Coffee and Yoga. Mind, body and spirit.

When I order coffee at a cafe it's usually an espresso. That little cup of black gold, black magic, call it what you will. If I'm feeling particularly enamoured of the idea of darkness, I'll order a double short black.

It's something that's been a treat from time to time as until recently we didn't have a coffee machine at home. We had a French press and I got rather sick of the mug with milk that was our typical morning tea.

A friend gave me a coffee machine, new old stock, 8 years old and never used. I suspect some plastic pipes inside it had perished or died, as I persevered for a few days, cleaned it, followed all the instructions and never got anything better than dark sludge out of it.

So I bit my lip, mentally apologised to the environment, and bought a wee Nespresso machine. Reader, I know I'm bad. Those pods take forever to decompose. You can't recycle them. But the bliss of popping one in, touching the button and watching an espresso materialise before my eyes, for one fifth of the cost of a cafe one! And I can have one EVERY DAY. I wouldn't walk to our local cafe every day and hand over $4.50 - my espresso was a weekend treat only.

Thankfully there are several brands of compatible pods, and the Vittoria espresso is nicely dark and deep and strong. L'Or isn't bad, either.

And my husband now makes his own flat whites for morning tea and is in heaven.

So what a tasty start to the year we've had.

Coffee cheers my spirit, in moderation is good for the body and gives my mind that little jolt to cheer it up when it doesn't feel like doing work at the computer.

Which segueways nicely into yoga. Now yoga is arguably much better for the mind, body and spirit, and I've taken that up recently. Like, last week, officially. I had been teaching myself from magazines and YouTube and websites, but I bit the bullet and joined a fitness centre that teaches yoga, pilates and barre.

I've decided I'll try and do 3 yoga classes a week, 1 pilates and 1 barre, as they are the only ones that fit in with my schedule - i.e., doing it during business hours. I have no desire to head out at 6am or fight peak hour traffic and overfull classes at 6pm when I'm getting hungry. I'm treating yoga as work - work on myself!

So far I'm loving it; I'm doing yin yoga and hatha yoga. While I do a fitness class on Fridays (bodyweight, light weights and cardio) which makes me realise just what muscles I've used, I'm getting complaints from muscles on a daily basis, but only mildly. It's all good.

I'm feeling a bit calmer - I think! The one bad thing about the yoga place is parking. It's in a shopping strip where the main car park is being redeveloped so parking is at a premium. Last Friday I was driving for 20 minutes around and around the other car park areas there desperate for a spot, almost screaming and my blood pressure going through the roof as I didn't want to be late for my class. I had allowed for 15 minutes to find a park. This rather negates all the good yoga does for my mind, body and spirit I suspect!

My neighbour put me onto the yoga centre as she has recently joined it too, so at least she'll be coming to some of the same classes and urging me to go if I'm feeling lazy or depressed and don't want to leave the house.

I've noticed another difference in my mental state - I want or NEED to do some sort of exercise every day now. Either yoga, pilates, barre or a good brisk walk. For this little sloth, that's a very good thing indeed.

And if yoga doesn't perk me up, fresh espresso will!

Dog days

It's winter in Sydney, and what a winter! Bright, sparkling sunny days, warm and delicious in the sun, cold at night so you can snuggle under a duvet without getting too hot.

Because it's still getting dark early, I have moved into my winter routine. I stop work around 3.30, gather our two dogs and take them to an off-leash area five minutes' drive from home. I can work then when it's dark until it's time to cook dinner.

I could walk there, but our older dog Rose the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel is twelve now, arthritic and easily tired. She's delighted to go in the car to her favourite spot, but doesn't run around with other dogs any more; she simply stays at my side or toddles at my heels and has the odd trot around.

Ellie our toy poodle is eleven months old and is delirious with excitement when I let her out of the car.

Because the parking lot is usually pretty empty on weekdays I park at the same spot, near the entrance and she's down the path and onto the grass before I've even shut the car door.

My, my, she's fast. Our little racehorse, chasing anything that moves. Pestering pigeons in the park, I paraphrase, after the song Poisoning Pigeons In The Park.

A happy soul, she easily makes friends with dogs of all sizes and ages. She has rumbled with a Briard sheepdog four times her size, and has endless fun with Cavoodles, who are apparently the dog du jour around here.  I know at least five different regular Cavoodles who frequent the park.

It lifts my heart to see her have such fun, to watch her lithe body transform from a black ball of fluff into a lean, mean, galloping machine, tail used as a rudder, ears flying back behind her head.

After the first minute or two she'll gallop back to me, do a circle and around me, and be off again. She's always clocking where I am, and always comes back to me for reassurance, pats, the odd treat.

I love doing this in winter as the days are cool and she can run like fury without getting too hot. There are fewer people there in winter and most of them have dogs; the serious dog people. Unlike summer, when you get picnickers, fisher folk, teenage lovers, sailors and heaps of kids.

Summer is a different story; muggy and hot unless the breeze is blowing from the right direction. The dogs pant and I get sweaty when we go for our walk around the point. I love the winter dog days. The coolth. The warm coat, and perhaps a scarf. And most of all the energy of Ellie.

A short - or rather, skinny - history of my life in jeans.

As I work from home, I tend to live in jeans. I have a few pairs in various stages of degradation, and nothing left for 'best', i.e. going into town or out to dinner at the local club.

Shopping for jeans, however, is hell.

I'm short, but I'm not skinny. I'm slightly overweight but you'd call me medium build. So in order for the jeans to fit snugly around my waist they are usually too long in the leg.

I am heaving a huge sigh of relief that 'high rise' jeans that actually fit around your waist are coming back into fashion. Curse Victoria Beckham for her statement several years ago that the hipster (low-rise) trouser was perfect for every body shape and thus prolonging the fashion. It bloody wasn't. If you were bigger than a size 8 you ended up with a muffin top. I did succumb to a pair of low rise jeans for $20 but never felt thin in them. I was ok standing up holding my tummy in but they felt horrible when I sat down, as if my tummy was bulging revoltingly over the top of them like a wobbly soufflé.

I used to wear bootleg jeans a few years ago, then I went for a half price straight leg when I had trouble getting bootleg. The straight leg doesn't really do me any favours. I look short and podgy, so it has been relegated to gardening wear. The bootlegs weren't bad but I got a bit sick of them and longed for a pair of skinny jeans, drainpipe jeans as we used to call them when I was a kid. Do I have the body shape for skinny jeans? Not hugely, but as I tend to favour mid-thigh tunic tops they work for me far better than bootleg or straight leg with tunics.  I bought a pair of skinny jeans two years ago (after going to five shops before I found a pair that had the waistband at the waist and found they were called Mummy Jeans - oh dear!) and felt twenty years younger the first time I put them on.

I do most of my clothes shopping by catalogue with Ezibuy, and I decided to try a pair of high-rise skinny jeans from them last year. While they're on the skinny side they are not skinny skinny jeans. They are skinny jeans for grownups and a bit stretchy. ;-)  I've noticed they have started to sag in the bum and legs, though, as the fabric isn't very heavy and I suppose the elastane element has worn out, and they don't do me any favours when I look in the mirror. They are now relegated to 'wear around home' status. They weren't expensive however, and these days you do get what you pay for in most cases.

Many jeans these days are stretch fabric, and the manufacturers claim they hoik you in and make you look thinner. I fell for a grey pair of Gordon Smith Miracle so-called Skinny Jeans a few months ago when they were on special; they were heavy wintery denim with 10% elastane and had a tapered leg rather than an actual skinny one. But the colour was good. Did they make me look thinner? Initially, but they stretched over the tummy a bit rather than flattened it once I'd worn them a few times. The real miracle about these jeans is that they are fur magnets. I had no sooner taken them out of the carrier bag than every bit of white cat fur in the bedroom migrated onto them.

Lesson: don't buy stretch jeans made with 10% elastane; there's something about that fabric that attracts cat fur. Unless you buy them in the same colour as your cat.

Today I was at my local shopping mall and found some Levi's on a mild special (they are never on a good special).

Now I've never worn Levi's. There was all that hype years ago when they brought out the 501s, the jeans specially designed for a woman's body. I tried a pair on at the time. They were horribly loose below my bum and looked disgusting on me, even though I was two dress sizes smaller back in the day. They simply didn't fit well. Obviously the women's bodies they were designed for were tall and had long legs.

