DAY 142-Healthier Eating Journal

On 4th of July 1979 I went on a date that I've never forgotten. First of all, it was the 4th of July. I was one month shy of 17 and he was 2 weeks shy of 17 and we were in the same class at our very small town high school. Odd thing was.... he wasn't the type I usually dated. He drove this huge banana boat of an old car... I had seen upwards of 10 kids in it at one time--not even kidding-- some hanging out the windows. He was a clown.... about everything. So we went on this all day date. About mid-way through the day, kids started piling in his car at different stops.... including other girls. After this one stop we all went to get back in and she slides in the front IN THE MIDDLE. Excuse me!!! He's driving... I'm the date. She's all giggling and trying to be cutesy and I'm just thinking.... would you like your left eye to remain on the left side of your face. However, I didn't want to scare him off with my lack of feminism at times, so I went around to his side and opened the door, made him get out and I slid in from that side. It didn't take much to gently (okay maybe that's not the right adjective)give her a little hip slide to scoot her over to where she should have been. I included the "I'm going to hurt you" look with the little hip bump, and she quickly scooted. The rest of the day went as most 4th of Julys go with booths in the park, fireworks, and the drive home. He got up the nerve to give me a goodnight kiss and a funny thing happened.... I looked in his eyes and saw something that scared me... he liked me.... a lot. It wasn't a wink, wink look. It was a "man you're beautiful" look.

I avoided him a little after that because I was not one to be tied down, but long story short, we ended up dating that whole next school year. The whole "I wore his class ring and jacket" and he passed me notes between classes. I know, very dated, but I liked it. I liked him. He was different. We both graduated at 17. So why do I bring this up. In a little over a month, it will be 31 years since that first date and he is still different. He still looks at me like "man you're beautiful" and tells me I am... and he is still my best friend. I honestly wish everyone could have that kind of love. All the stuff that can cause me sadness, disappointment, and frustration, seem to go away when I'm with him. He knows me. Knows what to say or what to not say (Okay.... he can work on that last one) but mostly I just always know that no matter what.... he takes care of me.

Today we slept in then made some breakfast. He actually likes the fresh spinach scrambled in his eggs like I do now. We had that and some bacon and I bought a loaf of this round bread at Wal-mart that we sliced and toasted. Used butter spray. I checked to make sure the first word in the ingredients was NOT "enriched" and I was amazed what all was in it including flax, various nuts, whole wheat, rye, and some other seed types. Anyway... it was really good. We had about 310-350 calories for breakfast.

After lunch he had to hurry to a wedding he was conducting. I stayed home and watched the last two American Idol shows that I missed. May I just say that Crystal clearly blew Lee out of the water. She was ripped off. Seems to be this week's theme. Nevertheless.... she will sell far more records than Lee and she will continue to share her God-given talents that are clearly miles above Lees.

So I took a shower and dressed up in one of my new dresses and we headed to town to go to the temple. The tulips and flowers on the temple grounds were gorgeous. We were going to do a sealing for Grandma and Grandpa (time and all eternity and not just till death do we part)and I couldn't help but think how Grandma would have loved all the flowers. Then, as we were walking up the ramp a very strange thing happened. A fuzzy little gray bird with a yellow belly started walking in front of us. I expected it to fly when we took each step but it just kept darting back and forth across our path. My husband almost stepped on it. We stopped and he started to reach toward it expecting it to fly, but it didn't. It just looked at us. We thought maybe it was hurt, but he kept walking and it started raining a little so we hurried past it because it wasn't limping. We stopped at the top of the ramp and he sat there and looked at us.... then flew away.

See we had talked about not doing the sealing today-- maybe doing it another day. We stepped inside and I knew we had to do the sealing today. Grandma wanted it today. She had waited long enough. She knew I'd pay attention to that bird. And I did.

After the temple sealing we went to Jonny Carino's for dinner. We had eaten such a late breakfast we skipped lunch. We did eat some grapes on the way to town though. So I ordered the flat iron steak with roasted potatoes and grilled squash, mushrooms, and broccoli. I know... I'm so predictable. Unfortunately, before dinner got there I had eaten half of my ceasar salad (which is pretty much just lettuce), and two stuffed mushrooms. They were SO good. They had spinach in them but they could have done with a little less salt. I also had a little bit of the bread they bring you when you sit down. I'm sure it was 80-100 calories worth though. So between the bread, salad, and mushrooms, by the time the food got there.... I ate three bites of steak, three bites of potatoes, and most of my veggies. That was it. The rest are in my fridge. However..... the husband made me share the turtle cheesecake with him. We split it and couldn't eat the whole thing, so I'd say we each ate 1/3 of it. I just looked up the calories for the turtle cheesecake and we're talking 1000 calories!! Yikes. Even 1/3 of that is 330 calories. I thought for sure it'd be more than that. However, bad news for the husband... the lobster ravioli pasta dish he ordered-- 933 calories!! Good thing he only ate half and brought the rest home. Good thing I only ate half the Cesar salad too because it's 265 calories. We should have gotten on line and checked the calories before going so we could make better choices.
All total, some bread (100), 1/2 salad (135), 3 bites of roasted potato (30), grilled veggies w/mushrooms (80-100), 3 bites of steak (60), cheesecake (330) and 2 stuffed mushrooms (150). I found the calories for Johnny Carinos at http://www.carinos.com/content/documents/Nutritional-Info-Guide.pdf
Grand total for dinner= 910 Excessive calories! Good thing we didn't eat lunch!!!

Since we ate dinner 1t 4:30 we had a snack later of 1 cup of cut up strawberries and bananas. We knew we better go light!

Total Food Calories Today= 1400