Mother Knows Best... sometimes...

How often do you make a comment in passing not realising the impact it might really have?

This postcard; which I saw on the PostSecret blog this afternoon reminded me of the countless times I've heard women comment on the influence their mothers unknowingly had on their lives. The little things their mothers never knew they did that upset them.

"Oh, you've put on weight since I saw you last"

"Are you really that hungry?"

"You're sister has such beautiful skin"

"Why don't you (sing, run, work, dance, do anything...) like your sister/brother"

"You're so much like your father"

Most of the time comments such as these are said without the intention of causing hurt but intention or not, they hurt. Moreso than causing hurt, these comments stick with us, in the back of our minds and every time we doubt ourselves these are the things we remember.

"My mum thinks I'm fat."

"I shouldn't eat that, Mum would be horrified."

"My sister is so much more beautiful than me, no wonder noone ever looks at me."

"I can't sing (run, work, dance, do anything) well."

"Mum hates Dad, she's never said anything good about him, she must hate me too."

There's one truth, as children, we know above all others; mother knows best. So if our own mother believes all these bad things about us they must be true, she wouldn't say it if they weren't, right?

If your mother ever said anything like this to you, she probably didn't mean it, probably meant well in fact. Maybe she just wasn't thinking about what she was saying. Most importantly, she was wrong; sometimes we all are.

As a child it may well have been true that our mothers knew us better than anyone else, as adults that no longer holds true. Go out and create your own truths; eat with joy, sing loudly, celebrate your beauty and be proud of the ways you are like your father, he wasn't all bad either.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes...

In just a few short months I will have been a mother for 14 years, FOURTEEN! That is SO many mother years and yet there are so many more to come.

This is significant in understanding the impact of what I did today to change my world, to add to my life, to enrich and make it better.

I went to playgroup. 14 years and 3 children and today I went to playgroup for the very first time independently, just me and my babe, noone else there that I knew. I have been before to a friend's playgroup to visit (whilst they were at a play centre end of term break up no less) and I've been to a supported playgroup-style program for mothers who have suffered post natal depression. I have never before been to playgroup, by myself. Let me explain...

You know that feeling you get when you're at a theme park (or even at "the show") and you're deciding which thrill ride you are going to go on first? The butterflies in your stomach start to flutter yet you still join the queue. As the queue proceeds and you get closer to taking your place on the ride those butterflies become grasshoppers jumping around your insides. You take your seat and wonder if you really will be able to hold down the lunch you probably shouldn't have eaten (or was it just the fairy floss that was too much?) You start to sweat, the ride lurches forward and your heart is in your throat closely followed by your stomach. You're wondering if you're really going to survive this little exploit (what made you think this would be fun?!) "OMG, I should just take the chicken ramp now!" You can't help but think. Then, just as quickly as you began to process your doubts about the ride, you realise it's all over and it wasn't really that bad, in fact, it was kind of cool. "I might even do that again!"

Everyone knows that feeling right? You either overcome it and take the ride or you decide you just plain don't like thrill rides and you never defeat the anxiety that prevents you from giving them a go. That's how I feel about people, interpersonal interactions and people in groups in general. Even the groups of people filling shopping centres scare me and I don't have to talk to any of them (well, not more than civilities with shop assistants or apologising to the person one of the babes horrifies with their childish absurdities.)

So playgroup, for me, was like deciding to go to a theme park, and then taking the plunge to go on the biggest roller coaster there (or maybe the Giant Drop, that is really one horrendous beast!) Today I did it, I overcame one of my great fears. I beat the anxiety and you know what? It wasn't that bad, it was kind of cool. The babe had a great time with many new friends. The mothers were friendly (they all took the time to come to me and introduce themselves which was a great blessing.) There were no scary, uber-stylish yummy mummies at our new playgroup.

Yes, I said it, "our playgroup". I can see that we'll be going back; maybe these friendly women will come to be women I call friends.

Wasted Time...

I sleep badly, terribly, in fact I often get by on fewer than 5 hours sleep a night. Note how I said "get by" otherwise known as "surviving" but I'm not by any means doing well. I am always tired, always on edge, always anxious, always impatient, quick to anger. None of these are good things, of this I am fully aware.

