04.13 pm

Well, here I am again – but probably not for long! I’m expecting Sean to turn up in about three-quarters of an hour, so I’d better get a wriggle on with this!

Yanno, sometimes I feel as though we might have been better off getting a couple of adult cats from a shelter, rather than two highly strung and over-active kittens! Never a dull moment around here any more – except when they’re asleep, which they are at the moment, bless their little hearts! 🙂 Sal is a really laid-back individual, who’d mostly prefer to sit back and observe… Satai, on the other hand, is a cross between a whirlwind and a squeaky, bouncy toy! Sal wants to lie around and snooze? Satai bounces on top of him and beats him into submission with an all-out wrestling match! Sal has almost reached his full adult size – he won’t get much bigger than he is right now (or at least we don’t think he will!) from here; he can really only grow “outward” – we’re almost at the point of considering whether we should put him on a diet, but his piteous and insistent cries that he hasn’t been fed for almost two hours are very hard to resist – and we usually find that a few more pussy biscuits will suddenly and mysteriously appear in his dinner bowl… hmm! At his age of course, Satai is a walking stomach with hollow legs – but he’s barely turned 12 weeks, and although he still has a lot of growing to do, is almost the same size as Sal! Methinks he’s going to be a big boy – which is weird, because his paws are small and dainty – in other words, he doesn’t have the tell-tale big paws to have to grow into!

Up until the night before last, Satai has been sleeping in the Library, as being considered too much of a disrupting influence in the bedroom with us and Sal – but on Saturday night we let him in with us – experimentally – and everything seemed to be working out well – he was a bit of a bounce-full at first, but once the lights were out he settled down and went to sleep too… Last night was a different matter  though, because he insisted on nibbling Julian’s toes, and pouncing all over the bed, to see just how high he could bounce, when he put his mind to it… alas, Satai was ignominiously carted back to the Library in disgrace, and he spent the remainder of the night on his own. At this stage, I’m not sure if Julian’s going to be willing to give it another go tonight…

So, all in all, it’s been a pretty busy time, running after the kitties and trying to keep them amused – as well as continue with our “usual” daily activities!

On Saturday we held my very favourite eldest daughter’s Big Birthday Bash at the East Empress Bistro – one of our favourite lunch and dinner places. As usual, a very good time was had by all, and also as usual, we all ate far too much – no dinner for us that night! 🙂 It’s interesting that the Bistro is where the proprietors had previously run a Japanese restaurant called “Circuz”, with their main restaurant, The East Empress, further down Springvale Road towards The Glen. Circuz, too, was an excellent restaurant – if a little pricey – but when they decided to “renovate” the East Empress, they moved into the smaller Circuz for the duration. It’s some renovation alright! They completely demolished the old East Empress, and started re-building it from, quite literally, the ground up! The owner is hopeful that they’ll be into their new premises by September this year, and from the look of it, as one drives along Springvale Road, it’s very likely that they will be. I wonder what they’ll do with the Bistro? Turn it back into Circuz? Something else? Sell it? Who knows! I’m going to ask them next time we go there – Julian has a Big Birthday Bash coming up in February! Hmm! 😉 Anyway, the point I was starting to make earlier, is that they’ve combined quite a lot of both the Circuz menu and the old East Empress one – making the Bistro a sort-of a Japanese/Chinese restaurant – to mix and match the dishes as you please! Très interesting, and very excellent food!

Dinner’s calling me – back soon! 😉

10.19 pm

Back again! Dinner was late tonight, so this blog is being finished extremely late – but boy! was that dinner worth the wait! It was a recipe I found in yet another of my daily foodie emails – one of those oh-so-easy sheet-pan dinners that look so simple and straightforward… and are! We’d been meaning to try one of these recipes for yonks, and finally today Julian decided to try this one for dinner tonight. It’s called “Grilled lemon chicken with potatoes“, and came from one of my daily foodie emails, GoodtoKnow Recipes. There are seven ingredients, and apart from parboiling the potatoes and blanching the beans, everything just goes in the baking dish or pan, under the griller – and… bob’s you’re uncle! I have to confess though that our oven doesn’t have very much of a griller, so we just oven baked it instead, so the chicken skin didn’t get quite as crisp as it would have under a proper griller, but it didn’t matter – it was utterly delicious, and will be a definite “keeper” recipe! Oh, and another thing that we “modified” – not by choice, mind you – but although the green olives in the ingredient list are optional, we decided that they’d be a really nice touch to the dish, however because Julian forgot to get green olives when he was getting everything else, we used some chopped kalamata olives that we already had in the fridge. Next time, we’ll use the proper, whole (as opposed to chopped!) green olives! The recipe says it will feed four, but we’re fairly light eaters anyway, and with only the two of us, there’s leftovers for at least another meal, chilling in the fridge, and waiting to go in the freezer!

Yesterday was Sunday, and of course Julian and I frolicked off into the mighty land of Azeroth, to slay monsters, complete quests, make heaps of money (gold!) and go up as many levels as we could – without dying! At the moment we’re playing with our two young Horde characters – Julian’s Mage, Krankhaft, and my Warlock, Imaan, who after going up four levels on Sunday, are now both level 44, and doing very well for themselves indeed! Neither of us even came close to dying, either!

So onto the good stuff now – the food!

On Saturday night, Julian and I had a cup of coffee and a small tub of yoghurt each for dinner – we were still too full after our Big Birthday Bash at lunch time! We were going to have sandwiches for lunch yesterday (Sunday) but what was left of the sliced and frozen bread had all frozen together into a lump, so Julian did a bit of a “mercy dash” and high-tailed it up to the shops to get some lunch. We had our usual Baker’s Delight lunch – half each of two savoury rolls, and a whole coffee & apple scroll each! (tsk, tsk!) but we had our usual totally delicious Julian-made Sunday night omelet that night – with cheese, green capsicum, diced onion, tomato, and bacon (Julian pre-fries the bacon, and then the onion and capsicum together before adding them to the omelet) For dessert I had a medium-sized yellow peach and a medium-sized yellow nectarine, with a tub of CHOBANI strawberry and banana yoghurt. Today for lunch I had a ham, cheese and tomato sandwich, seeing as Julian also got some bread yesterday, which was very nice, and you’ve already seen a picture of our dinner tonight, so I don’t think I need to say any more about it, other than to say that we did have our usual half tomato with it. For dessert I had one of the Clapp pears that we got from Bushy Park the other day. It didn’t look quite ripe enough to eat, but I had it anyway, and I’m so glad that I did! It was just right, very juicy, a little bit tangy, and quite sweet – and it was honestly one of the nicest damn pears that I’ve ever eaten! (I have two kittens busily destroying a couple of plastic drinking straws under my chair and around my bare feet – I don’t dare move because they’re both wrapped around the wheels of my chair! A favourite pastime of theirs, I might add!) I also had an Apple Le Rice after that delicious and yummy pear – of which I shall be sure to buy more of, next time we go to Bushy Park!

