Losing a part of me

Category: Friends

  • Day 88

    There is a psychological characteristic in me that does not seem to want to accept certain types of moderation. I am not talking about food intake… although I suppose I am a glutton when I do not check myself. No, what I mean is this: I feel that when I veer from my program, even a little, I will be punished the following day on the bathroom scale.

    Yesterday (Saturday) I had my morning shake, and then around 11:00am HRF Princess Sophie and I hit the road. We drove to Caledon to see my friend (and now hers) Jacqueline, and her young puppy (I think she is six months old) Charley. A wonderful time was had, but shortly after we left the house, I realized that I had not taken any meal replacements with me. We stopped in at Bulk Barn, where I purchased a bag of red-skinned peanuts. Remember the previous day, when I bought a bag of peanuts from the convenience store? That bag cost me $5.99, and the peanuts were salted. This bag cost me $1.50, and the peanuts were exactly the way I like them. I enjoyed them as we drove up north.

    Jacqueline knows that I am on a diet, and also respects that it is Passover, so even if I was not on a diet, I really cannot eat any snack she might put out. She offered me coffee, which I enjoyed. We had a great time catching up – it had been far too long!

    We hit the road a little after 5:00pm, and no thanks to Waze on my iPhone, we got to the supermarket around 6:00pm. I know, I wrote yesterday that I would bring her home before going shopping, but we were an hour later than I thought we would be, and it was warm and sunny. Princess Sophie climbed up onto the back dash to sun herself while I ran in and picked up everything that I needed… except one crucial item. Oops.

    We got home and I put the chicken into the air fryer, and the rest of it into freezer bags. It was only then, as I was getting ready to prepare my salad, that I realized that I had run out of balsamic vinegar the previous evening. Okay, I had a choice: Either I could make my salad another way (and while there are myriad ways to season a salad, I did not have too many options in the house), or I could forego the salad, and instead steam a head of broccoli. I opted for that second option, adding a bit of onion as well. I spread much less margarine than I had on my previous attempt, but also added some cheese (but not a lot). I forgot to add salt, but that is not the end of the world.

    Spoiler alert: While steamed broccoli can be quite tasty, steamed onion is less so… at least, not the way I prepared it. I ate it, but it was nothing to write home about.

    Later in the evening I had another meal replacement shake. That was the extent of my food intake yesterday.

    If you look at what I consumed, I obviously did not gorge myself. I did not eat tons of bad food, or even overeat the good ones. Yes, I had a little margarine and shredded cheese on my broccoli. Yes, I had a handful of peanuts (which replaced a meal). With all that, how could I possibly not lose weight?

    I did. After yesterday’s colossal two-pound gain (which followed the previous two day’s 1.5 lbs gain, I was hoping to be down at least a little. I was down a full three pounds from yesterday, and while I am not back to my best weigh-in of the last week, I am damned close to it… and most importantly, I am back under the 350-pound mark.

    I will mention as well that I think that moving the scale from the bathroom to the bedroom has done tremendous good for the stability of my weigh-ins. While I am neither an architect nor a builder, I suspect that the floors immediately adjacent to a load-bearing brick wall will necessarily be more stable than one nowhere near an outside wall, when the floor in the apartment has already been established as not reliably stable. It (the scale) is now under my window, which means I can just leave my phone on the ledge when I weigh in (which allows it to register the weight). Over the past few days (since I moved it) I know that there has been much less up-and-down before settling on a final weight… and so there it will remain.

    My plans for today: I am picking up the cleaning lady from the train station in about an hour. I would have stopped at the store to pick up a bottle of balsamic vinegar, but guess what? Yep, the stores are closed again for Easter Sunday. Sigh. I suppose for my salad today I will be making a slightly different dressing, with the fixings that I do have.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 86

    I cheated last night… twice. I paid for it this morning on the bathroom scale.

    I had wanted to try to steam either broccoli or cauliflower for a few weeks, and I decided that last night was the night. I put a crown of broccoli into a corning ware with some water. I spread some margarine on it, covered the pot, and put it into the microwave. I asked Lyle how long I should leave it in for, and he told me that five minutes should do… but I should really cut it up first. Oops. Too late for that. When it might have been done, I pulled it out of the microwave, sprinkled it with salt… and grated cheese. I gave it another minute in the microwave, and then voila, it was served. It tasted delicious… but neither the margarine nor the cheese was part of the diet program. It was not the worst thing in the world though, right?

