Forgetful Jones

Yep!

Completely forgot to do a post on Friday night!

You would think something so habitual would be difficult to forget wouldn't you?

Friday and Saturday were both fabulous in the shop, though February is expected to be a touch quiet in comparison to the rest of the year, so we should be knuckling down and getting some important stuff done in preparation for our courses and workshops in March.

Friday night was especially great at the club, because Rebel Mardi and The Lifesaver came to town and though our time together was short, there was a sparkle and a twinkle in the air that's been missing for quite some time.

Sadly, Lady Lynn, Beauty and Leggy Blonde were out of town and missed all the fun - and we missed them too.

Rebel Mardi came to visit me in the shop this morning and we had a quality laden thirty minutes together before she had to leave to start her very full day with friends and family.

I miss her very much and it always hits me like a truck whenever I see her smiling eyes in front of me.

The weather has been WET WET WET since the early hours of this morning and it's expected to continue for the remainder of the weekend. Even though we need the rain desperately, I also desperately need to get some washing done!

The best part though, is the drop in temperature. It's currently a blissfully delicious 19C and it only got as high as 22C during the day. People were actually wearing long sleeves!

My plan for Sunday is course work in the morning, a big cook up in the afternoon and in between all of that, getting some washing done.

Included on the cook up menu is 'Strawberry Cream Pie' - Yum.

So you see? You missed nothing by me forgetting to post on Friday night. There is not a lot happening in this neck of the woods and they do say "no news is good news".

Nite all.

Gusty Thursday

Gale force conditions in town today.

Our flags almost flew away and our sign went for a tumble and almost smashed our front window.

The winds possibly kept people away because we had a very light day of customers, which, on the plus side, gave us a chance to catch up with other non-customer related chores.

We had lots of time for D&M chats and laughter and singing and a bit of dancing. We do enjoy a good dance through the shop - especially to our favourite songs "Happy" and "Shake It Off"

We made sure to leave the shop as soon after 3pm as we could because we have lots of plans for self care and study time for our course, which we are loving! It kind of strips you bare emotionally, but the other end of that is full of enthusiasm and motivation and we encourage each other along the way.

I came home and unpacked the groceries, put the ingredients for the chicken broth in the slow cooker and got that started, then sat down for 30 minutes before cooking dinner which was duck breast with stuffed zucchini.

After we cleaned the kitchen, I bottled the kombucha that has been brewing on the kitchen bench for ten days and then started to brew the next batch, which entailed boiling 12 cups of filtered water with a cup of sugar and a knob of ginger, then taking it off the boil and adding the Rooibos teabags to brew until the water cools.

I got three 300ml bottles of kombucha out of this first batch which is a bit sweet, so I've added more water and a bit less sugar to the next one.

My plan for Sunday is to do a cook up so that there are meals to heat up during the week and I won't have to come home and spend too much time in the kitchen. I'd like to cook up some spaghetti bolognese sauce, curried sausages, butter chicken and beef casserole. The spag bol will be served with zoodles and the butter chicken with cauliflower rice.

I'm also looking forward to having some bone broth every morning.

Now I have some study to catch up on, so I'm outta here.

Nite all.

Lucky Day

I had a fabulous morning in bed (my favourite place to work) and spent three hours working on the course material and playing Words With Friends (which is very much like Scrabble).

Eventually, I made myself presentable for the lady's luncheon and Adoring Husband drove me to the Bowls Club at 11am.

I wasn't the first to arrive but the first thing I did was buy myself an alcoholic beverage and check the keno ticket that I'd bought on Friday night. It was a good start to the day with an $80 win!

The pokies captured my attention (as they do) until it was time to enter the dining room. Everybody had already been seated and there was nowhere for me to sit! So I made a noise and called my friends (Tweedle Dee in particular) nasty names, stomped around like a spoiled child wondering which stranger (of which there were many!) I would have to sit with and make small talk - when Tweedle Dee got people at her table to move along and she got me a chair to slot in next to her.

