10.05 pm

I’m writing this very, very late tonight – as you can see! By the time we got home from Mt. Cottrell this afternoon (read: “evening”!) I was both mentally and physically exhausted – so this is a “catch-up” of what’s been happening around here since December 28th – last Wednesday.

As you all know, we lost our dear old 22 year old Norwegian Forest Cat, Flipper, about a month ago – and though it may surprise a few of you, it’s a lot harder living without a cat, than it is living with a cranky 22 year old cat, more-than-a-little-senile, a true “Prima Donna” since her kitten-hood, prone to fits of the vapours at the drop of a hat, on daily medication for high blood pressure, and monthly injections for severe and painful arthritis. Naturally we were going to get another cat – another two cats, in fact, and this week we decided that the time had come! But what sort of cat, or cats? Once upon a time, a long time ago, in what sometimes seems to me to have been a galaxy far, far away, I used to be a registered breeder of Siamese cats. Since then we’ve had tiny, runty little kittens offered to us on the palm of a small child, been adopted by strays, taken in a run-away Norwegian Forest Cat who’d decided that she wanted to live with us, and not the lady across the road, and re-homed a beautiful Russian Blue boy, complete with papers. In short, we’ve had all sorts of cats from moggies to aristocratic pedigreed cats – this time, it was up to us to make the choice! Julian’s first cat was a wonderful Brown Burmese, and he has a very soft spot for Burmese. I still have a great fondness for Siamese, but not for the “modern” rat-faced cats that only pretend to be “Siamese”. No, this time I wanted something different! This time, I wanted a “spotty” cat! There are three types of pedigreed spotty cats – the Australian Mist, the Egyptian Mau, and the Bengals. Of course, it all depends on when kittens are available – and there didn’t seem to be many around. We did manage to track down a Lilac Burmese – slightly older at 16 weeks, as he’d been sold, but returned shortly after as “the children were allergic to him” – but let me start at the beginning!

We’d been looking on the ‘net for kittens, and as there was nothing available through the Feline Control Council (in association with The Governing Council of the Cat Fancy Australia and Victoria Inc.) we very cautiously started going through Gumtree… which is where we found the Lilac Burmese. On Wednesday morning. On Wednesday afternoon we went out to a place near Warrandyte to have a look at him. The Breeder’s place was ummm… how can I be politically correct about this?! I can’t. The place was a shambles! We were greeted at the front door by a very large German Shepherd, with a bark like the Titanic’s fog horn! Oh, the fierce show she put on, followed shortly by happy, slobbery panting – rinse and repeat! Several times! Eventually Mr. Burmese Breeder/Owner arrived – he’d been out in the cattery and hadn’t heard the doorbell – or the ultra-loud barking! (so much for the security services of a watch dog, eh?!) We went in. Doggie was very friendly, in full summer moult… and with fleas! The place had to be seen to be believed! There was stuff every which-where! One had to wend one’s way through a tiny, narrow track between piles of… rags? clothing? washing? It was hard to tell! The floor was covered with what looked like several decades worth of dust and/or animal dander, and there was about one and a half feet of clear space on the rubble-covered table. Outside on the lawn there appeared to be about 70 to 80 wild (I think!) pigeons, waiting for hand-outs, the gentleman said. The little kitten was sunning himself by the back door and appeared to be quite happy and complacent. We sat down and talked to the gentleman for a while and were told that the kitten was completely up to date on all his inoculations, with the appropriate papers to prove it, and had already been neutered – the story went that some people had bought the kitten, taken it home, and then in great distress, brought it back about three weeks later saying that they couldn’t keep him as their children were allergic to him, and the wife had developed a bad rash. However, they didn’t want their money back, but told the gentleman to keep it as a “down-payment” on another kitten from the next litter! (Huh? If they were allergic to this kitten, wouldn’t they be allergic to the next kitten from another litter too? *shakes head in bewilderment* It does not compute!) He accepted the full price of the kitten from us, and we took him home. His erstwhile owners had called him “Coco” – but that was the name of Julian’s mother’s cat (who never had any liking for anyone other than Julian’s mother!) so we didn’t really want to call him “Coco” (besides, he’s not, and never will be, a “chocolate ” colour – he’s a Lilac!) We looked up Burmese names – honorifics really, and Julian has re-named him “Salai” – which is one of the titles given to a Monk, or a Priest. We call him “Sal”, or “Sally”, for short. This is our little “Sal” 🙂

Sal slept on our bed on Wednesday night… and on Thursday morning, we discovered that he had… fleas! The night before we’d already decided that he should visit our Vet, just for a check-up (mainly because he’d been sold and returned a couple of weeks later, and also because of the not terribly salubrious conditions of the place we got him from) so on Thursday afternoon, in all that torrential rain, we took him up to our Vet, where he was examined (and found to be perfectly fit and healthy, thank heavens!) given a giant worming pill (just in case!) and we came home with a large packet of “Advantage”, of which he had his first application this morning! He’s a very happy, well-adjusted, fully socialised, little kitten – very gentle, purrs like mad every time you pick him up or pat him. We’ve bought him a lovely big cat climbing stand that he’s not terribly interested in, two scratching posts that he eschews in favour of the couch, or the dining room chairs, and various fluffy, feathery toys… but his very most favourite toy is one that Julian made for him on Wednesday evening, from a thin bamboo garden stake, a piece of string, and a small knot of Christmas curly ribbon tied onto the end of the string 🙂

And while Julian had his little Burmese, I was still searching for my spotted cat. Yesterday, I managed to find someone selling a Brown Bengal kitten, and today we drove out to Mt. Cottrell to have a look at him. He was a darling little kitten – miles too young to leave home, at only 9 weeks old – and I have to say that I was more than somewhat distracted by a young wombat who kept insisting on trying to nibble my toes and my heals! The little kitten was so tiny! He didn’t even have great big paws to grow into – but he’d obviously never had any contact with “people” – his breeder admitted as much – but oh! The difference in the two establishments! Chalk and cheese! This place, way out in the middle of whoop-whoop, was as clean, neat, and tidy as the other was scruffy, grubby, and ill-kept! This guy was a big-time breeder of all sorts of animals and birds – when we arrived at the electronic gates we had to phone for him to open them – and in we drove, up a long, impressively neat and tidy driveway, complete with strutting white peacock (I kid you not!) a couple of white kangaroos, that he’d bred, well painted and maintained animal statues of giraffes and lions, and so to his spotlessly clean dispensary/office. The kitten was in a large cat cage, because he had been running around with this over-zealous wombat, but the wombat had been chasing him and biting his tail, so the kitten was put in the cat cage. The wombat, having had his kitten tail removed, took revenge on trying to nibble our toes, heels, handbag, and whatever else he could reach. There were lots of glass cases with gi-normous carpet snakes, medium-sized snakes, a smaller glass case with a sign on it “Warning! Highly toxic North Queensland viper”, several small medical (?) cages containing injured or sick birds, trays of prepared animal food for the evening – and the whole thing was clean, animal-smell free, open, and fresh. Oh, there was one cylindrical tank that had a warm fountain (or maybe it was cold? There was condensation on the inside of the glass, anyway!) with what I at first thought was a large green plastic frog in it… until it moved! Getting back to the Bengal kitten! He’s had all his inoculations too, but has not been neutered yet – that will apparently be up to us – and he was really gorgeous, but so tiny – the guy said that they only had to keep the kittens with their mother until they were eight weeks old – but honestly, as gentle and as friendly as Sal is, I couldn’t see this little scrap of a kitten holding his own against him, especially as he’s really had no socialisation yet… We compromised. I said I’d take the kitten… when he was 12 weeks old. We put down a deposit, and we’ll pick him up on January 16th, 2017. I’m afraid we didn’t take any pictures of him – we were both too distracted by the wretched baby wombat trying to make us his next meal! Then we left and drove all the way back home, where I just wanted to fall in a heap and sleep – but I didn’t, I sat and fell asleep doing jig-saw puzzles instead.

And that’s all you’re getting from me this evening – Auric and Dapple are both well, but you know, Sal’s been here for three days – and he only just noticed them swimming around in their Fish House this evening! Household chores have all fallen by the wayside with all this “cat getting business” – the washing hasn’t been done, the Fish House is overdue for a clean-out, the kitchen’s a mess, and so is the Den, and office paperwork – what’s that?! But now that Sal’s settled in, and the Bengal kitten (whom I have yet to find a name for!) is organised, maybe life can get back to some sort of semblance of order! Anyway, that’s about it from me for this evening – and hopefully I’ll be able to get back into some sort of sensible and regular writing routine now! So drop in again tomorrow night to see if I’ve been able to get back “into the groove” or not 🙂 Until then though, do try to bee good, remember that when you feel like quitting, think about why you started, and don’t forget to keep warm – or cool – depending on the weather, to always drive carefully, and to look after yourselves… but most importantly, please – don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

P.S. I promised you all a picture of my “dragon scale” fingerless gloves, all the way from Latvia! This is what they look like – snazzy, eh?! 🙂

05.05 pm

Am I allowed to say “Happy Easter” yet? Woolworths is! They had Hot Cross Buns out on their shelves, like yesterday! Boxing Day! The very next day after Christmas Day! In the bleak mid winter summer! They’re mewling that they had to put them out “early” – because “people demanded it“! Oi, Woollies! I’m one of those “people” ye’re talkin’ about, yanno, and I’m very sorry to have to tell you Woolworths CEO’s that I don’t “demand” to have Hot Cross Buns out on the supermarket shelves until about the week before Easter! Yes, Hot Cross Buns are yummy! They’re quite delicious, and if not for my waste line, I’d be very happy to eat them every morning of my life – fresh, toasted, slathered in butter – whatever! But for goodness sake, leave the cross off them and market them as “Fruit Buns”! They’ll still sell like Hot Cakes – err… Buns! You’ll still get your “30 pieces of silver” per bun from the people whom you imagine are “pining” for Easter – the very next day after Christmas! Look, I absolutely despise “Political Correctness”, but even I have to draw the line at selling Hot Cross Buns on Boxing Day! Come Easter time, you know, you’ll probably be wondering why all your wonderful Hot Cross Buns, that “the people” were demanding, and clamouring so vociferously for at Christmas time, aren’t selling, but sitting there going stale on the shelf! Well, I’ll tell you why they’re not selling!… They’re not selling because by now those “demanding people” are sick to death of Hot Cross Buns, and are “demanding” Christmas Cake instead! So congratulations, you greedy and avaricious little piggies, you’ve single-handedly managed to twist the Celebratory practices of the Christian Faith, turning Easter into Christmas, and Christmas into Easter!

Market your Hot Cross Buns without the “cross”, and market them as “Spiced Fruit Buns”, and it’ll go down a lot better with those “demanding people”!

