*As promised: the recipe for “Lamb & Harissa Lasagne with Feta and Oregano” is now available on the Recipes page! Enjoy!

05.38 pm

Well, what an… interesting? day it’s been! 🙂 For some unknown reason, both Julian and I woke up this morning with a very distinct feeling that we really didn’t want to do our morning walks… but we did them anyway. Julian goes on a bit of a nature hike around the area – taking different routes and covering about three kilometers each day. While he’s out having fun in the clean (HA!) fresh (giggle) air, I mindlessly perform two kilometers of leg churning on the treadmill, and from what I can gather, at around the same sort of speed, too. He usually gets back before I finish though – not by much – I usually only have about another quarter of a kilometer to go when he gets back. Not so this morning! I’d barely cleared one kilometer before I got the familiar “Honey! I’m home!” as he comes through the front door. “What happened?” I asked him “did you get rained on?!” he replied “No, why? It’s not very pleasant out, but it didn’t rain” I told him that I thought he was back a bit early, because I’d only just finished my first kilometer – he said no, it was just his usual walk, and we left it at that… I eventually finished my second kilometer and left the treadmillery, in desperate need of a cup of tea – my mouth had got so dry! Talking about our morning walkings over said cup of tea, he admitted that it was all he could do to drag himself out of the house this morning, while I told him that this morning’s walk was one of the hardest, and definitely the worst I’d had to do since I first started walking up and down the stairs in Doncaster! Neither of us knows why we felt so… gosh, I don’t even know the right word for it! (quick! someone hand Winter a Thesaurus!) well, I don’t know about Julian, but it wasn’t that I felt tired, or ill, or resentful that I had to do it – my arthritis wasn’t playing up – and yes, it was before breakfast – but we always do our walks before breakfast, so it wasn’t low blood sugar or whatever. Anyway, as I said – I have no idea why this morning’s walk was so damn difficult! I warmed up three times quicker than I normally do – I usually get a bit heated at the 1.5 kilometer mark – this morning I didn’t even get to half a kilometer before my knees started shaking and I didn’t feel good. It’s possible, I suppose, that it could be a touch of sinusitis – I did wake up with a dreadfully stuffy nose, which cleared after I’d been upright for a short while, which usually indicates sinus trouble – but I know what that feels like, and this morning didn’t! Oh well, we both finished our walks, and – once again, I don’t know about Julian, but I felt fine again once I was sitting down. So, we had breakfast, and got ready to go and have my Warfarin blood test done. Last time we were at the Doctor’s, I noticed that there was a Dorevitch sign in the window – so I looked them up to see if it was a collection centre or just a pathology lab, and it was a collection centre, so I decided to go and have my blood test done there – and at the same time make an appointment to have my blood pressure measured again next Monday (the Doctor halved the amount of my blood pressure medication, and wanted to test it again in two weeks – I told you all about it at the time! 😉 ) Both Dorevitch and the Doctor are in the same building – Doctor is downstairs, Dorevitch is on the first floor… so I walked up the stairs (again!) only this time there was a very comfortable and reassuring stair-rail to hang onto. Now, this time last year we were still in Doncaster, and three times a day I’d walk the stairs – from the fifth floor up to the sixth floor, then down to the basement car-park, and back up to the fifth floor – and at that time, I could only manage to do one stair at a time (read: I was as slow as a lame chook!) Since we’ve been here in Vermont South, there are no stairs – the house is perfectly flat – so we hired a treadmill. It’s one of those ones that you can crank up the angle of the belt so that you end up walking uphill, at an angle. I have this one on setting “10”, which is as high as this one goes, and I stroll along at a comfortable 4 kilometers an hour. Normally, that’s fine – this morning, it wasn’t. However! All those stairs in Doncaster, and all this treadmilling here must have done me some good, because I can now actually walk up and down stairs more or less normally! Yeah, I was slow – but 99.9% of that is because I’m wearing shoes (did I ever mention to you all that I really hate and detest shoes? I did? Oh… well anyway, I still hate and detest shoes…) show me those stairs bare-footed, and I’d be up and down them like the Flash! Arriving at the blood-letting place, it was almost deserted, and I was taken straight in (I didn’t even have a chance to take out and start reading my Kindle!) As I told you about a week ago, we went and had our Medicare cards updated – my name, and our address – so this morning I handed the Vampire nice nurse who takes the blood my green form for the blood test – and would you believe, it was the wrong one! In amongst the pile of green forms that Dorevitch had sent me was one (there may be more! I haven’t looked yet!) that was apparently for an Asian gentleman (I think! It may have been for a woman!) This was… very, very unusual, to say the least! Never mind, nice nurse who takes the blood had a spare one, and so we started giving her all the particulars – including my name change, because the old green forms had my old name on it. Nice nurse who takes the blood couldn’t seem to get her head around the fact that it was my first name – my Christian name – that had changed, and not my surname – my last name! It took us about five minutes for us to explain this to her – I even wrote it down for her! In the end, she got it right, and she also got my blood. Then she asked about a referral! We both looked at her blankly “What referral” we chorused in amazement. So it now appears that for the two and a half years that I’ve been having Warfarin blood tests done, with never a word or a query from anyone, that I shouldn’t have been! The Government, bless their tiny malevolent hearts, has decreed that unless you have a (something or other – I’ve forgotten!) sort of referral from your doctor, you only get (get this! This is truly amazing!) six (6) months of Warfarin blood tests, or six (6) Warfarin blood tests – whichever comes first! After that, you pay $80 per test! This, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is a vital blood test that could mean your death – quite literally – if you didn’t have it because you were an old age pensioner who couldn’t afford it this week! And I thought that the American system, the way the Republicans think it should be run, was iniquitous! Well, I had my blood test, we picked up our jaws from the floor where they’d fallen in astonishment, and we toddled off to pick up Auric and Dapple’s new house. This business with the Warfarin tests though, has now brought to light another enigma for me to solve, in light of the forthcoming Federal Election! I cannot, and will not, vote for a Government who makes those sorts of laws. On the other hand, I cannot, and will not, vote Labour, under any circumstances. There’s no way I’d ever vote for the Greens – so who’s left? I don’t believe in not voting, or handing in a donkey vote – I want my say in how things are run, even if I don’t get what I voted for. At the moment, all I can say is – I sure hope that the Sex Party is fielding a candidate in our electorate! They seem to be the only ones left with their heads screwed on the right way, and not just “screwed”, like the rest of Australia’s so-called “leaders”!

