….and I think I can smell Christmas dinner roasting in the oven and the beautiful scent of the real pine Christmas trees my dad used to chop down every year in the bush, haul up onto the roof of the car and bring home for mum and I to decorate in the lounge room.
My imagination is working overtime, as is my body, seated mostly now in front of my sewing machine, as I spend my days madly sewing away at the last few orders that I must deliver this week.
I’m really looking forward to Christmas this year. The house is decorated, most of my shopping is done and my daughter and I have planned our Christmas cooking days for early next week. This is what Christmas is all about, isn’t it, the get-together with loved ones, the food, the gladness, listening to Christmas carols, relaxing. In Australia, it also mostly includes a swim in the pool after a huge Christmas dinner has been devoured, or falling asleep on the coolest available couch we can find around the house, preferably in front of an open window with a cool breeze blowing through.
For now though, for me, it’s back to work. So much to do, so little time! Yet I’m happy and organised and filled with anticipation.
Has anyone considered what their “word” for 2014 will be yet? Most years I struggle for ideas, this year though I already know what mine will be. But more about that later; the rest of 2013 is still here and to be enjoyed.  🙂
My other daughter (not the afore mentioned who loves to cook), knowing how much I love the Christmas carol “The Little Drummer Boy”, sent me a link to the song which I’d like to share with you all. It gives me goosebumps to hear this song, no matter what version it is I’m listening to. That little boy sure had amazing insight over two-thousand years ago, knowing the birth of this baby to be something special, and here we are, still celebrating his birth so many years later. And what better gift for the drummer boy to give the baby than that of his music. Priceless.
“When someone shares their favourite songs with you, embrace them, because they’re giving you a small glimpse into their soul.”
Why must it be that the best laid plans of mice and men, (and women,) often go astray?
Whilst working at my sewing machine during the past few weeks I’ve dreamed about my planned time away from home, on holiday, in Noosa, spending time at a resort I have visited many times before, picturing the free time I would find, the blog reading I could catch up on, the posts I would be writing, the books I would read from cover to cover, along with spending time visiting some of my favourite landmarks in the area with my family.
Late afternoon at Noosa Beach.
So here I sit at my computer, finally penning (typing, actually) a blog post, on the last day of my holiday.
Where did the last week go? I need another week away!
A great restaurant for a birthday celebration.
Such collective plans my girls and I had made before we left home! We would visit the markets at Eumundi and have a family dinner at a lovely restaurant on the river in Noosaville on the Saturday night, that being an early celebration for Emma’s birthday in December. Those plans were kept. The markets were fabulous, we walked around ooh-ing and ah-ing at everything and buying some irresistible items, after which we realized that we had spent the grand total of five-and-a-half hours shopping! No wonder our feet were sore.
A healthy treat!
Hayley could only spend the weekend with us, so Emma and I had to manage without her on the other days, which was sad, but manage we did, with a trip to the Ginger Factory at Yandina (we took Hayley there the next day as well, just for a quick visit!) and yesterday before Emma had to leave to go home again we went into the Sunshine Coast hinterland to visit Montville.
Montville.
Alone, I have walked around the boardwalk area at Noosa Beach and I’ve also taken a couple of walks along the river, one taking me to a cute little second-hand bookshop that we had discovered years ago when we were here holidaying with our very young children.
The Ginger Factory at Yandina.
I think that today may be the first day that we haven’t had any rain here during the last week. I also think that on some days we have experienced the full gamut of seasons. On my first day here the weather turned so cold that I needed to wear the “for when it turns cold” cardigan that I had packed but never dreamed I would need. Most days have given us at least a few hours of the less-than-pleasant, typical humidity to be expected in this area and something a little unexpected at this time of year as it usually occurs during the hotter summer months is stormy weather, including gusty winds and even hail.
At lunch with Emma.
Notwithstanding the unpredictable weather, we have had a wonderful time here, but where did my quiet moments, which I expected to have each day get to? My days seem to have come down to the question of do I enjoy the moment, or write about the moment? I have chosen to enjoy. The writing can come later.
On Sunday morning the boys came with us for a walk along the shore of the lake.
And the reading, did I get any done? Well yes, seeing as you ask, I did! I finished one book, bought another which I have started to read, didn’t read the book I had brought to read and I bought six craft magazines which have inspired me with some sewing projects for when I get home.
Stormy skies at Montville.
Tomorrow morning I head back home again, leaving Noosa behind, and yet again I will leave with beautiful memories and expectations of my next visit here.
