Well, we didn’t go waltzing off to Ikea this morning – or this afternoon, either! Partly due to procrastination on my part, and partly due to the rather large work-load that Julian has at the moment. I dunno, I thought that resigning from the ruddy Body Corporate committee over at Doncaster was going to give him a lot more free time, but… he’s still flat-out in the Office! Actually, there’s a lot of paperwork and “official” stuff that has to be gone through when you’re moving, from organising the re-direction of mail to getting a locksmith in to change all the locks (just in case friends of the last owners had a key, or the real estate agents still had a key, or whatever – it’s far better to be safe than sorry!) So that’s largely what he’s been up to. We have to go about finding a gardening/lawnmowing person and a cleaner – I know that E., our cleaning lady from Doncaster, would happily make the long trek from Upwey to clean for us, but it’s a long way to come by public transport (which hasn’t really been all that… reliable? lately!) and her arthritis is almost as bad as mine… It would be good if she could come and visit occasionally though – she’s a lovely person, and a real “live wire”! 🙂 So while Julian was slaving over a hot desk in the office, I was slaving equally as hard over a hot Guild Bank on Laethys! Playing Rift for most of the day yesterday, it was really drummed into us that the Guild Bank on Laethys was in a parlous state and in really desperate need of cleaning up and clearing out! The Guild Bank itself was chock-a-block with a lot of pretty useless stuff, and Azsharah, my “Bank Manager and Auction Creator” character, had bags overflowing with old items to be auctioned off, and no room to put any new things coming through… so I decided to do a clean sweep – get rid of all the old stuff, don’t wait to try to auction it, just Vendor it all and be done with it! (Vendoring something means that you sell it to a “merchant” at the item’s “base” or minimum price – you can usually get about three to four times as much by auctioning the item… but it takes time, which I couldn’t be bothered doing – lazy me! 🙂 ) Then I needed to get the biggest bags that I could, so I bought nine of them to replace my slightly smaller ones (which I then sold!) and I was ready to start. Azsharah is not only the Bank Manager and the Auction Creator, she’s also the Guild Bank Overflow Mistress – that is, she takes care of all the Crafting items that won’t fit into the Guild Bank, but which we need to keep, like materials with which to make bags, clothing, weapons, potions, etc., etc… I usually pass low level materials on to her for storage in her own personal Bank, and only leave the higher level materials in the Guild Bank itself, but character levels change, and their needs change with them, so about every six months or so the whole lot has to be gone through, sold off, neatened up, and made useful and usable again, and that’s what I did this morning! I have got a few things on the Auction House, and I sent a few things off to different characters to either break down into more usable materials, or to be used as upgrades if feasible (or Vendored, if not!)

I have to tell you all that Flipper was a very naughty girl last night! She got us both very concerned… It all started when Julian was getting her dinner ready – she snuck up quietly behind him and he almost stepped on her! She got a fright and decided to chuck a fit of the vapours, then demanded petting and comforting and coddling – which she got, but not for as long as she wanted! Her dinner was duly prepared and she was escorted into the Library, where she has her dinner (mainly because it’s just off the kitchen!) We shut her in with her dinner because she sometimes forgets that it’s there and she wanders off to do something else – like sleep, or demand pats! Anyway, we followed the normal routine, and we let her out after the usual twenty minutes… and she hadn’t touched her dinner! Now I might mention at this point that she has quite a few medications ground up and mixed in with her dinner – blood pressure medication, some medication to ease her arthritis, and a rather large potassium tablet – so it’s important that she eats her dinner so that she gets the right amount of medicine at the right time. She usually loves it, so not eating her dinner isn’t due to the fact that it’s got all that medication mixed in with it! Anyway, she hadn’t touched her dinner, but she kept going and sitting in front of Julian and looking at him expectantly – just the way she does when she wants him to get her dinner ready! He took her into the Library several times to show her her dinner, but no… she wasn’t interested! She just looked at it, and turned around and walked away – then went and sat in front of Julian again, still looking expectant! By the time we went to bed last night she still hadn’t touched her dinner. We were starting to get worried! This morning when we got up, she came in to say “good morning”, as she usually does, and seemed quite her normal, usual self. Overnight, she’d not only polished her dinner bowl, but she’d also eaten about a quarter of her bowl of pussy-biscuits, leaving a mess of crumbs and half chewed bits all over the carpet around it! So much for all our worry…

Weigh-in this morning. I don’t know – perhaps when I get to the .3kg to .5kg part of a kilogram zone I should stop weighing myself for about a week, or at least until my weight makes up its mind what it’s going to do! Because it just goes silly! Meandering up and down, backwards and forwards – it just can’t seem to make up its mind whether it should be going up or going down, or something completely different! F’rinstance – the day before the day before yesterday, I was 76.4kg. Then I went up to 76.5kg… Yesterday I went back down to 76.4kg again… and this morning? I’m back up to ruddy 76.5kg again! *Arrggghhh!* I suppose I should be used to it by now, but it just makes me want to scream with frustration! And tomorrow I start back on those new pills which I don’t like any more than I liked the other ones! And this time I’ll start taking the two anti-fluid tablets from day one, instead of waiting to see if I do need to take two of them first! Grrr!

Anyway, tomorrow my favourite eldest daughter is coming over – she’s got a visit to the hairdresser, and we have a bit of shopping to do over at Doncaster, plus the bits of my chair to reclaim, and some Dry Cleaning to pick up. Then we’ll come back here and watch something (I can’t remember what we were watching last time! Hopefully Lee will be able to remember!) Bother! We go to “Daisy Dry Cleaning” over at Doncaster because they use water (H2O) and not chemicals, so if a piece of clothing says “Do Not Dry Clean” I know that we can have it Dry Cleaned at Daisy because they don’t use the chemicals that you’re not supposed to use on those sorts of things. Anyway, I was hoping that there might have been another one slightly closer, but there isn’t. There are only three “Daisy” Dry Cleaners in Melbourne – Port Melbourne, Clayton, and Doncaster. There’s one at Lara, too, but that’s a bit too far out… So the Doncaster Daisy will have to remain our Dry Cleaner of choice! Not that I mind too much – they’re nice people there, and they look after us well (besides, we’re beginning to think that we’re funding their new Rolls Royce and their all-expenses-paid trip around the world! ) Julian heard from Mr. Treadmill person this afternoon – subject to confirmation, he should be delivering the beastie around 9.00am tomorrow! I shall be able to do some exercise for a change! 🙂 And now, once again, that’s about it from me for tonight! 🙂 I’ll let you all know tomorrow night if the Treadmill arrived, and if I’ve tried it out (or if I fell off it and ended up in a heap on the floor behind it! 😉 ) and if my weight has decided which way it’s going to go, or if it’s still trying to make up its mind. You’ll find out what my favourite eldest daughter and I watched in the afternoon, and what our plans are for Wednesday. There’ll probably be other news that may be of interest, but rest assured that you won’t miss out – you’ll hear all about everything tomorrow night! 🙂 Until then, though, do try to bee good, remember that every somebody was once a nobody who wanted to and did, and don’t forget to keep warm, to drive carefully, and to look after yourselves… but above all, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

(Winter smiles, and takes a big, deep breath…) Ahhh! 🙂 There’s almost nothing better, on an almost-spring Sunday morning in Stillwater, than the smell of fresh, clean snow from the Tarken Glacier! 🙂 We slept in – a bit – this morning, had a leisurely breakfast, and dived into Rift. Although we both reached level 65 the last time we played, we didn’t start off two new characters today, I played my usual girl, Sylversong, but Julian used Mandreth, a Cleric, who’s another one of his favourite characters. She’s only level 64 and he really wants to get her to level 65, so I came along to “ride shotgun” and give Mandreth a hand. Of course, I’d already done all of the quests Mandreth had to do, and because I’ve done them I don’t see all the sparkly things to pick up any more – so all I can do is kill anything that moves to make Mandreth’s run to level 65 as smooth as possible for her. We both died once – a clumsy “pull” on a hostile mob on both our parts brought down just about every hostile creature, as well as just about every neutral creature, on our heads! We didn’t stand a chance! As a Mage, I could have Feigned Death, and the mobs would have left me alone, but that would have left Mandreth on her own to try to fend them off, so I didn’t… and as I said, we both died – but we sure took a lot of them with us! 🙂 It’s really strange, going back and re-doing quests that you only did about three or four weeks ago – you can’t see half of the things that are the object of the quest, you can’t tell how many more “whatevers” have to be killed off or picked up, and at level 65, you don’t even have an experience bar to watch creeping along! I was constantly asking Julian “how many more “XXX’s” do you have to get?”, and “have you got all the “XXX’s” you need?” But, a good day was had by all – Mandreth didn’t quite make it to level 65 today, despite the use of experience enhancing potions, but if we play a couple of hours in the evenings during the week, we should be able to get her there by next week 🙂

