04.32 pm

Well, here it is, the last day of February! I have to admit to a certain amount of nervous anticipation this afternoon, for it’s tomorrow that I go to see Dr. Y…. Luckily, my hair is not going to look too bad because Sean was over yesterday to make it all look nice for the occasion – but what on earth am I going to wear?! It’s going to be hot, too, so it’s just as well my appointment is for eleven o’clock – hopefully it won’t have had a chance to get too hot by then (though knowing my luck – or rather, lack thereof… ) I don’t really know why I’m so worried – the last lot of tests I had a week ago were all good; he’d told me he thought I should weigh around about 70 kg (from 134 kg – so I went down to 65 kg. before going onto Maintenance – just to be on the safe side, you see – and continued to plummet down another three kilos, to 62.something!) Unfortunately, these horrible and totally despicable little pills that he’s told me to take every third month, do terrible things to me, and weight, mostly in the form of excess fluid (yes, I am on anti-fluid medication) just piles on – and although I do manage to shed a lot of it afterwards, I never really get back to where I was before. It’s also been the very worst possible time of the year for me – because I didn’t plan things terribly carefully! My very favourite youngest daughter was born on December 12th, and now that she’s all growed up and married and all that, we all go out for a quiet, unassuming little family “Big Birthday Bash” (however it’s not too bad – Julian and I don’t have any dinner that night because we’re still too full from Kate’s Birthday lunch!) Then there’s Christmas, and all of the “Holiday Festive Season” to munch our way through… then we’ve hardly finished our last slice of Panettone, and it’s my very favourite eldest daughter’s Birthday on January 12th, when we repeat the Big Birthday Bash scenario! (see?! I told you I didn’t plan things terribly well, all those long years ago! Two Birthdays a month apart – with Christmas in the middle! Arrggghhhh!) And if that wasn’t bad enough, Julian’s Birthday is February 4th, and mine is on March 9th! More “B.B.B’s”! Finally, as we raise our food and chocolate tortured eyes to the calendar – we see Easter looming up on the horizon! Does it ever end? (Winter shakes her head dolefully) Not down this end of the year, it doesn’t! So all in all, what with those spiteful little pills tipping me over the edge of my “Goal Weight cliff” (70 kg) to crash ignominiously onto the “Rocks of Weight Gain” below, plus the advent of the Festive Season (and still with Easter to munch and waddle through!) I’ve gone from my so-called “ideal weight” of 70 kg… to 73.8 kg this morning! Julian’s started to put on a few kilos too – so we’ve decided, that once the last Easter Eggs and Hot Cross Buns have been consumed, we both going to get back onto my very successful Optifast Diet! However – why wait until after Easter to do this (I hear you all muttering in the background)

Well, the reason is pretty simple, really. There comes a time in everyone’s life when one have to ask oneself – and come up with a logical and reasoned answer – “What are you willing to do to maintain a “so-called”¹ healthy weight?” I look around me at (all the) people struggling to fit into “Fashion’s Dictates”. Skinny, skinny, skinny, seems to be the goal this century, but not all that long ago, it was the buxom, bosomy “Rubenesque” figure that was admired and emulated – so who knows what it might be next year, or next century (if we all survive that long!) Anyway,I digress – to fit into today’s impossibly tiny fashions, most people I know – men included – have to exist on lettuce leaves and carrots, and spend six hours working out in the gym every day to even come close! (Yes, alright, that was a slight exaggeration – but only a slight one, OK?!) I’ve learnt, through trial and error and experimentation, that yes, I can hang on indefinitely around the 63 – 65 kg level… if I never eat another chocolate, if I only eat crispbread with a dessertspoon of low-fat cottage cheese and a slice of tomato for lunch, or I only have a salad – hold the dressing please – for lunch or dinner when I go out, if I never have another oven-fried chip, only eat a very small piece of meat twice a week, never have processed meats like salami or ham, never have an ice-cream, and limit myself to half a banana a day for my fruit intake. I’m sure that a lot of you have been there, done that, and decided that the benefits are simply not worth the sacrifices. Life is meant to be not only lived, but enjoyed! Food is meant to be enjoyed – it makes up almost as huge a part of our lives as sleeping does! It’s a social thing, too… So I decided, well before Christmas, that I was going to enjoy my “Holiday Season” – I was going to eat nice things – not stuff myself on them, of course, but quite frankly, I don’t want to give myself an extra three years of life if they’re going to be miserable and resentful years, if I can’t enjoy one small chocolate after dinner every night, or a small piece of fruit and a small tub of yoghurt for dessert! If I have to watch, weigh or count every morsel that goes into my mouth, then as far as I’m concerned, it’s just not worth it.

And in conclusion? Enjoy your lives! Life’s too short not to make the most of it while you can! 🙂

Sunday we played WoW, naturally, and we’re coming along very well – we did die quite a few times, but that was because the two of us were running a five-man Dungeon, on our own! And we finished it, too, which we both thought was pretty fantastic! 🙂 We finished a bit late, but as we’re getting into the upper levels, there’s more to sort out and deal with when we do get back to “base camp”. I was rather wistfully hoping that we might have made it to level 70 on Sunday, but that was a goal a little bit too far – we made it up two? three? levels? Level 68, anyway, and were well pleased with ourselves!

On Monday our cleaning lady was here in the morning, and after that we headed off to Bushy Park to get more fruit and vegetables, then we went on to The Glen where we had lunch and did a bit more shopping. We got home, and I took some photos of our first tomato crop that Julian had “harvested” on Saturday – there’s still more coming through too, but this lot don’t look too bad, do they? 🙂

It was a bit weird at The Glen – nearly all the shops down at the “David Jones” end are closing, or have already closed, due to the extremely extensive re-building that will be starting there soon. Unfortunately, I don’t think David Jones will be returning to The Glen, and it looks like the Arena, our second favourite lunch place there – and which has already closed – is gone for good, according to the whiteboard that they’d put up – saying something along the lines of “Goodbye, and thanks for 15 years of loyalty!” 😦 Very sad – but I guess that’s “progress”

Sean was over in the afternoon, and I’m going to have my hair colour re-done next Monday – a bit too late for Dr. Y., but I’ll still look good tomorrow, anyway! 🙂 “Les enfants terribles” are real little treasures, but boy, they get into everything! Satai’s latest play pen is the dishwasher – as soon as Julian opens the door, he has to climb into it – he’s fascinated anything to do with water, so I’ve decided to relent, and put my little “Lucky Bamboo” into the shower recess, so that I can leave my bathroom door open (except when I’m using the bathroom, that is!) Both cats absolutely love it when I turn the taps on at a trickle in both my hand basins – Sal likes to sit and watch the water trickling down the plug hole, Satai attacks the trickle of water with a vengeance! He bites the water (and sometimes the tap!) and smacks the water on the sink with both paws at once! You should see the bathroom though! Water goes everywhere! So much for the cleaning lady coming yesterday – I ended up with water splashed all over the mirror, the bench top – and the floor! Oh, and he also loves to play with my bath towels! The first thing he does when he gets in is make a bee-line for my towels, where he jumps up and swings on them, pulling them all down onto the ground! I think I’ve found a way to hook them up so that he can’t pull them off, but the proof of the pudding will be in the eating! It’ll be interesting to see if they’re still hanging up next time I go in there!