I'm sure that a great deal of this problem has been born of bad habit; night time is MY time, quite often it's the only time I have to myself however I know I have to change this pattern. I often think about how different my life might be if I were to turn my sleep patterns upside down, rise much earlier, sleep much earlier. If I were to rise with the sparrows I could walk or cycle (at a stretch maybe I could even run somewhere) before the children wake; the older ones are great babysitters when the babe is sleeping and don't mind as long as they know what I'm doing. In any case I would always have my phone with me and be able to be back home within 20minutes and we have great neighbours who the kids could go to if need be. I would still have time to myself but it would be more productive time; I wouldn't mind exercising in the evening (at night even) but my husband would be in conniptions at the terrible risk I'd be taking. Forming the habit of rising earlier might also mean that I can keep up with exercise during summer when it comes around again.

Getting up early isn't really the problem, I can do that, in fact, when I have to work I do just that, up at 5am without too much complaining. The problem lays at the other end of the day, the evening. The older children are at the stage where 8:30pm no longer seems a late enough bed time for them and last school term my husband made a deal with our son that if he wasn't late to school a single day he would be allowed a later bed time. He wasn't late and is now pushing for 9:30pm bed time. For me to change my habits and get up early every day I need to recognise when I am tired in the first place and go to bed at that time; usually around 8pm. I don't just get up and go to bed at that time because my husband has usually not been long home from work, the children aren't off to bed yet, generally it's family time and with D working on his own business we don't get a lot of that during the week. By the time the children are all in bed and settled into sleep I'm beyond tired, my mind kicks into overdrive and I can't wind down again for hours.

I think I will just have to take the plunge and do it. If I'm up early enough I'll get to spend quiet time with D before he goes to work (he currently intentionally gets up a little earlier than he has to for quiet time, on the opposite schedule to me!) It will be good for us to have those few precious moments to ourselves. It will be good for him to have that small amount of time in the evening alone with the children. It will be good for me not to have to "do bedtime". It will be good for me to get more sleep.

The notion keeps coming to me of late that "you can do anything just for this day". I've seen it in a movie or tv show, I recalled it from GA literature. It makes sense really. So, just for today, Tuesday (my little personal challenge was going to be to go to bed before midday on Monday but I had to write this post before it left my scrambled brain for never never land) 10 May, I will go to bed before 9pm. I'll see how it works and then maybe I can do it again on Wednesday, after that, who knows? Only time will tell.

Inappropriate censorship?

I read a blog post recently in which the author exclaimed at the differences in the book The Bridge to Terabithia that she as an adult read to her children, as opposed to what she recalled having read as a child. Having never read The Bridge to Terabithia (nor indeed watched the movie) I cannot comment on the content of the book, however I thought it was odd to want to censor something form her children which had brought her such joy.

The writer's main concern seemed to be the amount of swearing in the book, 'though she also mentioned a 5th grader having an intense crush on his teacher.

I've always taken the tact with my children that they can read 'most any material of their choosing (they're not hanging out with the Playboy girls) safe in the knowledge that anything that concerns them therein can be taken up with myself or their father and that we will always give them factual and relevant information to sate their thirst for knowledge. That's not to say that we'd give them a graphic or complete adult description of swear words, moreso that we might explain to them that "sh*t" is a slang word similar to "poop" which may be used as a swear word to express frustration, or that "f*ck" is a swear word used by some adults (and teenagers) but it is not acceptable for children or for adults who wish to be seen as responsible, considerate, people. We've taken the same tact with television and movies. They watch programs and movies of their choosing as long as they are in our company or the company of adults we trust tor treat them similarly (ie answer their questions honestly and appropriately.)

Print, televisual and cinematic media are for the greater part, a reflection on the beliefs and attitudes of our greater society. We might not agree with all of the ideas and ideals portrayed but I would rather my children be presented with those alternative view points whilst I can influence their reactions to them.

Did the books/movies you are now banning/censoring for your children do you any real harm? They gave you great memories and as a child, (as the adult you now realises) you censored them for yourself.

