04.15 pm

Here I am – pretty much on time, for once! 🙂 It’s been a pretty quiet day for the 1st of the month, though – we went out fairly early this morning to pick up my very favourite eldest daughter so that we could go up and collect our repeat prescriptions. While we were there I had the Doctor peer into my left ear, too, coz it’s still all bunged up, and actually starting to hurt a bit when I chew anything – and I really hate having to try to listen to people, music, or whatever, with everything sounding as though one ear was full of water! I also hate having anything put in my ear, almost to the point of paranoia – anything, from a drop of shower water (scream! shudder! gag!) to one of those Star Trek-looking blue-tooth thingies – the mere thought of something being plonked into my ear makes my stomach churn – so by the time I’d sat there making small-talk with the Doctor, and psyched myself up to ask her to have a look at my ear, I was absolutely terrified! 😦 This extreme phobia of mine is the main reason I can’t swim properly – I can only dog-paddle, with my head sticking out of the water… (I’m the same way about spiders, too – no matter how small or harmless they are!)

Anyway, the nice Doctor gave my ear a look, and said it was quite clear (i.e. there was no wax blocking it up) and that the ear-drum looked fine, though the ear canal looked a bit red and inflamed, which was probably all part and parcel of the dreaded lurgi I’d had, but which is still affecting my sinuses a bit – and apparently my ear too – so guess what! 😥 I’m to have ear drops! Two of them, twice a day – for five days! 😥 I’ve been telling my ear “Get better quickly! Get better quickly!” – but it’s all bunged up and I don’t think it can hear me properly! 😦 I’m sure I’ll survive it (the ear drops, not the sore ear!) but I’m not going to be a very happy little Vegemite for the next five days, so roll on, next Thursday!

I also asked the Doctor whether or not I could take Sudafed, now that I’m off my blood pressure medication – although I’m still on a half-dosage of the beta blocker. I’d been under the impression that the pseudoephedrine (try saying that six times quickly after you’ve had a few drinks!) in the Sudafed had a bad reaction to some of the blood pressure medications, and that was why you weren’t supposed to mix the two, but the Doctor enlightened me on that score 🙂 Pseudoephedrine raises blood pressure, so it makes no sense to take anything with pseudoephedrine in it if you’re taking medication to lower your blood pressure – they just cancel eachother out, and depending on your particular reason for being on one or t’other, fatalities have been known to occur – in other words, it’s just best not to tempt fate! Taking Sudafed for a couple of days to try to dry my sinuses out a bit would be fine – and would have been fine while I was on the blood pressure medication too, as it’s not a very high dose, and I wouldn’t have been taking it for long – but apparently Telfast would be just as good, why, she didn’t say – perhaps it doesn’t contain pseudoephedrine or something? (but I might be wrong! It’s more expensive though – I think!) Well, I just went and checked – apparently Telfast does contain pseudoephedrine – and the Doctor didn’t actually say that it didn’t. Basically, when in doubt, ask your own doctor, not me – I’m not a doctor!

Where was I? I got totally sidetracked, going and looking up all that stuff! Oh yes… I have to have ear drops! I wish I hadn’t remembered that, now!

After being to the Doctor’s, we dropped my very favourite eldest daughter off at her place, came home, and had some lunch – then Julian took off again to go and pick up a few things from the supermarket, and to pick up the Dry Cleaning.

