To Market To Market

I woke to the sound of my alarm playing Wham's "Wake Me Up Before You Gogo" at 6.15am.

Fifteen minutes later my alarm played "Happy" by Pharrell Williams.

As part of the meditation lessons, The Gypsy suggests something called 'traffic control' and every hour on the hour, we set our phone alarm to remind us to stop for one minute, 'be present' and stop negative self talk.

I did that for a day and then felt that I wanted to change it up a bit, so I added the song "Happy" to my alarm and now, every hour on the hour, I begin dancing (although mostly, I'm sitting down when the alarm goes off, so I kind of jig in my chair!).

Adoring Husband laughs at me ... EVERY time! But that song just makes me feel so good and it's very easy to dance to. The Motivator and I found ourselves stopping and bopping to the music all morning at work and every time, it brought a smile to our faces.

Anyway, I had my first dance to "Happy" while I was still in bed this morning, after which, I got ready for work and left early so that I could attend the local markets first.

Still heady from my big keno win on Friday night, I went a little crazy.

The first money I spent was $5 which I tossed into a hat that belonged to a young girl who was busking. She had a lovely voice and judging by her choice of location, which almost hid her entirely from public view, she was obviously a little shy. She stopped mid song to thank me profusely.

I bought a leadlight string of hearts to hang in my front tree, a beautiful timber hand crafted lazy susan to place in the centre of our table, a gift wrapped washer with soap (somebody out there will have it added to their birthday present this year!), two hanging hand towels, two necklaces and a ring, a hand made card, a pen, a letter opener, a book and two bags of vegetables.

I also ordered a hand made timber jewellery display stand from the same man who made our whale tail display stands.

All of those purchases completely filled the basket of my trike!

We had a quiet morning in the shop, but as always, we still had plenty to do and plenty to talk about.

It was a 1pm closure but I didn't leave for home until 2pm.

This afternoon and this evening I've done some course work, watched a less violent episode of 'Outlander', cooked dinner, watched some 20/20 cricket and some of the Winter Olympics. As I write this blog post, I have Sex and the City reruns on in the background.

But it's way after 11pm so it's time for bed.

Enjoy your Sunday everybody!

Nite all.

Bored Bored Bored

Adoring Husband is enthusiastic and excited about the Winter Olympics claiming them to be more spectacular than the Summer Olympics (in his view).

Five minutes into the opening ceremony and I am bored out of my brain.

So here I am, writing this post so that I can go to bed. Another early night will do me good.

We had a reasonable day in the shop and The Motivator and I both had some other 'stuff' that we had to do during the quiet moments.

We both left the shop around 3.30pm and I had enough time to sit down in the lounge room for twenty minutes before getting ready for the club.

Adoring Husband chose to not come to the club tonight. He had everything ready in the kitchen for me to prepare dinner quickly - it was Parsee Chicken, which I had cooked last weekend, so he had to put it in a saucepan and heat it up. He had the food processor set up so that I could process the cauliflower for cauliflower/cashew rice which I cooked in the pan with garlic, butter and lemon juice and and then I added lots of delicious coriander.

It was quite delicious and we followed that up with some more strawberry cream pie. There is enough left for us to have a small piece each tomorrow.

I had a very successful night with a big win on the keno which was nice.

Oh, my watch alarm just went off with the message that it was time for me to prepare for bed! I will follow those instructions immediately.

Nite all.

Day of Rest

Because Sunday was my day off, but was NOT a day of rest, I decided to make today my day of rest!

I stayed in bed until about 10am and I only got out of bed because I wanted to go into The Bay to get my hair done.

There was no appointment made and my decision was to wing it. If I got in, excellent, and if I didn't, then so be it.

I was going to do a 'salon crawl' until somebody had an available appointment for me. My first choice of salons was 'Headlines' in Torquay.

I went there a couple of years ago and I liked how they did my hair (even though it wasn't quite as blond as I'd expected), but they were a bit expensive. My hairdresser in Griffith has never charged me more than $100 for half a head of foils, trim, blow dry and straighten. A couple of years ago, 'Headlines' charged me $227 for the same treatment.

Also, my hairdresser in Griffith takes two hours to work his magic. 'Headlines' has taken three hours on both my visits.

