03.52 pm

Well, well, well! Will wonders never cease? 🙂 Here it is, dab-bang-smack in the middle of November, and here I am, starting early for a change, and what’s more – starting in on my Christmas-y type decorations! Well, Headers, anyway! I bought a new “Vector Christmas graphics” file this morning, called, of all things, “Fa-la-la”, and I bought it because of the really cute deer that you can see in the Header, and of course, I simply had to have it! For well under $20 I got about 15 to 20 images – including snowflakes, the deer 😎 , Christmas Tree baubles, stars, fancy ribbons, string (!), lots of other little bits and pieces, and about a dozen seamless patterns, which I have yet to have a close look at, but will probably use a lot, even if I do have to re-colour them to achieve the effects I want – so I reckon it was a bargain at half the price! They’re all “vector” images which means that they arrive absolutely gi-normous, but re-size perfectly to any size you want, with no loss of clarity or detail! Whoever invented them deserves to win the Nobel Prize for Graphics! (and if there isn’t one, well, there ruddy-well should be!) I’m afraid I’ve mostly frittered away my day, doing a little bit of “this”, a little bit of “that”, and quite a lot of “not much at all” – but I’ll blame the unseasonably warm weather for that, plus the fact that this morning was a really mad scramble! It was quite literally leap out of bed (actually it was more like a slothful stagger!) race (hobble) to the bathroom, race (limp) back to the scales, throw on (struggle into) some clothes, and into the car! I was having that “fasting” blood test done this morning, along with my “eat anything you want as long as it doesn’t contain Vitamin K (like nice, healthy, ‘leafy greens’!)” Warfarin blood test. However going without tea or coffee first thing in the morning is…. really Not Nice, or conducive to becoming Happy Little Vegemites – and I wanted to get the two blood tests over and done with as quickly as possible, so that we could get home to have our “fix”! After that, we more-or-less muddled along, until my very favourite eldest daughter rang – her computer wouldn’t boot! “This looks like a job for SUPER-Julian!” we cried, so Julian hastily put a pair of underpants on over his trousers, and after we’d both had a cup of coffee, he sprang into his automotive chariot (his cape was still at the Dry Cleaners, so he couldn’t fly!) and went over to see what he could do. Naturally he was able to get it going again, but it’s not a very happy little computer so she’ll probably have to bring it with her when she comes over next week.

I just received another of those annoying and tiresome letters (snail-mail, not e-mail) this time from Taste.com Magazine – telling me that I have just one issue left in my Subscription, and that I’d better renew it now, or I’d (heaven forbid!) miss out! Now, ordinarily one would think that this was very nice of them, to send me such a thoughtful reminder – and here’s the “BUT” that you again knew was coming! BUT! After allowing two of them to run out – because they were sending me double copies – one to our old Doncaster address, which was being re-directed to here, and the other one was being sent to our Vermont South PO Box, as well as to the house address! I’ve tried to correct this “abnormality” online – but all that seems to do is make things worse! I thought that I’d sorted out the other magazines, but I’m now starting to get double copies of “Women’s Weekly Food” and “Delicious” – and now “Taste” seems to think that my recently renewed subscription is about to run out! I think I know why it’s happening though. Most of them are handled through a crowd called “Magsonline”, where I have an account. There’s another crowd called “Magshop”, to which I also have an account, and which handles some of the other magazines that I get. I’m beginning to suspect that they work in concert, and that my accounts, which both have the same mailing address (because I think it has to be the same as what’s on my Credit Card?) Anyway, the only way I can see of straightening the whole mess out is to cancel my accounts with Magsonline and Magshop, allow the magazine deliveries to “peter out”, and then, when nothing has arrived at either address for a total of two months, start again from scratch, and from now on, totally ignoring any and all “panicked” letters begging me to renew my subscription, now! Before it’s too late! Grr! Anyway, I’m just sick of the begging letters, and I’m heartily sick of double deliveries!

Flipper went back and ate about maybe a tenth of her dinner? She’s getting so thin now… She does eat her pussy biscuits, though she’s not getting the medication that she should – I’m going to have to search for that syringe… Auric was suffering a rather bad case of the “floats” last night – as soon as he actively stopped swimming, his little body would just bob up to the surface, and he appeared to be having a bit of a struggle getting back down to the middle of the tank again. This morning though, he was fine! Sitting on the bottom, hovering mid-tank –  no problemo! So thanks for scaring us last night, you naughty boy! 😡

So that’s what we’ve been up to today – I still haven’t got my Warfarin results back (I would have thought we’d have heard by now! We were very early this morning at the collection centre!) Stop Press! Warfarin results have just come in – everything’s pretty much the same as last time, though I would have liked my INR to be a little higher than 2.2 (down from 2.3 last month – the thumb-nail rule for INR is that it should be low – around 1 – for normal people, and people like me who suffer from blood clots should be around 2.5!) My Warfarin dosage is to stay the same, and my next test is due on December 14th, a date we can’t forget because it’s our Wedding Anniversary! 🙂 I have an appointment to see Dr. B on Tuesday at 1.20 pm to get the results of my “fasting” blood test – and hopefully we’ll be able to work out some way of dealing with my fluid retention and swollen feet! Oh, I did do my treadmilling this afternoon, and was quite surprised! My right foot, although still quite swollen, really did have a lot more movement in it than it did before Polly poked the chopstick into it! I’ve also been persuaded to try an alternative approach! Cabbage! Google “Cabbage” and “swollen feet”, and you can see for yourselves. Anyway, I’m game to give it a go – because the worst it can do is not work, right? I got Julian to bring me home a cabbage this evening, only it’s a red cabbage, not a green one, and I think you’re supposed to use a green one – but maybe it’ll work anyway?

And now on to the “good” bits! 😉

Food stuffs. last night for dinner we had the Beak & Sons “The Godfather” Pork and Beef sausages, with steamed and mashed Butternut pumpkin, steamed green beans, and our usual half a tomato. For dessert I had a smallish yellow peach, and a smallish yellow nectarine, with a Blueberry CHOBANI yoghurt. For lunch today we found that we’d run out of bread! Julian had thought that there was another loaf of bread in the freezer, but there wasn’t… so we had a wrap for lunch, which was just as nice – if not nicer, because it was a change from the usual! In the wrap there was our favourite butter substitute, the basil-pesto hummus, Halloumi cheese, cold, sandwich-sliced roast beef, green capsicum batons, and some of the Beerenberg Hot Tomato Chutney – wraps are usually pretty messy to eat (things tend to fall out of the “other end” all the time!) but for once I only managed to drop one tiny piece of cheese as I was eating it, and it fell onto the plate, anyway! 🙂 Tonight we’re having some lovely looking pork steaks, delicately pan-fried with a little bit of home-grown, organic rosemary. With them we’re having steamed green beans, mashed potatoes, and once again, our usual half tomato. For dessert I’ll try one of my Corella pears, though I’m still a little bit dubious about their ripeness, and an Apple Le Rice.

Weigh-in this morning. Wasn’t too bad, considering… I went from 68.4 kg…. to 68.4 kg! Er… I stayed the same, which is really a lot better than going back up again! (that’s happening tomorrow!) So I shall just take it one day at a time, and see what the results of my “fasting” blood test this morning reveal…. which will probably be nothing new, but one has to jump through all the hoops first, doesn’t one!

And that pretty much brings me around to tomorrow again! Julian wants to look into our tomato planting a bit more – and this time we really should start a journal, or a log, of what we plant, how it turns out, and whether or not it’s worth-while repeating the exercise – because we can’t really remember which types of tomatoes we planted last year! All I can recall is that one was called “Black Russian”, and another one was called “Heirloom” – but I have no idea what the third sort was – perhaps it was “Big Red”? I can’t remember! I’ll probably fiddle around with graphics, and play a bit of WoW, and that’s about as much as I can tell you all! So, I’m afraid that that’s about “it” from me for this evening again! Do call in again tomorrow night to find out what my weight did (it’ll probably got up tomorrow!) and what the two of us got up to during the day. Until then though, you’ll all just have to try very hard to bee good, remember that it’s not enough to be nice in life, you’ve got to have nerve, and don’t forget to always drive carefully, to keep warm – or cool, depending on your preferences, and to look after yourselves… but above all, please – don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.49 pm

Here I am, finally! Yes, I know I’ve been slack – and I really should have started writing this today a lot earlier than I haven’t, and I’m sorry for that, because it means I’m probably going to have to finish it after dinner and television tonight, as I now have three days worth of adventures and excitement to catch you all up on! 😉 So… to re-cap (so to speak)

Sunday was our Traditional “Breaking Heads in the Broken Isles” – and of course, we did just that – only managing to die oh… about half a dozen times? One thing we did do though was change the appearance of our second Pet, Hati! Julian/Demelzae changed his/her Pet into a second Spirit Bear, so s/he now has two of these trotting dutifully by his/her side – I shall attempt to get a screenshot of them together later on… Wynterthyme (me) first changed her Hati into a second spirit cat, and she looked very spiffy and intimidating, strutting around town with the two of them flanking her protectively! However, out in the wilds, fighting for her life (and very often losing it!) they were hard to see and tended to “blend into the scenery” too much… so I changed them. I’d been under the impression that once you’d changed Hati’s appearance, that was it – you couldn’t pull a second change, so you had to be careful which Pet you chose to copy… I was wro… wrrr… in error! Apparently, as long as you hang onto your “Essence Changer”, you can swap Hati’s appearance over again, as many times as you like! And not only that, but if you do happen to inadvertently lose it, you can get another one – simply by asking the original quest giver’s offsider! So I asked myself “What’s the most striking looking Pet that you can tame? Hmm… Difficult choice! Some of them certainly look extremely striking, but either I didn’t find them visually “appealing”, like Gorillas, or some of the two-headed dogs – or that would be too hard to find and Tame if I didn’t already have one to “copy”! Personally, I’ve always liked tigers – and there are two “Special” tigers that I could have gone after – a Saber Tiger called Shango in the Sholazar Basin, or an “ordinary toothed” Tiger called Sin’Dall in Northern Stranglethorn. Because Wynterthyme is level 110 – compared to which the two tigers were pretty wussy little things – I went after both of them, because being “Specials” it was quite possible that I’d have trouble finding them both. I went after Shango first, and found him within seconds of reaching the area that he patrolled, and of course, being level 110, I had him eating out of my hand before you could say “Sholazar Basin”! Hmm… his teeth did look awfully long! What if they got tangled up in the undergrowth in the Broken Isles? Worse! What if he, and the Shango-looking Hati both got their long teeth tangled up in the undergrowth in the Broken Isles! At the same time! That could spell certain death for Wynterthyme! I put Shango in the Stables, and went looking for Sin’Dall, who had ordinary “tiger-length” teeth. Once again, I found Sin’Dall straight away (aren’t maps that give x – y coordinates great! 😉 ) It was all too easy! I zapped back to Dalaran with a gentle and amenable Sin’Dall by my side to make my decision… the “normal length” tiger teeth won out, and this is how Wynterthyme gets around now! We went out to do a bit of Herb Questing that I had to do (please don’t ask! It did not got well, and I had to call in Demelzae to give me a hand to get the damned thing finished!)

Sunday food stuff. For lunch we had a really scrumptious seeded sourdough sandwich, with pepper-rolled sandwich-sliced pork and some of our favourite basil-pesto hummus, and as usual for Sunday nights (which is “Omelet Night” in Winter-speak) we had a really delicious omelet – even though there was no bacon! We’d spoken about the bacon on a couple of shopping trips last week, and Julian had said that we did have bacon – only we didn’t, so we had to have sizzled-up smoked ham as a bacon substitute – which really turned out not to taste too different (because, well, they’re both pork, I guess!) There was also the usual pre-fried diced onion, diced green capsicum, tomato, and Cheddar/Tasty cheese, just barely melted…. For dessert I had a brown Nashi pear, and a Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurt.

Weigh-in on Sunday. Wasn’t nice! Words were said at the Physiotherapist this morning, about the effect those damned little pills have on me – but more on that later! I went from 69.3 kg on Saturday to 69.6 kg on Sunday. I can’t begin to tell you all how horribly disheartening it is – your intellect is telling you “don’t panic, it’s only fluid – it’ll go once those bloody pills leave your system!”, but when you’re standing there looking down at the readout on the scales, your emotions burst into tears as your brain screams “You lazy pig! You’re getting fat again!” at you! Not good!

