One Foot in Front of the Other

So time has passed and goals were achieved... It is lovely to have aimed and tried and to have then done. It was tougher than I thought it ever would be and to be honest, it took more than it gave. Or perhaps that is still just how it feels. I gave it everything and I think I am yet to fully heal. Stress is a funny thing. Insidious. With tentacles. I am still picking them off.

But now there is a future. Tiny pinpricks of What Might Be, are twinkling in the sunlight. I am good at what I do and when I am doing it, I am happy and whole. Finding a space to be that person, out there, in the world, is proving harder than expected. It is deflating and lets those tentacles wrap themselves around and about. But we again persevere. If we think laterally and in shades of grey, instead of black and white, then I am sure an answer will come. All we need do, is keep putting one foot in front of the other...

Whole Fooding

I've been focussing on what I have been putting in my body recently. You are what you eat, so to speak... And well, have you seen Miranda Kerr lately? Exactly. 

Seriously though, 5 years of huge stress and workloads and no chance for holidays are starting to take their toll... So I have been researching about how to heal, maybe not so much heal, but how to help oneself thrive via what you put inside. And really, when you think about it, it makes sense. 

I've quadrupled the amount of greens in my diet, and have begun experimenting with green smoothies. Im not quite brave enough to go pure veg - Im fine for mostly greens as long as there's some apple in there to soften the greeness! They aren't too bad once you get used to chewing your drink, and I do admit I feel quite peppy for a few hours after.

As I am completely new to this, I've been following a number of bloggers trying to learn tips and recipes, and I'm sort of feeling my way into a whole food, sometimes raw food eating habit. I am trying to keep dairy as a sometimes food, rather than a staple, and Im avoiding wheat and sugar and replacing them with the ancient grains like spelt and amaranth and agave as a sweetener. I have a vegan friend at work who's been telling me about chia seeds. I thought they were just fancy sesame seeds, but they are kinda cool. You take a tablespoon of them and put them in a bowl of water and they turn to a gel that you can use instead of egg. I am off to buy some tomorrow to give it a try. Why not? I might make muffins. mmmm. Yeah, maybe I will.

Miranda Kerr was my first point of call for advice, just because she is so well known for being healthy. Her blog on Kora Organics, does discuss healthy eating and also gives recipes... These pics are Bellissima Balls which I got from Miranda's website and then varied by adding dates and cocoa.

They were mighty delicious and the whole batch was gone in no time... Worth a try if you are hunting a healthy snack...

Hide and Seek

Road Trip

Four hours drive south and inland is a different world.

'Tis cold already down there. Well, cool to northern coastal dwellers still sleeping with bedroom fans and dressing in singlet tops and cotton skirts and flip floppy footwear.

The plants are no longer the fat leaved, fleshy flowered varieties grown from wet and humidity... They are finer, more delicate and cold hardy. Very English.

Even the trees...

The drive, while long, is quite beautiful.

The scenery changes quite a bit and there is an awful lot I missed that I wanted to show you. But the Road Authority, hasn't really designed roads with safe stopping zones, and what I have managed to avoid in these photo's, is showing the incredible volume of other road trippers also hurtling down these roads at 100 kms an hour on their way everywhere, this Easter long weekend.

It makes for very nervous passengers, when the driver pulls the car over to the shoulder of the road, rips out the camera from the back seat, stands at the side of the road while two semi-trailer's and a couple of four wheel drives roar past, runs out to the middle of the road, turns her back to oncoming traffic and snaps off a couple of photo's before the next rally of cars arrives...

Sometimes, you just want to swing off the highway, onto the side road... Just to see where it goes...

A storm sprang up between the highway and the ocean. It was looking quite ominous for a bit...  Particularly as this area is becoming somewhat similar to Tornado Alley in the USA.  

We do get them apparently, though they have never really made much more of an appearance than the occasional water spout, until this past summer. Now they are occurring regularly and are chewing swathes through residential areas, and chasing cars down freeways, with frantic drivers trying to record for You Tube and Keep Out Of Its Way at the same time...

But there was just a bit of rain today as the storm actual slid by to my left and no tornado eventuated -which was kinda lucky, because I didn't really feel like doing a Helen Hunt, and driving down a freeway dodging oil tanker debris... Plus, I realised I needed to get new windscreen wipers for my car. I wasn't able to decide if visibility was better, or worse, with them on.

Two Cat Lap

My sunday morning ritual is to get up, brew coffee, find laptop and climb back into bed for some lazy internet surfing.

The baby kitten (who's one now and technically not a baby, but still so little and the youngest, so the name stays) is a lap cat. Always.  She is either sleeping on me, or Mosey Pants... She's not fussy, but while sleeping she must be in contact with another body at all times.

So my surfing generally looks like this...