Well, today might have been fairly quiet, but last night certainly wasn’t! As you all know, Flipper absolutely loves Julian – I’m not even a poor second-best, when it comes to Flipper’s preferences in human slaves, and if she calls for Julian, Julian had better drop what he’s doing and go and tend to her needs, otherwise we both cop the full force of her very loud, insistent, caterwauling (the neighbours on both sides probably cop it too!) So, last night she was caterwauling away, demanding her dinner, nearly two hours before it was her dinner time. Eventually, for the sake of household (and neighbourhood!) harmony, Julian did give in, and got her dinner for her… unfortunately though, she was in one of her all too frequent “Vera Vague” phases, and had to be carried into the Library and shut in with her dinner, because she’d forgotten that she’d been demanding it. Needless to say, she didn’t eat it – she’d completely forgotten that it was there, and she just did her usual evening mooching around – that is, she went to sleep on our bed. Time passed… she snored on, and – didn’t eat her dinner. Our bed time came, and she still hadn’t eaten. She curled up, as usual, around Julian’s right arm, and went to sleep. We went to sleep, even though I was freezing cold because I was missing half my share of the doona which was all rucked up underneath Flipper! At about two thirty we were rudely awakened by Flipper, throwing up on Julian’s face, pillow, sheets, and doona! Julian was not best pleased, and made his somewhat irate mood amply known to both Flipper and myself, as he set about cleaning things up as best he could – at two thirty in the morning, and with a wife who wasn’t inclined to get out of bed because she was cold! Flipper fled, probably still feeling queasy, and in abject terror of Julian’s quite warranted wrath! After things had calmed down again, we went back to sleep. I still didn’t have all my doona – I could have pulled a bit more over my way, but I didn’t want to disturb Julian anymore than I had to, and also because I didn’t know which bits of the doona cover were clean enough to drape over my person – so neither of us really got a good night’s sleep, and we were feeling just a wee bit testy this morning when we got up. Meanwhile, Flipper had finally eaten her dinner…

This afternoon I got back into WoW, and Phoenìx has turned level 67, and finally has her “breadcrumb” quests to bother Shadowmoon Valley and Area 52 in Netherstorm. I think I’ll go to Netherstorm… Probably after we’ve gone out and voted tomorrow – honestly, I am soooo tempted to scrawl “I Hate ALL Of You Liars” in very large letters, over the enormous white paper! I won’t, of course, but I’m very tempted…

And now on to the good bits! 😉

Food stuff: Last night Julian made another Lamb and Harissa Lasagne with Oregano and Feta, and as usual, it was absolutely delicious! Plus there’s four more “dinners” from the leftovers in the freezer! 🙂 For dessert I had, for the first time ever, a Nashi Pear, which was rather nice – sweet, but with a certain amount of tartness to it, fairly juicy, firm, crisp, and crunchy! I also had (I bet you all guessed already! 😉 ) a small bowl of my very favourite Coles-brand, very low-calorie, delicious Rice Pudding. For lunch today I had a really nice sandwich, made from the tasty whole-meal bread, with the poppy-seed and sesame-seed crust, basil-pesto hummus as a butter substitute, and “tandoori” chicken sandwich chunks. I really wish those sandwiches were just a teeny bit bigger Tonight we’re having plain old-fashioned pan-fried chicken breasts, with chips, steamed green beans, and half a tomato. For dessert, tonight I’ll have one of the new Fuji apples, and another small bowl of my very yummy Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding.

Weigh-in this morning. Was alright, I suppose… I went from 64.3 kg yesterday, to 64.4 kg today – up one point, but still well within the so-called “margin of error”. I’ll probably be up a bit more again tomorrow, but I should start going down again after that – I hope!

Which once again brings me to tomorrow… and, of course, voting. Personally, I’d like to get there as the polls open, and get it over and done with as soon as possible, so that we can get back here and barricade ourselves into a nice, warm, dry house where there’s lots of coffee! 😉 But, as usual, we’ll see… Apart from the voting chore, I’m not really sure what’s happening – I guess I’ll be doing a bit more WoW-ing, and if the weather clears up any (who am I kidding! This is Melbourne!) we might be able to get the baby vegetables planted! However, all that is in the lap of the ghods! 🙂 Auric and Dapple are well, and seem to really be enjoying the new air-stone that sends up a small area of small, medium, and large bubbles – Dapple especially seems to like swimming into it, biting the bigger bubbles, and then squiggling out again (and “squiggling” is about the best word I can think of to describe his wriggle action to get out of the bubbles!) Their new diet of spirulina pellets seems to be agreeing with them both, and (touch wood!) Dapple seems to have got over his desire to sit in a corner, moping down on the floor of the tank. And that’s really about “it” from me for this evening! Don’t forget to drop in again tomorrow night to find out how much more my weight went up, what time we actually got out to vote, if Flipper was sick again in the wee small hours of the morning (and if so, who copped the brunt of it this time!) and what else we managed to get up to during the day. Until then though, please try to bee good, don’t forget that hope is the dream of a man awake, and remember to keep warm and dry when you go out to vote tomorrow, to always drive carefully, and to look after yourselves… but, above all… please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