Month: April 2017

05.37 pm

Well, it’s a wee bit late to be starting to write, but I felt that I owed you all a bit of an après Easter catch-up…

Pre Easter – two horrible things happened…

THEY  MURDERED  MY  FIG  TREE!

Well, it wasn’t really my fig tree per se., it was the fig tree “backdoor” – that is it was growing on the property behind us, but had (lots of!) branches hanging over the fence (and through the fence!) and from which we regularly plucked deliciously luscious ripe figs, when they were available. Alas, the house was sold a few months ago, and was demolished the week before last. When we knew that the house had been sold, we also realised that the beautiful, big, healthy, and very fruitful fig tree would probably be… “demolished” too… cut down… murdered… Well, we hoped for the best, but expected the worst… and sure enough, last week, after the house itself had been razed, the fig tree was also “removed”. The demolition and removal workers even broke a hole in our back fence with their damn digger, as they were attempting to remove the fig tree’s roots! It was a beautiful big tree, too – big and strong and healthy… green and shady in summer…  ah well, I suppose that at least I’ve still got my very own fledgling fig tree, sturdily growing in our back yard, sheltered by our large storage shed.

The other horrible thing was…

I broke one of my implants! I’ve just come back from my Prosthodontist, to see if they can fix it – which they can, but…  it’s complicated. I’d actually broken this tooth twice before – the first time, I did pretty much what I did this time – broke one side of my lower right molar (the “buckle“, I think it’s called) completely off! Dr. N. looked it up in his notes, and sure enough, five years ago I’d done the same thing (in fact you could actually see remains of the cement used to repair it, on the broken bit of tooth (which isn’t really “tooth” at all, it’s porcelain, as are the rest of my implants!)) So… what to do this time? Option One: I could leave it as it is – it’s reasonably safe, the broken edges aren’t sharp enough to be causing me any discomfort – but of course, it’s not as strong as it ought to be (there’s really only about a quarter of the tooth left) and it’ll cause a lot more trouble if left to its own devices. Option Two: I can have it rebuilt from the bridge up. This would mean unscrewing the bottom half of my teeth and sending them off to have the new molar made from scratch. I’d be without bottom teeth for a week! Now, this might be bearable (who am I trying to kid!) and I’d be left with a brand new tooth that would be as good and as strong as they were when they were first screwed in. Option Three: I can have that particular section of my lower implants unscrewed (the last three back teeth from the lower right hand side, including the broken one) and sent off to be repaired, just as I did five years ago. Depending on when they were sent off, it’d take three or four days. I could have had them removed and sent off today, but they wouldn’t have been collected until tomorrow afternoon, so the “repairers” wouldn’t have received them until Thursday – one day until the weekend, then next Tuesday is ANZAC Day, so I’d have been lucky if I got them back before that weekend! OK, so I’d go in early on Monday morning to have them unscrewed, they’d (hopefully) go off that afternoon, etc., etc., but even if they did come back by the Friday (which would have been a bit “iffy” anyway, what with ANZAC Day, an’ all!) Dr. N. was going to be Lecturing all day that Friday! Arrgghh! Well, the best laid plans of mice and men, etc… Anyway, the upshot of it all is that I’ve gone for Option Three (the repair job) but I’ll go in Monday week (May 01st) to get them unscrewed and sent off. They should be back by Friday, May 05th., so hopefully it’ll be a case of “all’s well that ends well”! 🙂

Easter was good though! 🙂

Our Hot Cross Buns from Ferguson Plarre were really yummy! (and still are, as we still have enough FP HCB’s for another three breakfasts!) The kids came over for luncheon on Sunday, when we had slices of roast turkey breast roll – cold, because we’d cooked it the day before, slices of slow-cooked corned silverside (also cooked the day before) some delicious home-made potato salad (my very own original recipe, too!) commercially bought quinoa tabouli salad (cos we haven’t found a good recipe for it yet to make our own) and a loaf of lovely fresh sourdough bread from Wood Frog, over at Doncaster. For dessert we had a yummy chocolate Mud Cake, with cream, and some Baklava, which my very favourite eldest daughter and her husband brought with them… all of that was followed up by very nice coffee, and lots of loose chocolate lollies and eggs.