Well, it’s too hard to try and remember what I’ve eaten over the weekend and yesterday, and I already told you what my weight was this morning (down four points from 74.2 kg yesterday – Monday, to 73.8 kg this morning, just to save you having to back-track! 😉 ) but I’ll get back to my usual accounting of the food and weight facts tomorrow…

Auric and Dapple are also both well, and enjoying the benefits of the new filter pads that Julian put in the last time he cleaned their Fish House – the water is certainly staying cleaner and clearer for a lot longer! Now I have to go and feed the furkids and the finkids – but I’ll be back “ron” 😉

Back! Well, I haven’t fed the finkids, because they get all skittish when their overhead tank light is turned on, so I’ll finish this and then feed them. The furkids are fed though, but before we fed them I snuck into the bathroom to see if my towels were on the floor or not – they weren’t! 😀 My trick worked! However, my two bottles of liquid hand soap were not where they should have been, and my hand towel on the bench top was skewed, so they’d obviously had a bit of a romp in there. Satai is favouring one of his back legs – I hope he hasn’t hurt himself! Being a Bengal, he’s very, very boisterous, and he keeps knocking himself and falling off things (he’s not terribly “graceful” yet – he’s still very much an un-co kitten!) There’s no way short of putting him in a cage that we can stop him tearing around, helter-skelter – and we certainly ain’t about to cage him – perhaps I should start looking up “common accidents suffered by boisterous Bengal kittens” – just to be better prepared for whatever happens! Anyway, that brings me to the stage of saying “and that’s about “it” from me for tonight!” – so I’ll say it – that’s about “it” from me for tonight! Do drop in again tomorrow night though and find out how I got on at Dr. Y’s, and if my weight went back up again or not, and if I have to stay on those hellish tablets! You’ll get all the latest on Satai and Sal, and if Satai’s hind leg is still troubling him – in which case we’ll probably be in for another dose of nerve deafness, with him yowling at the top of his lungs all the way to the Vet! Until tomorrow though, please try to bee good, don’t forget that it’s better to regret the risks that didn’t work out than the chances you never took – and remember to always drive carefully, to keep warm – or cool – depending on the circumstances, and to look after yourselves… but above all, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

¹I say “so-called” healthy weight because what constitutes a “healthy weight” seems to change from year to year, depending on what new scientific discoveries and breakthroughs have been made, and who’s discovered (or made up) the newest (or wackiest sounding) diet theory (or fad)

04.18 pm

I’m going to have a grizzle today – I hope you don’t mind too much, but thingz have to be said! This time it’s about Flickr. Flickr has been really good so far – I’d take a photo on my phone, it would be automatically uploaded to Flickr, where I could go in and edit it, then post it here – or anywhere else I wanted to send it. The “Edit” function used to have a drop-down function in its menu called “Aviary” which allowed you to do all sorts of things – add coloured filters, crop (which was always “de rigueur” for me because I’m a totally lousy photographer!) get rid of red-eye – all sorts of handy things! Now all you can get in their “Edit” menu is “Rotate”, “Replace”, and “Delete” – and rumour has it that “Replace” doesn’t work, either! And it seems I’m not the only Flickr user who’s a lot more than just “very put out” about this, because the powers-that-be there at Flickr aren’t replying to emails, and have refused to acknowledge that there’s a problem, or to say anything about the fact that their photo editing function is “broken” – let alone give us any idea of when it might be fixed! I’m about at the point of saying that unless Flickr can get their act together and get this editing problem fixed by the end of the weekend (this weekend, so if they’re in America, that’d actually be Tuesday, Melbourne time, as we’re a day ahead of them) or at the very least, let us all know what’s happening with their Aviary edit function, I’ll be asking Julian to shop around for an alternative to Flickr – which would be a shame, as it’s secure, quick, and easy to work with. I have also toyed with the idea of downloading the photos to my computer (do I have to do that? Maybe I don’t have to – I wouldn’t have a clue!) editing them in Photoshop, and then re-uploading them to Flickr – but doing all of that with every single photo that I want to put in the blog seems like a hell of a lot of unnecessary mucking around, for something that should be a simple matter of “aim, “click”, edit, post”!

C’mon Flickr! Get yer bloomin’ act together!

Yesterday my very favourite eldest daughter came over and we watched the last few episodes we had of “Legends of Tomorrow”, “The Flash”, “Supergirl”, and “Arrow” – we’ll have to get Julian to download some more of them for next week – but at least we got to see the dénouement of the four-part crossover episodes! Then we watched a couple of episodes of “The Librarians” before it was time for Lee to go home… “The Librarians” is really a lot of fun, as long as you remember that it’s just light, frothy entertainment! 🙂

Not much else has been happening around here though – this morning we were going to make a trip out to Bushy Park to get more fruit and vegetables, but that plan was amended to an afternoon trip, because we’re having corned beef done in the slow cooker for dinner tonight, and Julian had to get that all set up and simmering… then of course there was washing to be done, and the Fish House to clean as well, so today’s afternoon trip to Bushy Park for more fruit and vegetables became a Monday jaunt. Julian did have to go out today though, as the three of us went quite mad yesterday, and had eaten (gobbled!) up all of the divinely delicious sourdough bread that he’d bought at Doncaster the other day, so we had nothing for lunch today! I did tell you about the new Sourdough Bread Shop over at Doncaster, didn’t I? I think it’s called the “Woodfrog Bakery” – but I might be wrong, so don’t quite me on that! It’s not a “three walls and a shop-front” type of shop, it’s a reasonably solid type of kiosk-y affair, in the middle of the “walkway” leading up to Coles and the Colonial Fresh Market – situated behind the Coffee Hit, and about opposite to where Jones the Grocer used to be – you can’t miss it! It specialises in Sourdough only -Breads and pastries (e.g. Danish, etc.) and they are absolutely the nicest, tastiest, and most delicious breads I think I’ve ever eaten! Julian made the three of us sandwiches from a normal, medium-sized loaf yesterday, and the three of us all milled around like circling sharks, nabbing bits of bread to “nibble” on while we were waiting for the sandwiches – I even scored a semi-frozen “heel”, which I gleefully made off with and gnawed on whilst waiting for my sandwich. By the time the sandwiches had been made, and devoured, the entire loaf had been consumed! And I’m not really a big one for just plain-old bread and butter – or in this case, “naked and half-frozen, bread”! It’s yummy! Take my word for it! 🙂

So anyway, Julian went out to get some bread for lunch today, and came back with nearly half the supermarket, I think! (and we only did a great big shop the day before yesterday!) We have our cleaning lady coming on Monday morning, but we’ll scuttle off to Bushy Park for our fruit and vegetables after lunch – I must remember to try and get some cherries, too – my very favourite eldest daughter is very fond of cherries – in fact they’re one of the only fruits she’ll eat! I’ll have run out of my stewed plums by Monday, too, but this time I thought I might try stewing some apricots, if they have any nice looking ones available… because as nice as they are, I’m afraid that I am getting just a trifle tired of stewed plums…

