Nice to see you!

Three major events occurred for me last year (2010), all in the space of about 2 weeks. I turned 50. The following day I got married. Two weeks later, my oldest daughter became pregnant with her first child and my first grandchild.

Most middle-aged people will tell you that in their minds, they still feel 20 something. It's the same for me.

Wasn't it only yesterday that I was planning a night out with guys from the surf club? That gorgeous new perm. Flaired, cuffed denims and the red t-shirt with the off-the-shoulder frill. Corked platform wedgies. **sigh**

Suddenly I'm looking in the mirror and wondering how 30 years can flash by so damned quickly!

So here I am in cyberspace, sharing my genuine shock and horror with anyone who'll listen and maybe I'll even meet some other over 50s who find themselves in the same predicament!

Welcome to my dilemna!!

Saturday, January 30, 2016

Again?

Another day of storms .. but not here.

Bubbles has been without power for a few hours after three severe storms in less than 24 hours down in Sydney.

Vegan Chickie had to have sandbags delivered by the SES when the first severe storm brought so much heavy rain in such a short time, that her back yard flooded and the water was lapping at her back door. Her house was struck by lightning, a light globe exploded and her new modem was fried in the incident.

My sister, in Blackwater, had a massive storm approach from the west, which then split in two and skirted the town. This has happened two afternoons in a row now. The first afternoon, the storm split in two, skirted the town and then rejoined after it passed!

There is a storm passing over us as I type this, but it is not bad one. There is some severe looking weather moving towards us from the north at the moment, and it looks like Gladstone is getting hit.

With all the storms about, the weather is not cooling down at all. The rain just makes it steamier and more humid than ever. There are mushrooms growing in our back yard.

Adoring Husband has been on standby all day and was expecting to be called into The Bay to help with the clean up after the damaging storm there.

One man died and two people were struck by lightning in The Bay last night.

I triked down to the river late this morning. I didn't plan on going there, but as I got closer to the turn for the shops, I noticed something in the sky. It was a beautiful BIG white bellied sea eagle soaring low on the strong winds barely at tree height and right on the river bank.

Unfortunately, I have not been carrying my camera with me every day, as I once did, so I couldn't capture it's beauty. Instead I rode to the river path to sit and watch it in all it's glory. Sometimes, I would follow it along the river until it stopped to float in the sky again, when I would stop to observe for a while.

It was amazing and beautiful and perfect and I'm kind of happy that I didn't have my camera because it meant that I could really be in the moment.

After a visit to the butcher and supermarket, I came home to do very little. I cooked lunch and dinner, but otherwise a lazy day, which I enjoyed very much.

I'm watching the women's Australian Open tennis final right now and the German girl Kerber is currently beating Serena Williams, which is a big surprise .. however the game isn't over yet and Williams has a habit of coming back from behind!

It may be an early night for me tonight.

Nite all.

Stormy Weather

After 24 hours of warnings, the storms finally hit tonight.

They hit hard and they hit fast and they're still hitting four hours later.

There has been a fatality in Hervey Bay at the caravan park in Scarness. I understand that a man died after suffering head injuries when a tree branch fell on him.

A building on Main Street lost it's roof which led to damage inside the building.

There are power lines down on Denmans Camp Road outside the Girl Guide Hut and thousands of homes have lost power in Hervey Bay.

We had 4 hours of thunder and lightning and wind and rain and now it has suddenly gone very very quiet, but I don't think it's over for the night. There is more weather coming from the north.

Thankfully, there have been no call outs in our town for emergency services.

Unfortunately, it wasn't just our area that suffered. Adelaide, Melbourne, Hobart, Sydney and Brisbane all got ravaged by storms this afternoon and evening.

30,000 homes lost power in Sydney.

I've seen photos of the Esplanade at Scarness and there are trees down and the road is covered with debris.

I think it's safe for me to go to bed now.

Nite all.


Thursday, January 28, 2016

Gross Grandpa

Do NOT waste your time going to see 'Dirty Grandpa' - unless you want to enjoy the glorious view of a very naked Zac Efron (which is indeed glorious).

Robert De Niro is my favourite actor, so this movie was VERY disappointing for me.

The profanities were mostly unnecessary, and very vulgar and offensive. There were graphic sex scenes and drug use and so much tasteless dialogue, ugly characters and all political correctness was tossed out of the window.

There were a few laughs, but not enough to make up for the homophobia, racism, sexism and crass jokes about cancer and pedophilia that make you squirm in your seat with discomfort.

