Is love at first sight really a thing? Books, movies and real life relationships have been based on this theory of the possibility of falling madly in love with someone upon the very first viewing of them. Personally, I think that theory is a load of malarkey! I think that people confuse the laws of attraction for love all of the time, and that is why so many relationships just don't last. Once that first rush of attraction is replaced with the reality of who this new found muse is, well sometimes that reality just doesn't match up to the initial impression that they gave off when you first saw them. 
​That first rush of blood to the head when you see someone attractive is what relationships are often started from, but that feeling is just lust not love, it's your body physically responding to someone that is quite possibly a good physically match for you. The love stuff comes later, much later. Couples that say that they fell in love at first sight are daft; they did not fall in love at first sight at all. They got the hots for each other upon first sighting, hooked up and then continued to enjoy a mutual appreciation of each other, which in turn, with quality time and shared experience, they really fell in love. However saying all that doesn't sound nearly as romantic as "we fell in love at first sight" so I just let people say it when they feel like they need to, but in my head I'm thinking otherwise. 
It is possible to believe that you are in love with someone that you have just met, but you would have to be pretty dim witted to believe that that feeling of attraction was love. True love cannot be attained by one glance, true love is something that needs to be cultivated, cared for and tended to over time; like pretty much every other thing in your life that is worth having. 
I do believe that love can surprise you though. For instance, we have all met someone that we didn't find all that attractive upon first sight, but then after getting to know them we see something else shine through and we fall in love them for that reason. Which really proves that physically attraction is not the only thing can spark love, and probably not the best reason to run off and proclaim your undying love for either.
I absolutely despised Craig the first time that I met him, I thought that he was a stupid grunt. I didn't even speak to him for about 2 years after that first meeting because I was certain that he was dickhead and that we had zero in common. I was 14 and he was 16, so we were basically kids, and Craig really was a dickhead back then if I'm being honest about it. Anyway, a couple of years down the track and things had changed, I started to see him in a new way and it wasn't just because his biceps had filled out either, he had actually changed and so had I and something started to brew. It had to brew in the background, because I actually had a boyfriend, who was one of his friends, but brew on it did and eventually we got together, and the rest is history. 27 years we have been together, and we have been through some shit and some sugar in our time, but we love each other now more than ever, even if we do occasionally fight like we are on the set of  Clash of the Titans!
To sum it all up, I don't believe in love at first sight, I believe in infatuation at first sight. I believe that just like they say, you can't hurry love, because the really good long lasting kinds of love take years to create, but that is one of the best things about love, it isn't easy and anything that good shouldn't be too easy, but it is totally worth all of the effort. 

I am a total yoga fiend at the moment, banging it out 7 days a week and getting up at 5.40am to hit the mat with hubby every week day. I have vastly improved my overall health and well-being by doing yoga regularly over the last twelve months, and even though I don't appear to be getting any thinner, my overall levels of energy and vitality have most certainly improved greatly. I know that the scales say that I am heavier, but I honestly seem to have gained more muscle than flab, so being a little heavier isn't really that bad.
All of my clothes still fit me too, so I am actually okay with gaining a few kilos, I've made my peace with the war that I was having against my weight. Being thin isn't the be all end all, being happy and healthy is a far better thing to aim for. I don't need to be thin, thin is not necessarily the secret to a long and healthy life, but feeling great all of the time is something that I am most definitely interested in and surely that would add up to a longer and happier life? 
We all tend to view health in pretty limited ways, which is really quite shameful of us. When we think of health we generally think of other words too, like thin, toned, trim and tight. Visions of speed and endurance come to mind, people clinging to the side of a mountain or biking across the plains, a long distance runner or people at the gym pumping iron. And yeah, sure these are examples of healthy living for some people, but it is most certainly not healthy for all of us. However, we are all conditioned to see fitness in that way and by those very limited terms, because that is what the media tells us that being healthy is. And we buy into it. I buy into it, 100% I do, but not anymore, I have had a big change of heart over the last 12 months, and I know for sure that health and longevity come in many many forms. 
​Being healthy should not just be limited to the way that a person looks. For true vitality you also need a healthy and balanced diet; and I know heaps of people are going to hate me for saying this, but that diet should not be made up of protein powders and shakes - gross, that is not food, that is not natural and that is not nutritionally sound. Your food should mostly be in it's most natural state and in a perfect world, it should be paddock to plate whenever possible. It should have variety, colour and above all flavour, and what you put into your body should be a delight to eat. You should feel good eating it, and also feel great after you have eaten it too, and you should only eat until you feel full, not stuffed. 
