(with apologies to Carol Bayer Sager !)

This was on moving day; and you can see that Boodie was absolutely terrified. Not. No hiding in the bathroom for him ! – once he got used to the bringings of furniture et al, he paid it no attention and simply gazed, transfixed, at his new view.

I didn’t let him out that day;  but the following day he was out there, peering down through the transparent balcony walls in absolute fascination. And he’s out there every day: sometimes sitting on top of the external part of the split system. It gave me a fright the first time I saw him up there – especially when he stepped elegantly onto the railing ..

But hey, he’s a CAT ! – they’re not stupid !   :D

It definitely exists.   :)

Those of you who hail from America, don’t take offence at this little video: I think it’s so clever that it deserves to be bruited abroad.

Sammy J is one of our best-known wits. This will indicate why ..

 

 

I have decided that the basic difference between Democrats and Republicans is their smiles:

Getting rid only of Trump and having still to cope with the DISGUSTING McConnell at the head of the Senate would be truly terrible; but at least it does mean that all the arseholes like the Trump children – known on Twitter as ‘the devil’s spawn’ (oh, how I love it !) – plus Barr, plus all the grifters like Betsy De Vos, etc., will be gone. There is some good to be found,

What am I saying ?! – there will no longer be the orange baboon !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I wish I believed that you exist. Because then I’d have a reason to fall to my knees and pray that of the remaining four undecided Senate seats at least three go to the Democrats. For unless that happens, Joe’s victory will be the most Pyhrric of all times.

But I don’t.

Today I went up to ..

MARIBYRNONG

to see my new apartment. It’s FABULOUS. I LOVE it. I knew I would, of course; but to have it confirmed so delightfully was a truly uplifting thing.

I hereby give yous something to do: google the suburb.   :)

I’ll help: that’s it, below; so see if you can place it in the map I posted yesterday. (Thinks: was it yesterday ..?) In the map I last posted ..

You can see the river from a couple of my windows !

The entire section of Maribyrnong in which my building is situated is chocka with development; it’s a huge residential complex of apartment blocks and scattered shopping, with buses criss-crossing –

But wait ! – I am getting ahead of myself ..

Which side is my apartment ? – neither the front nor back, but on the left ‘end’ ..

Don’t be put off by my description of the area: there are no buildings jammed up against each other, and there are built-to-design-choice houses all over the place amongst them.

I even have a friend living there !

But if you want the pièce de résistance, it is this:

Oh, I’m SO EXCITED ! And the apartment itself is full of light (that can be kept out by dropping the very classy blinds) and bigger than I’d expected. I like very much being on the end of the corridor, so that there will be no people walking past in the night. Something tells me I am not going to hear one single large, bored dog barking mindlessly – not ONE !

More later.

The Grand Move.

It’s ‘grand’ because it isn’t within Geelong; so once it’s done, one of my Pages will have to go.

It is within that map, but its name doesn’t appear. Even H’s thanking me for staying this side of Melbourne doesn’t help you ..

I shall reveal all when I post again on Monday night. Pretend you care, OK ?

[grin]

This is the kind of thing that drives to drink a fat old person who has been given to understand certain things about carbohydrate content in fruit:

I have been told and also read that blueberries are THE fruit for low-carb intake, and that raspberries THE fruit no. 2. Yet there is a ‘chart’ that says apples are the same as blueberries !!!

I have eaten apples for my entire life: walking anywhere chomping on one used to be second nature to me. But since being told I must stop eating fruit – except for some berries ! – I have eschewed (like it ?) my favourite fruit entirely.

So WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS ???? – I could have been having apple with my morning yoghourt instead of thos ghastly blueberries ?!! – or pears ? – or fresh pineapple ??

But check out the next ‘chart’ and things are even more confusing ..

It’s BLACK not BLUE that’s No. 1; and all those others there come before the blueberries !! VOT ISS GOINK ON ?!

Obviously ‘expert’ opinions vary, and it depends upon whose word you follow as to what you are going to believe.

Thus am I vindicated – as are those who commented on the previous post ! – in thinking that I might just as well do my own thing. So there! [grin]

I am so desperate to settle on an eating regimen that will combine the things I really like to eat with those I really need to eat that I dunno if I’m Arthur or Martha (as we used to say).

And if that ideal smacks of dreaming, I’m going to continue to work towards it ANYWAY.

Because the things I really like to eat are vegetables, fruit, bread and various kinds of cereal. A local brand called Freedom produces some absolutely yummy breakfast cereals –

I came across that one first: it’s not at all sweet, consisting of flakes with a nutty flavour and pumpkin seeds: boy, is it delicious ?! And then I discovered

and decided to mix them together in a 5-something box with a lid. It was at that point that I decided I could, after all, live without muesli, provided I had a boxful of this mixture. I would add tinned pineapple and Greek yoghourt and stir it all together and have it for my breakfast or lunch. Oh, those were the days ..

