Somehow I didn’t experience that tough period that usually comes after you’ve fallen off the wagon where you really have a hard time with cravings the first few days back “on plan”.  Maybe all that pizza grease is still coating my insides and making me feel full, or at least less sensitive to any hunger pangs (I can somehow picture those little pangs struggling to make themselves known, but getting sucked down and drowning in grease.)

DH hasn’t been going out and starting my car in the mornings anymore because, theoretically, it’s SPRING, and there should be nothing to scrape off the windshield or anything. This morning, though, the back windshield had FROST on it !!!!!! Talk about disheartening! It’s supposed to be up in the fifties today, but it apparently got pretty chilly overnight. NOT optimum! I am SO looking forward to warmer weather; I don’t think I could face putting one of my long winter coats on again no matter WHAT it does outside. I’ve been wearing heavy cardigan sweaters and light woolen (or other) jackets and I was a tad cold this morning until my car heated up.

I sliced up the roast beef (from Sunday’s fiasco) and heated it up in gravy when I got home from work yesterday and called my girls to come pick up their share for supper. Told them to make their own veggies - DH & I each had a baked potato with FF sour cream and frozen lima beans (lots of fiber) and then our WW ice cream sandwich an hour or so later. I really love cooking for my kids. They are all working every day, raising their little kiddles - running them to scout meetings and soccer practice and band practice and what-have-you, and I remember when they were little and I was doing all that and how wonderful it would’ve been to have someone call and tell me to come pick up dinner once in a while instead of going home from work and cooking. Now, I do “pasta night” every Wednesday - I use the new high fiber “Smart Pasta” -usually Penne, although I’ve used both the rotini and elbows before - and Healthy Choice natural sauce and add green peppers, red peppers, onions, black olives and 93% lean ground beef and Italian chicken sausage. The calorie count is low, the fiber count is high, and it’s  really delish. I make a great huge pot of it and split it three ways for DH & I, and both DD’s and their hubbies and little ones. I’ve always loved pasta, and finally they’re making some that you can eat, enjoy, and not feel guilty about. When my DS comes home for his May visit, I’m going to have to make shepherd’s pie, and I’m afraid there’s NO way to make that in a low calorie, high fiber version. But that’s okay - he and my two sons-in-law will polish off a big pan between them  and DH, the girls and I will eat something else. I’m taking the week off that he’ll be visiting so that I can do plenty of home cooking and we’ll be able to do some family stuff together.

But of course the next family event is my DD & her husband and daughter going out to visit DS in L.A. They’re flying out on the 18th for a week. They’re all so excited about it - about spending a week together. It makes me feel so good that I raised them to love each other the way they do. It seems to me that if we do nothing else of any import, we really must teach our children the importance of family and that they should love and support each other throughout life, because let’s face it - the parents (me) won’t be around forever, while they share the same generation and time frame. It’s a little painful, sometimes, to watch them grow up and older and become adults in their own right, because you know you won’t see how it all turns out for them in the end. Life is the equivalent of having to get up and leave the theater in the middle of a movie.  We never get to see how it all turns out - never know the end of the story. So, all we can do is pass along to them those things that will sustain and support them as they go through their individual lives once we’re gone.

We actually had quite an in-depth conversation about this very subject when everyone was at my house on Sunday. DD2, who just has the one little boy (age 6) spoke about how she often feels that she has shortchanged him by not having any other children because she feels so supported and loved by her siblings, and knows that he won’t have that. DD3 only has one child, too - a little girl, age 7. She feels that we have the children we were meant to have, and that both of their children have a wealth of family and extended family who love and care about them. I think, too, that she may be counting on the fact that it isn’t really too late age-wise for her to have another child - she’s just 30. Her sister, DD2 is seven years older, and their elder sister - the one who lives about an hour away from the rest of us - is nine years older. MY sister is 12 or 13 (I’m not exactly sure) years older than I am, so long spaces between children is something of a family tradition, at least on my side.

Well, work beckons, and I probably ought to answer <drat!> so I’ll say TTFN and BBL.

Hugs,

Z