05.00 pm

Gosh, golly, crikey, and gee-whiz! Here I am, pretty much almost on time again – well, maybe a little bit later than I would have liked, because we went out to that “scungy aquarium shoppe” that Julian had found yesterday while he was Taxi Driving for my very favourite eldest daughter. I looked at the photos last night, and the artificial rocks in the photos definitely looked promising (we’ve been looking for a nice rock with sort-of cave-type holes in it, so that Auric and Dapple could play hide-and-seek) The shoppe is in Mont Albert, near the corner of Whitehorse Road and Union Road, and it isn’t really “scungy” at all! Its name is Nature Aquariums and Watergardens, and while it might be just a teeny bit “cluttered”, it’s very big, and an absolutely fascinating place – well worth a look-in, even if you’re not particularly “into” fish. They have lots of live coral, lots of live plants (only a very few artificial ones) and a lot of fish – cold fresh water fish, warm fresh water fish, and marine fish and plants – there are fish tanks and aquariums as far as the eye can see, and just about every possible pond or aquarium accessory that the human mind can conceive of! A fascinating place! There was one little stand of plants, apparently for terraria, in tiny little cylindrical containers, that had a special hose dispensing a very evocative fog, or mist, over them, and there were rows and rows of shelves of real wooden logs, plastic or resin wooden logs, real rocks, artificial rocks, aquarium sized plastic ship wrecks, statues – in short, everything you can possibly think of for a fish or lizard tank, or a terrarium – with one happy exception! They didn’t have any of those terrible, ugly, revolting, “Disney”, or “Disney-esque” tank decorations! So anyway, after I’d walked up and down every aisle in the easily tennis court sized shop – twice – we chose a very pretty, and rather large, lavender-cum-mauve coloured artificial rock, with a few hidey-holes in it for Auric and Dapple to play in – and now I’m worried that they might swim into the holes and get stuck!

This morning though, I played WoW, where Ellrevienne is now level 28, and coming along quite nicely – she’d been running around in Duskwood, but around mid-morning she was sent off to Northern Stranglethorn, though I don’t expect to be there for very long either, before I’m moved along to the southern Cape of Stranglethorn, with its beautiful downtown Booty Bay! Anyway, while I was busily slaughtering Worgen and Dire Wolves in Duskwood, before being sent off to Northern Stranglethorn, Julian worked up in the Office, getting all of the relevant Tax “stuffs” ready for our Accountant. He would have liked to have kept working after lunch, too, but he wants to redecorate the Fish House tomorrow, so he decided that it might be a good idea if we went out and got our “feature rock” this afternoon, so that he could soak it, and all the other things that arrived the other day, in a bucket of water overnight, to “rinse out” any residual dust, dirt, or harmful chemicals that might still have been on them, before putting them into the Fish House.

We stopped off at Vermont South shopping centre on our way home from the Aquarium shoppe, to check our PO Box, and to – finally – get some much missed tomatoes! We also discovered that there were a “few” other things that we needed, like milk, bananas, beans, spring onions, frozen chips, meat, mineral water – along with a few other sundries – so we arrived home just a wee bit (and all the rest!) later than we had anticipated! Naturally, the very first thing that happened when we walked in through the front door was that I took off my torture devices (shoes) and flung them under the hall table, and the second was that we made a bee-line for the coffee machine, and got ourselves a much-needed cup of coffee… and that’s really about the sum total of our adventures today!

So, now I’ll get on to the “good” bits! 😉

Food stuffs. Last night for dinner we had a very nice piece of pan-fried rump steak – a little tougher than the fillet steak we usually have, but delicious flavour! With it was had steamed green beans, steamed home-grown and organic carrots (yumm!) and chips. For dessert I had one of my Corella pears, which despite the way it felt to a gentle hand squeeze (very hard!) was perfectly ripe and ready to be eaten, and I also had an Apple Le Rice. For lunch today we had ham and cheese Toasties, made with ordinary sourdough bread (i.e. not the delicious seeded sourdough loaf!) a smudge of the mysterious and mythical “Baxters Fig, Date & Balsamic Chutney”, some very nice sliced ham, and some of my very favourite Cheddar/Tasty cheese – and really, it was a most scrumptious Toastie! Tonight for dinner we’re having some more of the Beak & Sons Gourmet Chicken with Mushroom sausages – pan-fried this time, not done in the griller, because last time the griller really squashed them a bit too much! For dessert I’ll have another of the peaches that we got the other day up in the Fresh Food Market at Knox City, and as I was able to also find another raspberry CHOBANI yoghurt this afternoon, I’ll have that too.

Weigh-in this morning. I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised – although I’ve been very good and dutiful for the past couple of days, my feet have been utterly unbearable! They are both so swollen, I had to get Julian to let the top buckle of my shoes out one notch this afternoon, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to get them on! So anyway, I know it’s fluid, but it doesn’t stop me from getting a tad upset about it – not least because my feet are really not having a fun time! Anyway, with the knowledge that I’m going through an “excessive water conservation” stage at the moment anyway, and knowing that come Tuesday morning, I have to start taking those excessively horrible little water-loving and retaining pills for a whole ten days of mental torture, because of the weight I know they’re going to make me put on, I was not particularly ecstatic when we gazed down at the readout on the scales this morning. Julian immediately said “*snort* It’s fluid retention!” I nodded mutely. Over night, for no apparent reason, I’d suddenly gone from 66.6 kg to 67.3 kg. This sort of thing is rapidly losing any comedic appeal that it might once upon a time have had, and I am no longer amused! Yes, I know it’ll go down – as will my poor, swollen feet – eventually! In the meantime, I have to grin and bear it, whilst feeling like a gross fat whale!

So, here it is, the top end of the day, and dinner’s nearly ready! Flipper has been fed, and according to her report card “Has eaten about half her dinner. Can do better! Flipper needs daily practice opening and closing her mouth with food inside it, and not with “meows for Daddy Pats”! 😉 Auric and Dapple haven’t had their dinner yet, because Mummy has been too busy in here writing her blog! Oh, I saw a little fishy today that looked exactly like Auric, only maybe a bit smaller? I tried to find one that looked like Dapple, and while there were some that looked a bit like him, their tails were all too small! Dapple has a very luxurious and fluffy “four-finned” tail! Anyway, once again, that’s about “it” from me for this evening! Do call in again tomorrow night to find out if Flipper did go back and eat a bit more of her dinner, whether my weight subsided or not, and if the Fish House was successfully redecorated – with luck, there might be a few “before” and “after” photos – but I won’t make promises that I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep! But until tomorrow evening, please do your very best to bee good, remember that sometimes people are beautiful – not in looks, not in what they say, just in what they are – and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry in this mercurial weather… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