But in order to reduce my sugar intake so as to ward off diabetes 2, I am sworn off ALL carbohydrates and ALL fruit (almost), so that breakfast would now be just the yoghourt. I love my Greek yoghourt, but ..

Breakfast is by far the hardest meal to provide for myself under the no carbs high fat regimen. No cereal and no toast and no fruit. Jesus christ on a bicycle ! – is there any point in living ?

I can’t help feeling that there MUST be a middle path I could take that would get me no closer to being pre-diabetic but maybe stay at this fairly naughty figure (whatever it is: my GP doesn’t believe in sharing details of that nature). I mean, if I were to cut down on the carbs but not eliminate them .. and if I were to increase fat intake but not to a disgusting degree .. wouldn’t that do ?

Let’s face it, I’m not going to lose weight. But if I can stay here, with my insulin count (or whatever – blood sugar ?) not progressing, why wouldn’t that DO ?!

(I believe I’ve consulted nine GPs since I’ve been in Geelong – 5 of them in the one practice – and I haven’t once felt confident about his/her pronouncements. My GP in Sydney I had for the last 12 years I lived there: I never once doubted a syllable he uttered. While Chic was still about I used to make him come with me if I needed to see Uttam, because I could never remember what he told me. The problem with that was that Chic and Uttam would make each other laugh, and we often ended up having to do a bit of speeding through my consultation .. But it was all good, back then.)

So what I really like are bread and cereal and fruit and vegies (including those carb-filled beans) and yoghourt and cheese, with the occasional piece of rump. But really only occasional. And what I really need is a lot of fat .. So if I were to make up a general kind of plan – NOT a meal-plan, just a kind of guide – that had me eating three meat meals a week and three vego meals a week and one day a week stuffing my face with Dr Becky’s salad, that absolutely does take away the appetite so that it’s a fasting kind of day .. wouldn’t that be good enough ?

In other words, do I REALLY have to go without almost all fruit (except berries) and many of the vegies I adores (root vegies !) and toast&marmalade forever ?

I can’t do that, I’m here to tell you. Nup, I can’t. It’s all very well Dr Becky telling me that after 40 days of this regimen I can have 1 day of eating whatever I want before going back for another 40 days .. If I look ahead for whatever smallish number of years are left to me and see a wilderness into which I must go for 40 days and 40 nights and then another and then another, interspersed with only solitary days of stuffing my face with my favourite foods .. well .. I will have to top meself.

My thinking now is to make some lists of this half-and-half kind of eating, follow them for a few weeks and then have another fasting blood test and see where my blood sugar is. As the GP has told me not to do that before December, it all fits in nicely.

Wish me luck, yes ?

Here you go: it’s brilliant !

It was a question from a blogging friend – a simple one: “How’s the non-vegetarian diet going ?” – that generated this post. Blame Hannah, OK ?

Re-capping briefly: I ceased to be vegetarian because my younger sister pointed out that if I am approaching becoming pre-diabetic (as my current GP recently indicated), it’s because of my non-flesh diet – NOT because I’ve been eating tinned pineapple as if there will be no more in the whole world the day after tomorrow.

Oh jesus, there are so many threads to all this ..

She talked at length about vegetarianism and what it means for the bod: that I am eating nothing but carbs – all those BEANS ! and PASTA ! and RICE ! and FRUIT ! and vegetables that grow under the ground .. And when you consider that, you realize she’s entirely correct: there’s virtually nothing but carbs in a vego diet. And carbs = sugar. Simple.

So it would seem simple that ceasing to ingest these delightful carbs must reduce my appalling waistline one, but also reduce my sugar intake two, right ? (Should’ve reversed those two in terms of importance.)

‘Simple’ is the LAST fucking word that applies to all this.

Look at those groups, for heaven’s sake ! – how can they be causing me to become slowly diabetic ?! And why are they labelled ‘Healthy’ ?! Well, the answer to that is obvious: the UNhealthy ones are cakes and lollies and pies and fish&chips and all the stuff like that ..

But I’m not a consumer of the unhealthy carbs: it’s the ‘healthy’ carbs that any sensible vegetarian consumes daily (obtaining much-needed protein from the beans, mostly). And I am finding that excising these from my daily intake is so awfully difficult that I don’t know where I am, any more. I have a permanently bad taste in my mouth that causes me to be grateful for social distancing because I would otherwise poison people (and no, it’s not ketosis: I’m not attempting your actual ZERO carbs intake).

