Menopause, Apples and Hoola-hoops!

I had noticed lately that my weight had crept up like a devious cat moving stealthily towards a bowl of scrumptious cream. Instead of entering a pity-party/depression-like state of mind, I travelled back in time to how that might have come about…. where did I go wrong?

It occurred to me that every time I went on an exercise regime, something
would happen to halt my progress…. just when I was going so well, influenza would step in to slow me down to me bring to a standstill so that I could conserve my energy to heal, or I would unthinkingly pick up my grand-daughter up the wrong way and feel a twang snap in my back and that also would bring me so a screeching stop as the pain was too much to bear and didn’t want to do any further injuries.

Another setback was the interruption of routine as we had to move house, again, due to the ex-landlord wanting to have the house for his permanent worker, and, just when we had agreed to this house and had packed up half our belongings, he tells us that he had changed his mind and we could stay….but by then, it was too late, as we found this gorgeous place to be better suited for what we needed…. and so it was a while before I got back into it as I was packing and slightly lifting things, not too heavy, because king Willem was at work and it was faster doing it myself, even with a sore back and I had our big strong son to help lift anything I thought would injure me more.

Now that my back has 97% healed, and I look after my grandbabies on regular days, I am able to work out some kind of timetable before I become all shlumper-dunk and rotund.
I got angry with the state of my body and decided that there will not be any more excuses! So, I went to the bathroom and wrote on the mirror; “No Excuses!” and on my bedroom mirror as well. I found that the white tiles in the kitchen acted like a whiteboard and so I found places on there where my eyes couldn’t miss them and wrote on there too.

Apart from the anger to spur me on, I realised I needed some mental balance in all this and now have an attitude of gratitude to go with this new life-change of mine.
I am grateful for my two legs to get me places, two arms and hands to give my children and grandbabies lots of huggles and my family and friends their massages, my voice to sing and talk with, my super-hearing ears, a gratitude for the sense of smell so I know if there is toast burning, a nappy/diaper to change, and best of all, the heavenly smell of Roses and Jasmine flowers. I am also grateful for my eyes that I can still see out of, even though I need glasses.

Yesterday, I went and bought a hula-hoop and a skipping rope to add to my weight-loss artillery… like my fitness ball; an ancient exercise bike my parents gave me one Christmas, saying I needed it more than them (hint hint;) my collection of Pilates DVD’s (Mari Winsor); and a few dumbbells.

Last night, I went to do some skipping with my brand new skipping rope and nearly gave up, well, for the night anyways, as it was getting late and it was such a long time since I have skipped like this and was only breaking it in, getting a taste for what it was like again. It pays to wear a sports bra too!

This morning, I tried the hoola-hoop….over and over and over again…. and wondered why it wasn’t working for me anymore. When I was younger, I was so good at it but now it kept spiraling down all the time…I couldn’t understand why. After ten minutes of stubborn-as-a-bulldog spiraling and failing, I had worked it out…..you cannot expect a ring to stay spiraling in the middle of your waist if you are rotund like an apple!!!!!

Oh my heart! I was feeling so clever and positive about this…..I will keep moving it around my waist everyday until this metallic pink and gold hoola-hoop wears a groove around my middle to give me a waist like I use to have, before kids and emotional-eating happened, when my ex-boyfriend use to touch his fingers together as he put his largish hands around my then-smaller waist!
Of course, I will also use the rest of my “equipment” to help it along……and maybe make a big bundle of $$$$ to hire The Commando and get good training like they have in the army or SAS!!!!

My other goal is to get my behind back where it should be…. to bring it from Tasmania up to Queensland…. That’s quite a lot of squatting, lunges and walking-on-my-bum to do!

Ex-Hubby in Watch-House

My funny ex-hubby came a-visiting this Sunday morning with morning tea in one hand and the next book for me to continue reading from the Ringing Cedar book series by Vladmir Megre … (I am borrowing from Anthony as he has the whole set, except book 4….and I am up to book 3.)