I played WoW for most of this morning – I did a bit of re-arranging on Saurfang, and the Alliance girl I have as my main Banker and Auctionator was level 54. I was in Stormwind, and getting tired of running or galloping everywhere and was wishing that I could fly… but you can’t fly until you get to level 60… hmm! Only six more levels! Shouldn’t take me too long! So I did the unthinkable (for me, anyway) and I played with a Banker! I made it to level 60 this afternoon, whereupon I dropped all my quests and raced back to Stormwind to get my flying licence! Yayyy! Now I can get back to my young-uns! 🙂 I also sorted out the Guild Bank vaults, so now I should be all set up and ready to manage the Auctions and Banking again! 🙂

Tomorrow is Sunday, and we’ll be back at WoW again, dragging our Mage and Warlock a little closer to level 70 (we’re both level 65 at the moment) Not that anything in particular happens at level 70 – it’s just the next “milestone”, you know? Anyway, depending on what time we finish playing tomorrow, there may – or may not – be an “episode” for you all to read. “Watch this space!” 😉

Food stuffs: yesterday’s utterly sublime sandwich was made with the stupendously tasty sourdough bread, organic butter, commercially sliced pastrami, thin slices of Cheddar/Tasty cheese, and organic, home-grown tomato. Very, very delicious! 🙂 Dinner last night was lightly pan-fried fillet steak, cooked in a cast iron skillet, with steamed green beans, chips, and half a really delicious, organic, and home-grown “Black Russian” tomato! I kid you not – there’s nothing quite as nice and flavoursome as a home-grown tomato! They’re absolutely nothing like the tasteless commercial “rubbish” tomatoes that you buy in supermarkets, where all of the flavour and goodness is sacrificed to produce tomatoes that are a uniform and more “pleasing” size and shape, and so that they can grow thicker skins, to last longer on the shelves! For dessert I had a small-ish “Williams” pear, a small apricot, and an Apple Le Rice. Today for lunch we had our usual “Baker’s Delight” fare – half a ham Danish, half a cheese and mushroom pizza roll, and a chocolate and choc-chip scone (with a small scraping of butter!) Tonight, as I might have mentioned, we’re having slow-cooked corned silverside, with another half an organic and home-grown “Black Russian” (or “Grosse Lisse”?) tomato, steamed green beans, and mashed potatoes. For dessert I’ll have a brown Nashi pear, another very small apricot, and one of the MOO Sticky Apple and Organic Honey yoghurts.

Weigh-in mornings have not been pleasant!

Weigh-in Thursday, February 23rd:      73.8 kg
Weigh-in Friday, February 24th:           74.0 kg
Weigh-in Saturday, February 25th:       74.2 kg

Oh well, as Julian said this morning – not long now until the end of Easter and the beginning of our joint Optifast diet! Yanno, in a perverse sort of way I’m actually looking forward to returning to the Optifast regimen – the food – while commercial and packaged, isn’t too bad – I really did like the soups – with the addition of a few chili flakes and/or semi-dried basil flakes – and the bars were yummy! Some of the new diet jellies (jelly crystals that you make up yourself, not those ghastly, over-sweet pre-prepared jelly cups!) are really, really nice, too! So as I said – I’m almost looking forward to it! 🙂

And there you go – all caught up with what’s been happening around this neck of the woods! Next Saturday we’ve got Julian’s Big Birthday Bash, and thanks to circumstances beyond our control, we’re going to be having it in conjunction with mine again, which is only about a week away anyway! I’m not sure where we’ll be going, but I’ll let you all know as soon as we’ve made up our minds! Sal and Satai, after having been truly angelic all day yesterday, have really gone out of their way to be naughty and wicked today! At the moment they’ve got their noses firmly in their respective troughs, guzzling their dinner, so peace reigns supreme for the moment! Auric and Dapple are still settling down after their Great Big Fish House Cleanup so I haven’t fed them yet – I’ll give them another half an hour to settle down, and then they too shall get their din-dins! 🙂 And really, that’s about “it” from me for this evening! Do drop in again tomorrow (or Monday, or Tuesday) night to see what we’ve been up to, and if I’ve managed to edit some photos to put up for you all! In the meantime, do try to bee good, remember that the hardest thing to do is to be true to yourself, especially when everybody is watching… and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep cool – or warm – depending on your inclination… but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.39 pm

Sorry I went AWOL again, but you wouldn’t believe how hectic things have been around here since Sunday night! Anyway, at least I warned you all that there might not be a blog on Sunday night – depending on what time we finished playing WoW – and surely everyone knows by now, and takes it for granted, that I usually don’t get a chance to write on Monday nights, either! After Sean has left, there are ravening kittens to be fed, as well as two rapidly growing goldfish, circling around the top right-hand corner of their Fish House like sharks, waiting for their algae pellets to arrive. The table needs to be set, dinner wants to be eaten, and our nightly date with the television must be kept! Yessirree, there’s never a dull moment in this household! 😉

On Tuesday we left here around noon, and were out nearly all day – and we didn’t get home until after ten thirty, either, absolutely bushed! It was my very favourite eldest daughter’s Graduation day, and because she needed to be down at Deakin University Geelong Campus by three o’clock to pick up her robe and trencher, and because there was no way known that we were going to miss her Graduation, we picked her up shortly after twelve and drove down to Geelong. I might say at this point that her husband actually works down at the Deakin Geelong Campus, and she could have gone down with him when he went to work that morning, but it would have meant an extra long, boring day for her with nothing to do until 3 pm – and seeing that we were going to be there anyway, she hitched a ride with us. We were expecting a few holdups on the way down, after the shocking air plane crash that morning, but despite the doom and gloom predictions of lots of slow, 40 kpm areas on the freeway – sorry, tollway – by “Brunhilda” (the name we’ve given to our Sat Nav’s female voice!) we pretty much had a hassle-free trip down, giving us enough time to go and have a very nice lunch at a restaurant right on the waterfront! I’d given Auric and Dapple a larger than usual breakfast that morning, and as goldfish can go for a couple of weeks without their usual food, I was only a little bit worried that they might get hungry enough to start nibbling on eachother before we got home, but we weren’t at all happy about leaving our little furry babies on their own for such a long time! We gave them an early lunch before we left, and put out extra bowls of (dry) food here and there around the house that they could find if they got really hungry – they also had four bowls of water, and we left the radio on for them – but it was with many misgivings that we left them on their own, poor little bubsies…

We’ve been to a couple of other Graduations before (this isn’t the first uni course that my very favourite eldest daughter has completed) but this one, despite being such a hell of a long way away, was by far the best organised and presented! It seems that the organisers have taken a page out of American’s book when it comes to organising and seating the disabled! Lee went off to get her cap and gown, and while we were waiting for her, we were approached by a nice young lass who’d noticed that I had a walking stick – she told us to remain where we were because after the Graduates had been organised into their ranks in the hall, those with physical infirmities would be seated before the rest of the visitors (we came across this all over the place when we went to the States many years ago, especially if there were likely to be long queues for anything – those with walking sticks were quickly ushered up to the front of the line!) Although as I said before, we’d been to several other Graduations, I’d forgotten just how “formal” and archaic the entire procedure is! Once the Graduates and the visitors are all seated (except for latecomers – who seemed to arrive throughout the entire evening, and who quickly became thoroughly annoying, shuffling their bottoms in front of our noses as they proceeded to inch their way down the row of seats, occasionally preventing us from seeing what was happening!) First, the Academics in their full regalia, file slowly in to take their seats on the stage – they’re followed by the Mace Bearer, solemnly carrying the Official Deakin Mace. After everyone’s in place on the stage, there are a couple of speeches, and a short address by a “distinguished guest” – this time it was the High Commissioner for Papua New Guinea, His Excellency Mr Charles Lepani CBE (who was also awarded a Deakin Honorary Doctorate later in the evening) Clever Deakin had staggered their Graduations – Tuesday was the Graduation Day for the Faculty of Arts and Education, which had been broken up into two parts – the first taking place at noon, the other, the one we went to, starting at 6.00 pm. And so the evening wore on – and my very favourite eldest daughter received her Bachelor of Arts (Professional and Creative Writing) With Distinction – BA(Prof&CreatWrit)!!