Weigh-in summary… my body’s playing yo-yo’s again…

January 20th – Friday: 72.0 kg ( 😥 )
January 21st – Saturday: 71.6 kg (and then I had the Big Birthday Bash lunch!)
January 22nd – Sunday: 71.8 kg (what?! Only up two points?!)
January 23rd – Monday (today): 72.2 kg (I guess Saturday caught up with me after all! )

The thing is, I start on those [censored] little pills again on February 1st (but only for 10 days!) and I shall start doing my very very best camel impersonation, storing fluid in every cell of my body, as though a thousand-year drought was about to start – a bit like the opposite of Noah and his forty days and forty nights of rain! My weight will skyrocket (I’ll go up at least a kilo, which is always extremely hard to dislodge afterwards!) and my emotions will run amok like nobody’s business 😦 I really hate those horrible little pills! 😦

And that’s about where I’m up to! I’m not sure what’s happening tomorrow – Julian is playing taxi driver to my very favourite eldest daughter in the morning, but apart from that, neither of us is quite sure of what we’ve got on. Terry, my very favourite youngest daughter’s husband, is going in for surgery on Wednesday, to remove part of his liver for a biopsy. He’s expected to be in intensive care for a few days afterwards, so we’ll be on standby for the duration – whatever we can do, we’ll do. Julian cleaned Auric and Dapple’s Fish House yesterday evening, and we have to get them a new Big Rock, because the one they currently have is too big, and won’t fit into the buckets that Julian uses to scrub and clean all the plants and smaller rocks in the fish tank, so a smaller “large rock” must be procured for them to hide in. As it’s not going to be too hot tomorrow (I hope!) and Julian has to go and post off a Birthday present to his sister (although they’re a few years apart in age, both his sister and his brother share a Birthday – on January 26th! 🙂 ) I might go with him, and then we could perhaps go to an aquarium or Pet Barn, to look for a new, smaller “big rock”! Well, it’s a thought, anyway! 🙂 And now I reckon I’ve just about caught you all up on our scintillating, amazing, and fabulous lives, so once more I’ll say “that’s about “it” from me for tonight”, because it is – but do drop in again tomorrow night – because as far as I know there’ll be nothing to prevent me from writing something for you all tomorrow night – and find out all the latest news chez nous – what my weight did, how the kittens are, and whether or not Auric and Dapple have scored a new Big Rock for their Fish House! 🙂 Until then though, do try really hard to bee good, don’t forget that there are as many styles of beauty as there are visions of happiness, and remember to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm – or cool – depending on what it is you have to do… but most importantly, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.44 pm

Back again – and for once, everything’s been fairly normal around here – or what passes for normal in this establishment, anyway 😉 The kittens are growing so fast! When we picked up Sal, he was 16 weeks old, and quite a well-built little lad for his age – and in the two weeks (or is it three weeks now? I fergit!) that we’ve had him, he’s almost reached adult size! Satai, who was barely 11 weeks old when we got him last Monday, was absolutely tiny in comparison! “They” do say that Bengals grow into “large to huge” cats, and although his paws don’t indicate how big he’ll eventually grow, i.e. he hasn’t got great big paws to “grow into”, he’s already close to Sal in size! He’s certainly the more dominant of the two, and I noticed this afternoon that he’s usurped Sal’s “top condominium” on the cat stand, where Sal used to curl up for his “après-midi” nap. Now it seems that Sal has decided that he much prefers having his “après-midi” nap on Daddy’s dressing gown, anyway! (perhaps because it magically and miraculously seems to fall into a comfy bed-like arrangement on the floor for him when Daddy takes it off every morning, hmm? 😉 )

 

 

But the two boys seem to be getting along pretty well – they play together until they wear themselves out, and when they’re not sleeping in the two places shown above, they cuddle together in Satai’s “cat cave”, or on Daddy’s dressing gown…

You can see how much Satai has grown in just a week! Maybe he will grow into a “large to huge” Bengal, after all!

Yesterday Julian and I took time out from our new Cat Entertaining enterprise (and apart from the job enjoyment factor, it really doesn’t pay terribly well, anyway! 😉 ) and played WoW. Imaan and Krankhaft went up another four levels, and (except for Krankhaft’s [lack of] motoring skills) once again, didn’t come even vaguely close to dying! Now, that’s the way we like to play! 🙂

The cleaning lady was here this morning – Sal really doesn’t like the sound of the vacuum cleaner (or the hairdryer!) and makes himself pretty much invisible while they’re being used, but little Satai was amazing! He stayed here in the Den while it was being vacuumed, and although he was quite wary at first, with Mummy sitting on the couch, just in case he needed rescuing, he started actually running after the vacuum, and pouncing on the hose! I thought he was very brave! 🙂 After K (the cleaning lady) had gone, we went out to get a few bits and pieces – as well as a couple of sturdy bowls for the boys – because we didn’t want to have to go out tomorrow, when I believe it’s going to be horribly hot. We went up to The Glen and had lunch at the Shingle Inn first, then went upstairs to see if Target still sold reasonably attractive fake plants, and nice sturdy cat bowls. I wanted some water-resistant plastic plants to put in a large blue and white ceramic vase, or urn, which I’ve placed for safekeeping in a corner of my extremely large shower, where little patty-paws won’t be able to send it flying – and I hate to say it, but it looks a little bit like a spittoon, sitting there empty! It now has a variety of plastic plants sitting in it and although the greenery still needs a bit more re-arrangement, at least it doesn’t look too much like a spittoon any more! And the reason we needed to buy new feeding bowls for Sal and Satai was that we’ve been using old and miss-matched crockery for their food and water, but they’re very breakable, and not terribly well balanced – one wrongly placed paw, or one over-exuberant leap for kitten-kind in the wrong direction, and food and water go everywhere! (we seem to be forever mopping up the spills!) So we ended up buying four (two for food, two for water) nice, strong, sturdy pet bowls, which they’ll get to try out at dinner time tonight.

I’ve just had to go and rescue Satai! He woke from his nap and realised that he didn’t know how to get down from his Penthouse! Everywhere he went to try and get down again, the floor looked just a bit too far away, and he was yelling for someone to get him down! now! And he was sure he was going to be late for dinner – or at the very least, starve to death in the next five seconds! Yanno, although the cat stand looks very “swish”, it’s not really terribly well designed – about the only way a little kitten can get down from the Penthouse is via a very narrow, angular section that has a dingle-dangle toy hanging from it. Sal’s bigger, and has no problem jumping all the way down, but Satai still has about a week’s growth to do before he’ll be able to do that – in the meantime, it’ll have to be “Descent by Mummy or Daddy”

I’m needed in the kitchen to help feed the boys… so I thought I might as well feed Auric and Dapple while Julian was busy dishing up the cat food… Sal eats in the kitchen, Satai eats in the Library, and they both get exactly the same food, and exactly the same amount – but they seem to have come to some sort of arrangement, where each of them only eats about half of their own dinner (or breakfast) then each of them races across to the other’s bowl, and guzzles down what the other has left for them! Cats are strange… The Dinner Relay race! 🙂  And now that Sal has finished eating he seems to have reclaimed his Penthouse suite! Better luck next time, Satai! 😉

Weigh-in yesterday (Sunday) I went from 71.9 kg on Saturday, to 71.7 kg… down two points…
Weigh-in today (Monday) I went from 71.7 kg on Sunday, to 71.8 kg… up one point….
So as you can see… “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” – the more things change, the more they stay the same!

Goodness knows what the scales will say tomorrow!

Food stuffs. Yesterday for lunch we had delicious sourdough sandwiches, with our favourite butter substitute, basil-pesto hummus, sandwich-sliced roast beef, some sort of sweet onion relish, sliced Tasty/Cheddar cheese, and lettuce – they were so yummy! 🙂 For dinner last night we had our usual omelets, with one main difference! 🙂 We had one of these in it!

Actually we had the one in the middle – Julian chopped it up and pre-fried it before adding it to the omelet, along with some green capsicum and some bacon… It’s sooo nice eating food you’ve grown yourself! 🙂 There was also diced tomato, and small squares of semi-melted Tasty/Cheddar cheese in it too. For dessert I had an extremely nice Calypso Mango, and a CHOBANI strawberry yoghurt, which was rather nice! (I don’t usually like strawberry yoghurts, but I’d never had a CHOBANI strawberry yoghurt before, so this one was a bit of a surprise because it was really quite nice!) Today for lunch at the Shingle Inn, I had all my usual – a long black (coffee) with a little side-jug of skinny milk, my usual BLT on sourdough bread, and another chocolate caramel slice. It was nice, but they’ve gone and changed it! 😦 The chocolate caramel slices used to be longish and skinny-ish, with a biscuit-crumb base (which was delicious!) a good, thick spread of caramel “goo”, and a nice, thick slab of darkish milk chocolate on top. Now, the slice is shorter but slightly broader, the base is made from a yukky nondescript pastry 😦 the caramel “goo” is not as thick and “firm” as it used to be but is “sloppier” and more sticky than gooey, and the chocolate topping isn’t as thick. It was alright, but if they don’t have their usual sort of caramel slice back next time we go there, I’ll have something else instead 😦 Tonight we’re having pan-fried steak, sugar-snap peas – just a few inferior ones bought from the supermarket, our usual half a tomato, and chips. For dessert I’m having a brown Nashi pear, and an Apple Le Rice.

