What happened was that I completely fell out of love with cooking.

It was fine as long as I could make my 1-pot stovetop meals and work my way through them. But my sister Paula had pointed out that I wasn’t eating any complete protein while cooking my beans-based vegetarian meals.

It was then I found out that I CAN’T COOK NON-VEGETARIAN. No: not that my noble spirit won’t allow me to; but that I’m not able to !

Bummer.

So I struggled along doing things like eating a shitload of salad with tinned tuna, until I felt that another mouthful of tuna would see me screaming. And Woolworths over the road had put up the price of its roast chickens to $11, which I refused to pay. So for a while it was those deli packets of sliced ham and stuff like that – all of which I actually detest.

And so, of course, I then fell out of love with the MyWW regimen. It was all too hard because I’d never used any of their hundreds of recipes.

Happily, I moved here to Essendon and had changed my Home Care Provider (as mentioned yesterday) and so have someone to offer advice – or, rather, suggest possible solutions. My Look-Afterer says he often eats Lite n Easy meals for the sheer convenience, and recommended a couple. (But he and his wife and kids eat from the straight dinners menu – not the calorie-counted meals; so his choices aren’t available to me.) I signed up; and I’m here to say that although the delivery men are stroppy bastards – well, mine is ! – it’s most definitely worth it !!

I get lunch and dinner. I’ve swapped out my oats banana for a grated apple, and believe me it’s a YUMMY breakfast ! And to not have to even THINK about preparing food is the most delightful thing – just wonderful ..

My Home Care Package picks up 70% of the cost, which means I’m paying just under $41 for a whole week of lunches and dinners because I decided to go with the 1200 calories a day set. Interestingly, moving up to the 1500 a day looks to me to add desserts, coz the menu items have the same names. I’m not a dessert person, and I fill up quickly these days; so as I don’t want to drop too much weight in the short term I’ve ordered some extra soups for next week. It’s all fun !   :)

You can see what I mean about losing weight too quickly .. Of course, a sensible person never weighs herself daily; but I’m glad I did !

I can’t go on eating 1200 calories a day indefinitely; so at some point I’ll cut out the lunches and just order the dinners. Or maybe go up to the 1800 cs a day ! – wowee !! I must check those meals out, sinful as they are ..

But I want to share the joy of never needing, ever !, to think dismally “What on earth am I going to make for my dinner ?” while knowing that it’s meant to be HEALTHY and all that.  With Lite n Easy all that shit’s done for me, lazy old fart that I am ..

But yes ! – exercise.

I suddenly and inexplicably grew tired of having to choose the radio button that says ‘nil’ when indicating how much of it I do.

No, that’s a porky. Wish it were true.

I came across a link in .. in .. dunno: maybe The Guardian ? – it wasn’t the ABC’s Just In column. Musta been The Guardian (to which I subscribe).  Yes, this was it. Never knew about ParkRun; or if I did I’ve managed to push it to the back of the ancient brain.

It grabbed me instantly. And that’s NOT a porky, believe it or not ! It fired me up to remembering how I used to do this daily walk, after Chic had gone and I mysteriously decided to lose some weight:

It was, of course, an absolutely GORGEOUS walk with Sydney Harbour everywhere around. I had some terrific photos taken during it, once: but no more. And that’s a tale from the M-R Madness files ..

Back to ParkRun ..

My local one – there are thousands throughout the world !! – is, I am very happy to report, at Maribyrnong. I have a very soft spot for that area as a result of living there for almost a year and having fallen in love with the beautiful little river – around which, as you can see, the ParkRun course runs. As do its participants – well, not this one: I don’t run, I walk briskly. I actually can’t run: something to do with balance and fear of falling ..

I start next Saturday. And I’ve already started on ‘Lite n Lean’ lunches and dinners: I can have my Home Care Plan pay for 70% of that ! In other woids, apart from seven bananas with seven servings of 40g of rolled oats and some lactose-free low-fat long-life milk for my coffee, I eat fourteen meals a week for about $48. Heh heh .. good for me and very good for my wallet ! Which has been attacked relentlessly of late by the need to have furniture taken away and in a couple of instances replaced by smaller things – this is a very small apartment indeed ..

Today my scales tell me 76.9kg. Comme vous pouvez lire, my weight continues to fall, ever so slowly. As I said to the young bloke who looks after me – upon whom I dote – in my Home Care Plan Provider company, Aunty Grace,

it’s my ambition to reach 70kg so that I can be a regular person in a lift. Don’t get it ?: lifts have plaques telling the gross weight they can carry and also the number of people. It always divides into about 70kg. [grin]

There was a very, very long time during which I would have to look away from that plaque ..