Adoring Husband almost walked out before the halfway mark and I believe that if the two main characters were different actors, I probably would have walked out too.

There are no excuses and sadly, I have lost a bit of respect for both Zac and Robert after suffering through this poor excuse for a movie.

Afterwards, some retail therapy went a small way towards improving my day! We drove to Tinkerbells on the Esplanade at Scarness and I bought some oracle cards and a new crystal to hang from my frangipani tree.

I bought a top on sale at Just Jeans and I ordered a book by Christiane Northrup from the ABC shop across the road. "Goddesses Never Age" and you can watch a short video of her daughter interviewing her about the book here. I love her ideas and the way she thinks.

After a very busy and social week, I'm looking forward to spending tomorrow at home catching up on some housework and a photography job that I should have done 2 months ago, but lost the man's email address - I ran into him today and he questioned me about my failure to fulfil his request. Best get onto that tomorrow!

Sleep time for me.

Nite all.

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Lady's Lunch

Another successful lady's luncheon today. We did miss quite a few ladies (Lady Lynn, Mardi, Beauty, Long Legged Blond and a couple of others) who were absent, but still managed to gather 18 of us together at the marina.

There was lots of laughter and sometimes the restaurant sounded like a henhouse, there was so much cackling going on!

One serious complaint about the food (no .. NOT Reality TV Queen .. hers was the usual 'minor' complaint), so the majority of us were more than happy with the meals, and our server was warm and friendly, which added to the day.

Most of us walked to the Boat Club afterwards.  I'd had a nice win on the pokies before lunch, so when I paid for my lunch, I secretly paid for everyone's drinks. Karma was kind and I won the drink money back after lunch!






It was nice to catch up with everyone.

I arrived home to the sound of loud talking and laughter coming from one of our neighbours' houses, so I placed my little ladder against the fence, climbed up high enough to see over the top and yelled at them to be quiet!

There was a short silence, until they realised it was me and they all yelled back, inviting me over to share the fun. So I poured myself a wine and got Adoring Husband to drop me off on his way to buy coffee.

It was another neighbour's birthday and Long Legged Blond had baked up a storm and invited the immediate neighbours over for afternoon tea. It was an impressive spread!

After about an hour, we all dispersed and headed back to our respective homes.

It's been a very pleasant day of socialising, as was yesterday, and tomorrow, Adoring Husband and I plan on spending the day together. We are going to see the movie 'Dirty Grandpa' with Robert De Niro and Zac Efron.

So it's good night from me!

Nite all.  

Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Aussie Aussie Aussie!

Oi Oi Oi

Happy Australia Day!

So, I found this little video on gut flora very interesting. It only goes for about 9 minutes and worth watching.



It's something that the Paleo way of eating focuses quite strongly on. Bone broths, fermented vegetables like sauerkraut, kimchi and some relishes and pickles, kombucha tea, coconut yoghurt and coconut kefir, as well as good quality probiotics.

All of that, combined with organic fruit and vegetables and grass fed proteins go a long way to healing your gut and keeping it's health strong, which in turn, means that your body's immune system is strong enough to fight diseases and illness.

It also builds a strong, energetic body that can maintain good muscle tone and strength and can repair itself rapidly after prolonged physical activity such as marathons, 2 hour football matches, 4 hour tennis matches etc. A good example of how effective this way of eating is, can be seen in this list of elite athletes who follow the paleo lifestyle:
  • Novak Djokovic - world number one tennis player for 4 out of the last 5 years. He finally broke through to number one, the year that he changed to Paleo.
  • Gary Ablett Jr - AFL player. Two Brownlow medals and two Premierships.
  • Melbourne AFL football team.
  • Wests Tigers and Roosters NRL football teams.
  • James LeBron and Kobe Bryant - champion professional basketballers in the NBA. 
  • Kelly Slater - 2011 World Championship surfer.
  • Eva Twardokens - Olympic Skier.
  • Phil Mickelson - golfer with too many achievements to list here.
  • Frank Mir - two time heavyweight boxing champion.
It shows that it's a sustainable and healthy way of eating for all walks of life.

As you read my post, we are remembering this day three years ago when our town was damaged by a tornado that whipped a path of destruction from one end to the other. You can read my post from 30th January 2013, which was the first date after the event that I had internet access long enough to post, HERE.


I spent THIS Australia Day at the Boat Club with Reality TV Queen and Suzy's Mum, whose name was drawn out to compete in a 'damper' making competition, which she did not win. There were crab races for which the winner won a carton of beer AND their mud crab (which was cooked for them after the race). There was also live music that had everybody (except me) up dancing on the dance floor.