I found a way to stop the cats drinking my glasses of water! While in the supermarket this afternoon, we bought a packet of those “coffee to go” cups with the little plastic sipper lids – they should work alright – as long as Satai doesn’t realise the fact that the lids look exactly the same as his newest most favourite toy! Yes, in unpacking them Julian managed to drop one of the lids on the floor, which made a rattly noise, so he pounced on it. It skittered away from him, clattering along the floor, and the game was afoot! he’s still playing with it! So is Sal… Like all kids, the simplest, cheapest, easiest to make or throw together toys are always their favourites! 🙂 (we have yet to introduce them to…. boxes! 😆 ) Anyway, that just about brings you all up to date with all our comings and goings for the past two days, so I reckon that’s about “it” from me for tonight! Do drop in again tomorrow night to find out what we’ve been up to, catch up on all the cat antics, fishy frolics, and my rather woeful attempts at amateur phonetography (that’s a new word wot I just invented! I reckon it’s cool, cos it means what it sounds like!) So until tomorrow night, please do your level best to bee good, remember that you never know what you have until you clean your room, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep cool – or warm – if you plan on visiting Alaska… but most importantly, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

05.00 pm

Well, here I am again – and you know what? I actually think I’ve managed to get something constructive done today for a change! I worked on this new (old, actually) Template this morning – it’s one of the first Templates I bought, and that I thought I’d revisit… what do you all think of it, anyway? I’m not too sure about the background – I’ll probably change that later this evening? Sometime, anyway… I do like the Header though, so I’ll probably keep that (for a change! 😉 ) After lunch I “cleaned out” (read “consolidated, stripped, and deleted”) a couple of unused characters on Saurfang (on WoW) and created a new Hunter, as Blizzard made a lot of changes and up-grades to the Class in the last Patch, and I wanted to see what they were and how they worked “from the ground up”, so to speak! So far, all I can see that’s different is that you don’t get a lot of your Pet abilities until level 14 – which is no biggie really – I always thought it was a bit silly giving you the ability to Tame a new pet at level 10, when you can’t Tame a Pet that’s a higher level than you are, and the first suitable Pet that any self-respecting Hunter would even be bothered Taming was level 13! I think that ability dates back to “the good old days” when I first started playing WoW – when Hunters reached level 10 they were sent out on quests to tame three different types of animals, depending on your Race. By the time you’d successfully completed those, you were usually around about level 11 or 12 anyway, so I suppose it made sense (sort-of!) Then Blizzard went and “streamlined” all the beginning and baby quests – in order to make leveling faster for some over-anxious to get at the “good stuff” newbies – by cutting out more than half of these early quests (which was a great pity, because some of them were actually quite interesting and filled you in on a lot of the back story! But ours is not to reason why, etc., etc.) at the same time they left in a whole lot of the game mechanics that had been associated with those now-missing quests! I suppose that at the time, they did mean to get a round tuit one day – and now they’ve finally decided that it’s close enough to “one day” as makes no never-mind, and they’ve started putting a few band-aids on various loose ends… well, that’s my theory, anyway, and I’m sticking to it! 😉  My new character is a Horde Hunter called Ismelda, and she’s level 8.

While I was busy with my several projects, Julian was also busy… fixing the fly-wire screen from the Library window – which teeny little Satai somehow managed to pull down last night (it’s quite a big window which opens onto our back decking – luckily it wasn’t open at the time, because if it had, we’d probably be a one-kitten family again! 😥 ) Anyway, he’s put some screws in around the top catch so that no matter how clever and dexterous Satai is, without opposable thumps and a good Phillips-head screwdriver he won’t be able to pull it down again! Of course, that doesn’t mean that he won’t be able to extend one claw, a la cartoon, and just run it along the edges of the screen going “zip!” up one side, “zip!” across the top, and “zip!” down the other side, then pulling the screen out like that, because it’s only made of soft mesh, and definitely not designed to have naughty little kittens hooking their claws into it!

After lunch Julian went out into the garden to harvest the potatoes from two of our remaining four Potato Bags, and to harvest whatever remained in our three heavy-duty vegetable planters. Here’s a picture of what he got from them!

I think we must have planted two different sorts of potatoes, as some of them look bigger and darker skinned than the other little “cocktail” potatoes – we’ll be having some of those small potatoes – and some of the carrots – with our dinner tonight Yum! 🙂 In the meantime, the three vegetable planters have been nicely prepared for our next crop of “whatever”. If we haven’t left it too late, I’d like to get in some sugar-snap peas (we never seem to have any luck with peas though – I have no idea why! ) because they’re so nice and easy to cook, and taste really nice, too! Julian says he thinks we still have time to plant some strawberries, but I think it’ll either be Googling up a planting guide for Melbourne, or asking the people up at Pinewood Nursery what we should put in. Our Rhubarb is almost ready to be harvested again, and all our tomatoes are going well, if a little too slowly for our liking.

Satai is growing up really fast now – I was looking at his this afternoon and thinking that he was nearly twice the size he was when we picked him up on Monday afternoon – but he’s a very naughty little boy – he gets into everything – and if we don’t watch it, he tends to get a bit over-excited in the afternoons/evenings, and of course, he’s teething, so he bites everything and everyone (except for me, for some strange reason!) – sometimes quite hard, too! Julian is just about at the end of his tether with him when he gets like that, saying that it’s because of his “wild heritage”, and not just “teething”. I’m not so sure though – I’m pretty confident that he will grow out of this behaviour as he gets older, especially if we don’t let him get away with it now. As far as his older brother Sal is concerned, well, he doesn’t seem to recognise that name at all – call out “Sal!” to him, and it’s just water off a duck’s back – he doesn’t even twitch an ear! So we’re going to start throwing different names at him to see which of them actually provokes a reaction – any reaction – which would be more than we’re not getting with “Sal” (or “Salai”, his full name!) I’m keeping a very close eye on (Sal) at the moment as he has a bit of an upset tummy (I do the litter boxes every morning, so I get to see (and smell!) how their tummy’s are working, etc.) We had to twiddle around with his food a bit when we couldn’t get the sort he was used to, but it was either risk a tummy upset, or starve him, and of course, now he’s got the upset tummy runs! But we’ve been able to get hold of his usual food for him again, so we’ll see how he goes… Auric and Dapple are both well, growing bigger by the day, and apart from their twice daily feedings, and their weekly Fish House cleaning, you wouldn’t even know they were there! 😉 They’re both such good little boys!

Weigh-in this morning. Wasn’t good! Alack and alas, Thursday’s copious amounts of bacon (from the looks of it, a double serve – which I did not ask for, or request – nor even allude to, with an oh-so-subtle lift of an eyebrow! 😛 ) that arrived in my BLT has caught up with me! Of course that splendiferous, rich, gooey, delicious toothfull that was the luscious chocolate caramel slice wot I also ate, had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with this sudden and largely unexplained (apart from the bacon!) weight gain! 😉 However, this morning I went from 71.1 kg yesterday, to 71.9 kg this morning! And we didn’t even have any dinner on Thursday night!