So how was everyone’s Christmas?! As good as ours was, I hope! My two very favourite daughters came over with their respective spouses on Christmas Eve, and made egg-nog for us all – yes, that infamous and almost lethally intoxicating egg-nog recipe of mine, the recipe that I posted for all of you last Christmas (er – the Christmas before last, now! 😉 ) D’you want me to post it for you all again? Do a “Woolworths people demand” for me, and I’ll post it, promise! 😉 Yes, the kids came over and made a nice mess of the kitchen (which to be perfectly fair, they did clean up for us afterwards) and we drank egg-nog, laughed and made merry, ate the best mince tarts this side of the black stump (Ferguson Plarre ones!) read “The Night Before Christmas” – it was my very favourite eldest daughter’s turn to read it aloud for us this year, sang “Jingle Bells”, and hung up our stockings (in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there) Then we all said goodnight, and the children headed off home. Mother and Father Christmas, yawning their heads off, pottered around filling stockings and tidying up a bit, said goodnight to Auric and Dapple, and headed off to bed…

Christmas morning dawned! Time to get up and see if Father (or Mother) Christmas had put anything into our stockings! Well, our stockings were filled to bursting too, and we were well pleased! Amongst mine were a beautiful, embossed leather-bound journal book, with pages of hand-made paper, a nice apple-scented three-wick candle, a beautifully decorated ceramic “edge-cat” (they sit on the edge of shelves and cupboards) an absolutely lovely star-shaped stained “glass” tea-light holder, and lots of other goodies. Strangely enough, Julian seemed to have a largely food-themed Christmas, with spices, food “rubs”, kitchen “gadgets”, and the like! 😉 I gave him a box full of assorted silicon kitchen-ware, and a large flat-plate grill. We’d been rather disappointed with the George Foreman grill we’d bought earlier this year – it just never seemed to get that nice deep brown caramelisation of the meat that you get on nicely grilled food – all it seemed to do was squash whatever we put in it, to the point that sausages never looked “quite right”. Anyway, so when I saw an ad amongst all the junk mail that gets dumped in our letter box for this nice, long, flat grill, with a ridged surface as well as a flat one, I decided to get him that for Christmas. We used it last night to cook some steak, and it performed beautifully! Julian gave me a gorgeous new phone… I’d been grizzling for ages that I really needed a bigger screen (does anyone remember that old ad where a hot little boy is standing by the back door winging that he’s hot, and says “But Mum, I need a fizzy drink!” – substitute “Julian” for “Mum”, and “bigger screen” for “fizzy drink”, and you can see what I mean!) So Julian gave me a “bigger screen”! A Samsung Galaxy Note 5! and it’s absolutely gorgeous! I love it to bits, and use it all the time! My very favourite eldest daughter gave me a variegated red agate one of these, and my very favourite youngest daughter gave me an Amazon Voucher. All in all, we did very well out of the “commercial” side of Christmas this year!

Christmas dinner went off well too! We had one of the Steggles Frozen Turkey roasts, because they’re a no-mess, no-fiddly bones, no-fuss, easy to utilise the left-overs sort of dinner (actually, we had two of them) with ham, roast potatoes, roast pumpkin, tomato “pie” (a sort-of a casserole of tomato and onion with spices and breadcrumbs) snow-peas (this year – it’s usually peas and steamed green beans though) gravy, and fresh, home-made “Julian” bread (with butter, for those who wanted it!) We normally also have a boiled in the cloth Christmas Pudding, but we’d made Christmas Ice Cream, and as it was so hot, everyone voted for the Christmas Ice Cream, so we still have an (uncooked as yet) Christmas Pudding to have later! I’ve been thinking that I really should put up the recipe for the Christmas Ice Cream, as it’s really delicious! You start off with plain, good-quality vanilla ice cream, slightly softened, to which you add chopped up Christmas Cake, as many different kinds of glace fruit as you can lay your paws on – chopped up (not too finely!) we always add some dried cranberries (Craisins) and we have, in the past, used dried blueberries too. Toasted slivered almonds, rum, and Cointreau. Mix everything into your softened vanilla ice cream, and re-freeze (this might take a while, as there’s a fair bit of alcohol in it!) When I find my round tuit I’ll post the proper recipe with the quantities to use, but until then, take my word for it – it’s absolutely the best ice cream ever!

After Christmas Lunch, we sprawled around and had chocolates and coffee… and a good time was had by all! 🙂 Especially as Kate and Terry had some good news to report! After more tests, the doctors have been unable to find a primary cancer after all, so this week he’s going in to hospital to have his gall bladder, and a golf-ball sized piece of his liver removed – they say that hopefully, that’ll be the end of it all – we’re all crossing our fingers and hoping that they’ll get it all and he won’t have to have any follow-up radium or chemo therapy!

My dinner is calling – back later! 🙂

 09.54 pm

And now it’s later, and I’m back! 🙂

Where was I?!

Ah yes, après dinner!  Needless to say we didn’t have any dinner that night! We “snacked” on a mince tart and a bit of chocolate – taken with a cup or so of coffee…

And so on to Boxing Day! As my very favourite eldest daughter and her husband Neale weren’t able to join us for Christmas Dinner (read: “lunch”) on the day itself – it was Neale’s parent’s turn to have them for Christmas Lunch this year – they came over for lunch on Boxing Day instead. We had very yummy sandwiches made from cold leftover turkey, ham, tomato, lettuce, and cranberry sauce – very nice! We still didn’t cook the Christmas Pudding, but as it was a trifle cooler than Christmas Day, we had a slice of Christmas Cake each, and the rest of the Christmas Ice Cream (we’re going to have to make some more this week and call it “Easter”, or “Hot Cross Ice Cream”!) After a happy afternoon of food and chatter, my very favourite eldest daughter and her husband went home, and this time we did have dinner (sandwiches, no matter how nice, are not quite as filling as a hot roast dinner with all the trimmings!) We pressed Julian’s new grill into service, and had some wonderfully grilled fillet steak, with chips, cooked in the oven on one of his new silicon oven mats, peas, and our usual half a tomato. I had a smallish yellow peach, and a smallish yellow nectarine for dessert, along with a Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurt (because they’re not very big! 😉 )

The agate pendant that my very favourite eldest daughter gave me was on a rather short leather thong, so this morning we went out to see if we could find me a rose gold chain that would support it. Apparently rose gold either isn’t terribly popular at the moment, or else they’d all been snaffled up as Christmas Presents, because although we walked the length and breadth of Knox City, we were unable to source one! I ended up getting a slightly longer leather thong for it, until we can find a suitable rose gold chain. Why rose gold and not yellow gold, or silver, or even platinum? Because the Tree of Life wrapped around the stone, as you can see from the link above, is made of copper wire – yellow gold, silver – or even platinum – wouldn’t “go” with it! I also wanted to get a sturdier case for my nice new phone – it had come with a very stylish, but light weight acrylic, which after only a day of use was starting to look grubby, and in severe danger of becoming scratched (and I hadn’t even put it in my handbag!) I found a rather nice navy blue leather case, so my precioussss is safe again! 🙂

I’ve taken myself back to Rift again – just to see if there have been any changes (there’ve been a few, and I don’t really like some of them!) and there’s been a new expansion, which I haven’t bought yet because I’m not sure if I’ll stay with Rift, or head back to WoW – or whether I’ll play both… The game’s changed enough to make me start off a new character so that I can learn any new stuff from scratch, and one disadvantage of Rift is that if a name is already taken, you can’t use accented “foreign” letters to get around the problem! I was going to call this new character Åtlantia, or Åtalanta, but of course I couldn’t use that sort of “Å”, so after going through about half a dozen names that were all already taken, in desperation I called her “Aquafresca” – “fresh water” in Italian, which is a silly name, but by that stage I was desperate! (so I don’t really think I’ll be keeping her long! ) I’ll let you all know how I fare in that department! I tell you what though, they’ve made some really huge improvements in their Dimension areas!

For lunch today we had sandwiches again – more turkey (which is nearly all gone now, after having my very favourite eldest daughter and Neale over for lunch yesterday!) this time with our favourite butter substitute , basil and pesto hummus, instead of cranberry sauce, and some mushed up cold roast potato and pumpkin. I thought that these sandwiches tasted better than the ones yesterday, and I’d thought that they were pretty good! Tonight for dinner we had Beef, Caramelised Onion & Pepper sausages, once more very successfully cooked on the new grill (though Julian said that they took longer to cook than in a frying pan) with mashed potatoes, steamed sugar-snap peas, which were really delicious and a little crunchy, and the ubiquitous half a tomato. For dessert I had a brown Nashi pear (which was gi-normous, so Julian had some too) and an Apple Le Rice. I actually found a really nice looking mango up at Knox City today, and it was a bit of a toss-up as to whether I’d have the brown Nashi pear or the mango tonight. The Nashi pear won, so I’ll have the mango tomorrow night! 🙂

Weight-wise the story goes thus:

Saturday December 24th:     70.3 kg      Christmas Eve
Sunday December 25th:        70.4 kg      Christmas Day
Monday December 26th:       70.4 kg      Boxing Day
Tuesday December 27th:      70.4 kg      Today

So considering the amount of umm… delicious but maybe not quite so good for me weight-wise… food, I’m just a trifle amazed that I haven’t hit 80 kg yet! Never mind – I’m determined that I’ll keep track of my weight as usual, but that I’m not going to worry about it until after March 9th – when I’ll go back onto Optifast for a while, until my weight settles back down again!

Auric and Dapple are both well and getting bigger – this morning I saw one of Auric’s scales fall off, and I reckon he’s growing faster than his skin can stretch, and that’s why he shed a scale! Or do goldfish regularly shed scales, like we shed skin cells, and it’s just that you hardly ever actually see them losing scales? (like most of the time no-one seems to notice you shedding skin cells!) I have no idea what’s happening tomorrow – there was one thought that we might go and see “Rogue One” tomorrow, but we sort-of never got around to seeing if we could get tickets – Julian will try a little later tonight – so either we’ll be going out to see “Rogue One” at a Gold Class movie theatre and having lunch there, or I’ll be pottering around, fiddling with Rift for a bit – and possibly making a new, and somewhat less Christmassy Header… and that’s really about “it” from me for the evening! Despite Woolworths trying to thrust Easter on us too early, hopefully the Holiday festivities and slightly skewed hours and interruptions will be abating soon, and we can return you to your scheduled program of nightly blogs, except on Sundays, Mondays, and occasional Tuesdays! Do call in again tomorrow night to see if we went out or stayed home (if you see a new Header you’ll know we stayed home!) if my weight decided it was sick and tired of loitering around on 70.4 kg and decided to dodge up… or down, and what other adventures we got up to. Until then though, do try to bee good – you should have got yourselves into the habit of doing that by now, anyway – and don’t forget that anyone can count the seeds in an apple, but no-one can count the apples in a seed (think about it!) do remember to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep cool – or warm – depending on where you are… but above all, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

-* MERRY CHRISTMAS *-

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Safe, Happy New Year, from All Of Us!
(you’ll just have to see if you can guess who’s who! 😉 )

See you all tomorrow (Boxing Day) night!

