Reg is fast asleep, on our comfortable, bed mattress after having caught 12 fish today.

He started the day at dawn catching a Mackerel on a light line, which threatened to break the rod, and he had to grab a cloth to protect his hands and try to bring the line in manually, taking the pressure off the rod, he still could not get the line in and the mackerel broke the line.

Then he succeeded in catching a variety of undersized fish, flounder and whiting, and a large puffer fish and he put all these back 

Finally, later at night when all the other anglers had given up, including me as I went home to roast a chicken, he caught two good size and one large whiting.

My Hero! J  This man woke up in pain with arthritis and had some pain through the day but he was out there enjoying life to the full, wearing his pedometer, checking that he got in a lot of walking and add to that, the active stretching and movements of casting a line, I think he is doing brilliantly J.

Images below are of Reg telling me about the 'one that got away'.

 

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.  

 

There are many Torres Strait Islanders living on mainland Australia, between Townsville and Cairns and the children I have seen here at Flying Fish Point, seem to go about life with a lot of independence and self-sufficiency. 

While I have seen sophisticated families carry the full set of patio furniture, wine and crystal wine glasses down to the beach for a fishing excursion I was impresses to see this friendly young, islander child, reeling in the fish using little more than a roll of fishing line, a hook and some bait, he had dug himself. Reg with his sophisticated fishing kit could not catch a thing, that day we watched the boy catch two whiting, with an expert hand cast, without the aid of a rod.

I had to ‘hand it to the local’ J, and I did not mind one bit, being ‘shown up’ by a skilled child, it was lovely to watch him at work.

 

A friend sent this to me; I thought it funny and asked if I could share it here.

 

The Seniors Gym Class.

A friend told me when she pulled out the measuring tape

She felt that her body had gotten totally out of shape,

 

So she read all the acnepril reviews  in the hope of getting trim,

and her doctor’s permission she got, to join a fitness gym.

 

She decided to take an aerobics class called seniors gray power,

she bent, twisted, gyrated, jumped up and down, and perspired for an hour.

 

But,

By the time, she got her leotards on,

The class was over, the instructor, was gone.

 

 

The most inspired moment, I had in the 12wbt forum was when I read at about the third or fourth, week stage, how this lady had managed to run 400 meters for the first time in her life. She had self talked himself through the run telling herself she could 'do it'  and how thrilled she was she had succeeded. 

I felt all her joy and I knew the effort as I had just had the same experience.  

Then she added, 'Not bad for a 90 year old'!  THAT was the end of my making excuses for my ability using age. Here was a woman who when most are considering using up the last of their, term life insurance, she is working on a body transformation for increased fitness.I LOVE IT! J

I had given up invalid thinking, over three years ago, I was still handicapping myself with ageism thinking and here was a 90 year old who has signed up for a 12 week body transformation. Does that 'blow your mind' with inspiration, like it did mine?
 

National Novel Writing Month (also known as NaNoWriMo) is an annual creative writing I am ‘in training’ to participate.  Will you join in too?Today was a satisfying  creative day, I wrote one art lesson, an incredibly basic, here are 3 pencils and a description of them starting point.

I also wrote a 1000 word short true story, to be published, once edited in this blog. It is one of numerous stories from life that I am eager to get into prin form and this storey along with the others still to be written, is why this website was created, as my venue for these short stories.   I plan by November 30 2010 to us these short stories to help form the bones for a novel.  I intend to participate in NaNoWriMo  My user name in there will be Gray Nomad


What is NaNoWriMo? National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30. It does not matter what your subject is, it could be about acne solutions, as long as it in the form of a novel.

In 2008, there were over 120,000 participants. More than 20,000 of them crossed the 50k finish line by the midnight deadline, entering into the annals of NaNoWriMo superstardom forever. They started the month as auto mechanics, out-of-work actors, and middle school English teachers. They walked away novelists.


So, to recap:

What: Writing one 50,000-word novel from scratch in a month's time.

Who: You! We can't do this unless we have some other people trying it as well. Let's write laughably awful yet lengthy prose together.

Why: The reasons are endless! To actively participate in one of our era's most enchanting art forms! To write without having to obsess over quality. To be able to make obscure references to passages from our novels at parties. To be able to mock real novelists who dawdle on and on, taking far longer than 30 days to produce their work.

When: You can sign up anytime to add your name to the roster and browse the forums. Writing begins November 1. To be added to the official list of winners, you must reach the 50,000-word mark by November 30 at midnight. Once your novel has been verified by our web-based team of robotic word counters, the partying begins.

Still confused? Just visit the How NaNoWriMo Works page!

I had planned a mushroom omelette and salad for tea tonight and I ate a heap of beautiful pork crackling, lol J, and I enjoyed every morsel of it and no guilt feelings because I went back to my 'eat when hungry, stop when satisfied' rule, took my time eating so I would register when satisfied and I brought a big bag of leftovers home for Indigo the poodle, who was very happy with this form of stopping when satisfied and leaving treats for her, eating plan.

We had a good drive today, relaxing I ate healthy during the day, the crackling sure may have put me over my calorie plan for the day but I will not be rushing off into rapid detox. or diet plans, just planning the mushroom omelette and salad for tomorrow night and I’ll still be aiming for a good final weeks results in my 12wbt that ends in one weeks time.

 

I had a lovely Mothers Day, after the 4-kilometre Mothers Day fun run, Reg and I went to the Maleny market for the best weight loss supplements I know of, organic grown fresh fruit and vegetables.  I am afraid it did bring out the bitch in me as the man who was serving my fruit and vegetables was holding a smoking cigarette in his hand as he handled my food and I had to keep moving away to avoid the smoke as he moved his hand around.  The owner came over and asked him not to smoke and serve at the same time and I thanked him, told him I had been doing a dodging act to avoid the smoke and I wasn’t all that happy about paying organically grown prices for food that had cigarette smoke on it. 

He gave me a  50 cent discount and apologised.
It was not a ‘big deal’, but I am glad I mentioned that I considered it a problem. He said that smokers forget how the non-smoker feels.