Tomorrow we’re off to buy bookcases – well, I think we’re off to buy bookcases! Maybe we should ring Ikea first, to make sure that they’ve got what we want in stock – I don’t want to waste a morning going all the way out to Springvale if they don’t! Been there, done that, with the stair climbing machines – and we came home annoyed and disappointed because the place we went to didn’t have any machines set up because “they were moving to Dandenong”, and we hadn’t rung them first. And here’s a thought! We may not be able to go tomorrow, because Ikea is a very big store and I’m going to need my wheelchair to get myself from point “a” to point “bookcase” without my back totally giving out – and my wheelchair currently doesn’t have a back or a seat! I suppose I could do a “Boudicca” – stand up on the footplate and drive it like an electronic chariot or something… but I think I’d get more than a few startled and curious stares… 😉 So… if not tomorrow for the bookcases, it’ll have to be Wednesday or Thursday – but I’ve got a funny feeling that something’s supposed to be happening on either Wednesday or Thursday – I just can’t remember what it is (must be my oldtimer’s disease!) and of course, my favourite eldest daughter is coming over on Tuesday, and we’ll be over at Doncaster for a while because she has an appointment at the hairdresser (I’m going on Friday instead of Tuesday, so that hopefully my hair will still look alright for the funeral in Adelaide on Saturday afternoon) I just reminded Julian of the wheelchair “problem”, but he says he was thinking of picking the pieces of chair up tomorrow anyway, because he doesn’t like the thought of them being over there all by themselves (wow! my collar bones are starting to get almost sharp, they’re sticking out so far!) So maybe we will get to Ikea, after all! 🙂

I’ve been putting a bit more thought into my bathroom renovation plans… I was thinking of timber vanity units, with timber tops, like the ones that are currently there – but on second thoughts, I think I’ll go with a caesarstone top, so that I can get the sort of corner-fitting vanity unit that I want – I’ll talk to Clarke next time we see him, and see what he thinks. Last time we spoke about it he suggested tiles on the top of the vanity unit, and I couldn’t say “No! No way!” fast enough! When I was a teenager and we lived in East Ivanhoe, the vanity in the bathroom there had a tiled top, and it was one of the most inconvenient vanities I’ve ever used! (apart from this one here, and that’s only because it’s so tiny!) Tiles are simply not nice and flat and level – the grouting between the tiles makes a really nasty little indent, and if you put a small bottle or a small anything down in the wrong place (i.e. half over a grouting line) it falls over, with sometimes disastrous and very expensive results! It used to drive me bonkers!

Weigh-in this morning. It’s doing it again! The typical (and frustrating) shilly-shallying that occurs when I get to between .5kg to .3kg of a kilogram level! This morning I went down the one point I went up yesterday – my graph looks like this: \/\ Down two, up one, down one! Goodness only knows what it’ll do tomorrow! I suppose it’ll either stay the same, or go up one again! Roll on next week, and the arrival of my treadmill!

You know, it’s still hard to get used to thinking of this place as “home”, and not some sort of temporary “holiday place” we’re staying in until we go home. I’m trying to find “work-arounds” for the bathroom, and yesterday, when my favourite youngest daughter and her husband came over, Julian was on the phone so I went to get the front door – and promptly turned the wrong way out of the Den, going towards the back door by mistake! And it’s such a long corridor! It seemed to take ages to get to the front door, and I wasn’t walking slowly, either! (it was like: “walk, walk, walk… am I nearly there yet? No, I’m outside the bedroom… walk, walk, walk… half way there! Keep going, Winter! walk, walk, walk… finally! The front door!”) I reckon I could probably get my exercise simply by walking up and down the corridor half a dozen times! But we’re getting used to the place, and I must say I’m most impressed with Flipper! Maybe it was because we sent her off to board at the Vet’s for two nights, so that she missed out on all the stress and angst of the packers and the removalists bustling around, but she’s settled in here quite quickly and calmly. When Julian brought her home, she was curious, and very wary, and she needed a lot of cuddles and personal contact from both of us, but she’s now shuttling between rooms, spending her time, as she did in Doncaster, sleeping in one or the other of her cat-caves, or on the sofa-bed in here, or lying along the back of the sofa-bed… she’s eating well, making her usual nice big mess with her pussy-biscuits (read: kibble designed to make her chew) so I’d say she’s not going to be going into a nervous decline because of the move any time soon! 🙂 There are still quite a few items still over in the apartment that have to come over here – pictures (at long last we have walls that we can hang pictures on!) wall clocks (apart from the microwave, oven, and my alarm clock, there isn’t a single clock in this place yet!) the books, of course, the brass gargoyle door knocker, and the little brass “cats-in-a-row” key-holder thingy to put on the wall by the front door (or the back door!) but those will probably be a job for next week – this week is going to be just too fraught and hectic to get stuck into too much unpacking and organising where things are going to go. And really, that’s about all I’ve got for you again tonight! 🙂 However, there’ll be lots more for you all tomorrow night, so do look in again and find out if my wheelchair is once more intact, and did we end up going to Ikea and getting lots of bookcases, or are we going to have to order them online? You’re probably all waiting with battered breath to know what my weight got up to – or down to, as the case might be – well, you’ll find all that out tomorrow night, along with all sorts of other interesting news and tidbits! But until then, please bee good, don’t forget that the measure of who we are is what we do with what we have, and always remember to look after yourselves, to keep warm, and to drive carefully – but most importantly, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Our first weekend at Stillwater! 🙂 Today’s been a fairly relaxed sort of day – Julian went off to “Bunny’s” (Bunnings) to get some steel shelving for the garage, so that he can move his tools out there instead of storing them on the top shelf in the Walk In Wardrobe, like he did in the apartment. He also wanted to look for new garage remote controllers, but didn’t realise that he needed the model number of the mechanism – oh well, next time… 🙂 While he was busy with that, I was busy playing Rift, getting Satai up another two levels, which was good. When he got back, we had lunch and discussed what we were going to do tomorrow – play Rift, or unpack boxes! I think Rift won out! 🙂 We’ve decided that we won’t roll new characters just yet – we still have things to do and quests to finish on the Tarken Glacier, so we’ll see how we go with things now that we’re level 65, at long last. Then Julian realised he’d made a terrible mistake last time we were out. Whilst loading the wheelchair back into the car over at Doncaster Shoppingtown on Thursday, he hadn’t loaded up the seat and the back part of the wheelchair – he’d only loaded the chassis part of it! I thought that surely they must still have them – we’re there often enough that they know us quite well, and they would have quickly realised that we’d left them behind by mistake! As soon as he realised what he’d done, he rang the shopping centre, who said that they didn’t know, but that they’d send someone off to the Valet Parking area to check for us and that they’d call us back. After several very anxious minutes, they did call back, and yes, the back and the seat were both there at the Valet Parking area, waiting for us in the “kitchenette room” (“kitchenette room”? I didn’t even know they had one!) We’ll be over there again on Tuesday, so we’ll collect them then… I absolutely hate to think of what we’d have done if they’d just been thrown out, or claimed by the wrong people!

