We all need inspiration in our lives. We all need someone to look up to and admire, it's healthy to admire the strength, beauty and commitment of other people. I am regularly inspired and fascinated by my wonderful children and partner, my fabulous friends and my family, but there are other far less accessible people that I am also very glad to have in the world with me. 
There are people in the world that I know that I will never meet, but they have had a profound effect on me as a person. They are muses to me, inspirations if you will, people that have made a connection with me through their art, their music, their words and of course, their cinematic efforts. They have struck a chord in my heart and I have made an invisible and yet quite meaningful connection to them, they are my 'unknowable inspirations'. 
Unlike my everyday inspirers that I can call upon any time (whom I am eternally grateful for also) my 'unknowable inspirers' will never ever know me, they will never know the impact that they have had upon me, they will never know that they gotten me through some tough times in my life with their wisdom and their truth. 
​Your 'unknowable inspirations' are the types of people that you would have over for dinner if you could invite anyone in the world to share a meal with you, dead or alive. 
So, who would you invite to dinner?
​People often opt to invite someone esoteric like Jesus around, just to see if he was a real person or not, and although that idea is somewhat intriguing to me, I would much rather chew the fat with someone that has shown me a new way of thinking or a new way of being. I want to have dinner with a person that has inspired me to do new things, or create something amazing, or given me hope, strength or humour when I needed it. I wouldn't want to waste my 'dinner with anyone' ticket to spend the night listening to Jesus preach or arguing with Hitler. 
I would be more than happy to share my dinner table with any of the following people, because they have all been inspiring to me at some point in my life so far: 
Orsen Wells                                  
Conan O'Brien                                  
Leonardo DaVinci
Tim Burton                                      
Hayao Miyazaki                              
Lena Dunham
Clive Barker                                    
Myf Warhurst                                  
Quentin Tarantino 
Jack Nicholson                                                                             
Anthony Bourdain
Lucille Ball                                       
Annie Leibovitz                                  
Bill Murray
Anne Rice                                        
Nick Cave                                            
Roald Dahl 
Rowan Atkinson                          
Guillermo del Toro                          
Joss Whedon 
Robin Williams                              
Bjork                                                      
​Isabella Rossellini 
​I know that I will never really share a meal with any of these people at any point, but I am just so glad that they are (or have been) in the world and I'm really thankful for all of the 'unknowable inspiration' that they have given to me over the years. 

The school holidays began with a day of intermittent snow fall, which meant that temperatures plummeted and Enfield became a 'Winter Wonderland' for the briefest of moments. The snow here doesn't even settle on the ground before it is melted and gone, but there is something beautifully hypnotic about the slow drift of gentle snow fall that cannot be denied, so the rare occurrence of snow is always met with an edge of enthusiasm and excitement around here. 
Seth has managed to kick off his holidays with a roaring head cold, sore throat and dry cough. It seems like someone is always dragging themselves across the end of term finish line in this house lately, but at least the weather has dictated that it is quite okay to hibernate indoors and waste time watching loads of movies and generally slothing around. This term was an extraordinarily long one, and I think that it stretched all of us to our limits, so having an excuse to chill out is probably not a bad thing, besides it won't last long, Seth has a friend coming for a sleep over tomorrow - so yes - Winter is really Coming!    
Zoe's nineteenth birthday also approaches this week, and I am pleased to say that she has decided to come home for a few days and let us all spoil her. I have taken on the responsibility of handling all the birthday requirements as usual, but I am not complaining, I am stoked that she is coming home to spend it with us. I was tremendously worried about losing my darling Zoe to the big bad world this time last year, but it appears that I have not. When your child chooses to come home from University for homemade lasagna and cherry pie instead of going out clubbing for their nineteenth birthday, you have most definitely not lost them. 
We actually still see quite a lot of Zoe, she comes home at least twice a month and usually stays over, which tells me that she still thinks that there is no place like home. I love that we still get plenty of time with her, my concerns over her leaving home have certainly alleviated a lot over the past few months. She is coping very well on her own, and still keeps in regular contact with me, so I don't feel like I have lost her at all. I lost a child, but gained an adult, nothing more, nothing less, and I certainly could've panicked a lot less about it all that's for sure, but hindsight is always 20/20. 
​I am honestly feeling pretty good about most things in my life right now. I have enough love coming and going, I have plenty to keep me busy and I have goals and plans. Author Tom Bodett once said that a person just needs three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do and something to hope for. And if that's true, well then Tom, I tell you that I really am very happy, and as soon as I pry these extra kilos off my arse then I will actually be mighty peachy too! 