Guess who didn’t have any dinner on Easter Sunday night! Not even a piece of fruit, or some yoghurt! 🙂

And now my dinner tonight (pasta) is ready!  I’ll be back to finish off later on…. 😉

 09.48 pm

And here I am again, after a lovely dinner of farfalle, with our own fully organic, home-grown tomatoes in the form of a delicious and home-made tomato sauce (passata) and a sprinkling of freshly grated parmesan to complete the dish! For dessert I had a brown Nashi pear, and a lemon CHOBANI yoghurt, which I was cruelly forced to share with two greedy little cats, Sal and Satai! Mind you, Sal doesn’t like the lemon yoghurt ones that much – he prefers the Le Rice, whereas Satai likes all yoghurts, no matter what flavour!

Well, I managed to struggle through Easter fairly well, trying to eat only on one side of my mouth, but usually forgetting and finding myself chewing vigorously on a quarter of a rear bottom molar instead of a full one, when I’d hastily and guiltily shove the food over to the new “chewing” side again… But then I’d think “Oh well, a mouthful of three-quarters melted, and half-chewed chocolate isn’t really very hard, it should be alright”, and shift everything back over to the damaged but normal “chewing” side. Anyway, we asked Dr. N. this afternoon if I had to try and avoid chewing on the damaged side, or if I could chew on both (sides) and he said – not terribly enthusiastically – that it’d probably be alright… if I was careful! …so I am!

We’re busily munching our way through all the left-over Easter goodies, in preparation for our big Optifast Diet once we’ve eaten up all the left-over chocolate, remaining Hot Cross Buns, Easter Eggs (I still have two big ones to go – Julian only has one left, but he eats a lot faster than me!) and Toll House Cookies, which were my very favourite youngest daughter’s “IOU” Birthday present to me, that I received on Sunday, along with half a dozen of her famous home-made Hot Cross Buns (which, unfortunately, are all eaten now! 😥 ) I’ve found my old Optifast notes, charts, and eating plans from 2014, so it’s just a matter of updating them a bit, and doubling up the quantities… I’m not exactly looking forward to it, but on the other hand, I’m not dreading it, either… and I have to admit, my weight has “spiked” more than somewhat, over these last few weeks of gratuitously stuffing myself with chocolate, until I’m almost (almost!) at the point of not wanting to even look at chocolate again for… oh, I don’t know? Ten minutes? Give or take a few seconds… 😉

So anyway – that’s really about it from me for tonight, as we haven’t really been doing very much, being still in our “Coasting-Through-Easter-And-Trying-Not-To-Think-About-It-That-Much” mode, but no doubt by next week, we’ll be up to our eyebrows in “thingz” again. Oh, one thing of note – we’ve been watching Netflix lately, particularly “Stargate Atlantis” – we’d watched almost all of the Five Seasons of it, and were just four episodes away from the end of Season Five and the final dénouement – the last of Stargate Atlantis forever – when Netflix’s contract with the distributor ran out, or whatever, and the show was pulled! Julian was forced to go and download them “elsewhere” so that we could find out how it ended (which was pretty lame anyway, but we wanted to see it, after investing that much time in watching the ruddy thing!) So we got to see the ending, and then we went mooching around Netflix looking for something else to watch, and nothing else really appealed… so this evening we had a look at Stan, and found what I hope will turn out to be a good series – “Forever” – I’m pretty sure that the Stan blurb said “2 seasons”, but just about everything I’ve read about it in the past five minutes says there’s only one season – so, who knows? Anyway, the first episode was quite good! 🙂 I’ll let you know how it goes, if we keep watching it…

As for what’s happening tomorrow, well, Julian has an appointment at the Dentist in the morning, and I have Sean coming over in the evening, but apart from that? I have no earthly idea… but, drop in again tomorrow night, or the next, and I’ll fill you all in on our comings and goings! 🙂 Until then though, please do try very hard to bee good, remember that behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes… and don’t forget to keep cool – or warm, as the whim takes you, to look after yourselves, and to always drive carefully – but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