After the ceremony was finished, everyone trooped out to the courtyard where a marquee offering refreshments had been set up. I’d love to put up some of the photos that we took, but for some [heavily censored] reason, Flickr won’t let me edit them. This one was edited on my phone, and re-synced with Flickr – but I just don’t have time to do the others I want to put up. Maybe tomorrow…

Well, my very favourite eldest daughter’s been dragging her feet a little, but the day before Graduation (I think it was the day before?!) she finally managed to get her application in to do Honours this year… and this morning she got an email saying that they’ve accepted her, so she’ll be going back to uni in a few weeks to do her Bachelor of Arts (Professional and Creative Writing) Honours course! Then… then, she’s going after her Doctorate, and we’ll have two “Doctors” in the family! Melissa, Julian’s sister, who’s a Doctor of Law, and my very favourite eldest daughter, who will hopefully become a Doctor of Professional and Creative Writing! 🙂

And now it’s time to go and feed the poor, hungry starving little waifers, who are soooo hungry that they’re cuddled up together, sound asleep in their Penthouse! (and we gotta feed the little fishies, too! 😉 )

Today we went shoe-shopping for me As you know, I absolutely hate, loathe, and detest shoes… if it sits on my feet, I hates it! Anyway, my poor old shoes are really starting to fall to pieces, and my Podiatrist was telling me that she has another client who suffers from badly swollen feet too, and that she gets sandals from Gilmour’s – they have a shop in Mitcham, so we went there, and I got two pairs of “footwear” – one pair of black, somewhat fancy-schmantzy “lace-up” shoes for “best”, and a pair of scuffs (sort of) for going out into the garden and so forth…

Gosh-darn-it, dinner’s ready! I’ll be back a bit later to finish off – stay tuned!

10.02 pm

Back – somewhat later than usual, and after only seeing one TV show instead of our usual two – coz Pete, an old friend of ours from the good ol’ BBS days rang up. We last caught up with him five years ago in 2012 (?) at a “Tron Legacy” movie night, with a personal appearance by Bruce Boxleitner (who also starred in one of my very, very most favourite TV shows Of All Time, “Babylon 5“) The time before that was… fourteen years ago! He mentioned tonight that his eldest daughter is now 14, and I remember my complete astonishment when he turned up – right out of the blue – at our place, with his two week old daughter in tow! Wow! Talk about time flying! 🙂 We do exchange Christmas Cards every year, but it’ll be good to catch up in person with him and his wife Mara! It’s very strange, you know – all of the friends I made in 1985, when I was a naive and computer illiterate newbie logging on to my very first Bulletin Board (BBS) called “Melbourne P.I.E.”¹ are still good friends – and even if fourteen or more years go by, we all just seem to pick up where we left off the last time we met! Anyway, I digress… where was I? Oh yes, getting back here later than usual this evening!

So there ya go – Sunday we played WoW until late – we’re well and truly out of Hell Fire Peninsula, thank goodness, and we’re starting to make our way through wet, marshy, muddy, and mushroom-friendly Zangarmarsh! We didn’t die, either, in fact we’re finding it rather easy (so far, anyway! 😉 ) On Monday, we had shopping and banking to do, and then Sean came over in the afternoon/evening, Tuesday we were down in Geelong most of the day for Lee’s Graduation. Yesterday, Wednesday I had a medical appointment in the morning and then had a terrible fit of the “Can’t Be Bothered’s”, so I didn’t (bother doing anything) and today we went shoe-shopping and shopping-shopping, and didn’t get back until early afternoon… Tomorrow my very favourite eldest daughter is coming over, so we’ll spend the majority of the day catching up on episodes of “Legends of Tomorrow”, “Supergirl”, “The Flash”, and “Arrow”!

Now, if none of you mind, I’m going to leave out any and all of the “food stuffz” bits, as it’s late and I’m already up to 1640 words – so I’ll just skip right on ahead to the weigh-in bits, OK? 🙂

Weigh-in Sunday, February 19th:          73.3 kg
Weigh-in Monday, February 20th:        73.4 kg
Weigh-in Tuesday, February 21st:         73.4 kg
Weigh-in Wednesday, February 22nd: 73.5 kg
Weigh-in Thursday, February 23rd:     73.8 kg

Will I be up, or down tomorrow? Prolly up – stands to reason! My stupid body is going to want to make me as fat as possible for when I go to see Dr. Y. next week! Well, ’tis almost March, and Easter is galloping up at a rate of knots, after which I’ll be back onto the Optifast for a while – so there, body! You’re not going to beat me, after all! 😛

And there you go – now all of you know as much as I do about the comings and goings over on this side of the black stump! Do call in again tomorrow night to find out what my weight did (or didn’t!) do to me, whether or not I managed to edit the pictures of the Graduation that I wanted to put up, and whether there are any new photos of Sal and Satai, or Auric and Dapple. Until then though, do try to bee good, don’t forget that nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood, and remember to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm – or cool – depending on where you are and what you’re doing… but most importantly, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

 ¹Melbourne P.I.E. – the P.I.E. stood for “Public Information Exchange” – the first Bulletin Board I ever called… ahhh… nostalgia!

04.52 pm

Well, it’ll probably be another rather shortish episode again tonight – once again, it’s been a very quiet day! This morning I completely changed out all the cat litter boxes (my, that was an exciting and challenging job! Not!) and Julian went and dropped off the dry cleaning, picked up some more coffee, and did some shopping. I didn’t go with him this time – I stayed home and played a bit of WoW – which was a nice thing to do, for a change! No! True! I don’t get the chance to play all that much these days – we’re always going somewhere, or doing something, or whatever, and unless I know I’m going to be able to get in at least two and a half hours of uninterrupted play, I don’t even bother to start – there’s nothing more annoying that being out in the middle of a quest somewhere, surrounded by hostile mobs – and all of a sudden, hey presto! It’s time for us to leave to go somewhere, or someone’s about to arrive in a couple of minutes, and I have to up and abandon my character – hopefully in a “safe” place – which usually ends up stuck on top of a rock, somewhere out in the wilds of Azeroth! (Winter shakes her head sadly) Not good! Tomorrow, of course, is Sunday, and Julian and I will no doubt be screaming, fighting, kicking and massacring our way through hordes of nasty Azerothian mobs all day – and having a right good time of it 🙂 I like Sundays… 😉

By the time Julian got back from shopping today it was lunch time, and after lunch he headed off to do some washing and clean out the Fish House. Lazy me sat on the couch in here (it’s very comfortable!) alternating between dozing off and reading my book, whilst attempting to stop Satai from biting my legs ((*helpless look*) what can I say?! The poor little guy’s teething! 😉 ) After Julian had finished cleaning the Fish House and had put all the buckets and other paraphernalia away, Sal and Satai sat and watched him through the big folding doors, “showering” the plants and herbs on the decking outside – with much the same horror and amazement that they watch him in the shower every morning! However, the washing is almost finished (little Mr. Curious was fascinated with the washing machine! Sal, being older and more worldly, is much more blasé about it all!) Auric and Dapple have a nice, clean Fish House, and the vegetables, plants and herbs have all had a nice, refreshing drink.