04.33 pm

Well, remember how I told you all yesterday that Julian and I were just about to head off to go and do some (more!) Christmas shopping with my very favourite eldest daughter, when I found that I had another loose screw, and how we still went and picked up my very favourite eldest daughter anyway, but then decided to drive straight to the Prosthodontist to see if he could tighten up that wretched screw – again! (for the third time this week – though to be fair, the middle screw-fiddle was when he was taking the bottom bridge out for cleaning, anyway!) before it fell out completely and got lost… We were extra, extra lucky though, because we arrived at the Mt Waverley surgery where I usually see him, just as he was about to head off to his second surgery in Moonee Ponds! (howzat for good timing, eh?! 😉 ) Anyway, he did tighten it, and he also ground down the tooth on top of the screw, to lessen the amount of “bite” on that side of my mouth (which was practically nil, anyway! All my “bite” is on the right hand side of my mouth) because it’s usually “load” that makes the screws come loose in the first place. However as he was going to be “on holidays” until January 17th, we asked him if he could “lend” us one of the special, teeny-weeny extra-teeny-small screwdrivers, in case it came loose again, which he reluctantly did, with the strict admonishment to “bring it back, please!” (and there was silly me, thinking that he was giving it to us as a sort of Christmas Present! 😉 ) So with the panic attack averted, and the screw all sorted out, we went on our merry way… That, let me remind you, was yesterday morning!

This morning, Julian had just gone off to pick up the Dry Cleaning, and do the last big lot of grocery shopping before Christmas, and I was sitting in here, minding my own business and working on the new Header that you can see above you, instead of frolicking around in Azeroth as I’d hoped to be doing. All of a sudden… there was something sharpish sticking into the left hand of my tongue! My Goodness! Whatever could it be! I wondered… HA! Wondered, my foot! I knew exactly what it was, as I’d felt it three times in the last week! My damnable screw had come loose again! It’s obviously not “load”, as there’s so little “bite” left on that side of my mouth, that eating and chewing over there sort-of doesn’t work terribly well anymore! Julian’s leaning towards the theory that the thread of the screw, or part of the thread, has become “stripped” or something, and isn’t gripping any more. Anyway, thank goodness we had that little screwdriver! When he got home he was able to tighten the wretched thing up again, but who knows how long it’ll hold this time! I’m not impressed! 😕

Hey! Guess what I’m doing at the moment! I’m doing something that I haven’t done since pre August 2014! I’m drinking a glass of (commercial) orange juice! And oh…. it is very nice! I’ve had orange diet jellies, and I’ve had supposedly orange flavoured sugarless lollies, and I’ve had small pieces of mixed peel in cakes and slices since then, but I haven’t actually had a drink of orange juice! *burp* You know, I’d forgotten just how nice orange juice is! Yumm! 🙂

So I haven’t really done much at all today, apart from constructing the latest blog Header! I was also quite surprised when Julian called me to tell me that my hand-crocheted fingerless gloves had arrived from Latvia! They’re beautifully hand-made, very popular, and there’s quite a waiting list, so we weren’t expecting them until about the middle of next year! When we got home yesterday we’d found a card in the letter box announcing the arrival of “a parcel” – which we’d apparently missed by “⇔” that much – and which now awaiting our collection from the local Post Office Shoppe. Julian picked it up this afternoon on his way home from all his errands – I was sort-of expecting it to be a top I’d ordered from Katies (or Suzanne Grae – I fergit which now) so I was most astonished to find out that it was my very pretty, grey, charcoal, dusty pink and red, “dragon scale” fingerless gloves! Julian took a photo of them before – when he gets a round tuit, and puts them up on Flickr, I’ll post a link so you can see what they look like!

And as that’s pretty much all of today’s doin’s, I shall now proceed to regale you with all the “good” bits! 😉

Weigh-in this morning. Not really all that much to jump up and down about, and go tearing off around the oval with my jumper over my face – in fact it was almost an “Oh. It’s you again!” moment (it’s a l-o-n-g story that was actually quite funny at the time – it’s since become a bit of a family-and-friends “in-joke” quote, somewhat along the lines of the infamous “Alright everybody, shut up and talk!”) But back to my weigh-in! I went from a slim, svelte 69.4 kg to…. you guessed it! 69.9 kg! Again! Ho-Hum!

Food stuffs. Last night for dinner we had pasta in tomato and basil sauce with a small scattering of parmesan, because we’d had such a big lunch, and for dessert I had another “ordinary” green Packham pear – because there wasn’t much else that was edible in the way of fruit (and I’d forgotten to take the peach and the nectarine out of the fridge, again! Grr!) and an Apple Le Rice. For lunch today we had half a mushroom and cheese savoury roll each, and half a spiced tomato and herb pizza roll each, followed by half an apple and cinnamon bun/roll, plus a Fergus Plarre mince pie each – however by the time Julian brought our lunch home after doing all the shopping, we didn’t have our lunch until well after three o’clock! For dinner tonight we’ll be having some Beef, pepper and Barossa Shiraz sausages. with chips, steamed green beans, and our usual half a tomato. For dessert I’ll be having “the best of” a somewhat mushy-looking apricot, a rather bruised-looking white Nectarine, and a rather tired-looking yellow peach. Hopefully the three somewhat “wonky” pieces of fruit will supply enough good bits to produce at least one and a half edible pieces of fruit! (and yes, I did remember – I took them out of the fridge at about four o’clock this afternoon – i.e. just after lunch!) I’ll also be having a Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurt…

And that’s been “my day”! There’s been no more news regarding Terry and his tests, so as they say in the classics, “No news is good news”! Auric and Dapple are very busy doing all sorts of “fishy things”, like swimming around, begging for food, and enjoying their nice, clean, fresh and sparkly Fish House… And you know what?! That’s about “it” from me for this evening! I have the Podiatrist coming tomorrow afternoon, and the kids will be over on Christmas Eve (Saturday night) to make a giant mess in the kitchen (making the eggnog! Julian “tested” the Brandy and the Rum this afternoon – just to make sure that it was still sound! 😉 ) Do drop in again tomorrow night to see what my weight’s been up (or down!) to, if I managed to find a second or two for poor lonely, neglected WoW, and what other adventures and escapades we’ve had! Then before you know it, it’ll be “tha Day”, so make extra, doubly sure that you don’t inadvertently wriggle your way on to Father Christmas’s “Naughty” list! In other words, bee good! Remember – be happy, be bright, be you… and don’t forget to always drive carefully, to keep warm – or cool – depending on your situation, and to look after yourselves… but above all, please – don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

*blog completed at 11.00 pm

04.47 pm

Where has the time gone?! It seems like only last week that I was grizzling about Easter Eggs making their appearance in the supermarkets! Or maybe that was just a premonition of déjà vu, because in about three week’s time, that’s what we’ll be seeing… again! However, one thing I am missing in the supermarkets this year are the stacks and stacks of Panettone (Panettoni?) that usually appear before Christmas! Where are they? Did they all get snapped up in a mad rush one day when we weren’t out doing some sort of supermarket shopping? Or have they suddenly gone “out of fashion”, because it only seems to be the odd delicatessen here and there that had any this year… Never mind, we have all of ours! 🙂 Our favourite “Motta” brand too, for once – now all I have to do is try to source some Panforte – or talk Julian into making our own – at least that way we’d know that it was “authentic”! Which of course, brings me to another grizzle! Why do people have to go and change things for no good reason! (though come to think of it, maybe chocolate is a good enough reason to change something, anyway!) Authentic Panforte has never had chocolate in it – it’s not supposed to have chocolate in it, because they didn’t have chocolate in 13th century Tuscany! If they did, well, they might have included it – or they might not! However it is supposed to have pepper in it! The above linked recipe, which is about the most “authentic” one I could find on the spur of the moment, doesn’t include pepper, though most other authentic recipes do. Go figure! So be warned! If you read my blog and think “what’s so special about this Panforte stuff that Winter keeps going on about every Christmas!”, and then happen to see some packets of Panforte and decide to try it, if it says “chocolate” anywhere on the packet, don’t bother, because it’s only “pretend” Panforte, and is about as much like real Panforte as I’m like Maggie Smith! (because (a) she’s a bit older than I am, and (b) she’s a lot thinner than I am! 😛 )

How’s all your Christmas Shopping been going? Finished yet? We keep thinking we have (finished the Christmas Shopping) only to suddenly remember “Oh, we don’t have anything for [whoever] yet!”, and start panicking all over again! I picked up the last of Julian’s “stocking fillers” this afternoon, so I’m feeling very virtuous, and quite looking forward to Sunday… but I’m not looking forward to the weather on Christmas Day! I hope “They’re” wrong – but I can remember with trepidation what it was like, way back in my youth – “just after the cavemen”, as some unkind people like to say – Christmas Day was very often hideously hot (there was no such thing as “air conditioning” for the plebs back then! You were considered “posh” if you had a single electric fan!) especially after a very large, hot, Christmas Dinner, with roast turkey, potatoes, peas, beans, pumpkin, ham, and tomato pie – with gravy, cranberry sauce for the turkey and apple sauce for the ham, followed by a large, boiled-in-the-cloth suet plum pudding with both plain and brandy whipped cream – all one wanted to do was lie on the floor and groan in distress! The men all retired to the lounge room to watch the cricket on television, or whatever, while the women retired to the kitchen to wash the dishes and clean up. We kids were left to argue amongst ourselves, grizzle, refuse to share presents, and mope – feeling vastly overstuffed and miserable in all the heat… Ahh… nostalgia! 😉 Still, this time next week will be here soon enough, and it’ll all be over for another year… when we’ll all dutifully turn around and go through the ritual, all over again!

