04.47 pm
My very favourite eldest daughter was over today – Julian has just departed with her to drop her off at home, because her husband came home early (for a change!) Normally he catches the train down to Geelong for work, but this morning he drove down instead, so we had an early end to our day of watching episodes from our favourite television shows, and you lucky guys get to catch up on all the stuff that’s been goin’ down around here for the past two days! 🙂
Yesterday we left home early to get to Doncaster for my Optometrist appointment at 11.30 am. I have to say that the Optometrist was very thorough, and the whole thing took over an hour – with two room changes involved. Well, I suppose the rooms are very small, and there’s an awful lot of equipment involved, but the upshot of it all was that (a) my new lens prescription is vastly different from my old one (the one I’m currently struggling with – no wonder everything I look at looks kinda fuzzy!) (b) the pressure in my eyes is fine, and (c) I had photos taken of both optic nerves, so they’ll have something to compare them to next time I have my eyes tested, and which showed that while I have very slight cataracts starting to form, my eyes are in extremely good condition… for “someone my age”! Because Glaucoma runs in my mother’s side of the family, they want me to have a sort-of Field Test when I go in to pick up my new (Birthday present!) glasses. The test consists of you sitting in a darkened room, staring straight ahead of you with your head in a sort-of round booth. In your hand you hold a little switch with a push button. Pin-head lights are turned on randomly, one at a time and, while still looking straight ahead, every time you see – or sometimes only sense – one of the lights, you click the button – this is to map your field of vision, especially your peripheral vision. It takes over an hour, and is as boring and dull as sailing solo to Russia on a leaky cargo transport! :/
After that, it was lunch time, so we had lunch at the Shingle Inn, then we came home via the Sourdough bread place – and here I have an apology to make. Apparently the place isn’t called the “Tree Frog”, which was what I told you all the other day, it’s actually the “Wood Frog“, and the bread isn’t called “Noir”, which is French for “black”, it’s called “Soir”, which is French for “evening”, and you’ll actually get to see it, pictured in the Header of the above link! So for those two mistakes, you can blame my “Oldtimer’s disease“! 😉
Although we’d planned to stop off at Bushy Park on the way home in order to get more fruit, both for stewing and for my “dessert” after dinner, we decided not to do so – the weather was just too humid and sticky – we’d decided to go to the Colonial Fruit Company while we were over at Doncaster Shoppingtown instead, which turned out not to be such a good idea, after all! The Colonial Fruit Company over there at Doncaster has changed so much since it first opened after the massive renovations there in 2008 – it had been a really vibrant, exotic, exciting store – from fruit and vegetables that the Queen Vic Market would have been jealous of, to continental produce of all kinds, small goods, dairy, fish, meat, all kinds of fresh pasta – it was a veritable Aladdin’s Cave of culinary delicacies! But slowly, slowly, over the years, the continental section withered and died – not from lack of customers willing to buy the produce, but from the cost of the overheads to maintain it – we know from talking to various shopkeepers that Westfield charge a very mean rental for their shops, and have some pretty dire conditions that have to be followed (one of which was – if the Centre was open, the shop had to be too – even if it was a Public Holiday, or even Christmas Day! – a very sore point with a lot of the shop managers!) plus the fact that a lot of the continental produce they carried required fairly sophisticated refrigeration units – it can’t have been easy to maintain… Anyway, as I said, little by little, they lost all the really interesting and exciting areas that they’d started out with, and the fruit and vegetables started to get more ordinary, plain, and not quite as fresh as they’d formerly been. Yesterday I was horrified to find that instead of half a store of fresh fruit and vegetables, there were now three outside (the entrance to the store) “bins” of fruit – bananas, apples, oranges, pears, and while they’re still available, peaches, nectarines, and plums. No apricots, even, and the vegetable variety wasn’t much better! Practically the entire store has been taken over by a sort-of Asian condiments store (mind you, I didn’t go in and have a proper look around! Next time I’ve over there though, I shall – so “watch this space”!) In the end, we got some bananas, I bought three Williams pears, because as much as I do like pears, I am starting to get just a little tired of them! I also bought eight enormous yellow nectarines – the only size they had – to stew, which I started doing shortly after we got home. In the end, it was Julian who had to cut them into (large!) quarters, and remove the stones for me – they were too big and hard for me to manage without totally mangling them – and then I stewed them. I had three of those quarter pieces on my cereal this morning, and they were absolutely delicious! 🙂
On the last leg of our way home, we stopped off at the Pet Barn place at Vermont South shopping centre to get some more “sausage toys” for Satai – he loves them so much, but is always losing them under the furniture (for which Julian is forever scrabbling around on the floor getting them out) or under the fridge (where they will have to live forevermore – the fridge is far too big and unwieldly for Julian to be able to mount a successful “sausage search and rescue” mission!) and we needed more cat food, too! These “sausage” toys that Satai loves so much are about the same size and shape as a real-life cocktail frankfurter, stuffed with, or scented with catnip – he’ll play with them for hours, running around carrying them in his mouth, or batting them all over the house like a football, or an ice hockey puck, occasionally making little high-pitched growls at them, or anyone who he thinks might be trying to rob him of his “sausage” 🙂
After finishing stewing the nectarines, I just had time to tidy up the kitchen before Sean arrived, and by the time he’d left and we had dinner and all, there was no time for writing, but not to worry, you found out all about yesterday this evening, right? Now, having caught you all up to date, I’ll get on with the “good” bits! 😉
Food stuffs. Because we were over at Doncaster, we had lunch at the Shingle Inn, where I had “my usual” – a BLT on sourdough, a chocolate caramel slice, and a long black, with a small jug of skinny milk on the side. I also pinched two chips from Julian’s plate of fish and chips 😳 For dinner last night we had beef, pepper and Barossa Valley Shiraz sausages, with a half an organic and fully home-grown tomato, sugar snap peas, and chips. For dessert I had a Williams pear, and a MOO Sticky Apple and Organic Honey yoghurt. Because my very favourite eldest daughter was over, Julian went out and brought back lunch – you guessed it, from Baker’s Delight – a savoury roll cut three ways, and a pepperoni and capsicum “pizza” roll, also cut three ways, plus three delicious fruit and white chocolate scones – one each, with a smattering of butter. Tonight we’re having chicken breast, rubbed with a paprika, garlic and onion herb and spice mix, pan-fried, and served on a bed of plain steamed rice, mixed with chopped red capsicum and finely chopped spring onion. For dessert I’ll have my last Williams pear (before it gets over-ripe!) and a fig from the over-the-fence fig tree next door, and one of the CHOBANI yoghurts – I’m not quite sure what “flavours” we have left though – I’ll let you all know tomorrow night! 😉
Weigh-in yesterday. From 74.9 kg on Sunday, I went down to 74.6 kg… I can live with that, I guess…
Weigh-in this morning. 🙁 I wish it was two weeks after Easter! I’d be going down, not up! I went from 74.6 kg yesterday to 74.8 kg Still, I did have a very nice BLT on sourdough, and a yummy chocolate caramel slice for lunch yesterday – I reckon it was worth the two points! 😉
And that pretty much brings me up to tomorrow, when – apart from Julian’s Dental appointment in the morning – I have absolutely no idea what’s happening! Like me, you’ll all just have to wait with battered breath to find out what happened! 😉 Do drop in again tomorrow night to find out what my weight did, how Julian went at the Dentist’s, and what Sal and Satai got up to during the day! Until then though, do try hard to bee good, don’t forget that some infinities are bigger than other infinities – 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! 🙂