On Monday, my very favourite eldest daughter came over. We’d taken a “rain check” for Tuesday, the day she usually comes over, because I had my next appointment at the Physio – and she wasn’t going to be free for the rest of the week because it’s her and her husband’s Wedding Anniversary, and they were going up to Sydney, by train, to celebrate! So as usual when she’s over, we retired to the loungeroom early to watch episodes of “Arrow”, and “Legends of Tomorrow”. We usually alternate episodes of “Arrow”, “The Flash”, and “Legends of Tomorrow”, but for some reason which I didn’t quite catch, because she was muttering, we had to watch three episodes of “Legends of Tomorrow” back-to-back, and so we never got to see any of “The Flash”, except when Barry made a brief, cameo appearance at a funeral, in “Arrow”. We had a good day, probably because we didn’t get into a really “in-depth” discussion of the US Election – if we had, the discussion would probably have ended in blows and tears The only reason I had hoped that Hilary Clinton would win was primarily because I totally detest the man who is Donald Trump. I think he’s a churlish boor, with a totally abominable attitude towards women, and non-Christians of any ilk. I don’t think he’s anti-Semitic like his newly appointed Chief Strategist, Steve Bannon – and I don’t think he’s as homophobic as his Vice President-to-be, Mike Pence – or at least I hope to goodness he’s not – but then, who can tell with Donald Trump?! He says one thing one day, and the opposite the next… *shrug* maybe he doesn’t even know himself? (now, there’s a frightening thought – someone who’s going to be President of the USA, and who doesn’t even know what he thinks or believes in?!) I’m not even sure that Trump will be all that powerful, in the long run – I think the people he’s appointed so far, plus his Vice President, Mike Pence (especially Mike Pence!) will be the ones to watch out for! Apart from all of that, in some obscure small way, I’m almost relieved that Hilary didn’t win. Sacrilege? 🙂 Maybe not… I’m sure everyone reading this is all too familiar with the problem we have here in Australia with our two main political parties… They’re the same! Neither of them has any real vision for the future, or in which direction Australia should be guided – so it doesn’t really matter who’s in power – nothing really changes – we just get more of the same… nothingness! And so it would have been with Hilary in charge. Just more of the same, with very little – if anything – being done to redress the problems of the jobless and the once reasonably prosperous middle classes. No, something had to give there – I’m just terribly disappointed that it had to be Trump – but there was no-one else. I don’t even think Bernie Sanders would have been able to change very much – especially with Congress and the House so firmly ensnared by the Republicans. Anyway, enough of politics! I’m writing a blog, not a manifesto!

So on Monday we idled around and watched television, and as my very favourite daughter walked out the garage door on her way home, Josh walked in through the front door 🙂 Once again, by the time we finished with my hair and chattering, it was little bit too late for me to do any writing, because it was dinner time! 🙂

Food stuffs Monday. For lunch on Monday we had really yummy ham, cheese and tomato sourdough Toasties, and they were totally delicious! For dinner we had pan-fried marinated chicken breasts (marinated in Dijon mustard and mayonnaise) on a bed of plain steamed rice mixed with finely chopped spring onions. For dessert I had a smallish yellow peach and a smallish yellow nectarine, followed by an Apple Le Rice.

Weigh-in Monday morning. Was pretty much the same as Sunday 😦 I went from 69.6 kg to 69.5 kg – within the magical, mystical “margin of error” – I hoped for better things this morning…

And here we are, Tuesday! 🙂 I bet you never thought I’d get here, did you! 😉 Well, this morning I had my second visit to see Polly, the Physiotherapist. She was quite pleased with my exercise progress, but growled at me because I didn’t do my treadmilling on Sunday (because my feet were so swollen, all I wanted to do was go into the loungeroom at put them up! Walking was difficult and painful!) and I didn’t do my treadmilling yesterday because my very favourite eldest daughter was over… and to tell the truth, I didn’t do my treadmilling today, either, because for some reason I was totally exhausted and just simply… fell asleep! Oh well, I will get back to it tomorrow! Polly’s given me another exercise to do – another one I can do in bed in the morning – and she gave my foot a bit of a massage to try to press out some of the fluid. It’s a bit of a vicious circle – the tendon is inflamed because of the pressure of the fluid around it – and the more inflamed it gets, the more fluid accumulates! I may have to go onto stronger anti-fluid tablets when I’m taking those horrible little pills – but that’s something for Dr B and Dr. Y to decide. So anyway, there’s Polly standing there talking to us while she’s trying to squish some of the fluid out of my foot, when she says “I’m going to use an acupuncture needle now – you’ll probably get quite a bruise there, because of the Warfarin…” I nearly leapt off the table in terror! I hate needles, and I really didn’t appreciate having one sprung on me like that! So, she’s talking soothingly to me, asking me if I’d ever done any sewing, and what sort of needles I’d used, etc., and then she goes on to say (while keeping a very firm grip on my foot, so that I couldn’t flee in panic) still in what I’m sure she thought were soothing tones (and my mind is busy yelling “no! no! no! don’t do it! no, no!) “Well, this needle is a lot smaller than the ones you would have used sewing” – and with that, she jabbed the ruddy needle into my foot! Arrgghhh! It hurt! I yelled “Owwww!” – er, quite loudly, I’m afraid (well, it did hurt! a lot! Did I ever tell you all that I was a devour coward, and that I have an extremely low threshold of pain? No? Well, I am, and I do! And I was quite annoyed about it!)

I fear that dinner’s ready – I shall continue this later…

09.30 pm

Right… back to the saga! 🙂 You know, I’m reasonably used to having needles stuck in me, with all my regular Warfarin tests, and when you come to think about it, a needle used for taking a blood test is a lot bigger (thicker, chunkier, whatever, because it has to be wide enough for the blood to go through!) than a (supposedly) thin little whisker of an acupuncture needle – and I know I put on a bit of a song and dance routine when I go for my Warfarin tests, but it’s more in fun than anything else – but that ruddy acupuncture needle hurt about 350% more than the blood test needles! It felt about as thick as a ruddy chopstick, and about as blunt as one, too! (actually, I was quite shocked! I’d always heard, read, and/or been told, that acupuncture needles were so fine that you hardly felt them at all, so having a blunt chopstick suddenly stabbed into my foot was… shall we say, a bit of an “unpleasant surprise”?) Now, having grizzled on about the horrible acupuncture needle for as long as I felt I needed to, to salve my wounded sensibilities, you know – I can finally add the “BUT!” that you all knew would be following, didn’t you! 🙂 As Polly removed the offending chopstick, and twiddled my foot a bit more, she noticed that all of a sudden, the fluid was moving out of my foot a lot faster and easier, and as she stood there, twiddling my foot every which-way, even I could tell that it had a lot more movement in it, and a lot less pain – so I suppose one could almost mangle a metaphor and say that what you lose on the swings of pain, you gain on the roundabouts of movement and comfort? Anyway, I’m sure you all know what I’m talking about, and have been there, and done something similar in the past (or are sure to in the future! 😉 ) You might also be interested to know that the acupuncture needle didn’t leave a bruise, after all – and even the much bigger needle used in the blood tests usually doesn’t leave a bruise – but if I bump any part of my anatomy against something like a desk leg, a cupboard, or a door knob, I get the biggest bruises, as though someone had manhandled me! Go figure!

So we got back from the Physio around lunchtime, and I spent a bit of time after lunch “wasting time” (I’m very good at that because I practice diligently, every day!) and then I went and put my feet up for an hour (why waste all of Polly’s excellent massaging!) had a cup of coffee – and started writing!

Food stuffs Today. We checked the PO Box on the way home from the Physio, which happens to be right next to the very excellent Barker’s Delight up at Vermont South, and as it was almost lunchtime, we got our lunch there. As usual, I had half a savoury “pizza”-type roll, and half a savoury Danish, and one of my very favourite fruit and white chocolate scones. Yummy! 🙂 For dinner tonight we had a Beak & Sons “The Godfather” Classic Pork & Beef Sausages, with steamed and mashed Butternut pumpkin instead of potatoes, steamed green beans, and our usual half a tomato. For dessert I had another smallish yellow peach, and another smallish yellow Nectarine, as the Corella pears that Julian got the other day still aren’t ripe enough to eat, and a Blueberry CHOBANI yoghurt.

Weigh-in this morning. This might give you all just a small glimpse of exactly what those unmentionable little pills do to me! As usual, it always takes about four days after taking the last one… Yesterday I weighed in at 69.5 kg… This morning, I weighed in at 68.4 kg. A whole kilo, those bloody little pills made me gain! Do you wonder why I hate them with a passion?! I’ll probably go back up a bit – a bit more than a kilo is a lot to shed overnight – the stupid thing about this whole drama is that I haven’t done anything right, or wrong, or even slightly differently – you’ve read my blogs – we have pretty much the same things to eat all the time – we don’t go out, we don’t drink or smoke – how can those damnable little pills cause so much angst?! (yes, I do know the answer! “only because I let them”, right? Well, surprise, surprise! I’m human, and I can’t help it!)

We noticed tonight that (a) as usual, Flipper hardly touched her dinner. Hopefully she’ll drift back to it throughout the evening! and (b) Auric is a very naughty boy! He had another bout of “Floaties” this evening! Maybe I gave them too much dinner, but I thought that the pellets I gave them this evening were pretty much the same as I always do – hopefully turning their lights out and letting them go to sleep will settle him – I guess there’s not much we can do though! I’ll try to feed them a little less, tomorrow night! And that’s about “it” from me for this evening (“at long [censored] last!” I hear you all chorusing! 😉 ) As for tomorrow, I’ll have my “fasting” blood test, as well as my Warfarin blood test, and probably get the results of the “fasting” test early next week. Apart from that, I’m not sure what’s happening tomorrow! I guess you’ll all just have to wait until tomorrow night to find out what we did, or didn’t do! 🙂 Do call in again tomorrow night to hear all the latest news and gossip, as well as how much my stupid weight went up (or, hopefully, down!) but until then, do try to bee good, don’t forget that success is a journey, not a destination, and remember to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry – or cool and dry – depending on the weather… but most importantly, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.42 pm

Well, I’m a bit late today, but that’s alright, because there’s not really all that much to tell you all! I’ve been really lazy today – I didn’t even log into WoW to see how Ellrevienne was faring – though I did go in and rescue her from her precarious position out in the wilds of the Eastern Plaguelands last night! She’s finished off that entire quest chain and is now resting comfortably at the Inn  in Light’s Hope Chapel! No, today I simply “mucked around” – doing a bit of this, playing a bit of solitaire, experimenting with fonts and backgrounds – the background that you’re currently looking at isn’t the one I made earlier today and experimented with… I decided that I didn’t really like it after all, and scrapped it – which meant that I had to either construct a new background toot sweet, or just go for the plain, flat colour, sans pattern or texture, that I went for next. I didn’t like that look either, so… by this time I was starting to sweat! It was almost four o’clock, and I hadn’t devised a workable background! I’ve used another background I rather liked – I’ve used it before, when it was blue… but a blue background wouldn’t go with the green Header – so I re-coloured it, and at the moment I think it looks quite acceptable – though I’m just as likely to decide otherwise in an hour or two! 😉

I also played around with fonts a bit – the one you’re currently seeing in the Header isn’t one of my new ones, it’s actually a much older one that I like a lot, but it’s a “shaded” font and doesn’t work all that well with the styles I use… but I accidentally discovered a hack for that little problem the other day, when I was playing around with one of my newest fonts – which also happened to be “hollow”! I wished that it was a solid font, as I’d be able to use some really spiffy styles on it, but styles lose all their “oomph” on thin lines – which was how this font had been designed. I thought of just “colouring in” the blank bits… and after a small amount of “trial and error” (three attempts/tests, actually) I managed to create a secondary, solid layer of colour underneath my font – I made the solid layer one colour, and the outline of the font above it in a contrasting colour and style, and as the saying goes, “Bob’s yer Uncle”! So anyway, I’d worked out a work-around for the hollow font, and it worked very well, too! In this case, however, I was using a shaded, or textured, font, which I wanted to hide – so I simply added the “solid” layer above the text, hiding the unwanted shading. I’m quite pleased with the effect, actually! I don’t know why I didn’t think of doing something like that ages ago!

