Starting to suffer from Alzheimer’s disease or something! Playing Rift this morning, tweaking here, adjusting there, I finally got the “New and Improved Blueiris Cloned as a Mage” ready to solo! Time, I thought, to transfer the original Blueiris to a new home, and rename her stand-in, Lilacrose. I made sure that Blueiris had no mail in her letterbox, no auctions, and not too much cash left on her – and I started the transfer… Then I get told that I can’t transfer her because she was moved recently and still has another two days before she can be transferred again!! (you can only transfer a character once every seven days) To the very best of my knowledge, Blueiris was moved to Hailol about a year ago, and hasn’t been played with, or touched at all since, until… about a week ago, when I “played” her character for about half an hour just to see what she had on her, and what she had in her bank! But I certainly didn’t transfer her – she was already here, and had been for ages! I’m quite puzzled though – I can’t think how they could think that I’d recently moved her, unless I did it in my sleep (or I’m developing Alzheimer’s!) I could, I suppose, raise a ticket (talk to a Moderator), but by the time they got around to my problem the two days could well be up anyway (the Moderators do do a good job, and they are very busy – sometimes it takes a while for them to get to you, especially so soon after a major patch, so I’m not bitching about it) So I’ll just wait… I can’t move Jadenfyre in until I move her out, and I still have to wait a couple more days before I can move him again, anyway… Oh well, so much for the plans of mice and men…

This morning was himself’s Birthday – he got a pair of very pretty fine bone china cups with fluffy cats on them from his sister, and the entire “George Gently” series from me and Flipper (it was on his “What to get me for Christmas” list!) His mother’s present is still in transit, and he’ll get the rest of his presents after the lift is fixed and we can have everyone over for his Big Birthday Bash. I did go for my stair walk this afternoon – I was going to do the Fire Escape stairs, barefooted, because I can’t balance properly in shoes, but the light in the stairwell was broken, so I had to use the front stairs. Julian’s thongs are a little big on me, so, I gritted my teeth and put my shoes on (and promptly staggered around as though I was drunk – it happens every time I put shoes on. I HATE shoes…) and tottered over to the door to the stair well. Ah tells you, them thar stairs air jest plain nasty! Not only are they rough and knobbly with lumps of stone poking out of them, they’re narrow, to boot! Anyway, I clutched the stair rail with my right hand, the way a drowning man clutches a straw, and I jammed my left hand against the wall on the other side. I felt most precarious, teetering there on the top step… It was almost surreal – my glasses are multi-focal, with the main part of them designed for “straight ahead” vision. Unfortunately, my back condition forces me to walk semi-doubled over, so instead of looking “straight ahead”, I end up looking “down”. This is fine on flat ground, and I can cope reasonably well and go at a respectable speed, but on a staircase? Suffice it to say that everything was a bit “wavy”, like looking through water, or something! I went s-l-o-w-l-y, one step at a time, feeling as though I was going to topple over and go head first down to the first half-landing any minute. I made that half-landing safely, and continued on down to the proper landing, where the next door to the inside (and the lift) is. Phew! I’d made the first landing, and I wasn’t tired, or even puffed – just terrified! I turned around to go back up. Seeing as the coming down had been easy enough (except for me feeling as though I was going to fall – probably because I hate heights, and I was looking down…) I thought that going back up would be a lot easier (because I’d be looking up at the steps, instead of vertiginously down) and in a way, it was. I still had a death grip on the stair rail, and the other hand on the wall, and I still went up, one baby step at a time. However, remember that I mentioned that the steps were narrow? And not just narrow, they’re murderously narrow! I have very big feet – about a size 11 – and even though they stick out in a perfect ballet “first position”, I had to be extra, extra careful not to catch my toe under the edge of the next step, as I moved slowly upwards. If I’d caught my toe under one and tripped, it would have been “all over, red rover” – at best, I would have smashed my face into the unforgivably hard concrete and broken my nose and my teeth, and at worst, I would have broken my neck and you wouldn’t be reading this blog, you’d be reading my epitaph! Still, I did it, and I survived, and I will do it again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. I really meant it when I said “I’ll do whatever it takes!” 🙂 Now all I have to do is work out a way to do it without having to wear shoes… I’ll have a lot better balance! Gimme a few days, I’ll come up with a solution – I always do! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning… I did it again. And this is the reason that I have to persevere with the stairs! Oh, I went down alright… 1 measly point again, to 105.5kg This is not good enough! At this rate it’ll take me until 2085 to get to 82kg! Well, maybe not quite that long, but far too long, anyway! So the stairs it’ll have to be, and that means that I have to get cracking, concocting a way of navigating the front stairs sans shoes… (or until the light in the Fire Escape is fixed!) Seeing my weight go down one drip at a time is like water torture! One.. slow.. drop.. at.. a.. time.. I can’t stand it!! Perhaps if I strap a new bag of Kitty Litter to my back for my stair walk, it’ll be more effective? Or even two bags… Today Julian showed me, using two 15 liter casks of water, just how much weight I’ve dropped since I started this diet, so if I carried that much extra around before, I should be able to cope with two little bags of Kitty Litter while doing my stair walk, shouldn’t I?

Anyway, drop by again tomorrow night – Julian has another Dental appointment tomorrow morning, and you’ll be able to hear all the gory details of what ensued. You’ll also get to find out how I managed my Stair Stroll, and if I’ve thought of a clever way to get up and down the hard and painful stairs without my shoes yet. My favourite eldest daughter will be over tomorrow, too – the shoes she ordered from Athlete’s Foot have come in and she has to collect them, and after that, no doubt we’ll watch an episode or three of something interesting… I’m getting the “urge” to make another header for the blog (read: “to look for a new theme template, for which I will have to design and make another header” 😉 ) And I think that the status of my weight will probably figure somewhere in the interesting mix of tidbits that you’ll pick up around here tomorrow night… So, until then, bee good, and stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