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! 🙂
My Word! 