Good morning, Baltimore!

We had a very lovely train ride up on Wednesday.  Everything was so smooth, and we came in ahead of schedule.  We even had a a bonus feature because when we got to the train station our friends Ralph and Phyllis Mollerick were there.  We spent the hour or so waiting to board having a fun time chatting with them.  We said our good-byes when it was time to board and went to our sleeper car.  It was a smooth train ride, great dinner.  We slept well.  I ate what I was supposed to.

The train arrived early yesterday morning. and even though our car came out as one of the final ten, it was only 9:15 a.m.  We did a little shopping at the Shopper's Food Warehouse across from the train and the kosher grocery store in Silver Spring then pulled into Cindy's driveway at 12:15.  That was the earliest we ever got to Cindy's house.  So very, very nice.

At that point we just jumped in to unpacking, eating lunch, paying bills, balancing checkbooks, taking naps, and generally getting all settled in.  Cindy's house is surely our home away from home, or as she said to us last week in an email "mi casa es su casa." She's not even here as she's visiting Jackie in WV right now.

Today we are doing a little Walmart run after breakfast and a few more little chores in the house.  With any luck, Cindy will return in the afternoon from her trip out to WV in time to see us before we head over to Lowell and Emily's house for dinner.  She will be gone again to Ken's house for the weekend before we get back from dinner. We won't see her again until we return from the cruise, so we might miss her until the 21st if she doesn't make it back by 5 p.m. today.  We are hoping she can make it back in time.

I did pack my scale, but I'm not happy with what I saw.  Last Friday I reported 260, a very happy five pounds down.  Then I reported every blog that I was holding steady on a plateau.  Actually I didn't write  down the fact that Wednesday morning before heading out to the train, I was down one to 259, so being 261 this morning is extra frustrating.  But there it is anyway.  My weight this morning is 261, an official gain of one pound for the week.

As an average, though, last week I lost five, then gained one this week, so I have averaged a two pound loss for the past two weeks.  Any weight loss group support system like Weight Watchers would be cheering me on. So I'm trying to cheer myself on.  Yay me.

The mentally sick me who does not have a normal relationship with food or weight is sitting here getting depressed over tracking every calorie, eating the exact amount allowed on my LoseIt app, and gaining two pounds in two days.  I just shouted and raged at Mark, who is not the source of my rage but takes it well anyway, that if I'm going to gain weight I'd just as soon do it by eating a big bag of Doritos and have a good time.  lol  Just joking.  Maybe tomorrow morning the pounds will be gone.  It might be the sodium from the Bacos on my salad last night.  I haven't had any Bacos in a long while.

Tonight we agreed with Lowell and Emily to make Shabbat dinner a healthy one.  We bought what looks to be very healthy, very bland chicken breast cutlets with no sauce or breading or anything.  Each cutlet is about 4 ounces.  We also bought something called a deli wrap that looked like a pastry roll up filled with corned beef and pastrami. It's one piece about four inches long by three inches wide that we will slice so that each of us gets about a one inch piece in in depth and about three inches wide.  That's a big unknown in calories.  We will have that with a roasted green veggie that Emily is making although they are using olive oil on it.  There will be wine and challah and no dessert.  I can make that meal work by taking only a small amount of challah like I do at home and not drinking more than a few ounces of the wine.  Unfortunately, they bought a bottle of a sweet white wine at a local MD winery that they are sure I'm going to love just for me to enjoy tonight, so it's going to be hard not to have a full glass to show my appreciation.  Usually I take two ounces of wine on Shabbat.  Tonight I'm going to program four to five ounces. Also that pastrami roll up thing is a huge unknown that will be impossible to guess and full of sodium, but my breakfast and lunch will be at home, very low calories, so I hope things will be ok.  Of course, that's what I thought about the lemon pepper cod on the train and look where I am this morning

So that's where I am and how things are going.  I haven't decided yet about taking the computer on the cruise.  Internet is very expensive on Celebrity cruises.  We have only 90 minutes each for free, and I don't know if I'll use it for blogging.  We shall see what mood I'm in tomorrow morning when we head up to NJ.  Sunday is the day we get on the ship. I'm getting very excited.