They say that exercise is addictive. Hmmm .. I shall have to avoid talking to my dear Hev, as she will only push me to do MORE. Still, getting up on a Saturday morning and taking a coupla trams to ParkRun should be tolerable: after all, I did that Pyrmont walk every day for quite a long time ..

Watch this space ..

Very happy to identify my political leanings.

It was well past time for Australians to take ScoMo to task for his absolute refusal to acknowledge climate change and his own betrayal of trust regarding a Federal Integrity Commission.

Amongst other things, of course.

The only awful news coming out of yesterday is that our tv screens and online newspapers will shortly be filled with images of the repulsive and completely OTT Peter Dutton as he becomes the Opposition Leader.

I couldn’t bear that: I shall have to start selecting a god to pray to that the ABC and The Guardian don’t give him as much coverage as they did ScoMo ..

Beautiful pale morning sky .. pinks and grey swirling gently behind Luna, who might even be full ! — such beauty up there above the gum trees with their slowly awakening bird populations just beginning to be heard ..

And this is right in the middle of a fairly central Melbourne suburb.

Am I lucky ?! – I AM !

There goes a little aeroplane, ‘way up high .. Essendon Fields is just north of me, and provides any time spent indoors with small aircraft taking off and landing (helicopters too she added, without excitement).

No: I think she’s a fraction shy of full – the curve isn’t quite there on the top right. But Luna is lovely: the palest lemon against the sky’s now faded colours.

IF ONLY the camera would show what the eye sees ! But still, you can see the most important things, I think: indisputable evidence of Boodz, and my Breville Barista Express, and the balcony giving onto the trees ..

 

(with apologies to Dickens)

I have a wonderful new Dell laptop with a ‘spill-resistant keyboard’. I have access to the Internet. I have lost an IT support provider. Life goes on ..

I am in my Essendon teeny apartment, and I LOVE IT LOVE IT LOVE IT. I use that adjective because it’s really much smaller than it seemed when I viewed it empty. But I don’t care about its teeniness: I am enjoying it immensely !

Oh, and I also have Covid.

“Unclean, unclean ..” she intoned dismally, ringing the little bell around her neck ..

Did a RAT on Friday and it came up as positive instantly – no waiting for 20 minutes, no sir !

Its source ? – no idea.

It was, I’m fairly sure, only a couple of days ago that I suddenly understood what’s been hovering over me for longer than I can point to; a kind of mysterious miasma of .. something.

Out of nowhere it came to me that I’m absolutely starved of affection, let alone love.

I’m not a person others can easily feel affection for, I think; they like me, and they can even be happy to see, hear or read me. But I do tend to alarm people – in a friendly kind of way – and while I may amuse them, they’re probably somewhat relieved when I leave (or finish).

It’s a grim situation for an ancient, especially for one who is entirely alone – and MOST especially for one who was loved absolutely and unquestioningly for 31 years by the husband she considered as others might god.

Why did I never realize this frightful lack before now ?!

I do have an answer for that question: it’s because I recently came across a person whose brain is admirable, whose ethics ditto, who’s responsible and even occasionally reliable, and who tells me “don’t overestimate my intellect lest I fall short of your expectations”. This combination writes an irresistible siren song for me so that I have, being me, immediately handed over my wrinkled old heart in hope of not having it returned in disgust: it is a young person, after all .. and how much more alarming must I be to one such ?!

There are three women in my life who I can call dear friends; but the one from longest ago is in Sydney, one (the next longest) in Brisbane and the most recent in Geelong. I have a dear male friend, also living in Geelong, from years and years back, and another man who was once my boss in Melbourne but who now lives in Perth. All have full lives, unlike me. All are people I would be deeply unhappy not to have as friends, even at those distances. I love them greatly. Who knows ? – maybe they love me. But I can’t hug them and give them loud kisses on their dear faces and clutch their hands.

Was I ever this demonstrative when I spent time in their company ?

Probably not.

Would I be so were they to haul up over the horizon tomorrow ? – definitely !   :)

I also have three family members left: an older sister who was living in Paris but is now disruptively back in Oz, a younger sister who lives in Tasmania and a nephew who lives in Perth (my home town). With the eldest I never developed a meaningful relationship; I and my younger sister were once very alike in temperament but she is ageing gracefully; I love my nephew very much, but I never see him.

So you see my problem with regard to this so much younger person: there’s possibly nothing more I would like to do than demonstrate my regard in the timeless manner I described above. It wouldn’t be anything more than me saying “I think you’re ACE !” in the same way as I would my extant dear friends; but it would bring on a panic attack.    :(

And were I not so badly in need of some utterly harmless demonstration of affection returned, it might never have occurred to me to even think how delightful my display would be — to me ..