If the adult (or inappropriate) content went straight over your head as a child why wouldn’t the same thing happen to your children?

Funny how children see the whole world from a different perspective than adults isn’t it?

I think it's important to remember that no matter what the influences our children encounter int heir young lives it is we, their parents, who are the greatest influence on them.

What is Real?

Every now and then I have a light bulb moment; in a flash, everything seems clear. I know exactly what I should do and how to do it, or I just suddenly understand something that has seemed beyond my grasp previously. We all have those moments right? Problem with my mind is that just as soon as there is clarity it is surrounded by mud, or at the least, fogginess. The moment is irrevocably lost.

It happened again this week. I had the television on in the background, as I so often do (and know I shouldn't) and there was a segment on a current affairs program about behavioural psychology. Specifically it was about people who intermittently cannot control their temper; apparently this is now a behavioural disorder, seriously. I couldn't get my head around that; how can it be that a person can control their temper most of the time but intermittently, randomly even, they lose that ability? It seems the whole world has gone mad in assigning every personality flaw a behavioural/mood disorder denying people the power of personal responsibility. Where is the line between "I screwed up and now I have to pay the price" and "I have a behavioural disorder and cannot control this"? Is there such a line? How can you tell if a person has "intermittent outburst disorder" or is just an abusive asshole who loses their temper?

This line of thinking, of course, led me to thinking about how I would then be judging myself. Post Natal Depression, Generalised Anxiety Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder, Severe Generalised Depression, Insomnia, etc, etc, etc, yes, you could say I'm a bit of a fruit loop. (You could, you don't have to!)

What if all these disorders weren't real? What if they'd never been labelled, if I'd never been diagnosed? Well, of course, the reality is they would all still exist, I would still have to deal with all of them but what if I could just change my thinking? What if I could just decide that I would not suffer from these disorders any longer? What if I pretended, "fake it 'til I make it" until I just didn't have any of those disorders anymore?

In that moment I really believed it to be possible; if I just "went to bed earlier", if I just "got more organised", if I just "stopped worrying". Then I could be me, the real me, me to my full potential. So I decided I would do it, the next day. The next day hasn't come yet, it probably won't come, maybe if I just take baby steps I'll find that day somewhere down the track... maybe I won't.

(It is worth noting that even though I didn't end up taking the "fake it 'til you make it" approach, I did a couple of days later hear a news article stating that researchers have found that there is a gene variant leading some people to be predisposed to depression. This seemed to blow my whole "pretending" theory into chaos. A (Dr) Google search however will quickly show that as with most medical research there are no firm answers, one study shows genetic variants another dismisses that theory just as readily. Here comes that fog again...)

Start Doing Things You Love...

Things I love...

• reading
• gardening
• photography
• bicycling
• writing
• letters
• learning
• friends and family
• dancing
• singing
• walking, hiking and camping
• flower arranging and selling
• crafting

These are the things I need to do more of to find my balance and ensure my happiness. They're not necessarily things I'm good at but things that bring me joy. I need to consciously act to make more time in my life for these things.

If you don't have enough time, watch less tv.  

I don't think I watch too much tv but this line of the Holstee manifesto is a reminder in any case, that the things we place importance on may not be important after all. Many a time I have the tv on for background noise (what bad company!) and get distracted from what I really want to be doing by whatever brain suck is currently on the box. Facebook offers similar torment in the form of all the mind numbingly easy to get drawn into games that are offered therein. I need to make a conscious decision to reduce the impact of those things on my life. Television and facebook; time drains extraordinaire.

Meant to be?

You could almost be forgiven for believing that news.com.au had signed up for google advertising with the look of this advertisement (on the right) posted next to this news story.

The advertisement is actually for a health fund offering 100% more dental cover...

Spiritual Home

It's been a long time now since I've set foot in a Church for anything other than the wedding, christening or funeral of a friend or relative, around 20 years in fact.

A long time that I've rejected Christianity and tried to fill the gap with a variety of other theories and systems.