I gave her a big hug and thanked her. I like to spend my lady's luncheons with my friends and not have to be friendly to people I don't know - yes it's one of my many foibles!

The next challenge was finding something GF to eat for lunch. I had one option - it was chicken and salad - which sounds nice and I should have taken a photo, because it was shredded chicken, which tasted very much like processed chicken, certainly NOT roast chicken. The salad was green leaves, 3 slices of cucumber, 3 cherry tomatoes and some red onion. A boiled egg cut in half. No dressing. I guess you can't expect too much for $8, but the crumbed calamari looked damn good!

So, wallowing in my disappointment, I bought myself another drink and headed back to the pokies where I pocketed some more winnings. I have a keno ticket to check when I return to the club on Friday night.

We had a record number of ladies at the luncheon - around 32 were expected - they were very loud and the drunker they got, the louder they got!

When I was ready to go, I called Adoring Husband to pick me up and the plan was for him to take me to The Blonde Bombshell's house for drinks, but his back was giving him hell, so I though I should probably head home and give him some TLC.

After a couple of hours worth of TLC, I jumped on my trike and pedalled to the beach to capture the so-called 'super moon' rising. It was no different to any other full moon really ...

I waited for the eclipse and captured some of it before the heavy cloud cover came to spoil the party.

This is the photo that I took yesterday of the storm across the river ...

Now it's midnight, so I'd best get some sleep.

Nite all.

And So It Begins

There was an extra person at morning tea today which gave us a few extra laughs. The JMac is always a bit of fun with her silly sense of humour and today was her first morning tea with us.

Our workshop for smart phones was held today with just one person in attendance. The Motivator was teacher extraordinaire while I manned the shop and the client left after 90 mins feeling happy with new knowledge about using her smart phone.

We had a few happy customers, old and new, come through the doors, and we recommenced our monthly FB 'photo with purchase' draw today - which means one lucky customer will win a $25 voucher on the 24th of each month.

An elderly lady visited with her artwork hoping that we might sell it in the shop. That matter is still under consideration.

We closed the shop right on 3pm, had a bit of a business meeting, discussed where we are up to with the course that we both signed up for and I walked out the door before The Motivator.

There was some heavy rain during the afternoon and just as I left the shop on my trike, there was a short sharp shower, so I sheltered under a shop awning across the road before riding along the river and getting a few good shots of the rain showers as they reached the other side of the river. Those pics are still in camera, but I'll edit them tomorrow at work and hopefully remember to post them here tomorrow night.

I'm excited that Grey's Anatomy starts again on free to air TV tonight, but I don't think I can stay awake to watch it all, so I'll have to record it.

Adoring Husband's back is still sore, however, he was well enough to not wake me to do his work this morning. Tonight, my back is giving me a bit of grief, so we are both in the wars at the moment.

Lady's luncheon tomorrow and I have the day off work to attend. I'm not even sure if there will be anything GF for me to eat because I forgot to ask on Friday night, but I'm pretty sure they'll at least be able to make me a salad.

Anyway, enough of this frivolity. I'm off to bed.

Nite all.

Back Breaker

We had a nice group for meditation this morning and The Gypsy did a good job of explaining her meditation theories and practices and providing us with tips on how to bring some peace to our own lives.

I loved having Lady Lynn sitting beside me through three guided meditations.

I started the day feeling energised and felt even more energised at the end of the one hour session.

It was a quiet day in the shop with just a few customers coming through the door between heavy showers, but that gave The Motivator and I a chance to catch up with our news and go through some of the course material.

Unfortunately we had a blackout for at least an hour in the afternoon, which made the shop really muggy and hot, but The Motivator and I set up a new display table and moved the other one to make enough room. Now it feels like we need some more stock to fill the gaps!

I left the shop before 3.30pm and rode along the river path on the way home. The town has become quiet again and now it is the quiet season.  

Adoring Husband injured his back this morning as he put the trailer on the car to go mow lawns.

He is in a lot of pain and it's highly likely that I'll be working for him tomorrow morning, and maybe the next few mornings.