    Later on, during my class but after the dinner break, I was still hungry. I decided to munch on some salt and vinegar rice crackers that I had bought for Leslie. I will have to buy her more, because I finished them off.

    Two cheats in a day must be punished… and the scale took back some weight from yesterday. If I am going to be under 350 lbs clothed on my next weigh-in at the doctor’s office on Wednesday, I cannot cheat much more this weekend. I will need to stay on track. I suppose then that it is a good thing I was not invited to a Passover Seder this year. Yes, it is sad… but as much as I love the holiday, I know that the foods at the Seder are too tempting for me to turn down. Next year, when I am at my ideal weight, I can make the Seder a cheat meal.

    I had just finished writing the paragraph of what I need to buy at the supermarket today… only to realize that the supermarkets are closed today for Good Friday. Oops. The simple revised answer to ‘what’s for dinner?’ is: Whatever I have in the freezer! I don’t know if I have any chicken left, but I know I have a piece of salmon, so that might be it. I have enough veggies for lunch and dinner, and while I might run out of milk on my second cup of coffee, that I can buy at any convenience store. I also have distilled water on my shopping list, but that is not an urgency, that is for the next time the humidifier in my humidor runs dry.

    I just checked, and I have a very small piece of chicken, and a very small piece of salmon in the freezer. I am defrosting both, and my Passover meal will be a multi-course dinner… with a salad, of course. It just occurred to me that I might have a container of chicken broth in the freezer. While I cannot make matzah balls (I wasn’t even able to find matzah when the stores were open), I can at least have a nice bowl of chicken soup with vegetables. I might need to find some carrots and maybe a couple of other veggies – the only one I have that would go into the soup is onion. No worries, I will make do.

    I have a study session to join for the course I am taking, and after that I will make a salad for lunch, and then I’ll head over to Lyle and Dorothy’s for a few hours. It will be good to spend a few hours with friends.

    Have a great day folks… and whatever holiday you are celebrating this weekend… enjoy it!

  • Day 74

    Yesterday was my first 10,000 step day in a very long time – possibly as long as 8 months, when I moved back to Canada. I routinely hit that number when I was golfing four times per week. Since returning to Canada, I do not think I have come close.

    I followed up my walk yesterday by eating well. I stuck to the plan (although my last shake of the day was later than I normally would have liked it. I drank more water than I have been. The result… my left foot has been killing me all day today. Oh… and I am down half a pound from yesterday, which I am sure I will gain back tomorrow.

    I took my son the younger for breakfast this morning, which due to the wait turned into lunch. We arrived at the restaurant at 11:02am, and we were eating precisely one hour later. I did not mind, although I should have had a cup of coffee or at least a breakfast shake before heading out to pick him up. That’s what I get for dawdling in the morning! My breakfast: a vegetarian omelet with a dash of hot sauce, and a garden salad instead of the potatoes and toast. All in all, I don’t think I did too badly.

    I dropped him off and came home. After I finish writing this, I will pick my cigars for the day and then HRF Princess Sophie and I will drive out to Cambridge to spend the afternoon and part of the evening with Ryan and his clan. It should be a fun time. I am bringing my darts and look forward to playing a few games.

    Have a great day!

  • Day 64

    Another day of following the prescribed regimen, and once again the bathroom scale is down. I am quite pleased with that, but more important, I am feeling lighter today. The shirt that I am wearing, which a month ago had my belly hanging out, is now much more comfortable. It is a good day to be going to the tailor to be fitted for a few custom dress shirts and pants, and possibly a vest and even a sport jacket. I will not be buying a suit at this time, but the rest I am ready for. I will not spend thousands of dollars at the tailor… but it is likely that I will spend more than $1000. I’ll be sure to take my American credit cards!

    Something that has been weighing on my mind is an issue that I only realized fully the last time I had lost most of my weight. At a certain point, if I do lose all of the weight, I am going to have a lot of excess skin and might need cosmetic surgery to remove it. If I am ever going to have the body that I really want to have, then that is a reality that I am going to have to face. I have been obese since very shortly after I got out of the Army, which is now over twenty-five years ago. It was a nice thought that my skin would bounce back because I was young… I am not so young anymore. I have never liked the idea of cosmetic surgery, but I remember how much of that skin was left – in my belly, in my chest – and I will not want to spend the rest of my life with it. Also, if I do go through that, then maybe I can look at the surgery as a delineation point – WAS fat, AM slim. Maybe that will be the daily reminder of why I cannot eat like I once did.