My siblings and I were raised in the Church of England, Anglicans, by the time that I made my first communion however my parents had long since left the Church, well at least physically they had. I would've been around 14 at the time I think and was involved with the Church through assisting to operate their creche and Sunday School and also through a Friday evening Youth Group. I loved that Church, I loved the people I met there, yet eventually I drifted away from there, for what reason I cannot recall.

I've struggled ever since then with the ideals held in the Bible; what is real, what is an analogy, an idiom? Where do you draw the line between fact and fiction and is it really meant to be read literally anyway? I think my drifting away from the Church began at that age when I naturally began to question everything I knew and when things couldn't be explained I sought to find the answers elsewhere.

Strange then, isn't it, when I haven't been able to find the answers elsewhere that I've returned to the place from whence I began?

What am I seeking anyway?

I believe firmly in signs, that if you live your life in a fully aware state there are many indicators in our day to day travels which lead us in the right direction, confirm our paths or potentially, lead us astray. Many days pass I'm sure in which I'm surrounded by signs that I either do not see or fail to recognise for what they are.

There is a children’s television show, actually I don’t even know the name of it, all I know if the theme song “everything’s rosie, everything’s ro-ho-o-sie, everything’s rosie when your friend’s are around… everything’s ro-ho-o-osie-ee now…” (Okay, I just googled, the show is actually called “Everything’s Rosie”.) Monty Python sang “Always look on the bright side of life,” whistle, whistle, whistle.” Pollyanna learned to play the glad game and for many eons people have been saying “every cloud has a silver lining”.

These sentiments, whilst mostly true, fall under another old saying “easier said than done”, however another quote I read recently was “The happiest people don’t have the best of everything. They just make the best of everything” had me thinking on the theory of always looking “on the bright side” all over again. What if it really is possible to change your life just by changing your perception of the events in your life? It’s worth a try isn’t it?

These are the signs that have been thrust upon me of late; genuine silver linings around real clouds as I drive home exhausted from work, the theme song of that children's tv show, the Monty Python troupe singing to themselves randomly in my head a friend mentioning the Pollyanna game. I must start putting more effort into noticing the positives in my life, being thankful for them and emphasising them.

Not Just a Rose

Specs: Canon EOS 400D 1/4000s f/1.8 50mm ISO400

I know it looks like it's "just a rose" but it's really not. About 6 weeks ago, amidst some of our hottest summer days I answered a call from a lady who wanted rose plants removed from her garden. It shouldn't have been done; for best results plants should be moved and transplanted when they are dormant, especially finicky ones like roses, ie winter. This particular rose was in the second lot of 2 that I took and it had been grown from a clipping from the original owner's Pop's garden a couple years ago.

I feel very blessed that all of the roses transplanted successfully (5 plants, one of them separated into two and both survived) living in a rental property there's no way I would've invested the money to buy roses, especially when one of them, the Honey Dijon, is still copyrighted.

So, the Pop's rose (I don't know it's name) was the first to flower and to round of the signs these roses brought to me one of the other plants is a "Blue Moon" rose. I've always loved roses in unusual colours and this one is particularly special; my Grandfather's neighbour and long time friend was part of the team that created this rose (first released in 1965.) The Blue Moon is not doing so well, it had a bad case of black spot when I adopted it, I do think it will survive though and will be at it's best for next summer.

That one, right up the back...

Specs: Canon EOS 400D 1/200s f/1.8 50mm ISO 400

Specs: Canon EOS 400D 1/200s f/1.8 50mm ISO 400

Today was my first day at the shop, well, first trading day in any case! There was still a lot of cleaning and tidying to do so I got stuck into that whilst R very ably attended to our cash till and customers. Had a chance to talk with the "neighbours" and some of our customers so that was nice.

Look forward to another couple of days in the shop this week; tidying up our second shop on Sunday and the following week we'll have TWO trading locations!

When I Grow Up...

I want to be just like my Mama!

There's my happiness! You can just see through his fringe, the sheer joy on my son's face as he looks at the "photos" he's taken, usually of his feet! He just loves to see the flash go off and the photo come up on the LCD under his control.

