Travelling north

Tomorrow we are heading off to Dongara to attend the third State Surfing rounds (actually held at Geraldton). I may have already mentioned the anticipation in this earlier post.

Hammerhead and Barnstormer are SOOOO excited and have been counting down sleeps for a week now. They have even packed their little suitcases for the first time. They have packed them full to the brim by themselves and lined them up at the front door. I was making dinner while all of this packing was going on and have only just checked the contents now that they are tucked up in bed. I have been pleasantly surprised to find that Barnstormer has remembered to pack her hairbrush, which is very odd as she rarely wants to use it at the moment.

Hammerhead's suitcase has his pillow pet crammed inside it with a new storybook (from Nanny) and his pyjama pants. He is clearly only focused on packing for the moment--bedtime.

Have pillow pet, will travel.

Barnstormer's case has eight pairs of knickers, an array of short and long sleeved tops, jeans, a bottle of bubble making solution (!), five random pencils and three different sets of pyjamas.

I have come down with a cold. It crept up on me this morning and is worse than the man flu I've been dealing with for the last month. It is a ruddy, great, big, horrid, blocked up-type cold that requires me to walk around constantly looking for tissues and working out if we have any suitable medication that has not expired. The sinus tablets I washed down with a glass of red at dinner time have done absolutely NOTHING.

HM also informed me that The Surfer "smashed up" his board this afternoon. Yes, two days before the big event. This is like Cadel Evans getting a puncture in LeTour and having no one to fix it. OK, I know Cadel probably has ten bikes stacked up on some Mini Cooper's roof just behind him, waiting hungrily for him to get a puncture so this is not a fair comparison as alas, The Surfer does not have this luxury at the moment. And there is no way a ding can be repaired in this timeframe, not even via the DIY backyard job, considering we are leaving tomorrow. What to do?

I could have sworn they were talking about a POXY repair kit.

For the record, "smashed up" will mean a tiny, seemingly insignificant indent somewhere on the board. It may even involve the need for a magnifying glass. Worse, it may mean he has to use a crappy older board. I don't know if I am a drama queen or not but when HM said "smashed up" I was at least expecting the board to be in two pieces. I know not the bounds of a surfer's sorrow.

Anyway, I am far, far more concerned about The Surfer or HM being eaten by a shark. But I dare not mention it ... it's the elephant in the room.

On a more positive note, I'm extremely looking forward to a getaway as it's been some time. I'm especially hanging out for more of this glorious sunshine. Have had an up and down week but am good now. One of those weeks where little things annoy me and I can fly into a rage at any given moment, usually over something that I wouldn't even care about at another time. But there's no point dwelling on it. It would be nice to know why because the very next day I won't understand why I felt like that.

What I do know, however, is that giving up coffee and wine didn't change anything in that respect. Which is somewhat of a relief ... imagine if you gave up coffee and wine and then EVERYTHING [as in mentally] was much, much better. And, even worse, you and every single person around you, felt that you should never drink coffee or plonk ever again !! I can honestly say that I didn't feel any better for it (other than experiencing some  'I'm purer than thou' feelings) and I know for a fact that HM missed sitting down for our glass of vino together while the fence jumper shows are on.


I had no trouble giving it all away but am now most content to have one long mac in the morning and a vino here and there. Not every night mind, but definitely one on a Friday.

Also, I must confess that despite having the best intentions, I still haven't packed my bag in advance.  I did, however, purchase a pair of thick three-quarter black leggings to wear under my skirts. As one friend has already mentioned to me, this is the closest I will ever come to wearing trackies.

Also, a number of peeps have mentioned that they cannot work out how to comment below. If you click on the link that says X number of gorgeous people have commented then you should be given the opp to do this. You can be completely anonymous. xx

Put on a happy face

There is nothing like a bit of winter sunshine to really sort out the symptoms of seasonal affective disorder (SAD). Yes as I have mentioned before I get sad with SAD. But when I drive down West Coast Highway on a glorious day like today I become the shiniest, happiest person in the whole city.

I even started singing to the kids in the car:

Grey skies are gonna clear up,

Put on a happy face.

Brush off the clouds and cheer up,

Put on a happy face.

And spread sunshine all over the place,

Just put on a happy face.

Ok, some of you might think that I may have inhaled one too many cleaning products this morning, but it's true. The weather can totally make or break my day. I was so happy to be out and about this morning that I stayed out twice as long!

I wasn't even going to go anywhere but HM did the last minute sneaky-exit-without-taking-the-kids after telling the kids they were going to the beach on the obligatory surf check. This of course was actually a clever ploy to get me out of the house (once the kids think they are going to the beach, you either have to take them or be prepared for no end of harrassment). They simply will not be placated any other way. Not even with ice cream.

So there I was driving down to the beach on the most magnificent of July mornings. SINGING.

The kids did not utter a sound during my warbling. They did not even flinch.

So we arrived at the beach and the glorious day just continued on. We watched The Surfer shredding it, we sat and made sand castles, some of us walked and collected shells and stuff, we had a muffin at the café and I had the most divine macchiato. For the record, I'm slowly introducing the odd dash of caffeine (and the odd slurp of vino) back into the diet. In my hiatus I learned this:

But just getting back to my choice of song for a minute ... I recently decided to stop putting on a happy face, as in stop pretending to be happy when obviously not feeling happy. Stop pretending to the girlfriends and extended family members, while letting it show at home. I realised that this was not that healthy (or genuine) and was a continuing part of the charade that I had so often played.

It took me a while to realise that it didn't matter where I was or what stage of my life I was in, there was something in my brain that just wasn't seeing the good stuff in life. It was only seeing the bad stuff. When my life experienced any major change (one of many), instead of being happy about the future, I was deeply upset about the loss of the past.

I have nothing to be sad about. Yes I've lost some very good friends far too young, but I also have a lot of very, very good friends still around. I have my health, I have my kids, I have my family and I have a good man.

And I have wine. But for all the right reasons now. Cheers!

Goodbye alcohol and caffeine ... for now

I've given up my wine and long macs. It's been three weeks exactly.

I had a bit of a crisis point just over three weeks ago. A very good friend died nearly two months ago--a most beautiful human being--and the black dog bolted down the well worn path. It was the third such friend I have lost to cancer. Am I jinxed? At this rate I am losing a fantastic friend once a decade.

I hit a very bad patch and so it was back to the GP for new directions after a lovely chat with a nice man on the Mental Health Emergency Line. GP enquired as to my alcohol and caffeine intake. Now I am no Hunter S. Thompson but I have to admit, my 'daily' glass of wine around nutcase hour was turning into two glasses, sometimes three. I knew this wasn't good but it seemed to taste nice.

Then it was coffee first thing in the morning. HM is barista extraordinaire and usually makes at least three full strength long macs before I am even out of pyjamas. This is often followed by a trip to a cafe with Barnstormer and Hammerhead for more. We like cafes.

Anyway, the irony is that you go to the GP depressed and they then tell you that you have to quit coffee and plonk. So you leave the GP even more depressed than ever!

Strangely, it has been very easy to give it all up. I think the fact that it is winter is helping. I do miss the little rituals that HM and I used to have but I am soldiering on, with clarity. Now I am hoping that weight will just magically fall off! I need to lose ten kilos at least. I am pretty certain I look exactly like that poor girl in the papers on the weekend where everybody had to judge whether she was fat or not. I almost have her height and definitely have her weight. So I am 'average'. This is one instance where I want to be below average. Stay tuned.