I know that I must find a dietician. Someone who really does understand it all and can explain to me satisfactorily every aspect of food. There isn’t one down here in Geelong: I once consulted a so-called ‘dietician’ who maundered on about the balance of the 5 food groups and the pyramid and all that shit, sitting there roly-poly and busting out of her ankle boots .. I was offended, frankly. No, I need a REAL one. Melbourne, probably. Which can’t be done right now ..

I MUST NOT GIVE UP.

The rest of my post just vanished. I’ve just about HAD this bloody new editor. Seriously thinking about finding a new blogging platform, were it not for the fact that all the bloggers I know are on this one.

I wasn’t alone:

But I’m not happy about it. That’ll teach me (I hope).

Here is the consummate article on the whole tRump thing, I go so far as to say.

https://the.ink/p/the-illness-he-is

Read that and you’ll have a really good understanding of the ghastly maelstrom that is the current situation in the US.

Or perhaps don’t, and skip away happily ignorant.

Me, I don’t buy it. It’s just too convenient that tRump and Melania have Covid-19. It gets him out of some dicey forthcoming situations.

Unhappily, it also means he’s back calling the shots. You KNOW he’s going to demand that the election be postponed, and who knows what else ?!

But I’m almost past it all. If the US of A can’t ensure that media coverage is even-handed – and it isn’t – then it’s no wonder tRump can just go on doing whatever he feels like to the Constitution (of course, with Barr’s help).

There’s never going to be another year as frightful as 2020, for which even a halfwit can be grateful.

And yet .. what if tRump and Barr manage to skew the election and he hangs on it there ?

Then 2020 would pale into insignificance.

In the last seemingly æon but actually fortnight or so, I have managed to create chaos for myself online and for WordPress support in wanting them to fix it all.

It’s been a horrible time. My own fault for creating an email aiias.

May I suggest to anyone thing of doing that AND changing to using it for his/her blogsite that he/she walks away from the idea ?

.. exactly what the problem is for me here – cf https://wp.me/p6zYMn-53e.

It can be encapsulated within five words:

I AM NOT IN CONTROL.

For the first time in my adult life, I am living in a place where I do not call the shots.

That is so not me that I find it absolutely astounding to understand, now and not earlier than now, that I hadn’t grasped why I have been so unhappy over the last few months.

I am not living, as it were, proactively: I am always behind, running after things in reaction.

My mail is missing ? – it’s in their “disinfecting” room somewhere, but they won’t search until they find it. I’m going to have to create a stink again and turn up every day ’round at the security check-in until someone pulls his finger out and takes another look.

My kitchen range-hood won’t work ? – the person in charge of this kind of thing takes the filter off to have it put through the main house dishwasher. She does not accept that the filter is not the problem: she says, in a polite but unmistakably condescending fashion, that no-one else’s range-hood has ever given trouble .. The phrase hangs in the air.

A family decides – in spite of Geelong’s being under Stage 3 restrictions – to visit on Fathers’ Day and bring loudly shouting children to play in the very small “grassed” area between these units ? There is no-one for me to speak to about this infuriating fact because it’s Sunday; and I can scarcely address the vile children, as none of the other residents appears to give a shit. I must respond as does everyone else.

If those examples appear petty to you, you have an entirely different mind-set from mine. To me they are insufferable.

I am not in control of how I live, and I can’t live like that.

I should never have come to an institution like this; and I would never have thought of doing so had I not  been approached with an offer.

It seemed like a godsend at the time, getting me out of a lease that was problematic. And there you begin to see: I am a difficult bloody woman, and I don’t like to be under anyone’s control. That time it was the RE agent, who represented irresponsible owners and who had told me lies when I was looking over the place about new carpet and re-painting. I successfully obtained – eventually – the new carpet by taking them to VCat; but the re-painting was never going to happen. I don’t like finding myself completely stymied – especially in the light of having been lied to.

Having long since found myself among the invisible (read: “old”) people, it’s hard enough living a life that can be described as satisfactory; and my Damascus moment of a few hours ago – it’s currently 3:30am ! – has shown me, inter plura alia, that it is far, far from that.

I am posting about it because I want to drive myself to DO something ..

Obviously I am going to have to move; and equally obviously I do not know to where. Or how. Moving is fearfully expensive. Shall I just walk away and leave everything behind ? – throw it out ? Try to sell it ? Donate it ? Move into someone’s furnished rental ? Where ? HOW to get rid of all my own stuff ? Surely there are some things I want to keep ?

My head is spinning a bit.

But I’m not slowly going bonkers, as I had worried deeply that I was.

I’m just totally frustrated and – surprise, surprise ! – angry.

I am an angry person, under the humour. I’ve been this way since January 29th 2005: holding to myself a deep-seated anger that what happened then ended one life and destroyed the other. He didn’t want to leave me and I didn’t want him to leave me; and maybe it all comes back to that ..

But at least I know, now, that my life is totally unsatisfactory and I am going to have to do something about it.