Joking around, I mentioned about the way the police came to his work to arrest him for not paying this particular debt that was incurred by the generosity of his heart to help out a woman he felt sorry for and helped to get her out of a so-called abusive relationship (which we found out later on that it was really the other way around and she just wanted to fleece another man….my ex….after being at his place for a few months, she cunningly got him to get a loan for her as he was working and she was on disability pension after twisting her foot tripping over her stinky cat which wasn’t suppose to be there in the first place…will explain more soon.)

He got taken away in the back of a police station wagon as if he was a dangerous criminal…he wouldn’t even hurt a fly…well he would but not a human!

After some questioning, they stuck him in a holding cell for a few hours, which I would imagine, to him would have seemed like a week!!! He tried to keep himself mentally occupied, then, out of the corner of his eye; he spotted something moving… it was a dead cockroach. On closer inspection from the hard bed he was sitting on, he focussed on the transport this creature was moving with…. It was an army of tiny little ants carrying it towards the escape hole in the corner of the wall of where the door was.

After much staring and amusing himself with nature’s entertainment, the mighty ant army came to a halt in the corner because they couldn’t get that cockroach through the little hole, which was a funny & fascinating sight. The little ants re-focused and nutted out how they were going to get their tasty morsel out of jail and into their nest, after a short while, they decided to re-group in different ways and actually tore the cockroach carcass into little pieces and pulled each tiny piece through the hole effortlessly!

As I was listening to him telling us about this experience of his, I couldn’t help chuckling away as I mentally visualised the look on the police-people’s faces as they looked in on him in the holding cell, either through the door or via one of those security cameras, whilst he was staring at the corner of the room….they must have been a bit perplexed, or maybe worried about the sad state of his mind, which was actually the opposite as he was just trying to occupy his thoughts to pass the time away and to keep himself sane from the thoughts of that “female” who made a mess of his life.

A short while before he was due to be let out, my son-in-law-to-be-made-official walked in to take him back to his car at work so they could go home…he lives with them until he finds himself a place of his own as he had left the other town where “she”, his nightmare, was living.

I will continue with the story of how this situation got to be in my next blog.

As for another one of my crazy menopausal symptoms, or is it just a getting older thing apart from changing subjects like a waffling scatterbrain…which I am not ;)

I was staring out the window the other day, wondering why the dogs were barking and worked out it was just a herd of cows making their way over closer to the fence… (we have moved onto another ex-dairy farm not far from the last one).

On the other side was what I thought to be a dead cow….I called king W to see it as I was worried about it and thought we had to somehow get in contact with the guy who leases the land around us. The king announced to me that it was a tree stump I was looking at, not a dead cow!!! Well, what a relief that was but at the same time, I was a bit concerned about my deteriorating vision.

The other similar incident happen when I thought, and mentioned to the king and kids in the back of the car, how cute those sheep were, all the same size and in a position like they were going to do some dancing…boy…. the laughter I got!!!

The “sheep,” from a distance, were really those big round bales of hay that have just been made, sitting peacefully without a care in the world, where they were made in the paddock at regular intervals….I do believe I am short-sighted after all….tried to be in denial… head in sand syndrome, thinking some eye exercise would fix the problem…now I have to go buy a pair of glasses!

My Kanya Gets Killed

She thought she was the bravest dog on this earth but Kanya wasn’t a match for whatever it was that that she was chasing…. a kangaroo or wild pig!

This time, she was the only one that escaped from the house-yard….once again…the temptation was too much to resist. I called her and called her until I ran out of whistle and voice….even the other two dogs were concerned, maybe they could hear something I couldn’t but they stayed put near the hole they had all dug previously to escape, which the king still hadn’t fixed yet.

Later on, she came back, panting away and wasn’t interested in eating so I left her to go lie down to recover from her “Fun Run” only to discover that she had passed away from internal injuries that I hadn’t spotted immediately as I was in hurry to complete my work. It was too late to take her to the vets L

Update:- We buried her in the garden and planted an avocado seedling tree on top as she was always stealing and eating my avocado seeds I kept planting…..its going to be a long day!

Late Blogs Coming Through...What a Time To Move!!!