Got onto the scales the other day and almost needed to call an ambulance out to offer me resuscitation! I have clearly been replacing cigarettes with food because in the almost six weeks that I have been off the fags, I have piled on 5 extra kilos! That's almost a fricken kilo a week, at this rate I will be washing myself with a rag on a stick by Christmas! This is so not okay with me, I already hover at the higher end of my healthy weight range, I simply cannot afford to put on five extra kilos, so now I am faced with the hideous prospect of dieting. 
I fucking hate dieting and I fucking hate to exercise, so basically I'm proper fucked! But when the scales shout out 'one at a time please' when you climb onto them, well what choice do you have? 
I have this quite realistic weight range that I like to stay in, it is not in any way erring on the side of skinny, I gave up on skinny years ago when I discovered whiskey and dark chocolate. As I said, my 'happy times' weight is at the higher end of the healthy weight range for my height, but I have made my peace with that. I was 10 kilos lighter before I got married and pushed out a couple of pups, but whatever, as I said - I've made my peace with that - I was skinny 25 years ago, I'm not a teenager anymore, it happens. 
Naturally however, I was not happy when the scales breached my "I've made my peace with it" weight limit. I have maintained my weight within those somewhat safe parameters for years now, not happy to see that I am about 5 kilos over my happy place about now. Also extremely unhappy at the prospect of less whiskey and chocolate for the next few months, especially during the darkest days of Winter and the impending school holidays, which God knows is a time of drinking until all hours and busting out the chocolate at 2am in the middle of a movie marathon. How ever will I make this work? Curses on you cigarettes, I have kicked you and yet I still feel your evil influence in my life, mainly around my gut and my thighs if I am being really honest. 
I'd be lying if I said that this wasn't terribly inconvenient for me right now, but as I said what choice do I have? We all know what happens when you breach your healthy weight range, you go into the very scary land of the over weight range, and that I am not willing to do. My family has a long history of weight related illnesses and deaths, I can't afford to pork out any further than I already have, it's fruit and crackers for me for a spell, but I'm doing it with a pissed off look on my face the whole time, I can promise you that! 

I know that I have said that there have been many times that I could easily have strangled my husband, but I would be lying if I didn't also say that there are times when I fall madly in love with him all over again. That's how it is in relationships, sometimes it's a total shit sandwich and then other times you're staring dreamily at your significant other thinking that they are the best thing since sliced bread. 
It would be fair and reasonable to say that Craig and I are having one of those 'god you're amazing' kinds of weekends. A weekend where we are both just happy to laze about in each others arms on the couch, watching crap, drinking coffee and chilling out. It's easy, and that's one the best things about being married for over 20 years, sometimes it's 'easy' to be together. We don't have to be talking or planning or doing anything together, we can just chill out together, no strings attached, no agenda, just a couple of unencumbered days to be at peace together.
These are just the best days, my favourite days. Sitting up in bed on a Sunday morning, sipping a cuppa, tapping on the ipad or reading a book, rubbing our feet together under the covers but not saying a damn word for hours. You can't buy anything that good, you just can't. 
It is in these golden moments that I look at Craig and see all of the reasons that I fell in love with him in the first place and why we have stood the test of time. I think that it is because it gets easier as you go along, you stop having anything to prove and you just start 'be-ing' together. That person propped up on the pillow next to you knows you, really knows you and isn't expecting anything from you, they are just happy to chill with you, and that is such a lovely feeling. 
I actually regularly fall in love with Craig all over again, it happens at least a couple of times every year where I find that I cannot get enough of him and he just encompasses everything that is good in my world all over again, and it often happens when I least expect it to as well, which is really nice. I think that you need to fall in love with your spouse again regularly, that first rush sensation and early infatuation is far too much fun to simply kiss goodbye forever. Call me a romantic, but I believe that true love never dies, it just simmers away on the back burner waiting to be reignited again, and from my experience, it just burns brighter with every re-ignition. 