In the middle of all of that, my favourite youngest daughter (Kate) and her husband (Terry) arrived to see the new place and to talk about gardening matters. Anyway, after we’d arranged to pick the wheelchair fragments up next Tuesday, we gave them the “Grand Tour” and showed off our new home – then everyone went outside, including me, to examine the vast expanse of entertainment decking, and the pocket-handkerchief sized back garden – and then I came inside, because it was freezing cold, and still drizzling with rain! Julian picked two lemons from our little lemon tree – one ginormous one which will probably be mostly skin and pith, and very little actual juicable lemon – the second one just looked like your average. a-little-on-the-large-side, lemon. They both have that wonderfully fresh, clean, lemony smell – though what we’re actually going to do with them, or use them for, I have absolutely no idea! Just sit and look at them, I suppose, gloating over “our” first lemons! 😉 Because I was cowering inside with the heater, I missed out on the garden-creating conversation, but I gather that Kate and Terry will bring over some sleepers and soil, to help Julian prepare the area for planting. I’m expecting great things from this vegetable garden – carrots, celery, beans (the sort-of magenta and white mottled “Italian” ones!), brussels sprouts, cauliflower, tomatoes, chilies, capsicum, cucumber… the list is virtually endless! About the only vegetables I don’t like are beetroot (because I ate too much once, when I was little, and it made me sick, so now I won’t eat it at all!) eggplant (aubergine) and sweet-potato/yams. I don’t like/won’t eat avocado either, but that’s a fruit not a vegetable… I think… So, Julian, if you’re reading this, get ready to roll up your sleeves and start slaving over a burgeoning vegetable garden! 😀 I can’t wait to start eating real home-grown vegetables – they taste so much more betterer! 🙂 Kate warned me that carrots are hard to grow, and that they won’t look anything like the mass-produced, “clone” carrots that you get in supermarkets, that they grow in all sorts of funny shapes – but I already knew that, and I don’t give a damn what they look like, as long as they taste nice! Oh, and I also want to put in a fig tree! It’s not a vegetable, so it’ll be my tree, and I’ll look after it – I want to get a Purple Genca (sometimes called Black Genoa, or Black Spanish) if I can, but it depends on whether it needs pollinating to produce any figs or not. I shall read up on them… I love figs! 🙂

On Monday, Julian’s decided that we’re off to Ikea to buy bookcases. Lots and lots of bookcases, because we’re going to be fetching our books home! Gentle readers, I can now reveal to you all that we’ve already sold our Doncaster apartment! The splendid Sharron won’t get to turn it into a doll’s house, after all! 🙂 Remember I mentioned a while back that the curvaceous Carmen wanted to bring some people through while the packers were there and the place was in utter chaos, and that she would never, ever show a house in such chaotic disarray to a prospective buyer unless there was a better than even chance that they’d buy it? Well, she brought the couple through… the place looked like a war zone… but she brought them through anyway. The next day was moving day, and the removalists were busy carting boxes and furniture out – if anything, the place looked even worse than it had the day before! The charismatic Carmen rang us again – the couple wanted to bring their family around to look at it – could we, sort-of, tidy it up just a little bit, please? So while the removalists were busy moving boxes out, Julian was running along behind them sweeping and mopping… he actually did a damn fine job too, and by the time we closed the door behind us to come over here, the apartment looked very clean and tidy. That evening, our first in our new home, clever Carmen rang again. They’d bought the place! (for a very good price, too!) It’s a long story which I won’t go into here because this blog is starting to get way too long, but as the usually careful Carmen no longer had the contract of sale documents, Julian copied four sets off, while she sent her minion over to collect them and take them back to her. She got the couple’s signature, came over to us and got ours, and… there it was – a done deal! I haven’t been able to say anything while the three working day cooling off period was in play, in case things fell through at the last minute, but the time’s up now so I can! 🙂 I have to give the canny Carmen full credit! She even managed to sell the buyer’s own house the very same night! Now, that’s salesmanship! (or in her case, saleswoman-ship! 😉 ) So we don’t have to leave our poor, lonely little books over there by themselves after all, and we’re going to need an awful lot of bookcases in a hurry! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Not so good today – my superb run of weight loss reversed itself today – I went up one point, from 76.4kg to 76.5kg 😦 I know it was only to be expected – I have had an almost waterfall of weight loss over the past week – but it’s still disappointing, none the less. I hope I don’t go up again tomorrow, but I won’t be too surprised if I do… or if I stay the same. As I said last night – I somehow managed to miraculously slide through the last “lower zone doldrums” unscathed – this time I’m not going to be so lucky… Let’s see what happens tomorrow – and anyway, next week should be a lot better, once I get my treadmill… 😉

So… Monday we’re off buying bookcases… Tuesday, my favourite eldest daughter will be over… I’m not sure when the treadmill will be arriving – hopefully Wednesday! Thursday? I have no idea… and Friday, I’m off to the hairdresser so that my hair will (hopefully) look alright for the funeral in Adelaide next Saturday. We’ll be flying in in the morning, and flying out after the funeral – and as we’re all going, there’s not going to be anyone left in Melbourne to feed Flipper if we don’t! There’s so much to do here – we’ve been making a list of everything we have to do “yesterday”, and the more we do, the more the ruddy list just seems to keep growing, not getting any smaller! *sigh* Oh well, we won’t be moving again in a hurry, I can tell you! 🙂 The painters came in today to “case the joint”, as they say in the movies, and it’s been decided that all the walls are to be painted, because if they’re not all done, they’ll look “patchy” and not very nice… they start Monday week, from memory… Anyway, once again that’s about all from me for tonight, but don’t forget to look in again tomorrow night to find out if my weight did go back up, or stayed the same, and if we Rifted, or unpacked boxes (or a bit of both!) and I’m sure there’ll be lots more to tell you all too! 🙂 Until then, though, please continue to bee good, don’t forget that from the errors of others, a wise man corrects his own, and remember to drive carefully, to keep warm, and to look after yourselves… but most importantly, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Well, almost our first weekend here in Stillwater! We’ve been here for four days, and there’s still boxes uncountable to sift through! This morning Julian taxied over to Doncaster to pick up our second car, and to do some shopping. How is it that we go to the trouble of making shopping lists, we’re going through the supermarket, armed with said list… and as we’re trundling down the bread aisle I say to him “How are we for bread, dear?” But because he’s about four paces ahead of me, and he’s tall, and I’m down low in the ruddy wheelchair, he says “What?”, so again I say “Do we need bread?”, and this time he hears me (I think!) and he replies “No, we’re right for bread… we’ve got plenty…” Then the very next day he says to me “I’m going to have to go out and get some bread – I have nothing to make my lunch with”. This seems to happen a fair bit with all sorts of things, not just bread… So anyway, he went over to Doncaster, picked up the Lexus, and came back via the supermarket at Vermont South, and I got in a couple of hours of solid Rifting, which was pretty good… We’re hoping that we might be able to Rift again this Sunday, but… I know the old saying “All work and no play makes Julian and Winter dull people”, but… perhaps we should only play until lunch time, and spend the afternoon dealing with boxes. I don’t think we’ll get much of a chance to work on the boxes tomorrow, as first the painter is coming over to see what work needs to be done, and in the afternoon, my favourite youngest daughter and her husband are coming over… Oh well, we’ll see… I wouldn’t mind having a day rocking and rollicking around either Telara, or the Tarken Glacier… (says she, wistfully!) Unfortunately though, we haven’t really done anything terribly constructive today – Julian’s back is feeling a trifle “tender”, and with the amount of boxes still left to move and unpack, neither of us wanted to jeopardise it by allowing him to do anything too strenuous, so he’s brought the car back, done a couple of loads of washing, and this afternoon we started unpacking two boxes labeled “Den stuff”. The first one contained a whole lot of my things that I’d been starting to fret about, including my photo of Gingee, my “prescription box” (a card index box with all of our various prescriptions filed alphabetically so that they’re easy to find!) a wall calendar, and a letter rack. Those items have been found homes for on my desk (which is starting to look a little crowded!) The second box we started to unpack was also mine… labeled “Den Shelf Stuff” – and so it was! So we’ve had to re-label it “Do Not Attempt To Unpack Until We Have Shelving!”, because if we hadn’t, we’d keep on picking it up, finding that it was not unpackable, and getting annoyed with it to the point that one or both of us would be happy to throw it all out. So we’ve unpacked and dealt with…. one small box, today! I looked around on the internet for bookcases and I’ve found some which look as though they’ll be ideal, from Ikea, and if they look OK when we actually set eyes on them we’ll probably buy… quite a lot of them! We’re going to need bookcases coming out of our ears (we really do have an awful lot of books!) I’ve also discovered that we really, really need a small, probably with only two-shelves, bookcase, or a very small coffee table to put on the wall side of the lounge-suite in the living room. At the moment we have one of our two side tables sitting very appropriately at the dining room end of the lounge-suite, and the second side table sitting very in-appropriately at the foot of the chaise part of the lounge-suite, because if we put it where it’s supposed to go, at the top of the lounge-suite opposite the other side table, it would make the lounge-suite w-a-y too big for the area into which it has to fit. And as the chaise part of it is where I sit, at the moment I have nowhere to put my kindle, a cup of coffee (or tea!), the television remotes, or my box of tissues – unless I can grow much more longer arms – which I can’t! So anyway, Ikea have a few possibilities there, too, so we shall have to take time off from our box unpacking to go and have a look at the bookcases and the small coffee table thingies…

