random thoughts...

Happy Christmas!

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My 2022 Christmas pic

HAPPY CHRISTMAS AND WISHING YOU A FABULOUS 2023!

It’s Christmas Eve and sweltering hot in my neck of the woods! I’ve just turned on the air con as I’m starting to melt. I usually leave it as late in the day as possible and generally prefer the ceiling fan.

It’s not as hot this year as the last few Christmases have been, but still it’s mid summer and toasty!

Not sure what your plans are this year, but I hope you have a delightful and happy Christmas whatever you choose to do. And if you are alone this Christmas, my thoughts are with you and sending you love and hugs…

It can be a beautiful time of year and a challenging time of year and I’ve had both types over the years. So I understand if it’s your happiest day with family or your saddest day with no close family to spend the day with you.

I’ll start my Christmas Day with a 5km run, nice and early to beat the heat. It’s my way of settling myself for the day. A reminder that I am fortunate to have a body that functions well and allows me to get up and run. It’s a mindfulness and gratitude setting time, whereby I run and recall all the good things in my life, enjoy the beauty of the morning, listen to the birds and greet the odd person who also gets out early on a Christmas morn.

My sister is recovering well from her kidney cancer operation. She lives on the other side of the country, so I won’t see her for Christmas, but she is surrounded by her children and grandchildren and her Christmas day will be filled with joy.

My daughter and I will be going to my partner’s family for Christmas this year. There’ll be lots of food, wine, laughter and games to play with the kids. My favourite Christmas treat is Christmas cake or pudding – dark, rich and fruity! It is literally the one thing I anticipate on the day (foodwise) and it’s always a delight!

We all bring something to share, so that no-one is burdened with all the preparation and cooking. We each have a Secret Santa gift for another person and then share in the cleaning up at the end of the day.

Then it’s a wrap for another year!

🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄

 

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musings about ageing

Impulsive decisions…

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eyebrow lamination

Eyebrow lamination!

Is something that I had never heard of until this week! I have my eyebrows waxed and eyelashes tinted every few weeks. The brows because they can look a bit wild and woolly if I don’t and the lashes as it saves me spending time putting on mascara – because I can’t be bothered with fussing to go out or go to work.

I had my usual appointment on Monday night with the woman who lives around the corner from me and has her own home beauty business. As it’s a week out from Christmas, she said why don’t you do something different?

And because it’s close to Christmas and I can have a tendency to be a tad impulsive I said sure, what did she have in mind? She said why don’t we do an eyebrow lamination and tint and an eyelash curl and lift and tint.

I’m like “go for it”. Then I said, wait, what exactly is eyebrow lamination? Laminating to me is a thing you do where you heat plastic sheets to preserve documents or pictures and I couldn’t quite get my head around having something like that done to my eyebrows.

Kim, my beauty therapist, explained that it was a process whereby the eyebrows are treated with a straightening chemical and then brushed into place. So ok then.

The whole process took almost two hours! To be honest I can’t say I loved the eyebrow look, they certainly were dramatic (see pic above). I’ve never had such dark eyebrows and I felt they looked absurd.

The eyelashes on the other hand, I did love – they curled up and looked longer! Cute….

I was a bit nervous going into work the next morning, but I actually got a lot of compliments on my brows. My beloved partner did not notice at all! 😂 😂

Anyway, not that this was challenging in any real way, but it does prove that you can try new things when you get older. The outcome may be great or not so great, it doesn’t matter. It’s just a bit of fun for the festive silly season!

 

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nature makes me happy

My little garden

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Yellow Kangaroo Paw

It’s taken a while!

I moved into my unit 15 months ago. I changed things and added things to make it truly my home.

I have a rear courtyard and I had a patio built so that I can sit out there any time of year. I also put up bamboo fencing to improve how the space looked and for more privacy, as it’s higher than the original fence behind.

I bought some outdoor wall art, outdoor furniture and an outdoor heater for the winter months.

I have plants in large pots including a Meyer lemon tree and a miniature nectarine tree. There’s a mini frangipani and a couple of other plants.

The whole area is warm and welcoming, private and beautiful. Great for me and my dog or for entertaining friends.

Alongside the side of my unit, facing the shared area with my neighbours is a garden bed. It was empty when I moved in and each of my neighbours have shrubs and groundcover in theirs. Mine looked bare and a bit sad and boring.

It’s taken me this long to decide what to do with the space. A friend of mine has a little business called Gardening Gals. I messaged her around a month ago to discuss her planting a garden for me in the garden bed. I trust her expertise and knowledge of plants and I said that I wanted native plants that are drought resistant and would attract birds. 

I said I really wanted Kangaroo Paw plants as they are local, native and look amazing when fully grown. She came up with a plan that would have higher growing plants at the back of the garden bed that will grow to give that area more privacy, interspersed with, and a little in front more low lying plants and groundcover.

Red Kangaroo Paw

She came on Friday with her offsider and they prepared the soil with soil improver and Saeasol and then put in my new plants. I have red, yellow and black Kangaroo Paw. Grevillea in red and yellow and a variety of different groundcovers that will look glorious when they sprawl out and flower!

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health and fitness

Waking up sad…

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dog stuck in a cat tree

Mornings can be hard…

It is reasonably common for me to wake up feeling a bit sad, down or flat. I’m sure I’m not the only one feeling this way. There is no particular reason or rationale as to why this happens. I just wake up and don’t feel so great.