While I was pottering away with fonts and stuff, Julian was busy doing “proper” things, like doing a bit more work in the garden to get the veggie bed ready for our tomato planting – hopefully sometime next week… Oh, and he cleaned out our two hard-working “bug catchers” that we have hanging under the ceiling of our rather large outdoor deck, because I’m totally allergic to mosquito bites! After that, he came inside and cleaned out Auric and Dapple’s condominium. Don’t ever fool yourselves that goldfish are “low maintenance” pets! Their tank needs to have 30% of its water “swapped out” every week – that means siphoning out 1/3 of the water and replacing it with fresh, clean water. The glass gets totally cleaned once a week, and Julian does a quick “vacuum” of the gravel once a week too, with a more thorough gravel vacuum, as well as a general plant and decor “de-algae-fying”, every second week. They got the “full” treatment today, so the tank’s looking all sparkly and kleeeen – not that Auric and Dapple are at all impressed! They hate having their peaceful routine interrupted by strange, pale tentacled “things” descending into their home, uprooting rocks and trees, before putting them all back in the wrong places! Tsk! What’s a little fishie to do? (why, cower down in one corner of the tank and wait for the horrible ordeal to be over, of course! That’s what a little fishie’s to do! 😉 ) There are two filters in the tank, and he changes each of the filters on alternate weeks. The water needs regular testing – at least once a week – to monitor the amount of nitrites, nitrates and ammonia in the water, as well as testing its ph balance, and adjustments are made as needed (Julian does this once a week, and keeps a log of the results) So it’s not just a matter of standing there and saying “Awwww! Look at the pretty little fishies!”, and feeding them – there’s also a fair amount of work involved! I generally try to help by keeping out of Julian’s way while he’s doing all of this work…

And that’s about all that happened today – so I shall now get on with the “good” bits! 🙂

Food stuffs. Last night for dinner we had our home-made hamburgers, made with real ham! I mean real pork, not beef! Julian was making them when I wandered into the kitchen at one point, and he said that the hamburgers just didn’t “feel” right when he was making them, and he wondered what he might have done wrong, or left out – so we went through all the ingredients, and he’d forgotten the breadcrumbs! Luckily it wasn’t too late to add them, because he’d gone and bought breadcrumbs specifically for the hamburgers! We had the hamburgers pan-fried, with organic (but not home-grown!) plain boiled potatoes, fully organic and home-grown broad beans, and our usual half a tomato. For dessert I had one of my Corella pears, and a Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurt. There were a couple of (cooked!) hamburgers left over, so we had those for our lunch today – in a most delicious seeded sourdough sandwich, with a bit of our favourite butter substitute, basil-pesto hummus! 🙂 Tonight we’re having a fairly plain, ordinary dinner, with pan-fried steak, chips, steamed green beans, and our usual half a tomato, and for dessert I’ll have a couple of my yellow Nectarines, if they’re not too soft and squishy, and an Apple Le Rice.

Weigh-in this morning. Was pretty horrific! Bear in mind though that I’m still working those horror pills out of my system – that generally takes about a week and a bit, with a sudden peak between the second and fourth days. Today was the second day – and boy, did I peak! I think I managed to keep a fairly calm face, but every time this happens, I die a little inside. Thank goodness I only have one more lot to take – in another three months, before I see Dr. Y. again, because I can’t keep doing this – I simply can’t! I’d rather go through all the hassles and the very real dangers (for someone on Warfarin, and a long history of clotting) of surgery, if it’ll keep me off these wretched pills! Anyway, I went from 68.6 kg yesterday… to 69.3 kg today… I know it’s only fluid – my feet certainly do look like balloons – but it’s just so depressing… and uncomfortable, as far as walking is concerned… (yes, I did do my treadmilling again today – and all the other exercises that Polly has set for me!) I’d better get off my backside and have that fasting blood test done – not that any of us, including Dr. B, are expecting any different results from the last time I had the tests done… (*gloom*)

And here we are, almost up to tomorrow again! It’ll be fun to get back into WoW with Wynterthyme and Demelzae, and to change Hati’s appearance! I still haven’t decided how I want her to look – but I have a feeling that even if I did decide tonight, it’d still be a split-second decision tomorrow morning, anyway! 🙂 Flipper was a good girl last night, and despite still having access to her pussy biscuits well into the afternoon, she made quite a job of eating her dinner last night! Maybe she overheard me talking to Julian about using the s-y-r-i-n-g-e to get her medication into her! 😉 Anyway, once again, that’s about “it” from me for this evening! Do call in again tomorrow night, to see how my stupid weight went, and what we finally decided to change our respective Hati’s into! 🙂 Until then though, remember that you are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream, and don’t forget to keep warm (or cool) and dry, no matter what the weather’s like, to look after yourselves, and to always drive carefully… but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.37 pm

OK, here I am a little later than I usually like to start – but I’ve been doing a bit of fiddling with some of the new fonts I got the other day – and no, I haven’t changed the Header yet, so don’t go looking to see if it seems at all different! It isn’t! Trust me on that one! Yes, I fiddled with some of the fonts, and have found a very interesting one. It’s “hollow”, you see, and it doesn’t look very good against a dark-ish blue background (like this one) because although you can change the colour and style of the outline, it’s a very thin outline, so it doesn’t really stand out well… Anyhoo, I’ve found a really easy way of “filling in” the blank area inside the outlined font – and that’s what I’ve been doing, “experimenting” with different fill-in colours, patterns and styles! And I would have had a new Header up to show you all except for the fact that I’ve found so many nice, pretty, clever, dark, patterned, pastel – you name it – “fill-ins”, that I just can’t decide on which one to use! 😥 “Spoilt for choice”, it’s called… Never mind – I’m sure I’ll have picked one or two to use – even if only “temporarily” – by the end of the weekend! 😉

This morning I played WoW – this time I played with Ellrevienne, who’s now level 43, and happily questing away in the Eastern Plaguelands, travelling along with Fiona, towards Light’s Hope Chapel. I’ve actually left her out in the open, because Julian had been working outside in the garden this morning, and he came in saying “Winter, can I have your attention for a moment!”, so I logged out, got thoroughly distracted by the gardening and Flipper, and this, that, and the other, and haven’t been back since! Poor Ellrevienne! I just hope that I’m in a safe enough place that I won’t be jumped by half a dozen blood thirsty (or brain thirsty?) Zombies, when I go back to collect her! (Ahhh! Coffee! (slurrrp!) That Nespresso Christmas Special Variety “Linzer Torte” is just sooo yummy and delicious!) ← sorry, I got distracted again – but then, coffee does tend to do that to me, especially if it’s extra nice coffee…. where was I? Oh yes, Zombies… I’ll probably go back and rescue her this evening, after dinner and television, and try to level up Aliriah or (the new and improved!) Viverra tomorrow… because on Sunday, Wynterthyme and Demelzae get to change the appearance of their constantly scratching and howling mutts!

Just briefly: with the advent of the new Legion expansion, once characters reach level 100, each Class gets a chance to go on a special quest to receive a brand new, never-before-seen, Class-specific weapon. All Classes are broken up into sub-Classes, and each sub-Class receives a different version of their special, Class-specific weapon. Both Wynterthyme and Demelzae are Beastmaster Hunters – our Class-specific weapon is a fancy-schmantzy gun called “Titanstrike”, which comes with its own special “extra Pet” – a wolf named “Hati“. Beastmaster Hunters always have a Pet who fights with them – which is why I’ve normally always played Beastmaster Hunters – but now you not only have a fancy-schmantzy gun, the magical abilities of which you can “boost” by collecting special “artifacts”, but you also have a magical second Pet, to aid and assist your original Pet with the fighting. I think there must have been a lot of complaints about the appearance of Hati – wolves make excellent fighting Pets, but they have two extremely annoying (to me, anyway!) traits, and those are that they’re constantly sitting down and howling, or sitting down and scratching themselves, as though they have fleas – even in the middle of battle! And people wanted “matching” Pets, too, so that both Pets would look the same (honestly, we Gamers are never satisfied with what we’re given!) So now, at level 110 (the highest level possible – so far!) we can go on another “special” quest, to gather the ingredients to create a magical formula that will change Hati’s appearance, for once and for all! Wynterthyme and Demelzae have just completed this quest! They have all their ingredients, now all they have to do is decide which of their many Pets they want Hati to look like! I don’t know how many Pets Demelzae has, but I have about 25 (I think!) and I can’t decide if I’d like to end up having two identical Spirit Bears, because Bears are traditionally very strong and robust and can take a lot of punishment – and Spirit beasts can heal themselves – to a certain extent, anyway – or whether I’d rather end up with two identical Spirit Cats – mainly because I think that the Spirit Cats look really, really cool! Ahhh Decisions! Decisions! I’ll let you all know what we decided to turn our Hati’s into on Sunday – if I have time to write anything next Sunday, that is! 😉

And that’s been pretty much the sum of my day! Julian, as I said, has been out working in the garden, and has almost completely cleared out one of the two veggie beds, so as to be able to get it ready for all the tomatoes we want to put in. Last year’s tomatoes turned out so well – especially for garden newbies – that this year we want to plant twice as many as we did last time! Unfortunately our cauliflowers didn’t turn out so well – does anyone reading this know why our cauliflower heads are starting to turn a nice shade of mauve, and whether they’re safe to eat? We didn’t do too well with our celery, either! For some reason, they all grew up with great, fat, thick stalks (more like a small tree!) in the middle, and what looked like normal celery stalks on the outside, only terribly skinny, floppy, and “weedy” looking! There’s no way you could use them as “celery”! The broad beans did well though, as did our green beans – but all the peas we planted, from sugar-snap to “normal”, were a dismal failure, and the carrots, although edible and quite nice, weren’t really…. “carroty”? Still and all, it was our very first attempt at growing our own vegetables, and we do have a bit of a reputation for killing plants, just by looking at them…

Anyway, I shall now get on to the “good” bits! 😉

Food stuffs. Last night for dinner we had the second lot of our frozen left-over Lamb and Harissa Lasagna with Feta and Oregano (only one more left-over meal of that left now! Julian will have to make another batch, “toot sweet”, as the French say!) and for dessert I had one of my Corella pears, and a Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurt. Julian went out to check the PO Box this morning, and came back with lunch from Baker’s Delight – so I had two halves of two different savoury rolls, and a yummy, delicious, “simply to-die-for” fruit and white chocolate scone. He also came back with some bread-making flour! Sourdough bread-making flour! I’m really looking forward to being able to make our very own sourdough bread! (Winter bounces up and down in her chair, clapping with delight!) For dinner tonight, Julian is making home-made hamburgers, only with minced pork, instead of minced beef – because they’re supposed to be “ham” burgers, aren’t they? So why are they always made with beef? (it was my suggestion to try making them with minced pork – I hope they turn out as well as I’m hoping they will!) With them we’ll be having some boiled potatoes, some of our own, home-grown, fully organic broad beans, and our usual half a tomato. For dessert I’ll probably have an ordinary old apple, and an Apple Le Rice.