05.16 pm

My goodness, it’s been a long time! Sorry about that everyone, but… better late than never, right? Well, I was going to go out today, to get Easter Eggs to give to everyone on Sunday, to look for a new computer chair for Julian (for his very belated Birthday present!) and an equally “very belated” joint Wedding Anniversary present (which was only last December!) of a suitable “Blanket Box”, “Footlocker”, chest “thingie”, or whatever they’re really called – to go across the foot of our bed – something that we can store “junk” in, or lazily drop our clothing on top of, when we can’t be bothered going and looking for a coat hanger upon which to hang said clothing. But it was (*insert expletive here*) cold this morning, and The Age weather information paragraph said to “take an umbrella today”, and as is my usual want, I got cold feet, and chickened out of the expedition. Instead, I busied myself with dithering around for most of the morning, not doing anything terribly constructive – unless you want to call cleaning out three rather well-used cat litter trays, and vacuuming most of the cat hairs off one of our wheelie stools¹, “constructive”! Julian is on a campaign to “cat toy-proof” the house, by inserting appropriate sized pieces of timber underneath all the chairs, couches, cabinets, dressers, and anything else that the cats love to bat their toys under – probably only for the fun of seeing “Daddy” down on his hands and knees with a torch and a long stick, trying to find and retrieve the various toy balls, mice, and feathered trinkets for them. It’s quite amusing to watch – I’m quite sure that you’ve all seen cartoons of cats crouched by a mouse hole, peering intently for any sign of movement? Well, it goes something like this – and both cats do this, by the way – they play ecstatically with their catnip-laced toy, batting it around, chasing it, scrabbling for it, until they finally manage to get it underneath a heavy piece of furniture. Light furniture just doesn’t do it for them – no, it’s not allowed to be anything that’s easily movable, it has to be something large, heavy, and unwieldly! Once the toy is in place under the heavy piece of furniture, they crouch there, staring into the darkness under the couch (or whatever the toy has been batted under!) until one of us notices – which is usually pretty quickly, because they wait until we’re around to do it. Once they know that they have our undivided attention, they turn around and look at us with sad eyes – “I’ve lost my toy!” – they seem to be saying, then they crouch down again, peering intently under the furniture… because they can see their toy, but they just can’t reach it – their little legs just aren’t long enough! This is obviously a job for “Super Daddy”, so Julian sighs, gets up, grabs the torch and a long piece of gardening trellis bamboo (which actually used to be the main part of Sal’s very first toy, only we “un-toy’d” it when Satai “accidentally” ate a little piece of curly Christmas wrapping ribbon that had been tied onto the end of it, and which he then promptly sicked up onto the carpet, so it was deemed to be an “officially dangerous toy” and, as I said earlier, secretly “un-toy’d”, when they were both asleep that night. It was Sal’s favourite toy, too… 😥 ) Where was I? Oh yes, Julian is either kneeling or lying on the floor, with his torch and his long “reaching stick”, and fossicking under the couch for the Lost Toy – the two cats are totally fascinated at seeing what’s under the piece of furniture by torch-light – it must look so exciting and enticing to them – and they’ll sit there peering under the torch-lit couch (or whatever) even after their toy has been found and returned to them… 🙂 Cute little guys…

So Julian is methodically working his way around the house, stoppering up all of the under-furniture-gaps with lengths of snugly fitting timber. Poor cats – no longer will they get to see the enticing and fascinating fairy-land expanses under the furniture by torchlight, once he’s finished!

