So it seems as though I’m starting a bit earlier today – Julian is busy building up the six flat-packs of cupboards – he’s made all six frames, now he’s building up the drawers and the cupboard doors. Hopefully they’ll all be finished and in place by this evening! As I suspected, Clarke didn’t come over today to help hang the mirror and/or discuss bathrooms with us – it seems that his kids have some sort of sporting activities on Saturdays, to which he’s obliged to attend. Well, I used to go riding on Saturday mornings when I was growing up, but my parents just took me there, and picked me up afterwards… However. So that means that our Sunday is going to be a little bit hacked into tiny little pieces, jumped on, set afire, and the resulting ashes scattered to the four winds – but it’s really a matter of priorities, isn’t it – Rift? or my bathroom? At the moment, my bathroom wins, hands down! I haven’t mentioned this before, but in the shower, the shower head has to sit on the floor as the rail it’s supposed to sit in…? on…? (Winter throws her hands up in the air in frustration at not knowing the correct technical term for the “thing”!) in the little thingy wot holds the shower hose and head – is broken, or loose, or something, and if you’re in the shower and try to put the shower head back in its cradle (there, is that better? I invented a term for the “thing” – “cradle”!) it just flops over, points any way it feels like, and sprays water everywhere except where it should! I have to lay it, very carefully, down on the floor, and try not to accidentally nudge it with one of my enormous feet while I have shampoo in my eyes! There is, quite literally, nowhere to put anything! I’ve had to resort to getting Julian to cover up one of the two hand basins with a chopping board, so that I at least have somewhere to put my comb! So as I said, when it comes to getting our priorities right, my bathroom wins over everything! Last night, after Julian had finished constructing the “replacement credenza”, of course we had to get the glass-topped table-desk out of the Den and into Julian’s C64 Room, and I was volunteered to help. I’m not very strong… and I was a bit trepidated (alright, a lot trepidated!) Naturally, we removed the glass top and put it in a safe place – against the wall that we were likely to bump into on our way out with the table, if we weren’t extra careful… which we were. After a great deal of huffing and puffing, and quite a few anxious moments, we managed to get it onto the trolley and into the nice, wide, hall corridor – the fun started when we had to get it around a newly painted doorway, and into the much more narrower – and also newly painted – bedroom corridor. We took it off the trolley, and roughly squished a couple of old towels under the table – Julian pulled on the towels, and I pushed the table, and we got it down to the C64 Room’s doorway. Then it was a matter of wiggling it, about a centimeter at a time, this way and that, through the (newly painted!) door jamb, without scratching the woodwork, or damaging the table legs… and then we had to turn it up the right way again, without damaging the table legs! Anyway, the nice, big, wide, glass-topped table-desk, is now ensconced in Julian’s C64 Room, and the “replacement credenza” is sitting against the wall behind me, with all its hardware (printer, file server, router, etc., etc.) lined up neatly on top of it. Apart from needing a damn good vacuuming, the Den is starting to look really good! Against the wall behind me there’s a side table with a very ordinary standard “reading lamp” behind it. Flipper’s sofa-bed sits next to the side table… and between the sofa-bed and the “replacement credenza” is “Miranda”, the utterly gorgeous silver and bronze (not real silver and bronze!) Art Deco standard lamp (I called her “Miranda”, after a book about a mermaid that I used to read as a child – I’ve spent ten minutes looking, but I can’t find any references for it. It must have been a good book though, because I distinctly remember borrowing it from the Library to re-read at least three times between the ages of six and nine…) unfortunately there are no photos of Miranda just yet, Julian’s been a tad busy today 😉 And just the other side of Miranda there’s the “replacement credenza” with its cherry-red bins, which means that the file shredder has been left sitting right in front of the window (it’ll have to be moved – it’s in the way there…) There’s almost a full wall of window directly to my left, and on this wall, where I’m sitting, there’ll be one of the cabinets that Julian’s been so busily constructing today, between the window and my glass-topped table-desk. To my immediate right (there’s just an empty space there at the moment) will be another two of those cabinets, and a fourth cabinet will sit against the wall between Julian’s desk and the door wall. These cabinets will be used for display, for books, and for storage. There are another two cabinets (we bought six!) but they’ll be used as storage in the “back hall” (which leads into the garage) I’m just looking around behind me and musing to myself that a nice rug might look good in front of the sofa-bed… hmmm…