Weigh-in this morning. Wasn’t too bad, actually – especially after all that pure, liquid sugar that I ate yesterday – and it was only yesterday that I took my last little “deplorable” pill – but I went from 68.6 kg yesterday, to… 68.6 kg again today! Yayyy! (Winter goes to jump up and down, decides that she doesn’t quite trust her ankles, and decides to sit down again instead) Anyway, today I managed to do the lying-down exercise that Polly set for me the other day – yesterday, my thigh muscles were still too sore from my visit to her on Tuesday to be able to manage it – the other exercises are really pretty easy – and I did my treadmilling again today – even though she told me to do it every second day 🙂

And that just about brings me round full circle, to tomorrow! As I said, I’ll probably do a bit more work on my young-uns in WoW, and Julian will probably be out doing some more work in the garden. We’ve had an idea as to how we can get some of Flipper’s medication into her, seeing that she doesn’t really seem terribly interested in her dinner these days. Loxicom is a liquid – she usually has three drops mushed into her dinner at night, and she takes – should be taking – ¼ of a Norvasc tablet for her blood pressure. Julian usually grinds this up and puts it in her dinner, too. Norvasc tablets are pretty small anyway, so I reckon we could grind the tiny ¼ up, and incorporate that with her Loxicom in this “alternative” dosage form. Her potassium tablet is really big though, and while we can grind that up and put it in her dinner, we’re just going to have to keep doing that, and if she gets it, she gets it – if she doesn’t – she goes without. The “alternative” dosage form is a syringe – minus the needle, naturally! No, if Julian sits on the couch in the Den here and keeps her happy with Daddy Pats, Nasty Mummy can come up to give her a pat too, then, before she’s aware of what we’re up to, gently put the syringe into the corner of her mouth, a quick press on the plunger, and I think she’ll get more of her medication than she isn’t at the moment! Now, is that sneaky, or is that sneaky? 😉  I’ve had to medicate cats like that before, and while you do lose a bit of the dosage, the cat usually gets the bulk of it inside them. We do have a syringe like that here, somewhere – we just can’t find it at the moment! Hmm… we might have to ask the Vet for another one… Auric and Dapple are both well, and getting really adept at disappearing inside their Big Purple Rock – and that’s… really about “it” from me for this evening! 🙂 Do call in again tomorrow night to find out if we’ve managed to find the syringe, and if we’ve medicated Flipper successfully that way yet, what my weight decided to do to me this time, and what other types of fun and excitement we’ve been up to! Until then though, please bee very, very good, remember that one day your life may flash before your eyes, so make sure it’s worth watching, and don’t forget to always drive carefully, to keep cool or warm, depending on your temperature preferences, and to look after yourselves… but above all… please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.13 pm

Well, here I am – apologies for not writing yesterday, but I think I was just too numb… or perhaps too bitter… to have been capable of writing anything! (Winter shakes her head sadly) “President Trump” – wow! But watch out, America, because you got the President you deserved! And watch out too, the rest of the world, because we all have to live with America’s choice of leaders! I fear that the world has fallen into that hideous and ancient curse: “May you live in interesting times!” I truly wonder what’s going to happen when the people wake up one morning to find that – Trump can’t give jobs back to the angry and disillusioned voters who gave him his win (which was supposed to be rigged, wasn’t it? Oh well, maybe it was, too… for him!) It’s not just a matter of “opening up new manufacturing plants”, or bringing the business back to “home territory” instead of outsourcing it overseas, where automation can mass-produce goods a lot quicker and cheaper than a slow and cumbersome production line – or by “deporting” (i.e. firing) the Mexican and Latino workers who supposedly “stole” their jobs, because they didn’t (steal their jobs) – yanno, sometimes it’s more practical and economical to import things rather than to pay people to make them! Yes, I do understand that an awful lot of people felt disenfranchised, and totally left out of any of the important decisions regarding their lives. They had nothing, and were starting to get even less. Their so-called “Representatives” (ahem! Whom they also voted for!) didn’t represent them at all! They represented themselves, and lined their pockets, and made decisions that would only benefit themselves and their ilk!

In other words, yesterday’s Presidential Election turned out to be the modern-day version of the 1773 Boston Tea Party, where dressed as Native Americans, furious Americans threw an entire shipment of tea from the East India Company into Boston Harbour, as a protest against “taxation without representation”. Yesterday, it wasn’t tea that they threw overboard, it was the “current establishment”, along with Hilary Clinton, that they threw out!

Most of what Trump said he was going to do, he’s not going to be able to – just because you’re the President of the USA doesn’t mean that you can do anything you like, whenever you like – in some ways, the President is much like the Queen of England – able to veto here and there, but totally unable to have your head chopped off. I just don’t think I’d like to be Donald Trump when his supporters find out that – he isn’t going to be able to bring back the old manufacturing jobs… he isn’t going to be able to build a Great Big Wall to keep illegal Mexicans out of the USA, and to make Mexico pay for it! And he isn’t going to be able to deport every single illegal alien, or to prevent Muslims from entering the USA! No… I don’t think I’d like to be him at all, when his supporters realise that they’ve been had, because they’re going to be right-royally pissed off!

So yesterday I pretty much sat around like a stunned mullet – why, I don’t know! I don’t think that I honestly, really-and-truly, thought that Hilary would win and that we’d end up with a female President of the USA – I’m afraid that country simply isn’t mature enough for that yet – maybe one day, but yesterday was not that one day! Shame… Truthfully, I didn’t want either of them to win – but… maybe Trump has more of a penchant for getting lynched when people find out that he can’t do any better than Obama… Time will tell… But mark my words – things will change here in Australia, too… we just have to cross all our fingers and toes and hope that it won’t be too bad.

This morning Julian had an appointment at the Dentist, to discuss what they’re/he’s/we’re going to do about his four central top teeth. They’re in urgent need of attention – really, they just need the facings on them re-done – but the Denti$t has ideas if shortening the two front teeth, crowning one of them (or both of them – in the end I lost track of which tooth they were talking about!) and artificially “straightening” one “eye” tooth, which is quite small, and a little crooked. All this work is strictly cosmetic, but on the other hand, having a capped tooth in the front there just might prevent problems later on, as one of the teeth is dead, anyway. We told them we’d let them know next week. I usually don’t go with Julian when he goes to the Dentist, but I went today because I saw an extremely nice maxi skirt in a “Sale” email from Katies, and there’s one right across the road from the Dentist, at The Pines Shopping Centre. Now, because of my wretchedly deformed ankles, I haven’t worn a skirt in centuries, but this one looked… nice. Special. And I decided that – maybe I’d try it on, and if it looked alright, I’d get it… They also had a very nice black “peasant” blouse that has almost ¾ sleeves (hopefully they’ll be long enough to hide my icky upper arms!) and they also had a pair of jeans… with proper pockets in them! So I got a pair of those too… (have you all realised yet that it’s very dangerous to take me shopping? (Winter nod-nods) Thought you might have! 😉 ) As Julian’s appointment was for 12.30 pm, but he didn’t actually go in until around one-ish – we had lunch over at The Pines before we went off to find Katies there, and in the end, we didn’t get home until a bit after 3-ish… and that’s been pretty much my day today! Flipper did a pretty good job of her dinner last night – we were both very pleased with her. Tonight she started to eat her dinner (I put her pussy biscuits away as soon as I got home – she was still asleep on our bed, so she didn’t see me doing it! Shhh! Don’t tell her it was me, or she’ll hate me forever!) Yes, Julian put her in her Dining Room (The Bookless Library!) with her dinner, and apparently she’d started to eat it, and then brought it all up again on the carpet in there! 😦 Poor little girl – hopefully she’ll go back and eat a bit more later… And speaking of eating, I guess I should move onto all the “good” bits, now that I’ve filled you in on all the goings-on chez nous…

Food stuffs. Last night for dinner we had some Beak & Sons “The Godfather” Classic Pork & Beef Sausages – we haven’t had those ones before, and they were really very nice! Julian was annoyed though, because there are usually six sausages per packet, so we get three sausage “meals” out of the one packet of sausages (at one sausage each, you see) but this particular pack of sausages only had five sausages in it, so we had one and a half sausages each last night, leaving one and a half sausages each for the next time we have them. Oh dear! The terrible traumas and hardships we go through, just for a sausage dinner! We had the sausages with mashed potatoes, steamed green beans, and our usual half a tomato. For dessert I had two smallish yellow Nectarines, and a new and different Chia Pod! It was an Apple and Spice Chia Pod, which was absolutely lovely! Not only did it have the usual weird little “bobbles” of chia (anyway I think that’s what they are!) in it, it also had tiny little cubes of apple through it, too! (or little cubes of apple flavoured protein, more likely!) Anyway, it was very nice, and I told Julian that we’ll have to get some more of those, next time we’re doing the shopping. Now, lunch today was quite interesting! There is no Shingle Inn at The Pines – there was a Coffee Club there, but it’s all boarded up being re-furbished at the moment – so we went to a reasonably nice-looking but “I Can’t For The Life Of Me Remember Its Name!” snackeral place, where I had a really, really, really yummy “Halloumi Bagel”! The Bagel didn’t have a hole in the middle – it was more like a fairly large, flattish (?) round Turkish-bread roll, absolutely smothered in sesame seeds, and full of slices of Halloumi. It was served warm, with the Halloumi a bit more than half melted – and I tell you what – the Shingle Inn can keep their BLTs on Sourdough Bread! Ah’ve found me a noo favourite lunch! 🙂 Unfortunately, I’ve never seen them anywhere else! 😦 But you can bet your sweet bippy that from now on, I’ll be-a-lookin’! I also had two tiny little squares of what I think were some sort of semolina cake (I got the feeling that it had been a “bar”, but that they’d cut it in half, making the two tiny squares) They were exceptional! A teeny bit yummy-crunchy on the top, and on the edges, the rest was soft and squishy and exactly like a very, very moist semolina cake – with maybe a bit of almond and almond meal in it! It was also most probably made from nothing but liquid sugar! But, oh… it was de-scrumptiously-yummy! So after all of that for our lunch today, tonight for dinner, we’re having another of our frozen left-over Lamb and Harissa Lasagna with Feta and Oregano. For dessert I’ll have a Corella pear, and a Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurt.

Weigh-in yesterday morning – Day 9 of the [censored] little Pills… Actually wasn’t too bad, considering! Mind you, I’m still completely off the graph page, and who knows when, or even “if”, I’ll come back down to what I’ve been considering to be “Normal”, for me! This morning I went from 68.8 kg on Tuesday, to 68.7 kg.
Weigh-in this morning – finally! Day 10 of the [censored] little Pills! Of course, it’ll take me a bit over a week to get them completely out of my system (though I have this working theory that they never quite do leave your system! They accumulate in your body, and every time you do take them, they accelerate and exaggerate the original effects – so the more often you take them, the higher your weight will go, and the harder it will be to lose it again!) Again – it wasn’t as bad as it could have been! I went from 68.7 kg on Wednesday, to 68.6 kg this morning! However, after eating that (absolutely delightful and delicious) pure liquid sugar today, what I see when I clamber up onto the scales tomorrow morning is anybody’s guess!

I started with my treadmilling again today – I told you the other night, after I’d been to see Polly, the Physiotherapist, what she wanted me to do – 1 minute at 6 kmph, followed by 1 minute at 3.2 kmph, for ten minutes, every second day – and wearing “Flight” socks, because of the swelling in my feet. Umm… this didn’t work! The “Flight” socks were… awkward, to put it mildly! My feet are very long, very wide, and very deformed. I wear a size 11 shoe – when I used to be able to buy shoes “off the rack” – so I needed a men’s size 12 to 14 “Flight” sock – only they’re so damn tight (well, I suppose they have to be!) that I wasn’t strong enough to get them on! I kid you not! I had to get Julian to help me get them on – I kept getting my little toe stuck in them, and more pulling really only threatened to dislocate said little toe. It took Julian and I, between us, ten minutes to get the ruddy things on, and then the tops of them were so ruddy tight that they started cutting off the circulation to my legs, so I had to fold the tops over, and down to a slightly thinner part of my leg! Finally I had all my socks on (the “Flight” socks, plus two other pairs of heavy-duty walking socks) so I got onto the treadmill. Now, Julian and I had discussed this at some length, and he said that 6 kmph was far too fast for me, and to stay around the 4.6 kmph instead – but I wanted to try 6 kmph, anyway – and see how I went… I didn’t! I was yelping “Help! Help!, help!”, because the “minus” button on the treadmill handle wasn’t working properly. I finally got it slowed down enough to regain my composure (i.e. I stopped screaming!) and now I know, for once and for all, and although it pains me to have to say it, 6 kmph for me is “sprinting” fast enough to break all the Olympic records and win the Stawell Gift! I’m little! I have short legs! I’m “stumpy”! So I alternated between 4.4 kmph, which is what I used to walk at, and 3.4 kmph – and honestly, changing from one to the other every minute was just plain crazy! So I finished off the ten minutes at a solid 4.4 kmph. The reason Polly wanted me to alternate like that was so that I’d have to lengthen my stride – so I paid close attention to how long I could get my stride, at 4.4 kmph. Errr.. it was exactly as long as my stride is normally, without doing the splits! I’m seeing Miss Polly again next Tuesday, and I’m afraid I’m going to have to tell her that (a) I can’t possibly get my stride any longer without doing the splits, (b) 6 kmph, for me, equals an extremely fast sprint, which my very healthy sense of self preservation simply won’t let me do, (c) neither Julian nor I have the time to waste on wrestling the “Flight” socks on every second day, plus the fact that their tops cut off my blood circulation, and finally, (d) I’m going to be doing 10 minutes every day, at 4.4 kmph, until told that I can increase the time limit…

I might also add that I’m so stiff and sore after my first session with Polly that it’s all I can do to get out of my chair! The other exercises are easy enough, but my legs are just too sore to do one of them!

