A friend of mine, Carol Willis, a talented writer has begun blogging about raising a child who never  followed the perfect family formula as given in Dr. Benjamin Spock's, book Baby and Child Care, published the year of my birth, in 1946.  You can read Carol’s stories, in her “Modern Woman’s Guide”, blog.

While many mums only ever have problems once the children reach the teen stage and start stressing over the opposite sex, and best acne face wash, Carol contends with a child who has been a handful from the start, she even gets her tongue stuck on a trip to the supermarket.  lol, this reminds me of one of my own children who was hyperactive, 'an accident looking for a place to happen'. 
In a recent blog,
‘About washing powder and tongues’, Carol Willis, writes,

“Another really vivid memory comes to mind when I think of my journey as a mother.  With my eldest child, we have dealt with several problems, both behavioural and physiological, and it certainly hasn’t been the blissful experience I was promised.  One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was from my mother, when she said “throw that damn book away, your child hasn’t read it yet”, and never a truer word was uttered.  I listened to her and I just adapted my style of parenting as I went along.  I didn’t know that if any child would test a mother and force an adaptive approach, it was Megan.” read more 

 
I am happy that I have raised my children, did the best I could, been judged by one as wanting as a parent  because I disciplined her more than she thought right and considered a good mum by the other.  I know I loved my children and only ever wanted, the best for them, and did all I felt was right at the time.   That is all any mum can do.  That is what my own children are doing.  Each has their own style, and I see them both as good parents in their own way. 

Our children come with their own individual natures, they did not come programmed according to the book and we can only be guided by our own best judgment at the time we are called on to make quick decisions.

Have the courage to discipline, tempered with wisdom and love, when needed, as true parenting is not trying to win a popularity contest with our children it is showing them we love them enough to care how they behave and to strive to guide them so they will be able to live happily within society.  This role does not always make us popular with them at the time and it is not always easy.  When a parent claims to have never had any difficulties, in parenting, they are the parents with the problem, as they do not know what their kids are getting up to.    

Above all else, however our children behave, let them know we love them, even when they try us in extreme ways.   

 I need a T Shirt that explains, “no emergency, the lady just loves life and thinks it’s worth making an effort to stay healthy”. Did you know you can get advertisers to supply you with free Gym Gear and T Shirts? I saw it promoted in Facebook off a running page. I have seen T Shirts in the gym with pronexin written on them. Handy to have lots of T shirts when you are working out and need to change clothes often. 

There is a beautiful swimming pool here in this caravan park, in north Queensland and I am the only one who uses it.

My husband caught 7 whiting this morning, and 8 tonight, and threw back some undersized perch, whiting and crabs, and he was the only angler on the shore.  With 15 fish caught my youngest grandson wants to come and fish with grand pop.

 Many people sitting around, reading books is popular and sadly it seems someone has been using the internet – mine. yes I have gone over 6 gigabits, something I have never done before.  My usage spiked last Monday, looks like someone might have been downloading movies or games using my wireless internet connection.

I need to learn a lot more about securing my wireless connection, looking at the graph it all happened last Monday, I actually saw a man sitting outside all day on his computer, they moved away on Tuesday and my internet usage returned to normal.

This scandalous old lady got laughed at again today for having swum 2000 meters in the pool so I laughed right back in the direction of the grey nomad knockers and said that  ” would be a strong senior when those who laugh were frail elderly”.....yes put me down as a scandalous old lady who gives cheek right back. lol, wish I had the benefit of learned quick wit when I was picked on as a child, it  is only the learned, one liners that give me the skill of quick retort these days :-).

Not quite as funny as the seniors being concerned that my husband had been taken by a crocodile,  because,  I was seen running along the street away from the beach after we had both been seen walking to the beach together.   

What the Super14 final 2010 meant for me...and my country

“How much?” I asked, pointing at the plastic blue horns. I wanted a pair to show my support of the Super14 Rugby team, the Blue Bulls. On the walk up to Orlando Stadium, the street is riddled with informal vendors selling supporter’s paraphernalia for both teams. They spread their goods on the ground, open one or two samples and call out loudly to anyone walking past that isn’t already sporting a flag, hat, shirt, face paint or the traditional horns of the Blue Bulls team. I’m not a Blue Bulls supporter under normal circumstances, so I was ill-prepared for the game.

“R30, mamma,” came the answer. Using the salutation “mamma” is a sign of respect in African culture, the vendor I was dealing with was acknowledging that I was not young, yet not old enough to be a grandmother. The closest English equivalent would be “ma’am”, yet even that doesn’t quite carry the same meaning.

“If I take 3?” As with most informal vendors, the world over, you need to bargain for the best price.