Having a healthy lifestyle should also incorporate other things that we rarely ever think about when we hear the word healthy. Things like fresh air and 'low impact' outdoor activity (by low impact I mean stuff that won't jar your joints), drinking water, taking care of your body through good hygiene and grooming habits, having meaningful relationships and quality time with others and by yourself. You should also regularly engage in activities that stimulate your brain and offer you a chance to grow as a person, both intellectually and emotionally. You should try to get a good night's sleep every day and also learn to turn off your phone and devices. All of those things will contribute to your overall well-being and they have zero to do with how much you weigh on set of scales. 
You should walk, stretch, laugh, smile, hug, breathe deeply, be thankful and love yourself  for just being you and be kind - every, single, day, without fail. So forget about what you think healthy looks like, because healthy really looks like a million different people's body shapes and comes in many different forms. So don't let the media restrict your perceptions; you don't have to look 'perfect' to have a good, healthy, vital and long life. You just have to embrace who you are and take good care of what you have and there is nothing skinny about that kind of thinking!

I've been looking back over the last twenty-something years of my life. Winter is a time that leaves a lot of room for extra contemplation and reflection, and even a little revelation in this case. Keeping a daily journal really helps you to identify some of the paths that you tread back over as time goes by and it also helps you to identify the patterns of behaviour in others that you may have been missing as well.
I have kept some form of a diary or journal for pretty much all of my life. I record things daily, almost anything really; goings on, conversations, trips, thoughts, ideas, trials and tribulations; my journals are very personal and also very extensive. On average, I would spend around 15-20 minutes every day writing in my journal, so as you would imagine, the content builds up quickly. I have volumes of the stuff, some of it from way, way back; and just the other day I had a flick back through some of the archives.
I was quite surprised, and perhaps even a little amused, to see that many of the feelings that I am having now, are almost identical to the ones that I was having around 20 odd years ago. And equally as interesting, is the insanely predictable patterns of behaviours that some people in my life have demonstrated over the years, I swear that you could you just about set your calendar to it, it's that consistent. 
I came to realise after reading those old scribblings of mine, that I have come full circle with a couple of the long term relationships that I had really invested in. It's like I left the platform for a new destination some twenty odd years ago with these people and then I re-arrived back at exactly the same place that I had began the journey from, all those years ago. Truth was, that I was never actually getting anywhere in those relationships, no matter what I did or how much I tried. Even though I thought I was progressing, I was never actually progressing at all, I was just looping back around, and I am honestly really pissed at myself for allowing myself to be hoodwinked all over again. 
How I missed all of the obvious signs that I was getting nowhere is so stupid, because hindsight is 20/20 and looking back at my journal notes, well, the signposts were most certainly there. I suppose that I just didn't want to see the painful truth, after all, no-one wants to believe that what they mistook for love was actually completely fake and disingenuous because that truth is just way too painful to stomach. So, I didn't see it, I was a fool, and I allowed myself to depart on a train that took me back to the start. Right back to the beginning where I was filled with a lack of faith and trust, but was willing to try again. How stupid and naive I was!
Over the years, some things in your life will change, some things will shift a little and then some things will stay exactly the same way that they have always been, and all you have to do is accept it. So I willingly accept it this time, these relationships are never going to change. No amount of time or investment will ever make them right, they are doomed to loop around to the start every single time. I was wasting my time, it was all a pointless exercise, and I can't believe that I ever let myself trust them again in the first place. 
So now I am finally free of it, free of the train of lies, judgements, false feelings and fake love. Free to board a new train, a better one with better people that won't make me feel like I don't matter, won't tell me I'm a bad person, won't betray my trust and won't waste my time for another twenty years looping around in circles desperately hoping to be accepted. They say that you should never chase anyone for love, affection or attention, because if it isn't given freely than it isn't worth having; and I have well and truly tired of the chase, I have learnt a lot from this experience and I will never ever chase again. 

Made six dozen cupcakes for a work colleague's birthday this week. Four dozen that were edible and two dozen that ended up in the bin. Don't mix up the olive oil with the vegetable oil when making cupcakes, blahh, totally disgusting, the smell of them was enough for me to bin them! Anyway, after redeeming myself with 48 successes, the house smelt of vanilla for a couple of days and apparently they tasted good because the feedback was positive, so it all turned out okay in the end. 