So I've ignored Levi's for years. Aside from which they are pricey. I shudder at the thought of paying more than $100 for a pair of jeans, which is what Levi's cost in Oz. For the same reason I avoid Guess, Jag, Sass and Bide and other designer brands. I have been known to scour the racks at charity shops looking for jeans in my size for a fiver.

But….but…. these Levi's I saw today were skinny jeans, in my waist size and more or less my leg length. They were high-rise. They were a dark indigo, just what I'd been looking for. I tried them on. There was no elastane. They hoiked me in like billy-o. They fit where they should fit. They actually looked pretty darn good. And they weren't made in China, which is a minor miracle these days - they were made in Poland.

Reader, I bought them.

I am 52 years old and now own my first pair of Levi's.

I feel like a teenager.

Hello, I'm an introvert. Nice to meet you. Now leave me alone.

I have a networking function tonight and I have slipped into the pattern of moroseness I usually feel on such days. I don't want to leave the house and spend two hours talking to other people. There will be more than 60 people there. Obviously I don't have to talk to all of them; usually I manage to avoid talking to many at all because I'm on duty with my camera or up on the microphone being an MC.

So I've been playing online jigsaws for the last two hours while my mind spirals down and I tell myself to buck up, it won't be that bad. It's cloudy and grey outside and that doesn't help either as I suspect I'm prone to SAD. I can't focus on work as I know I have to leave at 4.30 for this function to help set up.  I haven't been able to focus on the To Do list since 9.30am and it's noon as I write this.

Most business people head cheerfully to networking events and actually enjoy them. I'm guessing most business people aren't as introverted as I and at least 50% of them are genuine extroverts (apparently the population split in general is 60% extrovert and 40% introvert… which means that almost half the population is introverted, in a world which seems more geared to extroverts).

I found this rather good post today which explains introversion nicely:

http://introvertdear.com/2015/04/30/how-to-understand-an-introvert-explained-by-introjis/

It's not that I'm particularly shy. I used to be as a child but these days I happily get on the microphone and address the networking group. It's the small talk chat and talking to people I haven't met before which I find excruciating.

I have friends who nag me to give up smoking, and part of me would, very much, like to kick the habit. But the fags give me an excuse to escape for a few minutes by myself at parties and networking events. Get away from the crowd, get away from the noise. A bit of me time. Far from the madding crowd, essentially.

My introversion is the same reason I will send an email rather than pick up the phone, unless I'm calling a friend for a catchup. I don't think quickly on my feet and writing down what's on my mind is a far less stressful task.

I work alone and work from home. The introverted part of me can't cope with the notion of going into an office everyday and being surrounded by people for the duration of the working day. I put up with that for 25+ years and got through it only by making sure I had lunch at my desk by myself with a good book. I suspect working alone has made my introversion worse, but frankly I don't care. I'm happiest alone.

My upline in the candle business is chasing me to book for the national conference in July, a horror of an event with 600 people, a networking cocktail party with all 600 and a formal dinner again with all 600. It's my idea of hell. I hate conferences with a passion, especially big ones like this. Two days of being locked in a room surrounded by, mainly, strangers unless I could sit with someone I actually know. The final straw is that we have to share hotel rooms; the only available me time will be in the bathroom. The thought of the conference is making me feel physically sick, so I shan't be going. I suspect I will not go far in the candle business; one is expected to attend the conference if one is on the pathway to building a team and achieving leadership. You might wonder what an introvert is doing in a direct marketing role anyway - but I have no problem with speaking about the product; it's speaking to the guests socially after the parties that's hard!

I'm fine with small dinner parties with up to ten people. I feel quite comfortable and able to chat, particularly if they are people I already know. I find it awkward to talk to new people, particularly if they are as introverted as I. I forget to ask open ended questions; I struggle to think of anything aside from "What do you do for a living?" to start a conversation off.

This week is a particularly bad one for me. I have the function tonight, later this week I have a "Chambers Day" with other execs from Chambers of Commerce (a full day of conference including lunchtime bloody networking), and my stepson is visiting for two nights from tomorrow. I can feel my stress levels rising. I do like my stepson, however. He is in his late 20s. He has Asperger's, which is no big deal, except that like me he is an introvert so we have lots of long, awkward silences between us unless my husband is there to (sometimes clumsily) break the ice. If my stepson does talk it's often about topics he is fanatical about, and it's hard to a) keep up, b) maintain an interest as his chief interests don't interest me, and likely vice versa or c) change the subject. He can talk on his chosen topics for hours.

So, dear reader, or perhaps readers (I might get lucky), are you one of our wonderful 40% of introverts? How do you cope with large gatherings or compulsory work networking events? Do you find you get miserable just thinking about them, or do you force yourself not to think about them until the time is upon you?

Me, I'm heading back to jigsawplanet.com for a few hours to take my mind off it.

The Great Sortout continues… and moves to Etsy!

A couple of weeks ago I opened a couple of Pandora's Boxes - namely a large camphor wood chest and a smaller one. They were full of clothing Mum had kept for whatever reason:

• Some were mine from my babyhood and toddler days, lovely quality stuff
• Some were hers from the 40s and 50s
• Some were mine from my adulthood and I confess I was responsible for putting them there

I sighed. It was a sigh of nostalgia and a sigh of frustration, as it meant more sorting out and deciding what to do with stuff. Yes, I could leave it there. It wasn't hurting anyone. But living here I feel a bit stifled and overcome by STUFF from time to time. I don't need all of it. I don't need half of it.

So I sorted and got five piles:

• Back in the camphor wood. This included some of Mum's old 40s and 50s lovelies, as well as some clothing she'd made for me in the 80s, which was of a superb standard and - bugger it - doesn't fit over my bum anymore. However, I love the clothes and know how much love, frustration and pricked fingers went into making them.
• In the bin. Some of the toddler clothes were simply buggered. They had been good once but obviously I was hard on clothes as a kid. Mum must have kept them for sentimental reasons but they were my clothes after all and I can decide what goes. There was also some very holey woollen underwear. Nuff said.
• For my granddaughter - or step-granddaughter. There were several very good items, classic in look or unique enough not to look dated - which I've parcelled off to her. Sadly that only got rid of about six items.
• For charity. This was a small pile as a lot of the stuff is dated but I managed to find some items which wouldn't sell on the internet but were suitable for charity, in good condition and quite classic in style.
• On sale. eBay is my weapon of choice but with so much vintage stuff on hand I decided to start an Etsy shop. I'm delighted I got the name KeepCalmNBuyVintage… anything with the Keep Calm… theme is highly popular. One little pink day dress in particular is beautiful and pristine. Fit for a princess. I hope it sells and goes to a good home. I have no reason to keep it; I can't remember wearing it but I suspect I was posed in it for a birthday photo, possibly my third. It must have been very expensive at the time. The label shows no signs of repeated washing. Knowing me I would have yelled that I'd rather be wearing shorts or trousers, the tomboy that I was.

You won't be surprised to hear that the camphor wood chests are both still quite full even after all that. I'll have to do another purge in six months. The first run-through was rather emotional for me. There were things I just couldn't part with right now; it's only been a few months since I lost Mum.  Half the time I was sorting I was missing her dreadfully - the other half I was expecting her to walk into the room saying, "You can't throw that good thing away!"

So my sales continue. I've had a run on my babyhood/early childhood toys. Mum had kept nearly all of them and I threw most of the stuffed toys away as they were no good for charity. Too old and manky. I kept Ted and Kitty though!! Lovely Ted, my best friend until I started school, and Kitty, a cat who used to meow and has been loved so hard her fur and ears have disappeared. 

I had some great wooden pull along toys and early Fisher Price toys which sold on eBay, many of them not for the prices I'd hoped for, sadly. However, a Tonka truck I had got three figures, which was just champion!  

Now all the toys have been sold and I'm onto odd homewares. I can't understand why a Wedgwood dish as new and still in its box isn't getting bids. A film splicer and a pair of scratched opera glasses sold on eBay though, as did an orange cow money box and other mid-century goodies.

There's another box high up in one of the cupboards which I packed for eBay etc earlier this year, and once I've cleared the current crop of sales I'll get started on that one.  

Then when they're all sold I'll go through the house again and work out what else can go. My office has a bookcase of books from the 40s and 50s and I really don't know who'll take them as they aren't first editions. Some of them I'll keep and I'm trying to read my way through them to see if there are any more I want to hang onto. I may have to bring an antiquarian book person in. 