My third baby, my passion in progress, my secret lover and often my only confidant; Spicywatch.com has turned two! For two years I have remained dedicated to watching movies and whining away with my regular online rants, which have now accumulated to be almost 600 reviews and over 200 blog entries. 
I really cannot thank my regular readers enough for their continued check ins, and I can't even begin to tell you how deeply therapeutic and comforting this blog has actually been for me. I really have poured my heart and soul into Spicywatch, some of my blog entries are incredibly personal; clearly I am far more comfortable with writing about my life than I am with talking about it, so it has been really lovely to have the keyboard tell my story for me over the the past two years.
I like to believe that somewhere out there someone may read Spicywatch and feel inspired; not just to watch a decent movie, but also feel inspired to write a blog themselves, or to just feel like they are not alone if they have shared a feeling with me. When I started Spicywatch I did it for myself, never thinking that anyone would actually ever read the shit that I bang on with, so again I cannot thank my readers enough for the massive boost to my esteem that they give to me when they check back in every now and again. I don't know exactly who you are, but I know that some of you do return, and that is just the absolute best feeling that anyone with their own blog can hope to receive - a returning audience.
So with the warm and fuzzies flowing for Spicywatch, I gathered a few gal pals together on the weekend to toast two years of my movie blogging history. In the spirit of 'all good things come in twos', I encouraged my guests to share their favourite romance, duo or twosome movie clips, and thankfully my friends had enough taste to not torture me with Pretty Woman or Titanic clips. So we ate 'red' romance themed foods and we talked about classic romance movie scenes and great movie couples and duos, and I just couldn't resist tossing in the cheekiest 'sexy' couple clip that I could find. 
If you haven't seen the sex scene in this film yet, you're robbing yourself of some seriously quality viewing - it's absolute gold! 

The other day I had a huge cry, a really big one. One of those 'down to your boots' cries, a cry that starts from pretty much nothing and then once the flood gates are burst, it is absolutely impossible to contain again. I literally wept like a small child on and off for the better part of two hours over virtually nothing really, and I honest to goodness could not stop the tears once they began, no matter how hard I tried. The worst part of all, it happened at work! 
For me crying in public is a huge no-no, when I cry (and I seldom do these days), I like to keep my crying to the vicinity of my shower and the pillow in my bedroom. I also like to be alone when I do cry, very, very alone in fact; I don't even like my kids or my husband to see me crying, so this outpouring of emotion in a public forum was really horrid and utterly perplexing to me. 
Zoe thought that it was hilarious that I was so worked up about crying in public. 'It's not the social equivalent of pissing your pants in public mum!" she said, 'besides now at least everyone at work knows that you're not a totally impenetrable ice-bitch.'
Well, actually I was rather comfortable with impenetrable ice-bitch actually, so that hardly makes for a decent 'pro' to this situation in my mind. A work friend said that it was just like a nose bleed and had to run it's course, but I also wouldn't really like to have a nose bleed in public either to be honest, so again, not a 'pro'. 
​In the household that I was raised in, crying in public was not allowed - ever! If you cried, you were shamed and told to stop immediately or you would get something to really cry about. I think that this has had a profound effect on my mental well-being over the course of my lifetime and is probably why I simply cannot cope with showing my tears.
Every part of me rationally knows that it is perfectly okay and even quite normal to cry from time to time, but my upbringing is so ingrained that I just feel overwhelmed and utterly ashamed when I let my emotions show. I actually admire people who can freely show their emotions without guilt because I really wish that I had more comfort with my own feelings. 
I have stifled my true feelings and swallowed my tears a million times over because of what my parents did to me. So when I do eventually relent and the dams do burst, the waters run wild for hours on end, until my tear ducts ache from exhaustion and confusion.
It also explains why I am utterly useless at comforting crying people. I really do care about other peoples unhappiness and feelings of sadness, but the whole crying scene just totally spins me out. It makes me sweat and I get nervous, I shuffle and I don't know what to do and then I just turn into a deer in headlights. Completely bloody useless! I am great at solving problems, but fixing tears I am shit-house at. I was never taught how to comfort a crying person, because crying was something that you you just weren't supposed to be doing.
My siblings used words like sook, whinger and baby as a means of 'tear therapy' and it has certainly done the job on me, because I know that for the rest of my life I am going to be a 'closet crier' that will never feel 100% at ease with my own tears no matter how hard I try. 