After lunch, I played a bit of WoW, and then went hunting new – yes, you guessed it – WordPress Themes and Templates. I found a lot of them too, but I didn’t like them that much, so I’m sticking with this one for a bit. One of my favourite Net places to visit these days is Creative Market – a fabulous place for extremely reasonably priced fonts and graphics of all sorts – and every week they give you six  FREE whatevers. Sometimes fonts, sometimes graphics, but usually a mixture of things. This morning, one of the free items on offer was a new WordPress Theme, and from the sound of it, was almost everything I was looking for in a Theme or Template – almost too good to be true! So I gleefully grabbed my free download, and set about installing it. Uh-oh! The installation failed… because the most important part of the Theme, the CSS Style sheet, was missing! Looking at the home website of this wunnerful Theme, it said that their friendly staff would be very happy to install it on my computer for me… What?!? Give some total stranger access to the inner workings of my private computer?!? Because with this set up, everything’s on my computer, not the data base of a commercial entity like WordPress.com – and you can bet your bottom dollar that they’d never be stupid enough to let anyone from a third-party “free” Theme organisation anywhere near their files! They had to be kidding, right? No, apparently they weren’t – so I waved goodbye to my free, “almost perfect” Theme. It wasn’t Creative Market’s fault – their clients offer them items to give away once a week – it’s not their fault if one of those freebies is shonky! :/

Well, tomorrow my very favourite eldest daughter will be over, so I won’t get another chance to go off and buy Easter Eggs until Thursday, but that’s OK – say lar Vee, as the French say! 😉 We’ll spend a cosy afternoon inside, watching episodes of our favourite TV shows! 🙂

And now, for your enjoyment…

10.25 pm

And now it’s a lot later than I wanted it to be 🙁 I’ve been trying to mess around with getting the photos all neatly in a line across the screen, but I dunno how! So I’ve had to make do with a straight line up and down the screen instead! Grrr!

Anyhoo, I’m gunna call it quits for tonight – hopefully I’ll get a chance to add in a bit more tomorrow, or Thursday night, depending on what time my very favourite eldest daughter goes home tomorrow… but that’s about “it” from me for tonight though! Yes, my weight is continuing to rise, but at this point, I don’t give a damn – so eat, drink and be merry and all that – let them eat cake, says I! All the cake they want,  cos Easter is only a cuppla days away, and after Easter…. we Optifast! But do look in again tomorrow night to see if I’ve written anything new, or added some new photos of the boys (and I really mustn’t leave poor Auric and Dapple out of the pictures, either! More of them next time, too!) Until then though, do try hard to bee good, and don’t forget that to succeed in life, you need three things: a wishbone, a backbone and a funny bone, and remember to always drive carefully, to look after yourselves, and to keep warm – or cool – depending on your preferences – but most importantly, please – don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

¹Wheelie stools. We have two of them – old computer chairs with the backs and arms removed, leaving just the seat and the base – marvelous for scooting around on tiled surfaces, and even “passable” for getting around on carpet. Their only problem is that they’re cloth upholstered, so things like cat hairs stick to them as though they’d been super glued on! One of the wheelie stools lives in the Library, but despite a lovely couch, and a felted “cat cave”, Satai likes to sleep on the wheelie stool. It was originally upholstered in dark charcoal grey… which has now become more of a nice “taupe”, or “ecru” colour. I’m brushing and vacuuming it every morning when I’m doing the cat boxes, and I’m s-l-o-w-l-y getting it back to its original colour… but it’s a bit like “one step forward, two steps back”, because Satai still sleeps on it, every time he’s in the Library! :/

04.32 pm

Well, I’m finally back! Lots of thrilling and exciting things have been happening – even though it’s been fairly quiet around here, but as you can see, we managed to survive the various calamities and disasters that might have befallen us, had we been rash and foolhardy enough to go out and do anything mildly adventurous! Anyway, if any of you have been checking in to see if I’d actually written anything for a change, you’ll have realised that I was still somewhere around because of the periodic changes to the Template and the Header graphic – so, surprise, surprise – this time the Header graphics and the Template are the same – but I’m writing, instead!