My girls ❤
Emma and I are already planning our next visit. 🙂
On the morning of Monday, the 30th of August, 1993, I dropped my son off at school, saw my daughter into her pre school-class and with my nine month old baby I visited my mother for the last time. Mum had lapsed into a coma on the Saturday afternoon so we knew the end was near. Up to that particular morning, before leaving my mother’s bedside I could only say to her “see you later”. The thought of never seeing her again terrified me. On this day, twenty years ago today, before leaving her room I noticed a pulse beating in her neck, she was still alive. Then I said the words I had feared ~ “Goodbye Mum”, yet the words came easily; it was time for me to let her go. Later I was told that a nurse saw me leave the room. She went in to check on my mum ~ she had gone.
Today, as I think of my mother, the angel and guide of my life for the past twenty years, I would love to take you all for a walk with me around the beautiful garden of another very important woman in my life, one who also lost a part of her own soul twenty years ago today, my sister, Vivien.
Azaleas
“Daylight
See the dew on the sunflower
And a rose that is fading
Roses whither away
Like the sunflower
I yearn to turn my face to the dawn
I am waiting for the day . . . ” ~ Memory from the Musical “Cats”, one of Mum’s favourite songs.
Cows across the road from Vivi’s home, grazing by the river. Such a beautiful view from her front door.
Having three sisters, all of whom were substantially older than me, may have robbed me of the fun times as a child of having sister’s for playmates, but the blessing it gave me was the joy of having three extra “mothers”.
Take a seat….
Vivi is my closest sister in age, she is twelve years older than me, and it was Vivi who mothered me the most throughout the years when I was growing up. We even went through a stage when she spent a considerable amount of time yelling at me, as I rebelled against her when I was a teenager! Now that’s real love…. 🙂
….we can read a story together.
My own children adore their auntie. My youngest son Adam said to me recently “there’s nothing to not like about Auntie Vivi”, and I totally agree with him, she’s just wonderful.
A very pretty bird, one which I don’t see at my place.
If my sister lived closer I would definitely see her more often. Vivi lives six hours drive south of me, so when Adam and I took our trip down south in late June I planned it so that we would be at Vivi’s place to help her celebrate her birthday this year.
This is a bird that stays put in Vivi’s garden.
One of Vivi’s sons, his wife and two children came around for dinner. Vivi had asked for take-away Chinese food, which she doesn’t have very often, for her birthday meal so she wouldn’t have to cook on her birthday, so that’s what we had.
Keeping an eye on the time.
Vivi is a fantastic cook and can throw together a delicious meal in no time at all! As a child I loved sleep-overs at Vivi’s home as her meals were yummy, her beds were always soft and comfy and we did fun things together, like cooking and going shopping.
The Zen Garden.
During another visit to my sister’s home just over two years ago, her grandson told me about all the fun things he and his grandma do together when he visits her. It was like deja vu for me to hear him speak. “I used to do those things with your grandma when I was a little girl too!” I told him. I’m not sure that he could quite grasp the concept of the age difference between me and Vivi though, and why I was a child when she was an adult!
Every garden needs at least one bird bath.
The day I took these photos it was raining although the dampness did not put a dampener on the calm atmosphere in the garden, if anything the duller natural light and the raindrops created an even more ambient atmosphere. I can imagine how beautiful it must be on a sunny day. These photos were taken on a wet, midwinter’s day.
Vivi isn’t a huge cat lover, so instead of “Puss in Boots” she has “Frogs in Boots”.
I am definitely pleased with the photos I took that day and I just love the whimsical ornaments Vivi has in her garden. Vivi and her husband have lived in this home for around nineteen years now, the same length of time I have lived in my home, but I remember her previous home in the Blue Mountains which had a full-sized wishing well in the front garden. It was magical.
No chance of this slow moving guy getting too far away!
Our mum loved her garden and preferred large, brightly coloured flowers to the dainty, paler variety. Anything unusual caught her eye and she was very fond of cactus plants and succulents. One of her favourite plants was her Zygocactus and I was thrilled to see Vivi had one in a hanging basket in her garden. They are not a particular favourite of mine, although I think I should get one. They bring back wonderful memories of the excitement my mum showed when her Zygocactus flowered.
One of Mum’s favourite plants, Zygocactus. And the bird in the small cage is an ornament!
Vivi loves frogs! She has quite a few in her home and around her garden, ornaments that is. I made her a cross stitch of three frogs in lily pads a few years ago. It took me ages to finish but it was well worth the effort as it looked fantastic when finished and framed.
Frog art in Vivi’s garden.
