Ooo-er! I’m starting to write really late this evening! My favourite eldest daughter has been over – Julian is just running her home at the moment – but we’ve had a good day all round. Lee had an appointment at the hairdresser over at Doncaster Shoppingtown this morning for a hair cut – and although she says that Neale, her husband, will hate it, I think it looks good! It’s very, very short, but it suits her. We also did a bit of shopping over there, and we collected our Dry Cleaning (but I’m really annoyed with myself! I meant to remind Julian that we should take the Dry Cleaning basket which is rapidly filling up again, but I [mumble] forgot! ) Oh well, at least I’ll have something clean to wear on Saturday! This afternoon we watched about four episodes of “Arrow“, of which we’d only seen the pilot before we moved. It’s quite a good show, but as usual I was struck by the lack of communication between characters – back when I still used to watch soaps, like “Days of Our Lives”, and “The Bold and the Beautiful”, I used to think that if the characters would only talk to eachother about whatever was bugging them, instead of bottling everything up or deciding to take matters (like revenge!) into their own hands… then there probably wouldn’t have been a story-line, I guess! “Darling, I have to confess to you! Ten years ago I slept with your brother, and Sonny-Jim isn’t really your son! *sob* and Now he’s married to Mary-Sue, who’s really his half-niece, and she’s pregnant! *sob*” (Ahhh! But little do they suspect that Sonny-Jim isn’t the real father of the unborn baby at all! 😉 ) See? Where would the story-line be? “Darling” would leave “the confession-maker”, the truth would be out, and “Mary-Sue” would also ‘fess up to her small indiscretion – and that would be the end of it all! No more episodes full of angst, revenge, jealousy, and remorse – and we bored housewives would have had to go and read a book instead! (hopefully not a Mills & Boon!) So maybe there is a point in not talking to your friends and loved-ones, though quite frankly I prefer to clear the air and get things out in the open, and resolved, one way or the other!

It’s quite exciting – my treadmill arrived this morning at about a quarter past nine and has been installed in the middle bedroom of the “bedroom wing” of the house 🙂 I had a bit of a go on it, and I’m afraid that I won’t be able to read my kindle whilst doing my walking on it – I’m going to have to watch where I put my feet fairly carefully, because unfortunately my feet don’t point straight ahead like normal feet, but poke out at about a 45° angle (thanks to deformities caused by my arthritis – a legacy of eleven years of classical ballet!) and if I’m not careful I end up with either one or both feet only half on the treadmill “belt”, with the “overhang” resting on the plastic side strip – not an ideal situation! Still, it goes pretty slowly – it’s currently set to one kilometer per hour, but I’ll probably speed that up as I get more used to it… Julian thinks I should start out doing two lots of seven-minute walks a day, and gradually building it up. I start tomorrow morning, so I’ll let you all know how it goes!

The locksmith came today to see where we wanted the locks changed, and what sort of locks we wanted them replaced with – and surprise, surprise! They didn’t have the sort we needed and/or wanted in stock! They’ll have to order them in and it’ll take about a week to get them! Ridiculous! In the meantime, I suppose we’ll just have to sit on the porch with our rifle resting on our knees, waiting for the bad dudes to come and rustle our cattle try to break in… I suppose in this case, a deadlock isn’t always a deadlock…

Tomorrow I’ll start my walking exercise, and if the weather is anything like it was today, we might make the trek over to Springvale to have a look at Ikea’s bookcases and (I think!) cable tidies (the area behind our nice, white, glass-topped table-desks looks like a spaghetti monster’s nest!) and of course, there are all the boxes still left to unpack… however, it’s “that” time again! 🙂 S’cuse me!

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

Here I am, back again! 🙂 You know, we got spoilt, over in the apartment, with lovely tiled floors… the ceiling lights in the apartment below us kept all our floors nice and warm, and moving the computer chairs was akin to playing ice-hockey! Here, the floors are all tiled – except in the so-called “living areas”! The Office, the bedrooms, the Den here, and the Library, are all carpeted. Maneuvering the computer chairs around the desks was harder than trying to push Mt. Everest over onto its side with your bare hands! So we got three of those heavy plastic (?) mats that people put down to protect their carpets from the wear and tear of rolling chairs… but if anything, they made the problem worse. I “sploshed” at least half a cup of tea onto myself and the desk the other day (some of which got under the inlaid glass top and was a real pain to clean up!) just trying to push the chair back so that I could get up out of my chair! So we removed the matting… moving the chairs was only slightly easier, so in the end, Julian went off to Bunnings (which is just down the road!) and got some sheets of masonite (I think!) which fit quite nicely under the desks and you know what? The chairs now move as easily as they did on the tiles back in Doncaster! 🙂 Apparently these aren’t the right sort of wooden sheets though, and they’ll eventually warp and bow, but they’ll do for now, and at least I can get up and sit down without losing half my tea to my lap, and under the glass top of my table-desk! 😉

Weigh-in this morning. You know, I think my treadmill came just in the nick of time! Not only did I start on my next dose of horrible fluid retaining pills (for which I’m doubling my daily dose of anti-fluid retaining pills) this morning, but I went up a point too, from 76.5kg to 76.6kg! 😦 To say that I’m not a “happy little Vegemite” would be the understatement of the millennium! So, tomorrow morning I’m hopping on that there treadmill – and I don’t think it’ll be long before I double my seven minutes, and increase the speed I walk at – just a little bit! 🙂 I really wish I’d been able to get the treadmill with the adjustable incline, but I’ll start off with this one, and try to “book” one of the adjustable ones for next month!

As I think I said earlier – I’m not sure what’s happening tomorrow or Thursday – apart from my walking exercises and unpacking more boxes – if the weather’s OK we’ll probably go off to Springvale and Ikea, but if it’s pouring with rain, we might just sit all cosy at home and work on unpacking boxes. I need to find my “bathroom” box – it has a new tube of herbal toothpaste in it. I packed it, thinking that I had plenty of toothpaste to last me until we moved – and I suppose I do, really, but it’s starting to get a lot harder to squeeze the tube to get a sensible amount of toothpaste out of it, and I’d feel a lot more confident if I knew I had the new tube waiting in the cupboard! While we were at Doncaster this morning, Julian went to the Shaver Shop and got me some new “sensitive” toothbrush heads, and also went across to the apartment and unscrewed our little brass gargoyle-head door knocker and the little brass pussy-cat tails key rack. We’ll need to get another brass “striker” plate for the door knocker to hit against, and then once that’s up and functional I think I’ll feel as though I’m really home! 🙂 And that, I think, is about all I have for you tonight! Call in again tomorrow night though, and find out if my weight went up yet again, because I really don’t expect the treadmill to make any difference to my weight for at least two or three days (if not longer!) and also whether we went off to get bookcases or not – but whatever we do tomorrow, you can read all about it here, tomorrow night! 🙂 But until then, please try to bee good, don’t forget that when a cat chooses to be friendly, it’s a big deal, because a cat is picky! and always remember to look after yourselves, to drive carefully, and to keep warm – but most importantly, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