Lemme see now, what have we been up to… I had my Field Test (to see if I’m getting Glaucoma, cos my mother, and her mother both had it, so chances are I’ll end up with it too – Glaucoma can be nasty like that sometimes!) My new glasses arrived – early too, for a change – we hadn’t been expecting to get them for at least another four or five days. I was supposed to book myself in for the Field Test when I was notified that my glasses had arrived, but I was very anxious to go and pick them up, and the Optometrist wasn’t there that day, so I picked up the glasses anyway, and made an appointment to have the Field Test later on that week. I haven’t had a Field Test done for about four or five years (naughty me! 😳 ) and things have changed a bit in the interim. It used to be that they’d put a patch over one of your eyes (because you have to do this test one eye at a time) sit you in a sort of a little hooded booth, give you a small push-button hand-held thingy, and tell you to stare straight ahead at a fixed light. The Optometrist then leaves the room and starts the machine, which begins to flash seemingly random pin-prick lights, here, there, and everywhere. You’re supposed to click the little push-button thingy whenever you see a light flash, and it can become quite fraught sometimes, as some of the lights are bright and fairly obvious, and some are so faint and brief that you’re not really sure if you did see something or not, so by the time you get around to pressing the little button thingy, thinking “Yeah, I think it was a light”, the next light is flashing at you! If you click too many times in quick succession, the machine speeds the sequence up alarmingly! Well, that part of the test is pretty much the same, except you’re not put in a little hooded booth, this time you’re just put in front of a nice gleaming new machine – and go through the same routine. Then you’re taken off to another machine where once again, one eye at a time, you have to look at a glowing “cross-hair”. Once you’re staring at that, they get you too keep staring at it as they move it to the side of the screen, and then you stare a bit more while they do other stuff which your eye automatically tries to follow, but when that happens, they get annoyed, and you have to do it again, without your eye trying to follow the distraction. Then you’re taken back to the original room where they take some photos of your optic nerve, to see if there are any bulges or misshapen parts around its perimeter. The whole thing takes about 40 minutes. The results of all of that were “Your eyes are actually in pretty good shape for someone of your age!” “Someone of my age!” Hmm! I don’t have to have another Field Test for twelve months, because the pressure in my eyes is fairly good, but next time, the Optometrist told me, the test will take longer, because she wants to put some drops in my eyes to try and let a little more light in, as my just beginning to form cataracts are making the insides of my eyes a wee bit murky for taking photos of anything.

After that, we had lunch, and I went off to have my Warfarin blood test done, the results of which we got later that afternoon. My INR has gone up again – a bit too much on the high side (2.8) for my liking, but they (Dorevitch) seem pleased enough with it to keep my dosage the same, and they don’t want to see me for another six weeks!

Julian harvested the last of our extremely prolific tomatoes on Saturday, and pulled everything out of all the vegetable beds except for our one remaining crown of rhubarb – which is almost ready to be harvested too – in preparation for planting our Autumn/Winter vegetables. It’s really the season for planting things like spinach, silverbeet, kale, brussels sprouts, and lots of other “leafy greens”, and we would be, but I can only eat a little bit of those sorts of vegetables – as much as I love spinach, silverbeet and brussels sprouts, I can’t eat any of them very often. They’re very high in Vitamin K, which is why they’re so good for you, but they muck up the way Warfarin works, so people who take Warfarin are told to avoid them, where possible 😥

From the tomatoes that Julian harvested on the weekend he made a very small tub of our extremely delicious “passata”, which we used last night. No, we didn’t have pasta with home-made tomato sauce (“passata”) we had home-made hamburgers – but with a bit of a twist! 🙂 Well, you’ve all heard me rave on about our wonderful and delicious Lamb and Harissa Lasagne with Feta and Oregano, I’m sure, so I thought that maybe Julian could make lamb hamburgers, with a touch of Harissa in them, because home-made hamburgers are really delicious (the last time we had home-made hamburgers, they really were “ham” burgers! Julian made then from pork mince, thus putting the “ham” back in the “hamburger”, and they were absolutely fantastic!) and of course we know for a fact that Harissa goes beautifully with lamb, so the “lamburgers” with a touch of Harissa, and some of the latest batch of home-made passata were duly made, and then I thought – why not warm up the rest of this tub of passata, and spoon it over the lamburgers and the mashed potatoes before they went to the table? Which is what we did, and (*Winter preens proudly*) it looks like I’ve come up with another culinary Star Dish! This one (made up by me!) is well and truly a “Keeper”! 🙂