There are also some lovely anthologies from the 20s and 30s for children, particularly girls, and I won't part with them for anything. "The Big Book of School Stories for Girls", for example. The relevance of English boarding schools to Australian girls has to be pondered, but Mum said books such as this were her Christmas or birthday present, to be treasured unconditionally. I suspect they were second-hand when she received them, too; it was the Depression and my grandparents wouldn't have been able to afford brand new books. And you know what? I'm truly enjoying the stories! A lovely diversion when I want to get away from the computer for a bit.

I'd like to say that I'm saving everything I make from selling my childhood and other items, but I'm not. Everything I've made has been spent on day to day living. Wish I could unearth a Picasso in a cupboard but Mum hated his work!

Trespassers will be composted

After five months of feeling guilty about chucking fruit, veggies, eggshells and other organic matter into the bin, we finally got a compost bin for our new house. It nestles under the edge of a 45 year old camellia, and gets the western sun to warm it. It looks a bit like a Dalek in disguise. I'm surprised it doesn't shout "Exterminate!" every time I open the lid and put more veggie peelings into it.

I visit it daily and turn the contents with a stirrer that looks like a long metal corkscrew. Already the contents - my fruit and veg scraps, together with coffee grounds, tea leaves and the like, plus a healthy proportion of dried leaves - is starting to look like compost. Once I see a few worms in there, I'll be truly happy. The system will be working.

Buoyed up by living a bit greener, we have also bought ourselves a rechargeable lawnmower. Mum used to have a lawnmower man, John, whom I was quite happy to keep on in the role, but he's gone AWOL. He was going backpacking in Asia for six weeks in February, but I haven't heard from him since. I've tried phoning at different times of the day and his phone just rings out. I'm quite concerned about him, actually. I don't know anyone else who uses his services so can't contact them.  I hope he's OK.

But, sans John, with a lawn growing madly after a rainy autumn, we debated what to do. We were doing it ourselves with a whipper snipper and a little push reel mower (i.e.,. I was the motor!), but that was a pain in the teeth. The push reel jammed on every twig.

We considered other lawnmower men, but most of them work on a schedule. They come every couple of weeks whether you need the lawn doing or not, and you are duty bound to pay them, and they all charge more than John.

So I decided we would DIY as it would get us fit. I looked at petrol mowers, and recalled the childhood days when Mum would mow the lawn with our 1960 Scott Bonner and it was a pain in the arse to start.  I looked at electric mowers and rechargeable mowers and most of them wouldn't have the grunt to do justice to our lawn. It's big and sloping. Finally I found one that would: Eco-Mate.

As luck would have it, the Eco-Mate importer was awaiting a new shipment and had a demo model for sale, which had only had about two hours' use. It was nearly $100 off the list price, so G and I grabbed it. It rocks!  It's half as loud as a petrol mower and all you smell is the delicious scent of freshly cut grass. The downside is the battery is humungous so it's quite a heavy unit, but it's well-built and - bliss! - starts every time. I found it easy to mow the main lawn even though it slopes. I did the higher slopes outside our chimney area and that was bloody hard going. This week G did the higher slopes and he found it hard work too, but we both agree it's a great bit of kit.

Eco-Mate can do up to 90 minutes' work on a full charge; you don't even have to remove the battery to charge it if you don't want to, either; just run the charger up to the unit. Even after ploughing through our overlong grass last week it was still half-charged when we'd finished.

I've been doing the edges with hand powered grass shears; I found an manual edger in the garage and it's shite. It just hacks at the grass, but the hand shears work a treat. There's an electric edger in there too and I'm unsure whether that still works. One weekend we'll try it, but I do worry about G and electric lawn tools. Every time he gets the whipper snipper out I wonder whether he'll chop the cord in half! He can be rather slapdash. Hence I haven't suggested we try the electric edger yet.

And not for us the awful noise of the leaf blower. Seriously, I hate those things. I don't mind the ones that actually hoover up the leaves, but all the neighbours have lawnmower and maintenance men who use leaf blowers, and they simply blow the leaves off the neighbours' drives onto the road, where they end up in the gutter and storm water channels. Annoys me no end. They all seem to work here on a Wednesday and I hear leaf blowers in triplicate. We have a big garden broom and decent garden rake and of course the new compost bin will be delighted with our leaves.

To end this post, apropos no reason at all except it's pretty, is a photo of one of my camellia flowers, Paradise Vanessa.

A place where's it's usually 1973 - Radio Daze II

Two years ago I wrote a post called Radio Daze, which chronicled my radio stations of choice since childhood. Reading that post again today I giggled at the second para. I quote:

"As a child, Mum had the kitchen radio tuned to an easy listening AM station (2CH). This was the 60s and very early 70s so I was barely aware of the Beatles' existence until they had split up! Although I believe the easy listening station played Obladee Obladah occasionally, and Mum quite liked that one."

Why I giggled is that now I too listen to 2CH. I also giggled at my awful use of English. I should have started the para with, "When I was a child, Mum had…" But I digress.

This post is about radio, and how I'm listening to the music from my childhood and teens for the most part. Here's a station which plays The Beatles, The Monkees, Elvis Presley, Leo Sayer, Abba, The Beach Boys, Van Morrison and a whole lot of other oldies-but-goodies. There is the odd old classic from Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra, too. Sadly, because it's an easy listening station, I don't get a cheerful earful of Suzi Quatro, which is a real shame. There are some songs from the 1980s and a few from the last twenty years which make it into the playlist, but the amusing thing is that for much of the day I can hear the same songs I was listening to forty years ago. If I'm having a black day with the computer a blast of Abba's "Waterloo" can cheer me up no end.

The choice of playlist is interesting in that 2CH will play a maximum of two upbeat numbers you can bop around the kitchen to, then slip in something slow and often, dare I say, boring. I think there is a real underlying reason for this. The station caters for seniors, and wouldn't want to be responsible for a listener bopping a bit too hard and having a heart attack/falling and breaking a hip.  Viz: Leo Sayer's "One Man Band" was playing 30 seconds ago. Now it's the Hollies with "He's Not Heavy, He's My Brother."

Songs on the playlist have a long life, too. I wonder if this is because those listeners heading towards the autumn years don't have the memory they used to! F'rinstance "Little Green Bag" by the George Baker Selection has been on the playlist for a good six weeks. Nancy Sinatra's "Sugartown" had a good run lately too, and there's another… but I can't remember it! D'Oh! What was I saying about memory?!

Given the target audience, the ads are shockers: retirement villages, wills and guardianship from the NSW Trustee, home help for the elderly, care alert alarms… I mentally tune them out for the most part, because I'm light years away from their core audience.

Because 2CH is affiliated with the Council of Churches there are regular religious announcements urging us all to turn to Jesus, but that's a small price to pay for a playlist which is, on the whole, pretty good.

Excuse me, the radio is playing "Everlasting Love". Remember that by Doug Parkinson? It's time to dance around the kitchen.

The joys of procrastination

Not for nothing have I renamed my blog But I Digress…   I am good at digressing. I am also an expert procrastinator, especially on Monday mornings.

For the last two days I have been deliberately computer-free. I've used my phone and iPad to access social media and for fun only. Using technology for good not evil, as I put it. The only bad thing about this is that it has given me a taste of freedom, the opportunity to truly switch off and forget about work for the weekend.

So how did I spent my weekend? I didn't do anything most folk would consider exciting. First thing Saturday we headed to Orange Grove Markets for some good fruit, veg and pasta (well, that's mildly exciting, I love OG Markets). I weeded dandelions from the lawn both days, taking my weeding hours in the last seven days up to six. I mowed some of the lawn - will have to pick up some chunks of umbrella tree trunk before I can do the rest. G and I poisoned the remaining umbrella tree root in a very satisfying exercise. G and I took the dog for a good brisk walk on Sunday before breakfast. I hoovered the house. I scrubbed the bathroom. I did a few loads of washing. I read a book. G and I hung and rehung some pictures. I took down the venetian blinds in the living room as the cords had broken on two of them and anyway they were cheap things from Freedom Furniture 20-something years old. I polished some furniture. We rearranged some of the bedroom furniture. We both did some ironing as it had piled up. Are you seeing a picture here? Apart from reading a book, it was a pretty physical weekend.

