Just a Day

It started out like any other day until I received two invitations - the first from The Gypsy, which I declined because I had no way of getting into The Bay - the second from BGWLBH who had decided to go into The Bay!

So I accepted the invitation from The Gypsy AND from BGWLBH.

Unfortunately, something came up for The Gypsy and she texted me while I was in transit to advise that she had to withdraw the invitation and offered a rain check.

BGWLBH and I spent most of the day at Stockland's. We don't often go there because the carpark is a nightmare but we arrived fairly early and got a decent car space.

We enjoyed a leisurely breakfast at Coffee Club. I actually had just a pot of tea.

We equally enjoyed the art along the wall which was created by some school children. They each painted themselves 'doing' something, either alone or with a friend.

One was building a house, one was painting a house, one was riding a horse (which was pooping!), one was flying a plane, one was playing tennis, one was walking along a catwalk with his mate, one was on a cruise ship, one was diving into a pool, one was brushing her hair and so on and so forth.

We decided that we needed some new luggage, My suitcase is 20+ years old and is looking a bit the worse for wear and frayed around the edges. BGWLBH does not own a suitcase.

We tried TMAX but their luggage was a bit flimsy - even the solid framed cases. We tried Kmart but, again, flimsy. Strandbags seemed like a good option because they had a 30% off sale.

BGWLBH selected a nice light purple solid case and a matching solid cosmetics case. My colour of choice was sage green, but they didn't have the matching cosmetics case.

We asked the sales lady if she could contact Strandbags at Sunshine Plaza (on Sunshine Coast) to see if they had one - in which case, I would purchase the suitcase here and then grab the small case down there. Unfortunately, they were not answering their phone, so after 40 minutes of fart arsing around, I decided to give the whole thing a miss.

Disappointing, but obviously not meant to be.

We wandered the shops, Suzanne Grae, Jeans West, Sussans, most of the franchise clothing shops, the newsagent to check my six losing tickets and replace them with what I hope will be winning tickets. A couple of new shoe shops - it's been a while since we shopped in Stocklands. QBD for books, the jewellery shops ... it was quite exhausting.

Then to Pialba Place for Coles and to check Choice and Big W for luggage. No luck.

I've checked Myer online and they have some nice looking luggage with some on sale until the day we arrive ... so we'll have to go there as soon as we arrive on the Sunshine Coast.

There could be a problem with Cyclone Alfred threatening to ruin our holiday. My favourite meteorologist says that there is a 65% chance that it will continue travelling south and miss us altogether, so fingers crossed that this is so!

Now it's time to sleep.

Nite all.  

Tiresome Tuesday

It was a long day.

The rain didn't help.

After she dropped her car off for a service, BGWLBH shouted Adoring Husband and I breakfast, to thank AH for driving into The Bay to pick her up from the service centre and drop us off at our shopping centre of choice.

We did a lot of walking - although BGWLBH walked a lot further than me because she walked from Main Street to Old Maryborough Rd when the car was ready.

Our shopping included Office Works, Newsagent x 2, Choice, Butcher, Baker, Woollies, Seafood shop, Lady's Boutique, Reject Shop, Art n Craft store, Farm Gate, Su Jus and more.

We arrived home after 3.30pm which is quite late.

After unpacking all of our bags of food and other goodies, I took Harley out to play and then prepared three different meals for dinner.

BGWLBH requested honey soy chicken with rice. AH requested chicken thigh and salad on a bread roll. I made a bread roll with Mooloolaba prawns and lashings of butter. It all took a total of 40 minutes.

MAFS was top of the picks.

It's now 10pm but feels like midnight! I was awake at 5.30am so I'm feeling weary.

Nite all.   

Up Up and Away!

Use your thoughts to optimise your health... another Joe Dispenza video.

Today, while listening to more of the book that I mentioned yesterday, Joe D included a deep 30 minute guided meditation which sent me somewhere that I've never been!

I've been meditating five times a week for seven years and sometimes I experience some weirdness and wonderfulness, full of colour and light and music and floating and tingling. Every day is different, but depending on my mindset, meditation can take me 'places' ever so briefly.

Today, however, was a different kettle of fish altogether!

I imagine it was akin to astral travelling.

I was definitely not in my bedroom or in my body.