    I have my check-in meeting with my diet buddy this afternoon. It will be our first meeting in three weeks – she was off traipsing around Yukon… if traipsing is something that one does in the Great White North. According to her words, she needs to debrief. I suspect that while my last couple of weeks have seen me down, she will not have been so successful. That is not uncommon when one is on vacation. I have already decided that when Leslie and I are in Cuba, I will be suspending my diet program. That does not mean that I will not try to eat sensibly, but I will not be taking meal replacements with me. I rather suspect that eating sensibly in the tropics, where fresh fruits and salads make up a good part of the diet, will be easier than eating sensibly north of 60°, where a head of lettuce can cost $20.

    For those of you who are wondering if it would even be possible to stay on my meal-replacements-only program at an all-inclusive resort in Cuba, the answer is yes… and I know that because I have done it. In 2017, when I first went through the program, Eduardo and I spent a week at the Be Live Turquesas resort in Varadero, which is only a couple of kilometres from the resort Leslie and I will be at. I had four meal replacement shakes per day, and whenever someone asked if I wanted a drink, or if I wanted to join them for a snack, I just told them I was recovering from a bit of a stomach bug, and I was taking it easy. I remember the fear when we went into Havana, and I thought that I had forgotten my shakes at the hotel (in Varadero). I was so relieved when I discovered at the restaurant that I had not in fact forgotten them. I do not plan to subject myself – or Leslie – to that stress. I will be eating in Cuba, and when I come back, I will continue from where I left off.

    It is interesting… when I started this journey (again), I was reading my old journals from 2017 and 2019 nearly every day. I stopped doing that after maybe ten days or so… but thinking back on that trip, I decided to open up my first journal. Days 26-34 were spent in Cuba, and I got through it. It is amazing to look back on a trip like that and realize that I lost 3-4 pounds during that week. Okay, it is hard to be precise, because I had only registered my weigh-in six days prior to the trip. The first time I went through the program, I did it through a hospital bariatric clinic, and was not getting onto a bathroom scale. I was only registering my weight when they weighed me. On Day 21 I had lost 33 pounds, and by Day 35 I had lost 41 pounds. For those of you keeping track, I am currently on Day 64, and have not yet lost the full 40 pounds… but I am not on the same strict program that I was on, and I cannot expect to see the same drastic results. Yes, I plan to achieve the same results (minus the long, slow descent back into obesity), but it will take longer.

    Tomorrow morning, I am driving to Montreal for the weekend. I am looking forward to seeing my friends, but I am also looking forward to the relaxing alone time in the car. I will switch off between podcasts and the audiobook that I am listening to (remember when they were called books on tape? I am getting old!) and podcasts, and I will be smoking cigars as I like. I will do my best to not cheat on the program, which means that I will be taking a good number of meal replacement bars with me. Still and all, I know that I cannot follow the program the way I normally would, and I am hoping that when I weigh myself on Tuesday, I will not be more than a pound off from what I weigh tomorrow. Here’s hoping!

    While it is cloudy out, the temperatures are going to 11°c, and the wind does not seem so bad. When I get back from the tailor, I will be enjoying a cigar on the balcony.

    Have a great day!

  • Day 60

    There was a bit more temptation at Ryan’s place than I was comfortable with, but I got away nearly unscathed. We had a wonderful day smoking cigars and throwing darts, and then they decided, rather than going ahead with the pork chops for dinner as they had planned, they were ordering fish and chips. Glenn was as insistent as ever that I take some, but I insisted that I was on a diet and couldn’t have it. ‘But fish is healthy!’ Yes, Glenn… but dipping it in an inch of batter and deep-frying it is not. ‘You just scrape the batter off!’ Yes, but the frying oil is in the fish, and thank you, but no thank you. I did indulge in a handful of peanuts… but that was the only cheating that I did.

    Princess Sophie and I arrived home around 9:00pm and I prepared the chicken and salad which I had already defrosted and planned. It was quite good… if not as satisfying as the deep-fried fish and chips might have been. I was rewarded for my discipline by another low number on the bathroom scale. Although I am still not sure how accurate it is or might be, I know it is in the same spot on the floor as it was yesterday, and so it should be as consistently accurate or inaccurate as it was yesterday. Down is down, and on a weight loss program down is good.

