05.24 pm
Goodness, it’s quite late to be starting to write, but I don’t think this’ll be a long post tonight, as we’re both pretty tired after today’s luncheon… *yawn* Sorry… 🙂
Well, the morning started out well, we both managed to get our usual “Sunday sleep-in”, then it was pretty much “all hands on deck” to get things ready. I usually make myself scarce in the Den on days like this as I just tend to get in Julian’s way, but this morning, after I got Julian to clean down the dining room table (not that it was actually dirty, mind you, but it did have magazines, papers, various non-matching place-mats, and various fruit bowls strewn all over it!) I made us both a cup of coffee – which I didn’t get to drink until it was almost cold – and set the table properly for lunch, with matching place-mats, and all the usual stuff that goes onto a nicely appointed dinner table. Julian made a Greek salad – or what would have been a Greek salad, if he’d remembered to get the olives for it – but I must say that the Feta cheese he got for it was spot-on, and a very fine example of the breed! 🙂 He also brought home a loaf of sourdough bread from Baker’s Delight – not the absolutely wonderful tasting “seeded sourdough bread” that we’d tasted a sample of the other day, but one of their other un-sliced loaves of sourdough bread, which we had with our lunch – and y’know what? I honestly don’t know why anyone ever eats any other sort of bread! It’s got “body”, texture, flavour – it’s delicious! It’s ever so much more betterer than your common or garden variety, totally tasteless, “polystyrene” textured sandwich loaves! Kate and Terry were running late, but my very favourite eldest daughter and her spouse arrived on time, and Julian departed to go and pick up the Nando’s chicken and chips. While he was out Kate and Terry arrived, and so we were pretty much able to sit down to lunch shorty after Julian arrived with the main part of the meal. There was heaps of chatter, banter, and literary and television series discussions, with a great deal of laughter and merriment thrown in for good measure. As usual, we’d really over-catered for the meal, but by the time we were ready for coffee and cake, all of the excess chicken and chips seemed to have… quietly disappeared! The Black Forest Cake was absolutely fantastic – Ferguson Plarre are excellent Bakers – they actually use real ingredients, like proper, fresh, whipped chocolate cream, and real-live stewed cherries (well, I don’t know that they were actually “stewed“, but they were certainly “cooked”, and they were certainly “real-live” proper cherries, and not the messy tinned “cherry gloop” that most bakeries seem to use in Black Forest Cakes!) There’s a bit of cake left – Julian, the naughty boy, made sure that everyone’s plates had been collected, rinsed, and put in the dishwasher, before he asked – all innocent-like – if anyone wanted more cake? Just as people were starting to say things like “Is there any more?”, “where’s my plate gone?!”, and “Yes please!“, one voice over-rode them all – mine! I said – fairly loudly, and very firmly: “No! There’s. No. Cake. Left!” – I mean, they probably would have come to blows over it, if we’d let them have seconds, because there was only a tiny little piece left! I had to save them from themselves! Anyway, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it, OK! 😉 *sigh* Oh well, I suppose Julian and I will just have to suffer in silence, and have it for our dessert tomorrow night…
Needless to say, Julian and I won’t be having any dinner tonight – just our nightly chocolate each, and a cup of coffee!
Lunch today: [1] Primi Piatti and Nibblies: Moët & Chandon champagne for the Father’s Day toast, potato crisps, satay peanuts, and some sort of semi-hot mix [2] Secondi: a nice bottle of red wine, and a nice bottle of white wine to have with lunch, a lovely home-made “naked” (that is, without salad dressing, because most of us don’t like it all that much) Greek salad with delicious Feta cheese, but no olives, a delicious, thinly sliced (by Julian) loaf of Baker’s Delight Sourdough bread, with a small amount of butter for those who wanted it, a lot of Nando’s “chicken tenders”, ditto for Nando’s hot chips, a few different sauces and mayonnaises of varying “hotness” in which to dip said chicken tenders and chips [3] Dolci: a stunningly delicious Ferguson Plarre Black Forest Cake, pouring cream for said cake (as if a cake like that needed more cream! …still, we all added a small-ish dollop… 😉 ) coffee, however you wanted it.
Dinner tonight: maybe one chocolate each, maybe not… but definitely coffee…
Weigh-in this morning. Probably the best it’s going to be for a few days! 😕 Still, remember what I was talking about last night, and the fine line between “diet control” and a normal, enjoyable life? All I can say is – if I can’t have a fun day like today a few times a year, then one has to seriously ask oneself – is the low weight and the strict dietary discipline necessary to maintain it really worth it?! I’ve thought about it a lot, as you can probably imagine – and my answer, I’m afraid, has to be a resounding “No!” All the time I was on the Optifast diet, with absolutely nothing else besides water, tea and coffee, I could handle it extremely well, because I knew that it wasn’t going to be “forever” – if, on the other hand, I’d been told that this was all I could have – for the rest of my life – I’m not so sure that I would have accepted that – in fact, I know damn well I wouldn’t have! I’m afraid my attitude would have been that it’d be better to die young, fat, and happy, than to live for another thirty plus years, only ever able to eat Vita Brits, bran, bananas, Optifast Bars, Optifast soups, and diet jellies! (and hoping all the time that something clever and miraculous would come along to save me, other than me having to give up everything I loved eating, for ever!) Anyway – this morning I went from 65.8 kg to 65.6 kg, so I wonder how much today’s little “celebration” will set me back! 
*sigh* Once again, we’ll just have to weight and sea, I suppose…
And that brings me up to tomorrow again – our cleaning lady will be here in the morning, and Josh will be here tomorrow afternoon… in between, I’ll continue with my three young Mages on Saurfang. They’ve all been given their specialist “sub-classes”, Jordana is my Fire Mage, Mercedez is my Arcane Mage, and Cersie is my Frost Mage. Now I have to organise a Horde Priest, and a Horde Warlock, and like a jelly, I’ll be set! 😉 Flipper, Auric and Dapple are all well and happy, and so life muddles along as usual… and that, gentle readers, is about “it” from me for this evening! Please feel free to drop in again on Tuesday night (remember, there’s usually no blog on Monday night as I simply run out of time on Monday evenings!) to see how much my weight will have gone up after today, how my Mages are coming along, and what else I’ve been up to! Until then however, please try to bee good, remember that happiness is not the absence of problems, it’s the ability to deal with them, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry, even if the weather report does tell you it’s going to be “fine”… but most importantly, please – don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂
My Word! 