I'm lazy and selfish and spend too much time on the internet. I love to be creative with photography and jewellery and sketching with pencil and pastels. I'm happier now than I have ever been and I love everything about my life ... where I live, my home, my fantastic grown up children, my lifestyle, my friends, my dogs and last but not least my wonderful adoring husband. Life is good!
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!
This has been on the cards for a few months now, but I just wasn't sure if I could manage it financially, with my studies, possible visitors plus Adoring Husband's SES duties, but it seems that the Gods have smiled upon us and except for one small hiccup, which can be overcome, the road trip is ON!
I have booked my flight to Sydney and BGWLBH is driving to Sydney on the same day .. but that's as far as our plans have progressed. We haven't finalised any accommodation details. We have no idea what direction we are heading, if at all. It's just going to be one of those 'follow your nose and decide as we go' situations.
It will be nice to get some camera time in and BGWLBH has a new lens that she wants to play with, so we'll be searching for some great photo opportunities.
Knight in Shining Armour will be picking me up from the airport while Bubbles is at work and then hopefully, we'll spend Sunday with them before we embark on our adventure.
In the meantime, I have to study with intensity and sit an exam before I leave, then upon my return, I will have two weeks until my next exam! Two weeks after that I'll have an assignment due! So I'll be pushing myself to my limits!
Ah well, that's life.
Do we all love Meryl Streep? It took a lot of years for me to warm to her, but now I am a fan.
As an SES volunteer, Adoring Husband has to participate in a land search tomorrow for a missing man in our area. I can't imagine that I could ever do such a thing. The idea of possibly coming across the remains of a fellow human being, fills me with dread, so I have great admiration for the people who have the courage to do it.
I can only feel grateful that I will have a full day of silence to get in some of that intense study that I mentioned.
Judi's advice to get the pork crackle crunchy, worked a treat, and for the first time in my life, I got a deliciously crunchy crackle on my pork belly. THE FIRST TIME EVER!!! The whole thing was crunchy and salty and delicious!
*happy dance*
I do believe that we will have pork belly regularly from here on in!
Go here for a nice positive way to start your day.
It's Friday night and we had a good night at the club .. none of us were winners, although I got a small win on the pokies, and I have a keno ticket riding.
Sleep is looking like a really good option right now ...
Well, ok, I knew that there was marrow in bone and I knew that there was cartilage somewhere on the bone.
A bone also comprises of epiphysis, diaphysis, compact bone, spongy bone, periosteum, medullary cavity, nerves, blood vessels and four types of cells - osteoblasts, osteocytes, osteoclasts and bone-lining cells.
But wait! There's more! I won't bore you with it though - I hear your sigh of relief.
With every single day of study, I am more amazed by the human body and how it works. We really are quite a miracle of nature and I often, in the course of my study days, find myself shaking my head in disbelief.
I got some good hours of study in today, despite Adoring Husband conducting his SES business very loudly in various parts of the house!
For lunch today, we had a big plate of roasted sweet potato, cauliflower, zucchini, carrot and tomato with last night's leftover kangaroo heated up in a cashew cream onion sauce.
Dinner tonight was turkey mince. In the turkey mince was turmeric, paprika, cumin, butter, onion, garlic, rainbow chard, sweet potato, choko, cabbage, cherry tomatoes, chilli tomato sauce, chicken broth and cashew cream. I really loved it and there is some leftover for tomorrow night.
Tomorrow, I am going to attempt pork belly with crackling again .. I have it drying out in the fridge overnight and I'm going to do my darndest to get it right for our lunch time meal. Wish me luck!
Thought you might get a giggle out of these pics ...
There are two comedians in this world who have always left me feeling cold and flat. I couldn't understand how people could find them funny and after my first experience with both of them, I avoided watching all of their movies and anything that included them on television.
I formed an opinion on first impressions (as most of us do) and then couldn't be swayed from that opinion.
Those two comedians are Jim Carrey and Russell Brand.
For 25 years I avoided everything Jim Carey and for 10 years avoided Russell Brand.
Actually, I'm still not a fan of Russell Brand's style of comedy and I think he is a bit confronting and offensive .. however, that's my problem, not his. I do however, believe in his belief system and his revolutionary way of opening our eyes to what's happening in the world today.
We all swim along the river of conformity like a school of fish. Have you seen the footage of huge schools of fish in the ocean and as they move in unison, the sunlight glistens off their scaly skin and flickers through the water? That's us.