“What is it? Shiny! Can I play wif it?”

“It moves! It goes round n round n round! C’n I play wif it?!”

Yanno, it’s occurred to me that I’m always talking about Auric and Dapple, but I never put up any photos of them!

So there ya go – ladies and gentlepersons, I give you…. (drum roll please!) the Two Amazing and Miraculous Survivors of the Infamous Mud Puddle! Auric and Dapple! Unfortunately the water’s still a bit cloudy from all the cleaning and gravel vacuuming this afternoon – I’ll try to get better piccies for you all tomorrow!

I may have to scoot off in a sec – the cats are bellowing for their dinner!

The kittens have now been fed! 🙂 And… speaking of feedings and food stuffs… 😉 Lunch today was from Baker’s Delight, as it usually is when Julian goes off in the morning to do the shopping, so I had a half of a very nice ham Danish, and half of a very nice pesto/pizza flat roll, plus a delicious fruit scone (that is, we each had half of the two savoury rolls, but a whole scone each) For dinner tonight we’re having chicken breasts marinated in Dijon mustard and whole-egg mayonnaise, served with plain steamed rice mixed with finely chopped spring onions. We had that weird fruit what I can’t remember the name of last night, and I tell you what – we won’t be getting another one! We didn’t like it – basically it tasted like a cross between a very insipid mango (though I do like mangoes now!) and a lychee (which neither of us like!) I will, however, take a photo of one next time we’re at Bushy Park, if they have any, and find out what its name is, so that you can all avoid them if you ever see them! They’re really “not nice”! But for tonight’s dessert I’ll have a very nice looking mango that I got at Bushy Park the other day, and a Sticky Apple and Organic Honey MOO yoghurt. 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Tra-la-la, and here we go gathering nuts in May again on the roundabouts, losing on the swings this morning for a change! Oh, it’s a silly, mixed-up muddle-headed body that I have indeed! Yesterday I was 73.6 kg… this morning I went down two points to 73.4 kg! Not that I’m complaining, mind you – I just don’t understand it – after all the carbs I had the other day! Oh well, lunch today should “bulk” me back up again, fer sure!

And here I am, right at the last paragraph – and dinner’s ready! You wouldn’t read about it! (well, actually you are! Reading about it, I mean!) Never mind – I’ll be back “a little later” to finish off….

09.58 pm

Right, I’m back again… lemme just read back the last couple of sentences… yadda yadda yadda… uuhhh… yeah… right! So, tomorrow’s Sunday – all day until midnight – and we’ll be spending our usual Sunday sashaying around Azeroth – well, we’re actually in Outland now – still in my most UN-favourite place, Hell Fire Peninsula, where all the really, really nasty, giant robot Fel Reavers sneak up on you and stomp you flatter than a pancake. Actually, they don’t sneak up on you – they make too much noise to sneak – you can hear them coming for miles, but just like ambulance sirens and Fire Trucks, it’s damn difficult to tell which direction the noise is coming from – all you can do is freeze and cower, and hope to goodness that they’re actually going in the opposite direction to you. Still, I reckon we must be just about through Hell Fire Peninsula by now and just about ready to move on to Zangarmarsh, the next area along… it’s a much more nicer area, with giant mushrooms, spiky floating spores (toxic, of course!) and gargantuan Marsh Walkers, which have lots of gossamer-like tentacles… yeah! 😀 It’s much more betterer than Hell Fire Peninsula! 😉 And once again, that’s about “it” from me for this evening – you may, or may not, get another “episode” tomorrow night, depending on what time we finish playing, but rest assured that you’ll hear all about our adventures from both the mundane world and the WoW universe, if not tomorrow night, then most definitely on Monday night! Until next time then, do try to bee good – don’t forget that a positive mind will find a way it can be done; a negative mind will look for all the ways it can’t be done, and remember to keep warm – or cool – depending on your mood, to look after yourselves, and to always drive carefully… but above all, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

05.39 pm

Extra short and sweet tonight, because I really hate having to finish up after dinner. As I was telling you all yesterday, my very favourite eldest daughter came over today, and we spent a very pleasant day watching episodes of “Legends of Tomorrow”, “Supergirl”, “The Flash”, and “Arrow” – including two episodes of a three episode “crossover” segment, where the characters from all of the above series get to interact with eachother. We would have just had time to watch the third and last episode of this very interesting set of “crossovers” – the final dénouement – before Lee went home around five-ish, except that around twenty past four, my phone made a really weird sound – nothing like the sound it makes when I get a call or a message – what it was, was a “reminder”… that I had the Podiatrist coming around 4.30 pm! To quote a modern colloquialism that I hardly ever use, “WTF”?! For the last two days I’d had a weird feeling that the Podiatrist was supposed to be coming today, so I’d checked all my calendars and reminder thingies – nothing! “I must be mistaken!” thought I… besides, whenever I do send myself reminders like that – you know, birthdays, appointments, and stuff – I always (without fail!) set it to send me the reminder three days before the event. Three days, not ten minutes! So… what to do? By the time we’d dithered around, fussing about whether or not we should start watching the last ruddy episode, it was ten to five, and Jo (the Podiatrist) still hadn’t turned up… so we started watching the… “ding-dong” went the door bell! I tell you, it works every time! Back in the “middle ages” – a long time ago – if I had to go anywhere by taxi, I’d usually find myself pacing up and down outside, sometimes for three-quarters of an hour – getting more and more annoyed about how long it was taking. I was a heavy smoker back in those days, and not being able to smoke in taxis really put my nerves on edge… I always found that the best way to get a taxi to arrive was to light up a cigarette – the taxi would always turn up before I’d had time to take a second puff of my newly lit cigarette – pretty soon I found myself doing that as soon as I stepped outside – and now it also seems to work with Podiatrists who are running late!

So we never got to see the final segment of the crossovers this afternoon – we’ll just have to wait until next week! 😮 😥

Auric, Dapple, Sal and Satai are all well and in fine fettle, and Satai’s tiny little wounds are healing nicely, although still a wee bit swollen (as one would expect!) Alas, I have no new photos for you this evening – but maybe tomorrow?