Today, 'Headlines' had an opening available for me at exactly the time that I walked in the door and they charged $203 before I walked out the door - and it's still not as blonde as I wanted it. Emma told me that because it had been so long since I'd had my hair done (over a year!) it was a major job just to cover the root growth and that as long as I didn't leave it too long, the next visit would make my hair the blond that I wanted.

Ok. We'll see.

After my salon visit, we did some Go Natural shopping, ran a couple of errands for the shop, did a Bunnings run (ew I know) and then finally a quick stop at Stocklands.

We were home by 4pm and while I packed all of our purchases away, Adoring Husband headed back to the SES shed to make a delivery.

I cooked some barramundi for dinner and served it with a light salad, followed by some strawberry cream pie with coconut ice cream. Yum!

It's only 8.30pm but it feels like it's 10pm so I think I may have an early night - I will take notice of my special alarm tonight!

Nite all.

Trivial Matters

Our team came 4th in the monthly trivia competition tonight.

There were only single points between the top four teams and we were pretty proud of ourselves because none of us felt very brainy when we arrived. We even got two perfect rounds! It was a good night.

It was also a good day at the shop.

The Gypsy was fully booked for the day, but the icing on the cake was when we had closed the shop this afternoon, but forgot to lock the door and two customers walked in to make some good purchases before they returned home from their holiday here.

Thanks ladies!

I spent the day decluttering the main draw of my desk. In the end, I had completely filled my little rubbish bin, filled a bag with books and paperwork to bring home, filled two plastic folders with other paperwork to keep at the shop and filled the draw with about eight big notebooks inside which I have begun writing some of my greatest ideas!

I found two important things that I've been searching for at home for the last four months. One was a PIN number for one of my keycards and the other was my newest SD card for the camera. It was like finding treasure!

It actually took me all day to do that - in between customers and chatting with The Motivator and The Gypsy and gift wrapping customer gifts etc.

It was a bit of a rush home to cook up a quick crispy skin chicken with salad before getting ready for trivia.

Meanwhile, psychotic dog Jack has suddenly started cramping in his legs again! I'm madly rubbing magnesium oil into his feet, legs and ears (because when he stopped having cramps from the last episode, we got slack with that chore) and I'm hoping that the cramps will quickly disappear and I make a promise to the universe to continue massaging him with magnesium oil on a regular basis.

There is no worse sound than a dog screaming in pain and no worse sight than your dog holding his leg at stiff right angles to his body. Ugh.

Adoring Husband had his first experience of Bowen Therapy today for his back - I'll let you know the result. He was told that he may not feel anything different until the next day, but I can already see that there is improvement in his movement.

The odd thing is that he forgot to take the Parkinsons medication before we went out tonight, but his tremor is at this very moment, non existent. He has decided to not take any medication before bed to see how it goes.

I wonder if The Gypsy did some extra tweaks to treat the Parkinsons? She did tell me a few things about how Chinese medicine treats that particular disease, so she may have worked some magic. I wonder.

Anyway, it's approaching midnight - which means that I must have accidentally ignored my alarm when it told me to get ready for bed at 10pm. I'm using my phone alarm to get me into a regular bedtime routine - so far it worked for one night haha. I really must be more vigilant!

Nite all.

Across the Miles

I'm posting very early today because I've received some really sad news and I'm not sure that I'll be in any kind of a mood to do much at all tonight.

My Mother-in-Law from my last relationship has been a lovely friend to me all through the twelve years that I was with 'The Pig Hunter' and for the fifteen years since we separated.

Since my split with her son, we've emailed each other a couple of times each year to share our big news and I always looked forward to our contact.

I have been incredibly lucky with my mothers-in-law from all of my relationships and Dorothy was an amazing, vibrant, strong, intelligent, funny, supportive, kind and generous woman whom I admired very much and who was a very positive influence in the difficult phases of my life.

My fondest memories are of her and I drinking wine, singing and dancing around my kitchen in Griffith while we cooked dinner together. We would sit up for hours at night having deep and meaningful conversations about absolutely everything.

She shared so many of her life stories, of which there were many. There were hilarious and hysterical stories along with the devastating and tragic.

Dorothy was always full of good advice and even though she only visited once every year (she lives in New Zealand), I was always excited when we knew she was coming.

When I separated from her son, she said "Well what took you so long!? I could never figure out what the two of you were doing together!"