Weigh-in this morning. Well, I’m starting to work out a morning routine for getting up and getting weighed – not quite a perfect routine yet, but gimme another day and it’ll be right 🙂 I think… anyway, I noticed this morning that although I’d written my weight down in my diary, I’d neglected to enter it in on my graph – because it was in another room, that’s why! Tonight I shall take both my diary and my graph book with me so that I shan’t forget tomorrow morning! Anyway, this morning I’d gone down another two points, from 76.6kg to 76.4kg – and now, here I am again, almost to the point where my weight either stops moving altogether, stays the same for days in a row… or goes back up. Somehow or other, I managed to very cleverly slide past the 77.4kg (or so) and straight down into the 76kg zone – I very much doubt that I’ll be able to repeat that little trick, so for the next few days (at the very least!) I think we should probably all totally forget about weight-loss, and start thinking more in terms of “staying the same”, or “going up!”

Flipper seems to have accepted her new reality, if not with good grace, then at least with good, solid snoozing! She hasn’t repeated her bedroom visit of the other night – either because she “forgot” that she’d slept most of the night on our bed, or because she found that it wasn’t as good as she’d thought it would be and didn’t care for a repeat visit. She seems though to have appropriated the sofa-bed in the Den here, and although she mooches around now and then, she spends most of her time either flat-out on one end of the sofa-bed, sleeping very soundly, or lying sphinx-like along the top of the back of the sofa-bed, loftily and regally surveying her new domain. We’ve brought her two cat-caves (where she usually spent more than three-quarters of her time sleeping) over from Doncaster, and although she’s poked her head into – and walked into – both of them, she’s shown no interest at all in curling up inside either of them for a nap. The heater here is very effective and efficient, so I guess she’s probably warmer here than she was in Doncaster, which was, I admit, a fairly draughty apartment… Anyway, she seems calm and happy enough, and she’s eating well…

And so life continues to muddle along as usual. On Monday, I should be getting a treadmill delivered, and I’ll be able to start doing some exercise again (mind you, walking around this place is quite good exercise, too! It’s very big!) It’s a shame I won’t have an incline that I can set, but maybe it’s just as well, too. I’ve never used a treadmill before, so it’s probably a good idea to get used to walking “on the flat” first, before starting to climb small hills… and tomorrow week we’ll be heading off to Adelaide for Julian’s mother’s funeral. I’m starting to count the days (again!) until my bathroom gets renovated – it’s really hard, trying to squeeze everything into such a small area… and that’s about all I have for you all tonight, gentle readers! Do drop in again tomorrow night to find out what the painter had to say, what sort of gardening advice we got from my favourite youngest daughter, Kate, and her husband Terry, and whether my weight has reverted to form and either gone up, or stayed the same; see if Flipper is still sleeping on the sofa-bed, or decided that our bed is much more nicer, after all! Until then, however, please try to bee good, always remember that chaos often breeds life, when order simply breeds habit, and don’t forget to drive carefully, to look after yourselves, and to keep warm – but above all, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

My goodness gracious me! What absolutely horrible, cold, wet, and miserable weather! About the only thing good about today’s weather is the fact that all the rain is refreshing the water in our little fishy pond surrounding the water feature at the front of the house, from whence I concocted the name “Stillwater”! We’ve just got home from a shopping trip and visit to the hairdresser, and I can’t remember when I’ve been so glad to get inside and close the door behind me! We left here around midday, got onto Burwood Highway, just past the Vermont South shopping centre, and couldn’t remember if we’d shut the garage door behind us! So, we turned around and came back to check. We had, but it’s something we’re going to have to be mindful of – we’ve lived with an automatically closing garage door for eight years, and now we actually have to close it behind us (with a remote control, but we still have to remember to use it!) So we set off for Doncaster Shoppingtown again, and it was raining pretty heavily – the roads were definitely not much fun to be on this afternoon! We picked up some more coffee pods, and also some tea from T2, because we ahh… don’t know where our tea supply is cached in all the boxes! We will find it of course, but we needed some tea to take us through until we do. We got two little boxes of Ginger and Spice, and two little boxes of Raspberry Rush – both flavoured black teas that one can add milk to – they both sound nice, and they both smell delicious – so we’re about to sample the Ginger and Spice one to see if it’s as good as it smells! (it does!) 🙂 Anyway, I had my hair done, and after having lunch at Jones the Grocer (Julian had a very nice looking 3-cheese croissant and a piece of cake; I had one of my favourite Optifast bars, a Berry Crunch one!) we went and bought a new, small Sharp microwave – it’s very small and quite a cute little beastie – and Julian had to buy a new, smaller Pyrex jug in which to steam his beans as the one that he’s been using wouldn’t have fitted in the new, smaller microwave! I got some more perfume as I’d almost run out of the one that my favourite youngest daughter gave me for Mother’s Day (Don’t look now, but we brought Flipper’s two cat-caves back today and Julian’s just put one on the sofa-bed in here – she’s just noticed it, and has made an immediate bee-line for it! 🙂 ) Now, you recall that we’ve been trying to hire ourselves a treadmill – well, today we actually managed to find someone who was willing to not only lease one to us but who said that we could go around and try one out. We wanted to get one with an adjustable incline, so after we’d finished at Shoppingtown we slithered and slid our way on the freezing cold, wet and greasy roads to Glen Waverley, where this guy was located. It was still pouring with rain, but it had become about four times colder, too, and I’d just come from the hairdresser! All the treadmills were in the guy’s garage, so we had to run through the freezing rain to get to them (when I say “run”, I don’t mean actually running, I mean walking as quickly as I can with shoes on, OK?!) …It didn’t do my newly coiffured hair much good, I can tell you! Well, there were a lot of machines there in his garage, but we were only interested in two of them. There was one smaller (and dingier and grubbier-looking) one that did do a teeny-weeny bit of an incline, and one slightly larger, cleaner and nicer looking one that didn’t do any sort of incline, large or teeny! I had a go on the smaller one, and it wasn’t bad, but the walking platform or whatever was quite narrow, and my deformed splayed feet tended to overlap badly on the plastic sides that you stand on while you start the machine up. I think that might have been a bit dangerous and either break the machine, or send me flying, so we decided that maybe that wasn’t the right one for me. Next I tried the nicer, cleaner looking treadmill with no adjustable incline. It wouldn’t even start. “Oh dear!” said the guy who owned them “I must have got them mixed up! It’s the one behind it that you should be looking at!” – “Good save!” I thought to myself, as we stood around and shivered violently while he swapped the two machines over. I had a go on that one, which was quite a lot wider and managed to accommodate my deformed feet quite well. It goes slowly enough for me too, so we’ve arranged to have either that one, or one just like it, delivered early next week, for me to try for a month. Unfortunately it doesn’t have an adjustable incline, so I’ll have to walk flat, but if that one works out alright I might try “graduating” to one that will allow me to walk uphill next month – on the other hand, if I continue to lose weight while walking on the flat, I won’t bother with the incline. We’ll see how we go, anyway.

