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! 🙂
My Word! 