Dinner is yelling at me – back anon…

09.52 pm

Dinner is now gurgling happily in my stomach, and all’s well in the Den! 🙂 In actual fact, there’s really very little left to tell you! As far as I know, we’re just having a nice, quiet day at home tomorrow. I managed to pick up 20 lovely new FREE fonts last night, which I might have a bit of a play around with tomorrow, if I get too tired of playing WoW. Flipper has been back and eaten a bit more of her dinner, and apparently managed to keep it down this time, and tonight when I went to say goodnight to Auric and Dapple and turn their tank light off, they actually didn’t complain that they “weren’t tired yet Mommy”, and could they just have “nother five minnits, pleeeease!?” – so at the moment I think they’re happily lying side by side about and inch off the bottom of the tank, tails twitching every now and then to keep them stable, all ready to go to sleep (if no-one goes into the kitchen and turns the lights back on again – after we’ve had our cup of tea, of course! Ya gotta get y’priorities right, y’know! 😉 ) And so once again, that’s about “it” from me for tonight! Do call in again tomorrow night to find out what my weight did, after all that pure, liquid sugar this afternoon (I felt a little bit like a hummingbird!) and if I’ve had a bit of a play around with all those new fonts I snagged (if the Header’s different, then I probably have!) but until then, do try very hard to bee good, don’t forget that once a president gets to the White House, the only audience left that really matters is history, and remember to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry this week, because this time next week you’re probably going to need to turn on the air conditioner – but most importantly, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.03 pm

Here I am at last – sorry about last night, but by the time we’d finished with the hair re-touching etc., and cleaned up, it was after 7.00 pm – so I didn’t bother to start writing anything – it was too late! Never mind, I can tell you all that my very favourite eldest daughter has lovely blue hair. and that my “vibrantly streaky red” (??) hair looks fabulous again! 🙂 I can also tell you that Flipper hardly ate any dinner at all last night, which has us both very concerned! Apart from not getting her proper medication, she’ll also stiffen up a lot, and her condition – already not terribly good – will worsen, and she’ll go down pretty rapidly. As long as she eats something – f’rinstance, her pussy biscuits, which while not “ideal“, at least provide some nourishment – and continues to drink, she’ll be alright for a short while… and if the worst comes to the worst, the Vet said (last Friday, when she and the Nurse were here giving Flipper her anti-arthritis injection) we could “feed” her a small tablet to increase her appetite – which we’d rather not do, as I don’t think she’d have a bar of being manhandled into having a pill – no matter how “small” – gently but firmly shoved down her throat! I’m pretty sure we’d both need a few stitches each…

My very favourite eldest daughter and I spent a pleasant morning discussing politics in the Den, because the cleaning lady was here and it would have been impossible to watch the television with the vacuum cleaner loudly buzzing in the background. After K. (the cleaning lady) had finished up for the day, we retired to the loungeroom and watched episodes of “The Flash”, “Arrow”, and “Legends of Tomorrow” for the rest of the afternoon – “and a good time was had by all” – especially after we stopped discussing politics, because – let me see now… how can I put this delicately? My views are a trifle more “conservative” than those of my very favourite eldest daughter, perhaps? 😉

This morning, of course, I had my greatly anticipated visit to the Physiotherapist, and the news is quite encouraging. First, the fluid retention in my feet – she had a few suggestions for getting that down a bit. The Treadmill. Yes, I can get back on the treadmill, but I have to wear a pair of “flight” socks (compression socks that people wear on long flights to prevent DVT!) under my two pairs of heavy walking socks, as she says that this will “encourage” the flow of fluid from my tissues. I can only use the treadmill every second day, until I see her again next Tuesday, to see how I’m going. The treadmill is to be “flat” (not tilted at any sort of angle) and I’m to walk at 6.0 kmph for one minute, then (somehow!) step onto the side bar of the treadmill while I turn the speed down to 3.2 kmph – then I keep on repeating those two steps for ten minutes. If my ankle starts to hurt: If the “hurt” factor is below “5” (on a pain scale of 0 to 10) I keep on walking – it means the tendon is working and growing stronger; but if the “hurt” factor is above “5”, stop and rest for a minute, as it means the tendon is being aggravated. If the 5+ pain doesn’t subside, stop for the day – if it does, attempt to finish off the exercise program. The program is as follows:
Day 1 – 1 minute @6.0 kmph, 1 minute @3.2 kmph – repeat this for 10 minutes.
Day 2 – no walking!
Day 3 – 1 minute @6.0 kmph, 30 seconds @3.2 kmph – repeat this for 10 minutes.
Day 4 – no walking!
Day 5 – 1 minute @6.0 kmph, 30 seconds @3.2 kmph – repeat this for 15 minutes.
Day 6 – no walking!
Day 7 – 1 minute @6.0 kmph, 30 seconds @3.2 kmph – repeat this for 15 minutes.

And by that time I should have been back to see her again…

The “fun bit” is going to be stepping from, and then back onto, a treadmill belt moving at between 3.2 kmph and 6.0 kmph, without falling flat on my face, as I don’t have terribly good balance! Wish me luck!

She’s also given me three sets of exercises to do, to strengthen my leg muscles and ligaments – and all I can say about those exercises is that thank goodness I always had extremely good “extension” and “turnout” when I used to do ballet (many centuries ago!) and that despite my deformed spine and my arthritis, and in spite of being… er… as old as I am¹… I’m still remarkably supple! 😯 Interestingly, my ugly and deformed ankles are not actually due to my osteoarthritis, but to ballet, and my excellent extension and turnout! Then she strapped the offending ankle (which is now starting to itch abominably!) telling us that it should only stay on for “a day or two”, and sent us on our merry way!

So…. thereya go! I has me marchin’ orders, and me bran’ noo exy-sighs-zies to do and to become excellent in – all before next Tuesday morning! 😉

After we finished at the Physio, we went on to The Glen, to get me some “Flight” socks, and to do “a bit” of shopping – which actually turned out to be “quite a lot” of shopping – before coming home to a very necessary and welcome cup of coffee!

And so far, that’s about the sum total of my adventures today! 🙂 So, shall I get onto all the “good” (and the “not so good”!) bits, now?

Food stuff. Because my very favourite eldest daughter was over yesterday, and the cleaning lady was here, and Julian went out to get a few “bits and pieces”, so the house was in a bit of “organisational disorder”, shall we say – and as a result, Julian brought lunch home with him, meaning that I had a half of two different savoury rolls, plus a very lightly buttered fruit and white chocolate scone (my favourite!) Then, because there was so much going on in the kitchen last night, what with my very favourite eldest daughter having her hair washed twice in the kitchen sink, and my hair washed once in the kitchen sink, Julian didn’t cook anything for dinner – we had the first “lot” of our frozen leftovers from the Lamb and Harissa Lasagna with Feta and Oregano that we’d had a few nights previously – and as usual, it was even better from its brief sojourn in the freezer! For dessert I had one of my last Corella pears and a yellow Nectarine, as well as a tub of Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurt. Lunch today was nearly as bad as yesterday’s! We were at The Glen, but didn’t really want much for lunch, so instead of going to our usual haunt in shopping centres, the Shingle Inn, we went to Michel’s Patisserie, just outside Woolworths. I think Julian had a cappuccino, a large sausage roll with tomato sauce, and a muffin of some sort (but I could be completely wrong, so please don’t quote me on that!) while I had a long black, with a small jug of skinny milk on the side, two small party pies (with tomato sauce) and a “brownie slice”. Tonight we’re having the very delicious and tender “Woolworth’s Brand” Lamb Eye of Loin with Caramelised Onion, that we’ve had several times before (because it’s so yummy! 😉 ) on a bed of plain, steamed rice with finely chopped spring onions mixed through it. For dessert I’ll have one of the two brown Nashi pears that we got today, and an Apple Le Rice.

Weigh-in yesterday (Monday) morning – and Day 7 of the “Horror Tablets”. Well, if I’d thought that Sunday was a “horror weigh-in”, at 68.0 kg, it was in reality a fun and happy day at the best Holiday Resort that money can pay for, compared to Monday’s weigh-in! I went up almost an entire kilo, overnight! Thank You So Bloody Much, you shitty little pills! 👿 I went from 68.0 kg on Sunday – which was bad enough because I’d reached the disgustingly fat 68 kilo mark – from 68.0 kg… to 68.8 kg! Two measly points off a kilo! Again… I was shattered!

Weigh-in today – Day 8 of the “Horror Tablets”. Well, it must have been all the hair washing! 😉 I went from a disgustingly fat 68.8 kg… to another disgustingly fat 68.8 kg… I stayed the same, which I suppose is better than going up – again! That’ll be happening tomorrow…

Auric and Dapple seem to be a little more relaxed with their new decor – in fact I’ve seen both of them darting around the back of their new Big Purple Rock – and just… disappear! 🙂 That’s right, they’ve discovered the new “holes”, “caves” and “passageways” in the Big Purple Rock, and have been trying them out for size – so to speak. And so far, neither of them has become stuck in one of the holes! (Quick! Quick! Everyone! Please cross all your fingers, eyes, and toes that they never do! 😉 ) Ahhh well, at least they both eat all their dinner! Tomorrow morning we have an appointment with our Solicitor to sign some papers, but apart from that, I think we both have a fairly clear day, so maybe I’ll get the chance to get back into WoW…. Speaking of which – do you remember that I was saying that we had to collect a certain number of items in order to be able to alter the appearance of one of our Pets, and that I was complaining because the mobs we had to kill to get one of these items only spawned occasionally? Well, Julian had left Demelzae parked right in the middle of this area, so that he could see, just by logging on, if the needed mobs were in residence there or not. Well, this morning, they were! We didn’t have much time – I still had to get myself ready to go and see the Physiotherapist – but I logged on too, and we started slaughtering all these Mages, in the vain hope that we’d be able to get what’s considered to be an extremely “rare” drop (not only are these Mages very rarely in the area, but what you have to get from them is even rarer!) We’d killed quite a few of them, but still no drop from them, and I was beginning to think that we’d either have to be late at the Physiotherapist, or come back another day! We downed another one – Demelzae immediately ran off to shoot another Mage elsewhere, as I stooped down to loot the body… Yayyyyy! We’d finally got the needed drop! Just in the nick-a, too! We immediately Hearthed, and Logged out – I went one way, Julian went the other, and we managed to get ready and make it to the Physiotherapist on time! We’ll either have a look at what we can do with these “hard-to-get” items tonight, or maybe tomorrow – “depending” 😉 And really – that’s about “it” from me for this evening! Please feel free to drop by again tomorrow night, to catch up on all the latest chez nous! Will Wynterthyme and Demelzae have managed to change the appearance of their second Pet? Will my weight have bounced up another kilo and a half? (of course it will! What a stupid question!) and will Flipper have eaten any of her dinner tonight? Until then though, please try hard to bee good, remember that music is the literature of the heart; it commences where speech ends, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry – especially if it doesn’t look as though it’s going to rain! 😉 but… above all… please, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

¹ as old as I am – and I’m-a-not tellin’ any of ya! 😛

04.45 pm

Well, well, well! Aren’t you the lucky ones tonight! 🙂 We finished playing a bit earlier than usual tonight, so I thought I’d squeeze in a short, quick daily update for you all! Ain’t I nice! 😉

