05.43 pm
Well, here I am, finally! Some family friends from Adelaide dropped in a while ago – mainly to drop off some boxes from the old house there – they didn’t stay long, only about ten minutes, but of course, not knowing how long they’d be here, we’d run around like chooks with their heads cut off, tidying the house and making sure it looked “nice”, and worrying that we didn’t have anything to offer them other than tea or coffee. Anyway, they’ve dropped off the boxes, filled us in a bit about the renovations that are currently taking place at Julian’s old place – it sounds most interesting! Apparently they’re making some really radical changes to the layout – but it sounds like it might be a huge improvement. Melissa, Julian’s sister, is keeping in touch with the new owners, so hopefully we may be able to learn a bit more from her. I’d really love to go and see it when they’ve finished, but… I doubt that we’ll be able to.
Now, the reason I didn’t get anything written last night is because my Podiatrist didn’t get here until about a quarter to six, and by the time she left, it was pretty late – just as well we were having the reasonably quick-cooking pan-fried chicken last night! We were out most of the day, too – I had to have my Warfarin blood test done – all is well in that department, my INR has gone down a bit from what it was last time, my dosage is staying the same (5mg Monday to Saturday, 4mg Sundays), and they want me to have another test in a fortnight. Ho-hum! After that we went off to Glen Waverley, to see if we could get my name changed on my Medicare card. That was quite straightforward, and we should get our new cards within a week or so. For some unknown reason, I’m on Julian’s Medicare card, and he’s on mine, so we’re both getting new cards! Then we went on to The Glen, to go through the same process at BUPA, and once again, we can expect our new cards within a week or so. Now all we have left to change my name on are my Passport, the Tax Department (for my Tax File Number) the Electoral Roll – ‘specially as it looks like we’ll be having a Federal Election within a few months 
and of course, a couple of Shares Registries… Anyway, by the time we’d finished with BUPA, and been to Target to get a pedestal fan – er… “why does she want a pedestal fan at the beginning of winter?” I hear you all muttering – well, it’s because when I’m doing my treadmilling in the morning, I get hot, even though I walk in my undergarments. Just uncomfortable hot, not sweaty hot, but before I turn the machine on, I hop up onto the belt, open the window, and turn on my remote control Dyson fan. Yes, on, off, temperature and speed, can all be controlled manually, or by remote control – I love it! 🙂 I originally got it for the bathroom over at Doncaster, which because it was in the middle of the apartment, got either blisteringly hot in summer, or freezingly cold in winter, and that fan was fantastic! When we moved here, it was the middle of winter, and once again, I relied on the fan to keep me warm in that dreadful old bathroom before all the renovations. However, by the time they were finished, it was high summer – the bathroom stayed fairly cool, but I desperately needed the fan in the Treadmillery, where my hands would get so slippery with sweat that I was afraid they’d slip off the treadmill’s handle bars, and I’d end up in a melted puddle on the floor. So we brought the fan in, and set it up so that when I started to get too hot, I could just touch the remote control and have a lovely, cool breeze blowing on my face. But now that it’s starting to get cold again, I need the fan back in the bathroom – so rather than buy another (rather expensive!) Dyson, we thought we’d get an el-cheapo pedestal fan from Target – on sale now that it’s no longer summer – and a third-party remote control with which to turn it on and off – alas, no speed or temperature controls on this one, but on and off is all I really need to keep me cool. So after BUPA, we went to Target, and got our fan for the vast sum of… $12.00! I then wanted to have “a quick look” in My Size, because I’d seen their new May Catalogue just that morning, and they had what looked like an extremely nice short knitted cape – with arm holes in it so that you didn’t have to fiddle with openings and what-nots. There was one in their window, so we went in to see what they were like close up – now, I’d received the email Catalogue earlier that morning. This was new stock – never before seen in My Size – and they only had two left, including the one in the window! I said I’d like to try it on, and the one in the window was the only “Small” one they had. I tried it on. It looked fabulous, so not only did I get it (and wore it!) but Julian said that seeing they were selling so quickly, I should order another one online when I got home (so I have!) A spare to wear when the other one’s at the Dry Cleaners! I actually wore it last night while we were watching Grantchester, and it was the first time I’ve been able to sit in the loungeroom in autumn (or spring, or winter!) without shivering with cold! It’s a lovely cape, and it looks really smart, too! 🙂 So by the time we’d done all of that and were coming down the escalator again, my knees were beginning to feel distinctly “rubbery”, and I decided that maybe I should sit down for a bit. Last time we went up to see the doctor – just to get a repeat script – she took my blood pressure and was a bit taken aback that it was very low! She told me that I should go back and have it tested again the following week, which of course we didn’t do. I had been intending to, but life sort of got in the way a bit, and then I forgot about it – until yesterday! I shall definitely go back next week to have it tested again. The doctor seemed to think that I’d lost so much weight that I probably didn’t need to be on blood pressure medication any more… so we’ll go and see what’s what – the “rubbery” knees may have been simply because I was in desperate need of a cup of coffee! 😉 Well, we were right in front of The Shingle Inn, so we decided to have lunch there as it was pretty close to lunch time. We’d just about finished eating, when an elderly lady came up to us (elderly? So what does that make me? She was probably only a couple of years older than me! ) She apologised, but wanted to know if I was of European descent – and so we got talking. I told her that I wasn’t, but my father was Italian – then there was a bit more conversation – quite a lot more conversation, actually – but the upshot of it was that (a) I looked Jewish (no, I don’t have a big nose!) (b) I was a truly “free spirit” (which I suppose I am, really…) and (c) (Josh, you should get a bit of a smile out of this!) she loved the red streaks in my hair – they really suited me, blah, blah, blah… I told her that they’d faded a lot, but that I was having them re-done next week 🙂 Then she said that she was running late to meet her cousin, and off she went, leaving Julian and I both feeling a little bemused by the encounter!
