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It’s funny how excited I still get about snow.  This winter has been a dream come true.  I have always loved going out into the snow.  When I was a kid in the late 70’s and we had a couple of big storms (okay, big then, but not 2010 standards,) I’d have to shovel the driveway and some of the grass so our schnauzer named Schnappes could go out to play and do his business.

I would often shovel our elderly neighbor’s driveway first because of the “payment” I would receive.  Fresh-baked, homemade gingerbread men.  Wow were they good.  They were usually done by the time I finished shoveling our driveway.  One time, my dad came home early and noticed I had done the neighbor’s driveway first and asked why.  I told him because he couldn’t bake.

This last week has been great.  Two huge storms with plenty of snow.  Jake, Jane, and I started shoveling Saturday around noon (I had shoveled once on Friday night while Eliz was picking up Jake from school after he attended the school play Little Shop of Horrors.)  The three of us shoveled for about an hour and then Jane had to go inside to get ready for a Bar Mitzvah which she was attending at 5:00pm.  Jake and I continued shoveling so Eliz could get out and get Jane to her friends house to carpool to the service (thankfully the party was postponed until noon the next day.)  Jake and I cleared enough snow so Eliz and Jane could get out and had the whole driveway clean by the time Eliz was ready to pull in after returning from dropping Jane off and looking for a new shovel.

With yesterday’s storm, Jane and I went out to shovel.  I did most of the shoveling while Jane did some, but concentrated on building a snowman.  We were outside for a little more than an hour and had cleared a good portion of the area of the driveway by the garage doors and a path to the street.  I intended to go back out, but our power had gone out.  After resting for 10 minutes or so, Eliz said we should play a game.  The choices were Life, Monopoly, and Risk.  I am not a fan of Life and we thought Risk would’ve been too hard without power and little outside light due to the dark gray clouds and heavy snow coming down.  Monopoly it was!

We had fun playing for over an hour.  We stopped for a tea and hot chocolate break and as we started to play again, the power came back on.  We took a few minutes to power up the computers in the office and check for any sales on ForYourSalon.com (we had some!)  We resumed playing around 4:00ish.  After another hour, Jake was broke.  He went and watched Ghostbusters that was playing on cable.  Eliz, Jane, and I played on.  Jane was just about broke, but then she landed on Free Parking, where we start off with $500 and then add all the fines and taxes to the pot.  She scored nearly $3000!  She was down to one monopoly, but now had cash.

At around 6:00pm, the power went out again.  We continued to play with flashlights and a candle providing us light.  Eliz took too many rides on the railroads (all owned by me) and was living it up in hotels on Boardwalk, Park Place, Oriental Avenue, and Pennsylvania Avenue (also owned by me,) so she went broke.  With Jane only having one monopoly, she wasn’t bringing in enough cash.  I believe a stop at my hotel on Boardwalk finished her off.  It was the longest I’ve ever played.  It was probably three to four hours long, not including breaks.  It was awesome.  Had the power not gone out, we probably wouldn’t have played (and even if we did, we definitely wouldn’t have played that long.)

Today we all went outside around 10:45am to clear the driveway.  The area we shoveled yesterday had about eight or nine inches on it and was much easier to shovel today since it was lighter.  The rest of the driveway, included the path to the street which was covered over and as high as the non-shoveled areas, wasn’t as easy.  Snow had drifted in some areas and yesterday’s snow was still heavy and much icier.  It was so tiring mainly because of piles of snow along the driveway that we had to throw the shovel-full of snow over were so tall.

While we shoveled, we joked around with one another and talked at times.  We finished off the driveway and the area in front of the mailbox (in time to get one check and a blizzard of bills today.)  We went inside to rest for a few minutes and decide on lunch.  We ended up at Five Guys in Lawrence Park.  Even the ride there was nice in the heated car.  The restaurant had the heat cranked and it felt great there too.

The power had come back on just before we left for lunch at 2:00pm (I had to open the garage door manually, but by the time Eliz backed out and I came in to close the door manually the power was on,) so when we returned, it was back to work.  It was nice to see we had a few more sales to acknowledge since the power had gone out.

All in all, it was a fantastic 24 hours.  Without the power, we spent more time together as a family.  We worked together to clear the driveway (even though Eliz shouldn’t have shoveled since she is still getting therapy for her arm.)  It felt good to be with the kids without them wanting to bolt for their computers or a video game and me not taking another call or updating the website.  I guess we probably wanted to do that, but we couldn’t.  No matter, I still enjoyed the time together.  I can’t wait for the next snow.

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Okay, technically it was seven years ago yesterday since it is past midnight.  What happened back then?  I had a trabeculectomy on my left eye.  It was my twelfth glaucoma operation and first since 20 May 1980.  Maybe I should have put off that surgery.  Since that trab in 2003, I have not seen better than 20/100 (and that was only for a span of about eight months.)  Before the surgery I was about 20/80.  A little better on some days and a little worse on others.  I was able to read the mail by myself.  Well, I wasn’t by myself.  Our dog Zamboni, would sit next to me while I went through it.