    I woke up at 5:45am to do what one does at that hour before returning to bed on a Sunday, but I could not sleep after that for a spell. Upon realizing that I would not easily get back to slumber, I donned my spectacles and checked my phone. I answered a couple of emails, I played my game, I checked Facebook. After maybe forty-five minutes or so I realized my eyes were finally growing heavy again, and I got another three hours of sleep.

    Usually when I cannot fall asleep like that, there is something weighing on my mind. In August when I suddenly and abruptly found myself back in Canada, knowing I had to find an apartment and get settled… not to mention coordinate with my friends in California getting my apartment closed out and my stuff shipped. That kept me awake. There have been a couple of relationship issues that have kept me awake. Last week, there was one night when I was so obsessed by my Government of Canada security clearance going through. All of these and more have been reasons that I have been unable to get back to sleep in the past 7-8 months. Last night there was nothing. Rather, there was something that I was thinking about, but it is simple and meaningless and irrelevant. I was telling Leslie this morning that I think sometimes my brain said ‘Well, all of the pieces of your life are in order right now, but I don’t want to sleep so I am going to make you obsess about something that is really nothing.’

    I did consider for a brief moment getting out of bed and looking into why one of my credit cards was declined on Friday, but I decided that if I got my mind really working then I would never actually get back to sleep. I took care of that this morning – their fraud department thought that I might not really be me. Believe me folks, if I was using stolen credit cards then I would not be looking at every gas station in town for the lowest price, and then buying regular. Dude, if I am using a stolen credit card then I promise you I am putting the premium gas into my Subaru!

    Because I got a later start to the day than usual (yay lazy weekends!) I will finish up some personal stuff on the computer, and then after lunch I will probably sit on the balcony smoking cigars. While it will not be nearly as pleasant as it was Thursday, the forecasted high today is 11°c, and the rain should have ended by now. I will take Her Royal Floofness for a couple of walks of course, and then dinner and an early bedtime. I have some reading to do to prepare for a course that I might be asked to teach toward the end of April (and for which I will have to create the courseware, before you wonder how far in advance I start preparing to teach a class), so that will be done on the balcony with a cigar as well. If Leslie is not too busy, it would be nice to have a chat with her as well.

    I really do miss her and am counting down the days until she comes for her next visit. I am not just saying that because she is the most loyal reader of this blog (Hi Sweetie!!) but because I mean it. Time with her is better than time apart from her. Had she been in bad with me when I couldn’t sleep this morning, she would have snuggled with me, and things would have been better.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 59

    I have not looked back on my previous journal for a few weeks. I do not know why I stopped; maybe it is because the program that I am doing now bears some resemblance to the strict cheatless meal-replacements-only program that I was following the last couple of times. Perhaps it is because I saw how much weight I had lost (I was averaging one pound per day over the first couple of months) and decided that it was disheartening, knowing that as we approach the two-month mark of my journey, I am nearly 35-pounds down, and not the 60-pounds I would have been last time.

    Yesterday was a day of very reasonable cheating. I was meaning to drive to Brantford and then straight home, but as I prepared to return, I got a message from Lyle asking me to come to his house instead of meeting me here. Okay, no problem. Well… one problem. I would have to eat. Not wanting to put out Lyle and Dorothy, I stopped at a convenience store and got an all-beef pepperoni stick. When I arrived, this being the day after St. Patrick’s Day, Lyle offered me a plate of homemade corned beef. I took two slices with some mustard. We went outside for our first of two cigars, and I did not feel at all bad smoking his high-end cigars, as I usually force my high-end cigars on him!

    Between cigars, he offered me one of Dorothy’s cookies. How could I resist? It was wonderful, and I do not feel guilty about it. Okay, I might feel a little guilty about it, but I ate it and enjoyed it. Dorothy is an exceptional baker, and the mix of dark chocolate, dates, figs, and nuts made it worth the cheat. I enjoyed a second exceptional cigar, and then stopped in at the supermarket before coming home for the evening.

    I had my regular dinner of chicken and salad when I got home, and I took HRF Princess Sophie out for a couple more walks before the evening was done. For the first time since before I broke my ankle (in November), I am now over 6,000 steps per day. This is likely due to four factors:

    · I broke my ankle and could not walk for nearly two months.

    · My gout has been bothering me a lot.

    · It has been cold (often bitterly so); and

    · I was heavier than I have ever been, and walking was harder than ever on my feet, knees, and the rest of me.