Weigh-in this morning. Well, life is full of little surprises, isn’t it! I went down another three points, from 76.9kg to 76.6kg! This can’t last, folks! I will have to pay for this rapid and very gratifying weight loss – I will have to bounce back! It would be good if I could go down another couple of points first though, wouldn’t it! 😉

Well, Flipper has eschewed her much-loved cat-cave and is reclining in regal splendour along the back of the sofa-bed! In fact she’s been behaving quite differently from the Flipper we’d come to know and love over at Doncaster! Many, many years ago, Flipper would, occasionally, sit on Julian’s lap (we even have some photos to prove it!) but since our sadly departed Russian Blue, Arty, came to live with us, she wouldn’t have a bar of sitting on anyone, and even hated to be picked up! Last evening, and this morning, she was quite willing to be picked up and cuddled on “Daddy’s” knee! And last night she was even happy to have the “horrible Mummy” cuddle and pat her! But the most amazing thing was, she made her way into our bedroom last night, where she somehow managed to jump up onto the bed (she doesn’t jump terribly well any more because of her arthritis) and spent the night cuddled into the doona between us! I think she got down once, probably to have a snack and a drink, or to use her litter box, but she was there again this morning when I woke up! She’s never, ever, ever done that before! When we went out at midday we were a little concerned that she’d be upset, but when we got home and I walked into the Den here, there she was, stretched out along the back of the sofa-bed, quite relaxed. When she saw me come in, she hopped down and came over for a pat, had a few mouthfuls of pussy-biscuits, and went back to her sofa-bed perch! I’m beginning to think that she likes living here already! I hope so, anyway! 🙂

The painter was supposed to be coming over tomorrow, to case the joint and see what needed to be painted, but he’s taken a rain check until Saturday morning, which suits us fine – we still have a lot of work to do here, with all the boxes that still have to be unpacked! On Saturday afternoon, my favourite youngest daughter Kate and her husband Terry are coming over to have a look at the place and to advise us on setting up and maintaining a Vegetable garden, and no doubt, my favourite eldest daughter will be over next week to see what the place looks like with furniture in it! 🙂 There’s really not all that much more to add tonight, apart from the very obvious fact that we’re both going to be very busy unpacking boxes for several weeks to come – so once more I shall leave you with the reminder to drop in again tomorrow night, to see what we’ve been up to, what adventures we’ve had, and whether or not my weight has bounced right back to the 77kg zone again! But until then, please bee good, don’t forget that life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it; always remember to keep warm, to look after yourselves, and to drive carefully, but most importantly, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Well, no more countdowns for this, that, or the other, anymore! 🙂 Here we are, and the place is starting (only just!) to look like a home, and not like a cardboard box tip! The (un)packing ladies arrived here this morning at half past eight, but this time, instead of being just the two of them, it was a whole team of seven (or was it eight!? I fergit…) “and there was much to-ing and fro-ing in the land, and much disruption and chaos ensued…” However, I have managed to find a few of my things – not everything I wanted to find, but a few… and no doubt a lot of things will be re-lost, as it was himself telling the ladies where to put things, and not me! Quite frankly, there wasn’t room for me to butt in and see where things were being put – with the seven (or maybe eight) of them, plus Julian wheeling trolley-loads of multiple cardboard boxes at a time into the shed, there wasn’t much room left in the corridor to walk around saying “I’d like those in here, please”, or “Could you put those in my bathroom? Thanks…” – and it’s a very wide corridor! The one thing that we’re going to have to get, toot sweet (as the French say) are bookcases! Not just for the books, which are still over at Doncaster for the Doll’s House, but for “stuff” – ornaments, document folders (I don’t really classify them as “books”, but they need to be stored somewhere!) etc. I think I might have mentioned last night that we got the removalists to put the sofa-bed in here (the Den) because the sofa-bed’s rather big, and the “secondary” corridor to the three spare bedrooms where we were going to put the sofa-bed is quite narrow. The entry to that narrower corridor is quite small too, and rather than risk injury to the sofa-bed or the walls, we had them put it in here, where we were (are still?) going to get a nice “casual” couch or chairs for that particular corner. It will look and be very comfortable when it’s all done and the boxes (all 19 of them – I just counted!) aren’t sitting in a miniature “Great Wall of China” right across the window! I have no idea what’s in them, but apparently it all came out of the Den over at Doncaster – so I think we’re going to need quite a lot of bookcases! The ladies have now departed, but as yet I haven’t got up off my chair to have a look around to see what they have put where. Hmmm… I’ve just been for a brief wander… they really haven’t unpacked very much at all, that I can see! S’truth almighty, there are still boxes from here to eternity, apparently they haven’t found most of my bathroom stuff, there are boxes of saucepans still in the living room – and if Julian was busy filling up the shed with boxes that he wants me to sift through for auction – well, it’ll take us about 20 years just to go through all the boxes still left all over the house!

Anyway, while all that was going on this morning, and I was stuck in here, keeping out of everyone’s way, I thought “Well, we’re in a new house, I should really bestir myself and find a new template for the blog and make a new header – so I have 🙂 I hope you like it… At the moment, Julian’s off picking up Flipper – goodness knows what she’ll make of all of this! Before picking up Flipper though, he dropped off a whole heap of boxes filled with crumpled packing paper at the tip, then went on to Officeworks because our mouses (?mice?) apparently don’t like glass-topped table-desks. He has a mouse mat, but I don’t, and the chairs don’t roll over carpet the way they did over tiles, so he’s got me a mouse mat, and got some of those mats that you put down on carpet so that computer chairs can be moved around more easily (I actually think I pulled a muscle trying to manhandle (womanhandle?) my chair up to, and away from, my desk!) At the moment I’m using my desk notebook as a mouse mat… It works… sort-of, if you don’t mind a fair bit of drag… From Officeworks he went over to Doncaster to do a bit of shopping (we were out of a few things, and there was Dry Cleaning and mail to pick up) then across to our old apartment to pick up Flipper’s litter-boxes and cat-caves (which he forgot to take with him – again! Poor Flipper – she’ll just have to put up with sleeping on the good mohair rug!) The nearby Golf Club has been sub-divided and work is starting on yet another housing estate there, so Doncaster Road is half blocked off, and will be until next March! So to make things easier for everyone half the entries and exits to Shoppingtown have been closed off too! Yeah, riiight! That’s really going to help matters! So while Julian was over at our old place, he walked around and took lots of photos, just so we can point and say (hopefully not too wistfully!) “We used to live there…” I’m thinking that this place will feel a lot more like home when it has a cat in it! Let’s just hope that Flipper thinks it’s home because it’s got us in it! Foxtel was supposed to have been switched across this morning, but I went in there to try it our just before and it told me that the card wasn’t “valid” or something – more work for poor Julian to have to chase up!

I can’t wait to have my bathroom re-done! There is totally and utterly and completely no room to put anything, with that ruddy great bath in there! I have two small cupboards – no drawers at all – just two very small cupboards, where if you adjust the shelves so that a can of hair spray will stand up on one shelf, the remaining shelf is too low to even put a roll of toilet paper on it! That bathroom is minute! Where’s a woman supposed to put her makeup? There’s no room for a box of tissues anywhere near the vanity unit – my tissues are sitting on a bit of the bath surrounds at the moment, as is my Dyson reverse-cycle fan heater, a mirror on a stand, and two cans of hair spray – and we haven’t even found all of my bathroom things yet! I really am going to have to settle down and look for vanity units that’ll give me a bit of storage space!

Weigh-in this morning. My first weigh-in in the new house, I was a trifle trepidated because of not having done any Stair Walking (though I did do a bit of running around and unwrapping things) so I was a bit nervous when I stepped on the scales (in the en-suite – Julian’s bathroom, because there’s not enough room in mine for even a pair of scales on the floor) Do you know, I had to rule up another graph page this morning! I’d gone right off the page! Down another three points, from 77.2kg to 76.9kg! I’m amazed… stunned! Awed! But I’m sure it’s only an aberration – I’m sure to go back up again tomorrow! But in the meantime, I can jump around singing “Hallelujah” – I’m in the kilo zone before my final goal weight! Of course I won’t stay there – I’ll probably go back up again tomorrow – but that doesn’t matter, I’m in it for today, at least! 🙂

Tomorrow we’re going to have to leave Flipper on her own to get used to the place – we have to go and get a new, much smaller microwave. We don’t need or want a fancy one, we only ever use it for de-frosting things occasionally, re-heating leftovers, and/or steaming vegetables – so while we’re over at Doncaster and I’m at the hairdresser, Julian can pick one up from DJ’s or wherever. There was something else we were supposed to get too, but Flipper’s just come home and I’ve completely forgotten what it was. Never mind, I’ll remember tomorrow – I hope! 🙂