Then Mr Pants decides that he too must share in some lap time, and tries to climb onto laptop keyboard to sleep there... Laptop quickly whisked away, he finds a comfy spot, and then there were two...

Laptop is now relegated to a less comfy surfing position on the bed.

What I cant post on here, is the double barrelled purring they make.  Its like a lawn mower. In tandem.  They are so very happy in their sunday morning group hug. Its very cute.

And so I sit there, with an empty coffee cup, really wishing I could train them to go make me another... But I stay and hang out with them, because all hugs are great hugs.

Eventually we do get up to start the day.... Well ok, some of us get up and start the day, and some of us are still in bed an hour later...

Happy Sunday! xx

My desert life

I have come upon a few photographs of my old desert home recently...

They are from three completely random sources, but as a picture representation of my childhood...

They are brilliant.

I think this photo is from the 1970's... Though it may be the 60's or the 80's... But I would say later, rather than earlier.

My preschool is the white roof far left bottom corner.... You can see the dry river bed (with all the trees and no buildings) in the middle of the photo, and just make out buildings on the other side.  When it floods after heavy rain (to this day), it washes over the bridges and cuts the town in half. Sometimes the water washes down in a roaring wall, and anyone in the way has no chance... But often it would slide down in a gradual trickle, slowly getting higher and deeper and faster... I have a memory of being maybe 14, and riding on horseback with a friend (her horses) up the river as it flooded... We only thought to get out and ride along the bank when it got deep enough to touch the stirrups...

Thats a cracking dust storm rolling over the ranges... They used to happen all the time in the old days. They were caused by years of running thousands of cattle and sheep through the desert. They would eat all the plants and loosen the soil with their hooves (native desert animals are soft soled creatures whose feet don't tear up the fragile ancient soil).

It was a different time then, and I used to walk to school with a bunch of kids from my street. The eldest would have been 10 and the youngest 5. We would all go home and stay at each others house in a big group, until our parents collected us and took us home when they finished work. We all knew what a dust storm looked like on the horizon, and I can remember one day, one blew up just as we were walking home from school... The littlest had only just started school and i remember i held her hand and pretty much dragged her as we ran home to her and her sister's house. We beat it just, slamming windows shut as the dirty winds hit the town. That red dust stains everything.

This is the desert. For as far as you can drive, mostly this is what you will see... Another part of the desert not far from here is called the Nullabor, it means "no trees'... Self explanatory really...

But its beautiful out there... So incredibly quiet... And the stars are so bright, you can walk around at night without a torch... Some years ago at my best friends wedding, they stopped the cars on the way home, late late at night, and made us all get out to look at the stars. I had grumbled, wanting to get home... But i was living in the city by then, and had forgotten, or probably never noticed them, thats the special thing about my friend - the Mama with the Red Heart... She notices the detail...It's a gift I tell you...  Those stars were so clear, you could see the Milky Way as though it were a footpath... Billions of suns shining down from so far away... I want to go back there just to see the sky at night one more time... Its amazing.

This is my favourite of the three... My red hearted friend took this one. Yet again, she notices the beauty, in the tiniest things... 

Where am I?

So my posts here are somewhat haphazard... I'd love to post more, to be doing more worthy of posting... To be out there in the world... Experiencing... And then sharing all of that with you... Because what we love most about blogs is seeing the world through someone else's eyes... Well, I do.

But the reality of my world, for the past five (well nearly) years has resembled this...

And that's not all of them for this semester!

I am nearly there... 8.5 months to go... But in balancing my life between work and those books, there is little time for anything creative... Truthfully, there is little energy.  The semester has only just started again, but in a few weeks the grind will be in full force.

Then I become so exhausted my bones constantly ache, I dream of sleeping while I am awake, I cant keep food down, and alcohol becomes a food group...

But I love it. The law I mean. Its a beautiful thing. It is humanity, good and bad.  When Newton spoke about standing on the shoulders of giants, I know he was talking about scientists (my second love), but the same could be said for law.  All our laws have come from decisions that were made before... Even now at law school, we learn that the grounds for some laws that exist today, remain unchanged from Roman law and early early English law. 

We are all here because of what has come before... And who has come before... It is constantly changing, learning and evolving... As we all do.  It is a part of us. We create it. It is who we are...

But it's a damn hard slog to get that certificate to stick on the wall... And sometimes it gets me down, because it is such a sacrifice... Had I known how isolating this would be, I probably wouldn't have taken this path... Or maybe I would have... 

I do have a solid few who are my shining light... My family send me these this week...

This is just a tiny sample of what was a massive bunch of tropical flowers

And I do have some wonderful friends who are very supportive, and understanding of my often absences from their lives...

Only for a little while longer...

And then I shall be back, and active, and interesting, and adventurous...

But until November, when you wonder where I am... I will be, if not posting, reading every one of those fracking books!

See you on the other side (if not before)!

x