Yes, I’m late again, but that’s because my favourite eldest daughter has been over – Julian’s driving her home as I write. We had a really interesting day – she’s trying to learn Italian with a program on her phone, and not doing too badly with it (though her pronunciation leaves a fair bit to be desired!) I’ve lent her my old Italian text-book, as it has a lot of extra vocabulary in it, plus the parsing of sentences and the conjugating of verbs, that should be a bit of a help for her… Actually, it’s not really “my” old text-book, it was my father’s first (the name “A. Benini” is written on the flyleaf) and although Italian was always spoken in the home, because he was taking Italian as a school subject, he had to have the text-book. My mother used it next, when she met Dad and decided to learn Italian, and then the old, and somewhat dog-eared text-book was passed on to me, when I took Italian and French for Matric (Year 12 – and being the lazy individual that I am, I took all the easy subjects – English, English Literature, Biology, Art, French and Italian) So it’s a well used, slightly dilapidated, old book – but still serviceable in teaching the rudiments and basics of the Italian language – and I can help her with her pronunciation. We watched one episode of “Supergirl”, one episode of “The 100”, two episodes of “The Shannara Chronicles”, which means that we won’t have any left to watch next week because Lee will probably be over here before the next one becomes available. We also watched the first episode of a new show, called “Sense8” – an extremely confusing story about a group of people around the world who are suddenly linked mentally, and must find a way to survive being hunted by those who see them as a threat to the world’s order – well, Lee liked it, but I found that first episode to be extremely confusing (or maybe I’m just too old to understand the issues! 😉 ) For the moment, I’ll give it “the benefit of the doubt” and watch another one next week, but if I hadn’t been briefed about the story line I wouldn’t have had a clue as to what was going on! After that, we did have some “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” to watch, but we didn’t – we sat and talked about weight loss, and going back to uni, and about a short story competition in a magazine with a $5000 prize, which said that the story could be about anything we wanted, but that it had to have “threads” as either a major or a minor theme – I wasn’t sure what they meant by “threads” – did they mean actual physical threads, as in sewing or weaving, or did they mean metaphorical threads, as in following the threads of an idea, or a conversation – apparently, as they hadn’t specified one of the other, the author was free to treat the theme as either! I suppose I’m sort-of toying with the idea of entering – it’s only 1500 words, which is about what I write here every night, so it’s not as though it would take me ages to write, and I have a couple of ideas about the “threads” theme, so at the moment I’m in a bit of a “will I, or won’t I?” frame of mind… I’m also toying with the idea of picking up a paint brush again – it’s been a very long time since I did any actual painting – I’ve mostly worked with digital art for the last… goodness knows how long (ye ghods! I just counted on my fingers and toes! Has it really been that long?! more than thirty years, since I last picked up a paintbrush?! 😮 ) What if I’ve forgotten how? In truth, the real reason that I haven’t gone back to art is that I have no idea what I’d paint – or even what I’d like to paint, or want to paint – and I’m a bit scared that I’d get the paint and all (which isn’t cheap!) and it’d just sit there, unused, because I didn’t know what to paint! So, I’ll just give the typical “motherly” response to whether I will or whether I won’t (about both the painting and the short story) which is “We’ll see…” which really means “not this week, darling – next week, perhaps…” – or in other words, “No!” 😉

Food stuffz: last night we had sausages – they were the King Island Beef ones, which I like a lot – and we had sugar-snap peas, half a tomato, and some more of the extremely nice “sea salt and cracked pepper” chips – if you haven’t tried them, you should! I reckon they’re a cut above your normal or garden variety oven baked chips! Oh, and I had one of the Dark CoCoa Chia Pods for dessert – I still can’t get over how very weird they are, with their gloopyness, that isn’t really gloopy, and their crunchiness, which isn’t really crunchy… Today for lunch I had a very delicious sandwich, made with multi-grain bread, probably a lick of butter, some of the basil pesto hummus, and some of the chicken tikka sandwich chunks. Quite, quite delicious! Tonight we’re having pan-fried chicken, with sugar-snap peas, half a store-bought tomato (ours still aren’t ripe enough to pick, and neither, unfortunately, are the figs! 😦 ) and hopefully, some more of those nice “sea salt and cracked pepper” chips. I might have another low-far yoghurt for dessert tonight – but I’ll see how I feel after the chicken… Tomorrow night, Julian is going to make home-made hamburgers, with very lean mince meat, onions, capsicum, and an egg (for binding purposes) 😉 and I reckon that mashed potatoes would go well with those… (Julian really does make delicious hamburgers!)

Weigh-in this morning. Was disgraceful! That’s right, I went down another point, from 62.0kg to 61.9kg! So, I didn’t do my lunchtime treadmilling today – besides, my favourite eldest daughter was here – I couldn’t very well just waltz off to the treadmillery, and leave her sitting there twiddling her thumbs, now could I?! 🙂 But I’m getting a little concerned – I’m eating enough at each meal that I feel almost uncomfortably full when I’ve finished, and also, I don’t want to stretch my stomach too much – so in desperation, I didn’t do my second walk today… I’ll see how I go on the scales tomorrow – hopefully I’ll go back up a bit…

Today Flipper went back to the Vet for her post-op check-up, and they’re very pleased with her – they don’t need to see her again regarding her teeth for another six months, and she can have her beloved Pussy Biscuits back! As soon as she got home, I put the bowl of Pussy Biscuits down for her, and she’s gobbled almost half the bowl full! Obviously the lack of chewing-type teeth isn’t preventing her from being a greedy little glutton! I’ve suggested to Julian that we leave the Pussy Biscuits out for her in the morning, and put them away again in the early afternoon, as she’s not eaten her dinner tonight – I’ll go and put them away shortly, and hopefully she’ll eat her dinner later on (it has all her blood pressure and pain relieving medications in it, you see) Tomorrow, Julian and I are off for our last visit to the Doncaster apartment (*sniffle*) I’m so very sad to have to leave that place – it was really wonderful living there, and I really resent the actions of the Doncaster Council… Oh, don’t get me wrong – I love this place, and I’m very glad we moved here – and at long last I have my promised veggie garden 🙂 (not to mention the kindly and generous fig tree next door, which insists on hanging a branch or two over our fence and presenting us with a few very delicious figs, every now and then!) …but I’m still going to miss the apartment, its location, and its magnificent views. Anyway, that’s about it from me for this evening – but drop in again tomorrow night, to find out if doing only one treadmillathon today added any more to my weight or not, if Flipper went and finished off her dinner overnight (because I forgot to put her bowl of Pussy Biscuits away before!) and how Arisnoë is going on her climb towards level 90, and my first Horde Garrison! 🙂 Until then, please remember to bee good, and don’t forget to laugh loudly, laugh often, and most importantly, laugh at yourselves… remember to always drive carefully, to keep warm – or cool – depending on our truly delightful Melbourne weather, and to look after yourselves… but above all, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