Sadness and celebrations

Yesterday I went out for a celebratory lunch with some friends, one of whom passed her viva for her PhD just last week. It was lovely and really nice to have some good news to celebrate for a change. Most of what I've been hearing lately, from both friends and family, seems to be bad. Health issues (some pretty serious), work worries, including likely redundancies, financial concerns, unemployment, you name it - a bit of a worry, in all sorts of ways.

And then, last night's phone call - the death of my aunt, a lovely lady. I have many happy memories of her, mostly from my childhood when she was so loving and kind. She was elderly and had been ill and pretty much housebound for a long time, indeed she's been in hospital since just before Christmas, so it was no surprise but very sad still.

Back to the lunch. I have to admit that I wasn't in the mood to be sensible, so pizza it was going to be. What's more, I wasn't even going to make a half-hearted attempt with vegetable toppings and minimum cheese. It was going to be a full-on, thin, crispy pepperoni pizza. And so it was.

It has been a while since I've eaten pizza. It's been a while since I've eaten a main meal at lunchtime. I have to admit I struggled and only the embarrassment of asking for a doggy bag, and smelling pepperoni in the office all afternoon, persuaded me to finish my meal. I did leave a little bit, but not much.

So, what was the damage? Well, somewhere in the region of 1100 calories with quite a few of those from fats (looking up some values for Pizza Express meals on the CalorieCount website). Not much of a surprise there then. The walk there and back will hardly have made a dent in that lot! Thankfully a dessert was out of the question and we had water to drink.

The good news is I was still so satisfied (or do I mean stuffed) when I got home last night that my evening meal was a natural yoghurt and a handful of blueberries. Actually, that's progress!