I am not really a very good baker. I have made some bloody horrid cakes in my time, some really filthy bad ones, the type of shitty cakes that even dogs won't eat. I made a chocolate cake once that so bad even little kids (that claimed to love chocolate when I was cutting it) wouldn't eat it! How woefully bad! Also, since I am gluten free, it is very much in my favour to avoid creating any type of tempting pastry or refined flour based products that may lay around the house for days on end, gently calling out my name in the wee hours, coaxing me with their doughy goodness. It's tough to resist, it is better if I just avoid baking on all fronts really.
I must admit that I have gotten better at baking as the years have gone by, and when the occasion calls for it, I can pump out a reasonably respectable cake, but I never really know what they taste like since I don't eat them myself and that just never really feels right. It kind of feels like being dishonest. What kind of a chef doesn't taste their own food? I'll tell you what kind, a shitty one. If you never actually eat any of the stuff that you bake, you probably aren't that a good a baker, well that's what I tell myself anyway. 
I'm not a bad cook though. I have a pretty good repertoire of recipes that I can make well and that I know taste delicious, because I have tried them myself. I also really like the whole 'eye work' dash of this, dash of that, type of a thing that cooking allows for; where nothing has to be exact. Baking on the other hand is a science and science is an exact thing, and I am not known for my exact-ness. More for my round-about, kinda, near enough, something like that-ness; so cooking suits me a lot more than baking. 
Perhaps I will have more patience for the science of baking as I get older, but for now I am just happy to watch the Great Aussie/ British Bake Off and admire the professionals doing their thing. I certainly don't feel the need to make another 72 cupcakes again in a hurry that's for sure! 

In spite of the frigid evening temperatures, the days have been quite mild this Winter. Unless the weather is waiting to unleash its full fury in the last six weeks, so far it has been pretty mellow and the days have been more than adequate for outdoor activities in the afternoons. 
This week Seth and I headed out for a walk along the Yarrowee Creek trail; starting at Magpie this trail goes all the way into the Ballarat CBD, around 10 km in total. It's a leisurely stroll, mostly on flat surfaces and it is has been sealed with a fine stone in recent years so it's a pretty civilised walking choice. There are a lot of picturesque nooks and park benches along the way to take a rest or admire the view, and we happily ate our afternoon tea at one as we meandered and chatted. 
Things got really interesting when at about the halfway point of our stroll we saw a sign attached to wire fence that said 'do not wander beyond the path, contaminated area under investigation.' Woah! What? Having seen more than our fair share of sci-fiction and horror movies, this little slice of information allowed us to create a lot of possible scenarios about said 'contamination.' That word sets minds racing all by itself, I mean how often do you actually see signs like that in the real world anyway? Uhhh...never! That stuff is fully reserved for movies that have shit get real, in a not good way, very quickly.
So much for a leisurely stroll in the winter sunshine! Suddenly it's all World War Z over here as we start to throw out the possibilities thick and fast, constantly glancing over our shoulders with looks of horror to really ham the moment up to its full horrific potential. What would you do if you if you saw a zombie horde running down that hill right now? Questions like that got tossed around, and our walking speed dramatically increased as we disturbingly realised that aside of our silly banter that we were actually absolutely alone out there and in a real contaminated area. It is safe to say that from that point on, every creak of a pine tree or call of a crow had a completely new and menacing tone to it. Hilarious! We laughed about it when we got back to the safety of our car, but for a minute there, we had managed to freak each other out a bit with our tales of undead horror and alien infection. 
And that is one of the best things about having kids with vivid imaginations, no matter how old they get you can always escape somewhere else together, on any given day. And on that windy winter day in 2017, Seth and I were the last survivors of an apocalyptic event, alone together against the hordes. 

Life is a crazy and beautiful thing. It leads you down a lot of roads; some clean, smooth highways, some long, bumpy, forgotten paths, but it is always moving and it is always changing and we have no choice but to move and change with it. Time waits for no man as they say, and what you choose to do with your time is your choice and yours alone; but don't get too tangled up in the realities of time when it comes to your life. Because all that we really ever fully get to have is this moment - right now - yesterday's gone and tomorrow never comes, so just embrace the moment.
The unpredictability of life is what makes it so exciting, and yet terrifying at the same time. No-one really knows what lies around the next corner and life has a way of blindsiding you, no matter how well you think you can predict the road that stretches out up ahead, chances are that you will find yourself on a completely different pathway that you hadn't even noticed without even knowing how you got there.
