What's on your Sunday Menu, RNYers?

Good Morning and Happy Easter to those who celebrate! Normally at 6am I would be running around the house like a crazy person trying to cook and clean but today is going to be super chill. I have insisted that we put on pants and eat our meal off of the fancy china, but its going to be a pretty low-key day. We have a ZOOM set up with our friends and family this afternoon to have desert together :) It's nice actually--we have some friends who moved far away who we used to celebrate holidays with, and this is allowing us to "see" them. It's funny how we never thought of video calling them before, when we were all together.

Accountability: Better. Less bread and I went for a nice 3.5 mile walk in the sunshine. It's supposed to be sunny and a little warmer today before going back to a rainy week, so I will get myself out for a good long stretch today.

QOTD: Do you speak a second (or more) language fluently? I come from a linguistically advanced family--my dad is able to read and write fluently in 17 languages! Can you imagine? Anyway, I good ear for languages but never really tried to be fluent. I took Latin in HS and did well with it... Then I took a year of French and liked it, but have forgotten most of it. I decided to use some of my extra quarantine time to learn Spanish and I am really enjoying it! I would love to feel confident in a second language!

Morning! I'm happy to say that my children are not awake at 6:45am. Even though they are 11 and 14 they still asked for an egg hunt and given how strange everything is this year I figured I better do something normal. They may be nearly grown in the scheme of things, but they'll still get excited to hunt some eggs for sure! Both of them also have birthdays coming up in the next two weeks as well. I feel bad that nothing is really normal around here.

We never do a big meal on Easter though. So, today's food will be pretty normal. I think I'm going to make Shepard's Pie for dinner as the kid's love it. I do not...but that's okay.

QOTD: Nope and I'm not any good at it. I'd be interested to see what immersion looks like for me, since I feel much about spoken language as I do about computer programming - they blow my mind. It feels incomprehensible to me and my brain can't compute it. My husband swears that people who can retain spoken language also tend to be good programmers and vice versa, so that makes sense. He and my youngest daughter can use Duo Lingo and learn the basics of pretty much any language. He likes doing Russian for a challenge and my youngest knows enough Spanish to pick up topics of conversation when we're out and about.

My Food:

• Coffee w/ Cream x2
• Eggs, Sausage, Sweet Potato
• TBD, but probably lunch meat and pickles/olives
• Shepard's Pie, maybe, meh.

Does anyone feel like food is holding zero appeal in this quarantine? I can't seem to think of anything I want enough to actually cook and eat it. I've been going through the motions, but just missing the occasional nice meal out and being unable to source certain ingredients to do my own cooking has made food so, meh. Before quarantine I had started meal planning for dinners and we were really branching out with our options and making some cool dinners. Now I can't seem to manage to get any meat that isn't chicken breast or pork chops. Beef has also inflated in price here to the point where I'm unwilling to buy it for now. Salmon/fish is impossible to get unless you go to a store and I've been trying to do as much delivery as possible. We keep running out of fresh produce before anything else.

I thought maybe my body was craving something sweet since we haven't really had much around the house to satisfy that. But, I had three little Hershey's Eggs last night (like a Hershey Kiss in egg form) and those were also meh. I think this partially comes from the fact that since COVID came to be a household name I've been trying to take super great care of my diabetes, in case I happen to get it. That means I've had very little carby food, and we all know that food is more fun right? This feels a lot like those months after surgery where food isn't really very interesting for awhile.

I wouldn't say food has no interest, but I find that I feel hungry all the time but never want any of the options I have, which is sign that I am bored, not actually hungry. I don't remember ever being a bored eater--this feels like a new phenomenon.

It's great that you have had less carby food! I have had more carbs in the last 3 weeks than in the last 3 years... But I am determined not to go to the grocery store for at least a few more weeks (Boston is in our peak season--we are seeing 100 deaths/day right now) and so I am adding rice and pasta to my meat dishes to make them stretch--just like my depression era grandmother taught me, lol. I'd rather come out of this a few pounds heavier, but not sick than to have to face this illness, so bring on the carbs!

I've always had issues with bored eating. That's my "thing". Some people emotionally eat or they binge - for me it's always been about eating for the sake of eating when I don't have other things to do. Well, that and adding in food routines that don't serve me, like nightly ice cream with a giant scoop of peanut butter added (before surgery, of course). I'm one of those people who could have a glass of wine every night simply because I made it a routine and not because I actually feel the need for wine. I've cycled through so many "routines" since surgery - yogurt, what I have for breakfast, apples with PB. I think this has something to do with having an addictive personality.