After weekends like this I find it hard to tie myself down to a computer on a Monday morning. So all this morning I have been procrastinating, playing for time before sitting at The Screen of Doom. G leaves for work at 7.30am. At that point I put on washing; I have some blankets to wash which I am giving away on Freecycle. I did the washing up and cleaned the kitchen benches. I hung the first load of washing out and put another blankety lot on. That's also hanging out now, together with load number three, white stuff. I mopped the kitchen, bathroom, loo and laundry. I brought the bins in. I watered the lawn where I'd put lawn seed down the week before, and the little garden near our front door.

Yes, it's sad: I far more enjoy housewifely tasks than work tasks. I would rather scrub the floors than build a website. With the changes I've had in my life over these last few months I would rather clean the toilet with my own toothbrush than build websites and put up with clients.

G has been away quite a lot in the last couple of months, so I have ironed several shirts for him. He usually irons his own shirts (quite the enlightened bloke in some ways). In our marathon ironing session yesterday he mentioned that and thanked me for it, whereby I answered it was the least I could do and anyway, that's what I do. His reply: "I didn't marry a 'wifey'." Now 'wifey' I am not and we both know it. But is there a difference between a 'wifey' and a woman who enjoys the physical side of housework and treats it as exercise? Plus, I get a lot of gratification from cleaning things and seeing the result.

I've spoken with G about my loathing of doing the work I started my company for in 2001. Now we have moved into a mortgage-free house he has told me that if I want to cut down on the stuff I hate doing, I should. He'd sooner have me happy than stressed and miserable. So I have. I'm not building any new websites. I'm telling potential clients I'm too busy, and just keeping the existing ones and their odd requests for changes and updates.

But still, I have come to dread spending my days sitting in front of the computer. I've been using computers for more than 20 years, and am finding technology increasingly frustrating. I get cross with websites which don't accept the login I set up with them. (Not, I hasten to add, the ones I build myself). It seems you need a password for absolutely everything these days and it's overwhelming. I get cross with email spam, especially when it uses my own name as the sender, so I can't put it into junk mail as I don't want to ban my own email address from my own computer. I get cross with Microsoft products, particularly Excel as it keeps crashing when you least want it to. I get cross with Google products when they change the layout and setup and you can't find what you bloody well want in terms of functionality. I just get cross.

So I procrastinate. I figure I can spend at least an hour after breakfast each day on cleaning maintenance, i.e. washing up, sweeping the kitchen, using the carpet sweeper on the rest of the house, with a major hoovering at weekends, watering the garden and lawn. I can walk to the post office and check my PO box.

And when I do get onto the computer and go through the emails and say "fuck off" to every single junk email - today I fantasised about meeting the bastard who sent me 47 emails about Louis Vuitton products using my own email address, and strangling him -, I then spend some quality time on Facebook and personal sites. Anything to put off the inevitable work stuff.

I have even stalled the workday by writing this blog post. But all good things must come to an end. The sun is shining outside and the sky a superb azure. And I'm stuck in the office, about to research some social media products for a client.

Ooh! Procrastination alert: it's almost morning tea time. I'll go and put the kettle on and that will give me the opportunity to enjoy a cup of coffee outside in the sun…

Bugger the hospital corners - I like my bed made my way!

I have a beef with hotels, B&Bs and other places at which I've stayed over the years.

I hate, desperately hate, the way they make the beds.

The sheets are turned down and tucked in so tightly that when you get into bed, your shoulders aren't covered. The blanket or duvet barely reaches to my nipples. I love to have at least a sheet over my shoulders except on the hottest nights. As a female of a certain age, I'm prone to waking at 2am screamingly hot (oh, OK, I have hot flushes. I'm menopausal), in which case I throw the covers off for a few minutes until I'm back to normal. But I like to have the choice. I don't want to spend all night with the top half of me too cold, awaiting the next hot flush.

Inexorably therefore, at any hotel, I have to remake the bed somewhat - untucking the sheets, blankets and duvet at the foot end and hauling them up towards the pillow.

I also untuck the sheets at the side, as I like to stick a leg out of bed as well if I get too hot. At home, there is usually at least one cat sleeping on the bed. In winter, I'm likely to have both of them tucked behind my knees (my knees, you'll note. G is too fidgety for them to get a good night's sleep behind his knees). So a little foot ventilation is necessary. I'm used to folding back the bottom end of the blanket or duvet to allow for the heat given off by the cats. Amusingly, I found myself doing that at hotels in Tasmania before I remembered the cats were back in Sydney.

My other alternative is to drag the pillow half way down the bloody bed so I can get the blankets up to my chin.

I'm not sure where the trend came from for making beds with blankets that don't come up to the pillow, but I suspect I'm not alone in remaking hotel beds to make them comfortable and practical rather than simply neat-looking.

What about you? Are you a fan of the hotel/hospital style of bed making, or do your sheets and blankets tuck happily under your chin at night?

Candlicious

My past is littered with failed multi-level-marketing attempts. In the 90s a close friend got me into Amway. It was disastrous. I didn't even manage to get one friend or colleague to 'look at the plan'.

Two years later I was more or less press-ganged into joining NuSkin at a women-only luncheon. I sold a couple of bottles of rather nice skin and face gunk but that was a fizzer, too.

Six years ago a colleague persuaded me to join Agel, saying I couldn't fail. Agel sells high-end vitamins. Unfortunately, good as the product was, the price was a bit of a killer, and as a rep I had to buy two boxes at month at around $100 each to stay in the business. I had no takers for becoming a rep under me, and, a couple of thousand dollars later, got out of that one.

At that point, I swore I would never again get involved in an MLM business as clearly I was not a born salesperson.

Why obviously explains why I've just signed up to PartyLite to become a candle lady, doesn't it?

The difference is, this time I have real faith in the product - and my friends are urging me to join so they can buy candles from me and hold candle parties with me presenting, so they get candle freebies of their own. I have finally found something people want to buy from me.

I am a candle addict. I have candles throughout the house and bugger the ozone layer and my carbon footprint, I thoroughly enjoy burning them. As a bit of a connoisseur of candles, I adore the PartyLite ones for their clean burn and good scents, which don't fade and aren't sickly overpowering. Before I even decided to become a 'candle lady' I was already a brand ambassador.

It was a tossup whether to try and supplement my income with PartyLite or Enjo, as I have big beliefs in both products. PartyLite won for the simple reason that people use and replace the candles quicker than they do the Enjo products. We'll treat ourselves with a pretty, sweet-smelling candle; it's an affordable luxury which starts at $17 - less than most lipsticks. We don't think of buying a cleaning glove as treating ourselves (but we are really, because we're cleaning the house without chemicals and our bodies will thank us). The money isn't quite as good with PartyLite but the starter kit is cheaper, and people really WANT to hold candle parties; already I have three friends who want to host one for me.

This time, I have also done my homework with my accountant. You see, most people who join an MLM business hear the words "expenses are tax deductible" and rub their hands happily. People trying to get you to join an MLM will tell you they are deducting their expenses so you can too, and if their MLM business is bringing them income which is higher than the tax-free threshold, they may well be deducting their expenses. However. The tax man gets grumpy on MLM people starting out who try and claim everything they spend on their business - Agel samples, Amway samples etc - as a tax deduction when they are not yet getting a large income from their MLM business. If your MLM business is earning less than the tax-free threshold, the ATO treats it as a hobby business and you can't claim expenses.

In my case, the main expenses I'll have are buying sets of new brochures from time to time and other stationery. Any candles or accessories I want to add to my kit I will get from 'hosting' my own candle party from time to time, as there are freebies for every person who hosts a party and depending on the takings from the party, the free candles could be up to $200 in value. If I achieve sales targets in the first three months the company will also give me a number of free accessories to use in my display kit.

My aim is that in a couple of years I can wind down the computer stuff and be, mainly, a candle lady. Ideally with a team under me, as that's how you really start to make an income from the business, obviously.

I hope, hope, hope I have found my niche. I need an extra income, I need something I can be passionate and confident talking about and demonstrating, and I need something people can afford and want. Hope it doesn't all go up in smoke!

Lean green cleaning machine

As it says in the About Me blurb, I want to live in a world with fewer chemicals in it. One way I achieve this at home - for the most part - is using Enjo products to clean the house with.