And that is what life is like. Life is a tricky thing. It's weird and it's wonderful and we all get to play our parts and change our roles as we move further along the pathway of our lives and uncover new things about ourselves as we do that.
I love that life offers us so many chances to evolve ourselves. At any moment we can change our minds and our ways of thinking, we can embrace a new way of being whenever we want to. Everyday is another chance, another go around if you will, and with time marching forward, it is important to embrace all of the twists and bends in the road for what they really are; opportunities.
Sometimes opportunity can come in the guise of misfortune and that can make it really hard to see the lesson for what it is, but I really do believe that all of life, every day of it, is filled with endless opportunity. And by opportunity I don't just mean 'things' presenting themselves, I mean the opportunity to change the way we view things. An opportunity to see things with fresh eyes, perhaps with more clarity, more openness or more willingness. That is the opportunity that I am speaking of, the opportunity to live life to the full. To embrace life for all of its beauty and its ugliness, for its perfections and its failures and for everything that falls in between as well. 
When you can truly do that, then that is when you really begin living life to the fullest. That is when your life is complete; when you have not only made your peace with the winding road, but when you also love it for being as wild, unpredictable and filled with opportunity as it is,  and that I believe is the essence of life, and it is wonderful. 

Recently on Triple J there was some discussion about Public Displays of Affection or 'PDA' for short. This is a topic that really seems to divide people on what they think is publicly acceptable and what is just taking things too far when it comes to getting up close and personal in public places. 
Interestingly, there is actually a general etiquette or social expectation in our country when it comes to the topic which is designed to make sure that everyone's comfort levels are respected and that no-one gets arrested for indecent exposure. However, in spite of the guidelines, I'm pretty certain that everyone actually has their own beliefs and individual comfort levels when it comes to PDA. Sometimes the differences are defined by cultural beliefs or upbringing or a person's level of comfort with touchy-feely things. For others it can be the heat of the moment and the law of attraction that dictates what is acceptable at any given moment. For example, someone getting hot and heavy at a nightclub after a skin full of vodka seems like a lot less of a big deal than macking on out the front of local church on a Sunday morning, but that's just my opinion and you may well disagree. 
Personally a bit of public pashing in the park is not really a big deal for me, but rubbing up against each other like a couple of cats in heat and anything that leaves one feeling breathless is taking things too far, that's 'get a room' stuff. Generally for me, public groping is a no-no and touching people on any of the private parts of their bodies in front of others is just not okay in public at all. Licking and biting each other is not something that I want to be seeing in the aisles of Kmart and if I see a tongue when people are kissing each other in front of me I am not in my comfort zone any more. 
The most explicit public display of affection that I have seen was on a stretch of grass in the city of Rome where I saw a man with both of his hands thrust straight up the front of a woman's shirt as he busily fondled her breasts whilst lying on top of her and eating her face off. They were clearly getting hot and heavy and were getting a lot of toots from passing cars as they went about their business. I thought that it was hilarious, but I didn't have any kids or my nanna with me, so it really didn't worry me; it certainly wasn't bothering them that everyone could see their passion for each other that's for sure. And maybe that kind of thing is okay in Italy, how would I know? But I have never seen anything quite so intense in Australia before.
We have all been around couples that are fresh in love (or lust) with each other and cannot keep their hands off each other for a minute, I did it myself when I was younger. A bit of touchy-feely is not really that big of a deal for me, it's okay depending on the time and the place. I think that as long as the couple are considerate of the comfort levels of other people in their space, then things usually don't stray too far out of left field. Some people say that if you wouldn't do it in front of your grandmother than it is not okay to do in public, which probably does have some grain of truth to it. Odds are there will be an oldie around when you are in full on pash mode, so unless you're at a dimly lit nightclub at 4am you should probably put a lid on that shit until you are no longer in the public eye. 

After the recent viewing of Okja on Netflix, Zoe has decided to become a  vegetarian. Kudos to her I say, going without meat is tough going, I should know, I was a vegetarian for four years and almost died of anemia in the process! That was way back when I was teenager and I really didn't undertake my vegetarianism very wisely or with any proper education about how to care for my own health; hence I got sick all of the time, weighed a mere 48 kilos and had dangerously low levels of iron in my system. Fair to say that I sucked at being a vegetarian, but I understand that it can be done safely and correctly, so I have no problem with supporting her decision, if anything I totally understand it.