This morning I did a bit more “tweaking” to the blog header… the colour pink was needed in the “Spring” icon, so I took some colour samples from a gorgeous photo of cherry blossoms, and created several sets of Photoshop “styles” – the resulting header version is just one of four… I left a bit of a “glow” around this one, just to see how it would look… (Oh, lordy, lordy, lordy! I just looked at my word count! eek! “999” so I’ve quickly written a few more words – just in case! 😉 )
Weigh-in this morning. Well, I “threw away” that point that I’d accidentally picked up yesterday by mistake 😉 so now I’m back down to 75.8kg 
I’ve stepped up my Treadmilling, too, from 10 minutes to 12 minutes – which is about how long it took me to do one of my Stair Walks – and I’ve upped the speed again too – from 1.6kmph to 1.8kmph. Any faster than that and I think I’d be jogging, and I am not going to do that because I have far too much respect for my arthriticky old ankles! (i.e. I’d probably break one or both of them if I tried jogging, or running!) Anyway, I counted my steps at that speed, and I must admit I was a trifle surprised! Each time I go off and do my Treadmilling, I’m doing over 600 paces (which works out at about 900+ paces per day) and I can assure you all that I was never able to do any part of my Stair Walks at 1.8kmph, not even on my way down! But you know what? I still feel as though I’m not putting any effort into it; that I’m not working or exercising hard enough. I don’t puff or feel tired, either while I’m walking, or when I stop – I feel as though I could easily do twice the amount of time at that speed (but then I’d probably die of boredom!) So… why do I feel as though I’m not really doing any good, that I almost feel as though I was still sitting at my desk?! I’ll remind Julian to see if he can book a treadmill with an adjustable incline for me for next month – this is too easy… Maybe “climbing hills” will make me work a little harder…
Tomorrow, Clarke will be over around about lunch time – hopefully we’ll be able to get him to help Julian hang the mirror – but if not, we have to pin him down to a definite start date for my bathroom, and I’m going to have to choose tiles, vanity units, fittings, towel rails… Julian was saying the other day about knocking the wall down between the toilet and my bathroom, because heaven knows why, the toilet is in a separate little teeny room. The thing is, I pointed out to him (because he’s always pointing it out to me!) that the house is built on a concrete slab, and while it’s not impossible to move the plumbing around, it is difficult, expensive, awkward, and fraught with disasters just waiting to happen! Believe me, I’d love to expand the space, move the shower, and re-arrange things so that I had something similar to what I had in Doncaster – but there’s a ruddy great window along one wall, which precludes positioning the shower there (well, it could be, I suppose – there’s no “view” per se, so nothing really to “lose” there – and those glass bricks could possibly be used as the “outside” shower wall, and still provide privacy and light… I think…? Clarke??!!) Anyway, that’s up for discussion tomorrow – I’ll let you all know what transpires! 🙂 But that’s about it from me again for tonight – do drop in again and find out if my extra walking is helping my body in the shedding of a few more kilos, as well as what Clarke had to say about bathrooms in general, and glass-walled showers in particular (hmmm if the shower could be put where the bath is… then the toilet wall could get knocked down and I’d have a much more bigger bathroom…) Yeah, “and visions of sugarplums danced in her head!” 🙂 But there’ll be lots of stuff to tell you all about – like whether or not we managed to kill off our little fishies – we added some more water to their “pond” today – it was starting to dry out a bit – but all the muck from the bottom got stirred up… 😦 On a brighter note – we should have photos of Miranda and the Den ready for viewing tomorrow, so until then, please bee good, don’t forget that you can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do, and remember to keep warm, to drive carefully, and to look after yourselves… but above all, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂
My Word! 