Wheelistically @ Claire.NU

I’ve been put­ting off writ­ing here, as des­pite things being “all go” and pretty pos­it­ive this end, I didn’t want to speak too soon. You know how the Fate God rolls.

Thursday saw K cel­eb­rate her birth­day by endur­ing a rather gruelling and extens­ive recruit­ment pro­cess which involved super­vised team work exer­cises and psy­cho­met­rics tests, in addi­tion to a one-on-one inter­view. The inter­view had been in the up-coming pipeline for quite some time; a pos­i­tion in the same line of work as K’s cur­rent employ­ment, but more hands-on, increased respons­ib­il­ity and higher up the food chain, so to speak. She was a very brave birth­day pud­ding and com­pletely rocked the group work and the inter­view and was told that she’d be ideal for the pos­i­tion (squee), it all now depended on her psy­cho­met­ric score, which would be cal­cu­lated over the next few days.

Whilst we (nervously and not so) patiently awaited the res­ults, we con­tin­ued to cel­eb­rate her birth­day in our own little way by tak­ing our annual trip to Col­chester Zoo and by going out for a meal to one of our favour­ite res­taur­ants. The zoo was the usual fun, we had a pic­nic sur­roun­ded by squil­lions of little floofy, baby ducks and we decided to take the road train around the zoo this time, com­plete with guided, spoken tour of the sur­round­ing attrac­tions. High­lights included get­ting a glimpse of Colchester’s elu­sive Leo­pard and com­ing eye­ball to eye­ball with a cer­tain male lion.

Although the weather was was bright and sunny, it was a lot cooler than on pre­vi­ous vis­its, which res­ul­ted in the nor­mally comatose lion-esque inhab­it­ants being far more act­ive than usual. As we passed the lion enclos­ure, I could see that I’d caught the eye of Mr. Lion even at some dis­tance. He was just stand­ing at the top of the hill, his steely gaze com­pletely trans­fixed and sear­ing holes into me. K and I were all “Lions! Wow!” and trot­ted mer­rily up the hill to get a bet­ter gawp. Only he was still. star­ing. at. me. (Obvi­ously, he’s still got the knack for want­ing to pick-off the weak, crippled ones in a herd.) There were chil­dren and cam­eras and other people, but no, he didn’t even notice them, it was like I’d just got up and piddled on his ante­lope car­cass. And now? Now, he was pissed.

All that sep­ar­ated me from Mr. Lion and cer­tain maul­ing was some tuppenny-ha’penny bit of per­spex and all I could think was “Je-sus wept, look at the size of him”. He was gi-fucking-normous with big, jangly, hairy, bells on. He could have my entire head in one swift nibble. But he had the most hyp­not­ising hazel-green eyes and I just couldn’t break eye con­tact. I was mere inches away, star­ing in awe into the eyes of one of the Earth’s most beau­ti­ful and power­ful and fero­cious creatures for what seemed like an age and as much as every basic, nat­ural instinct in my body was scream­ing “RUN AWAY!”, it felt like such an amaz­ing one-off moment. Until his lip curled and bar­ing his teeth in con­front­a­tion, he gave a very vocal, growl­ing, aggress­ive warn­ing. Then, he charged for­ward with a skin-shedding roar, teeth first into the toughened win­dow of the enclos­ure. As I stared at the lion-breath and saliva that clouded and smeared up the pane, I think I nearly peed myself a little bit. Maybe. Just a little.

The meal at our favour­ite res­taur­ant was really lovely, although poor K had a slim selec­tion of choices, what with her cal­orie, fat and GI-controlled diet. Bless her, she’s been work­ing so hard at her weight loss. In just over 12 weeks she’s lost 3 stone (over 40 pounds, for you Amer­ic­an­ists) and gone down 3 dress-sizes. She’s still got a bit of a way to go until she’s where she should be in regards to the BMI (Body Mass Index), but the trans­form­a­tion already (phys­ic­ally, psy­cho­lo­gic­ally and in terms of con­fid­ence) is noth­ing short of amazing.

After days and days of never-ending wait that was the longest wait that ever waited, we found out yes­ter­day (Monday) that my new, skin­nier, K had passed the psy­cho­met­rics test and has now been appoin­ted and placed on a tem­por­ary list wait­ing to be given a new place­ment! Squee! Well done, Pudding!