There were plenty of other things I could do then that I miss terribly now.  I still love sports, I just can’t participate anymore.  I used to go to about 30 Flyers games a season.  Even then I couldn’t see the puck, but I could follow the game and enjoyed going.  I’ve been to three since 28 January 2003.  That date was the last home game before my surgery.  It was the last game I “saw” (and it was a bad game — a 3-0 loss to Tampa Bay.)  I’ve been to two Phillies games at Citizens Bank Park, one this past season when they played Baltimore (and lost 6-5.)  A friend had two extra tickets and Jane wanted to go (it was her first Phils game, but her second O’s game.)  It was great seeing her get into the game and get excited, and I enjoyed spending time with my friend and his son.  As far as the game went, I pretended like I knew what was going on, but I didn’t.

My whole life was about trying to maintain my vision.  Glaucoma cannot be fixed or reversed.  I remember as a kid I used to ask my eye doctor if anything new had been developed that could improve my vision.  The answer then is the same as it is now: not yet.  Maybe some day.  On that day back in 2003, we tried.  It just didn’t work out the way we hoped.

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Back on 9 Dec 2009, my doctor told me to join Weight Watchers or do some other diet program.  I told her that it would not happen.  We were in the process of boxing up the inventory at our business location in the Delcroft Shopping Center (you all know the one: lots of water, super high levels of hazardous mold, and mushrooms growing out of the carpet.)  My doctor and I went back and forth and she told me that I had to lose weight.  She told me I could try on my own by eating 1500 calories per day.  Okay, I’ll do it.  I don’t know if she believed me or not.

The next day, I started counting every calorie.  Before we go out for dinner, I look up the calories at the restaurant we’d like to go to eat.  If the restaurant doesn’t have the calories listed on their site, we usually pick a place that does instead (and go to the place that doesn’t list the calories only after doing some strenuous activity which would give me some extra calories to eat.)  I usually eat a salad for lunch, which consists of a bag of Fresh Express or a similar brand, some mushrooms, sometimes some peppers, sometimes some walnuts, and either balsamic vinegar or a low-fat dressing.  Breakfast is either two Dannon Fruit-on-the-Bottom yogurts (280-300 calories total,) McCann’s Steel Cut Irish Oatmeal (two servings = 300 calories,) or two eggs with low-fat cheese (about 240 calories.)

Dinners are are anywhere from 500 to 800 calories (unless I’ve been doing some physical labor…)  It was apparent early on that I couldn’t do this without knowing some foods serving size.  Sure, a Gardenburger on a Martin’s roll with the low-fat Cracker Barrel cheese was easy to figure out (100+140+80=320,) but what about a serving of walnuts?  So I bought a scale from Amazon.com.  So, back to the walnuts.  I serving is 180 calories.  Serving size is 30 grams.  30 grams is a better than average handful of walnuts!  Half a serving will do on my salad…

Snacks include blueberries, grapes, celery with salsa, raspberries, blackberries, an apple, a grapefruit, cassava chips (these — available from Whole Foods – are my fav,) pretzels (both gluten-free and regular,) pumpkin seeds and air-popped popcorn.  Grapes are my single most favorite food.  It is absolutely horrifying how many I used to eat as a snack at night.  Now I usually have 100g-200g, depending on how many calories I’ve got left to “spend.”  The other fruits I’ve mentioned also are things that I used to snack on before and have just lowered the amount I eat at a given time.

I have always drank plenty of water, between two and three litres per day, which I still do.  I also drink hot tea in the morning (a Teavana blend,) and evening (Stash Lemongrass and Ginger Tea, Eliz’s fav and sometimes hard to find.)  I don’t add anything to either of those “cups” of tea.  In the afternoon, I sometimes have either Red Rose black tea hot or cold.  I add lemon juice from half a lemon.  If I’ve got 50 calories to spare, I might add honey to the hot tea.

There are certainly things I haven’t had since I started the 1500 calories per day.  Some I miss, like the Apple Chai Infusion from Starbucks.  Maybe once I work some exercise into my daily routine, I can get that again…

My goal is to continue at the 1500 calories per day for as long as I can take it (and Eliz and the kids can take me…)  I’m not sure why I’m doing this.  I think it is more for the challenge than being fat.  I don’t think that I’ve felt any better or worse since I started losing the weight, but I have noticed that I have more energy.  I still get a little more than five hours of sleep per night, except on the weekends when I sometimes get eight or nine hours.  I’ve already gone from my clothes being snug to just right to I-might-need-smaller-size.  I guess I can still do somethings…

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