I say for the most part as my husband G gets into the shower recess when I'm not looking and gives it a choking squirt of Exit Mould, just in case mould should consider appearing.

Over the years we've been together though he's embraced the Enjo system even if he doesn't use it properly.  With Enjo, you have a 'fibre' in the form of a glove, or a floor mop, which you dampen with cold water to wash your surface. The important bit is that you dry the surface off ASAP with a clean towel or an Enjo Miracle cloth. This way you get rid of an astonishing amount of bacteria as well as making the surface clean and shiny. Trust me, you do. Anyway G often forgets about the drying off bit. But at least he has a go.

My old Enjo glove fibres I use in the kitchen and bathroom were getting absolutely buggered, almost threadbare in parts. Enjo stuff isn't cheap however; replacements are $49 each and I had to save up a bit to buy replacements for them, which I got a couple of weeks ago.

$49 might seem a lot for a cleaning product but then I'm not buying bathroom cleaners, spray-and-wipe type cleaners or floor cleaning detergent. I reckon in the years I've had my Enjo gloves they have more than paid for themselves.

Enjo make a brilliant paste cleaner called Marble Paste for difficult stains, and really scummy shower screens etc - so I haven't had to buy Gumption, Spray and Wipe, Jif or anything else for eight years. I've only used half my Marble Paste tub as a little goes a long way. It uses orange oil as its cleaning ingredient.

I have never been a 'clean freak' but I fear clean freakiness is creeping in. Most of it is clearing up after G.

When he washes the dishes after breakfast at weekends (my job during the week) the sink and benches are soaked and there is water everywhere. G cheerfully mops it up with an Enjo and doesn't dry it off, so that's where I come in, and I usually end up doing every surface in the kitchen after that.

Whenever G eats anything or makes a sarnie he leaves crumbs - can it be that men just don't see these things? - so the benchtops usually get another quick wipe then to get the crumbs off. I use a carpet sweeper in the living/dining area most days - those crumbs again! He's a mucky pup - as I don't want to encourage ants. We hoover the place once a week to really pick up the animal hair.

Our bathroom mirror gets a daily spattering when G shaves before breakfast, so I get the Enjo bathroom Miracle and wipe it over while I'm cleaning my teeth after breakfast. I do wonder if he ever notices it's spotless every morning?

My new Enjo fibres have given me a new lust for cleaning as they are doing a much better job than the buggered ones. From being a chore, I now treat cleaning as a bit of exercise you can do every day. I figure with the carpet and floor sweeper, the bench wiping, the bathroom cleaning, I'm getting up to 30 minutes' of movement, using lateral muscles, every day. Without even trying.

I have turned into a lean green cleaning machine. Well, green cleaning machine anyway. I'm hoping the cleaning will help lead to the lean bit!

It's hard being a girl - at least it used to be

Earlier this week I was watching The Agony of Life on ABC1, a show where well-known and (to me) not well-known people talk about life, the universe and not quite everything. No, not this blog. I wish they did. More readers would be good.

But I digress. Back to the show. This week it was all about the teen years, with guests revealing, to a man and woman, they were NOT cool kids. I can relate to that!

One of the questions presenter Adam Zwar posed was "How did your parents tell you the facts of life?" Ah, The Talk! The answers were varied and often hilarious.

Unlike laconic comedian Judith Lucy, who was a late bloomer ("I didn't have breasts until I was nineteen. I woke up one morning and THEY'D ARRIVED!") I was an early starter.

I was ten when Mum sat me down with a book on Menstruation (aka The Talk). It looked very dated - 1950s or early 1960s.  It was supposed to be written in a friendly style but friendly styles in those days were very stilted. People were embarrassed to talk about the fact that once a month girls start bleeding like stuck pigs. It was full of diagrams, and dry paragraphs. I read it and decided I didn't want to get my periods; sadly I didn't have much choice in the matter and a few months later found blood in my knickers one morning.

Couldn't find an English language ad but this brings back bad memories.

Well, if that wasn't bad enough, sanitary napkins in those days were a far cry from today's. We're talking early 70s. These things were the size of surfboards. And stick-on pads were just about to come onto the market. However, that was a year in the future and the only option was to wear Modess panties, bloody huge underwear with a plastic gusset in the crotch, and elastic strips at each end of the gusset. The sanitary napkins - oh bugger that, call them pads - were stuck under the elastic to hold it in place. I swear these knickers creaked and squeaked when you moved. They didn't hold the pads in place very well either, I was always conscious of the stupid things moving up my back or creeping forward. I was embarrassed beyond belief. I cried every month.

I can't tell you how unspeakable these were.

The other option was the sanitary belt. The pads in those days had foldout strips at each end which you could shove into the little rings on the sanitary belt. The belt was adjustable/elastic. The idea was it would hold the pad in place. I tried it. And tried it. And tried it. It didn't.

Worst of all about wearing surfboards in your underwear was that if you wore jeans or trousers - and I was a tomboy, I LIVED in jeans! - the stupid things were just a bit visible. From behind it looked like you'd crapped your pants. From the front...well, you looked a bit like a boy. I had to be paid to wear a dress in those days. The idea of having to wear a dress or skirt for at least five days a month was abominable so I stayed in jeans and rocked the got-a-willy/crapped-my-pants look.

Then stick-on pads became available. I begged Mum to buy me some. Anything but those creaky, sweaty plastic knickers. These days stick-on pads are pretty good. They have 'wings' to stop leakage. The adhesive is great. They are much thinner than they used be; bless technology. The 1970s stick on pads were shockers. They were still surfboard sized, they still were visible in trousers, but the adhesive was hopeless. One little strip down the middle that didn't stay stuck for very long, so the pad started creeping around your underwear. This meant - oh yes - they leaked.

Sick of having bloodstains on my jeans I regretfully started sticking the would-be stick-ons to the plastic knickers as the adhesive stuck to the plastic quite well. I was one of those unlucky girls who had heavy periods, and heavy period pain to go with them. I envied girls who only bled lightly for three days. I had one week a month of misery.

Then there was the whole palaver of taking spare pads to school to change at lunchtime; they looked pretty obvious and I used to hide them in my brown paper bag with my sandwich and apple.

I wonder if pad technology would have been a lot better a lot earlier if more women had been involved in the development process. I'm guessing that in the 60s and 70s most of the scientists working on sanitary products were men. Being men they were probably embarrassed about the whole job, and certainly didn't talk about their work down at the local pub. They probably said they were working on kitty litter or something instead. Seriously, consider wings on modern pads. A woman had to think that one up, surely. And probably borne of leakage experience. A bloke wouldn't consider something so logical. If they could make pads in the 70s with long strips at either end, they could have made them with strips at the side. But they didn't.

I was so glad the day I discovered tampons.  But girls these days, with a wealth of ultra-thin, ultra-absorbent, wing-bearing pads to choose from - they don't know how lucky they are!

Housanality

Ok, what's Housanality? Well, people have personality, houses have housanality. OK, I just made that up. But think about it, it works, doesn't it?

This is the context I'm talking about:  In our group of 8 townhouses we find that certain types of people live in certain houses in our complex.

For example, house number 2 attracts noisy people. The tenants before the current lot screamed and argued with each other on a daily basis. We were tempted to call the police once or twice when it threatened to become physically violent but luckily they backed off. Often outside, too, in their courtyard, so they could share the hate with their neighbours. The courtyard is number 2 is a bit of a noise amplifier because of the shape of it, we think. Every shout is magnified.

The current tenants in number 2 are loud, too. Like the previous tenants they are from India or Sri Lanka. It seems many Indian women have LOUD voices. Maybe they have to shout to make themselves heard above city noise in India. I'm not trying to be racist here. But most of our neighbours are Indian or Sri Lankan, and the women have voices which can clear blocked drains. Fact.

Anyway, our neighbours in 2 have a toddler, and they play, at loud volume, a CD of nursery rhymes in English, but with an Indian accent. We can hear them clearly in our own house. These songs become ear worms for me; I get "to marrrket, to marrrket, to buy a fat pig" stuck in my head for minutes at a time. It's worse when the child's mother, who we call Gobbler (more on that soon), sings along. She shouts loudly and tunelessly; the funniest song is Baa Baa Black Sheep, when Gobbler bellows, "YES, sir, YES, sir, thrrrree bags FULL!!!!"