After I moved to Sydney and while I was working there, she and Ric were in town very briefly, but she made the effort to contact me and we shared a fantastic lunch together where we knew our time was limited and we babbled on trying to share all our news before we were forced to part company again.

That was the last time I saw her and she was looking and feeling great. She was a beautiful woman inside and out and carried herself with such poise and confidence.

I wish I had a photo of her to put on here, but I'm at work and don't have access to them.

I sent her an email a couple of days ago to tell her about The Happy Abode and what was happening with the family and to let her know how happy my life is here in our community.

Today, I received a reply from her husband to tell me that Dorothy is terminally ill and clinging to life in a hospice near Wanganui.

My heart aches and I wish that I'd had the chance to speak to her before she'd reached this level of illness. I feel on the brink of tears and my energy level has dropped to a low that I've not experienced for quite some time.

I'm just trying to focus on the loving relationship that we shared and I want to celebrate the wonderful woman she was - especially to me.

She will know when she's ready.

I guess that this is my goodbye.

Nite all.

Checking In

Another fantastic meditation class this morning. The Gypsy always presses buttons and provides 'aha' moments every week for me. I love it.

It was a freakishly quiet day in the shop as far as sales went, but we had a lot of people coming in asking questions about The Gypsy - she is fully booked on Wednesday, asking questions about our courses and workshops, asking about our meditation classes and asking us to find and order certain items for them to buy.

The Motivator had a productive day in the shop, while my day didn't feel productive until I arrived home.

This is what I made as soon as I walked in the door this afternoon...

It's made out of strawberries, nuts & seeds, coconut oil, honey/maple syrup, vanilla extract and a touch of salt. I posted the recipe here two or three years ago (maybe longer) but I think this one tastes better than the one I made back then.

We ate a slice of it after our dinner of spaghetti bolognese with zoodles.

It's now almost 11pm and today I set my phone alarm to tell me when to go to bed. I want to start a habit of going to bed at the same time every night, so I've set the alarm to warn when I have 30 minutes left until bed time. I only have five minutes left until I should be in bed, so I'd best sign off!

Looking forward to coffee with the girls in the morning.

Nite all.

Not So Restful

My day of rest was not so restful this week.

I stayed in bed (my favourite home office) all morning doing my course work and at midday it was time to get up and start the big cook off.

I made 8 meals of spaghetti bolognese sauce, 4 meals of parsee chicken, 2 meals of curried sausages and one meal of ginger, honey and lemon Chicken Maryland. By the time I'd finished all of that, and cleaned up the kitchen, I was too buggered to make the strawberry cream pie - maybe tomorrow.

The next chore on my list was to declutter my shoes. Twenty three pairs of shoes now sit at the door awaiting removal to the nearest charity organisation. More than twenty three pairs remain in my bedroom.

Two loads of washing were hung on the line and a third is waiting to be hung out tomorrow.

I cleared out the top drawer of my bedside table.

Confession time.

The top drawer of my bedside table has not been cleaned out in the ten years that we've been in this house. It was full of old dockets and receipts, tiny little ziplock plastic bags with buttons, price tags off clothing, pamphlets, business cards, notebooks, pegs, paid invoices, coins, odd socks, charm boxes, safety pins, pens, scrunchies, paperclips, book marks, bra strap extenders, mini hair brush, mini lint remover, stiletto tips and more.

It took almost an hour to sort through ten years of accumulated 'stuff' inside one tiny little drawer!

Then I cooked dinner, which was the Maryland chicken with char grilled zucchini, grilled tomato and mushroom & onion seared in butter and the leftover ginger, honey and lemon sauce.

This is what happened during dinner ...

... but I was too exhausted to grab my camera and find a good place to photograph it! So this is from my front door and taken with my phone.

Adoring Husband required his back massage before bed - I'm not sure that it's even helping - and he'll make an appointment with the Dr tomorrow. He'll need x-rays and probably a referral to a specialist. Who knows what lies ahead of us there, but there have been too many days of pain with no respite, so steps need to be taken.

Now I need to go clean the kitchen before heading off to bed.

It's an early start tomorrow morning for our meditation class and we need to clear the room because it's still set up from last week's smart phone and tablet class.

I will definitely require a day off this week!

Nite all.