Food stuffs today. For lunch today the three of us had some of the ultra-delicious Cinnamon and Date bread that Baker’s Delight make, toasted. This time we all had three slices each, because two slices of toast didn’t seem like enough for lunch, especially when you consider that a sandwich consists of two slices of toast bread, plus all the stuff that goes inside the sandwich – butter (or butter substitute) meat, cheese, tomato – whatever! Tonight we’re having pasta with tomato sauce and a smattering of grated parmesan for dinner – yes, an extremely carb-heavy day! Oh well! For dessert I’ll have either the nice, lovely-looking rosy mango that I got at Bushy Park the other day, or, if we remember after our pasta, Julian and I will share the cricket-ball sized fruit with the intriguing-sounding name – which unfortunately, I can’t remember off the top of my head at the moment – it was either “creme caramel something”, or “something creme brulée”, or something like that, anyway – if they have them again next time we go I’ll make a note of it for you all! And after that I’ll probably have a lemon CHOBANI yoghurt to finish off with.

Weigh-in this morning. What did I tell you all last night, hmm? Yes, back up again – not as much as I expected though! I went from 73.3 kg yesterday to 73.6 kg today. It took four step-onto-the-scales to arrive at that figure though! The first weigh-in went to 73.7 kg. Second weigh-in went to 73.6 kg – then 73.4 kg, and finally, 73.6 kg again! You see, I have to keep getting on and off the scales until I get two results the same! I would have much preferred it if I’d got 73.4 kg a second time, but… say lar vee, as the French say!

And that about wraps it up for today! Not all that much happened – my very favourite eldest daughter and I were too busy watching television, and the cats were – for once in their lives – reasonably well-behaved! I’m not too sure what’s happening tomorrow, but why don’t you all drop in again tomorrow night and find out?! 😉 And that being about “it” from me for this evening, I shall once more exhort you all to bee good – or as good as you can bee, remember that chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to keep warm – or cool – depending on what you’re doing, and to always drive carefully… but most importantly, please – don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

P.S. I lied! I just managed to snap this for you all as I waltzed off to dinner! 🙂

 

04.57 pm

Back again – and as I’m quite sure that you’re all feeling a wee bit anxious about how our sweet little Mephistopheles fared today, I shall make it first off the list of “things wot happened to us today” to tell you about! Actually, it was first off the list of things wot we had to do today anyway, as the blissfully unaware little guy had to be at the surgery by 08.00 am! He actually arrived at about 08.06 am, but in he went. You know,this is his third trip to the Vet since we brought him home about a month ago – the first time, his behaviour was absolutely appalling! Anyone would have thought that he was a feral kitten! We think that for the first nine weeks of his life he’d had pretty much no interaction or socialisation with humans at all, and therefore all humans were giant monsters to be treated with yells and screams of fear, hatred and loathing, yadda, yadda, yadda – I was quite ashamed and embarrassed by him! 😳 Strangely, when we brought him back home from that first visit to the Vet, he seemed to have decided that – maybe we weren’t quite so bad, after all, and that maybe, if we were very quiet and good, and didn’t make any sudden grabs for him, he’d even let us pat him – just a little bit! 😉 By the time we took him up for his booster shots, a couple of weeks alter, we were “his” peoples, and he walked around the surgery with a lot more confidence and a bit of a swagger, trusting that we wouldn’t let anything horrible happen to him. But we did! We asked them to cut his claws! He wasn’t very impressed with us for that, but he’d forgiven and forgotten by the time we got home and we gave him some dinner! 🙂 The Vet was quite impressed with him too, and said that he’d improved a lot! (although that wouldn’t have been too hard!) This time, they were most impressed with his progress! Well, he’s almost seventeen weeks old now, so one would hope that his demeanour would have improved a great deal! Anyway, back to today’s tail – er, tale… We got up a bit later than we’d meant to, so Julian flung on some clothes, stuffed a sleepy-eyed and somewhat confused Satai into the cat carry cage, while a somewhat anxious looking Sal sat watching, and wondering what was going on! Off they went, and Sal decided to stick to me like glue! I collected their supper dishes, and took the opportunity to give their table mats a thorough cleaning. Next, I gave Sal his breakfast, and followed my normal routine. We’d be told that we’d probably be able to pick Satai up “sometime this afternoon”, so we had all sorts of things planned for the day – including my Warfarin blood test, which I should have had yesterday! Julian duly arrived back, we had breakfast, and were just starting to block out our plans for the day when the phone rang – it was the Vet! He was all done, and we could pick him up in about an hour! I still had to clean the cat boxes and brush my teeth! Aaarrgghhh! We wouldn’t really even have time for coffee after I’d dealt with my chores – but ya gotta get yer priorities right, yanno? So while I raced around cleaning out all the cat boxes, Julian made some coffee and cooled it down, so that I’d be able to drink it as soon as I’d finished my work! We raced off to have my blood test done, crossing all our fingers and toes that there wasn’t going to be a whole crowd of people ahead of us waiting for blood tests, and then we shot straight off to the Vet to pick up his royal highness! He didn’t seem to be too put out by the whole experience – he was wide awake, and bright-eyed, if not bushy-tailed – but starting to get a bit grizzly and annoyed about still being in his little carry cage – he wanted to get out and play! (just out of surgery, and the kid wants to play! *eye roll*) All the nurses at the surgery said how much better behaved he’d been this time round, we nodded politely, smiled, and took the little brat home – where we found Sal, sitting with his nose pressed to the garage door, anxiously waiting for his precious little baby brother to come home!  This was the kitten that he’d hated, and hissed and growled at, at first – now he hates being separated from him! 🙂

So Satai is fine – he’s been playing, wrestling with Sal, getting into mischief, climbing to the roof of the Penthouse and attacking the poor, long-suffering, “sacrificial” plastic palm from the top, instead of the bottom, and generally acting as though nothing at all had happened to him. At the moment he’s having a bit of dinner – only half of what he usually has, said the Vet – but I have a feeling that we’ll probably be giving him the other half in a couple of hours! The poor little lamb hasn’t had anything to eat since ten o’clock last night!

Did I tell you all that those two little wretches have worked out how to open my bathroom door? They’re not allowed in there, because I have a real live non-plastic bamboo plant in there (you know those small, “lucky bamboo” “twigs” that they sell in little pots in some supermarkets?) There are also things like a very delicate stained-glass clock, perfume bottles, and other things that would make my very annoyed indeed if they were to go “shatter-tinkle”, should they get “accidentally” knocked onto the floor. I’m sure you understand… So I keep the bathroom door shut, and so far (so far!) they haven’t shown much interest in trying to get in… unless I’m in there! The minute I go into the bathroom and shut the door, they’re both breaking their necks to get in there! I sit here at the computer for most of the day, or I go into the lounge (or onto the very comfortable couch in here) to read, or whatever – and they totally ignore me – I’m “part of the furniture”… the minute I get up and head towards the bathroom, I’ll look down, and find I have two little shadows trotting along at my heels! Why?! Sad has taken to sitting outside the bathroom door waiting for me to come out, but last night… I’m doing what people usually do in the bathroom, when all of a sudden, I hear two lots of plaintive little “meows”, begging me to let the owners of said “cat’s chorus” in, and then I see two tiny pairs of paws poking and scrabbling under the sliding door… which they managed to slide back just enough for them to get their heads through…. and then they were in! I was highly amused – and impressed! I thought it would still be a while before they were big enough and strong enough to slide the door back that much! (it’s much wider than an average sliding door, and therefore quite a bit heavier than your average, or garden variety, sliding door!) So now, when I go to the bathroom, I have to remember to lock the ruddy door behind me! Talking about locks, we noticed Satai, newly home from having his little “snip” today, leaping up for the “latch” type handle of the laundry door! Luckily, he’s still not quite “tall” enough to reach it properly – but he will be soon – and it’s obvious that he’s been giving this “door opening” exercise a fair bit of thought! The laundry door is nearly always kept locked, so even if he had been able to swing on the handle, he wouldn’t have been able to open it – but he could have with the front door, which is a little lower! This is why we’ve recently had the front door fitted with a second deadlock – we thought this might happen – I used to have a Burmese/Abyssinian cross called Boo (short for Boojums) who was mind-bogglingly intelligent, and who learnt how to open doors like that – we ended up replacing all the door latch-type handles with round knobs! Even as smart as he was, he didn’t have the opposable thumbs needed to turn those knobs!