“For you, mamma, I’ll give them to you for R25 each. R75 total.”

“Make it R70 for me.”

“Oh mamma! You’re tough! Ok, R70”, he bent down to pick up my purchase, when a strong gust of wind grabbed his stick-on tattoos and blew them into the field behind him. “Ow!” he cried, torn between chasing his merchandise and staying to protect what was left. I bent down and put my hand on the remaining merchandise to stop them from blowing. “Oh, thank you mamma!” He ran into the field to chase his lost product, and came back after a minute or two, breathless but victorious. I waited while he placed a stone on the recovered merchandise, thanking me profusely all the time. It struck me just how profound this moment was – it didn’t occur to him that I might steal his product, and it didn’t occur to me to leave him to find a solution to his problem alone. The interaction that took place was just natural.

Here I was, in the heart of Soweto, a white woman accompanied only by my 70 year-old mother – I was in the proverbial lion’s den, the largest black settlement in the country, and I felt welcome. All around me are rugby supporters, largely white and Afrikaans, mingling with the local black residents with no sign of trouble whatsoever.

This is a big moment in our history, second only to the unity we all felt at winning the 1995 rugby World Cup. Rugby has historically been a white sport, and it’s been a slow transformation to become a multi-cultural sport. By circumstances and a twist of fate, the Blue Bulls were forced to host both the semi-final, and final Super14 matches at the Orlando stadium in Soweto. This is history in the making, and I was there to witness it.

Across the field, which is crammed with supporters with portable braais (barbeques), I can see the local shebeens (informal pubs), which are bursting at the seams with white supporters – some of these business owners have probably never had a white person in their establishment, and here they are in their thousands, sitting alongside the locals and eating traditional fare. The shebeen owners have painted their walls blue, and have hung up supporters paraphernalia – I daresay it’s the first time they’ve had cause to do this, but I sense that it won’t be coming down as soon as we leave either.

Beer is flowing freely, the smell of cooking meat hangs in the air, behind me is the blaring sounds of traditional Afrikaans music interspersed with the noise of vuvuzelas (a traditional African noisemaker used typically at soccer matches). This is the best example we can give the world of how we live in unity and how accommodating we are of each other.

For the locals that aren’t attending the game, I can see them walking the streets in large numbers, some of them have brought their own braais onto the street and are cooking while chatting to the passing supporters. Some of the supporters have had to walk a fair distance because of the heavy traffic, and all are arriving safely and in high spirits. Out here on the streets, the informal vendors are also selling beer, food, and anything else you could possibly want – no opportunity to make money has been overlooked.

At this moment, on the eve of the FIFA World Cup, with the world’s eye on us - I’m proud to be South African, proud that I choose to live here, proud that my fellow countrymen are also displaying the best attitude possible to carry my country into a positive future. I'm proud to be a part of such a defining moment in the country that I love.

by Carol Willis.

Carol I am proud to have been able to publish such a beautiful story of community spirit and pride. 

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My friend in the mountain wilderness, to the north west of this quiet fishing spot, Flying fish Point, where I have been exercising in the pool every day, left a status update this morning that said. :-

“Having a wonderful day, weeding the old clucker tucka bed...new Arrowroot bed and building a compost pile during my weeding, also collecting old chook poop from the old chook farm next door.Gunna have a rip snorta of a compost in a few weeks.ALSO Serving customers off the road with my pumpkin, eggs and broms....wonderful day :)”

Now that sound like the sort of Lipofuze, lose 7 lb fast, sort of action I would love.  LOL, let me out of this clean swimming pool and into some good tropical dirt and even chook poop, compost bin and I will be as happy as a pig in lol J.
I am a gardener at heart and no amount of downsizing and coastal holiday making, will take away my love of the land, hard work doing things I love and the dream of self-sufficiency.

 

The Turning Point, the Year I Turned 13.

You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing that we call 'failure' is not the falling down, but the staying down - Mary Pickford

 

Camp fire yarns, was created for me to tell stories I have heard through my life.  I will gradually compile them here.  This is a glimpse into my own story.  Not one of my happiest years, nor the worst, but this was the year of my first great turning point of positive change, in my life.

I don’t regret any part of my ‘different’ from the average life. Each thing that happened to me was a stepping stone I built on. Each event made me a little stronger and gave me a lot of understanding. of people with problems, I can relate to, because ‘there but for the grace of God,( or someone being there with their hand outstretched  for me to grab and haul myself up), go I'.

I remember my teens, my first teen year at home when I was 13 years old was the usual familiar for many, head on clash with my mum, only exaggerated due to our hostilities beginning when I was 4 years old and growing up in a family who longed for love but mostly hated each other.  Yes that does happen. 'It's a long complex, story, maybe the subject for a novel, not for today's waffle'.