He really needs to take better care of himself.

I guess it's time to get into bed. If I have to work at 5.30am I should get some sleep.

Nite all.

Opening up to Goodness

Here I sit, on my day off, in bed working on Denise DT's Manifesting Course and clearing bad money memories that I didn't even realise that I had. Talk about cleansing and invigorating! Just the introduction week is mind blowing - week one doesn't even commence until next week.

As I sit here tapping away at the keyboard, I can hear the TV in the next room where Adoring Husband is watching 'Outlander'.

Over the top of the TV I can hear his grunting and groaning and cursing and moaning.

I sat out there briefly, about thirty minutes ago, and had to leave the room after five minutes.

Here's the thing ...

I believe that everything that you see, hear and feel has an impact on your physical, emotional, mental and spiritual being. Every tiny negative experience in your life affects the energy in and around you.

Whether it be 'real' negative experiences in your own life or dramatic visual experiences on TV (or in a book or a story or on the radio). They all have a negative affect on the mind and body, which remains with you always - sometimes on a deep subconscious level - which you don't even realise.

I also believe that if you don't deal with all that stuff that is being pushed to the recesses, it slowly but surely, over a long period of time, manifests into physical ailments as your body tries to deal with the negativity and the ugliness.

Sometimes it's released in other ways, like the subconscious build up of frustration or anger that you take out on a loved one when something small triggers the negative emotions. Sometimes it takes the form of a headache or the inability to sleep or food cravings or a skin rash. Every tiny bit of negativity weakens your immune system.

It takes a strong conscious effort to surround yourself with love and positivity and to treat yourself with tenderness and care.

With this in mind, I have made changes to my life to avoid negativity where I have the power to do so eg I don't watch any news other than the local news (which mostly tells me about the man who has been donating blood for 50 yrs or the local sports stars who have achieved something nationally or internationally).

I don't watch national or international news - for example - how scared has the entire planet been for the past year, as the media brain washes us with threats of an impending nuclear war because of Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un?

What can we do about it? Does knowing of this threat change anything? Do you do anything differently with your day knowing that somebody in another country could press the red button any minute? No - you sit in your lounge chair feeling the fear rising in you as you imagine a major war and how it will affect your loved ones and your future. Needlessly.

I avoid talk back radio with people like John Laws, Ray Hadley or Alan Jones who all incite anger and division within the community and force their opinions upon their listeners, telling anyone who's opinion differs, that they are idiots.

I don't watch movies or TV shows that are filled with graphic violence or horror, or movies that retell a true historic story about wars or murders or natural disasters (I know that it happened - knowing the juicy details will not change anything except make me feel sad/angry/frustrated/depressed) I don't listen to angry aggressive music that attempts to embed itself inside my brain.

I avoid negative people. I avoid angry people. I avoid bigots. I avoid drunks (when they're drunk). I avoid disempowering males. I avoid people who thrive on being 'victims' or thrive on the dramas in life.

When I realised that I had the power to make the choice to avoid all of that and surround myself with positive happy people who want the best for themselves and for me, that's when my life changed for the better. I felt freer and lighter and less anxious or stressed.

Life brings with it, it's own share of challenges and obstacles and burdens for which we have to find a way to deal. We can surround ourselves with love and move forward, dealing with those challenges in the most positive way possible OR we can hold on to the drama that we choose to accept from artificial sources (movies/books/media) and weave it into our real lives so that every challenge seems impossible to overcome and the physical and emotional pain seems unbearable.

If I'm lucky, I reckon that I still have a third of my life left to live. Boy, I've had my fair share of challenges during the other two thirds of it and I can honestly say that I haven't dealt with most of it as well as I could have. Having cleansed as many of the toxins and the negatives out of my life as I can, I want to move forward into my future feeling happy, loved and positive about the possibilities and that means for me ... "Outlander" and it's drama, graphic torturous violence and demeaning disempowering of already powerless people, is off the table!

It's 5.20pm so I'd best get out of bed and cook some dinner!

Nite all.