"If I can cry over some computer generated hybrid being slaughtered for meat then I cannot eat animals and not feel guilty about it any longer" she said to me. For anyone that hasn't seen Okja yet, it really does drive home the brutality of the meat industry albeit in a 'Studio Ghibli' fashion. Seth walked out of the room exclaiming that the film was too fucked up for him to endure as well.  Parents beware, the M rating on this film may be a little light handed given the impact that this film had my kids, so keep the wee ones away from it. Did I enjoy the film? Honestly, not really, it's not a terrific movie, there are a lot of problems with it, but it is certainly having an impact on people and making them rethink their meat intake, so for that reason it is very effective. 
It is probably high time that people did take more consideration into what they are eating, how it sourced and what kind of an impact it is having on the environment in general. The human race does eat way too much meat, and a lot of that meat isn't slaughtered ethically or humanely and it is something that we all completely disregard when we are selecting our meat products at the supermarket or butchers. 
Bottom line is that an animal has had to die for you to eat that roast chicken, steak, burger, sausage, pork crackling....whatever meat that you enjoy, and that should be taken into consideration. If you had to kill the animal for yourself, would you eat as much meat as you do now?  I know for a fact that I wouldn't. I also think that if you are willing to chow down on the delicious bits of the animal, then you should be willing to also eat the offal and the trotters and the tongue and all of the other bits that people shout out 'gross' and push back. All parts of an animal should be used, well as much as is safe to consume and use anyway.
Think about our ancestors, they would've eaten every part of their butchered animals, used the skins for clothing, the bones and teeth for jewellery and the guts for broth. Nothing would have been wasted. If we were still responsible for our own meat butchering, we would still continue to do that, because we would have hand-raised the meat and cared for it and understood just how precious it was. Today we waste a lot of the animal, we only want the best cuts of meat and refuse the rest. It gets tossed out or put into dog food as the industry happily slays another animal for us to pick only the prime cuts from. We have lost touch with our food, we have no idea about the animals we eat. What are their lives like from birth? What are they fed on? How are they slaughtered? What happens to the leftover bits that no-one wants? 
All worthy questions, and questions that we should be asking ourselves. Probably the most important question of all is, are you a mindful eater? Not just in regards to the meat that you consume, but all of the food that you eat. You don't have to be a vegetarian to be mindful about your food intake and to consider whether you are being sustainable in the way in which you eat and source your produce. It is something that we all need to do. The more questions that we ask now, the better that the world will be tomorrow. If we all start to question things just a little bit more, it would make a huge difference and will bring us back in touch with the food that we eat. Next time that you pick up your fork, spare a thought for how that food actually got your plate and learn to respect what you eat. Eat mindfully for a better world.

Zoe came out to Enfield to celebrate her 20th birthday over the weekend. We enjoyed a leisurely couple of days together sipping champagne, eating Thai food and chatting away the hours. It was only a week ago that I was discussing the joys that an older child brings to your life with a friend from work. At the moment her children are still quite small and as we all know, this makes them pretty demanding and exhausting a lot of the time. She asked me "does it really get better?" To which I happily informed her that there is a constant source of joy and awe that is yet to come for her. 
It was with great delight that I shared with her just how terrific it is going to be when her children have grown up. Even Seth, as he grows older, is always dazzling me with his profound and unique way of looking at the world. I told her that she will look at her children and be absolutely amazed about just how wonderful and interesting they will to be to her. I told her that they will inspire her and enthrall her with their ideas and views, and all the while she will get to sit back and marvel in the fact that she was the one who created them.
I said "it is is just the best feeling in the world to spend time with your older children, you will love it." And I meant it, I adore my children and I think that they are just the most incredible people that I have ever met in my life. When you look at your children, you will see all that has been in their life and all of the potential that lies ahead of them (that they will never see themselves) and it is just magical. I actually got a bit teary trying to describe it. 
As my children get older, it becomes clearer and clearer to me that all of the hard work that you put in over those early and formative years really does pay off in the end. My children seem so much wiser than their years and are often the catalysts in a new way of thinking about situations. They have lifted me out of some pretty heavy funks and offered me words of advice when I have felt lost. Their conversations are never dull to me and I am always excited to hear their views about current events and occurrences.
​Every generation gleans something new from their experiences to share, and your children are the best gateway to that knowledge. Eventually this learning will come from your great grandchildren and so on and so on; it's a never ending cycle of learning from each other and exchanging experiences, and it is honestly the best thing in the whole world to be a part of. So it is fair to say that in response to the question "does it really get better?" I would have to say "it gets so much better than better!"