If I’m up at 5.30am for an early gym session, the sads don’t have much time to take hold. I am up, in my gym gear, grab my water bottle and towel and head out to the gym. Usually by the time the session starts and most certainly when it ends I feel absolutely fine or fantastic depending on how the gym class goes.

The other mornings when I don’t have to leap straight out of bed or when I wake earlier than I need, then it’s like existential dread drops like a veil over my mind and emotions. Sometimes I just go with the sad feeling, get up anyway, lace up my running shoes and head out the door for a 5-6km run. Again, I usually feel better once I’m on my way – says something about the power of exercise on mental health and wellbeing.

Other mornings I just can’t. And that’s ok too. I’ll stay in bed a while longer, feel like crap (again no real reason as to why) and then get up and get on with my day whatever that may bring. I always try to take my dog to the park as it’s good for him and my spirits lift when I see him galloping around with his ears flapping in the air!

Sometimes my spirits may lift as the day progresses, occasionally they do not. So I just sit with the sad feelings knowing that they do pass.

Occasionally I wake up feeling wonderful, happy and full of joy. Again, no idea why that happens, but I am more than grateful when it does.

To counter the waking up sads, I exercise every morning, which really helps me re-set my mind. For the mornings where it is more of a struggle I try other things like positive affirmations & gratitude lists – I have varying success with that.

On one of my favourite podcasts (click the link to go there if you like) I heard about another podcast/app called Wake Me Up: Morning Meditation & Motivations (click the link for the Spotify version or this link for the Apple version). The guy talking you through the sessions is Tyler Brown (he has a lovely soothing voice) and there are a series of meditations, motivational sessions or yoga/stretching options. The free version is great, except you have ads at the beginning which can be a bit jarring. There is a subscribe option, but I’m sticking with the free for now.

I don’t know why, but I find (and I’ve only been using the app this week and I’m not getting paid to say any of this, just offering options for people who may feel bleh in the a.m.) that it actually helps. The sessions are only 10-15 minutes long, so not too long to interfere with getting your day on the move, but long enough to refocus and re-set your mind and emotions for the day.

Give it a go and see what you think 🥰 🤗

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health and fitness

You really never know what is around the corner!

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sisters

Sisters…

My sister went to have her bloodwork done a few weeks ago. When she got the results her doctor thought her liver enzymes were a little unusual and sent her off for an ultrasound.

She had the ultrasound done the following week and fortuitously the results found that her liver looked fine. However, the doc said that she had a small lesion on one of her kidneys.

My sister then had to book in to have a biopsy of the lesion to determine whether it was cancerous. She had to reschedule as she caught a bad head cold the week prior to the biopsy and was still unwell the day before.

They got her back in within the week, which indicates that they were fairly concerned about the lesion. My sister wasn’t too freaked out as she trusted the urologist and oncologist, mostly because they kept her informed and were reassuring. She was a little nervous the night before and the day of the procedure, which is understandable.

She finally had the biopsy last week and got the results a couple of days later. That appointment was via Telehealth because in her town they still do a lot of online medical appointments due to another wave of Covid.

The outcome was that the lesion was cancer, more precisely it was a ‘renal cell carcinoma‘ – you can read about that if you click the link. The good news was that it was very small and had not spread anywhere else. The specialist is booking her in for surgery in January to have a ‘partial nephrectomy‘ which is surgical removal of part of the affected kidney. Again you can read about that procedure if you click the link.

I had to google all the terms as they were unfamiliar and I am now far more informed. My sister is fortunate that due to the small size of the lesion, she can have ‘robotic surgery’, rather than having ‘open surgery’. The recovery time from robotic surgery is a lot quicker and the surgery itself is far less invasive.

She has been reassured by her specialist that they will be able to remove the entire lesion and that she (likely) won’t need further intervention. Although I guess she will have regular scans to ensure she stays in the clear.

She’ll be in hospital for a couple of days and then home to recover. I am planning to send over a care package for her when she gets home. We live in different cities on opposite sides of the country, so I can’t get over to see her easily.

Please look after your health and wellbeing, have your bloodwork done (I know I am well and truly overdue for mine and will book in asap!), eat well (as much as you can), exercise well (as much as you can) and take care!

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nature makes me happy

Motorbike frog

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motorbike frog

I love frogs!

I am fortunate that at my workplace we have a garden section. In that section we have some resident fauna, including this cute little motorbike frog!

I don’t always get out into nature, so it’s lovely having a work garden to wander through occasionally and check out the critters. Motorbike frogs are native to the South West of Western Australia and they get their unique name from the sound the male frogs make when mating, which sounds like a motorbike going through it’s gear changes!

I was listening to one of my new favourite podcasts recently called “big picture science” (I’m a bit of a science geek and love to listen to science based podcasts, in addition to my favourite health and wellbeing ones). The interviewee was discussing nature and people and how we need to be more interconnected. Can’t argue with that one. However, the commentary was that people/humans see themselves as distinctly separate to nature, hence the common expression of getting “out into nature” (which is a statement I use a lot and have done pretty much my whole life) implying that we are not actually part of nature itself.

For me, I feel very much connected and a part of nature when I am surrounded by trees or by a river or the ocean. Less so when I am in the city and/or suburbs. I think that is common for most people and possibly why many people feel apart from or separate from “nature”.

Interesting discussion and ideas to think about. I like things that make me think or question things or reflect on my own concepts of how I view the world.

Spotting that little motorbike frog in the plant made me smile and brightened my day and I hope it makes you smile too!

For more information on motorbike frogs, check this link: motorbike frog

 

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