So there you go – apart from playing a bit of WoW this afternoon, that’s about all that’s been happening today! Oh, I got the results of my Warfarin blood test back… My INR has come down to 2.6 from 2.7, which is about where it’s supposed to be, my dosage remains the same – 2.5 mg from Monday to Saturday, and 3.5 mg on Sundays. My next test isn’t until March 30th, so it seems I’m keeping fairly steady on this dosage…

Food stuffs for today. I don’t usually mention breakfast, because it’s nearly always the same – two Uncle Toby’s Vita Brits, about 200 gm extra bran (usually Sultana Bran, because I like the sultanas!) 200 ml of skinny milk, and half a sliced up banana. Since we’ve been going to Bushy Park though, I’ve been buying a lot more fruit – especially plums, which I stew. They’re so nice, so instead of the banana, I have two stewed plum halves, with a bit of their liquid. This time I bought Amber Jewel Plums, and they’re the nicest plums I’ve ever had! Well, stewed, anyway. For lunch I had a sourdough sandwich, with commercially sliced cold roast beef, some really yummy Cheddar/Tasty cheese, and some Baxters Fig, Date & Balsamic Chutney – which now, you might be surprised to find out, has actually started to exist! I’ve never been able to source it online, and really felt that it had to be a fragment of my tormented imagination – but here it is, in all its glory (and it really is very, very nice!) ladies and gentlepersons, I give you…. (drum roll please!) Baxters Fig, Date & Balsamic Chutney! For dinner tonight we’re having steak – but it’s almost ready, so I’ll have to continue this a wee bit later! back soon! 🙂

10.08 pm

Ecco mi ancora! Here I am again – it was a beautiful little piece of fillet steak, which we had with steamed sugar-snap peas, chips, and half an organic, home-grown, very delicious, tomato each! For dessert I had a small-ish Williams pear, followed by an Apple Le Rice. Hmm… I think I might have said that I was going to have the Apple Le Rice last night, but if I did, I’m sorry, I lied was mistaken… because I had a Moo Banana Caramel Sundae yoghurt last night… The Moo brand yoghurts are extremely yummy, and my current favourites – I like the Sticky Apple and Organic Honey one best, with the Boysenberry and Super Acai a close second, followed by the Lemon Delicious one – do try them though – they’re even nicer than the Vaalia and CHOBANI yoghurts! I was also wrong about having chips last night, because unbeknownst to me, Julian had steamed some of our very own, organic, home-grown baby potatoes, which we had with a teaspoon or two of plain Greek yoghurt instead of butter…

Weigh-in this morning: told you! Back to the old see-saw slash yo-yo merry-go-round! This morning I weighed in at 73.3 kg – down 7 points. Go figure! Tomorrow I’ll prolly be back up to 73.9 kg or something

And there it is – all of the day’s doin’s chez nous (more or less!) Tomorrow my very favourite eldest daughter is coming over for a fun day of lazing around watching pre-recorded TV shows. Oh, my goodness! You’ll never guess what just happened! When we picked up Beelzebub, sorry Mephistopheles, this afternoon, we forgot to pick up his “certicate¹ of sterilisation” – needed so that the City of Whitehorse Council doesn’t treble his registration fee². So never mind, they very kindly emailed it to us, and Julian printed it out… I just heard a heartrending wail of “Nooo-oo-oooo!” coming from the kitchen! Messy Toffee had *giggle* chewed up the bottom corner of the newly and beautifully printed out Certificate! It’s quite mangled – shredded, even! 😀 I guess that tells us what he thought of his little “snip trip” this morning! 😉 And that’s really about it from me for tonight – finally! 🙂

Do call in again tomorrow night to find out what Lee and I watched on TV, how many holes were ripped in Daddy’s trousers (if any!) and what other shenanigans the Dreadful Duo got up to while we were distracted by the TV shows… (and I’ve just been told that they “found” the bowl of cherries that was in the middle of the dining room table – I have yet to be appraised of the damage! ) I tell you truly! There’s never a dull – or peaceful – moment, when you have two kittens… but wouldn’t life be dull, dry, and boring without them! 🙂 Until tomorrow though, do try to bee good, don’t forget that words are but pictures of our thoughts, and remember to always drive carefully, to keep warm – or cool – depending on your preference, and to look after yourselves… but above all, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

 

¹ An old family joke – don’t worry about it! 😉
² City of Whitehorse Council Registration fees for cats:
   Sterilised: $32.00
   Un-Sterilised: $96.00

04.03 pm

Oh dear! I’m quite out of practice at this after such a long holiday! It’s been far too long to write up everything that’s been happening, so I guess I should just start out by saying that we’ve been…. “living in interesting times”!

The kittens, Salai (aka “Sal”, aka “Sally”, aka “Sally-Pally”) and Satai (aka “Mephistopheles“, aka “Messy Toffee”, aka “that [censored] little sod!” 😉 ) have been growing apace – Sal, I would guesstimate, has reached his final, adult size – unfortunately he’s now starting to grow “outwards” a bit, thanks to his dutiful “cleaning up” of Satai’s leftover breakfasts, nibblies, and dinners (which Satai had been saving up for a small little snackeral later on!) but as Sal keeps reminding us, “we don’t want to invite the ants inside now, do we!?” (gobble! gobble! gobble!) “Messy”, at almost 17 weeks of age, and almost as big (height-wise) as Sal, is still a lanky, scrawny pre-teen little spotty leopard, and to give you an idea of his personality, think of a slightly (but only slightly!) gentler version of “Taz”, the Looney Tunes cartoon Tasmanian Devil 🙂 Poor Satai is in for a bit of an “anti-treat” tomorrow – “he sails to the Vet on the dawn tide tomorrow morning!” sans breakfast, to have his very-obviously-becoming-necessary “little snip”! We’re going to have to give them an early dinner tonight, because Satai can’t have anything except water after 10.00 pm tonight – and therefore neither can Sal, because they’re forever trying to steal eachother’s food! Tomorrow morning, we’re going to have to get Satai into his cat-carry cage and whisked into the garage hallway, where he can’t see what Sal’s up to. I’ll keep Sal occupied in the kitchen, and Julian will cart a foul-mouthed, screaming, furious, and very disgruntled Satai off to his “snippy” appointment. I’d go with them, but I don’t want to leave Sal alone with no breakfast, so as soon as the door to the garage closes, I’ll feed him and have a play with him.