Because I had to go up to the doctor’s to pick up yet another prescription this afternoon (that’s what happens when you get old – you need lots of things to keep you going!) and we were going to be in the area anyway, we picked up my very favourite eldest daughter who had more shopping to do. We were going to have lunch first, then leave her at The Glen while I went to the doctor’s to get my Warfarin script – as I walked out through the front door (which now has a pretty Christmas Wreath on it!) and closed it behind me, I suddenly realised… one of my screws had come loose again! Actually, it was the same one that had got loose last time, when I had to go all the way to Moonee Ponds to get it tightened up again! I was absolutely and totally horrified! There went yet another day – sidetracked and ambushed by something that was my fault, even though it was totally out of my control! (don’t ask! It’s just always my fault when things go awry!) We picked up Lee, and decided to hot-foot it to Dr. N’s to see if he could tighten up my screw again (yeah, I know that sounds a bit “off”, but you all know what I mean!) I didn’t really want to wait until after we’d had lunch (what if I swallowed the screw?) and I’d picked up my Warfarin script, so we decided to go there first. We were damn lucky! Dr. N was there – we’d caught him – just as he was about to leave for Moonee Ponds! So he tightened up the screw – for the third time this week – and ground the tooth it was in down a little bit to reduce the “bite” load on it (which is apparently what loosens the screw in the first place) He also “lent” us a teeny-weeny little screwdriver, so that Julian can tighten the wretched thing up himself, if it comes loose again, as Dr. N will be away over Christmas and won’t be back until January 17th (at least, that’s what I think he said!) He said, in a somewhat panic-stricken tone “But please bring it back!” – so I think it must be the only one he has! We then went on to The Glen, had lunch, did a bit of snooping around in David Jones (I like the David Jones in Doncaster a lot better!) then left Lee to her own devices and went off to get my Warfarin script. After that, we picked up my very favourite eldest daughter, dropped her home, and came home ourselves – via the Vermont South shopping centre, where I attempted to buy another mango, but all the fruit at both Coles and the Greengrocer there was abysmal! In fact I reckon that even a starving pig in its sty wouldn’t have eaten any of the fruit that I saw up at the shopping centre today, if it had dropped in the pig’s feed trough!  So I didn’t get any more fruit today 😦 I reckon that the best place to get fruit (and vegetables) is the fresh fruit and vegetable market at Knox City! We’ll have to see if we can get up there before Sunday (which is doubtful, but we’ll try…) Anyway, such was my day! 😳

All in all, the past three days have been extremely busy! On Sunday we played WoW, naturally, but this time we played with our newbies – Imaan and Krankhaft – and had a great time! We went up a couple of levels each, and did quite well for ourselves. On Monday, our cleaning lady was here in the morning, then we went off to Bunnies because my one year old desktop fountain was starting to look a bit dilapidated! It looked as though it was made of stone, but apparently that was just paint, which had started to peel off, and was looking rather unsightly – so we went off to get another one. I could have got one exactly the same, but it too had a small crack in the paint-work around the hole in the top where the water comes out, so it wouldn’t have been long before its paint started peeling too… instead, I got a rather pretty metal fountain, which looks like brass, but probably isn’t. It consists of four lotus leaves, and the water comes up the “stem” of the tallest leaf, then overflows off the leaf and down into the next leaf, which overflows and falls down to the next leaf – etc., etc., and so forth! Hopefully this one will last a little longer than a year, before it starts to look unsightly! In the afternoon Josh arrived and did my hair – and that was Monday! 🙂 Yesterday my very favourite eldest daughter came over and we spent the day in decadent laziness, lounging in the living room and watching episodes of “The Flash”, “Arrow” and “Supergirl” all day. Julian made The. Most. Delicious. Fruit loaf, Ever! We had a couple of pieces for breakfast this morning, toasted, and it was absolutely divine! By the time Julian got back from dropping her home again, it was dinner time, so that was my Tuesday!

And I’ve already told you all about today, so that brings you all up to speed on events chez nous!

Err… sorry, dinner’s ready – back later with more! 🙂

09.30 pm

It’s later, and I’m back!

Where was I? Oh yes… now you should all be up to date with what’s been happening around here… so now I can get on with all the “good” bits!

Weigh-in December 18th – Sunday. As usual, “within the margin of error” for the last few days. I went from 70.1 kg on Saturday, to 69.9 kg on Sunday!

Food stuffs. Well, I can’t really remember what I had for lunch on Sunday, but I had a very delicious omelet for dinner, with pre-cooked bacon and diced onion, together with squares of semi-melted Cheddar/Tasty cheese, tomato, diced green capsicum, and some diced “sweet” orange capsicum (not “sweet” sweet, but a bit sweeter than the green capsicum, anyway) and for dessert I had my last white Nashi pear and a Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurt.

Weigh-in December 19th – Monday. Par for the course! My body decided to dither around a bit, so I went from 69.9 kg, to…. (drum roll, please!) 69.9 kg! How ’bout that! I stayed the same! *rolls eyes*

Food stuffs. We’d gone shopping up at Vermont South after our cleaning lady left, and we had lunch up there. I had a smallish square of “home-cooked spanakopita”, with a side serve of somewhat wilted and over dressed salad, which, of course, I didn’t eat, as I prefer my salads naked! Next time we have lunch there, if I have the spanakopita again I’m going to ask to have it cold (i.e. not semi-warmed up in the microwave) as I have a vague idea that served cold, the filo pastry around the filling might be just a tad… crisper? (home cooking hint! Never warm up filo pastry in a microwave unless you like chewing soggy pastry a lot!) I also had a nice, almost-the-same-as the Shingle Inn ones, chocolate caramel slice, and an Iced Coffee – asked for with skinny milk, and no cream or ice cream, but which came with full cream milk and a small scoop of ice cream. They did remember the “no cream” bit though. For obvious reasons, I didn’t drink much of it… For dinner on Monday night we had a delightful piece of fillet steak, cooked to medium-rare perfection by Julian, with chips, steamed green beans, and of course, our usual half a tomato. I’d bought a nice looking mango during our shopping excursion, and I had that for dessert, along with an Apple Le Rice.

Weigh-in December 20th – Tuesday. Guess what! The scales seem to have got stuck, or something! I clambered up onto the scales yesterday morning, fully expecting to be up somewhere around the 80 kg mark or something, after all the food I’d been eating – but lemme tell you, I went from 69.9 kg, to…. an amazing and startling 69.9 kg – for the third day in a row! Wow! Maybe I’ll stay like this for ever! (extremely unlikely, but wouldn’t it be a nice Christmas Present from Me to me! 😉 )

Food stuffs. We had very nice Julian-made sandwiches for lunch, with ham, cheese, capers, and tomato, as my very favourite eldest daughter and I were too busy lolling around watching episodes of our favourite TV shows to go out shopping anywhere and have anything “commercial” to eat – it also meant that we didn’t get anything for lunch dessert, but that was OK, we had some very nice “proper” coffee instead! 😉 For dinner we had some delicious little frenched lamb cutlets, with steamed, fully organic and home-grown tiny cocktail potatoes, peas (for a change!) and our usual half a tomato. For dessert I had an “ordinary” green pear (yes, I looked at the label on their bin in the supermarket – I was right! They are Packhams!) which was delicious. I was going to have some of my stoned fruit from the fridge for dessert, but I forgot to take it out in time for it to warm up to room temperature, so I had the pear instead. I also had a Lemon CHOBANI yoghurt with the pear…

Weigh-in December 21st – Wednesday (today!) Well, I might not be remaining on 69.9 kg for the rest of my life, after all! In fact, I don’t think that you could really call today “within the margin or terror error”, either! This morning, much to my surprise, I went from 69.9 kg, to 69.4 kg! Down five points! 😯 But don’t worry – it’ll be up again tomorrow, after my nice lunch today! 😉

Food stuffs. We had lunch at the Shingle Inn at The Glen today! I had my normal “long black with a small side jug of skinny milk” and BLT on sourdough bread, and because they didn’t have any of my favourite, sticky, messy, gooey chocolate caramel slices 😥 I had a chocolate and walnut brownie “wedge”, dressed up with faintly sparkly icing, and thinly piped zigzags, to emulate a Christmas Tree (I suppose!) Actually, I’ve had their brownies before, and they all have one fault – which this “Christmas Tree” brownie also suffered from. They’re all too thin! Brownies are supposed to be thick! A little bit gooey and chewy in the middle, and with little crispy, crunchy bits on the outside edges! The Shingle Inn brownies are only about a centimeter thick! They’re so thin that they crumble and fall apart when you bite them! They need to be at least twice that thick to be able to eat and enjoy them properly! However, they do taste nice – so I suppose that’s the main thing. For dinner tonight we has pasta – fusilli, to be precise, with tomato sauce and a small scattering of parmesan cheese. And, once again, I forgot to take the nectarine and peach out of the fridge in time for them to warm up a bit, so I had another of the “ordinary” green (Packham) pears and an Apple Le Rice for dessert.

And that’s about where we’re up to! Terry’s PET and CT scans came back clear, so that’s good – now he’s got an endoscopy and a colonoscopy lined up for Friday, the results of which probably won’t be available now until the middle of next week, unfortunately. Not a pleasant thing to have hanging over your head for Christmas! Auric and Dapple have calmed down again after having their Fish House cleaned out today, even though it didn’t really need it – the usual algae growth has slowed down remarkably since Julian put in a new filter – it’s bigger than the old one, works really well, and is a lot quieter too! Tomorrow – Hallelujah – I think I finally have a quiet day to myself! I don’t think I’ve touched WoW since Sunday – which is a long time for me! So long, in fact, that our friend Steve who lives out in the back of beyond somewhere near Melton has noticed my absence there! 🙂 Anyway, that’s finally about “it” from me for tonight! Do drop in again tomorrow night to find out what’s been happening around these parts – what tricks my weight has decided to play on my scales, whether or not I got any WoW-ing in, and if Julian’s made anything else yummy and exciting (I have a few new recipes “on the boil” for him! 😉 ) Until then though, make a great big effort to bee good – because it’s only a few more sleeps before you-know-who checks his Naughty or Nice list! Don’t forget to think less, and live more… and remember to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep cool – or warm – depending on where you are and what you’re doing… but most importantly, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

06.03 pm

I’m very late tonight, so I’ll make this a bit of a short quickie “placeholder”, for ‘ron… My very favourite youngest daughter was over this afternoon – and under the circumstances, there was a lot to discuss and talk over regarding her husband’s recent cancer diagnosis. Before that, I spent the morning doing what I do best – dithering, and wasting time! We were out most of yesterday – Julian had a Dental appointment at 10.00 am at Brandon Park, and I had to have my Warfarin blood test done. Looking at the Dorevitch list of collection centres online, it said they had a collection centre at Shop 116, Brandon Park – so we thought “Goody! We can get both done under the same roof!” and so I went too. There was no “Shop 116” at Brandon Park – according the the Chemist there, there hadn’t been for more than 5 years! Grr! Still, I got most of my “private” shopping done there, and picked up a lot of the “incidental” Christmas Presents (for anyone that we haven’t bought anything for, and who, for reasons known only to themselves, have bought one for us, if you see what I mean) (uhhh… it doesn’t happen often, and of course we get left with the disposal of said “incidental Christmas Presents”, which is why I usually get either chocolates or shortbread for those occasional “just in case” presents! 😉 )

So we were out all morning, and when Julian had finished at the Dentist, after a bit of discussion over a well-earned cup of coffee (I’d walked the complete length of Brandon Park twice!) we decided that (a) we needed a top-up of coffee capsules, and I still needed to get my “personal” Christmas Cards and have my blood taken, and (b) our Dry Cleaning basket was quite literally overflowing onto the floor! We decided to go home, pick up the overflowing Dry Cleaning and head off to Doncaster Shoppingtown, our old Stomping Ground, as all of the amenities listed above were available there. We had lunch there, and this time I walked the length and breadth of Doncaster Shoppingtown, twice! Yes, my blistered instep survived intact – what didn’t was my left hip – but that’s a story for another night when I have more time! (no, I didn’t fall over and break my hip! I’m not that old and doddery yet!) Anyway, to cut a long story short, we had lunch (at “Coffee Hit“, not Shingle Inn for a change!) we got our coffee, I had my blood taken, I found the sort of “personal” Christmas Cards I was after, and a good time was had by all, even if I was, by that time, walking on my knee bones, after having worn my poor feet down that far with all the walking I did! 😛

Needless to say that when we got home around 4.30 pm I was too exhausted to do anything much at all – hence no blog last night! 😳

Anyway, that just about covers our two days – Oh, I did find the time to do a new Header (which you may or may not have noticed – I hope you did though) then this afternoon I fiddled around with an older Template, which I’m not sure if I’ll stick with yet – I think I like the Header I did yesterday better – so I might switch back to that one… or work on this one a bit more, whichever… however, tomorrow is Sunday, so we’ll be WoW-ing all day I expect, so the Template and Headers might have to wait until next week…

Dinner is almost ready – I shall continue this a bit later…

09.58 pm

Well, t’is later, as you can see.