It started with complete blackness which turned into dark blue, deep purple and pinks.

At first it felt like floating on clouds, but soon changed to flying and the colours got brighter and ever-changing until they were yellow and orange glowing all around me.

There were rays of rainbow colours shooting across the darkness and the finale was like a giant diamond shooting rays of light upward and through me.

By the time I opened my eyes, my body felt like it was levitating ever so slightly above the bed and my eyes felt like they were looking through vibrating liquid.

I had to pause the book and just sit in the silence for a few minutes, because the energy in and around me was palpable.

I confess to shedding a couple of tears because I felt overwhelming love - like I have never felt before!

It was the most amazing experience. I know there is another guided meditation in the next chapter and I am keen to get to it and go even deeper (or higher as the case may be).

I know Joe Dispenza has interactive workshops in Australia (in Melbourne) but they are run by a consultant and that doesn't appeal to me.

If he ever comes to Australia to run them in person, I'll be Johnny on the spot!

Other than read the book, I played with Harley and cooked dinner of chicken meatballs with spicy dipping sauce, fried rice and a salsa made with tomato, red capsicum, pear, avocado and shallots.

Now it's 11pm and I'm definitely ready to sleep. Big day in the Bay tomorrow.

Nite all.

Shifting My Energy

Joe Dispenza - "Ascending your Energy. Tune into your new Destiny."

That's the name of the book that I'm listening to on Audible.

This is some of the Joe Dispenza story (just under 13 minutes) ...

The book on Audible takes about 13 hours to listen to, and it's so fascinating, I want it to be finished so that I can put everything into practice!

Rewiring neural pathways, changing your belief system, changing your energy, healing your body, creating your new future and harnessing the power of your mind.

Another of his books that I can HIGHLY recommend is "You are the Placebo".

That's pretty much what I've been doing for most of the day. Even while playing with Harley, I had my ear pods in listening to the book.

For dinner I made fish in chilli, lime coconut soup served with boiled rice and hot Turkish bread.

I also had to take this week's 52Frames photo - the theme being "Triangular Composition".

I was hoping to get really imaginative this week, but time always gets away from me - a week isn't long enough for a procrastinator!

Next week's theme is "Unfinished"

Now it's time for me to sleep.

Nite all.

Epiphany

Today was quite uplifting and at the same time gut wrenching.

After a relaxing and enjoyable morning playing with Harley, drinking tea and watching a couple of episodes of the new season of Cobra Kai, I made my way into my bedroom for a midday zoom meeting with The Gypsy.

It was a life coaching session - to help her practice for her new business that should be launched in the next month or so.

I wasn't expecting such an emotional session.

For all the work that I've done on myself and the changes I've made to stop triggers, feel more empowered, connect with the divine/universe/lord (whatever you choose to believe) and just create a more peaceful and powerful existence, I was surprised by a simple realisation.

Simply put and in a nutshell, I recalled being sent away to be with my grandparents travelling around Australia in a caravan to recover from two close and serious surgeries.

I was aged 5 for the first surgery (appendicitis) and then almost 6 for the second surgery (a clot in my tubes), less than 12 months apart.

Due to certain circumstances, both were very serious and required weeks in hospital. The second surgery was followed by injections three times daily in my tiny thighs and were incredibly painful - which meant two nurses holding me down while a third jabbed me with the needle - as I screamed, shrieked and fought with all of my might.

Both events were very traumatic and I was not only physically scarred, but emotionally scarred as well.

No sooner had I returned home, my mother made the decision to send me with my grandparents "to recover and heal" ... when what I needed was my safe and secure home with a mother to nurture and tend to me.

I felt like I was being punished and rejected for having been sick.

Evidence of this now new fear, three years later, aged 8, I stood on a piece of broken glass in a river bed and the cut under my foot became infected. My mother wanted to take me to the hospital and the fear was so intense that I screamed and physically fought her to avoid being put in the car.

She gave up on the idea and instead made me bathe my foot in hot salty water three times a day. It healed.

The fear that caused me to react like that was that I didn't want to be sent away again for being sick.

So, subconsciously, I have carried this fear into adulthood. Obviously, as an adult, I'm not going to get sent away ... but whenever illness, disease, weakness, injury rears it's ugly head in my life ... it doesn't even have to be MY illness, disease, weakness or injury ... fear takes over.