So, Flipper is home – she doesn’t seem frightened or upset – just curious, but wary… hopefully this is a good sign (she even had a bit of a cuddle with the much hated “Mummy”! Howzat for a good, brave little girl!) Julian’s getting her a drink of water while I finish this. Foxtel is now working, though for some unknown reason I can’t get to their online TV Guide – I could yesterday, but not today. The page loads, but only displays the top frame of the screen and nothing else. You’d think that if it was broken a company like Foxtel would be right onto it, as it doesn’t make them look good in the eyes of their online customers! Anyway, the internet for me will be down for a while this evening while Julian plumbs his computer in and gets the network up and running – at the moment we’re without the file server so I can’t save things properly or access document files, graphics, photos, and just about everything I use all day, every day! And so once again, that’s about it from me for tonight! 🙂 Don’t forget to drop by again tomorrow night to find out if my weight has gone back up again (it probably will, you know!) and how Flipper coped for her first night in a strange place – whether we got our new smaller microwave, and what sort it is – and if I’ve found the rest of my bathroom gear (I’m going to be pretty annoyed if I haven’t!) but whatever happens, there’ll be lots and lots to fill you all in on! Until then though, do continue to bee good, remember that life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to drive carefully, and to keep warm – but most importantly, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Look! Look! 🙂 It’s me! I’m here! 🙂 I’m home! 🙂

This will be probably the shortest blog I’ve ever written, but it’s 10.10pm and I’ve just got my computer back up – Julian is busy making the bed – it’s been a hell of a day, and we’re both totally exhausted – we were up at 6.00am this morning – and would you believe, the removalists arrived at 8.00am and everyone ran around like ants when their nest’s been disturbed – except me! I sat around and got totally bored. I read my kindle. I needed coffee badly, but there wasn’t any – it was all packed! And so was the tea 😦 We didn’t arrive here until after four – still no coffee (or tea!) By the time the removalists finally finished and we closed the door behind them it was almost seven o’clock. No television, we thought we needed something to eat – you know what the main problem was? Finding a saucepan or frying pan to cook in! Oh, all the boxes were labeled – handy descriptions, like “KitcHen essENtials”, which had cups… and glasses… and a couple of plates! Or dishwashing detergent… or plastic containers! We eventually found one frying pan – with a lid, too! – so that Julian could heat up some frozen tomato lasagna that he’d made for just such an eventuality – what, no microwave? I hear you ask! Yes, well we left the microwave behind – it’s too big (the one thing we are short of here is bench space in the kitchen!) We’ll get ourselves a smaller one on Thursday when I go over to Doncaster to the hairdresser, and tomorrow, the un-packing ladies will be coming over to un-pack everything they packed up yesterday, and they’re going to keep asking us “Where do you want this?”, and we’re going to look blank and say “Ummmm…” because we don’t know where we want things yet! (why is there a cold draft blowing down the back of my neck?) One of the reasons it’s taken so long to get my computer functional (you should see the nest of spaghetti cables behind my desk!) is because before he started working on it, Julian wanted to locate the doona, so that he could make the bed while I wrote this, if we could get the computer to work… We had no idea which box the doona was in – or the rest of the bedding either, for that matter – so again, we went running around from room to room opening boxes that hadn’t been packed by the ladies, looking for the ruddy bedding – which we eventually found, but… still no doona. More frantic opening of boxes. Naturally it was in the very last possible box… I mean, well obviously it was going to be in the last box we opened, because after we found it we wouldn’t open any more to look for it, would we? – What I meant was that there literally no more boxes that it could have been in because there were only boxes packed by the ladies left! Anyway, we located the doona, and Julian came in here to set up my computer, and now here I am, getting to write a short blog after all! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. As of 6.00am this morning, I was down another two points – down from 77.4kg to 77.2kg! Now, sitting here at 77.2kg, and not having done any Stair Walks today, I’ll either stay the same or go up tomorrow, because I’m at that particular point in the kilogram zone where that’s exactly what happens! Unfortunately! But we’ll see if the stress and strain of today will maybe leech another point out of me first. Going without coffee for so long was a definite strain!

Tomorrow we have to be up bright and early again because the un-packing ladies will be here – bright and early, at 8.30am – to unpack everything. Oh, what joy! We’re going to have to find new homes for everything! Thank heavens we don’t have the books to cope with as well! This room, the Den, is going to be really nice – once we get all the boxes out and neaten up all the spaghetti under the desk – rather than try to wrestle the sofa-bed down the narrow secondary corridor to one of the three spare bedrooms, we put in here – the Den – where it looks quite good! It needs a side table and a rug, and some bookcases, and it’ll be a very nice – what do they call them? “Parent’s Retreat”? Unfortunately we don’t really need to “retreat” from anyone or anything, so we’ll just call it… “The Den”, and be done with it 🙂 Anyway, as I said earlier, we’re both totally exhausted, so that’s all I have for you tonight – I just wanted to let you all know that we’re here, we’re more or less intact, and I’ll have lots more to tell you all tomorrow night! I don’t know about you, but I’m really curious as to what my weight is going to do until I can find someone who’ll rent us a treadmill! However until tomorrow night, please try to bee good, always remember to think big thoughts but relish small pleasures, and don’t forget to drive carefully, to look after yourselves, and to keep warm – but above all, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

No more Stair Walks after this evening…

…I’ve been told I won’t have time to do a “lucky last” one in the morning – the removalists are arriving at eight o’clock… I’ll be lucky to have finished breakfast by then! So, the packing ladies arrived at eight o’clock this morning and started doing their “thang” – and despite my putting what I wanted packed on one side of the vanity unit in my bathroom, and telling them, clearly, that only the things on top of that side of the vanity unit were to be packed – except for the dyson reversible fan, and the duster bin next to the toilet… they’ve gone and packed everything they could lay their little mitts on, including the bathroom tidy! All I can do is hope against hope that they had the good sense to empty the ruddy thing before they packed it, otherwise I’m going to have a full to overflowing small rubbish bin being unpacked over at Stillwater! Something that I definitely didn’t want! There’s going to be enough junk over there once they start unpacking, what with the reams and reams of packing paper, bubble wrap, and cardboard boxes (thank heavens we’re fairly close to the “Refuse Station” – it’s just down Burwood Highway, behind Bunnings and Officeworks!) So it’s now 3.30pm, the packing ladies have gone, and I’ve done my second last Stair Walk – only one more to go. Julian is on his way home from taking a load of things over to Stillwater – including my wheelchair – and when he gets back, we’ll have a cup of coffee… then he has to load up Flipper and take her off to the Vet, where she’ll be “boarding” overnight, and we’ll pick her up and bring her back to her new home tomorrow evening. Oh, she’s going to be so angry and upset with us – she’s already been wandering around the house yelling and screaming because all her familiar things have been slowly vanishing into “the Nothing“! While she’s at the Vet, we’ll get them to snip out a few bits of matted fur, very close to the skin, just under her jaw – they’re a little bit too close to her jugular for us to feel happy about doing ourselves. The poor old girl is really getting too old and stiff to be able to groom herself the way she used to – she always looked immaculate – she does her best, but… *sigh* …and also, I suspect that it’s not so much that she’s unable to groom herself properly any more, but more a case of starting to groom herself, forgetting what she’s doing, and wandering off, or drifting off to sleep, instead of getting rid of all the little mats and knots – which very quickly grow into big mats and knots! If that is the case, then there’s not much we can do about it, except keep on taking her to the Vet to be de-matted!

My goodness gracious me! We’ve just had a call from the charismatic Carmen! She wants to bring someone around to look at the place, even though there are boxes every which-where, the place is quite grubby, and everything is in chaos! Now, I know what sort of a saleswoman the crafty Carmen is, and I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there’s no way known she’d bring a prospective buyer around with the house in the state it’s currently in, unless there was a very serious prospect of them buying it! So let’s all cross our fingers and toes! 🙂