erm.. my dinner’s ready… back soon…
09.08 pm
Back again… Where was I? Oh yeah – the strange lady who came over and chatted to us. It’s truly amazing how many people like my hair colour! 🙂 Anyway, we had lunch, did a bit more shopping – my knees weren’t feeling “rubbery” any more, thank goodness – and we came home. I sat down at the computer, checked Wynterthyme’s Followers and her Fleet, quit, and started on some editing work for a sort of an “ye olde blog word lyste” type of thing (names, expressions, spelling, to save having to look things up all the time) I’d been meaning to do it for ages, and I was just getting stuck into it when Julian walked past the Den door saying “Don’t forget the Podiatrist will be here in about twenty minutes!” – well, of course I had, so I hastily saved all of that and thought “I’m so tired – I’m never going to get my blog written tonight!” – and sure enough, I didn’t! Sorry! mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, and all that… but better late than never, eh? 🙂 So, now to the important bits…
Food stuffz: yesterday for lunch at The Shingle Inn, I had my usual BLT on Sourdough bread (toast, really) a long black with a little juglet of skinny milk, and a gorgeous, sticky, gooey, delicious caramel slice – it’ll take me at least a fortnight on the treadmill to work it out of my system, but it was worth every single sinful and gluttonous bite! 🙂 Dinner last night was pan-fried chicken breast on a bed of steamed rice that was flavoured with finely chopped home-grown spring onions, and our usual half a tomato. For dessert I had a slice of my cake, and a low-fat strawberry yoghurt, instead of my Corella pear – I thought I’d give it one more day to ripen properly. Today for lunch I had a really delicious sandwich – rather a small one really, because the Baker’s Delight whole-meal bread loaf seemed to be quite a bit smaller than usual – with cold sliced roast beef (sandwich roast beef, that is, not really-truly roast beef!) with Beerenberg Tomato and Cracked Pepper Relish (which is really yummy!) and low-fat Halloumi cheese, and for dinner tonight, Julian made (for the first time ever!) a recipe I found in the latest “Delicious” magazine, called “Lamb & Harissa Lasagne with Feta and Oregano”. I saw it in the magazine, and although we both looked for the recipe online, we couldn’t find it – probably because it seemed to be part of an Ardmona ad! In the end he had to scan it to be able to print it out, but it’s not a very good scan so I’ll have to transcribe it, so that we can print it out properly and laminate it – this one is a definite keeper! It was totally scrumptious! That’s what we had for dinner, and because it freezes so well, there are three more small meals of it left, so it’s also damn good value for money! Once I’ve transcribed it I’ll put a link in the blog to wherever I put it, OK? It’s easy to make, too… And for dessert, I had my last Corella pear – I was quite right to have left it to ripen for another day – and another slice of my cake.
Weigh-in yesterday morning – Friday the 22nd. I went up two points, from 63.1kg on Thursday, to 63.3kg. This morning, Saturday the 23rd, I went from 63.3kg to 63.3kg – that is, I stayed the same… so it looks like I’m back to the gentle yo-yo bounce, up a couple, down a couple, up one, down two, bounce, bounce, bounce – as long as I don’t fluctuate up and down too drastically, I’ll stay happy! 🙂
And so to tomorrow, Sunday! Of course, being Sunday, it’s our “The Dashing Duo’s Day in Draenor”, or “The Daring Dungeon Duopoly” – or whatever else we decide to do tomorrow, for a change 😉 Whatever we decide to do though will be a lot of fun – however, the usual warning applies – “Warning! Blog contents may settle be a bit late” – depending on what time we finish! Julian has flushed out the small pond in the front garden, and it’s absolutely amazing what a difference it’s made! The water is actually clear, for a change, and you can see the bottom! He’s taken all the stones out – they’ll need to have a bit more of a thorough scrub, but not all of them will be put back – apparently there were far too many of them? He’s also put some “anti-fungal and anti-algae” stuff in the water, which is still going to have to be flushed and re-filled a few more times to get it really back to what a pond should be like, and because there used to be an underwater light in it (but which had sprung a leak and died) he’s put in a new one. I haven’t seen it at night yet – it’s supposed to be a blue light, but when I saw it inside, it looked to be different colours depending on what angle it was on! So it’s unusual, and pretty! 🙂 And that’s about it from me again this evening – sorry it’s so long, but there was a lot to tell you all! Don’t forget to drop in again tomorrow night for a much shorter missive – and find out what we did, what my weight did, what Auric and Dapple are up to, and whether Flipper has noticed them yet! Until then though, do try very hard to bee good, remember that the measure of who we are is what we do with what we have, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep cool – or warm – depending on the weather… but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂
My Word! 