…pounds. I don’t know about everyone else, but this pandemic has not been kind to my waistline. I read where there are now 15 Pandemic pounds you can expect to gain, and I long ago read that when you moved to the Villages you can expect to also gain 15 pounds…that is 30 pounds. And even before that I read that you gained 15 pounds your first year at college. Now we are up to 45 pounds and that doesn’t even count the pounds that the extra ice cream and cookies and snacks and crackers and pizza contribute. And than add to that many years ago I stopped smoking and gained weight. In my 50’s my womanly hormonal changes put a few pounds on me. Wow, when I think about it I didn’t have a chance. In cleaning out drawers and the like I came across a little book, which when I opened it and started reading it, I was journaling about my new diet. The date was July 1998. It had all the pros and cons of dieting. After I read a few pages I was inspired and impressed with my own words. However I continued reading and realized I would love to weigh what I did in 1998. There were only a few more pages about how well I would do with this new mind set and the next page is all about Christmas day, the dinner I am going to cook for everyone and a few sentences about what a wonderful day it was. A few blank pages and then May 2014. I confessed that I had not lost weight but instead gained the amount of weight I had wanted to lose. But this time I am serious. Next page – July 2015 I write I am now heavier and am running out of years to accomplish my goal. Not much dialogue now..just I’m going to drink water and exercise. On the next page I have week one and each day I mark my weight down. I did very good, it was going in the right direction. Week two was not so good, each day it was going up and by Friday I stopped completely and put the book away, only to be found 5 years later. June 2020..I guess you could consider it good news I am about the same weight I was 5 years ago, but I have written I have run out of time and all my energy is going to go into achieving the goal I set in 1998. I had a friend at that time that lamented that we are going to be in our 80’s and still trying to lose weight. Well, how true was that statement? There is one silver lining to this saga, vodka has no calories and no carbohydrates.