So we picked up the new Fish House and brought it home. It’s very nice, and I’m sure Auric and Dapple (and their new friends, as soon as they arrive) will be very happy living there. We’ve put it in the lounge room where we wanted it to be, and I’ve voted to live with it there for 24 hours, and see what we think we should do then… Why? Because it’s made from raw, untreated pine. It could, of course, exist quite happily just as it is – but it looks a bit… odd. Anyway, we also got some nice gravel, some fake plants, because the guy at the aquarium said that goldfish would eat real plants, and poo lots because of it, and the tank would get a lot dirtier a lot quicker – so we got fake ones. We also bought a nice medium sized rock, that I hope Auric, Dapple and their little fishy friends will use for playing games around, hiding in, and having “Secret Fish Business” meetings behind. We got home to find a new packet of green Dorevitch forms – with, of course, my old name on them – heavens we only informed them of the name change this morning, and I’m quite sure that Dorevitch, as good as they are, aren’t quite that quick!

After a quick lunch, Julian took off again to go to the bank, and to see if our parcel of tea had arrived from Tea Leaves. He also went over to Doncaster to drop off some more Dry Cleaning, and while he was over there, Hildan Jewellers sent him an SMS to say that our jewellery was ready! Remember a while back how I was complaining that all my rings were falling off? Well, I went through all my stuff – some of the earrings are true heirlooms passed on from my grandmother’s family in Italy – anything that needed re-sizing (just about every ring I had needed to be re-sized!)(er… and I have a lot!) cleaned, re-strung – whatever – and packed it all off to Hildan’s. They’re really lovely people – they have a small suite up in the Doncaster Tower, and we’ve been going there for years – whenever we had to have anything done, repair-wise or re-sizing… so Julian arrived home with all my finery – a lot of which I’m wearing again now! 🙂

I didn’t have time to do anything with WoW this morning, apart from catch Wynterthyme and Wïnter’s Fleet and Followers, before we headed off to the blood-letting (the nice nurse who takes the blood thought that “Winter” was a very “exotic” name! Oh, la la! Je suis très exotique! 😉 ) However, this afternoon, while Julian was off doing all his “shopping bits”, I played around with Arisnoë, who’s now wearing some upgraded Heirloom armor to see if I can level her up a little more quickly – well, it sure seems to be working! 🙂 She hit level 99 just before I stopped playing to start writing this – and then of course, Julian got home and I got my nose stuck into the jewellery bag, and, well, I was a little later starting this than I’d planned…

So as I said – it’s been an… interesting day! 🙂

And now from the sublime to the ridiculous!

Food stuffz: last night we had the very last of the frozen leftover Lamb & Harissa Lasagne with Feta and Oregano – and you know? We both agreed that the longer it had remained in the freezer, the nicer it was! All the flavours get a proper change to permeate through all the layers… and for dessert, I had a small bowl of Coles-brand, very low-calorie, Rice Pudding with some fruit on top. Lunch today was – yes, another sandwich! 🙂 Made with the Baker’s Delight whole-meal bread with the sesame-seeded crust, Julian used the basil-pesto hummus instead of butter, and I had the last of the cold marinated roast beef – pretty much the same as yesterday’s sandwich, except with the hummus instead of the pumpkin and potato! Tonight for dinner we’re trying out a new recipe from an e-zine called “the kitchn“. The recipe is called “Southwestern-Spiced Pork Tenderloin” – I’ll let you know how it goes, and if it’s any good, I’ll post the recipe for you all! 🙂 For dessert, I now have Corella pears again – if they’re ripe enough I might have one of those – if not, I’ll have a reprise of last night’s Coles-brand, very low-calorie, Rice Pudding with some fruit on top.

Weigh-in this morning. Was a little more mollifying. I went from 65.1kg to 64.6kg. I’m not going to say anything, lest I mozz myself! (Winter looks around furtively – holding one finger against her lips she says “Shhhhh!”)

Well, there you have it! That’s how my day has played out – so far, anyway – we haven’t heard back from Dorevitch about my Warfarin blood test yet… I’ll keep you all posted! And once again, that’s about it from me again (“dinner’s in 10!”, calls Julian from the kitchen! Arrgghhh! This is too long!) – will finish my last words later – back soon-ish! 😉

09.08 pm

Here I am again – where was I? Oh yes, I’m very sorry this evening’s missive is really more of a missile – but news to hand: Warfarin blood tests are in: INR is back to 2.6 – about where it should be, for a change! I stay on the same dosage of 4mg daily, except for Sundays, when I take 5mg.  And now, that really is it from me for this evening! Tune in again tomorrow night for a much shorter essay on “What Made My Day Today”, whether Arisnoë has finally cracked level 100 yet, and what my stupid weight decided to do to amuse everyone this time! (sorry – I’ve just finished watching Shaun Micallef’s “Mad as Hell”!) In the meantime, please do try to bee good, remember that success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep dry and warm, especially if it looks like rain… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