Food stuffs. Today for lunch we had a delicious sourdough sandwich, with some of our favourite butter substitute, the basil-pesto hummus, hand-sliced smoked chicken breast, tomato, and lettuce – it was really, really yummy – I just wish there’d been a bit more of it! Tonight we’re having Pork Sausages with Kakadu Plum and Lemon Aspen, with some of our own baby potatoes, our own carrots, and peas – alas, ordinary peas – there are no sugar-snap peas left – we’ll have to pay another visit to Bushy Park to get some more good ones (the ones in the supermarkets are terrible!) No half a tomato tonight – we have enough with our baby potatoes and our home-grown carrots! 🙂 For dessert I’ll be having my last yellow nectarine and my last yellow peach – they’re almost on the verge of being over-ripe, but if I eat them tonight they should be alright – and I’ll have an Apple Le Rice with those…

And that brings me back to tomorrow, Sunday, when himself and I will be running around Azeroth again! 🙂 Dinner is almost ready, and I think I’ve just about caught you all up on our adventures for the day – so that’s really about “it” from me for this evening! Do drop in again tomorrow night – if I get time I will fill you all in on our day in Azeroth, and the latest antics of our sweet little kitties – but until then, please try to bee as good as possible, don’t forget that kindness is the greatest wisdom, and remember to keep warm – or cool – depending on what you’re doing, to always drive carefully, and to look after yourselves… but above all, please… remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.31 pm

*puff-pant* *puff-pant* You know, there’s quite a lot to be said for “adopting”, or “rescuing” a couple of adult-aged cats, rather than a pair of cheeky, bouncy, energetic little kittens – though as a matter of fact, Sal isn’t a “kitten” any more – at 18+ weeks he’s now considered a teenager – with all the “I’m not talking to you anymore!” sulks, the sweet, gentle purring cuddles when he wants something, combined with bouts of wild exuberance and frenetic zooming around the house, as though someone had set fire to his tail, that comprises cat adolescence!  Satai, of course, is still a bubsy, bumbling little kitten – full of volume and bounce (like a good shampoo?) and just like a human toddler, he’s into absolutely everything! I was given a beautiful embossed leather-bound journal with lovely hand-made paper pages for Christmas – an object to grace one’s desk, or the loungeroom coffee table, not locked away in a drawer somewhere… but it’s rapidly getting to the point where I’ll have to do just that, and hide it away “in a safe place” – or until Satai finishes teething, anyway! He’s now sitting on a corner of my desk – right next to the shelf where my nice leather-bound book is – and you’d think that butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, sitting there looking at me with those innocent little kitten eyes… and then off he goes, exploring my desktop – just out of my reach (it’s a big desk!) and getting into stuff that he knows he’s not allowed to! Because both of them like to drink water out of a glass, as well as their own water bowls, I’d craftily put a card out of my card index box over the top of the glass of water on my desk… but the card being bigger than the rim of the glass, and Satai being small enough not to be able to see the glass underneath the card, thought that the card was just something else that he could climb on. After saying “No!”, and removing him – several times – from the ingredients of a disaster just waiting to happen, I had to resort to playing with him to keep him occupied and quiet – or what passes for “quiet” in a Bengal, anyway.

You can see a corner of my leather-bound book on the shelf in the background…

Isn’t he adorable? 🙂

Yesterday was my very favourite eldest daughter’s birthday, and as her husband is now back at work, she came over for the day. We took her to lunch at The Arena, at The Glen, and bought her some ### ###### for a Birthday Present (hashed out, because you never know – she might be reading this, and she’s supposed to have “forgotten” about them until her Big Birthday Bash on January 21st!)  and afterwards came back here and watched episodes of “The Flash”, “Arrow”, and “Legends of Tomorrow”, until it was time for Julian to drop her off at home, where Neale was going to whisk her off for a Birthday Dinner somewhere…

The day before yesterday though – remember, we picked Satai up on Monday afternoon. He’d yowled all the way home in the car, and Sal wasn’t terribly impressed to meet his new little brother, though Satai took to him like a duck to water… however Monday and Tuesday were a little “tense“, shall we say, with Satai totally horrified by these strange giant hoomans who’d catnapped him and carried him off to a very different place to the one he’d grown up in, and also slightly reproachful that Sal, a fellow cat in a not very pleasant place, didn’t want a bar of him! Poor Sal, he didn’t understand why his happy idyll with his new Mummy and Daddy had to be ruined by the arrival of this tiny, spotty, noisy – and far too bouncy – piece of fluff! He slunk around, turning sad and reproachful eyes towards us… how could we do this to him! But… who can resist the charms of a kitten for very long! No matter how much he glowered, hissed, growled, and spat at the little scrap of fur, the little scrap of fur just kept on bouncing up to him, wanting to play! It didn’t take long until they were playing – then Sal would remember “Oh yes, I hate this horrible little kitten, don’t I!”, and with a hiss or a growl – and sometimes both – he’d stalk off indignantly. My very favourite eldest daughter took some photos of them yesterday – this is one of them:

As you can see… they get along very well now 🙂

But getting back to the day before yesterday! We took Satai up to the Vet for the customary “check-up to make sure we got a healthy specimen”… At this stage he was very reluctant to let us handle him for longer than 2.4 seconds at a time, hated going in cars, objected strongly and loudly at being shut up in the cat carry basket, and in other words behaved like a spoilt brat having a tantrum. Have I told you how noisy he is yet? By the time we got from Vermont South to Blackburn, our ears were ringing! Literally! He screeched, he shouted, he yelled, he screamed! It’s truly a wonder that we didn’t develop nerve deafness! We took him into the waiting room at the Vets – and he didn’t even stop to take a deep breath! He just kept on yowling! How something so small can create so much noise is totally beyond me! The nurses there were very kind, and made lots of soft, kind, and gentle “encouragement-type” sounds to the three of us – not that we could really hear what they were saying over Satai’s screeches! Then another nurse came out – she’s been there since the year dot. She’d been out in the back and had heard all the noise – and thought to herself “That sounds like a Bengal!” – which of course is exactly what Satai was busy telling everyone, whether they wanted to listen or not! As it turns out, she knows the guy who bred little Satai because he used to go there (to the surgery) many, many years ago, when the practice was owned by Dr. Peter Cullen – so that was somewhat comforting to me, because we started going to that surgery when Dr. Cullen was there – but that’s a very long story for another night! Well, Satai had his exam, was pronounced fit and healthy, had his claws clipped, and had his next inoculation, which was due around about then anyway. He’s a precocious little lad, and insisted on exploring the surgery (yelling the whole time) and then we brought him home. By this time I’m afraid I was at the snappy, snarly stage of telling him to “SHUT UP!” But once we got back inside and let him out of his cat carry cage, he calmed down pretty quickly – and do you know, since then he’s been a changed boy! He doesn’t object to being picked up and cuddled anymore, though unless he chooses to clamber up on you of his own volition – which he does a lot of – he’s sometimes very wriggly and difficult to hold, as he’s very easily distracted – and a distracted kitten is a very wriggly kitten! The first thing he wants in the morning – besides his breakfast – are pats and cuddles! He loves being with us and making us play with him! In between bouts of playing with him, he spent the afternoon curled up underneath a little plastic footstool close to my feet, under my desk!

Sal sleeps on our bed with us, but at the moment Satai is sleeping in the Library, because (a) he’s a chatterbox – he hardly ever shuts up, and (b) the bed’s still a bit high for him to jump up onto, and I don’t want to risk him hurting himself if he falls awkwardly, either trying to jump up, or trying to jump down. When he’s big enough to jump up on the bed unaided, I reckon the two of them will sleep on the bed with us… and hopefully Satai doesn’t talk in his sleep! Besides… he’s a Bengal… it won’t be long before he works out how to open the Library door, and by then he’ll also be strong enough to do so, too!

My weight’s been up and down like one of Satai and Sal’s toys! At the moment it’s gone down to 71.1 kg, which is good – but we had lunch up at The Glen yesterday and I had my usual BLT – which arrived with more bacon on it that I think I’ve ever seen on a BLT before in my life! Plus I had one of my very favourite chocolate caramel slices (drool!) Needless to say, neither of us had any dinner last night! Today for lunch I had our usual “bring home food” from Baker’s Delight, and tonight we’re having some delicious looking pork cutlets, pan-fried in a little lemon flavoured olive oil with a few rosemary leaves, with some more sugar-snap peas, chips, and our usual half a tomato. For dessert I’ll have a nectarine and a fresh fig, and a CHOBANI Lemon yoghurt (erm… and about three or four cherries, just because they’re yummy!)

