Daily Bread #108

This is our quarantine pool.  It won’t be full of family and friends for awhile, like it has been at times in other summers, but I am grateful that it was warm enough to swim in it this week.  There are definitely worse places one could be sheltering in place.  It is important to stay grateful for some of the blessings we have.  I know I have more than my share right now even while we face some frustrations like a broken dishwashers.  I lived most of my life without one, so it really isn’t so bad and when it is safe to do so we can afford to have it repaired or replaced.  It is only 5 years old.  Is my memory faulty or did appliances used to last much longer than they do today?

Memory is funny.  Quarantine brain is a running joke among my facebook friends as we forget what day it is.  I wrote this poem after a conversation with my 30 something daughter.

When I Was Young

When I was young

We hid under our desks

For fear of the atom bomb

Now I hide in my house

Afraid of disease.

When you were young

You practiced lockdowns at school

For fear of bullets flying.

Now the schools are closed

And very safe one would think.

 

When I was young

The only homeless people I saw

Were hobos riding the rails

And long haired hippies

Looking for crash pads and revolution

When you were young

Tent cities crowded the streets

Of every city you saw

So much misery and poverty

And no one seemed to care.

Now there is some concern

But only to contain the viral

Spread of this dread disease

 

When we both were young

We went to concerts and rallies

We gathered with friends

And only robbers wore masks

Except for the Lone Ranger I guess

But he was the exception.

There are no exceptions now.

 

What will your children say

If you have them

About when they were young?

Will there still be long days at home

Writing sidewalk messages to the world

Grandparents and teachers on video

Unable to give kisses or grades

I’d bake the kids some cookies

But I may be out of flour.

 

It is a blessing to be old.

I hope you are really old someday.

Your children too

If you have them.

I kept to my calorie burn goal again this week and realized that I am back up to the amount of daily walking I was doing before my knee surgery.  And now a lot of it is on hills and trails, something I couldn’t do before my new knee.  Another thing to be grateful for.

I am also eating more, because of the extra exercise, and I am still recording all the calories I consume.  I guess some on the veggies, but I still weigh meat, cheese, and sweet potatoes, and I carefully count the calories in bread and the occasional cookie or other sweet.  My food scale lives on my kitchen counter.

I am VERY close to another “goal weight” which I think will be the last goal I will set as it will move me out of the “overweight” category into the “normal” range.  I am still suspicious of those charts, but given that I started out as “morbidly obese” it feels like quite an accomplishment.  I actually hit that number this morning, but my average for the week is 1.7 pounds higher.  Since I decided to use my average weight for each week to monitor my progress, I am sticking to that method.  Therefore, I will need to be that little bit further down before giving myself a rousing cheer.

Be well!  Stay safe and healthy!

L’Chaim!  This week’s stats: My Fitbit report shows 108784 steps last week for 44 miles.   I ate approximately 11445 calories and burned 15169 for a deficit of 3724. My average weight this week is down .6 pounds from last week’s average for a total loss of 171.1