The kid cries and screams a lot as all toddlers do, and then Gobbler gobbles to him. Yes, she could be mistaken for a turkey. She does an amazing turkey imitation, heaven knows why, and I swear that kid is going to grow up believing he's raised by poultry. When she's not gobbling, or singing, she talks to him, either in Hindi or parrotting back his own baby noises at high volume. Needless to say whenever it's not raining all the action takes place in their courtyard, so we hear every gobble whether we want to or not.

Then there is number 5. Number 5 attracts noisy dogs. The owners had two dogs there a few years back before they bought a bigger place and moved out, and their dogs barked and barked and barked and barked and barked. At nothing. When the owners were at work and I was busy working at home I wasn't above turning a hose on the bloody animals to shut them up. Now the place is tenanted and guess what, a noisy dog lives there. He barks and barks and barks, but usually for a reason, ie someone is walking down the street 25 metres away. His bark gets higher in pitch the more excited he gets until he sounds as if he's being strangled. When the maintenance men did the lawns today I thought he was going to choke. Thankfully, unlike the previous dogs, if you go out and say his name gently and tell him to be quiet, he'll look you in the eye and shut up. He's nice. If noisy.

Whoever lives in number 8 is scared of dogs. The previous owners were petrified of our Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, who does have a nasty habit of rushing out of the front door and barking at people from a distance. We're trying to get her out of it but she's determined to protect us from our neighbours, all of whom she knows well and likes. On the lead she's fine but off lead she's a wolf. So we try and keep her on the lead when we go out front. But... a few weeks back we'd been out in the car with her and we let her  jump out of the back seat. G went to open the front door of the house thinking she'd follow him but our dog spied the new guy in number 8 and went galloping up to him, barking, tail wagging frantically. Harmless but loud. Poor guy - he's scared of dogs and he ran to his car and jumped onto the bonnet, then the roof. I couldn't believe it! I was mortified. Poor bloke! He's Indian and I've met many Indians around here who are frightened of dogs. I had to grab our dog and apologise profusely. Inside our house G and I collapsed in cruel laughter as jumping on your own car was like something from a movie.

So there are the personality traits of a few of our neighbouring houses. Numbers 3 and 6 attract quiet people; we've seen a couple of families come and go in each of them over seven years and we've never heard a single shout. Numbers 1 and 7 I can't make a comment on, as the people in them have lived there longer than we have; will number 1's future owners have a penchant for white fluffy dogs and twee garden statues? Will number 7's future owners be outgoing and friendly?

Who knows? The local council is likely to rezone our entire street to high density housing, and if developers make us owners an offer we don't want to refuse, our houses, and their housanalities, may be gone forever in a few years, replaced by an apartment block. That's a sad thought as apart from KFC on the corner this is a quiet street, a neighbourly place, a sleepy hollow where houses sit on quarter acre blocks and kids still play cricket in their back gardens. Once land is gone, it's gone. And so is a way of life.

Can't stop that day

Monday. What is it about Monday that makes songwriters attracted to it in a way that they aren't about Wednesday or Thursday? Tuesday got its chance with Ruby Tuesday, and Friday on My Mind is a 60s classic.

Friday songs are upbeat. The weekend is on the way.

But Monday... oh dear. Monday Monday, can't stop that day. I don't like Mondays. Manic Monday. And let's not forget Blue Monday (New Order). Says it all really.

Frankly I don't like Mondays either. I get blue on Mondays. I am a classic sufferer of Mondayitis, and this is my second working Monday of 2013. I've already had enough!

This year I'm trying to only work part time; I'll be choosing my clients carefully. If someone sounds like trouble at the first conversation, I don't take on the job. My experience is that troublesome clients always want to pay as little as they can and indulge their right to change their mind often on fixed price projects.

Menopausal women can go through weird emotional and mental stages. I suspect I'm in one right now and have been for over a year. I just don't want to work. Part of that too is that I don't make much out of what I do so slogging away for nine or ten hours a day is discouraging, but the thought of going out and getting a paid job, with a supervisor/boss telling me what to do and watching how long I take for lunch, peering over my shoulder to see what I'm doing, the awfulness of KPIs and reviews, the sick feeling in the pit of the stomach when you ask for annual leave in case it gets knocked back and the unspeakable hell of workstations and shared offices... oh no, I don't want that again. No money would be enough. I'm an unemployable renegade these days.

So Mondays (like rainy days... there's a song in that!) are getting me down at the moment. I've had three weeks without work, weeks to explore painting, drawing and dressmaking/craft stuff. Fantastic weeks with little computer time. Freedom. Me time.

I'm not alone - I know that! But time was many years ago when I DID like Mondays and quite enjoyed my job. I was an employee at that stage but extraordinarily blessed with a great boss and my own office. This was in the heady days when email was just coming into regular use and didn't take up 90% of your work time. The company I worked for had a wonderful family atmosphere which changed after we were taken over; I scored a new boss who was a total control freak and sent me pretty close to a breakdown. I began to loathe my job and used to cry in the mornings as I drove to work. After that, my third control freak boss in my career, I decided enough was enough and lit out on my own.

They say that if you have a hobby you enjoy, make a career out of it. That's what I did twelve years ago, when my hobby was building websites and doing graphic design. Now I need a new hobby and new career! So I can like Mondays again.

Painting is an option.... suggestions on a postcard please!

You're so vain... Or, the French Solution

Well, actually, I'm so vain. I feel about 25 and skinny inside but the reality is fifty and overweight (but not yet obese, officially). I don't want to look fifty. I don't want to be tubby. I am also, and I state this unequivocally, the world's laziest bint. I have a gym membership but haven't used it in ages. Just the thought of hot gym-based sweatiness in a Sydney summer makes me want to lie on the sofa with a chilled glass of pinot grigio. Lying on a sofa won't help my thunder thighs though; summer is especially awful for me as wearing skirts or dresses means my big inner thighs rub together and get sweaty and uncomfortable unless I wear panty hose or thigh-length underwear. So I spend summer in trousers or shorts, even on the hottest days.

Having perused several books by French women or Brits and Aussies writing about French women (Almost French by Sarah Turnbull, Parisian Chic by Ines de la Fressange, All You Need To Be Impossibly French by Helena Frith Powell and - like millions of others - French Women Don't Get Fat by Mireille Guiliano, among others), I have decided to pursue a French solution. French women don't go to the gym. They simply move a lot. They walk. They take the stairs rather than a lift (although an office block of 30 floors would defeat me). Having spent five days in Paris walking my arse off last year there's something about Paris which compels you to walk everywhere, because there is so much to see and the city envelopes you in Parisian-ness. Um, western Sydney doesn't have the same charm but I'm doing my best. Even downtown Sydney doesn't have the same pull walking-wise but curiously central Melbourne does.

(Why French? you may ask. Because I've always thought French women to be chic, and while I was born without a chic gene, it doesn't stop me trying.)

Another part of the French solution is eating like the French. Not being guilty about having a glass of wine with dinner (but of course, one is not supposed to drink the entire bottle as some of my girlfriends do!). Not eating huge meals. Eating seasonal produce. Eating whole foods. Eating freshly prepared meals rather than package ones (something I have always done anyway). I've also cut down on the carbs, especially after 5pm. Except for the wine. I view wine as 'good carbs'. Heh heh, I've rattled on about diets etc on this blog before, but basically I eat protein and veggies at every meal, and don't have carbs every day. I have also cut down dramatically on sugar, particularly processed sugar. The Christmas season, with its jolly Christmas cake and irresistible Christmas pudding and home-made brandy custard and catching up with friends to - frankly - FEAST has taken its toll however and my weight is creeping up again.

So I have pledged to walk or cycle to the shops unless it's stinking hot in which case the airconditioned car gets a run, I gallop up the stairs in my house several times a day, the diet is back on track, but wait, there's more.

Those canny French women spend a bleedin' fortune on their skin, not just anti-ageing but anti-fat as well. I've been doing some research as I don't have the kind of budget which allows me to spend $200 on a face cream or anti-cellulite/slimming cream. Nor do I have a budget for regular facials, or regular anti-cellulite massages.

One thing and another led me to the No Lipo Lipo program by Carole Maggio, who has a day spa in California. One thing I had been researching was dry body brushing, something you can do in the privacy of your own home at the frugal cost of a sisal mitt. Lo! Carole's program includes dry brushing and also deep knuckle massage. Because I can't go to California for a six week program, I bought Carole's knuckle massage DVD which shows you how to do it all at home.