As I’ve filled you in on yesterday and today’s doin’s, I shall get on with all the “good” bits for you!

Weigh-in Friday the 16th. I thought was reasonably good, for a change! Mind you, I didn’t expect it to last… I went from 70.0 kg on the Thursday, to 69.9 kg on the Friday! Undeniably within the magical “margin of error”, anyway!

Food stuff. As I mentioned earlier, we had lunch at “The Coffee Hit” instead of the Shingle Inn yesterday at Doncaster – mainly because when we sat down to have a cup of coffee at Brandon Park while we discussed what to do next, we’d first decided that we wouldn’t have anything to eat, because it was too close to lunch time. I had an iced coffee with no cream or ice cream, and, stupidly, forgot to specify “skinny milk” in the order… so I only drank half of it, in order to feel virtuous or something, I suppose. I also had an apple pie thingy – one of those round, slightly domed “pies” with thick, hard, white icing over them – there’s far too much thick, short pastry (top and bottom!) not terribly much diced stewed apple in the middle, and a lot of the icing… I can truthfully say that they’re one of my favourites – and that I really only eat them for the icing! It’s a bit like a much thicker version of the icing on Neenish Tarts, only a lot thicker, and a lot more of it! So much for not having anything to eat because it was too close to lunch time! When we got to Doncaster, Julian dropped off the Dry Cleaning and we thought we’d have lunch (it was lunch time by then!) By some sort of unspoken agreement, we avoided the Shingle Inn, maybe because we felt that we’d have a bigger lunch there than elsewhere? Perhaps… anyway, we made our way to The Coffee Hit, and went to see what they had in their food viewing window thingy. Again – we weren’t going to have any sort of cake, as we’d already had our “dessert” at Brandon Park. I chose a chicken and pesto Toastie… and a small “flourless Orange Friand“, because it looked so nice, with a slice of preserved orange on top of it – and I love flourless orange cakes, anyway! Again I had an Iced Coffee with no cream or ice cream – this time made with skinny milk! I still didn’t drink all of it because by this time, I was feeling just a little full! For dinner that night we had Beef, caramelised onion and pepper sausages, with chips, steamed peas (for a change!) and our usual half a tomato. For dessert I had a white Nashi pear – really, I think all they’re good for is a source of fluid! Yes, they’re crisp and crunchy and pleasant enough to eat, but they’re really pretty flavourless! I also had a small tub of Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurt…

Weigh-in Saturday the 17th (today!) Just as well I did all that walking yesterday! I went up two points, from 69.9 kg yesterday, to (after all the eating we didn’t mean to do, but did!) 70.1 kg this morning. Goodness knows what it’s going to be tomorrow morning!

Food stuffs. For lunch today I had a sandwich made from the last of this lot of “Julian’s Bread” – quite plain, just ham and cheese, but it was delicious! Dinner tonight was pretty much as per usual, except for one extremely pleasant surprise! Julian went out to water the vegetables and our little fig tree, and decided to harvest one of the five “growing sacks” of our very own, fully organic, home-grown potatoes! Two meals worth of tiny, “cocktail” size baby potatoes! Ideal for making potato salads with, but tonight we just had them steamed. We also had gently pan-fried chicken breast, steamed green beans, and our usual half a tomato. The steamed potatoes were absolutely delicious, even without any butter, cream, or plain yoghurt on them! (I can’t wait for our own fully organic and home-grown tomatoes!) For dessert I had a smallish apricot and a smallish yellow peach, and a CHOBANI strawberry and banana yoghurt.

And that’s it, gentle readers! Auric and Dapple are still behaving themselves, swimming around, growing bigger day by day, and hoovering the gravel for any dropped breakfast or dinner morsels… Tomorrow I expect we’ll both be either running Dungeons, or doing a bit more work with our two newbies, Imaan and Krankhaft – so as likely as not, there won’t be time to write tomorrow night – so, that’s about “it” from me for this evening! Do drop in again on Monday or Tuesday night when once again I’ll be able to catch you all up on our comings and goings. In the meantime, please try to bee extra good, and you never know who’s keeping an eye on you to see if you’ve been Naughty or Nice! 😉 remember – don’t be afraid of change, because it is leading you to a new beginning, and don’t forget to keep warm – or cool – depending on your preferences, to look after yourselves, and to always drive carefully… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.35 pm

Here I am again after a very pleasant break yesterday! 🙂 My excuse for taking a break? It was our 26th Wedding Anniversary, and we went out to lunch. When we go out for a meal, we generally go for lunch rather than dinner – I’m not exactly sure why I prefer to go out for lunch instead… yes, it does cut a huge swath right through the middle of the day, but for some weird reason (remember, I do have a reputation to maintain! 😉 ) I feel that it’s of far lesser importance than fragmenting the evening, in the way that going out for dinner invariably does! Once upon a time, a long time ago now, Julian and I were reasonably heavy drinkers, but for many years now we only drink “socially”, or when we’re at a restaurant, when we might have a Martini, followed by a glass of wine with our main course – and I’ve found that going to bed after a fairly substantial meal and a couple of drinks, doesn’t always mean that you get a good night’s sleep! However, the same meal and the same drinks at lunch time gives you plenty of time to digest your meal, get in a bit of snoozing, WoW-ing or surfing during the afternoon, and have a pleasant evening before retiring to a peaceful night’s sleep 🙂 Plus the fact that it’s far less fattening, as we never have any dinner after we’ve been out to lunch – and somehow, you know, playing it the other way (that is, not having any lunch before going out to dinner) doesn’t seem to work in quite the same way – all that does is prompt you to eat more of the delicious-sounding rich foods than you normally would, before coming home to your over-indulgence induced bad dreams and fragmented sleep! Anyway, it was our Anniversary, and we went to “The Tender Trap” – a lovely restaurant on Blackburn Road in East Doncaster, where we had a really fantastic meal, and we worked out, with the help of the Head Waiter who’s been there since forever, that we’ve been going there for nearly 25 years – almost as long as we’ve been going to the East Empress in Glen Waverley!

When we got home we both pretty much bludged for the rest of the afternoon – I was actually awake for a change, so I could have written my blog, but I was just feeling too well-fed and lazy to be bothered! Sorry! 😉 Today I worked nearly all day on this latest background and Header – what do you all think? Is it too bright for some of the smaller screens? Please let me know if it is, because I do have a somewhat more sedate and “quieter” “Plan B” background and Header waiting in the wings! Julian picked up our Ferguson Plarre order this afternoon – one large Christmas Cake, one large Christmas Pudding, and three dozen mince pies! I was much relieved when he brought them home – I was starting to worry that we’d forget them, or pick them up late, and find that they’d sold them to someone else! Oh, and we put up the Christmas Tree, too! For the last two years we haven’t dismantled the tree, as it’s small enough to stand it upright, with all its decorations still on it, in one of the largest, thick orange garden bin bags – it’s starting to look a little “sad” and dilapidated though – this might be the last time we’ll be able to get away with it! Oh well – anyway, we’ve found the perfect spot for it (more-or-less!) so now all we have to do is, uhhh… wrap the presents? (Winter starts to panic *but how*??!!) Ah yes! We shall need boxes – in which to put most of the Christmas Presents – because most of them aren’t really the sort of Christmas Presents that you can wrap! 😉 Julian has another visit to the Dentist tomorrow, and even though the blister on the edge of my instep isn’t fully healed yet, I think I shall go with him. He can drop me off at the shopping centre on the way there, because I’ve just remembered something that I was going to get him – if “tha place” still has any left! I also need to get my own “personal” Christmas Cards, too, so it’s as good a chance as I’m likely to get, between now and Christmas! So, I guess that’s going to be “Hello!” to a couple of new blisters, and “Goodbye” to any chance of catching up with Nofret in WoW! Thank goodness Christmas comes but once a year!

I’m not quite sure what’s happening this weekend – I think my very favourite youngest daughter, Kate, will be coming over, though I’m not sure if her husband Terry will come or not. He’s not taken the news of his cancer well, and I think he’s going through a pretty rough patch  at the moment (which is hardly surprising!) They both need all the help and support they can get at the moment, and of course, if there’s anything at all we can do for them, or help them with, it’s theirs! On a somewhat less distressing note, I’ve started looking for Cat Breeders in Victoria, as I’m after a “spotted” cat – either an Egyptian Mau, or a Bengal, and although we’re not quite ready for another cat just yet, looking for a pedigreed cat, especially one of those two breeds, usually means putting yourself on a waiting list, and then waiting until kittens become available! Auric and Dapple had their Fish House cleaned out on Tuesday, so their water is lovely and clear, and their walls are nice and algae-less – even their erstwhile mud-puddle outside got cleaned out again this morning! (not that they’ll ever be going out there again, of course!) And so that now brings you almost completely up to date with the comings and goings chez nous, and I can get on with all the “good” bits! 😉

Weigh-in Wednesday the 14th (yesterday) was a “Red Letter Day”, that I really didn’t want to get to! However… I’ve made up my mind not to get too emotional about my weight until the end of March, no matter what the scales say! I shall enjoy Christmas, and all the Birthdays and celebrations clustered around it, and go back onto Optifast for a month – or two, if necessary – at the end of March, after the “Holiday Eating Frenzy” has ended! I shall be moderately careful about what I eat, and I shall still weigh myself daily… However, yesterday, the 14th, I went up five points – from 69.6 kg on Tuesday, to 70.1 kg on Wednesday. Seventy kilos is? was? my “ultimate” end goal (which was why I wanted to get well under it first!) and I have to say that it’s taken me over 12 months, to put on those “extra” or “spare” five kilos from my “secondary” goal weight of 65 kg, to reach my “ultimate” goal weight of 70 kg. I don’t know whether to be pleased, or sorry!