I have actually found that working from home has decreased my boredom and lowered my food options. I can't get up and walk a 1/4 mile and get coffee or pop across the street for food. It also allows me to eat breakfast at bunch time which is what my body likes, and that pushes off my eating in general. When I'm working in an office I take breakfast with me and end up eating earlier than I really want to so it's not cold and gross.

I think part of the problem with food being meh IS that I'm avoiding carbs and the reason I'm able to avoid them is because this could literally be life or death for me. I could really go for a bagel. The data hasn't really been fleshed out as to what cir****tances make a diabetic more susceptible to complications. I've always had good control (even before WLS) but anything I can further add will only help, I imagine.

Good morning! I had a chat with friends on Zoom yesterday which was very enjoyable. Today we have a Zoom ****tail party at 6 and plan to get dressed up for that. I do try to at least wear some nicer shorts/tops here periodically when we take a walk if only so I feel better...

QOTD: I am English speaking only though I regret that. I took 3 years of Latin and 1 of French in High School and did well at both, but never continued. My DS speaks what he calls "kitchen Spanish" which he has acquired by working as a chef with Spanish speaking co-workers. He also has a bit of French due to some close friends of his from France. But I am sadly lacking.

TSS: 4 years

B: Coffee! Eggs, beans, salsa and cheese

L: Sliced Ever Roast chicken and egg salad (the latter my only real salute to Easter foods)

D: WW recipe turkey bolognese and riced cauliflower

S: blueberry lemon pie and/or yogurt with strawberry compote and/or WW one point blueberry muffin

Happy Easter menu friends! Started this and the rain stopped for a few minutes so Miss Lily and I headed out to walk til we started to get wet. We're back with 2.4 miles done. We did get damp at the end and it's raining harder now. Supposed to rain off and on all day so we'll sneak in what walks we can. Got the camper cleaned yesterday and laundry done including bed linens so I plan on relaxing today. Then back to work on windows tomorrow. Accountability was spot on food and stepwise yesterday and weight is 120.6 today. QOTD I took 2 years of French in high school but was never very good at it. I took a semester of Latin in college did mediocre at best. Don't remember any of either now. Here's the food plan B 1/2c steel cut oats with protein and peanut butter L 3/4 c cheesy broccoli soup D 4 oz grilled burger with cheese and no bun. No snacks here if I can rein it in. Have a great day full of healthy choices everyone!

Learning to speak another language for me would be a matter of dedication. I would set up a schedule with regular study times and also set up times to speak with native speakers of the language. It also helps to have a reason to become fluent in the language.

My brother, Ed was n his late forties when his wife had a sudden heart attack and died. They had never had children due to her having had cancer and a hysterrecomy at 25. He was very lonely.

About a year later, he was at work and saw a picture on his boss's desk of a woman Ed thought was very attractive. He asked his boss who the woman was. His boss laughed and said, "That is my cousin, she lives in Venezualua and dones not like Americans. Ed decided to make it a challlenge to see if he could get her to like an American and asked for her name, phone number, and email address.

He called her and his boss was also on the call. His boss wanted to be sure Ed was respectable of his cousin and also to translate. Ed spoke no Spanish and Yorli spoke no English. They seemed to like each other and started doing regular phone calls and emails. The emails were done by both with translating software which led to a few misunderstandings.

Ed hired a woman who taught Spanish. He practiced hard and within a month was speaking rather good Spanish. Yorli took a lot longer to learn English. One day Ed called me and asked my opinion. He wanted to spend $7000 to fly to Venezulua and meet Yorli in person. He asked if I thought he was being fooli****old him to do it, otherwise he would spend the rest of his life wondering if he had made a mistake.

Short story, he met her, thought she was beautiful, but extremely controlling. He flew home early. Somehow they worked out their differences and a year later Yorli came here and they got married. She is almost 20 years younger than Ed and they now have two beautiful twin daughters. The kids are bi-lingual. Everyone in the house speaks excellent English and Spanish.

What a wonderful love story!

Good morning, everybody!

Its fairly nice in Chicago today, but heading back into the 40's all of this coming week. Marilyn is cooking a turkey this afternoon. My oldest son finagled her into gettin him Buffalo Wings for his dinner. We finished painting the siding on the back porch and together with the doors from last year look really nice.

When I was scraping/sanding the paint off of the back off house, I had to choose between using my masks for dust or as coronavirus prevention. Not exactly Sophie's choice, but I went with the dust option and will just try and lay low/re-use the masks for the next couple of weeks.

I did the partner workout with Cynthia yesterday. it was a lot of fun and our technology worked fine.

QOTD: I took french from 4th grade through the end of freshman year of College. I can read a little. Can't speak or comprehend at all.

Breakfast: Protein bar

Lunch: Lamb

Snack: nuts

Dinner: Turkey

Have a great day, all!

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