Before the night of Vivi’s birthday was over, Vivi’s grand-daughter asked if we would like a photo taken together. Jess is a lovely girl, and at age nineteen she speaks with Vivi as if she were her friend and not her grandmother. Vivi’s eldest son and family couldn’t make it for her birthday, he has three children, two sons and a gorgeous little daughter. I hope someday I have the same close bond with my grandchildren.
Me and my big sister Vivi.
Mum wasn’t overly fussed on the colour pink, she preferred yellow, but I’m still going to show you Vivi’s pretty pink Azaleas, and I will leave you with another verse of “Memories” from Cats, a song that my mum loved. I know she remembers, I know she loves us, I feel her with us; it seems like only yesterday I heard her laughter, felt her hands, combed her hair. How can it possibly be twenty years…..
Raindrops on the pink Azaleas.
“Memory
All alone in the moonlight
I can smile at the old days
I was beautiful then
I remember the time I knew what happiness was
Let the memory live again…..”
An intense moment for Bella, the Border Collie and Porter, the Border Collie cross Cattle Dog.
Last week my daughter phoned me, quite early in the morning, to see if perhaps, just on the off-chance, I might like to go with her when she took her two gorgeous babies for a swim in the river.
We’re a-ready……
She didn’t sound too confident that I would say yes. I’m not usually a “make plans on the spur of the moment” type of person, but what she suggested sounded like fun, so around mid morning I headed off to her place, we loaded her babies into the back of her car and off we went.
……we’re gettin’ set…….
A couple of days later, I saw that Kathy, at Lake Superior Spirit, was sharing photos and adoption stories of her own “grands”, Kathy’s being grand-kittens!
Go Porter!!
What is it with us women with grown children? Here we are referring to our children’s animals as our grand-pets! Is there a secret longing that we are holding deep within our hearts that perhaps this addition of fury-grands may soon lead to “The Real Thing”? Or are we collectively heaving a sigh a relief that these grand-pets of ours, if they give our own babies any sign of trouble, can be unceremoniously put out the back door to give our children some peace? We remember the trials we have been through with our own real babies!
I can do it!
It is so easy to recall the joy I felt when my children were on their way into my life, the anticipation, the planning, decorating the nursery, choosing baby clothes and contemplating names. What a joyful time it was. And yet I simply cannot get my head around the idea of having an real human grandchild, one without the fur!
No Bella, it’s MY ball!
I keep on telling my children that I’m too young to be a grandmother, but that story is getting old, way too old, especially considering my eldest is now twenty-eight years old!
And I’ve got it! I always get it! Porter wins again!!
When the time is right for my children, when they can almost smell the soft scent of a baby near to them, when they long for the feel of a babies gentle skin touching their own and when they know, without a shadow of a doubt, that they are ready to love another human being to the ends of the earth and back again, then I guess I’ll be old enough to be a grandma.
Yep, Porter got it….again….
But for now, like Kathy, I will enjoy the long-furred, heavy-breathing, doe-eyed, unconditional love of my two grand-pups, Porter and Bella. Oh, and did I mention that I have two grand-kittens too? Like Kathy said, “Gosh darn, the important things we forget to blog about”!
In my herb garden, the dainty Dill flowers are looking simply beautiful.
I have something in common with my Dill plant. Hindsight is pointing out to me that I have been a bit of a “dill” recently.
Today, I feel as though the weight of the world has been lifted from my shoulders, and all it took to remove that weight was a morning spent in the hospital.
I have had a health issue for a few months now and my doctor sent me for a pelvic ultra sound. The results came back, which he somberly told me “showed some abnormalities”. What I didn’t tell my doctor, for fear of an over-reaction on his part, which would have sent me into a blinding spin of fear, was that my grandmother had died of a disease which I had the symptoms of.
Was this disease hereditary? I didn’t know. But you hear so many stories in the news of families who are pre-disposed to a certain illness. Was this one of them? I also knew that my symptoms may be nothing too serious at all. But in my state of panic, I managed to pre-empt the worst case scenario.
A visit to my one time obstetrician, these days gynecologist, abated my fears. No, although there may be a slight and very distant link to my symptoms as a hereditary disease, I was not a high risk case, having not one single “yes” to any known risk factor. I felt reassured.
So yesterday morning at 6 am, off I went to the hospital, to undergo a procedure which would fix my problem, amid a massive dose of nerves, fear, terror, dry mouth, racing heart, you name the “worry” symptom, I had it. By 1 pm, I was back at home again, slightly groggy, still very dry of mouth and starving hungry.
This morning I had a phone call from my gynecologists nurse, enquiring how I was feeling after my night at home. I assured her that I am feeling great, which I am, then I managed to muster up the courage to ask her if she knew how my procedure had gone. Her words were music to my ears, “Doctor has noted that everything went through without any problems and he has no concerns”.