Food stuffs. As I mentioned earlier, we had lunch at “The Tender Trap” yesterday – and this is what I had: Pork Rillette with Spiced Nut Crumble & Pedro Ximenez Soaked Dates – this had to be one of the nicest, yummiest, “Entrée”, or “Starter” that I’ve ever had! Almost exactly like pâté, only made with pork instead of goose liver! There were only three dates 😦 and they’d been soaked in some sort of a sweet dessert wine, and were to die for! For “Mains”, I had Eye Fillet, cooked “medium rare”, with Confit Garlic White Bean Puree, Burnt Onion, Asparagus, Jus – and because mains these days doesn’t often come with anything other than “edible garnish”, which is what all those other things were, you have to order accompanying dishes (of vegetables, etc.) We had three side dishes: a “Roquette, Pear, Honey & Pecorino” salad, in which you would have thought that they could have put a bit more pear (you had to really hunt for it amongst the green rocket leaves and the grated Pecorino cheese!) an “Heirloom Tomato, Basil, Bread, Shallot, and Fig Balsamic” which was fantastic, and “Thick Cut Chips with Lemon Zest & Thyme”. When we ordered them we were very doubtful that we’d eat much of them, because usually we never finish salads, and “sides”, but this time we astounded ourselves by eating almost every scrap, and which we both pronounced “wonderful” and “scrumptious”! For dessert we both had the “Cinnamon Donuts, Pedro Ximmenez Custard, & Burnt Orange Icecream” (you may notice there that the dates had been soaked in “Pedro Ximenez”, but the Custard served with the Donuts was made with “Pedro Ximmenez”? Their spelling, not mine, as I scraped, copied and pasted from their online menu!) I really couldn’t tell you which was the best part of the meal – it was all just superb, and that Burnt Orange ice cream was just too damn yummy for words! We both finished off with a very strong, very intense, syrupy “short black”, which was served with the teeniest little crisp, round, biscuit. For dinner last night all we had was a small tub of Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurt!

And now dinner is ready, so I’ll post this much, and finish later this evening, leaving you all to wonder what we had to eat today! (tee-hee!)

09.55 pm

Weigh-in Thursday the 15th (today) was within the mythical “margin of error” again. I went from 70.1 kg yesterday to 70.0 kg today. Big Whoop! 😛

Food stuff. Lunch today was, alas for my “waste”-line, a “brought home” lunch, and I had half a savoury “cheese” roll, and half a savoury flat “pizza” roll… with one of my very favourite Baker’s Delight fruit and white chocolate scone. Tonight for dinner we had the most beautiful little pork steaks, lightly pan-fried in a little lemon-infused olive oil, with a few sprigs of home-grown rosemary and a sprinkling of freshly ground pepper. With them we had chips, steamed green beans, mixed with slivered almonds sauteed in butter, plus the ubiquitous spiced and seasoned half a tomato. For dessert I had one of my little Honey pears (also known as the Winter Nelis pear), and an Apple Le Rice.

And that’s about the sum of today’s doin’s! Tomorrow, as I said earlier, Julian has another visit to the Dentist. I’ll go too, to see if I can get the last of my “personal” shopping done, and also to have my next Warfarin blood test done… let’s see how well my poor blistered instep holds out! For the last five or six nights we’ve been watching one episode a night of a new show on Netflix, “The Crown“, which we’re finding very interesting! While I’m of an age to (vaguely! I was little more than a toddler at the time of the Coronation!) remember a bit of the earlier years of Elizabeth II’s reign, we’re both learning a lot that neither of us knew before, so it’s been fascinating to watch the story unfold! If you get a chance to watch it, I can highly recommend it! Anyway, that’s really about “it” from me again tonight – but do drop in again tomorrow night, to find out how Julian went at the Dentist, what my weight clobbered me with after all our feasting, whether or not I did manage to finish up all my “personal shopping (and – more to the point – whether my instep lasted the distance!) Until then though, do try very hard to bee good (because you-know-who is watching!) don’t forget that with each new day comes new strength and new thoughts, and remember to always drive carefully, to keep warm – or cool – depending on what you’re doing, and to look after yourselves… but most importantly, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.34 pm

And, here I am again – after a two day absence… and boy, have they been (ever-so-slightly!) busy, fraught, anxious, and jam-packed with a month’s worth of happenings!

Let me start with Sunday. On Sunday we went out to lunch at one of our favourite restaurants – the East Empress Bistro – or, as it’s calling itself these days “Bistro Empress“(which by the way, looks nothing at all like the image shown on their website!) Julian and I started going there about twenty-odd years ago, when they were situated in Coleman Parade Glen Waverley, in what is now (or was? – some references say that they’re closed!) “La Porchetta“! We used to try to get there on Thursday nights, as they had “live entertainment” – a Magician who worked the tables doing sleight-of-hand card tricks. The food was wonderful, the “entertainment” was a lot of fun, and we became more-or-less “regulars” there – always pretty sure of getting a table for two, even if they were busy and we hadn’t booked. After a while, they moved to new premises, “just around the corner”, on Springvale Road, about a door away from the Chemist Warehouse, or whatever it’s called. If you drive past now, you’ll see safety fencing on the block and a lot of construction work going on – they’re in the throes of building a new restaurant, which according to the Manageress, they hope to have finished by June or July next year (2017) Oh, I say! very interesting! I just found (Googled the construction site) the Council Building Application Permit for the new building! The first two floors are going to be the restaurant, containing “a continuation of the previous restaurant”, with two dwelling floors above, and car parking for three cars with a “turntable” underneath – which all ties in with what they told us the last time (i.e. before last Sunday) we were at the Bistro Empress – so there you go! All very exciting! Anyway, when they moved from Coleman Parade to Springvale Road they “lost” their card-tricking Magician, but their food and service more than made up for a lack of live entertainment, and we continued to be regulars, as did my very favourite eldest daughter and her husband 🙂 The lunch we had on Sunday was a celebration of my very favourite youngest daughter’s Birthday, and my very favourite eldest daughter’s husband’s Birthday – Neale’s Birthday is on the ninth of December, and Kate’s is on the twelfth of December, and because they’re both so close to Christmas we usually roll the two Birthdays into one, and they share the celebratory lunch, where a jolly good time is had by all! We don’t always go to the Bistro Empress – we do go to other restaurants as well – but it’s a favourite, Kate likes it and it was her turn to choose this year – so that’s where we went. Of course we all ate quite a bit too much, and when we got home Julian and I resolved not to have any dinner that night – not even our usual Sunday night omelet – then I sat down to read for a bit while I had a cup of coffee (be warned! They don’t serve coffee at the Bistro Empress – however they will be having “proper coffee” again when they move to their new premises!)… and fell asleep! Well, so much for not having dinner that night! Whilst watching television on Sunday night, Julian decided that he could perhaps manage to eat a yoghurt… so we both managed to squeeze a small tub of Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurt into our still-full tummies… with a cup of coffee to wash it down! 😉

Monday. Now, on Saturday, my very favourite eldest daughter had gone off to Eastland to see if she could get the cleats she needed for her Gridiron playing. She got the cleats alright, but when she came to put them on for practice on Sunday morning, she found that the silly man in the shoe shop had managed to put one left shoe from each of the two pairs of shoes she’d tried on, in the same box, so she had two different makes of left shoe! On Monday, I was due to go to my Prosthodontist again, so that he could undo the loose screw that he’d tightened up for me last week, take out all the other screws, and give my bottom implants a good thorough sand blasting, and a general cleaning – so although it was going to be Very Hot, I was going to be out anyway – and Tuesday was going to be even hotter! My very favourite eldest daughter and I were supposed to be going to Eastland together on Tuesday, to rectify the “mistake” with her cleats, but being a truly devout coward when it comes to Very Hot Days, I asked her if she’d like to go then (Monday) instead, and get it over and done with. She said yes, so Julian and I picked her up after my visit to the Prosthodontist, and headed off to Eastland. I would have liked to have spent more time there, and investigated more of the truly delicious looking little home-wares shops and the interesting-looking Two Dollar knickknackeries, but fate conspired to keep me away from them…. this time!  We had lunch – again – at the Shingle Inn, but when Julian and I got to the table that Lee was saving for us, she looked upset – I asked her what the matter was, and she simply pushed her phone across the table to me. It displayed a message from her sister – my very favourite youngest daughter. They’d finally got the results of her husband Terry’s blood tests and scans, and he has cancer. The tumor on his liver has grown alarmingly over the past week, and they say it’s also elsewhere in his body, but they don’t know where yet – they’re going to be doing more tests to see if they can find out what it is, and where it is, and then work out a course of action. Until we know more, we just have to be positive, and hope for the best. So, Lee changed her shoes and got the right ones this time, we did a bit of shopping, and came home. I probably wouldn’t have had time to do very much poking around in the shops as by the time we’d dropped Lee off and got home ourselves, I only had an hour before Josh was due! Besides… remember I told you how my [censored] shoes had rubbed my insteps raw and that I was starting to get blisters? Well, Monday’s little jaunt to Eastland finished the job, and I have the. most. painful. blister on the instep of my right foot! It’s excruciating! I’ve got it band-aided up, and while I did manage to get around yesterday – just – today it’s so bad that walking is almost impossible. I probably would have braved the heat again today, and gone shopping with Julian after his appointment with Polly the Pummelling Physiotherapist this morning, but walking around shops is completely out, for at least the next two days! 😡 I are not amused! I wanted to go to Horseland in Ringwood yesterday, to get some supposedly miraculous “natural” insect repellent that a friend of Julian’s recommended, but I ran out of time, so I guess I’ll just have to get nibbled upon until my instep heals up a bit

Today I’ve simply been sitting resentfully in my chair, grizzling about my sore foot and my horrible shoes, and playing WoW – Nofret, my Blood Elf Mage can now Teleport to all capital cities, and is doing very well. Auric and Dapple had been happily swimming about, doing what happy and lazy little fishies do best, until Julian finished his shopping and his office work and came in to clean their tank! Then it was a matter of “[panic, panic!] Oh look! There’s that terrible big pink tentacle with fingers on it again! Oh No! There goes our favourite “tree”! And our Rock! [panic, panic!]” – but they’re all happy again, now that the terrible big pink tentacle with fingers on it has gone, their “furniture” has been returned, all dusted and clean, and their tank is nice and fresh again. Spoilt little sods! 😉

And that’s really about all my news for the past few days, so I suppose I should get onto the “good” bits!