We played a couple of hours of WoW this afternoon – and we made good going out of them too! We went up three levels, and have pretty much almost reached the end of the Hinterland quests – though at the moment we’re in Stranglethorn Vale, where we’ll pick the adventure up again next Sunday! 🙂 Auric and Dapple had their Fish House cleaned out yesterday, so they’re looking very spick-and-span, and thank heavens our cleaning lady will be back next Monday morning! For some very strange reason, the house seems to have broken and partly chewed feathers all over the place! And there you go – once more I’ve pretty much brought you all up to speed on all the comings and goings chez nous, so that’s really about “it” from me for this evening! Don’t forget to call in again tomorrow night to see if I’ve managed to get another catch-up written, and whether or not my weight has got sick and tired of going down, and has decided to go back up again “for a change” (I mean, two days of going down has to mean it’s time for a change, doesn’t it?) Anyway, until next time, do try to bee good, remember that life is a journey, not a race, and don’t forget to always drive carefully. to look after yourselves, and to keep cool – or warm – depending on your inclination…. but above all, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.14 pm

Back again, having spent nearly all day in the lounge room, “supervising” the kittens!(read: making sure no blood got spilt! 😉 ) Sal is still “very put out” about his new brother, whom we are calling “Satai” at the moment (this is likely to be temporary, so don’t be surprised if I suddenly start calling him something else!) and he (Sal) is going to a very great deal of effort to make us understand this fact – hissing at Satai, growling, threatening to pounce (you know, the complete “hunter’s crouch” bit that cats do when they’re about to spring on a bird, or a mouse – complete with a full botty wiggle!)  etc., etc., and so forth. In other words, Sal is being a complete schmuck about it… or was being…

Satai, bless his little heart, has been quite unphased by Sal’s posturing and disapproval, and has just carried on as though Sal was being the friendliest cat in the neighbourhood – and, I might add, completely confusing his older brother! If Sal was expecting little Satai to be intimidated or frightened by all his hissing and growling – the entire object of his threats – well, he was sorely mistaken… and not a little confused:

Sal “hiss, growl, glower! don’t come near me, you nasty little spotted interloper!”
Satai “hello Sal, (bounce, bounce, bounce) what shall we play today? Hey! Wanna play chasey? (runs around in a circle chasing his own tail) C’mon, you can chase me!” [runs a short distance away, sees that Sal’s not chasing him, runs back again] “C’mon! chase me!”
Sal reluctantly runs around the corner after Satai
Satai gleefully shouts “You’re it now, I’ll chase you!”
Sal pelts around the corner with little Satai in hot pursuit

Anyway, they’re now both plum-tuckered out from all this “chase and be chased” exercise – Satai is either under the coffee table in the lounge room (his most favourite spot in the whole house!) or under the end table in the Library (his second most favourite spot in the whole house!) and Sal is sound asleep, curled up on Daddy’s plush grey velour dressing gown, which somehow “slipped to the floor”, all of its own accord! 😉

Satai is getting to know both his name, and us. We were a little concerned on the way home from Mt. Cottrell because he wouldn’t stop meowing all the time – we thought he was unhappy, and crying – but apparently that’s not the case! We’ve come to the conclusion that he’s just a chatterbox, as he still meows almost non-stop, even when he’s playing and obviously happy! Actually, it’s not so much a “meow”, as a “chirrup”, or a sort-of a cross between a meow and a chirp! I’ve read many stories about cheetahs and their cubs, and how the cubs make a sort of chirping noise to communicate with their mother and their siblings – well, I think this is what Satai’s doing – chirping! I think the only times he’s ever completely silent is either when he’s asleep, or got a mouthful of toy (or food)! We can now pick him up, if we don’t make sudden, quick moves, and he’s quite happy to be picked up and cuddled – but if you move towards him too quickly, he runs off – not far, just out of reach – where he sits down again and looks at you as if to say “What are you going to do now, hmm?”

How did we get to the name “Satai”? Well, I had a whole list of names picked out, which I managed to whittle down to three. We tried Nebi, and we tried Kiraat – which I ended up thinking was too long, and yesterday we tried Seti – which worked, but we felt was too similar to “Sal”, or “Sally” (Salai) and that the two of them – not to mention the two of us – might get confused. Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, there was a TV show called “Babylon 5” – one of the main characters was a member their world’s governing body, called The Grey Council – the equivalent of the US Senate, I suppose you could call it – and they were addressed by the title “Satai”, which would probably be the same as the term “Senator” – so f’rinstance, “Satai Winter” would be like saying “Senator Winter”, if you see what I mean… So we tried “Satai” on the kitten, and he seemed to like it – when I patted my knee and called “Satai”, he came running over, anyway… But, “Satai”, “Seti”, “Sal” and “Sally” are all pretty similar – which is why I said in the beginning that the current name of “Satai” could very well be temporary. We’ll see! 🙂

Update! Julian couldn’t find Satai, so I told him how to call him – calling out “meow” in a high, squeaky voice always seems to make him poke his head out from wherever he’s hiding – this time he’d secreted himself inside the end table drawer, and was most annoyed when Julian found him there! But he sat quite happily on the couch on Julian’s knee for a few minutes, even when Sal jumped up onto the couch with them! The three of them were just in here, and not only did Satai let us handle him without protest, but once back on the ground, he walked over to Sal and they touched noses – twice – and then Sal remembered that he was supposed to be hating this little spotted interloper, and gave a somewhat half-hearted hiss, which Satai totally ignored and pranced off to chase his own tail again!

So, I suppose you all want to see what this charming little Bengal kitten looks like! Well, for once I have photos! 🙂

Not terribly good photos I’m afraid – I’m not really a very good photographer – but they’re good enough for you to see just how sweet and gorgeous he is 🙂

So apart from Sean coming over this morning to do my hair, that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing all day, “supervising” the children while Julian went out to pick up the dry cleaning and do some shopping – and of course, yesterday was almost completely taken up with our trip out to Mt. Cottrell to get him! We did have an “un-cat” day on Sunday, when we played WoW, with Imaan and Krankhaft. Once again, we went up lots of levels (at least four or five, from memory!) and didn’t even come close to dying once! It was a very good day, and we’re hoping that we might get a chance to play a bit more before next Sunday! These days I hardly seem to get a look in at WoW, as I won’t even start playing if I know I’m going to have less than two hours worth of playing time before I either have to do something else, or be somewhere else… We might be able to get a couple of hours in tomorrow, if we’re lucky… Thursday’s out, as my very favourite eldest daughter will be over… and it’s her Birthday, so if she’s very lucky, we might even take her out for lunch somewhere! 😉

Weigh-in this morning. My weight has been steadily climbing – and at the end of the month I go back on those bloody (‘scuse the French!) little fluid loving and retaining pills for ten days – “and that’ll be another full kilogram of fat and fluid, thank you ma’am!” In the sort of weather we’ve been having, where heat – and especially humidity – make my feet and fingers swell like balloons (which is yet another reason why I hate summer!) the last thing I need is something else to make me retain even more fluid! Anyway, ’tis only going to be until after April 16th (Easter Sunday) because then I’ll be Birthday and Celebration-free, and I intend to go back onto Optifast for a couple of months… This morning I weighed-in at a disgustingly fat 72.0 kg!

Food stuffs. Today for lunch we had Baker’s Delight Bring Home food – it’s very nice, the two halves of different savoury rolls, and the – usually fruit and white chocolate – chocolate and choc-chip scones, which while totally delicious, are really not very good things to eat when you’re trying to watch your weight! (note to Julian – why don’t you make another of those delicious fruit loaves? Two slices, lightly buttered, for lunch would probably be better for both of us – or even a sandwich made from your yummy home-made sourdough bread…) Tonight we’re having grilled steak, with par-boiled (not steamed) sugar-snap peas, sautéed in lemon flavoured olive oil, our usual half a tomato, and chips, of which I’m only having six… I must go out with Julian tomorrow, as I only have one piece of fruit left! A brown Nashi pear, and that’s it! I want to go back to the fruit market at Bushy Park and get some more cherries and pears, and to see what else looks interesting. So, a brown Nashi pear tonight, and a CHOBANI yoghurt, if we have any left – otherwise I’ll have an Apple Le Rice.