Julian hasn’t been all that well, and had to be carted off to hospital in an ambulance at half past one in the morning (with me with him – I just threw Sal into the Library with Satai, and locked them in for the duration (they did have toys, some pussy biscuits, water, two littler boxes, and eachother for company though) – I didn’t get home again until about ten thirty the next morning! It was a bloody miserable night!) He spent a couple of days in hospital, and went back again yesterday to have a colonoscopy – that, and all the other tests he’s had, have come back clear, so whatever ailed him that night might have to forever remain a mystery. T’wasn’t nice though, and I hope I never have to race off with him in an ambulance in the wee small hours of the morning, ever, ever again!

Auric and Dapple, our two little fishies, are doing very well, and are getting so much bigger! They must be about one and a half times bigger than they were when we brought them in from their thick, algae-soup, “mud-puddle” outside! We’re told that they’ll grow to a size suitable for their tank, and though I have toyed with the idea of getting them a bigger Fish House when that happens, I don’t think I’ll be able to talk Julian into it! 😉 You know, Sal had been here for over a week before he noticed the two bright orange and gold fishies, swimming happily around in their tank – and when he did, he didn’t appear to be terribly interested in them anyway! Strange cat… Satai, on the other hand, noticed them immediately, and is already planning and scheming to find a way to get at them! Normal cat!

Our veggie garden is going great guns, and we have some beautiful looking tomatoes coming on, we’ve just finished a very large “tureen” of stewed, home-grown, and fully organic rhubarb, which was delicious, and the back-door neighbour’s fig tree is promising a bountiful crop – unless the people who recently bought the place decide that they don’t like figs, and swoop in and cut the tree down! 😥 Mind you, our own little fig tree is looking very healthy and should turn out to be a good bearer – alas, I think it’s still too little to have any figs this year, but with luck, it should produce a few next year! (cross fingers, touch wood! 😉 ) In the meantime, we have Bushy Park just close by for all our fruit and vegetable needs – except for garlic and tomatoes, which we’re now producing ourselves! 🙂 Hopefully, our delicious Black Russian tomatoes will ripen soon – they’re really the nicest, and the ones we planted the most of!

And now, gentle readers, I suppose you’re all wondering how my ruddy weight’s been going? Well, I can tell you all, in one, single word… “disastrously”!

I’m not really all that sure why, either… I’m not eating anything different, or any more of what I am eating (er… well-l-l… unless you count the Bare Ginger¹, which I have been having maybe one or two too many of them – only for the fiber, mind you… would you like to buy a bridge?) The one thing that I haven’t been doing though, is exercising… walking on the treadmill, which I must get back to! I don’t use the treadmill so much in an effort to lose weight, but to wake up my metabolism, which is notoriously s-l-o-w – walking at, say, three kilometers an hour, for fifteen minutes, gets my metabolism going, and I really do think it makes a big difference! So…. why haven’t I been doing my walking? *shrug* Laziness… ? Procrastination… ? The use of the tried and true excuse of “I haven’t got time – we have to leave in half an hour!” ? All of those, I guess, plus the fact that I’m a past master (mistress?) at making up plausible, and even semi-plausible excuses…

I did make up my mind, before Christmas 2016, that I was going to damn-well enjoy Christmas and the holidays! I was going to eat mince pies and Christmas cake; have Panettone for breakfast, and a chocolate after dinner! So I did… and my weight didn’t suffer unduly… Then of course, there were the birthdays… My very favourite youngest daughter’s birthday is on December 12th. My very favourite eldest daughter’s birthday is January 12th. Julian’s birthday is February 4th! Then there’s “Saint Valentine’s Day” – or should that read “Saint Chocolatine’s Day” – my birthday early in March, followed shortly thereafter by… you guessed it, Easter! I mean… what’s a girl to do?! *sigh*

It also didn’t help that quite often, when we were “a bit rushed for time” (!!) we’d have lunch up at the shops, or Julian would bring home a couple of savoury rolls, and two fruit scones with white chocolate icing from Baker’s Delight, which we shared. It all adds up…

Yes, people, those are my sins, and I’m living with them. I’ve put on about four kilos, bringing me up to 74.0 kg as of today (yes, I still weigh myself every morning, regardless!) I’ve also just come off ten days of those despicable little pills, but this time I was determined that I wasn’t going to let them rattle me when I piled on the fluid and the kilos! Because (a) I’m seeing Dr. Y. on March 1st, and I’m going to remonstrate with him regarding my continuing to take them, and (b) I’ll be going back onto Optifast after Easter (Winter blows a raspberry at the horrid little pills!) Needless to say, Julian has been putting on a bit of weight too, because he’s no longer doing his early morning walks, either (although he’s recently lost a few kilos thanks to his “mystery illness” and his colonoscopy yesterday) So, my intention is, and has been from the day I decided to enjoy Christmas and the holidays, that as soon as Easter was over (i.e. that as soon as all the Hot Cross Buns and Easter Eggs that had been in the house since the beginning of Lent had finally been eaten) I was going to go back onto my Optifast diet for two months, or until I’d got back to my goal weight of 70 kg., secure in my knowledge that there would be no more birthdays or gala holidays until May 9th (I think that’s when Terry’s birthday is!) Julian thinks he’ll do the Optifast diet too, and I think that’ll be fun – in a perverse sort of way! 🙂

Food stuffz: Today for lunch I had a ham, cheese and tomato Toastie, a yummy, gooey, sticky chocolate caramel slice, and a long black with a small jug of skinny milk on the side – yes, we’d come back from Bushy Park and were doing a bit of grocery shopping up at Vermont South and decided to have lunch there (just for a change, like! 😉 ) and tonight for dinner we’re having some lovely little pork cutlets, pan-fried with a little rosemary, and a squeeze of lemon juice just before serving, with a few chips, sugar-snap peas, and half a home-grown tomato. For dessert I’ll have a green Nashi pear (they’re a lot smaller than the gigantic brown Nashi pears, and are really very nice!) and an Apple Le Rice.

Weigh in yesterday morning: 73.8 kg
Weigh-in this morning: 74.0 kg
Yes, my weight is still see-sawing up and down like a yo-yo!

And that, gentle readers, pretty much brings you up to date with the comings and goings chez nous! As I said earlier, poor little Satai (who am I kidding?! There’s nothing “little” or “poor” about that naughty little miscreant! 😉 ) is off to have his little “snip” – but he’ll be the better for it, and he’ll be fine as soon as he gets home and gets some dinner (though they’ll probably give him something to eat at the Vet, after his little operation) Life continues to muddle along in its inimitable way, so do drop in again tomorrow night to find out what’s been happening! Satai should be home by the time I sit down to write – and certainly before I stop writing, anyway, so I’ll be able to tell you all how he is, and what my weight decided to punish me with for having that chocolate caramel slice today (and the iced apple cake I had yesterday at the hospital while I was waiting for Julian!) However, until then, please try hard to bee good, remember that the mediator between head and hands must be the heart… don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep cool – or warm – depending on what sort of weather Melbourne’s decided to give us – this time… but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

¹It’s not as stringy and as fibrous as the Buderim Naked Ginger… 

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🙂 Just a quick note: this blog will return in full force as of February 15th 2017….