And it’s been yet another exciting and productive day here at Stillwater! 🙂 The painters arrived at 8.30am – late! And then… suddenly remembered that they were supposed to be somewhere else this afternoon, so they left early, at 3.00pm! …Apparently they won’t be late tomorrow! (grrr! It’s so hard to get good tradespeople these days!) Anyway, I closeted myself in the Den and tidied up the Greybriar Guild Bank – Julian brought one of his characters from Laethys across with enough Platinum for a third Guild Bank Vault, while I finished tidying up the two current GBVs and then set Scheherazarde up to be the “Mistress of the GBV Overflow” (that is, things that really should be in the Guild Bank, but won’t fit!) Scheherazarde will also double up as “Auctionator”, and Daenerys, The Guild Mistress, will be the recipient of any Artifacts found on that shard, so it all looks as though it’s coming together nicely on Greybriar! 🙂 The dining room table and chairs also arrived just after lunch, and I have to say that our proper table is much more nicer than the horrible black beetle of a loan table was! Surprisingly, the chairs aren’t leather, they’re cloth-covered! Goodness knows why we decided on cloth instead of leather, though apparently we did… But it’s just as well that we didn’t have our proper table and chairs when Julian had his little… mishap with his dinner, because our “proper” chair would have been totally ruined! The chairs are covered in a light-ish sort of “oatmeal” cloth, and the tomato “oil” in the tomato lasagna would have stained the cloth beyond redemption! Which is why I can’t understand how we could have chosen cloth over leather! All too often food and drinks get spilt or dropped on dining room furniture, and it’s much more easier to clean oily marks off leather than it is from fabric (especially a light coloured fabric! You’d think that we could have at least chosen a somewhat darker colour, like maybe a nice chocolate-brown, if we really had to go for fabric!) I don’t know where our brains were that day! (I also can’t understand why we went for a creamy oatmeal type of colour! It has a lot of “yellow” in it, and everything else in the room is either dark brown, or grey! I might get Julian to look at the order form, just to check that we did get what we ordered! *Winter shakes her head* Most strange…)

Anyway, we have the dining room furniture, and it looks nice (despite the colour?) Greybriar has been nicely set up for next Sunday’s “And now for a walk in the Black Silverwood forest”, the painters have made a start on the en-suite and Walk In Wardrobe doors in the bedroom, and Julian has started assembling the first of the six glossy white bookcase-display-cupboards – although there was a fair bit of confusion and consternation with the first drawer – he wasn’t sure if he’d done it the right way up or not, because the drawer knob was on the bottom of the drawer front, not at the top, or in the middle! Personally, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a drawer with the knob or handle on the bottom of the drawer face, but the drawer above it is the same, and that’s what the instruction sheet says to do, so maybe it is right… I just find it a little… odd… Well, we shall see what it’s like when it’s finished… All-in-all, we’ve all had quite a productive day – except for the painters, who stuffed things up a bit, but I’m sure it’ll all be alright tomorrow 🙂

Oh, I should tell you – we discovered a new low-sugar diet jelly! I have a small diet jelly for “dessert” every night, but we buy the packets of diet jelly crystals and make our own – those commercially made-up jellies are really horrible, and taste like artificial sweetener more than anything else! We usually get flavours like strawberry, port wine, raspberry, lemon, and pineapple – but it seems like the manufacturers are slowly waking up to the fact that there’s actually money to be made in the diet or low-calorie dessert production, and they’ve started adding flavours like “vanilla and berries”, and “orange blossom and tea”, and lemon and green tea”, and they’re really, really delicious! But I reckon that this new one we found is really the best of them all! It’s “raspberry and licorice”! I’m sure you’ve all seen bags of raspberry licorice in the supermarket and lolly outlets, and while I don’t mind licorice, I’ve never tried the raspberry flavoured one. When we saw it in diet jelly crystals, however, I thought we might as well give it a go. I’m so glad we did! It’s lovely! There’s not enough licorice flavour in it to actually give it a licorice taste, but it’s just enough to really enhance the raspberry flavour! 🙂 So, who needs mud cake, when you have such nice low-calorie jellies to hand? 😉

Weigh-in this morning. *sigh* My body, under the influence of those wicked pills, has decided to really make me suffer! I stayed the same again. 76.4kg again! I am not amused! I am not happy! All I can do is try to console myself that I only have another three days of the bloody things to go! I’ve upped my Treadmilling – ten minutes at 1.2kmph, three times a day, and so far it doesn’t seem to be having any appreciable effect. I don’t want to make it any longer than ten minutes – ten minutes of mindless walking is boring enough, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s possible that it might just bore the weight off me! I suppose I could try to go faster – I’m certainly considering it – and only my extremely over-active sense of self-preservation is stopping me from turning the speed dial up another notch! We’ll see what tomorrow brings…

Yesterday while I was paddling along on my trusty treadmill, I was thinking about the funeral… and it occurred to me that we (human beings in general) aren’t doing things properly. It’s become “tradition” to have funerals as soon as possible after a death – I suppose it must have originated when it was imperative to get bodies interred (or cremated) before they started to smell bad, but that’s not strictly necessary in this day and age (depending on where you live, of course) But that’s not the point I’m trying to make – what I’m trying to say is that we have funerals when the grief is still fresh and raw and emotions are running riot. Most of the people who read the eulogies are unable to speak audibly or coherently for the tears that choke them up, as was the case on Saturday. Afterwards people mill around and don’t know what to say to eachother – anything you can think of saying usually sounds trite, or forced… Wouldn’t it be far better just to have a brief, private burial or cremation with only close family members attending – not a formal “service”, but just a type of “laying to rest rite” of some sort. Family members could then go home to grieve in peace… and then about six months to a year later, there should be a memorial type of funeral service for the deceased – not a wake, as a lot of people have these days, but a proper, memorial “funeral service“, as we had on Saturday, where people who wanted to speak (i.e. read a eulogy) could do so, audibly, coherently, with a smile – which was completely impossible on Saturday! If the eulogies could be heard at all (and they mostly couldn’t!) it was muffled, mumbled, and choked with emotion! I think it was because it was simply too soon! Tradition be damned! My family understand that I’m to be cremated. They also know that I don’t want a funeral service – I don’t even care if anyone’s there to see my casket sink down into the crematorium below. What I want is that sometime down the track, they’ll hold some sort of “remembrance” “do”, where people can remember me as I was, the things that I accomplished – as well as those that I didn’t accomplish (and there sure have been a lot of those! 😉 ) I want it to be a fairly quiet occasion, but a happy “do you remember when she…” time, and I hereby give my permission for anyone on a diet to only drink mineral water and eat their Optifast bar! 😉 But in my opinion, funerals are always held way too soon after a death – let’s all try to start a new Tradition, get the burial out of the way privately and quietly, and leave the eulogising until a bit later… Enough about funerals…

Well, my favourite eldest daughter will be here tomorrow, and no doubt we’ll watch some more of “Arrow”, Julian will probably get on with more cupboard assembling, and the painters will hopefully get on with painting the bedroom, and move onto the next room… So once again, that’s about all from me for tonight 🙂 But call in again tomorrow night to find out if we’ve spilt anything on the dining room chairs yet 😉 whether my weight decided to move at all – in either direction – what Lee and I watched, how many cupboards Julian’s managed to finish assembling, and whether the painters have finished in the bedroom! Yup, it’ll all be here for you, tomorrow night – so don’t miss out! 😉 But until then, please bee good, remember that ability will never catch up with the demand for it, and don’t forget to drive carefully, to stay warm, and to look after yourselves… but most of all, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