We don't even realise we're doing it.
Conformity is actually hard work and takes all of our thought processes to keep ourselves close to the school.
You know what happens to the fish who become detached from the school? They get eaten!
Somebody makes rules, so we follow them.
Somebody sets standards, so we aspire to reach them.
Somebody creates lifestyle cliques and we choose one.
Somebody brands certain life decisions as 'bad' and we avoid them.
Somebody tells us we must choose 'something', so we make our choice and then close our minds to all other 'somethings'.
Somebody tells us that women are the home makers, so all women become home makers.
Somebody tells us that all men are the providers, so all men become the providers.
Somebody tells us that a single mother is a failed human, so we look down upon and judge all single mothers.
Somebody tells us that a single father is a wonderful example of successful parenting, so we all look up to and judge all single fathers.
Somebody tells us that the sign of success is accumulated material possessions, so we spend our lives accumulating houses, cars, boats, caravans, big screen televisions, overseas holidays, expensive breeds of pets etc.
Through the decades, somebody has told us how to think, what to believe, where to go, when to stop, who to trust, who not to trust etc etc etc.
BUT they always find a way to put the seed of doubt in our minds. So we are always questioning inwardly, whether we have done, or are doing, the right thing. That way, our minds will always be preoccupied with all of the trivial matters that I've mentioned - and they are only a spit in the ocean - until our aim is to disappear into the mediocrity of the niche that we've created for our lives.
We don't want to stand out. We don't want to be noticed as different. We want to look like we are doing as well as everyone else, but not so well that others think that we believe we are better than them.
We spend our entire lives obsessed with creating the so-called perfect life.
I've discovered that these two comedians have not followed the flow of conformity. They detached themselves from that flow, at a young age, and they believed in themselves and they didn't care what other people thought of them. They became successful doing what they loved.
Yet they've realised that with success, comes responsibility and accountability.
They've realised that success, both spiritual and financial, does not bring happiness or comfort.
They know, that with their fame, they have the power to show us and teach us that we all have a choice.
We don't have to conform.
We have the power to change the way things have always been and we don't have to fit into any niche or clique or class system.
We can be unique.
We can be perfectly wonderful, just the way we are.
We can release the pressures of conformity.
They question conformity.
They try to open our eyes to what is outside our protected shell of a life.
They break the barriers.
That's what makes them confronting and offensive.
They force us to see outside our own existence and they question our ideals, just as we should always be questioning ourselves.
This video of Jim Carrey goes for almost 30 minutes. His speech is uplifting and he makes so much sense. I have become a fan. I still don't like his brand of comedy much, but he is a great serious actor and his take on life is inspirational.
I honestly believe that if I'd heard this speech in my teens, my life may have been entirely different.
Procrastination is the practice of carrying out less urgent tasks in preference to more urgent ones, or doing more pleasurable things in place of less pleasurable ones, and thus putting off impending tasks to a later time, sometimes to the "last minute" before a deadline.
This has been #369 from 'The Art of Procrastination' by Roz G.
It's been an enjoyable, but wasted day .. and by wasted, I mean a wasted study day .. again.
I saw my boys this morning, then had a really enjoyable morning tea with the girls, bought some groceries, picked up a borrowed item from Gentleman Jim's, dropped the groceries at home and picked up my bags of preloved clothes to deliver to someone who might enjoy them. I then returned home and cooked crispy skinned chicken with sweet potato and choko puree and baby spinach for our lunch.
By this time it was already 2pm and all I wanted to do was sit down and put my feet up. I sat at my desk, but the motivation had well and truly passed, so I did the healthy thing and 'let it go'.
Let's try again tomorrow!
Tonight I cooked up a kangaroo fillet for Adoring Husband and served it with a garden salad of baby spinach, cucumber, tomato, capsicum, onion, pear, avocado and balsamic vinegar.
I had a pear, two energy balls and a bottle of water because I was still satisfied with the rather large lunch that we had consumed.
Adoring Husband is always hungry, always has been and always will be a 'bottomless pit' for food. He has no 'full' button, nor does he have any self control, so, in the last 12 years, I can probably count on one hand how many times he hasn't been able to eat everything on his plate.
For example, I made 36 chocolate energy balls 5 days ago AND a choccado tart (similar to a cheesecake). I ate a third of the tart and 6 energy balls. There is nothing left of either of these sweets.