    My doctor has told me that I need to be exercising, and frankly I did not need him to point that out to me. Of course I need to exercise! He also pointed out that simply walking my dog would not be enough, because most dogs (especially smaller dogs) do not walk at the undisturbed pace that I would need to consider it beneficial. I think that next weekend I am going to start. Why wait? While both my feet and my knees are better than they were, I still feel a little tinge in my left knee, and I want to give it a few more days to heal. What I will say is that for the 6,000 steps that I am taking in a day now, I am doing them at a more comfortable pace than I was even a week ago (because of the gout), and certainly more so than a few weeks ago, when the gout, the knee, and the weight were huge factors. I know that as I lose more weight, the pace will get easier still.

    The plan for today is to drive to Cambridge to see Ryan and the gang. I finally remembered to bring my darts, and Cara is in for a lesson… I always beat her with the random darts I pick up there… let’s see how I do with my own set! They asked if I would stay for dinner, and that is always an uncomfortable question for me. I do not like having to say, ‘I’m sorry, your food is incompatible with my diet program.’ When they told me they are serving pork chops, the refusal was easy! I will bring a couple of meal replacements, and when we get home later this evening, I will make a salad with some chicken.

    The forecast for the next seven days shows rain (or flurries) five of them, but at least the temperatures are warming up. I know that early spring is always going to be rainy, but that’s the price we pay for green summers. I’ll enjoy it… especially with the knowledge that my balcony is covered.

  • Day 58

    Yesterday morning my friend Eduardo picked me up, and we drove down to St. Catherines to spend a few hours with his son. There was some minor computer work that needed to be done – having to do mostly with Quickbooks, which made it more Victor’s area of knowledge than mine. The three of us then went for lunch at a nice Greek restaurant on the Welland canal. I was good – I had two chicken brochettes on a plate of salad. There was more salad dressing than I strictly needed, but still less than my friends put on the Caesar salad last weekend. I also enjoyed the tzatziki – certainly not on the diet, but better that it was on the chicken, and not scooped up with pita bread. No, I did not indulge in than particular sin.

    For dinner I had a slightly larger helping of chicken than I probably should have but did not go terribly overboard. I had my salad, and because it was such a lovely day, I had three and a half cigars on the patio. I was saddened by news that a close friend of my father’s had a heart attack on Wednesday, and I spent a bit of time thinking of him. I am praying for his speedy recovery. He was younger than my dad… but not by much. He was also a lifetime smoker (in addition to being a cigar smoker) and did not live the healthiest lifestyle. As Leslie and I discussed it last night, I told her I am trying to lose the weight, but I was not planning on giving up my cigars anytime soon. Esti (who told me the news) said that we all have a bullet out there with our name on it. Well, I have avoided far too many of those bullets (and none of them were figurative) to live my life in fear… and I will not give up my cigars because of that.

    I have to drive to Brantford this morning to pick up another collection of meal replacements. It is amusing that I am driving all over G-d’s green earth to pick them up… as if they were contraband being delivered by one of Cosmo Kramer’s shady friends. Never mind… I have to go out to do some grocery shopping anyways, and it is another nice day. I might bring a cigar along, although I have not decided on that yet.

    Lyle is coming over for a cigar in the afternoon, which will be nice. I really enjoy sitting and chatting with good friends. I cannot think of any other plans I have for the day, or for the weekend. I am sure something exciting will come up!

    Have a great day!

  • Day 57

    I was a bit off yesterday. There was no particular reason for it that I could discern, but I was a bit melancholy. I went off the diet both in quantities of food – I ate an extra salad with an extra can of salmon – and in foods eaten… I ate a bag of microwave popcorn. I suppose the combination of the two are why the bathroom scale was, once again, slightly up this morning. There is nothing to say but I will do better today.

    The plans are to spend much of the day with my friend Eduardo. The original plan was for him to come spend the afternoon smoking cigars on the balcony, but for reasons I will not elaborate on we will now be spending the day at his son’s house. I used to work for the son, who is not only a very nice guy but also an occasional cigar smoker. I have in the past smoked some very lovely cigars from him; whether I will smoke his cigars today or my own does not matter, I know it will be a lovely day.