What a time to move…what awful timing!!! There I was, hobbling about with my sore back, feeling sorry for myself and this silly monkey chatter in my mind getting louder and more negative until I remembered that I can get over it and “this too shall pass” when I shift my mind in a different gear….looking at the positive things around me rather than feeling frustrated that I cannot get much done and moving in slow motion, like this nightmare where you are trying to run from the boogeyman but cannot run fast – looking like the six million-dollar man running but without the speed and strength!

Packing up for the move was frustrating indeed as I thought we had another few months up our sleeves and had time to declutter more, or at least do the minimalist thing, however, because farmhouses are as rare as hen’s teeth around here, we had to snap this one up…too good to pass up….and just packed up all the old stuff which was meant to be sorted out, so now I will have to do this over this side of the move, more time consuming but less stuff in the end result – less is more!

This place is exactly what I was visualising previously when we found out we had to move – a nice house with mountain view on a hill…cause I am short (or, vertically-challenged as my security-guard brother says!!!) and need to see some kind of nice view and since we are landlocked and cannot see the ocean, which I dearly miss, the mountains are the next nice alternative…..and I can pretend the pacific ocean horizon lies over the mountains… truly, not fibbing…its just that it is a long way away…like about a few hours as the crow flies or 4 - 5 hours as the King drives depending on if he decides we should have a peepee break (or do they nicely call it “comfort break”?) The other obvious reason for the hill is that I am not too fond of floods.

As I packed and gently moved things….don’t worry, this little Babushka made sure the heavy stuff was lifted by the strong guys around the place… I did my back-stretching exercises, positive mental attitude and made sure I didn’t overdo things….and it is paying off! I still have a niggly back…pinched kidney nerve plus sciatica, however, it is slowly going and I will slowly increase my movements and will soon be doing some Zumba!!! Hee hee!!!

I have an A4 poster inside my pantry door, where I see it everyday - it is a silhouette of a slim lady on a hill with her arms triumphantly up in the air, with dumbbells in her hands….underneath the photo, I wrote “SuperNonna!!!” to motivate this menopausal Nonna-Babushka into getting as fit as possible for the grandbabies and especially for myself….cause I’m worth it….if we don’t look after ourselves, we cannot have enough strength and stamina to look after our loved ones….. I made the mistake of letting myself go…pretty much a sin, considering French women don’t get fat….unless she gets taken away from her French environment and lose her French ways, trying to assimilate herself in a different culture where the food and lifestyle is different….but really…there are no excuses…..I emotionally ate my way to where I am but not staying in this blubber-body…and yes, it will be like pushing an elephant up the hill to get menopausal lady to trim down but not impossible! I am thinking of making a photo blog about this…maybe take a photo each day in the same pose and fast forward them like animated pictures moving in the corner of an exercise book as you flip its corner pages….should I be so daring?!?!?! 

Green Frog & The Microwave

OK…here I am again, this time, not promising to be regularly on every day until I work out this internet signal thingy where we have moved as we have no signal, well, we kind of do if you point the cell-mobile phone in a certain direction and catch the wave…now I see where they get the term “surfing the web” but in our case, it is actually catching the mobile/internet signal, but it isn’t strong enough or long lasting enough to do longer then two or three minutes of internet work …probably will get satellite internet as soon as we settle in….. but for nowadays, might just have to type it out and save it for when I am near an internet connected computer/laptop.

The house is roomy enough and has beautiful mountain views – and it comes with lots of wind…good for drying the clothes and drying your hair “a la naturel” ….just stick your wet head out the door, slide your fingers through your wet hair a few times (or get your darling to do it for you) and “voila!” – your hair is dried in no time at all, thanks to mother nature!

At the last house we were in, the old dairy farmhouse, we had this cute green frog that adopted us and lived in between the fridge and microwave (don’t like microwave ovens after finding out the stuff it does to the molecular structure of food…[another blog entry about it soon]) and was a good weather indicator as not long after it croaked loudly, we knew it was going to rain…..and it did, 99.9% of the time….got to pay attention to nature!

Anyways, I named it Fredo and when we had to move, King Willem was all sad as we had to leave this Fredo behind. I carefully carried it outside and stuck him/her near water and green grass so it can go play with the other green frogs whilst we move the furniture and whitegoods.