And that brings me back to tomorrow – Julian wants to go out to get some magnets – all our windows have Holland Blinds with little metal chains for raising and lowering them, and of course, the kittens have “found” them! Not only are they likely to break them, but they’re also likely to strangle themselves in them, so to keep them out of kitten reach, we either have to cut chunks out of them in order to shorten them – which will mean that they’ll be out of my reach too 😡 or hitch them up out of the kitten’s reach (which will also mean that they’ll be out of my reach, but if it keeps the kittens safe, I don’t mind…) Because the chains are made from metal, they’ll stick to magnets (Julian experimented with a magnetic lapel clip!) so he plans to buy enough magnets that he can affix to the window jamb, to hold the chains out of kitten-harm’s way…. so…. if I go with him, I can get him to stop at the Bushy Park fruit and vegetable market so that I can get some more fruit – two problems solved/taken care of, in the one trip! 🙂 So the whole tribe of us, Julian, me, Sal, Satai, Auric and Dapple are all basking in the warm glow of bonhomie at the moment – the two kittens seem to be adjusting to eachother, and Satai seems to be adjusting to us giant big hoomans – Auric and Dapple will be having their Fish House cleaned tomorrow – and that’s really about “it” from me for tonight! Do drop in again tomorrow night to see if I did get some more interesting fruit, if Julian got his magnets, and cleaned the Fish House, and whether Sal and Satai are still on speaking terms! 😉 Until then however, do try to bee good, don’t forget that if you turn your face to the sun, the shadows fall behind you, and remember to look after yourselves, to keep cool – or warm – depending on your personal preference, and to always drive carefully… but most importantly – please, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.43 pm

Well, here I am, at long, long last – and I still may have to dart off every few minutes or so to supervise the “cat-proofing” and/or the cat-catching! Yes, we brought our little Bengal boy home this afternoon, and he squalled and yowled most piteously, at the top of his fairly formidable voice, the whole way – from Mt Cottrell, to Vermont South! Once home, we brought him inside – of course, Sal had to come in to see what all the noise was about – and let our newest “child” out of the cat carry basket. He took one absolutely horrified look at us (Julian and me) and fled to the nearest hidey-hole he could find in this strange and unfamiliar place. This didn’t do him very much good however, because we were still in the hallway, and the nearest thing to a “safe and sheltered hidey-hole” was the narrow, but highly visible gap between the thin legs of the hall table, and the alcove wall in which it sat! He backed out in consternation, and started to investigate further. Sal sat there looking stunned! “What the…. !!!” his expression virtually screamed at us. (gone cat catching again…) (cat found – but not caught…) From a list of around twenty-five names, I’ve whittled it down to a short list of three names for this highly recalcitrant kitty – “Kiraat”, which apparently means “hunter” in Bengali, “Nebi”, which means “panther” in ancient Egyptian, and “Seti” (in this particular instance Seti I, who was a pharaoh of the New Kingdom Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt, the son of Ramesses I and Sitre, and the father of Ramesses II) which means “dazzle”. At the moment I’m calling him “Nebi”, but this is liable to sudden change without notice – depending on how quickly, and how well he adjusts to “alternate humans” – or if he even decides to like us at all!

While he was in here (the Den) earlier, he was quite happy to strut around and examine every little nook and cranny (except for the ones near where we were sitting, of course!) He sniffed at all of Sal’s toys, examined the climbing stand, and even made a couple of attempts to go up and make friends with Sal, who rebuffed him, hissing and even growling at the poor little boy! (I mean, how dare that spotty little interloper sniff at his toys, and explore the many rooms of his climbing stand! The nerve!!)  Finally we managed to grab him, and we took him into the lounge room, thinking to show him where the litter box was, in the Library, next to the lounge room, only before we could do that, he got away again, secreting himself under the recliner chairs and the couches… then just for good measure, he managed to get himself into the  teeny-tiny gap underneath our very heavy, marble-topped dresser, and he didn’t know where his toilet was yet! After a great deal of scrabbling, wrenching of muscles, and sheer dogged determination, we managed to swivel the dresser around just enough for Julian – who was now lying flat out on the floor – to be able to stretch in his arm and pull the little blighter out! We put him in the Library and shut the door on him…

Julian went out again – this time to Bunnies, to get some “stuff” to make a “blockade” for the bottom of the stove – heaven help us if “kitten” got under the ruddy stove! “Mr Naughty Kitten” stayed in the Library until this was accomplished, and even though we’ve opened the door, as far as I know, he’s still in there – this time backed up against the wall – where human arms are simply too short to reach him – underneath a very large, square lamp table!

Well, we’ll simply have to wait and see how things go with the little boy – he is very beautiful, with more of a very light creamy-brown “base” coat, and “thinly smeared Vegemite” coloured whorls and spots. Personally I think he’s going to end up as a beautifully marbled Bengal, rather than having the dark brown rosettes that I’d thought I was getting – in fact, I’m not even sure that we were given the right kitten! There were two kittens in the “enclosure”, one of them hiding in terror behind a large scratching “thingy”. Mr. Breeder Person pulled this one out and I was surprised, because it had a much lighter coat than I remembered. There wasn’t much light in there, and it was hard to see the kitten that was trying to hide – but it did look quite a bit darker – and more like the colour that I thought I’d seen when we went out to have a look at him… But he/they are/were (presumably!) microchipped, so it’ll be interesting to see if the number on the microchip form that we given the first time matches the number on the papers we were given today! We’re hoping to be able to capture and cage him tomorrow afternoon so that we can take him up to our Vet for a quick once-over, and they’ll scan the microchip inside him so we can try to match it up with the papers we have. If he’ll settle down with us, I don’t really care if we’ve been given the wrong kitten, even if it turns out that he’s given us a girl instead of a boy (though he did keep referring to both of them as being “his brother” a lot) I wish I could post a photo of him for you, but I only managed to take a couple of him on WhatsApp for a friend before he scarpered, and both photos were taken from some distance away and are rather blurry, because he was running away from that horrible human woman at the time! Never mind – hopefully he’ll be more amenable tomorrow, and you shall get your much anticipated photos! 🙂

Anyway, that’s about all I have time for at the moment – this isn’t as much as I usually write, is it, but I have to go and get food ready and go and sit and talk to my boy, in an attempt to get him to know and trust me… so that’s about “it” from me for tonight – do drop in again tomorrow night to see if my cat is talking to me or not yet, and what Sean thought of him. Until then though, do try hard to bee good, remember that a closed mind is a good thing to lose, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm – or cool – depending on what you were planning to do… but above all, please – remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.23 pm

Er… I think I got the date wrong on my last blog – it should have been “Winter’s log, earthdate 201701.03”, not “Winter’s log, earthdate 201701.04”, because the 4th was yesterday, and I didn’t write anything last night because we went out to see “Rogue One” at Century City Gold Class, and by the time we got home at around a quarter to six I was too busy thinking about the movie, and about the delicious lamb and fetta pizza, and the over-the-top chocolate Sundae – that I really shouldn’t have eaten, but did anyway… (not to mention the “sampler” tray of three different flavoured pop-corns that we had first!) to feel like writing anything! Sorry about that, chiefs! 🙂