Weigh-in Sunday morning. Not the best, especially considering what we were going to be eating later on in the day, like banana fritter with salted caramel ice cream? Hmm… ’nuff said! I went from 69.3 kg on Saturday morning to 69.7 kg on Sunday morning…
Food stuffs Sunday. Well, as you know, we didn’t really have anything for dinner on Sunday night – though we did end up having a Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurt each, so I suppose you could call that dinner – at a stretch! 😉

Weigh-in Monday morning (yesterday) I suppose I can’t complain (but I will!) considering what we ate for lunch on Sunday! (but then by the same token, we didn’t have any proper dinner, did we… *sigh* swings and roundabouts – roundabouts and swings… ) I went from 69.7 kg on Sunday morning, to… 69.7 kg on Monday morning! I stayed the same! Me think it amazing! 🙂
Food stuffs Monday. We had lunch at the Shingle Inn, and once again, I had my usual BLT on sourdough bread, a chocolate caramel slice, and no, I didn’t have my usual long black with the side jug of skinny milk – this time I had a skinny” iced coffee with no cream or ice cream – and you know what?! It came with no cream or ice cream! They usually “forget”, and it arrives with cream, or ice cream, or both, and has to be taken back and re-made. This time, they got it right, first pop! 🙂 For dinner we had the omelet that we would have had on Sunday night, if we’d been having dinner. This was another “experimental” model omelet – pre-cooked smoked bacon, diced onion fried up in a teeny bit of lemon infused olive oil, a very small amount of organic, home-grown lemon juice squeezed into the onion as it was cooking, tomato, green capsicum, squares of semi-melted Cheddar/Tasty cheese, and hand-picked from the garden, fresh basil leaves, roughly torn into the omelet filling at the last minute. Absolutely sensational! 🙂 For dessert I had a white Nashi pear, which was pretty insipid – they don’t seem to have much flavour, really, which is why I’m not keen on the white ones… the brown Nashi pears are much nicer, but a lot harder to find! At the moment, anyway… with the Nashi pear, I had an Apple Le Rice.

And with that, my dinner is ready, so I’ll continue later this evening!

09.37 pm

Back again with the rest 🙂

Weigh-in this morning – Tuesday. Quite amazing, really – mind you, not that I expect it to last! I’m sure to be weigh up again tomorrow, just wait and see! However, this morning I went from 69.7 kg yesterday, to 69.6 kg this morning – even after all the things I’ve been eating, which is why I repeat – I’m sure to be up again tomorrow morning!
Food stuffs today. Well, as I said, Julian went off this morning to be folded, spindled, and mutilated by Polly the Pretzel-bending Physiotherapist. He came home, did a bit of work, and darted off again to do a fairly big shop (I’d really love to know how we manage to get through so much “stuff”, even making lists and shopping carefully and conscientiously, every second day seems to bring a “big shop”!) so of course, he got home reasonably late, and had brought lunch with him! I had half a ham danish, and half of a medium-sized savoury pizza-style roll… plus another one of those very yummy Baker’s Delight chocolate and choc-chip scones ( 😳 ) He also brought home our dinner – cold cuts and salads, because it was too hot to be bothered cooking. Dinner tonight consisted of a little bit of very nice salami, two very small slices of (commercial) cold silverside, a bit of cold sliced turkey, ham, a small spoonful each of (commercial) potato, and tabouli salads. And last but not least, three de-stoned kalamata olives. For dessert I had one medium-sized apricot, and one medium-sized white nectarine, and a strawberry and banana CHOBANI yoghurt. I don’t think I want to look at the scales tomorrow morning…

And that’s pretty much brought you all up to date with our comings and goings over here! 🙂 Tomorrow is our 26th (I think?) Wedding Anniversary, and we haven’t been able to decide what we want to do. We’d hoped to go to a movie at Gold Class, but alas – there’s nothing on that we have even the vaguest interest in seeing! We’ll go out to lunch somewhere, but probably just spend a quiet day at home [while my miserable bloody blistered instep heals!] We thought of having lunch at the Healsville RACV Club, and if the weather was good enough, having a bit of a wander around the Healsville Sanctuary – but you-know-who isn’t capable of wandering anywhere at the moment without yelping and squeaking in pain every time she puts her foot down, so scratch that idea for the moment! Anyway, that’s really about “it” from me this evening, but do drop in again tomorrow night to find out if my weight did go up again (it’s sure to!) and if we went anywhere exciting. Until then though, it’s too close to Christmas to risk being Naughty, so do try terribly hard to bee good – remember that life is like riding a bike – it is impossible to maintain your balance while standing still; and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep cool – or warm – depending on this weird Melbourne weather… but most importantly, please – don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.06 pm

Goodness gracious me! Only 15 more days until Christmas! I sure hope that all of you are more prepared for the Big Day than we are! Alright then, more prepared than I am – because I’m sure that Julian has everything in hand, and that everything will run smoothly, like a well tuned watch, on “Tha Day”!

Yesterday morning we left home around 10.15 am to go and pick up my very favourite eldest daughter, who’d kindly agreed to come and do a bit of personal and private Christmas shopping with me… I hadn’t been able to decide whether to go to Doncaster or The Glen, but I felt that The Glen was maybe a bit too small… a bit too limited in the variety of shops available to me – but where else, apart from Chadstone, would I be able to find a David Jones, and a Myer store? Julian refuses to go to Chadstone – he says it’s just too big, and he gets lost – and I must admit that I too find its size a little daunting! Hmm… so I looked on the box that knows everything, and found that yes! there was a David Jones as well as a Myer store at Eastland! We’d go there! Then I remembered that I needed to get some more fruit, as well as all the “Secret Women’s Christmas Shopping Business” that I had to do, and the best place for fruit was Knox City! Dilemma! I could go to Eastland and have both a David Jones and a Myer store, and (perhaps!) not a terribly good fruit emporium… Or I could go to Knox City, which only has a Myer store – but it has a good variety of smaller shops, and probably the best Fruit and Vegetable stall in the metropolitan area… I chose Knox City. When we got there, we made our first port of call the Shingle Inn, where we sat down and had a cup of coffee and a Shingle Inn mince pie (well, it is Christmas!) each, while we discussed our plan of action. After that, we… walked. And walked. And walked. And then walked a bit more, because by then it was lunch time – so we went back to the Shingle Inn and had lunch, after which we did a bit more walking. To cut a long story of torture, pain, and frustration short, we eventually managed to get almost everything that we needed to get – unfortunately my very favourite eldest daughter wasn’t able to get her cleats – Rebel Sports, Athlete’s Foot, and another sports-type store didn’t have her size, but she did manage to get herself a mouseguard – sorry, mouthguard! (she’s joined a women’s Gridiron team called the Monash Warriors!) Actually, she just messaged me – she got them today…. at Eastland! I knew we should have gone to Eastland! (but then, I might not have been able to get such nice fruit, might I!) Anyway, we didn’t get home until after five o’clock last night! By that time, I’d almost managed to abrade all the skin off my insteps (don’t ask! I have badly deformed feet from osteoarthritis after too many years of classical ballet, and the most detestable shoes imaginable – they’re ugly, klunky, clod-hopping “boats” which I only wear when I leave the house, because I detest them so very much! The inner part of the sole rubs against my instep to the point that I get blisters there. I hate those shoes sooo much it’s not funny! ) I really needed to go shopping again with Julian this morning, for things like more “Stocking Fillers” and so forth, but at the moment it’s all I can do to hobble around in nice, cool, and comfortable bare feet, and as we’re going out for lunch tomorrow, I thought that perhaps I should give them a bit of a well-earned, and well-deserved rest! (my very favourite youngest daughter shares a Birthday with my very favourite eldest daughter’s husband, so we roll the two into one, as it’s too close to Christmas to have separate Birthday parties!) It’s rather ironic, you know – when we first arrived at Knox yesterday morning, and held our “Council of War” at the Shingle Inn, it’s right next to General Trader, so we went in there to see what sorts of things they had. They seemed to have just about everything we wanted, barring Lee’s cleats and mousemouthguard, of course, but naturally, we wanted to see if anyone else had these items – maybe at a cheaper price – and several hours later, after all of our walking, and all of our looking here, there, and every which-where, we ended up getting everything we wanted… back at the place where we’d started looking for them, all those hours ago – the General Trader!

Oh, I didn’t tell you what happened with my “loose screw”on Thursday, did I! Well, it was a right nightmare getting over to Moonee Ponds at that hour of the afternoon, and the weather looked very ominous, but we made it to the surgery at about five-twenty, so we had about ten minutes to wait. Dr. N has two practices, one is a very new, purpose built dental surgery in Mt. Waverley, right after freeway on-ramp on Blackburn Road, and the other is this little upstairs suite in Moonee Ponds – I usually go to the Mt. Waverley one. Anyway, it was exactly as I predicted! We waited for about 10 minutes, then I was shown into the surgery, sat down in the chair, and had the dribble bib attached around my neck. Dr. N came in, asked us how we were, and which screw had come loose. I showed him where it was (sitting in the dentist’s chair, with your mouth wide open doesn’t make for terribly good diction, and it came out sounding more like “At ung, o’er air”, but he seemed to understand what I was saying – or maybe the fact that the screw was about to detach itself completely, and fall into my mouth, gave it away – but he found it) As he was busily screwing it back into place he said that I was lucky not to have lost it completely, as it was almost falling out – then it was “Thank you very much for that – see you next Monday, when you can take it out again, along with the rest of the bottom screws!” The whole thing took about three minutes, tops! Then we drove home, through the wind and the rain – we did see a lovely rainbow, but most of the time visibility was pretty bad – however, we made it back in one piece, and I was able to enjoy my dinner, using both sides of my mouth to eat on again!

Julian and I played a bit of WoW today, as we won’t get a chance to tomorrow, but we only ran one Dungeon this afternoon – The Nexus – Wynterthyme had already done it with Mouselet, but Demelzae hadn’t, so we did that as a “Mythic” Raid – which wasn’t really a good idea, as with Raids you don’t get the opportunity to finish off quests and hand them in for your rightful “just desserts”. Once again though, at level 110, it was all really very easy – and I do remember that some of those Bosses were rather nastily lethal!

And that’s pretty much what we’ve been up to for the past couple of days! Tomorrow we’re off to an excellent Chinese Restaurant, the Bistro Empress, on the corner of Springvale Road and Coleman Parade in Glen Waverley (right next to the Novotel!) It was called the “East Empress”, but the old place in the shopping strip a little further along Springvale Road has been torn down, and a new “East Empress” is rising, Phoenix-like, from the rubble! Apparently it’s going to be three floors, with the Restaurant taking up the ground and the first floor, and there’ll be an apartment above that. We’ve been going to the East Empress – and now the Bistro Empress – for nearly twenty-five years (almost as long as we’ve been married!) so we’re very excited to see what the new place will be like!

