Well, here I am – a lot later than usual, as the Podiatrist has only just left – and it’s almost five thirty! (I never realised that it took a whole hour to humanise my feet! Still, considering what my feet are like, I can’t say that I’m terribly surprised…) so, I have almost human-looking feet again 🙂 Today’s been a bit chaotic – we didn’t leave as early as perhaps we should have this morning, but we did manage to get the three major objectives for the day completed – my Warfarin blood test (which should have been done on Wednesday!) my appointment at the hairdresser, and my name change registered at Vic Roads – I should receive my new driver’s licence in about a week (I presume!) I had to have a new photo taken for it too, and I’m dreading what this one is going to look like – why is it that all licence, passport and ID photos have to look horrible? I wish they could use one of the photos from the professional session that we had done earlier this year! Oh well, the new licence with its undoubtedly awful photo will vanish into the back of my card wallet, where it will hopefully not see the light of day again for a long time! At least my hair will have looked good, coming as it was almost straight from the excellent ministrations of Elliott! 🙂 We arrived at Doncaster with about half an hour to spare before I was due at the hairdresser so I went up to have my blood test done. Although we took my wheelchair in the car (just in case!) once again I chose to walk around the shopping centre with only my stick for support, and – I had an adventure! 🙂 I went down an escalator! I know it doesn’t sound like much, but I haven’t been able to get on an escalator for…. oh, nearly ten years? For years before I got the wheelchair, I used to either use one of the shopping centre’s free ride-on scooter things, or else used a shopping trolley to lean (very heavily!) on – so it would have to be at least ten years since I went up or down on an escalator! (shopping centre trolleys, scooters and wheelchairs don’t really fit on them, you see) Now that Doncaster Shoppingtown has installed ticket-less parking – the parking area boom gates having been trained to recognise a car’s number plates – Julian had to sort-of re-register our Disabled Sticker with the new system, so while he was busy doing that, and I knew we were in a bit of a hurry, I went up to Dorevitch in the Tower on my own – I’d meet Julian up there when he’d finished. Rather than take the long way round from the car park to the Tower, I took the elevator up to the first floor, in order to walk down to the corridor next to Taft’s that leads to the Tower lift – it’s in that weird part of Shoppingtown where you walk down a long ramp to get to the ground floor – hmm… just drawing diagrams in my head – I think I must have taken the longest possible route to the Tower – it probably would have been a lot quicker just to stay on the ground floor, after all! Never mind, I went up, then had to come back to the ground floor (see what I mean!?) to get to the walk-through to the Tower. I was going to take the long ramp which reaches the ground floor opposite this walk-through I was heading for when I spotted the escalator: “I can do that!”, I thought to myself, and made a bee-line for the escalator, which took me to the ground floor, where I still had exactly the same distance to walk to get to the ruddy walk-through! Ask Julian – I have a totally abysmal sense of direction! When I finally got to Dorevitch, Julian was already there! So much for saving time! Still, I did see a lovely handbag on the way up (drat! I forgot to see how much it was! I hope it’s still there next time…) and I certainly got a bit of exercise to compensate for not doing my lunchtime treadmilling, so all was not lost, and I even managed to get to the hairdresser on time! 🙂 After I’d had my hair done we went and had some lunch at Jamaica Blue – he had some sort of pumpkin wrap, a mini lemon-meringue tart, and a cappuccino – and as usual, I had an Optifast bar and a long black with some skinny-milk – not for much longer, though! 😉

Oh, ye ghods! look at the time! (*aghast*) Sorry…. it’s “that time” again! Back later…

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

And… here I am, back again! 🙂 Our old Nespresso coffee machine has been playing up and leaking for a while and Julian was thinking of replacing it – and as they had the latest incarnation of the same machine at JB Hi-Fi for a very reasonable price, we bought a new one there on the way to picking up the Dry Cleaning. The Dry Cleaning collected, I was most delighted to see one of my very favourite tops amongst the clean clothes! I thought I had lost it somehow, because I haven’t seen it for so long – so it just goes to show you how often we take stuff to the Dry Cleaners! It’s a size “S” (small) and is unfortunately starting to get a little big on me, and I don’t think they make them in “XS” (extra small! Who would have thought! in August last year I was a size “XXL”! 🙂 ) and then we went on to Vic Roads from there… We were given a ticket, and a “Change of Name” form to fill in, and that there’d be about a twenty-minute wait, so we went and sat down and I filled in the form. I’d pretty much just finished filling in the form when our ticket was called. I handed in the form, which I’d forgotten to sign (silly me!) and we waltzed on over to have my photo taken, and that was that! I shall soon receive a brand new drivers licence with a new photo and the name “Winter C. Pxxxx” on it 🙂 No, I won’t tell you what the “C” stands for, except to say that it’s a name I shared with a fairly well-known fashion designer, as well as being a name which I’ve always disliked! 😛

When we got home, Paul was busy painting my bathroom with the waterproof membrane – unfortunately he didn’t get it finished, but he’s coming back tomorrow afternoon to do the rest – then it’ll have until Monday to dry and “cure” properly before he starts laying the tiles. The waterproof membrane is a sort-of light greyish-blue, and every “seam” (join between walls and floor) have a rubbery, and slightly stretchy “ribbon” strip about 11cm wide joining them, so that if the house moves at all it will stop the membrane from tearing. Roll on Monday – I can hardly wait to see what the tiles are going to look like on the floor! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Well, what can I say, except “*sigh!*” My body appears to be determined to drag this weight-loss battle out to the “nth” degree! I went from 65.5kg… to… 65.5kg! I stayed the same! May I scream now, please? Let’s hope I do better tomorrow morning – but then, although I did walk from one end of Doncaster Shoppingtown to the other (twice! and went on an escalator, twice, too!) I did miss out on my lunchtime treadmilling, so…. who knows?

So that was my day – busy, slightly chaotic, but satisfying – we got our yummy coffee (10 tubes of it! Should last me at least half a day… 😉 ) a new and betterer coffee machine, I had my hair done, my feet done, my driver’s licence name changed, and my bathroom is almost all waterproofed! 🙂 What more could a girl want? (a new, straight backbone would be good, and new feet… and a face lift… never mind – next year, maybe!) 😉 And having got to the end of my day (well, almost the end of it, anyway) it seems that I’ve also managed to get to the end of things to tell you for tonight, but do call in again tomorrow night – I promise I won’t be so late again tomorrow – and find out if the bathroom is all waterproofed and happily “curing” away for the start of the tiling on Monday, if my body has relented and grudgingly allowed me to go down another couple of points (even one point would be good!) and what other adventures may have befallen us since this evening! Until then though, do try to bee good 😉 don’t forget that whether you think you can, or think you can’t, you are right, and always remember to look after yourselves, to drive carefully, and to keep warm – or cool – depending on the weather… but above all, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