Well, let me cast my mind back to yesterday… In the morning, our friend Josh came over in an overt attempt to smuggle Sal out in his bag, and to do my hair for me. We didn’t need to be at the theatre until about 2.30 pm (the movie started at 3.15 pm) so we had “a light lunch” at home, as we intended to have something to eat during the movie. You see we only go to the movies about once a year – twice, if we’re terribly lucky – and because we go to see a movie so seldom, we always make an “occasion” out of it and go to a Gold Class cinema, where we usually have a meal and something to drink, about half way through the movie. So as I said, we had a “light luncheon” at home before we left – half a spicy, savoury pizza roll each, and a sort-of a custard-ee scroll with sort-of dribblee icing. Now, because the movie started later than we usually book for, we didn’t want to have a “proper lunch” there, we just wanted a bit of a “fill up snack” and a drink – and nothing else at home for dinner, because we figured that we’d still be too full from what we’d eaten during the movie. However, we did go a little bit overboard on the food front – I had a lamb and feta pizza, which was utterly delicious (pizza has been on my “bucket” list since August 2014, when I started on my Optifast diet!) and… I had a brownie fudge Sundae. I couldn’t help it! It’s a bit of a knee-jerk reaction with me – if I see the word “chocolate”, followed by the word “brownie” – that’s it! I’m hooked like a hungry whale shark! Throw in the word “fudge” for good measure, and I just can’t help myself – I have to have it! Now, as I’m sure you all know, movie theatres are fairly dark, when the movie’s playing, and your typical, common or garden variety Sundae dish is sort-of long and narrow, and the one my chocolate fudge brownie came in was no exception. In this long, narrow dish they’d managed to squeeze three average sized chocolate brownies, cream (and lots of it!), chocolate sauce, salted caramel sauce, and… three normal-sized scoops of ice-cream – chocolate, caramel and vanilla! The ice-cream froze the cream, and the chocolate brownies were a little hard from being underneath all that ice-cream, making it quite difficult to cut into with a spoon. The whole thing was very awkward and messily perilous to eat, sitting with your feet up, and in the darkness of a movie theatre – but I bravely persevered, and managed to get it all into my tummy and not all over my clothes! I also had a mocktail before we went in – I can’t remember what it was called now, but it had elderflower cordial, fresh mint leaves, pineapple juice and apple juice in it, and we ordered a “sampler” of three different flavoured pop-corns to take in with us. There were about seven different flavours, and I chose “white raspberry”,  which was nice, I guess – but a little bit too sweet, really, the corn kernels were quite small too, so it ended up being more like eating toffee’d pomegranate seeds! The next flavour I picked was “salted caramel”, and it was really nice – but the best one of all was the “Maple-flavoured Bacon” pop-corn! The corn kernels were the largest of the three different flavours, and they were delicious! I had my usual long black, with a small side jug of skinny milk – and you know what? Their coffee there at Gold Class isn’t half bad! 🙂 especially as it came with a very nice little Lindt chocolate ball! 🙂 So we ate a lot there, but we didn’t have anything at all for the rest of the night at home – just coffee, and a bit later, a cup of tea.

The movie itself was quite confusing at first! It’s set somewhere between Episode III, “Revenge of the Sith”, and Episode IV (the very first of the Star Wars movies!) “A New Hope” – in fact, “Rogue One” ends on Captain Antilles’ Alderaan Cruiser, and we see Princess Leia being handed the stolen plans for the Death Star, just as they’re being boarded by Darth Vader and his Imperial Troopers… (cue: “Imperial March” music and segue into Episode IV “A New Hope”) It was a bit tough working out who was who at first, as we’d been assiduously avoiding spoilers since “Rogue One” was released, but it wasn’t all that hard to follow. The special effects were quite brilliant, and although 99¾% of the main cast characters die, it does have a very satisfactory ending 🙂 All in all, it was a good movie, and if you’ve seen all the other Star Wars movies (especially Episode IV “A New Hope”!) do go and see this one! It ties up a lot of loose ends and “but whatever happened to…” queries. Although several characters from “A New Hope” have passed, special effects and CGI were used brilliantly to “replicate “, or re-create them!

Our cleaning lady was over today, and as we suspected, Sal nearly turned himself inside out over the vacuum cleaner! He ran for his life yesterday when Josh turned on the hair dryer, and he knows Josh – he’s never met our cleaning lady though (who is really a very nice young lady!) and the much bigger and noisier vacuum cleaner, with its long boa constrictor-like hose (it’s an in-house vacuum) sent him into a bit of a tail-spin! He vanished – and we looked everywhere for him. In the end, I grabbed his big jar of pussy biscuits and rattled it – that usually makes him materialise out of thin air – but this time? Nada! I came back in here while I thought about where else in the house he might be hiding, and all of a sudden, there he was in front of me, mewing piteously, and saying “You rattled the code for “pussy-biscuits”, so where are they then?! My bowl is empty, and I’m starving!”. I don’t think that Auric and Dapple even notice the vacuum cleaner – they just continue to swimmel around as usual 🙂 On Monday we’re going to pick up our new Bengal boy – I hope he’ll fit right in, but I’m suspecting that it may take a while for him to adjust I have a list of possible names for him as long as your arm – I just can’t make up my mind – and of course, a lot depends on what he wants to be called!

Today for lunch we had a very delicious sandwich, with cold sandwich-sliced roast beef, tomato, chopped lettuce, cheese, and some of that yummy, but totally imaginary Baxters “Fig, Date and Balsamic Chutney”, and for dinner tonight we’re having a commercially stuffed chicken breast, the stuffing being apricots and macadamias. It sounds really delicious, but the proof of the chicken, and all that… we’ll be having steamed rice mixed with finely chopped spring onion, and for dessert I’ll be having an “ordinary” green pear (a Packham) and an Apple Le Rice.

Weigh-in Wednesday (yesterday) 71.4 kg
Weigh-in Thursday (today) 71.4 kg

Not too bad, considering the way I’ve been stuffing myself for the past couple of days! I suppose we’ll have to see what tomorrow brings!

Which brings me up to tomorrow, and I hate to say that I have absolutely no idea what’s happening! I’d say “more of the same”, except that we’re not going to the movies, and the cleaning lady won’t be here – however I think that we should perhaps start preparing to batten down the hatches, and put any and all delicate breakables away in a safe, cushioned and padded place where paws, claws and tails can’t get at them, for on Monday, “Trouble” arrives! Oh, and we’d better get a second cat harness… And that’s really about “it” from me for this evening! Do drop in again tomorrow night to find out what we did do during the day! Until then though, please try to bee good, don’t forget that your assumptions are your windows on the world – scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in, and remember to always drive carefully, to keep cool – or warm – depending on your preferences, and to look after yourselves… but above all, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.45 pm

And a very Happy New Year to all of you out there! Luckily for all of us, the Christmas and New Year Gazetted Public Holidays are finally over – for the next twelve months, anyway – and we can get back to our usual normal, boring, hum-drum daily sloggings – even if certain well-known establishments (wot should know better!) are trying to foist the next Gazetted Public Holidays (Easter!) onto us a great deal earlier than is either religiously or commercially acceptable (yes, I’m looking at you, Woolworths (Hot Cross Buns) and Target (Easter Eggs) !) Yesterday at Doncaster Shoppingtown (getting coffee and dropping off Dry Cleaning) Julian and I did see Coles selling fruit buns, and although they looked exactly like your average Hot Cross Buns, they didn’t have the customary “Easter X” marked on them, and they were being discretely marketed as “Fruit Buns” – which is totally acceptable! (Dang! We should have bought some! We ate the last of our Panettone for breakfast this morning! 😦 …back to cereal and fruit tomorrow… )

So this afternoon, I looked at the time, and headed back to the Den to start writing this… Guess what I found! Someone was kindly keeping my seat warm for me… or was he?! “S’my chair, Mummy!”, he declared, with narrowed eyes (see fig. 2)

          

and he wasn’t going to move off my chair for love nor pussy biscuits… actually, that’s a lie – Salai (“Sal” for short) would travel to Timbuktu and back on a unicycle with a flat tyre for a small bowl of pussy biscuits! When I tried to pick him up to put him on the couch he just made himself go all limp and floppy, nearly turning himself into a pretzel in the process – however, he is currently sulking on the couch, I have my chair back, and you’re all getting a blog! 😉