Specs: Canon EOS 400D 1/8s f/1.8 50mm ISO 400

It's a Lego Kind of Day

Djr was given this Duplo truck for Christmas and is really getting into putting the blocks together. I'm wondering if the Little People Deluxe Super Duper Everything Included Farm set I have put away for his birthday should be set aside for more Duplo.

Duplo will certainly take up less space in our small house and be much easier to pack away at the end of every day...



Specs:
Canon EOS 400D
s1/6
f/1.8
50mm
ISO 400

Flood Relief and the Levy

Over the past 24 hours debate has been raging across the country as to whether or not we should pay an additional levy to pay for the damage caused by the recent flood disasters across Regional and South East Queensland. I believe the levy would also go part of the way to rebuilding required in Victoria and Western Australia but as the bulk of the rebuilding required to be undertaken is in QLD that is where the debate is focussed.

The Government is suggesting a levy associated with income taxes, which the Opposition has labelled "just plain dumb stuff" claiming that the Government should rather cut further spending than those cuts which will be required to be made along with the proposed levy to cover the cost of the floods.

Back to Work

Of course; having our own shop again means more paper work for me. Most of the time I don't mind it, keeps the brain ticking and all.


Specs:
Canon EOS 400D
s
f/
50mm
ISO

Boy Iced Cake...

'Twas Australia Day and we didn't do much to celebrate it was WAY too hot here, in fact the hottest Australia Day in 20 years. Obviously, in those 20 years I've gotten old and soft as 20 years ago I lived in this very same area and didn't notice how hot it was!

R baked chocolate cupcakes in the morning and iced one for each of us then insisted that she could not possibly clean up or ice the other 8 or so cakes, so L did, this is one of his works of art.

Specs:
Canon EOS 400D
1/6s
f/1.8
50mm
ISO 400

A Different View...

Photo by Dawson; this is his view of our lounge room and there just happens to be an add on the television for his favourite shop in the whole world. Bunnings. Yes, he loves Bunnings, he gets excited every time we drive NEAR a Bunnings let alone when we actually turn into one of their car parks!

Another of Dawson's favourite things "Alella" (Nutella sandwiches.) He usually opens the sandwich and eats the Nutella face first, probably wearing more than he eats.

Day One...

Our first trading day; we've had some stock issues, ie things ordered and not delivered so it's been a bit hard to have nice, full displays. We do however, have nice signs and fresh produce.

 The fridge with stock and signs! Eek - those stickers need to go, we don't stock that juice for starters...

The displays across the front of the shop; I think these need to move, I'm not liking this stock being in the window...

More display bins...

Today's photos courtesy of R on her first day as a "check-out chick".

Look What We Got...

We just took over the management of this shop; tomorrow is our first trading day so today R and I went with D to see the shop for the first time and give it a bit of a clean up.

 This is what the shop has looked like when closed for at least the last couple of years. Nice display isn't it? It's been changed; those display bins now face out of the shop when the shop is closed, a revolution in merchandising! (Or just common sense?) The stickers and signs from the windows have all been removed too, people can see in unimpeded.

 The shell of a shop; there is a lot of potential here. There has been no signage whatsoever in the fridges, infact, D told me there was 6 months worth of out of date dairy stock in the bottom of the fridge. Who does that?!

The price signs in the picture were put in place by D last week, there were none before that. Apparently there were also some dubious pricing practices in place. Look at all those walnuts (on the left of the shelf above the bins) so many walnuts! They were on sale from the wholesaler... so quick, buy up, don't worry about it you will sell them or not! Oh dear...

I love unusual little details like this. This mail delivery slot is in the bottom of the door, literally 10cm or so off the ground. I'd bet that really bugs the mail deliverer!

This was how we left the shop; display bind facing out, we didn't have any stock to put in place this afternoon. The bread crates were not ours to remove (unfortunately).

There is a lot of potential here; I want to put blackboard signs along the front of the display bins, that's a start.

Feathered and Friends

There are a couple of pairs of Crimson Rosellas that have been visiting the pine trees in the front of our yard the past few days.

Specs:
Canon EOS 400D
1/400s
f/5.6
300.0mm
ISO 400


We also had a visit from some wonderful friends and all had a great time...

Secrets and Hugs

Giggling Girls

Messy Treats...