beach day and we went to the Caves.  On Easter Sunday, we just stayed on the ship all day and enjoyed its amenities. It was still a pleasant day.

Instead of going on shore on Easter Sunday, we enjoyed the ship.  Mark and I were part of the crowd of THREE in the movie.  We  saw a movie called Suffragette.  Meryl Streep was in it.  Very good film.

Then I read my book on the balcony while Mark took himself on the self-guided art tour with the iPad.  Here is one of the pieces he saw.

That night Rock City was the big production show.

Here's my choir director, Rachel, belting out a song.

On Monday we went on shore.

The Harrison's Caves are unique in that they you can ride through them in a tram.

The spots on my shirt are water dripping down on me as we rode through.

These are the trams that take you into the caves.  It was a very unique cave experience.

After the caves, we went up to a beautiful place that used to be a sugar plantation, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.  There is nothing off Mark's shoulders until you reach Africa, 4,000 miles away.

We shared a shot of Mount Gay rum, which was surprisingly smooth.

Back on the ship, we explored deck 15.  We found this little table and chairs on a landing at the back of the ship between decks 14 and 15, so we sat and enjoyed the view for awhile.

On deck 15 on these Solstice class ships is a genuine lawn.  They actually cut this grass every day.