 I left home before I turned 14, made some good choices for my life, early on and never looked back from there. That was the start of a much happier life for me than my childhood had been.  In some ways, I could say I only experienced being a teenager, the year I turned 13.

I certainly was not your average teenager, worried about my weight and looking for diet pills that work.  I actually was suffering from severe malnutrition, I had been since I was age 4 when it was diagnosed by the school doctor and the government,  school health program, 'chose me', as one of the 32 most neglected, children in the state of Victoria and put me on a free food program,  providing me my school lunch, and morning and afternoon tea, for the year that I turned seven.  I remember being so proud that I was 'chosen' and 'special' and I won the award for the child who grew the most in one year.  The program only lasted for one year, because I left school to go to work at age eight.


At age thirteen I was still as I had been since four, skin and bone, rib cage sticking out and 'escaping' into tree tops or my world of art to find beauty as reality was a nightmare. I was 'learning to be an artist and create my own beautiful world.’



At age thirteen, after leaving the job my mother found me, (a machinist in a facory), I found myself my ideal job, training to be a veterinary nurse and from that job I got a live in job working with animals, doing things I loved and felt I was good at, veterinary nursing, dog training and breeding and canine portraiture plus journalism for a dog club magazine.

During my teen years I was able to study art, obtain my leaving certificate by correspondence, study health sciences while I worked, living in with a caring family for the first time in my life.  It was in this happy environment, when I was only 14 that I met my husband Reg. 

Fourteen was the start of the happy life of my future. In many ways, (aside from that year I turned, thirteen), I skipped my teenage years and jumped straight into adulthood,  at least in a behavioural sense.

I can remember what a traumatised person I was at age 13. Desperately unhappy, afraid, knowing even then, that the only way to protect my sanity was to break from the only security I knew, that of an unhappy home, life.

I did not know if there was anything better ‘out there’, (there was), but as I was beginning to entertain thoughts of suicide, as a means to escape the awfulness of my existence, I knew I had to try to find a better solution than that and I obviously did J

One day, after a family member had attempted to kill me and I had fought them of till we separated, equally wounded, I sat on the front porch, sobbing until my mother came home.  When she arrived, I informed her, that I ‘would never set foot in that house again’.  I did not. I had only waited there long enough to sob my heartbroken goodbye to my mother.  I broke her heart too, (if there was anything left to break,) by telling her 'I was desperately homesick.

Homesick for the home I had never known.' 

There are many organizations set up to help counsel teenagers who are considering suicide. Yellow Ribbon  is one of them. Every individual has the potential to save a life, save another’s sanity, if they are willing to reach out and offer a hand to be grasped and an opportunity to allow another to better themselves, a world where they can feel good about themselves and their accomplishments and most of all a life free from abuse.

The Turning Point, the Year I turned 13, I made the leap, from Survivor, to Successful, Achiever. 

Don’t leave it to organizations to help. It is one on one individual acts that make the difference.

Every time you reach out your hand to another, IT COUNTS. Just because some will not grasp the outstretched hand, please do not ever stop reaching out. You could be saving a life with your kindness. Each opportunity to advance that you give to a young adult, has a positive snowballing effect that builds in momentum with other acts of kindness and offers of a ladders to climb, transform and enhance lives in ways you might not be aware at the time.  

 

Emus have to be my favourite bird to paint. 

They have so much character in their face.  Mind you, I know a few characters who, farm emus and sell the oil.

One good friend I know who sells emu oil is constantly asked ‘how do they obtain emu oil from emus’.  He always tells them, with a straight face, that ‘they milk them like goats’. lol  J.

We have always had a few laughs together when we meet as he has a dry humour.  We were talking together about the law that states. that ‘only sterile emu eggs may be sold, as blown (empty) eggs’ and he assured me that, ‘by the time they had emptied the egg they were indeed well and totally sterile’.

I told him that his rosemary and emu oil hand cream was a hair loss treatment for men as I had been rubbing it into Reg’s bald scalp, because he had dry skin there and this fine down had begun to grow on his scalp. It actually looked funny, this fine hair,  when I ran out of this particular hand cream the fine downy hair stopped growing and no other emu oil product we tried repeated the effect.

 

“I never finish anthi”

That was the status this morning of my good friend Tina from Mummified times five blog

It brought to mind a time Reg and I sometimes chuckle together about.

I have made a deadline of Wednesday afternoon to leave for our 6-month caravan tour of Eastern Australia and we will leave then regardless of the state of the house.

