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! 🙂