I have made it through my first month without cigarettes - go me! I cannot deny that I have had some pretty tough days along the way, and I am still clinging to the nicotine patches like a life preserver, but at least I am down to the weakest dosage now, so another few weeks on those babies and I should be ready to take on the world without a nicotine crutch. 
I certainly don't need to take on any more projects to occupy my time that's for sure. I have a half knitted scarf to finish, a cut out kimono to sew, a half painted canvas on my easel and on top of that I have this blog, a stock pile of about eight months of solid movie/ TV series watching ready to go, two half read books on my bedside table, and my daily art journal to keep me busy. So yeah, as I said, I am really not lacking in leisurely things to do. The upside of this is that the Winter school holidays start in three weeks time, and it will be the prefect time to hibernate and complete some of these projects. 
Usually I set myself goals every year, but last year I just went nuts with setting goals and set the bar crazy high for myself and only managed to get half of everything done that I wanted to do. So I decided to chill out on the goal setting this year and just let things happen on their own, live in the moment and go with the flow.
Well the flow has actually lead me to get quite a bit done, probably giving up smoking being the best of those things. But it has also allowed me some breathing time to re-invest in all of the hobbies and skills that I had previously set as goals for myself. I have had time to knit and sew again, time to paint and draw, time to strum the guitar and dig around in the vegetable garden, time to sip a cuppa and read a good book.
It has been extremely good for me to take a breather from the high achievement goals that I usually set for myself. It has made me realise that I actually have a shitload of great skills at my disposal, but I have been too much like a shark - constantly on the move - to really appreciate them. For the very first time in my life, I have come to understand that I don't have to be any more than I am right now. I don't need to do more or be more because I am already doing heaps. I don't need to set myself any time frames or a deadlines, because I can work at any pace I want to, if and when I want to.
​I do realise that most of the world has already come to that conclusion, but honestly, I just never really felt like I was enough unless I was doing an extraordinary amount of things. I always believed that putting more pressure on myself to take on new things was making me a better person. I thought that it was making me more interesting and making me more fulfilled, but I think that after last years debacle, I realise that I was actually exhausting and overwhelming myself.
There is goal setting and there is insanity, I went down the wacko road and pushed myself way too hard. I started to complete tasks joylessly and relentlessly, sacrificing my happiness and sanity in order to be able to say - I did that or I can do that now! 
Fuck it, I don't need to do that to myself anymore. I have more than enough facets to my personalty and skill set right now, and I'm absolutely not ready to take on anymore. That should be my mantra for a while I reckon - I'm not ready to take on anymore right now. I'm just going to enjoy what I've already got and accept myself as I am.
​Looks like I'm already exorcising some of those old demons, which turned out to be negative thoughts about my own worth and ability. Ah yes, this lull is certainly proving to be most cathartic for me indeed. 

