We had a reprieve today! We’ve not been happy, having to live in a “pretend” home – sorry, “Display Home” – but we’ve more-or-less gone along with it because it seemed to be what the cultured Carmen wanted, because as I told you last night, she was going away in early September. This morning they were supposed to be coming to take the photos… Carmen arrived first, and was very disconcerted by the state of the kitchen. Actually, the kitchen was very clean and tidy – but she’d wanted almost everything removed from the kitchen bench, apart from the coffee machine and a bowl of fruit, and items removed from cupboards that had frosted glass doors (because the colours and shapes of the things behind them were partly visible, you see) etc., etc. This prompted a rather long discussion about getting things ready for “OFI” days*, where it was up to poor Julian to spend a couple of hours each way, turning the place from something we could live in, into something that Carmen wanted it to look like, and then back again afterwards. In the end it was actually Carmen herself who proposed that we put the sale campaign off until after August 25th – that is, after we’d moved out. Oh, we were sooo disappointed! – NOT! 🙂 That’s the way we’d wanted to do it from the start – we don’t need to sell the apartment in a hurry to pay for the new house, so there’s absolutely no reason to hurry, apart from the fact that Carmen possibly might not be here. By postponing the sale, we can get our old, comfy lounge suite back, and Flipper won’t have to be upset by being shoved into her much-detested carry cage and taken into the strange and unfamiliar apartment next door for 30 minutes twice a week. The charismatic Carmen and the scintillating Sharron get the whole place to themselves, to dress up and play doll’s house with to their heart’s content – when they have their “OFI” days, no-one has to run around neatening things up and moving personal effects out – Carmen can just turn up, open the door, turn on the lights and the heater, show people through a pristine doll’s palace, and just turn everything off, close and lock the door when they’ve gone – and be all ready and neat and tidy for the next “OFI” day! Much more betterer all round! 🙂 Of course, we’ll have to pay for the extra rental of the furniture that’s here, but that’s OK, we can live with that – it’s a very small price to pay for being comfortable and stress free! Actually as far as we’re concerned, all the rental stuff can pretty much stay where it is – apart from those truly horrible and unspeakably uncomfortable pieces of lounge room furniture – they have to go, while I’m living in the apartment – if we can, we’ll just swap those unmentionables for our old couch and chairs, currently languishing in storage – they’re really the only things we want back at the moment, and hopefully, everyone will be happy! (I know we will be!) 🙂 Oh, and the painter who was coming tomorrow has also been postponed until “later”. Flipper, of course, will still be furious with both of us for carting her off to the Vet for her six monthly check-up, her inoculations, and her Cartrophen injection (for her arthritis – it’s a shame they can’t give me one as well! 😉 ) but at least she won’t have to stay the night there, as we’d previously arranged, because of the paint fumes… but of course, now there won’t be any paint fumes! 🙂
So now we can start looking for new furniture in earnest – Julian has had a look at most of the stuff that I saved for him the other day, and agrees with me on most of it (especially the bedroom suite, which is really, really nice!) We plan (HA!) to get most of the things delivered to our storage facility well before we move in to Stillwater, but you know what the ubiquitous “they” say – “The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men… gang aft agley”, so we won’t hold our collective breaths over it! 🙂 About all we really have to seriously look for now is a bedroom mirror (long – for seeing hems in!) and desks. We’ll want three desks, I believe – one for Julian’s official “Office”, up by the front door, and one for each of us in the “Den”. We do have an extremely nice antique walnut desk, which will either go in the Library (if there’s room for it) or in one of the three as-yet indeterminate bedrooms, because even though it’s a beautiful old desk, it’s not really big enough (or even really suitable, for that matter) to be used as a computer desk. But you know the best part about going off to look at new furniture? 🙂 We’ll be able to come home, and put our feet up and relax during dinner, and while we’re watching “Person of Interest”! Speaking of which (“Person of Interest”, that is) it’s been officially confirmed that there’s to be another, shorter, Season made, and it’s also been confirmed that the character known to us as “Shaw”, who was “maybe killed off” (she was pregnant in real life and couldn’t continue with her extremely physical hand-to-hand combat scenes) is not dead, after all, and will be returning to the show – the number of episodes she’ll appear in is currently being “negotiated” 🙂 My favourite eldest daughter and I are absolutely delighted with this news – she’s a fantastic character – and we can hardly wait to see her in action again! 🙂
Weigh-in this morning. I stayed the same again. 84.3kg. I’m still retaining fluid, if my weight and my swollen feet are anything to go by – but we’re seeing the doctor on Wednesday so I’ll mention it to her then.
Well, it looks like we have the whole day to ourselves tomorrow! (yayyy!) If the weather isn’t too “Ice Age” cold and wet, we might start our Furniture Foraging. Problems only occur if it’s raining, because very few of those furniture stores boast underground parking, and extracting a wheelchair from the back of a car and re-assembling it in the rain, then me doing my best imitation of a scuttle to get into it is not really…. “pleasant”, shall we say. On the other hand, if we wait for it to stop raining, we may find ourselves moving into Stillwater on August 25th sans furniture! (which would not be a good look!) I’ve made my appointment to have my hair coloured this Thursday… so, palpitations and trepidations! What colour should I go?! 🙂 But first….
+————————–+ * Dinner & Television Break * +————————–+
Back again! 🙂 I’ve been playing Final Fantasy XIV quite a bit today – I’m getting the hang of it, but it’s very slow! There are so many cut-scene quest details – you can skip them, but then you end up not knowing exactly what you’re supposed to be doing. In Rift, and in WoW, the quest giver gives you “the abridged” version, and the rest is given in text format, if you want to, or can be bothered reading about it. So a lot of your time in FFXIV is spent watching and listening to various quest givers telling you in minute detail what it is you have to do. To people used to playing these sorts of games it’s a bore, and you tend to sort-of “tune out” after the first couple of quests and you end up not listening properly to the rest, so it can be a little obscure, despite all the details they insist on giving you. I strongly suspect that neither my favourite eldest daughter, who started playing it first and then told me about it, nor myself – now that I’ve given it a bit of a run for its moneyFree Trail, will play it for very long – but it’s fun, as a temporary diversion… 🙂 So, once again, that’s about it from me for tonight! Call in again tomorrow night and find out how Flipper went on her visit to the Vet, and if she’s forgiven us yet, for being so mean and unkind to her as to make her go in the car to that horrible place where they stick things in her, and cut her claws. I’m pretty sure there won’t be much change in my weight – unless it goes up, which it may well do – however there will be news about furniture in general, and (hopefully) desks in particular. I’ve been most put out by the lack of room on our bedside tables with the advent of the totally unnecessary lamps that the superlative Sharron insisted we have – but I suddenly remembered that the main bedroom at Stillwater doesn’t have “built-in” (so to speak) reading lamps, so unfortunately we will have to get some for over there – and thinking about those made me realise that we’ll also need some “standard lamps” (tall lamps) – at least two, anyway! We already have one which will probably go in the Library, but we’ll need another for the living room, and a third one for the “sitting area” in the Den… and maybe a fourth one for Julian’s office? Though a desk lamp might be all he’ll need. Anyway, so now we’re going to have to look at lighting, as well as furniture! Anyway, I’ll fill you all in on everything tomorrow night – but until then, do try to bee good, always remember that the highest reward for a person’s toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it; don’t forget to drive carefully, to keep warm, and to look after yourselves… but most importantly, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂
* “OFI” days = “Open For Inspection” days – it’s far too long to keep writing all the time, so from now on, “OFI” days stands for “Open For Inspection” days, OK? 🙂
My Word! 