Because I have been unaware of the connection to my childhood, that fear, in most instances, takes the form of anger and I had no idea why I got so angry.

Firstly, it explains why I avoid going to the Doctor (3 visits in 17 years) and will do everything in my power to fix myself in my own way.

Secondly, it explains why I get so angry with Adoring Husband every time he comes up with a new 'condition' ... Heart condition, Parkinson's, bladder cancer, GERD, blood pressure, bad back, bad hip, bad knee, bad shoulder, bad cough ... I've been angry a LOT lol.

So having this epiphany today released a lot of emotions that I was very surprised by and was not at all expecting!

It was a good release, tears were shed, I journaled the whole story behind it - how I felt then - how I feel now, I forgave my mother, I forgave myself and I realised it was a pattern that I've carried my whole life and I can let it go now.

Such a small thing but had such a big impact.

Before the end of the session, The Gypsy and I together, completed an exercise involving visualisation, imagination and reprogramming neural pathways, which left me feeling very tingly and ready to face my issues head on.

There were other less impactful realisations during the 2 hour session and I was quite exhausted by the end of it.

The journaling and some meditation under the Bali hut afterwards helped a lot. I feel lighter and the anger, which I held across my shoulders and in my chest has almost completely gone - I feel a bit empty where it was before and I think it will take a while to get used to it not being there.

Freaking weirdsville man, but I feel grateful for the epiphany and how much better I feel for having experienced it. 

That would have cost me a few hundred bucks for a psychiatrist haha.

The rest of my day was spent watching three NRL preseason matches - in the end, my Broncos were on top overall and have won the preseason tournament - this is a bad thing because the last two times this happened, they played poorly in the 'actual' season.

It was 'fend for yourself' dinner tonight so I reheated some pea and ham soup from the freezer. Warm and meaty and delicious.

Now I think I'll get some sleep - see if my subconscious needs to conjure some dreams to release some more crap from my psyche!

Nite all.     

Really? Friday?

I am so tired.

After all the excitement of kicking procrastination to the kerb yesterday, and getting shit done, I struggled to fall asleep because I had all of those results swimming around in my head.

I estimate that it was about 2am when I fell asleep and I woke up at 7am. I need more sleep than that.

I was less productive today.

A Zoom call was on my priority list, but confusion with times caused that to be postponed until tomorrow.

I tried to figure out how to transfer my book to the Pages App but I failed - until tonight when I googled it (why the hell didn't I do that to begin with?) and now I have the instructions to follow tomorrow. I'm too tired to even consider attempting it tonight.

Adoring Husband and I watched the two NRL preseason games tonight and I was very happy that Wests Tigers won their game.

I am currently lying in bed catching up on MAFS. I kept switching channels between Australian Idol and MAFS last week, so I missed a LOT of both shows. I caught up on Idol and tonight it's MAFS.

Pretty sure I'll fall asleep before I get through the episodes.

Not even 9.30pm and I'm ready to sleep.

Nite all.

 

Goodbye Procrastination!

I have had a productive day.

I have to update the beneficiary details for my superannuation account, which means having two people sign as witnesses to my signature before I send the form to where it needs to go.

I remembered to take the form with me to morning tea and had a couple of the girls sign it. I forgot to take an envelope to mail it, but I'll do that tomorrow.

I had to update my new card details on the account for my website host. It was a process and a half that took about 40 minutes!

I had to cancel three subscriptions.

One was for the photography site Flickr. I've been paying $17 per month for a 'pro' subscription and I haven't even posted a photo there for over three years! That's over $600 wasted. Ugh! It's now cancelled, but I had to delete hundreds of photos before hand and the whole process took over 90 minutes.

One was for Stan Sport, which is an add on to the normal Stan streaming service. Stan Sport is now cancelled. 10 minutes.

The third was for Audible. I just discovered that I've been paying for the Australian version of Audible AND the US Amazon version! $26.54 per month for 12 months. It took a hell of a long time to find any information regarding this account - their website and profile information is very difficult to navigate and in the end I requested a phone call.

They phoned almost immediately at 10pm!

I spoke to two different people with VERY strong foreign accents and even though they were difficult to understand, they were extremely helpful and without any hesitation, offered me a full refund (over $300), cancellation of the subscription and a free book from Amazon!

