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, April 30, 2016

EMB

EMB = Emotional Monkey Business

If this doesn't bring a tear to your eye, you have no heart!



I didn't even wake up until 8.30 this morning! Well, actually, I woke up a few times before 8.30, but closed my eyes and drifted back into that lovely lazy blissful sleep. It was a very pleasant way to ease into the day.

So I missed seeing the boys, but I still rode down to order my usual morning coffee and got some food to cook so that we had healthy munchy stuff while we watched the football this afternoon.

When I got home, I created the most delicious breakfast I've tasted for some time! I chopped up some banana into nice sized chunks, mixed coconut oil, coconut sugar, salt and chilli powder together in a cast iron frypan and threw the banana chunks into it. Cooked over a high heat until it caramelised.

In another pan, I cooked the bacon. I chopped 4 small pieces of haloumi cheese and fried it in the bacon fat til it browned and then I dry roasted some pine nuts.

Threw it all on a plate, drizzled some maple syrup over the top of everything and sprinkled the pine nuts over the top.

I'm drooling just remembering how delicious it was. I'm making more tomorrow morning!


I had a couple of hours with The Motivator this afternoon, which was fun. I only meant to be there for an hour, but when I looked at my watch, two hours had passed! I'm going back tomorrow to pick up my crab order. YUM.

Happy to say that I have four out of five of my footy tips correct so far.

I had until midnight tonight to create a photo for the April flickr challenge, so threw this together about an hour ago. The theme is 'Abstract'. This is not a bad effort for a 90 minute deadline, but the other submissions are amazing, so once again, I am making up the numbers.


Now I'm off to bed.

Nite all.

Friday, April 29, 2016

Luckily For Me

What luck!

Adoring Husband contacted Harvey Norman about the food processor. They advised him that it was purchased on 16th April 2015 and therefore the 12 month warranty had expired.

Luckily for us, AH always does his research before making these phone calls, and because we couldn't find the receipt, he had gone onto the website for this particular brand and discovered that it comes with an unconditional FIVE year warranty (and so it should, considering it's price!), so he brought this to their attention.

Harvey Norman keep a record of all our purchases, so we know that if we can't find our receipts, they can provide us with a copy.

Upon checking their facts, they asked AH to bring the offending processor into the store - I believe that they still weren't sure of the facts.

Not long after he hung up, they phoned back, apologising profusely, stating that they would replace the food processor with a brand new machine, but they had none in the store, so they would place an order immediately and could we bring the broken processor into the store at a time convenient to us.

I should think so!

We drove into The Bay today to buy BGWLBH a birthday present.

I have actually ordered a gift for her online and I was hoping it would arrive today. I've been tracking it and it was in Brisbane yesterday, so it was touch and go whether it would arrive on time. Unfortunately, it didn't make it, and I REALLY wanted her parcel to arrive before her birthday next Friday, so the next best option was to buy her something else in The Bay and get it in the mail today.

You see, Monday is a public holiday, so it was imperative that I got the parcel in the mail today.

I had an idea for a gift that 'I' would love to receive and hoped that she would also love it, so it was a double purchase. AH bought one for me, while I bought one for BGWLBH. It took a little while to find exactly what I wanted, but luckily for me, it was pretty painless.

Afterwards, Adoring Husband wanted us to have a nice lunch together, but I explained that we must get home with enough time to wrap the other gifts (this one was gift wrapped by the store) and get to the Post Office before 2pm to catch the last mail of the day.

So, luckily for me, he reluctantly, and feeling very hungry, drove us home.

I wrapped the gifts, wrote little notes for each one, added a longer note inside the card and jumped into the car and headed to the Post Office.

By now it was just after 1.20pm, so at this point, we still had plenty of time to spare. I took a few minutes to decide on the packaging, selected a box, filled in the address and signed the declaration .. just as I finished signing, there was a black out!

Because the PO is attached to the local supermarket, the power generator won't support the PO, so the shutter was pulled with no indication of how long this power failure would last.

Ugh!!

Now what?!

Luckily for me, Adoring Husband came to the rescue with the declaration that we would drive to the Howard Post Office (about 20 minutes away) because they had a later time for their last mail pick up.

By now, I'm feeling very stressed and anxious!

Twenty minutes later, we walk into the Post Office and discover, luckily for me, that their last mail goes very late in the afternoon, but just to make sure, we sent it Express Post!!

On the way home, I'm thinking about cooking up a feast for AH to make up for the fact that he missed out on lunch (especially because he also hadn't had any breakfast) and by now, it was after 2.30pm.

We arrive home to discover that the power is STILL out! We checked the Ergon Energy site to find that the time frame for a fix was 'unknown' so this meant no cooking .. no feast for AH!

Desperate situations call for desperate measures, so it was last night's leftovers of cold sausages and onion gravy, followed by a bowl of the ice cream that had destroyed my food processor. That was satisfying enough to please his belly AND luckily for me, made him choose to accompany me to the club for raffle night!

The final 'luckily for me' moment was when the team that I selected in my tips for tonight's NRL game, actually won .. unlike last night's team!

Seems like it might be my bed time.

Nite all.

 

Wreck it Roz

So I was making some ice cream tonight.

Frozen banana, maple syrup, nut butter, coconut milk and shaved chocolate. Chuck it all in the food processor and whizz until it's smooth and creamy. I've made it twice before without any issues.

Not tonight.

I turned on my very expensive food processor and it went clunk, clunk, bang, bang, crack, crack, SILENCE.

