Two days to go…
This is totally amazing! If it keeps up, I’ll have to start putting these up on the “As seen on…” page again! I can go for months and months and months, without seeing a single worthwhile (or what I consider worthwhile, anyway!) “Quote of the Day” from Goodreads, and now, all of a sudden, it’s the third day in a row with a decent one!
“Either you deal with what is the reality, or you can be sure that the reality is going to deal with you.” ― Alex Haley, “Roots”
The blurb reads: Roots author Alex Haley (born August 11, 1921) served in the Coast Guard during World War II. Impressed by his writing skills, his fellow sailors would pay him to write love letters to their girlfriends.
I don’t quite know why it’s “two” days to go – there’s really only one – tomorrow – and then it’s Friday, settlement day! And then, of course, the countdown starts all over again until Moving Day! It’s getting so close now, I’m starting to get nervous… anyway… Last night and this morning I went looking for “stair climbing” machines… I found heaps of them – large trolley contraptions for carting big heavy items up flights of stairs, both mechanical and motorised. I found one (yep! Only the one!) exercise machine that had rotating steps. There were about three or four that had two “paddles”, I suppose you’d call them – that you stepped on, left, right, left, right – a bit like riding a unicycle of some sort? which is definitely not what we’re looking for! I can’t ride a bike, anyway, even if they’re exercise bikes firmly attached to the floor – I just fall off them. My balance is abysmal – it’s almost as bad as my maths – but I never get sea-sick! The rougher and bumpier the water is the better I like it… however, I digress. For climbing stairs, I need to step up onto a stair with my left foot, then bring my right foot up so that I have both feet on the same step – rinse and repeat to the top, and then I do the opposite going down – I step down onto my right foot, then bring my left foot down to the same step. If I try to lead with my left foot on the way down, I’ll fall – I’ve tried it a couple of times, and each time I’ve ended up clinging white-knuckled to the stair rail, with my back painfully twisted. My left foot doesn’t seem to be able to “reach” that far down, for some unknown reason (Julian says it’s because my spine has fused in such a way that my left foot really can’t reach down that far on its own – my right foot has to be there first!) If I step down with my right foot first, and step up with my left foot first, everything works just fine, and I’m like an elderly mountain goat – I’m just concerned that these stair climbing machines either won’t be able to be set slow enough for me to do that, or that I’ll be told that I have to wear shoes to use the machine safely… well, I suppose I should really wear shoes to climb the stairs here “safely”, and I can, if I really have to, but I’m definitely a lot safer without them! *shrug* As usual, I’ll probably put my shoes on (so that I’m not lying) and tell anyone who asks “Yes, yes, I’m wearing shoes, just like you said I should!” and then take them off before using the machine… 😀
These machines are at Rowville, wherever that is, and if we have time between going to the Mirror place tomorrow morning, and my hairdressing appointment at 4.30 in the afternoon, we might see if we can get there to look at one – there are three different models… Time is getting short, and after we’ve moved, I don’t think Julian will want to drive me over here three times a day to climb stairs… You know, I’d try walking a couple of blocks three times a day – I reckon I could probably do that now in bare feet – but for something like walking around outdoors, I would have to wear shoes, and if I was wearing these shoes I don’t think I’d even make one block, let alone several! 
Now, if I could get a pair of shoes made like socks, but with thicker and more protective soles, that would probably work… (except in summer, when there’s no way you’ll be able to prise me out of the house and away from the air conditioner, if it’s over 25C!)
Weigh-in this morning. It seems that I truly am a person of extremes… someone told me once that I was like a volcano – lovely and calm and serene one minute, then the next, *BOOM*, I’d explode and disrupt everyone within several desks of me – usually because of someone’s incompetence and/or stupidity (and sometimes because of my own!) But yeah, I am an “extreme” person – and so is my weight. I probably triggered another Big Bounce Back this morning – I dropped four points! From 79.7kg down to 79.3kg. 🙂 Well, at least it’s going in the right direction, at last! 🙂 While my favourite eldest daughter was over here yesterday the three of us were talking about how much weight [people in general] should attempt to lose, and how the much-touted BMI thingy is supposed to work, and how often it gets it totally wrong – and I was idly wondering how much more weight I’d have to lose to be considered “slim”, generally. After quite a bit of discussion and a great deal of rubbishing the BMI methodology, myself and I reached a consensus that 70kg was probably not quite enough for me to be considered “slim”. I’d probably be considered almost slim at 65kg, so I’ll see what happens, and what I think, when I get to 70kg, because I’m quite prepared to go down to 65kg. if I think I need to. I’m also very aware of the fact that skin isn’t weightless, and at the moment quite a lot of my weight is tied up in the excess skin that’s hanging off me like ratty old curtains. It has to, and will go, once I reach my goal weight – if only for my own physical comfort! (having a lot of excess skin is very uncomfortable, you know – I really hope you never have to experience the creepy-weird sensation of excess loose skin around your body! )
So… tomorrow it’s off to look at mirrors and possibly stair climbing exercise machine (the alternative to the machine is to find a decent shoemaker who can make me a pair of shoes that I can actually wear comfortably and walk around in, without feeling crippled, hobbled, and self-consciously ugly!) then in the afternoon, to have my hair cut. I think by that time I’ll be so worked up about Friday that I probably wouldn’t even notice if Elliot shaved all my hair off and tattoo’d hair on my head (like they tattoo eyebrows on people who’ve lost them because of chemotherapy) Flipper has managed to clamber up onto the desk behind me and is busy spoiling her dinner, and making a real mess of the bowl of pussy-biscuits (kibble) that we keep there for her. Poor old girl – her arthritis doesn’t seem too bad at the moment (she had her injection for it about a week ago) but she seems to be losing a lot of strength and/or muscle tone in her back legs (I wonder if cats can get osteoporosis?) because lately we’ve noticed that she seems to be “missing” her jumps up onto the couch – that is, she’ll get her front paws up onto the couch, but then she doesn’t seem to have enough strength to be able to get her back legs up as well, and she ends up just… sliding back down to the floor again. It distresses her when this happens, and she stomps off complaining bitterly! She’s not hurt, I don’t think, but her dignity is definitely smarting! Anyway, that’s about it from your extremely voluble and long-winded blog writer for tonight – it might be quite amusing to drop in again tomorrow night to see what sort of a state I’m in, and whether I can write coherently or not, on Settlement Eve! Still, I should be lucid enough to tell you what my weight’s up to (or hopefully down to!) and whether we were able to find the sort of mirror we’re after. If we had the time to get there, I might even have some good news about a possible rotating-step stair-walking machine! Who knows! 😉 Anyway, there’ll be lots of news, so don’t miss out (and you can all laugh at me if all I can do is babble on about Friday! 🙂 ) But until then, do continue to bee good, always remember that the power of imagination makes us infinite, and don’t forget to drive carefully, to keep warm, and to look after yourselves, but most importantly, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂
My Word! 