All of these Paleo sweets and two cooked meals every day, plus chicken broth most mornings .. and he is lean. Leaner than he has been since he was competition dancing back in the 90s. It's amazing what taking processed foods, sugar and carbs out of the diet can do.
Here is a link to a story about saturated fat and cholesterol, which you might find interesting.
Grab a tissue and sit down for this one. If this doesn't bring you to your knees, nothing will.
Yes, I am procrastinating. I should be studying, but the neighbour has his kids for the weekend and he lives in a raised house with timber floors. I swear every time they walk anywhere in the house, they are pretending to be giants, because their footsteps echo with a boom through my house and unfortunately, my office window is directly opposite his house/verandah. Boom. Boom. Boom.
It's just one of those things .. you know those little things that you just can't stop from driving you to a point close to insanity? Like the continuous sound of pigeons cooing in your back garden or like chalk on a blackboard or the touch of knitted wool to someone else. Anyway, it can't be helped, so I have to find a way to deal with it!
I had a good night's sleep .. about 7 hours last night, but I still didn't care to get up out of bed this morning. It's one of my guilty pleasures. Sitting in bed til mid morning, reading or facebooking on my iPad, or playing with my new app that teaches me about the skeleton and other body parts.
Adoring Husband bought my morning coffee and delivered it bedside for me, so I had no reason to get up til I felt like it.
I made some chicken nuggets for lunch today, with a sticky sweet and spicy sauce. Instead of using breadcrumbs, I used (what I think was) LSA, a combination of ground linseed, sunflower seeds and almonds. This mixture was in an unmarked plastic bag in my pantry. It looked and smelled like LSA, so I am assuming it was exactly that.
I coated the bite sized chicken pieces (which I cut up from boneless thighs)in tapioca flour instead of cornflour or regular flour, then egg and then LSA seasoned with Himalayan salt and cracked pepper. I baked the nuggets in the oven on a greaseproof paper lined tray for about 20 minutes on high (220C).
The crumbed coating turned out quite hard and crumbly, but not as crunchy as breadcrumbs.
The sauce was 1/2 cup raw honey, 1/3 cup of my home made spicy tomato sauce, half a teaspoon of H salt and a teaspoon of garlic powder, well combined and heated in a saucepan on the stove. The recipe that I based and modified my lunch on, stated that the sauce should be poured over the nuggets at the 20 minute mark and then cooked for a further 10 minutes in the oven, but I poured the sauce into ramekins to dip the nuggets into instead.
Served with a garden salad of baby spinach, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, onion, avocado and pear.
A very pleasant lunch .. nothing to RAVE about .. but nice nonetheless.
I guess it's time to get back to my studies. A good procrastinator knows when to stop procrastinating.
Funnily enough, we were just talking last night (at the crazy karaoke night) about how amazing it is that I can still write and post on this blog after a Friday night of wine.
Ironically, I was in no fit state (after the crazy karaoke night) to write and post on this blog last night, after drinking too much wine.
A good night was had by all.
No, we did not get up and sing, but we DID sing along, sometimes very loudly, and we DID stand up and dance, near our table. We laughed at the bad singers, were amazed by the good ones, awe struck by the brilliant ones.
We were both horrified and amused by the antics of some local personalities whom we have never seen in an intoxicated state before.
We drank three bottles of wine between three of us .. well actually .. one of us was a driver and only drank two glasses of wine all night .. so really, two of us drank two and a half bottles of wine between us.
I'm hoping that my partner in crime didn't feel as poorly as I did during the night, when my body felt the need to purge itself of some poisons/toxins/alcohol. A confession that I'm sure conjures a pretty picture for you all!
Luckily, and I'm not sure how, I was not hung over when I awoke this morning. No headache, no nausea, but I did feel like there was a disconnect between my body and my brain. That feeling has gradually improved as the day has progressed and I am surprised at how well I have recovered.
I really must learn to pace myself.
I did take a photo with my phone, quite early in the night, but it was before the real action started and it's not worth sharing here. I attempted to take a video on my phone, but in my inebriated state (and never having used the video function on my phone before) I had no idea what I was doing and only managed a 4 second video of blurred action.
Anyway, next year, we have discussed practicing a song before the June long weekend. Mardi and Lady Lynn are going to be my 'doo-wop' girls and we are going to work on a routine. This will require equal amounts of alcohol as that which we consumed last night, to give us the courage to get up and sing and doo-wop. Only time will tell.