    While today’s high temperature of 16°c is 5-10° higher than any other in the ten-day forecast, it is nice to know that there is only one low temperature in that time frame that is predicted to be below zero. Spring is in the air, and you will hear no complaints from me about that! I briefly considered driving to Montreal for the weekend but decided not to. I will stick around here and enjoy the weather as it warms up… without having to spend the ridiculous price at the pump to fill my tank. It is not only for that reason that I will allow Eduardo to drive us to his son’s (he lives 45 minutes away), but it is certainly a consideration.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 52

    Yesterday was a day of positives all around. As expected, I worked for a few hours before starting my weekend a bit early. I had a nice salad, and then I went to pick up a couple of boxes of shakes from someone in Hamilton who was selling them off. I then stopped into Costco to pick up some cans of salmon… and ended up with $200 worth of stuff that I mostly need but some that I do not… I am not sure, for example, what I will ever do with 1000 packets of sweetener. I did buy chicken thighs, and when I returned home, I immediately separated the 27 thighs into Ziplock bags (3 per bag) and put them into the freezer. I bought some vegetables (onions, cucumbers, and tomatoes… and yes, I know they are actually a fruit but shaddup), and a few other things. While the quantities are a bit silly, I won’t have to worry about not being able to sweeten my coffee through the year 2025.

    When I got home, I realized that the two boxes of shakes that I bought (at a slightly inflated price) were actually four boxes of shakes. I texted the woman I bought them from and told her it was an honest mistake, and that I would transfer her the money immediately. She thanked me and refused and told me they were a gift. That was very sweet of her! We had a great conversation while I was there, and it was never my intention to short her. What was originally an inflated price turned out to be a bargain! Suddenly the drive was really worth it, despite the stupid price of gasoline.

    It was a beautiful afternoon. While it snowed all day, it was still reasonably mild. I sat out on the patio and enjoyed two cigars – one in the afternoon (a Partagas Serie D No. 4 from 2019) which was fabulous, and one later in the evening (a Davidoff Robusto Supremo that Leslie brought me in November). I do not remember the order, but during that time I had great video conversations with a couple of friends, with my girlfriend, and with my cousins in Florida. It was mostly positive, except to find out that my buddy and his wife will not be joining Leslie and me on vacation in May.

    Speaking of which, the trip is booked! We are flying out of Toronto the afternoon of May 10, and under four hours later we will be in sunny Varadero, Cuba. Leslie has never been on a truly relaxing, no-obligations, no-stress vacation before, and as I told her last night, I am on a mission from G-d to ensure that she has the greatest week of her life. We will take a daytrip into Habana to see friends and whatnot, but aside from that we will have no obligations beyond relaxation, enjoyment, and fun in the sun. fifty-nine days and counting!

    I got to speak with a buddy in Havana last night, which was also very nice. We will spend a day with him and his girlfriend. He told me that we can send the girlfriends off to shop while we go hunting for cigars. I laughed and told him that if he thinks that then he does not know my girlfriend, who will be every bit as excited hunting cigars as I will be; more, in fact… I’ve done the rounds of Habana cigar shops myriad times, and this will be her first time! You never forget your first time…

    The weather today is not as nice as yesterday, so I do not expect to spend much time on the patio. I might see if a friend wants to smoke in his garage, just to give me something to do today. Otherwise, I will be sitting at home and watching TV on my iPad, which still does not sound like a bad way to spend a lazy day!

    On the weight loss front, I am down a couple of pounds from yesterday! I am excited about that. A buddy asked if I wanted to drive to Niagara for Brazilian Rodizio or Buffalo wings, and I told him that they are both against my diet, and that I need to preserve my figure to fit into my bikini in Cuba. Good for a laugh, but in all seriousness, be mentioned two of my favourite food groups and I turned him down flat. I must be serious about this weight loss thing.

    Tomorrow I am taking my kids for brunch, and I will be eating. I plan to be good – breakfast and brunch are very dangerous meals because of all of the carbs and starches… I will have something good (maybe an omelet or a salad) while my kids eat their hearts out. It is not often that my older son calls me and wants to get together, so I am excited about that.

    There isn’t much else to say… I’m going to take it easy, catch up on my TV, and enjoy the day. I hope you enjoy it too!

  • Day 46

    While today has not been a perfect start to the day, I am going to make it better than yesterday. That is my only goal. It is windy out, but unseasonably warm. I am going to drive over to Lyle and Dorothy’s house for a cigar or two, and probably dinner. It will be good to see my friends. Yes, I was with friends yesterday, but you can never have enough time with friends.

    I only wish my girlfriend could be here too. I am counting down the days!

    As expected, my bathroom scale was up a terrible number this morning. I could not have imagined it would be otherwise; honestly, before I stepped onto it, I predicted the number. I was off by .2 of a pound. It is time to reset. Today, better… tomorrow, better than today. That is the only way to move forward.

    Have a great day!