Sighh .. What a silly old fart I am.

I made another cardi pattern from a YouTube channel belonging to a hugely talented crocheter called Sylvia whose projects are all subtle and delightful.

This is Sylvia’s finished product. Mine isn’t exactly .. ahh .. like it.

You see how she uses a gradient yarn ? – I didn’t have anything like it in my stash (which consists, as I have confessed to some other crochet people, of a pile of crocheted items  waiting to be frogged because either I never finished them or I finished them but don’t like them !) so I frogged a poncho made of a light self-striping acrylic.

Mine’s a tad less subtle, eh ?

Also, I didn’t want a waist with a cord, so I made it a little bit shorter. Now all I have to do is make two or three little cords for loose ties for the front and Robert will be my avuncular relative. I like the colourway.

But I’m not going to be doing anything in Granny stitch again ! – it made me feel like an assembly line operator, because it’s so quick and so fearfully repetitive.

Fiber Spider loves doing it, he says, and will actually look for patterns in Granny stitch. He must be a .. dammit, word’s gone.

Masochist. Yep.

This-morning I went to a shitload of trouble to take a photo of a cardigan I’d just finished crocheting so that I could use Imgur – called ‘image-posting software’ – to put a link to the photo in the Comments below the pattern on YouTube.

This, she said uncertainly, is it:

So it all worked: I put the link to the image into my comment and tested it, and there it was alright .. but some hours later I returned to Sarah’s entry in YouTube to see if she’d seen it and it had disappeared. The entire comment had gone.

The only person who could do that is the YouTube channel owner, yes ?

Looks like it’s so awful she was embarrassed by it because I’d also added a tag to give the credit to her for the design ..

Since this

is Sarah’s own version, made deliberately with ‘scrap’ yarn – i.e., left over from other projects – I’m thinking she feels my use of Lion Brand Mandala Ombre  is OTT ? Dunno. But it’s very puzzling ..

“Mein gott !” you are all crying: “does this mean she’s going to STOP WHINGEING ?!” ..

And the answer, my poor suffering friends, is resoundingly “YESSSSSS !”

I’ve found a really nice (nothing fancy, mind !) apartment, a small one in a small apartment building .. and that last phrase is true either way you interpret it: there are some larger apartments on the 3rd and 4th floors, but none is really big.

There you go – well, looking in one direction, anyway. Turning around you see the rest of the living-room and the bedroom, and the bathroom’s off the corridor, just inside the front door.

Oh, and the European laundry is behind the space between the bathroom door and the edge of the ‘floating’ bedroom wall (the bedroom is quite roomy enough for all my crochet stuff).

I reckon I can get my three big chairs in there no worries, and put ’em around the big grey ottoman that’s actually a spare bed. AND fit in my mesh metal kitchen shelves set. But I’ll need to get rid of the dining-room table and replace it with something smaller. I like to have challenges to occupy me.   :D

It’s in a Melbourne suburb called Essendon, in a shopping kind of area. The building itself is on a main road that has a tramline taking one directly into the city, should one have such a yearning. But my apartment is on the far side from that road, facing away from it and thus protected from traffic noise. WHILE AT THE SAME TIME, she added loudly so as to emphasise the joy, it’s three doors away from the most wonderful market hall I’ve ever seen !, and five or six away from a “Parisian boulangerie” .. Coles is a five-minute walk away. The tram goes through Moonee Ponds and Ascot Vale, both of which shopping centres are impressive.

The afore-mentioned market hall will have a post ere long, because I ain’t seen nuthin’ even remotely like it in this country. In France – yes; in Italy – yes. In Germany – sorta. In Oz – nup. A wine room; a real deli bar including a huge cheese selection (which could be larger, imnsho – but hey, who’s complaining ?); a meat section; the main enormous area filled with breathtaking fruit and vegies; a specialist groceries section; and even a section for pot-plants !! I am going to have a real problem keeping within my budget ..

So there it is. I’m housed again. I can leave this place of no intercoms and a washing-machine with a circuit-breaker that keeps failing (or however I should describe it when the bloody machines just switch off in the middle of a wash and/or a dry). One thing I’ll regret leaving: my local pharmacy, where the staff are just delightful and the service exemplary, as well as the stock’s being terrific. But who knows what I’ll find at the other end ?

Late addition: my moving day will be Tuesday fortnight – 12th April. Got a removalist booked !

I’ve always been a fan of Arnie’s – he never took himself seriously when he moved into the film industry but just enjoyed himself enormously and made POTS of money.

As he ages with grace (yes, I believe even Arnie can be graceful) he’s become something of a commentator on Life.

Click on the screen-grab above for a truly thoughtful but impassioned address to the Russian people ..