My very favourite eldest daughter isn’t going to be able to get over this week, unfortunately – she has a couple of uni assignments due, and already has an extension on one of them – but she did come over for a few hours yesterday. Julian picked her up at Deakin and brought her back here, where we had lunch and chattered for a bit, but there was no time to watch any of our favourite TV shows before he had to take her home again. Sean came over though, and once again I’m looking human 🙂 Julian and I watched the last ever episode of “Stargate Atlantis” last night 😥 I wish they hadn’t decided not to run it for another Season (*pout*) so tonight we’re going to have to watch something else on Netflix – probably “Stranger Things” – I’ll let you all know how it pans out!

Auric and Dapple are getting really big now – we have a small triangular hole in the glass “lid” to the tank-proper (just above the water line, but underneath the wooden tank cover – approximately ¾ inch, or 2 cm big) where I drop in their food (teeny little pellets of algae that look remarkably like dry caviar!) Because they were really quite small fishies when we first put them in the tank, we were a trifle concerned that they might try to jump out of the tank through the hole, so we covered said hole with the clear plastic lid of an old CD case. When I go to feed them, I slide it over the glass so that I can get at the hole, and then slide it back again when I’ve finished. It’s worked well – only now the two little fishies are quite big little fishies, and I don’t think they’d be able to fit more than their mouth and a bit of their heads through the hole, even if they were trying desperately to escape! There’s one thing about the tank that concerns us though – and that’s the fact that we’ve noticed green algae growing underneath the inside silicon seal in the back right hand corner of the tank! Surely the algae couldn’t grow there if water wasn’t getting through the seal somehow, could it? And if water is getting through the seal, what does it say for the chances of our tank remaining (a) watertight, and (b) a clean, healthy environment for our two not-so-little fishies? Any thoughts or ideas about this small problem greatly appreciated (as long as it’s polite! 😉 )

Sal and Satai are still being their usual adorable, annoying, and amusing selves – I’ll have to get some photos of them both for you – Satai is no longer a kitten – he’s now taller than his Burmese brother, but very lean and leggy, instead of being short and chunky. I have a small white plastic “foot-step” for getting into high cupboards under my desk, and when he was little, Satai used to love playing under it, as though he was pretending to be a turtle, or something. He’d hide his toys under it, then dive in after them – he had so much fun with it… 🙂 Now, of course, he’s sooo much bigger, he doesn’t fit under it any more… He still likes to put things under it though, and play with it, but he can only get his head and shoulders under it, and occasionally he’ll get down there and peek cheekily up at me, as though saying “Look Mum, I can still be a turtle!” Well, that’s what he was doing yesterday – I looked down, and there he was, all hyper and cute, peeking at me from under the “turtle shell”, with his whole back and tail hanging out the side of it. I laughed – he was so sweet… and then he spotted Sal, playing with something over by the couch! He was instantly riveted! Sal was playing with something that he (decided that he) wanted (for himself!) Without a single thought of where he was, or what he was doing, he took off, complete with “turtle shell” on his head and shoulders! It was so funny to see – if he hadn’t knocked the “turtle shell” against the desk leg, he probably would have just kept on going – but it bumped the desk leg and my handbag, which happened to be sitting on the floor there, and the plastic “foot-step” bounced off him, making him stop and pause for a second “Hmm… who was that masked turtle-shell?” and then off he went again. By the time he got to Sal, Sal had stopped playing with the toy anyway, Satai had forgotten what he’d been running over for, and they both tumbled down together in a mock-wrestling match-come-mutual bathing licks. I tell you, never a dull moment around here with those two! 🙂

My dinner is almost ready, so news on my bourgeoning weight will have to wait until tomorrow. So that’s about “it” from me for this evening – do drop in again tomorrow night to see if there’s any news of my weight and what else we got up to – but until then, do try hard to bee good, remember – to succeed in life, you need three things: a wishbone, a backbone and a funny bone – and don’t forget to always drive carefully, to keep cool – or warm, depending on the outside temperature, and to look after yourselves… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