Well, WoW was a bit fraught today – and yes, we did die – Wynterthyme died more than Demelzae (as usual) although one of those times was completely Demelzae’s fault! She let fly with a Barrage, bullets sprayed out every which-where, and nearby mobs that she’d thought were friendly…. weren’t… and the rest, as they say in the classics, was “history”! Never mind, we got better again, and soon got our own back on the miscreants! I have to say though, that our quests are starting to get very “muddled” – you see, we keep track of our quests with a handy-dandy “Quest Log” – a list of all our current quests, which runs down the right-hand side of our screen. However Wynterthyme is a Skinner/Herbalist, and Demelzae is a Skinner/Miner, and when they get Profession-specific quests, as they often do, those quests are also listed in the Quest Log. Unfortunately, there’s no quick and easy way to differentiate between the Profession-specific quests appearing in the Quest Log, and the ordinary, run-of-the-mill quest chains in there… so when Julian/Demelza says “I have such-and-such a quest to do – have you got that?”, and I have a look and say “No! I haven’t got that one! Can you Share it please?” but either the Share button is greyed out or missing altogether, or the request comes back with “That player isn’t eligible for this quest!”, or whatever – then we both have to stop galloping along the road to sort everything out – which is très annoyment! It usually turns out that (a) we are both doing the quest, only one of us was reading out the “body” of the quest, and not the Title of the quest, or (b) it’s a Profession-specific quest, in which case if it’s a Herbalist quest, Julian/Demelzae can’t do it, and if it’s a Mining quest, Wynterthyme can’t do it. Why we weren’t both on the same Skinning quest today, and why I couldn’t Share it with Julian/Demelzae, I have no idea! So anyway, you can see that sometimes it’s easy to get confused! I wish they’d display the Quest Log the way they do in the (much bigger and a lot more time consuming to sift through!) “full” Quest Log – where all of your current quests are listed under their specific Zones, or Areas, and under their different Categories and/or Professions!

And that’s pretty much all we’ve been doing today – so I shall move it right along, and get onto all the “good” bits! 😉

Food stuffs. Last night we had pan-fried chicken, served on a bed of steamed rice with spring onion very finely chopped up in it. It was very nice indeed! Julian is experimenting with different ways of pan-frying the chicken, in order to keep it as moist and “juicy” as possible, and last night he pan-fried it until it was almost completely cooked, then took the pan off the stove, and “rested” the chicken, in the pan, for about five minutes. This gave the chicken the time to finish cooking properly, but without the continued stove-top cooking that tends to dry the chicken out too much. For dessert, I had a small yellow peach, and a small yellow Nectarine – both of which I think would have benefited from another couple of days to ripen up a little more! Oh, and I had a Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurt with the fruit. Today for lunch I had another sandwich made from the same totally de-scrumptious sourdough loaf that we’d had in our lunches yesterday, however today I had sandwich-sliced turkey, Cheddar/Tasty cheese, some hot tomato relish, and… some sliced kalamata olives! The kalamata olives really worked well in the sandwich – we’ll have to do that again! 🙂 Tonight of course, is omelet night, being Sunday, and all that – which I suppose will have all the usual suspects in it! Julian fries up the bacon and the diced onions before he starts making the omelets (separately, of course, not the bacon and the onion together!) then there’s the generous pieces of Cheddar/Tasty cheese (which really melts beautifully!) diced tomato, diced red or green, or both, capsicums, plus of course his special blend of “secret herbs and spices” (so secret that even I don’t know what they are! 😛 ) And no doubt I’ll say something along the lines of tonight’s omelet being “one of the best he’s ever made!” 🙂 For dessert I’ll have one of my remaining Corella pears, with an Apple Le Rice.

Weigh-in this morning, and Day #5 of these horrid pills. Hopeless. All I can do is pull a face, shrug dejectedly, and cross another day of weigh-torture off on my calendar. Only another 5 days to! (and then about another four days, while I get the revolting little things out of my system!) You know, last time I set up a graph page to chart my weight, I moved it two kilos “down” the page, so that what happened this morning, shouldn’t have… But it did. I’ve actually gone off the chart! I’m disappointed, despairing, depressed, and full of doubts. I know it’s only the pills dictating these words to me, but I’m beginning to really, truly doubt my ability to keep the weight off. To say that I’ve had a gut-full of this pill-induced depression every third month is the understatement of the millennium – and truly, thank heavens I only have one more “pill event” before I see Dr. Y again next March. And, of course, the fact that I can’t do my usual exercise on the treadmill isn’t helping! I’m seeing the Physiotherapist on Tuesday, so maybe she’ll be able to get me back onto the treadmill again – I sure hope so! Anyway, yes, I went off the chart this morning. I went from 67.8 kg yesterday, to an obese, porcine, revolting 68.0 kg. I’m too depressed to even cry.

Flipper went back and ate a very small amount of dinner last night, and we didn’t give her back her pussy biscuits until we went to bed – and she didn’t even grizzle much about it! Auric and Dapple must have been really spooked over their House Cleaning event yesterday – and the fact that Julian had to re-do their glass walls last night because he’d missed a few patches of algae here and there wouldn’t have exactly helped matters either… because this morning, when I went in to pull up their outside blind and turn their lights back on, they almost went crazy! Trying to hide, rushing for the back of the tank, where they managed to get themselves all tangled up with eachother, and a couple of the plants that Julian had moved! Poor little guys – they really weren’t in a very happy mood this morning! I hope they’ve settled down by the time I go in to give them their dinner! Tomorrow my very favourite eldest daughter will be over, instead of on Tuesday, because (a) Lee’s having her hair cut, and her colour “re-touched” by Josh, when he comes over tomorrow, and (b) I have my appointment with the Physiotherapist on Tuesday, which isn’t exactly conducive to sitting around watching episodes of “Arrow”, “Legends of Tomorrow”, and “The Flash” 🙂 So all in all, I have a fairly busy couple of days – I’m pretty sure there’s something happening on Wednesday, too, but right at this particular point in time, I can’t remember what it is. Anyway, there it is – “My Sunday”, by Winter! And that’s also about “it” from me for this evening! Please feel free to drop in again tomorrow night, to see if we finished up early enough for me to write anything (because Josh has two heads to do tomorrow night, not just one!) to find out how much more my [censored] weight went up, and what else Lee and I watched as we lolled around in the loungeroom, watching television and being generally lazy! Until tomorrow then, please try to bee good, don’t forget to remind yourself that meditation is about opening and relaxing with whatever arises, without picking and choosing, and remember to keep warm and dry in this changeable weather, to always drive carefully, and to look after yourselves… but above all, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.31 pm

“Remember, remember! The fifth of November, the gunpowder treason and plot; I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot!” – I guess that old rhyme isn’t heard much anymore! These days – from what I can gather – November 5th is mainly known as “fireworks night”, if it’s even remembered at all! But back in the “good old days”, when I was a gell, all the children started collecting for the November bonfires (usually “community” affairs in someone’s empty paddock) as early as May! Little by little, piles of old fencing, broken furniture, logs filched from someone’s firewood pile, even the odd tyre or two – although that was rather frowned upon – old tyres were worth money, back in “those” days! Rags and bits of old clothing were collected too, to dress the “Guy” – Guy Fawkes in effigy, who would be burnt (as he well deserved, doncha know!) on the roaring flames of the bonfire. Most adults generally turned an indulgent “blind eye” to the comings and goings of small children dragging their bits of combustible materials down the street – although there was the occasional “Oi! Where d’you think you’re going with that good fence post, young lad!” – whereupon said young lad either dropped the freshly dug up fence post and scarpered quick smart, or tried to look all innocent, with a “but I found it in the lane, Mister, honest I did!” (you could pretty much find anything in those old night lanes, from dead birds that I used to gingerly carry home so that they could have a “decent burial” in our garden, to old books – and bits of “lost clothing”! [ 😉 goodness knows what used to go on in those back lanes after dark! I was only five years old…]) Anyway, towards the end of August, adults would start buying fireworks, and kids would spend their hard-earned pocket money on “penny bungers”, and sparklers, ready for the Big Night! These days fireworks are considered to be far too dangerous for the ordinary “man on the street” to handle, and are only permitted to be handled by the professionals – but in those days, come dusk on November 5th, people would gather outside in the street, or in the afore mentioned paddocks, and those that had assembled a bonfire lit them.  Children scampered around setting off their penny bungers, and waving their sparkling sparklers like demented fairies waving their fairy wands, while the adults stood around and gossiped, lit the bigger fireworks, like the rockets and the Catherine wheels, and everyone usually had a jolly good time. Yes, there was occasionally an accident or two – I do remember, that a boy once managed to blow off one of his hands because he was trying to set off a rocket by inserting it, pointy side down, into an empty beer bottle… in his bedroom (why??!!) but to the best of my knowledge, no-one we knew ever got more than the odd burnt finger, from holding their sparkler too close to the “burny bit”… Ah well, I think kids generally miss out on a lot of things these days, due to everyone being so fearful and over-protective? I don’t expect to hear very many bangs and whooshes tonight, though when we lived in Doncaster we had such a wonderful view over the city – we’d turn off all the lights and sit there watching all the pretty lights in the sky, on New Year’s Eve, November 5th, and any other nights where there’s be likely to be “Officially handled” fireworks. One of our cats, Arty, used to absolutely love watching them! He’d sit there with us, head swiveling every which way to watch the rockets and showers of falling sparks… Alas… we lost him all too soon from kidney failure,poor little boy…

…Sorry! I got all nostalgic for Guy Fawkes night, and Arty, for a bit then! I’m sorry I didn’t get to write anything last night, but the Podiatrist was a trifle late, and by the time she’d gone it was dinner time, and you know my writing rules – If I starts it before dinner, I finishes it after dinner. If I don’t get a chance to start writing before dinner, it doesn’t get written – writing from scratch on a full stomach is just too onerous! So! We did go out shopping yesterday, after the Vet and her nurse had been around to give Flipper her anti-arthritis injection, trim her claws, and snip out some of the many little mats of fur that we didn’t want to snip off in case we snipped her by mistake! The two ladies were really lovely, and soon had Flipper examined, injected, claws trimmed and mats more-or-less vanquished – and although she wasn’t very happy about all the unwanted attention, Flipper didn’t have her usual hysterical fit of the vapours and traumas that she has as soon as she sees the cat carry basket – so although it costs an arm and a leg, if it keeps Flipper a little bit happier, I consider it money well spent! After the Vet and the nurse left, we spent a bit of time making a fuss of Flipper, until she gratefully curled up in her “cave” and went to sleep. Julian put the radio on for her, and we quietly slipped out of the house and went off to Knox City!

Once up at Knox, my objectives were to (1) See if there was a My Size up there, because I wanted to have a look at some slacks that they had in their catalogue. Mainly I wanted to see if they had pockets in them, because if they didn’t (have pockets) then I wasn’t interested in them. However, there’s no My Size store up at Knox City, so I had to cross that one off the list. (2) I wanted to go to Priceline to get some more of my favourite makeup removing wipes, because I only had about two left – I also wanted to have a look at a new makeup removing product from Nivea – which I’d heard good things about – so I got some of that – and finding that it also came as a wipe, I got some of them as well, and didn’t get the other wipes I’d been planning to get. I was then going to go on to Myer, to get some Jurlique Clarity Hand Lotion, which would have been Objective #3, but seeing as I was already in Priceline, I decided to go looking to see if they had anything “comparable”. There was one product there that I’ve had before – well, not that exact same product, but I’ve had some of their other products, so I decided to try the Avène Cold Cream Body Lotion, because I know that I’m not allergic to, or sensitive to, their products. I used it last night, and this morning – and it really is lovely and smooth and gentle! So far… so good! 😉 The only other thing on my list of Objectives was fruit! By this time it was almost lunch time, so we decided to have an early lunch, get my fruit, and head home – completely forgetting that we needed to get Tissues and Naked Ginger! Anyway, we had a very nice lunch at the Shingle Inn there at Knox City – less than 100 yards away from the very nice fresh fruit and vegetable market! I got quite a bit of fruit – some yellow peaches, yellow nectarines, Red Dacca bananas, Lady Finger bananas, and two “Ya” pears, just to see what they were like. Unfortunately these Ya pears come “packaged” in those pale yellow fibrous nets – supposedly to protect them – but I didn’t realise until I went to get one last night that it had been split inside its net wrapping, and the fruit was quite spoilt as a result. I had the last remaining one instead, and it too had some bad bruising, though I was able to eat almost all of it. I don’t think I’ll bother getting any more – it was quite nice, but pretty much exactly the same as the pale skinned Nashi pears – just a different shape! Anyway, after getting my fruit, we came home, and it wasn’t until we were driving into the garage that we realised that we hadn’t been to the supermarket – so Julian had to go out this afternoon to get Tissues and Naked Ginger! Then I read my book (Kindle) until the Podiatrist arrived – and that was about the sum total of my day!