Well, they’ve been and gone – I guess we’ll know when we know! Julian also had a call from the Coroner in Adelaide – exact cause of death won’t be known until the pathology reports come in, but the body will probably be released tomorrow or Wednesday – Melissa, Julian’s sister has tentatively suggested the funeral be held Saturday week. You know, this has really been a jumpin’ place today – the packers, Carmen, calls from the Coroner… never a dull moment! I rang the people from whom we were hoping to rent a treadmill this morning, but only got an answering machine: “Please leave a message and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible!” – so I did, and it’s now half past four, and I’ve heard zilch! I don’t know – perhaps they’re making too much money and don’t need any of ours? The place is looking decidedly forlorn at the moment – it’s so empty and bare… and it’s going to look decidedly strange over at Stillwater, with no books anywhere! Julian used to have a favourite print – it was of a railway station with all the lines branching out from a somewhat grubby and slightly bombed out cathedral – probably somewhere in France. There were different types of trains on all the lines – a steam train, an old “rattler” – sleek modern fast trains… the station platforms had that “just swept” look, scrupulously clean – even though there were a couple of cigarette butts, and a discarded ticket, lying on the railway lines… there’s a composed and serene Nun facing you, a small girl with a lollypop stands on another platform, and a man reading a newspaper stands on yet another platform… But the strangest thing about the painting is that… well, what do you see around stations, where there’s ample shelter and lots of wires overhead? Birds! There isn’t a single sign of a bird, anywhere in the painting! There’s very clean-looking rubbish on the ground, and the whole painting is highly detailed – but there’s no hint of birds, or bird droppings! That print (it was quite a large one!) hung on our wall for years, and everyone who saw it noticed the fact that it was so very “birdless”, and remarked on it! I wonder if we still have it – if it’s still in storage! If it is, I’d like to have it cleaned and re-framed (I smoked very heavily back then and I fear it became rather heavily coated with cigarette smoke and nicotine! ) Anyway, saying that Stillwater was going to look really strange with no books anywhere reminded me of that print… well, they both start with the letter “b”, don’t they! “b” for books, and “b” for birds! 😉 Let’s hope this couple fall madly in love with the place and buy it overnight, then we won’t have to leave all our books over here for the sumptuous Sharron to decorate her pretty doll’s house with! 🙂

Julian has just taken Flipper off to the vet, and I think I’m starting to wish that we weren’t moving, after all! It’s different, you know, when you’re leaving a place that you’re glad to be moving out of, and leaving a place that you’d have been perfectly happy to stay in for many more years, but felt “chased out of” by all the big developments going up all around you, the Council altering their parameters and building regulations to line their own pockets, and the fact that with so many teeny-tiny, small and mingy little apartments going up all over Doncaster Hill, the value of your big, spacious, light and airy apartment is going to plummet. Don’t get me wrong – Stillwater is a beautiful place and I’m very glad that we’re going to be living there – in other words, I’m sad to be leaving this place, but very happy to be moving in to Stillwater – you know what I mean?

Weigh-in this morning. Well, I’m still being surprised! I went down another two points to 77.4kg – goodness knows, the bounce back, or the “go slow” strike must hit soon… This is really only two and a bit kilos off what my intended goal weight was! However, looking at my current figure (would you believe that I’m starting to develop a “waist”, and not a “waste”?! 😉 ) I’m afraid that another two kilos (and a bit!) isn’t going to make much difference, and after all, I still have to hit maintenance and stay on that weight! Which is why I wanted to get down to 70kg – then I’ll have 5 kilos to play around with while I’m trying to get stabilised on real food again. I shall re-evaluate the situation when I get to 70kg… 🙂

So tomorrow is moving day. Tonight we’ll have our last dinner here, and spend our last night in this apartment… At least I still have an operational computer, though I’m not sure whether I will tomorrow night or not – so if there’s no blog tomorrow night – and please bear in mind that it’ll probably be quite late tomorrow night before the blog will be up – don’t despair, there will be one the following night! And that, I’m afraid, is about all I have for you tonight – but look in again a bit later than usual tomorrow night, to see what we’ve all been up to, and how the move went! Were there any bumps and hiccups? Did my weight go up or down with excitement, or did it get bored with the whole thing and stay the same? Have I decided where to put everything yet? Well, I can’t promise that all of your questions will be answered, but a great many of them will be! (if I have a working computer, that is – otherwise you’ll just have to wait an extra night to find out, won’t you! 😉 ) But until then, please try to bee good, don’t forget that small deeds done are better than great deeds planned – always remember to keep warm, to look after yourselves, and to drive carefully – but most of all, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Only three more Stair Walks…

Oh dear, I meant to do so many things today, and all I’ve managed to really get done is… wash my hair! Duh! I guess I’m just a fritterer – I start doing something, get distracted, start doing something else, then – oh! time for my Stair Walk! I come back from that, and – pick up something else… See what I mean? I’m a fritterer – I end up getting lots of things started, and nothing finished! *sigh* I suppose I should count myself lucky that I managed to finish washing my hair! Anyway, Julian spent the morning doing more washing, packing up all his computer gear (he’s left his laptop here so he has something he can surf with) and ferrying it all over to Stillwater, where he is at the moment, setting it all up over there. Mine won’t go until tomorrow – or maybe Tuesday – because if it’s over there tomorrow, and we don’t move until the next day – how am I going to get my blog written?! So be warned – I might not be able to write anything for a couple of nights – it depends on when my computer gear is trundled over to our new abode, and how easily everything “slots together” when it is. Tell you what, if I can’t write my blog for a day or so, I’ll write an extra, extra long one for you, to fill you all in on what’s been happening while I was unable to write! 😉 Only kidding – but I might write a couple, one for each missing day, back-dated to reflect the day(s) I wasn’t able to write anything – I mean, I wouldn’t want you all to miss out on anything – I’d never be that thoughtless! 😉 Hopefully I won’t have to miss a day – but you just never know, do you! Paul was there when Julian arrived – his excuse for not being there yesterday was that he got held up, and didn’t get to pick up the door until after three o’clock, when he didn’t think it was really going to be worthwhile taking it all the way from Eltham to Vermont South, when he could bring it the following day (today) and make an early start. He hopes to be finished with the three taps, the showerhead and the two doors by close of work today (hmm I wonder if that includes cleaning up as well!) Ahh… I just had a phone call from Julian – progress report: he’s set up his “business-type computer” in his new office, but just dumped his “having fun” computer on the table-desk in the new Den. Paul has both doors hung and the plastering finished in the en-suite (though over-night a few pin-holes have appeared in the plaster which he’ll have to fill in and re-sand. Julian says that sometimes when plaster is drying it produces a small amount of gas which makes these pin-holes…) he’s changed the kitchen tap, and was in the middle of changing my second swivelly tap when Julian left, and he’s changed over my showerhead. Julian says he’ll clean up as best as he can with the built-in vacuum cleaner, and that we may see the two of them (Clarke and Paul) at some stage tomorrow – apart from that, we have the painters coming in some time in the middle of the week to paint the two new doors, and do a bit of touch-up work here and there. Then we should be free of tradespeople for five and a half weeks, when work starts on my bathroom! 🙂 I think I should start looking at vanity units around about now, because I really don’t think that what I want exists in a standard pre-made vanity unit – it might have to be custom-made… Tomorrow, I have to ring and arrange to hire a treadmill – we’ve found the place, and chosen our machine – Julian says to arrange to have it delivered on Wednesday, if possible, though I don’t know which room we’ll end up putting it in. I guess it really doesn’t matter – we have three spare bedrooms to chose from 😉 We’ll hire it for a month, and see how it goes – if it’s suitable we’ll either buy one, or extend the lease… but I don’t want to have to go too long without being able to do some sort of exercise – missing out on my Stair Walks the other day couldn’t have been avoided, but I did feel guilty for not doing them, and what’s even stranger is the fact that I really do feel better (a feeling of general all-round well-being?) when I get back from a Stair Walk! Me! Who generally hates, loathes, and despises exercise! Who’d a thunk it! 🙂 Don’t worry though – I think there’s very little chance of me ever becoming addicted to exercise, or that you’ll see me deserting Rift and my graphics, and running off to buy a life-long membership at a Gym! (what a horrible thought!)