I put the DVD on yesterday, made notes to take into the bathroom and gave it all a go. Jesus!  My arms will certainly get toned as giving yourself a massage with your knuckles is hard work! You're supposed to do the massage three to four times a week but I'm going to try and do it every weekday while G is at work.

Carole also sells her Facercise book, which for a modest sum looks like it can supplement the skincare cream I use anyway and keep the wrinkles and double chin at bay. The book arrived in the post a few days ago and G flicked through it. "God!" he said. "I hope you won't be doing these exercises in front of me!" The exercises are well illustrated with photos, and some of the facial expressions you have to pull as part of the exercise program are a hoot!

So I'm also doing the exercises while G is at work. They make your face ache :-), which is probably proof they are doing their thing. I'll be intrigued to see if there is a difference. I've noticed the corners of my mouth turning down over the last year or so, and I hate that. I look like a grumpy old cow. (Probably because I AM a grumpy old cow 9-5 Mon-Fri!) Facercise has an exercise to stop your mouth turning down at the corners.

So here's the goal. By Easter, when it's time to hoe into all those cheap chocolate eggs, I'll be a clothing size smaller with a mouth that doesn't turn down. I'll be bien dans ma peau.  C'est tres bien, non?

Ink and flowing hands

I read in The Australian a week or so ago that writing implements may be on the endangered list, along with ties and hard copy diaries.

That's sad. I do love a good pen. There's something grand about writing with a fountain pen, for example.  I write letters to family members and old friends who haven't embraced the digital age, and take the trouble to use my fountain pen as it's about the only gallop it gets these days.

Even sadder on the handwriting front, there was a letter from a reader to the Oz's magazine stating that her grandchildren, in their early 20s, couldn't decipher their great-grandfather's WWI diaries, written in an elegant copperplate.

At school these days, it seems, kids aren't taught cursive/joined up writing. They learn a sort of italic printing but by the time they're in high school most of their work is via computer. Handwriting is not a skill that's desirable any more. Hence a generation who'll struggle to read the handwriting of their ancestors; they haven't learned how to form the shapes themselves.

There's a likelihood that cheques will go the way of the dodo as electronic banking buries them; that a signature written by hand won't cut the mustard at some point and that biometrics will be used to prove you're who you are. Handwriting, which has served us for more than a thousand years, will be more or less redundant.


That's a real shame.


Both my grandparents had elegant writing. Despite going to the same primary school their writing styles were quite different. Both slant forwards but my Pop's was copperplate, very neat and small, and Nan's was a flowing hand, big and generous. I write much like Nan, in a hand that lies about my age.

I grew up learning a very plain joined-up form called modified cursive, all the rage in NSW schools from the late 50s to at least the 1970s. It looked so plain and ugly - and even worse in my eyes, childish - beside my Mum's and grandparents' hands that once I was out of primary school and not marked on my handwriting any more I swiftly put loops on all the strokes I could and should. Fancy capitals, too.

I couldn't easily find an image of the cursive we learned at school on the net, so here it is, with my own cursive hand to show the difference.

I don't write by hand as much as I used to. My day book, beside my Mac, is covered with my scrawl, some of it neat, some of it all over the place as I take notes while I'm on the phone and/or pushing a cat out of the way.

This afternoon though, as work is getting quiet now with Christmas approaching, I did the annual Christmas card job, using my lovely fountain pen. I do have some fancy calligraphy I use when I'm handwriting, funky styles that I use for one-off cards, ie birthdays. It takes me a bit of time to do each card that way however, so with a pile of cards in front of me I elected for my usual handwriting, the one with loops and fancy capitals.

There really is something satisfying about writing by hand rather than simply tapping away at a keyboard. It means you have to think about what you're writing; you can't simply backspace if you change your mind half way through a sentence. Or misspell someone's name through being hasty. (Sorry to my cousin Louise, I really meant to put the 'i' in in the first place, not add it afterwards.)

There's some ink left in the pen; time to write a Christmas letter to my last surviving relation who doesn't own a computer!

When imagination runs wild - the unfettered state of childhood

When I was a pre-schooler, about three years old or thereabouts, I had an idea for a tv show for kids. It was called Toilet Time. The premise was this:

I would sit on the toilet having a crap and would be reading aloud an interesting story to a group of kids sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of me. They would be sitting a couple of metres away so they wouldn't cop the smell.

Yes, I was a bizarre child. At three I already had the reading skills of a seven year old, but the Toilet Time idea was the bizarre bit.

I used to like sitting on the loo reading a book as a kid; it was a good way to pass half an hour and whatever I'd eaten 24 hours before.  (These days I barely get the opportunity to finish a page before life calls me out of the loo.) In my imagination, however, I was not alone.

I used to envisage my audience, this rapt collection of small strangers hanging on my every word. Boys and girls, neatly dressed, the boys in shorts and long socks, the girls with ribbons in their hair.  They were happy listening to me; I was happy reading. Win/win!

This was, of course, one daydream that I had while I was on the loo. When I wasn't reading while sitting there, I'd make up stories.

In one, I played a character called Bronwyn who was, I think, some kind of drum majorette. Whatever she was, she proudly led the marching band down the main street of a town, quite which town I'm not sure. She wore some of her hair in a ponytail above her forehead so it swung onto her face. She had white boots and a miniskirt and was about eight or ten I think. She certainly wasn't three. What she did when she wasn't prancing down the street I'm not sure!

I spent a lot of my childhood pretending to be someone else, actually. My imaginary friends far outnumbered real ones. Sometimes I'd tell my family who I 'was' and demand they call me by that name for as long as the pretence held. Hours, days, weeks, in one case months (I was Dora from Follyfoot in that case, when I was 11). Other times I'd be in character but kept it solely to myself.

Being a tomboy from about age five my characters were often boys. Boys had more fun in my book. They could get dirty and play in mud - heck, they were probably expected to! They could climb trees without someone down below telling them their knickers were visible. It wasn't unusual for me to play multiple characters: Jess and the Four Boys comes to mind. I created them. Jess was a man in charge of the four boys; uncle, father, I can't remember what, but I was mainly Jess. I can't remember the names of the four boys but I just liked the sound of it. Jess and the Four Boys. I was about six or seven at the time. J and T F B liked getting into trouble and mischief... multiple boys saw to that!

I was characters from books or tv shows, I was characters I had created, I was occasionally older or younger than my age; at one stage I was a cat.

I had imaginary conversations with my imaginary characters and their imaginary friends; often I'd write them down and turn them into a story. (No, not for Toilet Time. I had grown out of that idea by then.)

I probably should have considered acting as a career, but I was too shy. My characters usually only had one audience: me.

At an age where I should have grown out of pretending to be other people I withdrew even more into my imaginary worlds: high school. I hated the place. I didn't fit in. I got through my years there pretending to be an apprentice jockey - or several, whichever one I wanted to be that day - and pretended that school was actually the Apprentice Jockeys' School (yes, they exist).

As a kid my imagination knew no bounds. I used to write stories almost compulsively, based on the adventures my characters had while I was playing them. I envy that young me as these days I am hard pressed to come up with a decent, detailed fiction plot.

At the risk of sounding curmudgeonly, if I wanted entertainment as a kid I did one of these things:

• read a book (and often acted it out)
• went and played outside (being in one character or another)
• watched tv - I was allowed an hour a day after school and an hour after dinner, and shows such as McHale's Navy, Hogan's Heroes, Petticoat Junction and Green Acres gave me great ideas for playacting outside afterwards when I was 8 or 9
• did some kind of art or craft thing - writing, drawing, painting
• played with my toys - raced toy cars or made up stories for my dolls to act out
• walked the dog (who also assumed characters in my imaginary world)

In short, I entertained myself. Yeah, I played with the neighbours' kids too and we'd ALL act out scenes from tv shows.

I do wonder about modern kids though. Do they do this sort of thing? Do they 'pretend' as I did and many of my friends did? Or do they just sit around and play with bloody computers, phones and electronic toys? My friends' children, who I have watched grow from babies, have never pretended to be anyone else. None of them had imaginary friends. I hate to say it but they are a little bit boring; they lack imagination. Easily bored, they HAVE to be entertained by something, preferably with batteries in it (just wait until the girls discover dildos!).  I feel sorry for them, as if they have missed out on something fun and important by not letting their imagination run wild as a child.