As for today – well, I did play some WoW this morning, but logged off at lunchtime and after lunch started working on the background and header that you’re looking at right now! That took me pretty well up to 04.30 pm, when I started writing this – so now you’re all up-to-date in what I’ve been up to, so now I can get on to the “good” bits, I guess! 😉

Food stuffs. I said earlier that we had lunch at the Shingle Inn at Knox City yesterday, and I had all my “usuals” – a BLT on sourdough bread, a luscious, gooey, and very delectable chocolate caramel slice, and a long black with a little jug of skinny milk. As usual, it was all delicious! For dinner last night we had some beautiful fillet steak, pan-fried with pepper and a little lemon-infused olive oil, mashed potatoes, our usual half a tomato, and some home-grown, completely organic, and utterly delicious steamed broad beans! For dessert I had the Ya pear, and an Apple Le Rice. Today for lunch we had sandwiches made with a new sourdough loaf from Baker’s Delight, and you know, I think it was the nicest tasting sourdough bread that I’ve tasted for a long time! It was really nice and tasty! There was some of the fillet steak left over from dinner last night, so I had that in my sandwich, with some of that yummy Cheddar/Tasty cheese, and a smidge of Baxters Fire Roasted Tomato & Smoky Chipotle Relish. Altogether, that sandwich today was a real winner! Tonight for dinner we’re having chicken breasts pan-fried with a few herbs and spices, on a bed of plain, steamed rice with some finely chopped spring onion mixed through it. For dessert I’m having one of my yellow peaches, and one of my yellow Nectarines, because they’re both quite small – and I’ll be having a Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurt with them.

Weigh-in yesterday morning. I think those wretched little pills are starting to kick in! 😦 I went from 67.0 kg on Thursday, to 67.6 kg yesterday morning… not good!
Weigh-in this morning. Yup, the pills have kicked in with a vengeance! I went up again this morning – from 67.6 kg yesterday, to 67.8 kg this morning 😥 Only another five days to go….

Flipper has been fed, but she’s hardly even touched her dinner! I’ve taken away her pussy biscuits, and she won’t be getting them back until she’s eaten at least half of her dinner – or until just before we go to bed – whichever comes first! Auric and Dapple have had their Fish House thoroughly vacuumed, and all of the glass walls cleaned. Their water’s been tested, and everything’s apparently completely “spot-on”, so that’s good – they should be very happy and very grateful little boys! 🙂 Tomorrow of course, is Sunday, and our “traditional” day for romping through the Broken Isles, looking for monsters to smite, and evil people to castigate! I did change from a Beastmaster Hunter to a Marksman, but I think I’ll change back again so that Demelzae and Wynterthyme can both have the same Pets! I hope we don’t die too many times (though we probably will!) but I’ll fill you all in on that tomorrow night! And once more, that’s really about “it” from me for this evening! Please drop in again tomorrow, to find out how we went in WoW, as well as how much extra (fluid) weight those unspeakably despicable pills have made me go up to, and what other sorts of adventures we’ve had during the day. Until then though, please do try to bee good, remember – to change one’s life: 1. start immediately. 2. do it flamboyantly. 3. no exceptions – and don’t forget to always drive carefully, to look after yourselves, and to keep warm and dry no matter what the weather looks like – this is Melbourne, where the weather is subject to change without notice – but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.35 pm

Goodness, I was going to start writing about ten minutes ago, but got slightly… distracted by an email from one of the ten-trillion-and twenty-three (well, sometimes it ruddy-well seems like that many!) authors from that “get free books” list that I signed up for. So, what was it about the email that managed to distract me for ten minutes? Oh, nothing much, really – just Chapter 1 of her book – “Configured” – the first book of a planned trilogy. I was a bit surprised to see “Chapter 1” splashed across the middle of the email, but having been a cat in one of my previous lives (well, I must have been, because I’m insatiably curious! 😛 ) I thought “I’ll read the first few lines…” and ended up reading the whole chapter – and now I’m impatiently awaiting Chapter 2, which she says she’s sending tomorrow, because… I wanna know what happens next! I admit it – I am a book-a-holic! E-books have truly been my saviour, because I no longer have terrible recurring nightmares where I’ve run out of bookshelf space, and am facing the horror of having to cull my books! I don’t think I’ve ever thrown a book out – ever! I’ve passed a couple of them on to my two very favourite daughters, but there are still too many books to count, still packed away in boxes from two house moves ago, because Julian’s decided that we don’t need bookcases anymore, now that we can store all our books electronically on our Kindles! It’s not really the same though – because there’s nothing more comforting or satisfying than a room packed with bookshelves – from floor to ceiling – overflowing with books of all shapes, sizes and genres – new, or dog-eared and “well loved” – duzza-matta – they’re books, and I can’t bear to part with any of them! And as if my “book fetish” wasn’t enough, we have to go back to my confession of having been a cat in one of my past lives, because I’m so insatiably curious – all I have to do is see an interesting sounding book title, read the “blurb” (a brief synopsis of the story) and I’m positively frothing at the mouth to go and read it “right this minute!” I find myself sitting on both hands, so as not to click on the “Buy now with one click” button on the Amazon site – and even sitting on both hands isn’t enough sometimes, and I find that I’m squirming around in my seat, using my elbow, or sometimes even my nose, trying to click my mouse on that wretched button! I think that currently, I have more new, and totally unread books stored on my Kindle than I can possibly live long enough to read – but you can bet your sweet bippy that I’ll give it a damn good try! (hmm… I wonder if I could persuade the powers-that-be to let me take them with me? 😉 maybe if I smiled very sweetly… *shrug* s’pose it’s worth a try, anyway…)

So – apart from getting distracted by books, what else did I do today? Well, I played WoW this morning, and got Ellrevienne up to level 40 – though as yet I haven’t taken her back to her home city – the Exodar – to learn how to ride really fast horses, because by that stage I was starting to get a little bit “lonesome” to play a Horde character again… Now, I’ve deliberately not rolled a Wynterthyme account Horde character on Saurfang, because I’m not sure what sort of resources I have available for them. I was pretty sure that there was a Horde Guild, and Guild Bank – but what was in it was pretty much unknown. So I went and logged in to my other, Tinselfluff, account and had a look. Yes, there is a Guild, and a fairly sizable Guild Bank Vault – not that there’s that much in it though – there’s about 600-odd gold in there, and a few sundry useful items – so hiking back to my primary account (Wynterthyme) I bit the bullet, and created my only Horde character on that account – a Blood Elf called Aliriah! (who’s now level 7, and doing her “baby training” in the Orc Training Area!) and by then it was lunchtime, and Julian had just arrived back from his shopping expedition, so we had lunch!

Let me explain… originally, we were going to be going out and doing some shopping together – but Julian needed to go to Doncaster for coffee and Dry Cleaning (amongst other things!) and I wanted to go to Knox City, because they have a really nice fresh fruit and vegetable market there, and I’m starting to get a little bit desperate for some decent fruit. We also needed to see our Solicitor in Nottinghill, as there are a few bits of paperwork that still need to be taken care of; and we had to pick up some more of Flipper’s medication in Blackburn. I elected to stay home, and go up to Knox City tomorrow – and having decided to go up to Knox City tomorrow morning, I then get a call from my Podiatrist’s Receptionist, to remind me that she’d be calling in tomorrow afternoon, at about 4.30 pm! Then, not to be outdone in the awkwardness stakes, Julian tells me that he’s organised for the Vet to pay us a visit tomorrow morning at 11 am, to give Flipper her anti-arthritis injection (I wonder if the Vet would give me one too, if I asked nicely?! …probably not… *pout*) clip her claws, and shave out any mats of fur that we didn’t want to have to handle ourselves. So, it looks like we have a pretty full dance card tomorrow! On Monday, the cleaning lady will be here in the morning, and my very favourite eldest daughter will be over in the morning too, because not only will Josh be doing my hair when he comes over on Monday afternoon, but he’ll also be cutting her hair, and “refreshing” the colour that he’d put through it about two months ago – so that sort-of takes care of Monday! On Tuesday, I’ve finally got an appointment to see a Physiotherapist about my wretched (and still sore!) right ankle! I’m seeing Polly, the same Physiotherapist that Julian was seeing when he wrecked his ankle, some time ago. Hopefully she’ll be able to (a) give me some exercises for it, and (b) let me know if it’s safe for me to get back on the treadmill again – I haven’t dared to do so yet, without an “official” say so, because I don’t want to make it a lot worse! I’ll also be asking the Podiatrist about my ankle tomorrow, though I suspect that she’ll just advise me to see a Physiotherapist!

Small aside: Nespresso have got their three special Christmas “Coffee Variations”, and Julian brought home a tube of each, to see if we liked them – I’m drinking one of them as I type. They’re supposedly “based” on three favourite Austrian desserts: “Sachertorte” – which is pretty close to the Ciocattino that I usually have (sort-of a little bit chocolate flavoured!) “Linzer Torte”, which is another type of cake that usually has a “lattice” top on it – we thought we could definitely taste “cherries” in that one, and last but not least, “Apfelstrudel” – or apple strudel – which as the name implies, supposedly has a slight apple taste – and which, surprisingly, it does! Having only had one cup of each so far, at first “taste”, at the moment I’d rate them in this order: First: Linzer Torte – I really liked the (very slight) “cherry” taste. Second: Apfelstrudel – again, I like the very slight “apple” taste, and Third: Sachertorte – don’t get me wrong, it’s lovely – but too close to what I drink all the time for it to be much of a “Special Christmas Variation”!

Getting back on track again – regarding next week – and we’re seeing the Solicitor on Wednesday! And on Thursday, I think I’ll just stay in bed… 😉

So that’s our busy week roughly mapped out for you all! Julian was just saying today – he’s retired, he doesn’t go out to work anymore – so how come he’s always so busy, and however did we cope when he was working! “But… Is… a… Puzzlement!”

And now I’ve finally got you all up to speed on our comings and goings, I can get onto all the “good” bits! 😉

Food stuffs. Last night for dinner we had pasta – spirali, actually, not “wind-round-your-fork” spaghetti, with tomato sauce and a little bit of grated parmesan cheese. For dessert I had one of my remaining Corella pears (quite a nice one, actually!) and an Apple Le Rice. For lunch today we had our usual naughty Baker’s Delight fare – a half each of two different savoury rolls, and one of the baker’s Delight delicacies – a fruit and white chocolate scone! Tonight for dinner – and we probably shouldn’t be having it because we only had pasta last night – but we’ve been waiting ages to make this again! Lately there seems to have been a bit of a “run” on minced lamb in both Coles and Woolworths, and we haven’t been able to get any for nearly a week – however Julian did manage to get some today, so he’s made one of our very favourite recipes – Lamb and Harissa Lasagna with Feta and Oregano! It’s just finished cooking, and is “resting comfortably” in the oven with the oven door open, and boy, does the house smell yummy! For dessert I’ll have my last brown Nashi pear, and a Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurt.

Weigh-in this morning – on day 3 of my “Pilules Horribilis”. Still taunting me! Still teasing me – pretending one thing, whilst waiting to dash my hopes and dreams into smithereens! I went from 67.3 kg yesterday… to… 67.0 kg today! Tomorrow is going to be horrible! I just know it!