Fast forward to a few days, last week, I went into our new kitchen for a drink of H2O in the middle of the night, and lo and behold, who did I see out of the corner of my eye but Fredo …. I wasn’t too sure if it was him/her so I called King Willem over and he reckoned it was Fredo….he must have hitchhiked here with the fridge, probably in the back where he wasn’t noticed. In the morning, I went to see under the microwave oven to check if I hadn’t had a dream or wasn’t sleep-drinking, and sure enough, it was really Fredo, in his usual cubby-hole space where he stays there during the day until we go to sleep at night, and then he ventures out to find some bugs or whatever adventure he is up to……maybe his date didn’t work out for him in the wild! Well, I call it a he as it is easier to type and Fredo is a male name…. as in the chocolate Fredo frog! Will take a photo of him soon!!!

Body Blushing - Don't Read This If You Get Offended by Real Life!

Well....I am thinking that I may be at the door-step of this thing they call "Menopause" ....a term I use to say I was in when my ex and I separated nearly every two years...."In Between Husbands" that lasted eleven years...or something like that....anyhows, I have been reading a bit on what I am going to go through at this stage of my life, being peri-menopausal - about the mood swings, hot flushes, etc.

My mother couldn't help me much as she was fortunate enough not to have gone through most of these symptoms when it was her turn to become the ultimate beautiful woman-mother that she is....and is still crazy too...that is genetics...lucky to have this kooky traits from both sides....Papa is just as kooky as my Maman!



For the last few days, I have been feeling like I am blushing for no particular reason.....all over my body, but not the night-sweaty thing! I tried to think back to see if I had had a naughty thought or two, but not to my recollection - they just come visiting me whenever they like....when I am doing the laundry, washing the dishes, organizing business, talking with friends and colleagues on the msn messenger thingy...and no, we weren't writing about anything that would make me blush!!!

So, I have decided that this phenomenon called hot flushes, or "Big Body Blushes" ... are just God's way of giving me big warm hugs to let me know that it is alright, I will get through this stage of adjustment and to Welcome me into the new life-stage of Womanhood!

Something had changed in me...ever since I got into my BF program, I am losing fears and phobias right, left and centre!!! My confidence is growing but still have to shut that monkey-chatter up in my head from time to time ....the one that the old me use to listen to AND believe all the lies that it was telling me....now, thanks to what I am doing, I know better and get to stick some virtual duck-tape on its mouth :))

My daughter took me shopping last week and went to park her car at the shopping mall....in an underground car-park....now, the old me would have panicked, having being claustrophobic, gone clammy and would have pleaded with her to park in the open car-park, but this time, all fear was gone and I was calm and shocked by my new-found confidence and serenity! All thanks to BF!

OK ...that's it for now until my next crazy thoughts or adventure in this little corner of the world of mine! Have yourselves a magnificent day!

Bicycles, Dingoes and Kissed by a Wasp...

Thought I might share my achievment of the day with you all......I have finally gone back to riding my bicycle, which was feeling all lonely, neglected and sad looking, with flat tyres and dust on its black handle bars.
I got the tyres all pumped up and ready to go, and put it back in the laundry, where it sleeps.

After two thoughful days, I dusted it off and hopped on it, slowly and carefully riding around the house yard all wobbly like, seeing as it was a long time since I last rode it. Plus, being at home in the privacy of our yard meant that if I fell off, I would only fall on the soft grass and not make this crazy Nonna a fool of herself on the real hard road.

Today...this late afternoon, in the fading light of the day.... after chatting to my good friend overseas, got motivated (and pushed by my fitness coach-like son) to go out and give it a go.

I only went for one kilometre & a bit and back again, as it was getting dark and didn't feel like bumping into any dingoes or startled kangaroos up the road. The puppies were barking upon hearing me crawl back home with jelly legs....must have sounded like a heavy breathing heifer to them!!!

Listening to my motivating CDs helps me to overcome quite a few things that were blocking me from going forward in my life, but now, they seem to be getting better. For a start, I just discovered today I am over being scared of paper wasps as I moved through quite a few of them this morning, going inside the house...I actually got kissed by one!!!
Lucky my mouth was closed as I was breathing in!

Life is certainly not dull at the moment!