Very happy with that outcome. 2 hours.

I had to do some light journaling about my 'patterns' in relationships through my life, in preparation for a Life Coaching interview that I have tomorrow. I am assisting a friend who is starting up a life coaching website and she needed a few practice runs before launching the site. There are a few of us volunteering as guinea pigs for her process. 30 minutes. 

I did my Friday Falafel for Vegan Chickie. 10 minutes.

Three loads of washing.

Harley play twice. 40 minutes

Morning tea with the Art girls. 90 minutes.

Dinner of chicken rollups with roasted vegetables and steamed snow peas. 60 minutes.

We played YouTube trivia for an hour.

That's almost a ten hour work day!

It's now rapidly approaching midnight and I'm ready to sleep.

Nite all.

Too Old

Two days in a row, BGWLBH and I have been into The Bay.

Today, we were avoiding the planned 5 hour power outage for our community. We didn't want to sit in a hot house and even the pool didn't seem inviting for five hours!

Instead of doing a 'pub crawl', we did a clothing shop crawl along the esplanade. Sadly, neither of us found anything to buy! So much to choose from but nothing that tickled our fancies.

We enjoyed a bacon and egg breakfast at a new cafe at Holistic Healing Haven. It was peaceful with friendly service and reasonably priced.

The power was restored an hour earlier than expected but we still got home quite late.

Leftovers for dinner for everyone except me. I had prawns that I seared in butter.

Anyway, we are both exhausted because we are too old to be gallivanting all over town for hours every day!

Tomorrow is morning tea with the art girls so I don't even get to sleep in.

I'm definitely ready for sleep now.

Nite all.  

Quietly Does It

The day began with rain.

I was up before 8am - because Harley was freaking out in his bed and panting heavily and trying to drag the fencing between the dressing table and the end of the bed.

We discovered that Adoring Husband had tried to set the house on fire when he cooked the bacon in the griller and Harley is super sensitive to fire/heat/smoke. 

He knew that he needed to escape from the house ASAP!!

After I played with Harley, I spent some time working on my project (book/journals/cards) in bed.

I made a late breakfast, early lunch - toasted bacon, tomato and onion sandwich.

AH and I watched a couple of Foxtel movies. "Summer Camp" with Dianne Keaton and Kathy Bates. I'd rate it 3/5. "The Fabulous Four" with Susan Sarandon and Bette Midler also 3/5.

Harley and I rested in the bedroom for an hour before playtime.

Bangers and mash for dinner.

I switched between MAFS and Australian Idol tonight.

Now it's time to sleep because tomorrow is meditation day.

Nite all.  

Happy Days

It was an indulgently lazy day for me and I enjoyed every minute of it!

I was up before 8am and took my tea and Harley out to the pool area to play. When I returned inside, I discovered Adoring Husband looking like he'd just watched "The Notebook" for the first time - his eyes were red and puffy and his mouth was all downturned - I looked at him and he said "I'm sick. Nausea and stomach pain."

So in my caring, loving inimitable style, I replied "Best go back to bed ... and take a bucket with you."

It's ok. He was up by lunch time and planted firmly in front of the TV watching, firstly, the darts, followed by the NRL Preseason Games.

I know how well he was feeling because he ate a lamb rack, a pile of sweet potato wedges and regular potato wedges and a large stir fry of green beans, snow peas, capsicum, zucchini, mushroom, tomato wedges and shallots.  He also went back for seconds.

I had a phone call at 10am with The Gypsy. It lasted for 2.5 hours. No zooming because she was having trouble with her internet connection.

After the first footy game, I lay down on my bed with Harley and we napped for an hour or so.

We had an afternoon play before I cooked the dinner that I mentioned above.

I purchased the lamb rack from the butcher at Pialba Place and it was lovely and tender and full of flavour. I haven't been happy with our local butcher for some time. The meat has been tough and most of his produce is prepared in advance with different flavoured marinades, of which I am not a fan. I prefer to make my own marinades with fresh ingredients.

However, it's great to have a local butcher for emergencies so we'll continue to buy our chicken wings, Harley mince and I do like their fat pork sausages!

MAFS was juicy tonight!

Now I'm going to do some more work on my book/journals/affirmation cards.

Nite all.