And as I’ve already told you all about tomorrow, and the day after, and next week, and all – the only things I have to catch you up on are Flipper, who gets her jabs tomorrow, here, so as not to upset her too much – and Auric and Dapple, who are both perfectly behaved, as always! 😉 And really – that’s about “it” from me for this evening (I’m hurrying this bit as Julian has stalled the News for me and is starting to look a bit anxious that his Lamb and Harissa Lasagne with Feta and Oregano might be getting…. cold…!) Do call in again tomorrow though, to find out how our ultra-busy day went, how Flipper reacted to her little “visit”, and what other adventures we managed to squeese into our hectic schedule! Until then, do try hard to bee good, don’t forget that the better you know yourself, the better your relationship with the rest of the world, and remember to look after yourselves, to keep warm and dry when the weather gets stormy, as it does on occasion here in Melbourne, and to always drive carefully…. but above all… please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.21 pm

Do you know, it’s taken me nearly half an hour to actually get anything written today? I’ve been stuffing around with itchy hands – not itchy palms, mind you – that I wouldn’t have minded, because according to folklore and superstition, it would have meant that I was going to get some money! No, it was the backs of my hands that were driving me batty – an area about the diameter of a tennis ball on the back of each hand was itching like there wasn’t going to be any tomorrow! I hope it’s not my latest acquisition that’s causing it! You might remember that several days ago I mentioned that I’d brought a new body moisturiser made by Grown Alchemist? It’s really rather nice on most of me, but not on my face, which is where I bought it for in the first place. So after a few days, we were out shopping again, and I spotted some new Palmolive Oil Infusions body moisturiser, which I decided to try… It smelt as nice as it sounded – Citrus with Jojoba Oil – and it was touted as being “non-greasy”. I probably shouldn’t have bought it – because I know from bitter experience that I can’t use the Palmolive “Aroma Therapy” shampoos and Shower Gels, because they…. (Winter goes on, in a very small voice) make me itch…  Anyway, I’ve been using that on my face – and my hands – since I got it – and now the backs of my hands are so itchy they’re driving me up the wall and down the other side – I’ve rubbed some cortisone cream into them to try to calm the itch, but it hasn’t quite kicked in yet – so I’m trying to type, and not just sit here, trying to scratch the skin off the back of my front paws! Thank all the powers of goodness it hasn’t made my face itch too – yet, anyway! *sigh* Back to the drawing board! You know, I should have just stuck with what I knew worked for me – the two Jurlique Clarity products that I’ve used for years and years – Clarity Hand Lotion, and Clarity Hand Wash – they’re both fantastic, but the Hand Lotion is soooo expensive, so I was looking for a “more affordable” solution. However on the face of it, I’ve probably wasted more time, effort, and money on trying out “unsatisfactory” products, than I would have if I’d just gone and bought more of the Jurlique Hand Lotion in the first place!

Anyway, so apart from getting terribly itchy hands, what else have I been up to since Saturday night? Well, not a lot, really – playing WoW mostly, of course, but on Sunday evening Julian’s sister came over for dinner, because she was in Melbourne over night on her way to somewhere-or-other (she’s a Federal Court Judge and more-or-less flits around the country “as needed”!) On Monday, Josh came over in the afternoon, and on Tuesday, my very favourite eldest daughter was over. Normally, she usually stays at home with her equal but more technical half on a Public Holiday, but Neale doesn’t get Cup Day, and had to work, so we had the pleasure of her company! As usual, she and I sat lazily in the loungeroom and watched episodes of “Arrow”, “The Flash”, and “Legends of Tomorrow” – which are all getting decidedly fraught and scary! I keep reaching for my Peril Sensitive Sunglasses, but I seem to have mislaid them!

We had a bit of fun and games on Monday – Auric and Dapple’s Fish House light went off! One minute they were swimming around in bright, clear water, showing off their lovely red-gold scales – and the next, they were plunged into darkness! No amount of expert fiddling on Julian’s part would get their strip of lighting going again, so he rigged up a temporary strip of led lights which made everything look “blue-ish”, and really showed off their pretty reddish-gold scales, and when he went out later, to do the shopping, he also dropped in to the Pet Shop place next to Aldi’s, up at Vermont South, and bought them a new lamp! (sounds a bit like a Panto, doesn’t it, in Aladdin, when the evil Magician  successfully tricks the Princess into giving him the Magic Lamp! “new lamps for old! new lamps for old….”) Unfortunately, after fiddling around in the Fish House when he was re-arranging their rocks and plastic flora the day before, then their lights going out, which necessitated even more annoying fiddling in their watery domain to try and get said lights working again, Auric and Dapple became quite traumatised and distraught, so that the mere sight of Julian walking up to the tank to give them their breakfast sent them fleeing to the furthest reaches of their small world, and cowering under the new plants that he’d put in for them! I ended up giving them breakfast on Monday and yesterday, but they seem to have calmed down today, and have gone back to being their usual happy little selves! And so all’s well that ends well, in the watery world of “The Puddle Jumpers”¹! 🙂

Well, when I said that I’d “mostly” been playing WoW, I have to also explain that I haven’t had all that much time to play any of my usual “solo” characters. On Sunday of course, Julian and I played with Wynterthyme and Demelzae – and didn’t do too badly! We both died – I died a lot more than he did – I’m not quite sure why, apart from the fact that I’m just not fast enough to get out of the way of incoming spells, curses and sundry missiles! However, we did have a great time! We did finish up a bit earlier than usual for a Sunday, but that was mainly so that we could start setting the table and getting dinner items ready for when Mitta arrived. I played again on Monday – didn’t really get a look-in yesterday (Tuesday!) – and I played again today – with Ellrevienne, who’s now almost level 40 (when she can learn to ride a faster horse!) and while not wanting to “mozz” myself, I do have to say that she is doing remarkably well! Hopefully I’ll be able to do a bit more with her tomorrow! I’ll be sure to let you all know! 😉

And now it’s on to all the “good” bits! 🙂

Food stuffs.
Sunday – for lunch we had really yummy sandwiches, made with seeded sourdough bread, with our favourite butter substitute of basil-pesto hummus, ham, my delicious Cheddar/Tasty cheese, and a small amount of the Baxters “imaginary” Fig, Date and Balsamic Chutney. For dinner that night – even though/especially because Julian’s sister Melissa was with us, we had our traditional Sunday night omelets. My omelet had diced green and red capsicum, fried onions, semi-melted cheese, capers, ham (because we’d run out of bacon! 😦 ) Their omelets were pretty much the same, except instead of ham, they had smoked salmon, because Melissa is a Vegetarian who eats fish meat, but not animal meat, if you see what I mean. For dessert, Julian had bought a very nice cheese cake, which was absolutely delicious, with a tiny little dollop of cream! 😉

Weigh-in Sunday morning. Not too bad, I suppose – I went from 67.3 kg on Saturday to 67.2 kg

Monday – for lunch we had a standard “brought home from the shops because Julian was doing the shopping and didn’t want to have to turn around and make lunch when he got home” – so we each had one half of two savoury rolls, and a scrumptious “Baker’s Delight” fruit and white chocolate scone. For dinner that night we had the most tender and delicious little pieces of fillet steak, with chips, our usual half a tomato, and some of our very own home-grown, fully organic, and really fantastic, broad beans! They were a resounding success, and I think we’ll be planting a lot more of them next year! For dessert I had one of my Corella pears, and we both had a small slice of the left-over cheese cake from Sunday night – again, with a teeny dollop of cream.

Weigh-in Monday morning. Well, I can’t say that I was surprised – I went from 67.2 kg on Sunday, back to Saturday’s weight of 67.3 kg!

Tuesday. Well, we had to have toast for breakfast, because Julian had forgotten that we were completely out of cereal! We had two slices of toasted sourdough bread each², with a meager spreading of peanut butter, and half a banana sliced onto the peanut butter – it was actually quite delicious, and I remarked to Julian that I wouldn’t mind having that more often, if only as a change from the eternal and everlasting two Uncle Toby’s Vita Brits, a sprinkling of Sultan Bran, half a sliced banana, and 200 ml of milk – but he flatly refused 😦  For lunch we had yet another yummy sandwich made with sourdough bread, with a smear of butter, sandwich-sliced corned beef, tomato, and chopped lettuce. For dinner we had Beak & Sons Gourmet Wagyu Beef sausages, (which also don’t exist because I can’t find a reference to them anywhere online – and yet we ate them! *shrug* so go figure! They certainly tasted real enough!) with chips, our usual half a tomato, and peas (of the commercial, frozen variety) mixed with some of our own home-grown, fully organic leeks, which Julian had cleaned, chopped, blanched, and frozen when we harvested them, many months ago! For dessert I had one of my brown Nashi pears, and we had the last itty-bitty little slices of Sunday night’s cheesecake – again with a small dollop of cream. Unfortunately, it’s all gone now! 😦 (still, three night’s worth of desserts from one small cheesecake is pretty good going!)

Weigh-in Tuesday morning. Please remember that on Tuesday morning I started taking those wretched and deplorable little fluid-retaining pills again! 😦 😥 So naturally, because I was about to start taking them – I had to go through the proverbial “calm before the storm”! – just to thoroughly rub my face into what was not going to be happening for the next ten to twelve days! I went down! From 67.3 kg on Monday, to 67.0 kg yesterday. I stood forlornly on the scales, waving a sad goodbye to the “zero” after the point! 😥

Today for lunch we had – guess what! Oh, you’ll never guess! I’ll just have to tell you all! I had a sandwich! Yes! Really! 🙂 Once again, it was our favourite sourdough bread, a smearing of butter, sandwich-sliced cold roast beef, Cheddar/Tasty cheese, and some of the Baxters Fire Roasted Tomato & Smoky Chipotle Relish – absolutely delicious! 🙂 For dinner tonight we’re having pasta with tomato sauce, and a small amount of grated parmesan, and for dessert I’ll be having one of my Corella pears, and – seeing that there’s no more cheesecake – I’ll be having an Apple Le Rice.

I’m afraid that you’re all going to have to wait until tomorrow night to find out what my next weigh-in is going to be – suffice to say that it won’t be pleasant!

My pasta is calling me – back later! 🙂

09.29 pm

Well, my pasta is busy being digested, and we’ve watched our quota of television for tonight, so I’m back! 🙂 Now, where was I, when my pasta so rudely interrupted me? Oh yes, that’s right, I was telling you all that you’ll just have to do what you do every night after reading my daily musings! Wait until tomorrow night to find out how my weight went! 😉 And so, onto tomorrow! I have no idea what’s happening, except that we may have to go out at some stage – Flipper needs more of the special anti-arthritis drops that we put on her dinner (because there’s no other way we could get them into her that wouldn’t involve a great deal of blood-letting – 99¾% of it, ours, and she seems to like the taste of them on her food, anyway!) I need to get more fruit – I’m down to one apple, one brown Nashi pear, and two dubious looking Corella pears, we’re down to only one box of tissues, and I also need to get some more naked ginger. I know there was something else that I wanted to get too, but I can’t remember what it was right at this point in time. Don’t worry though, I’ll think of it while I’m in the supermarket – even if whatever I think of there turns out not to be what it was that I thought I needed this afternoon! Oh, and I’m sure you’ll all be delighted to hear that Flipper is once again deigning to eat most of her dinner, and that Auric and Dapple have got over their fear and distrust of their housekeeper and breakfast giver! 😉 And that, gentle readers, is about “it” from me for this evening! Do call in again tomorrow night – to find out if I remembered what it was that I thought I wanted, how my stupid weight behaved itself, now that it’s being aided and abetted in its recalcitrance by those ‘orrible little pills that I have to take for the next nine days! . Until tomorrow night though, please try hard to bee good, remember not to strive to be a success, but rather to be of value, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry, especially at the moment with weather and temperatures all over the place like a dog’s breakfast (which come to think of it, is pretty much usual for Melbourne, anyway!) but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

¹“The Puddle Jumpers” – because they successfully “jumped” out of their squalid little “puddle”, and into a whole new world of clean, clear water, lots of food, and pretty rocks and (plastic) plants to frolic and play amongst! 🙂

²“two slices of toasted sourdough bread each” – I feel that I should point out that (a) we get Baker’s Delight to slice the bread at “sandwich thickness” – which is pretty thin, and (b) the loaves are very small in dimension. One slice of sourdough bread would probably equal ½ a slice of commercial white bread – if that!