I am experiencing a rather strange period in my life that I rarely seem to experience. It is a good time, a wonderful time in fact, because it is a time of peace and ease. I am truly grateful to have this lull in my life where no-one is experiencing a huge amount of stress or calling me on the brink of a nervous breakdown, but to be 100% honest, it is also very odd. 
I love that I am a confident, a friend and a sympathetic ear to many, not that I like to hear about the stresses of others and I am most certainly not a bad news monger; but I do more often than not have the dramas of someone else's life to contend with on top of my own. When I get a lull and it all goes quiet like it is at the moment, it is just so bloody weird for me. When I am left alone with only my own thoughts to contend with, truthfully, it is also slightly unnerving. 
I see myself as a bit of sponge to the feelings and emotions of others, if the people I care about are doing it rough, then I do it rough right along side of them. I literally 'feel' their difficulty and struggle, and I know that that sounds so crazy, but I honestly do. I will have trouble sleeping, I will lay awake at night pondering possibilities and I will roll along with the highs and the lows, just like it was all my own worry and strife. I don't know why I do this, I just do. It's not like I'm caught up in the drama of the situation, it's more like I'm caught up on the feelings, which I know is actually a shit load weirder really. 
New age people would call me an 'emotion absorber', a person that feels other people's emotional struggle. Psychic people would call me a 'sensitive.' I don't want to give it a label, but I know that I do it. And when things ebb right back and the world around me goes really quiet like it has been lately, it is so very, very odd for me. Lovely, serene even, on some level, but really totally odd in every way. 
You see when you are busy running to the emotional rescue of others, you tend to put your own crap on the back-burner, eventually forgetting about your troubles altogether and just getting on with trying to fix things for other people. Then when you find that you get a lull, it can in a way be incredibly overwhelming because you actually have the time to address yourself and all of the things that you have shoved really far back in the closet or swept neatly under the rug. This is both a cathartic and an overwhelming process, and it is where I am at right now. 
All the dust has settled, all the wrongs are righted and there is no-one that needs me to rescue them, except for myself of course. And the work of the self is indeed the hardest and most difficult work of all, even the horrendously shallow people in the world are aware of that fact. Not many of us are really very comfortable with facing our own demons, especially if you have been clothing, feeding and tucking them in at night for years on end.  But if you are like me and you suddenly find that you can't escape yourself because there are no other distractions, well then it is time to grab your crucifix and holy water and get to work.
Who knows how long this lull will last?  Hopefully for a long time because not only am I relieved that all is well with the ones that I love, but also because I am also finding this process, although at times concerning, extremely interesting. 
Who knows what I am going to discover about myself underneath all of those tidy layers that I have created? I don't drop my metal skin amour very often anymore, but while I have the time, I'm just gonna take a peek and see what is hiding in there. May need more than a crucifix and holy water to battle these demons, but I am up for the challenge. 

Our good old geriatric guinea pig Vince is soon to become a resident at my school. Since no-one at our house seems to give two shits about what becomes of Vince, it has been decided that he should live out his days at a primary school, which is most certain to shorten his already 'not long for the world' life span.  
Technically he is Zoe's guinea pig, but since she left us, Vince hasn't been so much as looked at. Apart from having his cage cleaned weekly and a daily toss of some food bits, he has been left to his own devices pretty much 24/7. It turns out that there is a child at school that needs something to love, so I see a win-win opportunity here. Vince gets some much needed attention and I don't have to clean up his poo anymore, what a fine plan. The only potential flaw that I see in this plan is that he is already so old, and I do worry that said child will form an attachment and then find Vince legs up soon after, if he even has that long to go! 
I will definitely need to forewarn everyone about Vince's fragile and elderly state, so that his death isn't too traumatic, but who knows how long he will last? It is impossible to know for sure. 
​
Braved the frigid temperatures last night and headed out for a feast of yummy treats and some good wine in front of the fire place at a local wine bar with some gal pals. We also took  in a movie all about relocating and fitting into new places. Seems rather apt in a way, but there were no guinea pigs to be seen here, but there were certainly plenty of laughs. 

HUNT FOR THE
WILDERPEOPLE 
Release Date: 2016
Rating: PG
Running Time:  101 mins 
Director Taika Waititi hits a very humorous note with his latest offering, Hunt for the Wilderpeople. Based on the novel Wild Pork and Watercress by Barry Crump, this New Zealand tale was a box office smash, swiftly becoming the highest grossing locally produced movie of all time and endearing audiences with its quirky characters and subtly sweet storyline. 
After a tragic turn of events, 'bad egg' Ricky Baker (Julian Dennison) finds himself on the run from the law and hiding out in the bush with his cantankerous foster care father Hec (Sam Neill). 
There is no shortage of laughs to be had here, this is truly funny 'grass-roots' humour at its best. One of the things that I have always loved about Waititi's movies is that they never feel forced or fabricated, there is a genuine sense of realness to them that makes them so enjoyable. 
Newcomer Julian Dennison is a natural in front of the camera, demonstrating a fabulous mixture of naughtiness and charm in equal measure, and Sam Neill does an excellent job of portraying the relentlessly grumpy character Hec. It was so great to see Neill back onscreen doing comedy again, which he clearly has a flair for. 
This movie isn't life changing, but it is fun and delightful in all the right ways, and with a PG rating you can take the kids along to see it without worrying about any unnecessary vulgarity or inappropriateness. 
FINAL SAY: Shit just got real!
4 Chili Peppers ​