And now that I’ve caught you all up on our daily doings, I can get on and tell you all the “good” bits! 😉

Food stuffs.Yesterday for lunch of course we were at the Shingle Inn in Knox City, so I had my usual BLT on sourdough bread, but they didn’t have any of my favourite chocolate caramel slices! Instead, I had the “next best thing”, which was a “wedge” of chocolate and walnut fudge (about 6.6 cm wide at its widest point, about 10.5 cm long, and about 1 cm high) covered in a glossy chocolate glaze with pink “sparkles” in it, and a very thin zigzag piping of green peppermint frosting across it, to make it look like a “Christmas Tree”, I suppose. Anyway, it was very nice, but not a patch on my favourite chocolate caramel slices! With that I had my usual long black, with a small jug of skinny milk on the side. I mentioned before that we’d sat down there and had a cup of coffee and a mince-pie as soon as we arrived at Knox, but I neglected to mention that we repeated the procedure for afternoon tea, only by that time I was hot, and tired, and sore – so I had an iced coffee with no cream or ice cream – and another mince-pie. For dinner last night we had pasta with tomato sauce and a sprinkle of parmesan cheese – “farfalle” (“butterfly” pasta, sometimes called “bow tie” pasta) this time –  and very nice for a change! For dessert I was going to try a real, live mango for a change (I’ve only eaten tinned mangoes before, and they were horrible, but I’ve been talked into trying a real mango…) but I’d also bought three small, “Honey” Pears. One of the Honey Pears had got a bit bruised around the stem, and I thought I’d better eat that first, so we cut off the tip of the pear around the stem, and I ate that for dessert, with a Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurt. Honey Pears are really very nice! Julian went out shopping this morning and brought lunch back with him, so I had half a ham Danish, half a flat, pizza-style spicy tomato roll, and a delicious fruit and white chocolate scone, and tonight we’re having pan-fried fillet steak, chips, peas (for a change!) and our usual half a tomato. For dessert, tonight I’ll have the Mango – if I can figure out how to cut it up! It’s not your usual mango shaped Mango, it’s sort-of long, and a bit “wavy” (for want of a better term!) and is called (I think!) a “Dragon’s Tooth” mango. I’ll see how I go with it… With that I’ll also have an Apple Le Rice…

Weigh-in yesterday. Was terrible! I was aghast! (and depressed!) I went from 69.8 kg on Thursday – and as if that wasn’t bad enough, when I woke up, my feet looked as though I’d been standing up and drinking gallons of water, for a fortnight! I’d gone up another deadly notch to 69.9 kg! 😥
Weigh-in this morning. Proving beyond any reasonable doubt that it’s all fluid, although my feet were still a bit puffy this morning, they were nowhere near as bad as they have been for the last few days – and I’d gone from 69.9 kg yesterday, to 69.3 kg this morning. Down six points! Go figure!

And that about brings me to the end of tonight’s discourse – you already know what’s happening tomorrow, and also what’s on our plate for Monday morning! Auric and Dapple, as usual, are being good little fishies – swimming around, nibbling on the fake, plastic water-weeds, and doing all their usual “fishy” things – so really and truly, that’s about “it” from me for this evening! Do drop in again tomorrow night to find out how our Birthday Luncheon went, and what we all ate, and what else we all got up to during the course of the day – but also, please try to bee good! You-Know-Who is watching you all with beady little eyes, looking to see who’s been Naughty, and who’s been Nice, so don’t get on his Naughty List, or on December 25th all you’ll get is lumps of coal! Don’t forget that creativity could be described as letting go of certainties, and remember to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm – or cool – depending on what you’re doing – but above all, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.24 pm

Well, I am not a Happy Little Vegemite this afternoon, no sirree, not a Happy Little Vegemite AT ALL! 😡 I’m due to go to the Prosthodontist next Monday, December 12th (my very favourite youngest daughter’s Birthday!) to have my lower implants professionally cleaned, polished, and made all sparkly again… Next. Ruddy. Monday! Today, one of my lower implant screws came loose! Why couldn’t it have waited until Monday to come loose?! Unfortunately, it can’t wait until then, because if it comes out and I lose it, or accidentally swallow it, (a) it might be difficult to get a matching screw at such short notice (it’s really eeny-weeny-teeny!) but more importantly, (b) it will put too much load on the remaining screw and I could end up breaking or damaging not only the implant, but my jaw as well! So guess where we’re going tomorrow afternoon! Moonee Ponds! At 05.30 pm (so please don’t expect a blog tomorrow night – I’ll be in transit! I’ll give you all a quick update when I get home, but that’s about all I’ll have time for, if that!) All that ruddy way – from Vermont South to Moonee Ponds, at peak-hour, for an emergency dental appointment to tighten up one stupid little screw, which will take all of about three seconds – and that’s including the time it’ll take me to walk into the surgery, sit down in the chair and receive my handy-dandy dribble bib, have Dr. N say hello to me and ask me what I’ve been up to in WoW – and tighten up the wretched little thing! All the way to Moonee Ponds… (Winter pouts sadly over the loss of time this “little”excursion will incur)

We were up really early this morning – Julian had to be over at Glen Waverley at 07.30 am to supervise the painter who – as far as I was aware – was painting the new ceiling in our erstwhile back neighbour’s garage, not installing a new ceiling there, as turned out to be the case! But as usual, I managed to get things wrong, didn’t I! Apologies for leading you all astray with that little “assumption” of mine, because Julian wasn’t there to supervise the painting of the ceiling, he was there to supervise the installing of the new ceiling – but because it was the painter that we’d used many times before, and because Julian always referred to him simply as “the painter”, naturally I assumed (always a very unwise thing to do!) that a painter would be, well, painting – not installing a new ceiling! However, having straightened out that small issue, we were up at 06.30 am, and Julian arrived on time… so I pretty much had the morning to myself! I played WoW until Julian got back at around 11.30-ish – the work didn’t really take all that long, so Julian was home in time to get the corned silverside into the slow cooker for our dinner tonight, after all!

After that, he finished off the last bits of the Christmas Cards, put stamps on the envelopes, and took them up to Vermont South… and posted them! Finally! The Christmas Cards Have Left the Building! Now I really have no excuses left for not pulling out the old Christmas Present List, and starting to organise exactly what we’ve got for whom, whether it’s been ordered from overseas or not, and if so, when it’s due to be delivered… how many “incidental” presents we still have to get, etc., etc., and so forth. I have my little list (let none of them be missed!) of what I want to try to get for Julian this Friday – the presents for both of my very favourite daughters and their respective spouses have already been obtained and organised – leaving only a couple of boxes of shortbread or similar for the few remaining friends and relations in Adelaide, and lastly, something for Julian’s sister, Melissa, who lives in Sydney!

The Vet rang this afternoon too – Flipper’s ashes had come back, so this afternoon when Julian went to post off the Christmas Cards, he continued on to the Vet and brought Flipper home again in her pretty little box. I do miss her, poor old girl…

As you all know, Auric and Dapple had their walls and gravel and plants cleaned yesterday – and everything put back in a much better lay-out. Usually, this upsets them more than somewhat – it can’t be much fun seeing all your belongings pulled out of your home by a giant pink tentacle “thing” with fingers – and then to get all your stuff back again, smelling (do fish have a sense of smell?) “different”, and deposited in different places from where they’d got used to having them! They’re also not terribly fond of the ultry-violent steraliser thingy wot kills of algae in the water (I think!) because it buzzes a bit – but this time they seem to have been quite un-phased by it all – probably because this time we put their furniture back in more-or-less sensible positions! (Winter gives a hard stare in Julian’s general direction! 😉 ) But they’re good little fishies – I’m so glad we brought them inside to be “indoor fishies” – and they’re really growing! They’ve more than doubled their size since we brought them inside!

Now, as I’ve just about got to the end of all our comings and goings today, I’ll get on to all the “good” bits for you! 😉

Food stuffs. Last night for dinner we had some gently pan-fried porterhouse steak, with chips, some rather nice steamed green beans, and our usual half a tomato. For dessert, I had an “ordinary” green pear – probably a Packham… they’re quite big, and it’s really strange – I can eat a small to medium sized (any variety of!) apple, cored, and cut into quarters – but it seems to take such a long time to chew through those four quarters! I get tired of chewing, and totally bored with the apple, almost wishing I hadn’t started eating it! The Packham pears are rather on the large side – bigger than your average “any variety of” apple, anyway – and I eat the pear in exactly the same way as I eat an apple – cored, and cut into quarters – it too takes a long time to chew through, but I don’t get tired of eating the pear, or even slightly bored with it! I wonder why? Anyway, I also had an Apple Le Rice with the “ordinary” green pear. For lunch today we had another sandwich made with Julian’s home-made bread – with a smidge of butter, chunks of cold smoked chicken breast, Cheddar/Tasty cheese, and tomato – it was most delicious! I’m so impressed with the texture of the bread, and the ever-so-slightly “crunchy” crust! Tonight for dinner we’re having the slow-cooked corned silverside, possibly with a side dab of mustard or other condiment, steamed potatoes, steamed green beans, and our usual half a tomato. I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow night – or whenever I get a chance to, seeing as we’ll be in Moonee Ponds tomorrow night ( 😡 ) For dessert I’ll have another one of my “ordinary” green pears (which I think is a Packham) and a Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurt.

Weigh-in this morning. Was horrible! After dinner last night, while we were sitting in the lounge room watching television – with out feet up, I might add – I looked at my feet and was amazed at just how swollen they were! I mean, I’m used to seeing them looking like toed balloons, but this was ridiculous! They were gigantic! So for some reason known only to itself, my body seems to have decided to go on a fluid hoarding spree – just for a bit of a change, you understand! They were still pretty swollen when I got up this morning, so when I got on the scales I wasn’t particularly surprised to see 69.6 kg on the read-out. Depressed, but not surprised. I’d gone up over half a kilo overnight – for no particular reason other than my body just decided to upset me for a change… *sigh*

So that pretty much brings me up to tomorrow again – and this is where I usually say something along the lines of “I have absolutely no idea what’s happening tomorrow,” – but this time, of course, I do! Well, I do know what’s happening tomorrow evening, but in actual fact I have absolutely no idea what’s happening for the rest of the day! *shrug* I suppose I’ll probably play a bit of WoW – I haven’t tried to do anything with my new desktop wallpapery thingy – it’s starting to grow on me a bit, so I’ll see how I feel about it tomorrow! But once again, that’s really about “it” from me for this evening! Do call in again tomorrow night, to see if I’ve managed to get anything up, like how my visit to Moonee Ponds went, and what new evil tricks my horrible body has chosen to play on me, weight-wise, but until next time, please try very hard to bee good, because you don’t want to run the risk of getting yourselves on you-know-who’s “Naughty List”, do you! 😉 remember – people who wonder if the glass is half empty or half full, miss the point! The glass is refillable… and don’t forget to keep warm – or cool – depending on the time of the day, to always drive carefully, and to look after yourselves… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