Maybe I could turn Toilet Time into an app ...

A painterly weekend to myself

I have deliciously sore muscles in my legs, back and arms from weeding my Mum's lawn on Saturday morning. She has a weeding device which is supposed to pull dandelions out easily without you having to bend down, but some of her dandies were too well-established so I was bending and pulling and yanking for an hour and a half in the spring sunshine, until I felt too sweaty, my hair dripping with salty sweat, and too thirsty too. I'm surprised my muscles aren't complaining more, but then I do try and do stretches most days (when I think of it).

Last weekend was a computer-free weekend aside from social media updates and chatting online with some friends. And oh boy, was it good!  G was away until last night so I had the luxury of a weekend to myself with my own company and no interruptions.

After I'd done the lawn I did some cleaning at Mum's house then came home and got stuck into more drawings. I had a scene in mind of the view from Mum's house, across the river to the great school which graces the top of the hill on the other side. It would be the view from my childhood, before the trees grew and obscured most of the building.

I also tried a scene from Paris. I had taken a photo of a languid Parisian girl with a red-lipped, bored face toiling up the steps at Montmartre, and decided it would make a funky landscape with the buildings leaning in and out, and the curves of the handrail exaggerated.

I got stuck in.

My paintings didn't turn out quite as I'd hoped, so late in the afternoon I gave up and treated them as drafts. I was tired though - I draw/paint standing up and I'd been on my feet most of the day. After a hot bath I sank gratefully into bed at 9.30. This is the time that 20 years ago I'd be setting out for the evening - how times change!

On Sunday, after getting a couple of loads of washing out on the line and cleaning the house, I brought out the pastels again.

The second attempt at Mum's view was better, but I think I buggered up one of the jacaranda trees I'd placed in the foreground. Now I definitely know what I'm doing with that scene; one more attempt should see it as I intend it to be.

My sulky Parisian girl turned out better, too. On Saturday I'd painted her with too subdued a palette. This time I went mad on gold and oranges, taking the soft sandstone and hyping it up into summer colours. I'm much happier with the result.

These two paintings are both the same size: 9" x 5" (don't ask me what that is in centimetres, I can work it out... eventually!). This is specific as there is a class in an art show I have entered in the past in which all the entries must be that size. They can be any media or subject. This dates back to the Heidelberg School in the early 1900s who held an art show where all the paintings were that size.  The art show isn't until next May but heaven knows I need some practice!

I'm buoyed up as my nudey rudey and Parisian building both made it into the art show in the area I'm living in at the moment. I'll be going to the opening this Friday night. I'm stunned and delighted as I really didn't expect to make the cut, I'm so out of practice.

So now all I want to do is draw and paint. Work is an invasion when my fingers are itching to grab hold of a pastel!

G is home again so that intrudes on my creative space a bit, particularly in the evenings when it's my only real chance to paint during the week. But don't knock the muse, never knock the muse...

To carb or not to carb....

Yesterday I felt like a slug. Today I am bursting with energy.

I think the culprit for the sluggishness is carbs. On Saturday night I had pasta, delicious ravioli bought from Orange Grove Markets, as fresh as can be and quite irresistible. Sunday lunchtime I had the rest of the pasta. On Sunday night I had a pasta salad and couscous salad my neighbour gave me.

Yesterday morning I had toast for breakfast as I couldn't be bothered making anything else - only one slice as I wasn't hungry, I think I was still full from the carby dinner - and scoffed the rest of the couscous salad for lunch. I was tired, lacking energy and lacking enthusiasm. Couldn't be arsed taking the dog for a decent walk. Didn't want to tackle the ever-growing stuff in the inbox and was glad when a storm crashed overhead and I had to turn the computer off, just in case there was a lightning strike.

Last night I eschewed all the carbs sitting in the fridge and had a sausage, a baked beetroot (oh yum!) and some cauliflower with cheese for dinner. I woke up this morning feeling thinner, hungry and alert. Not that I weighed any less, but I certainly didn't feel bloated as I did the day before. This morning I had a slice of bacon and an egg fried in a non-stick pan, with some baby spinach leaves on the side.  I am raring to go!

Ageing is a bastard. I turned 50 last month. I don't feel it but my body isn't what it used to be. I used to be able to eat carbs and not put on weight or feel like I needed to curl up with the cats and sleep. Now my body runs better on protein and veggies, with only a few carbs per week. Considering mashed potato is one of my favourite comfort foods it's been a hard slog cutting down on the carbs, but I can see and feel an improvement without them.

Wheat is a big problem in our society in general these days. Over the last 50 or so years different varieties have been bred for high yield, and this breeding also includes an increase in gluten, far more than in the wheat my mother ate as a child.  Wheat ain't what it used to be. I don't think I tolerate the gluten like I used to; it bloats me. More and more people are exhibiting gluten intolerance it seems if the increasing number of gluten-free foods on the market is anything to go by.

Too much processing is a problem too. When I go to the supermarket just about every biscuit, cracker and crispbread is either wheat-based or rice-based. Not great. The best cracker you can eat is an oatcake; oats are low gluten if not gluten free, and fantastic for lowering cholesterol. You find oatcakes everywhere in the UK but here in Oz they were on the shelves for a few brief months last year then discontinued. I complained. Apparently not enough people joined me. So now I make my own oatcakes, and they are dead easy to make.

Cutting down on processed food including bread has helped me feel more energetic. I might eat a slice of bread a week; some weeks not even that. All the additives in a modern loaf have turned good old simple bread into an over-processed food. I was baking my own for a while there but since I cut out the carbs I haven't bothered; G still likes his toast with home-made marmalade and we try and buy sourdough from good bakers who don't load it with too many preservatives etc.

The last few weeks have been temptation-laden though as there is leftover mud cake in the fridge from my birthday. I'm rationing it to thin slices as it contains heaps of the other thing I've cut down on too - sugar.

I've tried to go sugar-free but I'm not a saint. I love dark chocolate. I love wine. Those are my weaknesses.  I am at an age and a stage where I'm likely to gain weight - menopause, anyone? - so am being bloody careful not to as excess weight isn't good for your organs and is seriously hard to shift during menopausal years apparently.

I'm planning another delicious carb-free dinner tonight. Another sausage (bugger the fat content!), asparagus and another little roast beetroot. Mmm.

What you can do on your own

G is away for a week on a business trip, so I'm once again batching with the animals. While I'll be painting some evenings (even some days if I'm lucky) there are other things I do and don't do when I'm on my own for a bit:

• Take up the entire bed. Yes. If I get too hot in one spot, simply roll over to where it's cool. Fling my arms out wide. And my legs. Be a starfish. 
• Fart in bed. Girls do fart. Even in bed. But now there is no pretence about carefully lifting the covers and letting a silent one out very slowly. Blow, wind, and crack your cheeks!
• Don't set the alarm. I work at home. Without having to wake up at 6.30 for the morning rush that sees G out the door at 8, I can laze in bed until around 7, when the cats demand breakfast and the dog demands a wee.
• If it's yellow, let it mellow. Yup, saving water by not flushing the loo after each wee. They can build up for a bit. 
• Reheating food and eating it out of the container. Hmm, the thin end of the wedge. The slippery slide to slovenliness. But hey, it's less washing up. 
• Showering with the bathroom door open. It lets out the steam. G and I both value our bathroom privacy so we generally shut the door when we're in there. 
• Not turning the telly on at 7 to watch the news. G loves the news. I love the silence without it. But I do enjoy the weather.
• Cook beetroot. Mmm, roast beetroot. No use cooking it for G, he loathes it. I love it. I don't usually bother cooking it for one, but this week I picked up some delicious little small beetroots at the local markets. I shall feast. 
• Eat lots of vegetarian meals. G loves his meat, I enjoy a few veggie days when he goes away. He doesn't have the same enthusiasm for quinoa with carrots, spinach, rocket and spices cooked in veggie stock that I do.
• Most importantly, paint. I can't paint with other people about. I don't get the concentration and imagination, I'm always conscious of others being 'there' and one thing I do hate is anyone looking over my shoulder. I work at night after dinner, with a wine or two. I know I should be working in daylight but don't always get the opportunity particularly during the week.

So that's my 'alone' list... I'm sure I'll think of more things and add to this. What's yours?