So, what exactly have we been up to, over this Holiday period? Well, doing “nothing much” has been keeping us both extra busy, Sal experienced his first ever thunderstorm last Thursday, which made him a little nervous, but he was a big brave boy and tried hard to emulate Mummy and Daddy’s air of nonchalance, so-much-so, in fact, that on New Year’s Eve he hardly even noticed the odd “pop, pop, pop” of local fireworks going off in the distance! We were very proud of him! 🙂 Ah – Sal has stopped sulking on the couch and is now very deliberately turning his back on Mummy, and clambering determinedly onto Daddy’s lap, where he’s settling in for a nice long cuddle, still with his back towards me! What else have we been up to… we played WoW on Sunday – running Dungeons with Winterthyme and Demelzae in the morning, and furthering the adventures of Imaan and Krankhaft – both level 26 now – as they moved from the final quests in Silverpine Forest to the opening quests in the Hillsbrad Foothills. We went up about four or five levels, too, which isn’t bad considering that we only started playing them after lunch, after running Winterthyme and Demelzae through the set of three Dungeons (comprising the Tempest Keep “set”), in Netherstorm that morning! We’re expecting “new and interesting things” in WoW after the scheduled Maintenance tonight, as we both received cryptic emails from Blizzard stating that “Strange things are afoot in the world of Azeroth as denizens of Sanctuary (← note the name “Sanctuary” in the original email!) cross over into an unfamiliar world” – sounds quite intriguing! I can’t wait to find out what’s going on – though it’s probably going to be something quite tame – we think it has something to do with Blizzard celebrating the fact that it was twenty years ago that Diablo was released. The blurb reads: “As we approach the original game’s release anniversary on December 31, Blizzard Entertainment is thrilled to commemorate twenty years of Diablo. We’re ready to celebrate our passion for the world of Sanctuary (← and note the name “Sanctuary” in the blurb!) and the brave heroes who inhabit it!” Diabo, Diablo II, and Diablo III were really fantastic games – I didn’t actually “play” any of the Diablo games – I wasn’t fast enough – but I did create characters to act as mules to carry extra loot and stuff around – and I also watched avidly, yelling out helpful phrases, such as “look out behind you!”, and “quick! Take a pot now, or you’re dead!” Re. the use of the word “Sanctuary” in both the email and the blurb – are they planning to cross some of the NPC characters from Diablo, like maybe Deckard Cain, over into Azeroth?! That would be a real hoot! 😆 Hopefully we’ll find out tomorrow morning… when I have Josh coming over, and then we’re off to see “Rogue One” tomorrow afternoon! (*sigh* it never rains but it pours!)

We’re still wondering if we shouldn’t pick my little Brown Bengal kitten up a little earlier than planned… we’re just a little edgy that he’s so un-socialaised and unused to people, and the sooner we start “people-taming” him, the better! On the other hand, I don’t want to hurt Sal – he’s really Julian’s kitten, but he seems very fond of me – how is he going to react when I start spending a lot of time and energy on a new kitten? I don’t want him to feel abandoned or unloved – because I do love him – he’s so very sweet and gentle and loving – there’s so much of Arty, our beautiful, happy and loving Russian Blue, in him, and I couldn’t bear to see him unhappy. I’m really confused… because whether or not we do go ahead and get this Brown Bengal, we will be getting a second kitten – we don’t want to be a “one cat family” (arrgghh! Sal is “play-fighting” my bare feet under the desk!) though we had to be with Flipper – she was far too old and infirm to accept another, younger cat! We’re supposed to be picking up the Brown Bengal on the 16th – but I think we might bring him home a week early – he’ll be eleven weeks old – and after just experiencing the second attack on my feet in twenty minutes by you-know-who, I’m thinking that a kitten playmate would be a much more betterer alternative to my ankles and toes!

Speaking of blood-letting “attacks”, I went to have my Warfarin Blood Test this morning, and the results are in. My INR has come down from it’s very high 3.5 (it’s a wonder I didn’t hemorrhage!) to a much safer 2.7 (2.5 is the ideal for me!) and my dosage is to remain the same. Next test is due on January 24th.

Auric and Dapple are well, and continuing to grow bigger and bigger – I believe that goldfish will grow to an appropriate size for their “home”, be it pond or fish tank – so they’ve still got a ways to go yet! 🙂 Sal noticed them for the first time a day or so again, and is quite fascinated! When I go to feed Auric and Dapple, he comes with me and stands up with his front paws on the glass, watching them get their dinner. Luckily we got a Fish House with a nice, solid, wooden top, so neither Sal – nor his brother-to-be – will be able to jump in and catch our pretty little fishies!

My weight. I’m continuing to weigh myself every morning, and I’m reasonably happy to report that at this stage it appears to be “holding steady” between 70.9 kg and 71.6 kg – unfortunately, at the end of this month I go back onto those despicable little pills which will see me go up at least a kilo plus before I see Dr. Y. again in March! Still, depending on his verdict, the plan is to go back onto Optifast again for a month or two until I get everything back to the way I’d like it to be – around 65 kg!

I’m eating “normally” at the moment – and enjoying the Christmas/New Year break – most of the “excess” stuff, like Mince Pies, Christmas Cake, Panettone, etc. are all eaten up now (actually, there is still a bit of Christmas Cake left – I must remind Julian that we’d better get it eaten too!)

Dinner is ready – back later to finish off! 🙂

09.51 pm

It’s later, and I’m back 🙂

OK, and now to the nitty-gritty! Firstly:

Food stuffs. I’m not going to try to remember what I’ve eaten since last Saturday, because “sufficient unto the day”, etc., etc. So… today for lunch we had simple ham and cheese sourdough Toasties – and quite delicious they were, too! For dinner we had Beef, Pepper & Barossa Valley Shiraz sausages, with mashed potatoes, steamed carrots*, and “continental flat beans“, and for dessert I had a very nice, crisp, crunchy, and juicy brown Nashi pear, and a Lemon CHOBANI yoghurt.

Weigh-ins went thusly:

Friday, December 30th: 71.4 kg
Saturday December 31st: 71.6 kg
Sunday January 01st: 71.8 kg
Monday January 02nd: 71.2 kg
Tuesday January 03rd: 71.4 kg

All pretty much within that fabled “margin of error”, considering how often we’ve had lunch out, munched on a mince-pie (only one!) every night whilst watching television, and that I’ve also had a glass of orange juice almost every day, and upped my fruit intake a bit (well, alright, a lot then! A lot for me, anyway) So as I said – although I’m watching my weight and being reasonably careful with what I eat, I’m also going to live happily and enjoy myself – within reason – and I’m expecting to get back onto Optifast after the last Birthday luncheon “do” for this end of the year, in March. I also plan on getting back onto the treadmill by the end of the week – on the flat, this time, and a lot slower – so that if possible, I can get away with doing it in bare feet!

There are lots of things in the pipeline at the moment – getting our second kitten, finding a pair of shoes that I can bear to even look at, let alone wear, sorting out, and doing something with our Library – and lots more that I can’t remember now, as I’m being hopelessly distracted by a small lilac Burmese who’s decided that the whole world is his toy – including my feet!

Tomorrow, as I think I said earlier, Josh will be over in the morning, and then we’re off to Gold Class to see “Rogue One” – so it’ll be another busy day again – but at the moment, I reckon that’s about “it” from me for this evening! I should be on-track to be back again tomorrow night, so call in again and see what we thought of the movie, how much my weight went up, and whether or not Sal has worked out how to get into the Fish Tank yet! Until then though, do try to bee good, for goodness sake, don’t forget that true change takes place in the imagination, and remember to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm – or cool – as the whim takes you… but most importantly, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

*(gasp! shock! horror!) We didn’t have any tomatoes! Entirely our fault, as we went to an extremely nice sort-of Fruit & Vegetable “market” on High Street Road in Wantirna South, which our friend Josh had recommended to us. Signposted by a giant watermelon slice, it’s called “Bushy Park“, and it’s really well worth a visit, especially if you’re after fresh fruit and vegetables! There are three of these Fruit and Vegetable “markets” along that particular stretch of road, and goodness knows, we’d driven past them about a million or so times (only a very slight exaggeration there!) because I’d thought that they were just “little farms”, selling their own produce! How wrong I was! They had just about every type of fruit and vegetable there in well laid-out aisles and bins, as well as a massive cool-room with not only fruit and vegetables, but mushrooms of every type and variety! They also sell things like lentils, dried beans, poppy seeds, flowers… and in an adjacent building, they have their own cafe! Well, we bought lots of vegetables, some brown Nashi pears, a very nice looking mango, spring onions, capsicums, lettuce – I fergit what else – and we looked at all the beautiful, luscious, varieties of tomatoes, unwilling and unable to decide which ones to get, to the point where we totally forgot to go back and get some! So, we had carrots tonight instead, and we’ll get some of those lovely looking tomatoes tomorrow! 🙂