Australia · challenges

Weekly Photo Challenge ~ Round

Joanne5 Comments

This week, the WordPress photo challenge is “Round”. (No, I’m not late for this challenge, as opposed to last weeks challenge, which I managed to post just a tad late!

On Queensland’s famous Gold Coast one can spot many a varied and unusual building. My photograph features some apartment buildings in Coolangatta.

As you can see, all the balconies have a rounded effect, as do the main outer walls of the buildings.

The lucky occupants of these apartments would surely have the most enviable of views also, being situated just across the road from Coolangatta beach.

Round apartments ~ so modern ~ so typically Gold Coast ~ such stunning views!

birthdays · friends · gratitude

Enough Love for Every Day

Joanne1 Comment

“A birthday is just the first day of another 365 day journey around the sun. Enjoy the trip”. ~ Author Unknown.

It was my birthday a couple of day ago. I don’t like to think of how old I am these days. A wise person once said, “You are only as old as you feel”. If I keep on reminding myself how old I really am, I may start to feel old! It’s better to forget your age, I have decided.

Having said that, I quite like having a birthday. It’s a day for me, just me, when I indulge myself by doing whatever I feel like doing. If I don’t feel like cleaning the kitchen I have a great excuse, “It’s my birthday”! If I want to watch a particular programme on TV, the same applies, if one of the kids wants to watch their shows. I remind them, it’s my birthday.

I guess it could be called emotional blackmail, or even a guilt trip. So what? I only get one day a year when I can do this, which is totally out of character for me. Funnily enough, I get my way.

“Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional”. ~ Chili Davis.

After an incredibly delicious meal on the night (which I had organised but the family cooked) it was too late to clean up the kitchen. We stacked the dishwasher and went to bed, leaving the unwashed pans and the “not suitable for the dishwasher” crockery sitting dirty on the kitchen bench.

Did the cleaning fairies appear overnight and clean up the mess? Ha…ha…ha…as if they would!

So, before leaving for work the next morning I cleaned up the kitchen. Isn’t their always a price to pay? That’s what I get for using emotional blackmail on my family ‘coz it was my birthday!

On a brighter note, I had a great long list of “Happy Birthday” messages left on my Facebook page. Now, that was really, really nice! Some messages came from family and friends, but many of them were from my blogger friends. After I have been given so much by these people, in their sharing of their thoughts, ideas, photographs and wisdom, I am further rewarded by their kind words on my birthday. It doesn’t get much better than that!

“Friendship isn’t a big thing, it’s a million little things”. ~ Author Unknown.

I really must check the birthday announcements on Facebook more often. I just, well, forget to look! The birthdays column really isn’t in the most eye-catching position. Perhaps those in Facebook Land should look at making the birthday notices more prominent.

After the warmth I received from my friends wishes, I really must make an extra effort to check those birthday announcements.

Or, even better still, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we all remembered to send our friends and family warm wishes every time we have contact with them? Why wait until it’s their birthday? 🙂

“Three things of life that are most valuable – Love, self-confidence and friends”. ~ Author Unknown.

 

nostalgia

Weekly Photo Challenge ~ One

Joanne4 Comments

Last weeks WordPress Photo Challenge theme was “One”. Yes, I know, I’m late, but I really wanted to share a photo and a short story….

Sitting silently alone, in the midst of…well…nothing, I spotted this old park bench.

I visited an old park just recently, during a visit back to my old home town (which I have yet to tell you all about!)

Way back in time, at the very young age of only nine years old (wow, that sounds so long ago!) I enjoyed playing in this park, which was just across the road from the home we lived in.

It was a rented property and we only lived there for a couple of months, whilst our new home was being built, but the memories of this home have lived on, so many years later.

My hours spent playing in the park with friends were definitely a highlight of this time.

The park has been renewed over the years and certainly isn’t the same as when I played there as a child. But it is still a park. With one very old bench, sitting near the fence.

I could never know for sure, but I do believe that perhaps this is the old bench that lived in this same park, way back when….

There is no way of knowing for sure if it’s the same bench, but I like to think that maybe it is. Just maybe, something of my old park still remains today.

 

daughter · Mum

Being Authentically “You”

Joanne4 Comments

“Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive”. ~  Sir Walter Scott (1808)

When my eldest daughter told me that she had realised she was copying me, when making choices for her own life and had stopped doing so as she wanted be authentically herself, I couldn’t have been happier.

I asked her whatever had possessed her to want to copy me in the first place, and she told me simply, “Because I love you, I guess”.

There is an old saying that ‘imitation is the highest form of flattery’, but how much imitation is too much?

Think about it carefully. Do you really want the responsibility of knowing that there is someone out there, who is not truly being themselves, because they are imitating you?

Or would you be content to spend your own life living as another person would have you live it?

An innocent act of admiration for someone in your life can lead to a web of deception, a web that you may not even realise that you have got yourself caught up in, until one day you wake up to the fact that the person who is living your life, isn’t really you.

I know this to be true, as I’ve lived the “lie”, albeit an innocent lie, but none the less destructive.

Throughout the month of March, the theme at the Calm Space was “change” and I submitted my article to Karen rather timidly, with the content being so personal.

There were two deciding factors on why I finally decided to allow Karen to publish what I had written. One – Karen told me she loved the article (and it always helps to know the Editor is happy!)

My second deciding factor was that I realised that someone who reads my story may actually learn something, and benefit from the mistakes I have made.

My message is an important one. I do hope you will read my article at the Calm Space, “Living the Richest of Lives”.

“Your experiences are not limited to what you have created in the past”. ~ Gary Zukav

Australia · autumn · gratitude · Mount Warning · Tweed Valley

Autumn Sunset

Joanne6 Comments
An autumn sunset over Mount Warning

“How fine has the day been, how bright was the sun,

How lovely and joyful the course that he run!

Though he rose in a mist when his race he begun,

And there followed some droppings of rain:

But now the fair traveller’s come to the west,

His rays are all gold, and his beauties are best;

He paints the skies gay as he sinks to his rest,

And foretells a bright rising again.” ~ Isaac Watts.

With summer now behind us, Mother Nature has taken it upon herself to have her last hoorah of hot summer’s days and nights, which we know to expect during the months of the summer season.

During this afternoon, I noticed the temperature had reached 31 degrees Celsius, a hot day for this time of year.

But when you see the brilliant red formations of clouds in the western sky late in the day, it is so worth the unseasonal heat!

Following my previous photos of Mount Warning, The Mesmerising Mountain, I just had to add yet another magical photo to the series. How could I resist?

“Come watch with me the shaft of fire that glows In yonder West : the fair, frail palaces, The fading Alps and archipelagoes, And great cloud-continents of sunset-seas.” ~ Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Looking to the west of Mount Warning