Weigh-in this morning. More surprises! Now even Julian is starting to comment on how weird it is that when I’m up near the top of a kilogram “zone”, my weight drops off in great big chunks, very quickly, but when I start getting down to the “.3” mark of the “zone”, it either slows right down, goes up, or stays the same! Weird! (well, I do have a reputation to maintain, so I guess it’s not really quite so weird, after all! Now, what would be really weird would be if I wasn’t weird… er… I think…) Anyway, I went down another three points, taking me from 77.9kg down to 77.6kg, which is good – but I’m still expecting a reasonably large Bounce Back…

Tomorrow, the packers are coming. I guess everything of mine in here except the computer, mouse, and keyboard can pretty much be packed – Julian’s home, and I have another new mouse. I really like my little “harlequin” mouse – he’s very pretty – but he has one glaring fault! When not being used, he “goes to sleep”, and needs to be switched off, and then back on again, to make him wake up. We think this new one will probably do the same, as it’s the same make – but one can be hopeful… It really is most annoying, having to turn your mouse upside down and “tickle his tummy” twice to make him wake up! But as I was saying, the packers are coming tomorrow, and I guess everything of mine in here can… pretty much be packed, except for the obvious items. I’ve still got one more Stair Walk tonight, and three tomorrow – and if I’m really lucky, a lucky last one on Tuesday morning, before we leave here… then I’ll just have to wait for the treadmill. So it’s not long to go now… I’ll try to keep my computer operational for as long as possible, but as I said earlier – no guarantees! And so I guess that’s about all from me for tonight – but do drop in again tomorrow night (hopefully I’ll be here, if not, I’ll bring you all up to speed when I can, I promise! 🙂 ) I’m sure you can’t wait to find out if my weight went up, down, or boringly stayed the same – because I am getting to that part of the zone where that’s about a given! And I’ll let you know how the packers went, and how much is still left to be carted over to Stillwater, piecemeal, on Tuesday… and any other interesting little bits and pieces that I’ve suddenly thought of to tell you all! 🙂 Until then, however, continue to bee good, remember that you can’t do something unless you can imagine it, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to drive carefully, and to keep warm – but most of all, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Only six more Stair Walks…

*Quote of the Day from Goodreads this morning: “Some people care too much. I think it’s called love.” ― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

Before I get on and tell you about our doings today, I have the sad task of telling you all that Jenny, Julian’s mother, passed away this afternoon. She’d had a touch of “stomach flu”, but apparently a lot of people in Adelaide were getting it, and she’d had it a few times before anyway, so we weren’t overly concerned. However a friend and neighbour had called in to say hello and found Julian’s mother unresponsive, so she called for an ambulance, and then called Julian, as she’d been unable to reach Melissa, his older sister. Julian received the call shortly after we got home from our shopping expedition – Melissa has now been contacted, and as executrix, will start organising things – I’ll let you know when we have to fly over for the funeral.

We had quite a busy day today – we had to go off shopping to get our new doona cover and bedding for our new bed, but first we went over to Stillwater to measure up the bathroom cabinets for the slide out drawers that will be put in. They’re probably only going to be temporary, because my bathroom will be re-done in six weeks – Julian says that he’ll probably commandeer the sliding drawers then and have them put in the en-suite, if I no longer need them. He also had to measure the gap between the drying machine and the linen-press, for some sort of narrow wast bin, and I must say that we were surprised, and a little annoyed, to find that Paul wasn’t there working on the en-suite and the Walk In Wardrobe doors as he said he would be. Words will be had on Monday! Measuring done, we then went up to Knox City – there’s a Howard’s Storage up there for the slide out cupboard drawers and laundry “tidy”, and we wanted to get a shoe rack for the back hall leading to the garage, so that we could shed our shoes as soon as we walked in and not have them scattered from one end of the house to the other (as we sometimes do here, I’m afraid to say!)  We also went to Myer to look for bedding, and they did have quite a nice doona cover that we probably would have bought – if we could have got a bit of service! There was only one shop assistant in the entire area, and she was extremely busy serving another customer who seemed to have bought nearly all the blue towels, hand towels, face washers, and bath mats that the store had. After waiting a good five minutes without even being told “I’m sorry, I’ll be with you in a minute” by said ultra busy shop assistant, we put the doona cover down, and left. I’m afraid that the false economy of trying to save money by cutting down on staff that Myer are practicing cost them a fairly large sale this afternoon, and I’m sure that we’re not the only customers who walk out without buying anything because they’re either ignored, or don’t have the luxury of time to waste until someone is available to take their money! We ended up getting a very nice doona cover, fitted bottom sheet, and half a dozen pillowcases at Adairs, and which are now happily swooshing around in our washing machine so that they’ll be ready for us to put on our new bed on Tuesday night 🙂 We had grocery-type shopping to do too, so on our way to Coles (at Knox City) we stopped in at the Terry White Chemist shop there – they sell nearly all the Optifast products, and as we needed a bit of a top-up but didn’t want to wait for them to be delivered if I bought them online, we got them there, whizzed over to Coles, did our shopping, and came home. We did have some Dry Cleaning to be picked up, but that will have to wait until Monday morning now. As soon as I got inside, I shed my feet and trotted off to do my afternoon Stair Walk, expecting a nice cup of coffee when I came back, only to be greeted by Julian’s announcement that his mother had just passed away! 😦 So things are a little bit… nebulous? at the moment? As far as I know, we’re still intending to move into Stillwater on Tuesday – funerals permitting, that is. Ah – more news. The doctor who was called to issue a death certificate wasn’t happy to do so as he didn’t know enough about her prior medical condition, so the death has had to be referred to the Coroner – we’re told that this usually takes about a week. This is actually good, because it will give Julian’s brother Mike a chance to get here – he lives in Israel – and it will give us a chance to get our move over and done with before we have to go over to Adelaide – *sigh* so now you all know about as much as we do about it.

Weigh-in this morning. I really wasn’t looking forward to getting on the scales this morning, after not having done any Stair Walks yesterday – but I suppose guilt must gobble up a lot of calories or something because I’d gone down four points! From 78.3kg to 77.9kg! However, I’m sure my body will wake up to the fact that guilt doesn’t really burn up calories, and I’ll bounce back to well over 78.3kg again! Still, we can only cross our fingers and hope!

I’m not quite sure what’s happening tomorrow – as far as I know we’ll be starting to ferry things across to Stillwater, and putting them away – however I’m not entirely happy with putting things away in cupboards and drawers while Clarke and Paul are still busy making messes and getting plaster dust all over what had been a nice, clean house! I’d really rather wait until that’s all cleaned up first, but I fear it won’t be, and we’ll just have to move in and put up with all the plaster dust and other builder’s debris. I’ve also been spending quite a lot of time trying to decide where I’m going to put things, like the green and gold glass ewer and basin that used to live on the sideboard in the hall – do I want that on the hall table, or do I want the “porcellino” (literally “little pig” – it’s a small bronze copy of the large bronze pig in Florence) there? Where is Julian’s antique clock going to live now? Is there room to hang the photo “Bert’s Bath” in my bathroom? Where are we going to hang “PB in his floral dress”? (don’t ask! It would take too long to explain!) …and things like that.

Unfortunately, it’s “that” time again…. sorry…

+————————–+ * Dinner & Television Break * +————————–+

And now, Hey! Presto! Here I am again. So, yes, I’m starting to wonder where I’m going to put things… we might have more room over at Stillwater (as in more actual rooms to fill) but I really don’t think we’re going to have all that much more space in which to put, or display items. It’ll probably turn out to be a matter of “put it here, move it there, leave it where it looks best”. We also went to Officeworks where I had a look at cable and power cord “tidies” – and ended up getting a new mouse instead. My mouse would periodically, about twice a week, stop. The batteries were fine, the mouse was fine (as in not all gunked up with desk residue and Optifast bar crumbs) but it would just suddenly stop. The only thing that would get it going again was to open up the battery compartment, half lift the battery out, poke it back in again, and the mouse would perform flawlessly for another two or three days – rinse and repeat. So we bought me a $15 “harlequin” mouse – “harlequin” because it’s covered in multi-coloured hexagons – it’s quite pretty, and seems to be working as well as any mouse can, or does! 🙂 Oh, and I must tell you, one of the couples on our floor here dropped in a lovely “Going Away and Thank You” present for us – a beautiful potted orchid, and a nice bottle of Moët! That was very sweet of them – they haven’t been here all that long, and John, who has been helping out on the Body Corporate Committee, has recently had heart surgery. We are going to miss the people here – they’re lovely people, and although we don’t socialise (with anyone, really!) it’s been good, and we’ve enjoyed living here. And so, gentle readers, once again I have to tell you that that’s about it from me for tonight. Do drop in again tomorrow night though, and find out if my weight has woken up to the fact that it didn’t have to go down because my guilt gobbled up a whole lot of calories, and has decided to pay me back by going back up into the 78kg zone again! You’ll also become privy to whether we ferried stuff across to Stillwater and put it away in plaster-dust covered drawers and cupboards – or whether we just packed stuff up and left it in boxes for the removalists to take over on Tuesday. Anyway, I’m sure there’ll be lots to tell you all – isn’t there always? 😉 but until then, do please try to bee good, know that we do not remember days, we remember moments, and don’t forget to keep warm, to look after yourselves, and to drive carefully – but above all, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