I do what I can do, pat myself on the back for what I achieve and I don’t beat myself up about what I could not get done in the time, nor give up on what I have planned ~ the holiday start deadline, in  this case.

Once when we had a young family and had scrambled to put together a working holiday of painting commission and art exhibiting plus family beachside cottage holiday in Fairhaven on the Great Ocean Road of Victoria, we achieved all those priorities, but left the house a mess.
 
In my passion, to always, cram, as much as I can into an opportunity, I even packed the sewing machine and all the accumulated, family clothing requiring mending. Yes, I completed my oil painting commissions, some free lance watercolours, the exhibition and all the mending and we had the most wonderful, relaxing family holiday in a cottage, opposite the beach. The holiday cottage was an exchange for the commissioned artwork I painted of the cottage, something I frequently did to provide some wonderful holiday’s for the family and myself.

We returned. to find we had been burgled while away. That actually created several  funny reaction in us, that both Reg and I still chuckle about.

With a shock, I discovered my priority in life was a $5. value item.

The first was my reaction to seeing we had been, burgled. I immediately checked to see if we still owned three things.

I laugh about this, as it has to show what my priorities were at that stage of my life.

The first thing I wanted to make sure was safe, was the chook. We had bought ‘Henny Penny’, for $5. There was a frantic urgent cry from me, for everyone to; “‘look for Henny Penny”.   We found Henny Penny, she was safe, she had let herself inside the house, the same way the burglars had entered, through the jemmied back door and she was happily roosting in the opened top, piano.  There was a great sigh of relief from the entire family that the family chook, with retail value of lol, $5. Was safe and no one seemed to mind the piano worth a few thousand dollars had chook poo and hens claw, scratches on it.

Priority no 2. I then looked straight for the wall, the spot where my favourite oil painting that I had painted myself, (huge. Intense sigh of relief), it was there.  I felt like, ‘nothing else mattered’. Then I remembered my last spendaholic, explosion and purchase that I could hardly have afforded to make, the two crystal sherry decanters I bought Reg for Christmas. They were still there. Lol, finally materialism had surfaced. Lol, I am human.   The items, stolen, were electrical entertainment appliances, nothing that I was sentimental about, none of that upset us. We did lose the coin collection I had inherited from my mother and discovered it was not, covered by our home contents insurance so there was a little regret there.

'OH they ransacked the house'.

 

When the police arrived to investigate the crime scene, lol, they looked at the mess the home was in.   
I had packed up a family, an exhibition, the art studio and the mending chores to go on holidays. I had not then done a superwoman and run around, picked up, tidying, cleaning and making the beds, before leaving. I did not feel like saying to the police, “No that is what life in a creative happy family home, looks like.”

Reg and I struggled to keep a straight face.  Neither of us wanted to confess, we often left for holidays with the house looking like that and we were not going to reproach ourselves for having the priorities we choose to have.

We found we were ‘different’, to many other people in many ways, because of this burglary. The police talked about how we must be feeling traumatised. No, we were not even upset, the hen and painting were OK, what was there to feel upset about?   
Other people spoke of how we must feel violated.  No, just a fact of life, happens to most people at some stage, we just bought a good burgular alarm and organized a few ideas to make doors and windows harder to jemmy and we don’t keep uninsured valuables in the house and spend all our money on travel, not valuables anyhow.

Burglars can steal your things but they cannot steal your memories’

Reg has always said, “Burglars can steal your things but they cannot steal your memories". With this in mind, we have simply travelled more, until travel and the sometimes ransacked looking, home with few valuables in it, that we leave behind, has become our happy lifestyle.

Aim for excellence, not perfection.

Yes, of course I would love to walk out the door, on this six month Australian caravan tour, knowing I leave behind a spotless tidy home.  I will however, be aiming for excellence, not perfection'. There is a huge difference. 

 

A very busy week planned.
Tuesday we take our eco-tourer caravan down to Melbourne, stay overnight with our youngest daughter and the family :-).  Then the caravan goes in for service at Caravan Court in Springvale on Wednesday, wee leave it there and return back to northern Victoria, where I have an optometrists appointment on Thursday. Our 'troopy gets four new tyres fitted and a wheel alignment on Friday. A weekend packing for our tour and cleaning the house ready to leave.
The FREE art supplies competition ends on Monday so i will be packing and posting the last of the prize winners gift, so get your addresses to me as soon as I notify the winners please. :-).   Have a great week everyone.

Observing one minutes silence to remember the victims of the Black Saturday fires, one year ago.
Host: We Will Never Forget Type: Causes - Rally Network: Global Date: Sunday, 07 February 2010 Time: 12:00 - 12:05 Location: Australia

Yellow ribbons are available at Spotlight stores.