We had lunch before all of that fun started and it was a good day.

The lady's luncheon is tomorrow, so I need to sleep now.

Nite all.

What Day is it?

Sometimes the days run into each other and I have no idea what day it actually is. For example, yesterday (which was Sunday), I was sure it was Saturday. I even missed watching the Lleyton Hewitt doubles match because of it!

I also missed a friend's birthday. Ugh!

So I visited her this afternoon, enjoyed a beverage with her and The Speckled Hen and gave her the gift that I so carefully chose a month ago so that she might feel loved on her special day... instead, she felt loved 24 hours later!

It's been hot and steamy all day. Even the Seat of Knowledge was not pleasant this morning. We can usually rely on a nice sea breeze down there, but at 8am today, it was just as steamy down there as everywhere else.

Storms built up during the afternoon and there was thunder rolling in the sky, but unfortunately nothing eventuated and it is still hot and steamy at 11.30pm. There are scattered storms showing on the BOM, but they are all moving around us and obviously NOT cooling things down.

The edge of a storm skimmed Blackwater and blew down a tree in my sister's front yard. The picture on the BOM showed the storm with a big black centre. Those kinds of storms never end well! Thank goodness it skimmed the town and it wasn't a direct hit.

Sadly, all of the Aussies are out of the Australian Open Tennis Championships, so my interest has slightly waned.

It's way past midnight and before I sign off, I have one photo from our road trip to share. This was taken with my phone and is a little spot outside of Woodenbong.


Nite all.


Sunday, January 24, 2016

A Better Day

I've had a much better day today.

I spent the first half of it in bed! I had a take-away coffee, bought yesterday, in the fridge, so I heated it up and climbed back into bed with my 'Create Your Shining Year in Life' workbook, my reading glasses, a couple of pens and started at the beginning (almost always the best place to start).

I got to page 112 of 160,  when Adoring Husband walked into the bedroom and congratulated me for reaching one minute past midday still in bed! That was a shock!

The workbook has a lot of activities and a lot of lists for me to formulate, including '100 Things to do in 2016'. It also asks what I want to stop doing to my body, what I want to continue doing to my body and what new things I want to do. It asks me to talk about all of my relationships.

It asks me about financial goals, travel plans, releasing negative rituals and building new positive ones. What I should celebrate about myself, self care and pampering, setting goals and steps I can take to reach them.

It includes affirmations and dream boards and retreat planning and provides lists of books to read for whichever area of my life that I want to improve or change.

I have a wall chart which is a daily planner, so that I can create a schedule, plan my days, manage my time and get organised ... all of which I don't currently do, but want to ... not in a strict sense, but to help me get stuff done. I'm hoping it will knock that evil 'procrastination' on the head and help me NIKE (just do it).

Here's a question for you. You will either already know the answer, or you will WANT to know the answer!! I believe that most of you, who read my blog are one of these...

A LIBROCUBICULARIST (Lady Lynn, you are probably being one right now!)

You will find the definition at the end of this post.

Does anybody else in town have a problem with ants at the moment? We have ants everywhere! In the kitchen, in the bathrooms, in our bedroom and they don't seem to be heading anywhere in particular. They are not eating any food in the pantry, just creating long lines as they march across walls and bench tops and through drawers. They've been doing it for a couple of months now.

I sprayed peppermint water in their path and they didn't like that, but they only disappeared for a couple of days and then they returned.

I found this recipe which I'm going to try tomorrow ...

One empty water bottle, cut down to about 5cm tall
5 T Baking soda
5 T Powdered sugar (I assume that means icing sugar)
3 T Water

Mix it all together and place some in the bottom of the water bottles. Position them near the ant trails and the sugar will attract them. The mixture will eliminate them.


I'll let you know how successful it is.

I experienced some symptoms of PTSD when a very nasty storm skimmed past us this afternoon. We only took the edge of it, but for a brief time there was heavy rain, strong winds and LOTS of loud rolling thunder. It certainly raised my heart rate and I was shallow breathing when the power failed and the anxiety kicked in - although the look on Adoring Husband's face was equally anxious!

Thank goodness we didn't cop the full force of it. I was planning the dive into the wardrobe with all of my electronic devices!

Well, the tennis has now finished for the evening and again, it is rapidly approaching midnight. Time for bed.

Nite all.

 PS LUBROCUBICULARIST - A person who reads in bed!