Yes!!!!
See now why I think I may have been a bit of a dill? I’m such a healthy person, I rarely even come down with a cold these days, yet when something health-wise does go amiss I tend to always imagine the worst thing possible is wrong with me. I also hibernate.
Two weeks can change everything, I have discovered. In my last post, I had to get something out in the open. I realised that holding “bad stuff” inside of me was eating away at me, affecting my health and my state of mind. I hate to burden people with my worries and fears, or any adverse emotion for that matter, yet I had reached the stage where I couldn’t carry the burden alone any longer. I had to open up, and the response I got from you all was amazing! All of your comments brought tears to my eyes, I felt the caring in your words, and oh my, you have no idea how wonderful it made me feel! Thank you, one and all, for caring. I hadn’t really expected anyone to comment at all, as it was such a down-toned post, I just needed to get my worries out into The Universe . You were all so fantastic in your support; thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Sharing my worries with you all also gave me the courage to speak with my family about my wish to live elsewhere, especially with my husband. I told him that I have to be what he would no doubt regard as me being selfish, as I am causing myself to have health issues through my dissatisfaction with my life. I only have myself to blame. My restlessness ended up manifesting itself within my body, forming into something which only a hospital procedure could rectify.
I believe that we are all responsible for our own thoughts, our own health, our own actions. We cannot hold another person responsible for our problems. When we are faced with an issue which we regard as something adverse, we have choices in how we cope with the problem. I know these things in my own mind and believe them with all my heart. It’s just that being a human being can get in the way sometimes, we can veer off track and mess things up. Yet we know we can do better.
That is how I’ve felt lately. Trying to cope with issues alone, trying not to burden my family, trying to carry my problem around by myself and work things out all by myself, so as not to worry my family with anything. I’ve been messing up, monumentally, in a very human way.
I should never have feared, my family were there for me, I felt their love and support. As one of my daughters has told me recently, as a child, she was the dependant one, coming to me with her problems. Now she is an adult, the tables can turn sometimes, I can go to her with my problems, and she can help me, she’s an adult now. Isn’t that sweet?
We are coming up with ideas, left, right and centre, about how we can have the best of both worlds, by keeping our home here, which I absolutely love, and my children never want to see leave our family, and having another home, where I can spend some of the year, in the place of my heart, the Blue Mountains. With compromise, planning and time, we are aiming to have it all.
I read a passage this morning, written by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer, which really spoke to me. It is so easy to become buried amid the humdrum of day to day life and lose focus of the big picture. It’s a matter of learning to focus on both aspects of one’s life. I’d like to share his words with you here ~
“One of the huge imbalances in life is the disparity between your daily existence, with its routines and habits, and the dream you have within yourself of some extraordinarily satisfying way of living. Buried within you is an unlimited capacity for creation that’s anxious to plant seedlings to fulfill your dreams and your destiny. The absence of balance between dreams and daily routine can reveal itself in symptoms of depression, illness, or anxiety—but it’s more often something that feels like an unwelcome companion by your side, which continually whispers to you that you’re ignoring something. You sense that there’s a higher agenda; your way of life and your reason for life are out of balance. Until you pay attention, this subtle visitor will continue to prod you to regain your equilibrium.
When you live your life going through the motions, it may seem to be convenient, but the weight of your dissatisfaction creates a huge imbalance in the only life you have now. It shows up when you’re sound asleep and your dreams are filled with reminders of what you’d love to be, but you wake and return to pursuing your safe routine. Allow yourself to think about this “fire from heaven.” What are your dreams and how can you shift your thinking habits to match your dreams? Commit to thinking about what you want, rather than how impossible or difficult that dream may seem. Give your personal dreams a place to hang out so that you can see them in your imagination and they can soak up the energy they deserve. Thoughts are mental energy; they’re the currency that you have to attract what you desire. Learn to stop spending that currency on thoughts you don’t want. Your body might continue, for a while, to stay where it’s been trained to be, but meanwhile, your thoughts are being aligned with your dreams. Align your inner creative energy—your thoughts—so that they match up perfectly with your desires. Dream and you shall become.” ~ Dr. Wayne W. Dyer.
I am dreaming, and this time I am sharing my dreams. Without anyone else losing their dreams, I can have mine. Oh how I do love compromise!
Next time I write I will be back to my usual self, with photos, happiness, joy and well being. Thank you for being my blogging friends. And please, if any of you have a dream, go for it!
“Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. Time will pass anyway.” ~ Earl Nightingale.
In My World 