When I pulled it apart, the bowl had a small crack in it and beneath the bowl, the base was shaved and shredded and split. It's not very old, so we're hoping it's still under warrantee. I have no idea how or why that happened, but I'm not happy Jan!!

I actually did some housework today and then cooked up a big lunch of sweet potato mash, broccoli, carrots, sausages in onion gravy. I am a bit partial to sausages with onion gravy.

We had a big lunch because Adoring Husband had SES training tonight.

Remember the other day when I posted the link to cleaning soap scum from your shower? No? Well here it is again ...

Cleaning Soap Scum

I tried it today and it was pretty good. You need to wear a face mask, because the fumes coming from the mixture are pretty strong! I used 'Earth' dishwashing liquid, instead of 'Dawn' and it possibly isn't the best one to use because it is lacking a lot of the ingredients that are in the more toxic dishwashing liquids like Palmolive or Sunlight or Morning Fresh.

It definitely reduced the scrubbing/rubbing/wiping time considerably and it worked well on the tiles and the chrome fittings too.

I will use it again.

I found this today and thought it was very moving .. both happy and sad.



I can't believe that it's rapidly approaching 1am already. Best head to bed.

Nite all.

Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Lovely Lunch

Hervey Bay Golf Club was the destination for lunch today.

I ordered 'main meal size' Grilled King Prawns, which should have had 6 king prawns on a bed of rice with a seafood aioli. Well, I received 6 king prawn heads, but only 4 bodies! My generous friend, Chef Pat, who was sitting beside me, offered me one of her prawns, which was lovely.

I was encouraged to tell the staff about the shortcomings of my meal, but when I told the woman taking our payments, she simply said "Oh ok, I will let him know."

I didn't complain, but stated a fact. Perhaps I should have made more of a scene, and perhaps I should have said "Well let me wait here while you tell him now."

I don't believe that she let anybody know, so this evening, I constructed an email to the club and sent it via their website 'contact us' facility, explaining my displeasure at both the meal, and the response I received when I advised them of their error. It will be interesting to see if they respond.

Today, I chose NOT to have more drinks at the Speckled Hen's house, as a few of us usually do after our lunches, and they drove me directly home instead. I walked in the door, to discover that Adoring Husband had eaten the last four of the muffins that I made yesterday, so I stepped into the kitchen and immediately made another dozen!

That was six hours ago and there are STILL a dozen muffins in the kitchen as we speak!

I'm now going to bed, to take advantage of the deliciously cool breeze floating through the bedroom window.

Nite all.  

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Giggle a Day

These gave me a good belly laugh. I hope they shoot some happy endorphins through your face and brain!



Whisper Challenge 1

Whisper Challenge 2

Whisper Challenge 3

Whisper Challenge 4

When I rode to get my coffee this morning, I took some old scratchies to be checked by their scanner and discovered that we had won $18, so I bought $18 worth of new scratchies and won absolutely zip! Ah well.

I spent some quality time with The Motivator this morning, which was most enjoyable. She and her fiance, 'The Mighty Fisherman', gave me four crabs for my birthday!! What a lovely surprise!! I came home and spent 40 minutes removing all the meat from the crabs, then sat down and took 10 minutes to eat it all! Delicious :)

BEFORE I sat down to eat my crab meat, I whipped up a batch of Adoring Husband's favourites, the apple and walnut muffins. I made a dozen and I believe there are only three or four left! Lucky they are healthy!

I'm looking forward to lunch with the ladies tomorrow, but I haven't heard from my lift yet, so it may be touch and go!

Finally today, I have this link that some of you may find exciting!!

How to Magically Remove Soap Scum Without Scrubbing.

Nite all.


Monday, April 25, 2016

Being a Woman

"And the beauty of a woman, with passing years, only grows." - Audrey Hepburn

Feminism (noun) - the belief that all people are entitled to the same civil rights and liberties and can be intellectual equals regardless of gender.

Some women who should be celebrated and better known than they are ...




Roslyn Sussman Yalow won the Nobel Prize for her development of RIA (radioimmunoassay)
a technique that is used to measure small quantities of liquid in human blood.


Barbara McClintock, the first woman to win an 'unshared' Nobel Prize in Physiology,
for her theory in transposition - the idea that certain genes turn on or off 
physical characteristics.





About International Women's Day

My day of empowerment included riding to the Seat of Knowledge, buying coffee, visiting a friend for morning tea, watching a movie, watching the football, cooking dinner and thoroughly enjoying every minute of it!

Now, I'm off to bed for another good night's sleep.

Nite all.


Sunday, April 24, 2016

Anniversary Number Six

Adoring Husband and I spent a lovely day together, celebrating our sixth wedding anniversary. He brought me coffee so that I could enjoy a leisurely morning in bed, followed by two enjoyable hours at Arkarra Lagoon over lunch, then we drove into The Bay and shopped at Pandanus, before heading to the Boat Club for a quick 30 or 40 minutes of unsuccessful gambling.

We drove home and he dropped me off at 'Woman of Many Talents' house, where she and I spent over two hours catching up on all our news.

Later, I watched the Cronulla Sharks beat Penrith Panthers in the only NRL game played today and we had curried sausages for dinner - nice and easy out of the freezer and reheated.

So the weekend was fantastic, with all the celebrating of the birthdays and the anniversaries!




Now I'm off to bed. I was thinking of having an early night, but I've just looked at the clock and it's already 10.45pm. Ah well, I guess it's better than midnight!

Nite all.