I like to purchase products that will last. I really hate it when things run out, breakdown or stop performing when I haven't had them for very long. I can't say that I like it much better when I have had them for a long time and they breakdown either, if I am being really honest. Why am I mentioning this? Well because today I got home from work, went to grab a cold glass of water and realised that my fridge was warm. No-one ever wants to come home to a warm fridge, especially not on a 35 degree day; but shit like this happens, and my refrigerator is about 15 years old...so.... crap on a stick, my fridge is broken!
Needless to say, I was not happy and it made me very snappy and impatient with everyone in the house because it was an unforeseen annoyance, and everybody knows that they are the worst kinds of annoyances. On top of that, this was a rather inconvenient unforeseen annoyance as well, and I did not get to enjoy a cool glass of water to calm me down, I instead got a tepid glass of water and an hour on the phone trying desperately to get someone to come to Enfield to investigate my inconvenient annoyance. Well by 4.30pm in the afternoon the best I could muster up was a visit from a guy that said he 'might know what to do' (that doesn't really fill one with a lot of hope now does it?) and he could probs squeeze me in some time tomorrow, but he was not exactly sure when. Hmmmm......
​Well, tomorrow is the worst day ever to be vague about times because I am working out at my new job and I cannot afford to not be there for that, so I have had to call in favours and juggle things around; and I tell ya, I am literally having a 'make it work' moment over here people! Anyway, I think that I have strategized the shit out of the situation and now I just have to hope that the service/repair man comes good and does indeed squeeze me in and can indeed fix my refrigerator blues. 
These things sure are sent to test us, that's for sure! They always happen just before a big event (like Christmas) when you're funds are all tied up and they always require many maneuvers to remedy. Nevermind, be zen about it, find the calm and keep moving forward. This type of thing will happen and it won't be the last time that something like this does happen, so losing one's cool over it is not really worth it.
So now I am off to throw out a heap of gross, festering and smelly food that is puddling at the base of my fridge that I haven't been willing to face yet. Lucky, lucky me, what a lovely thing to do on a stinking hot afternoon....reckon the Coke in the fridge could still be salvaged, may need to pour myself a stiff one for this job, a lukewarm stiff one, but a stiff one nonetheless!

Do you ever think about your purpose here on the planet? I know that I do, probably more than I should if the truth be told. And I have started to wonder if perhaps we really don't have an actual 'purpose' in this life, maybe life is just all about the fact that we even 'are' more than what we are doing with our time. I mean apart from a handful of famous people, the vast majority of us can only ever hope to leave a lasting impression or a change to our immediate environment and the people that we have in our lives; and maybe that is more than enough. Perhaps just leaving behind good memories for others to recall about us is actually the whole point to all of this, and maybe life is not any more complicated than that, perhaps we just make it so with our constant need to strive for more. 
When I eventually leave the planet I know that I will leave behind my passion for cinema through spicywatch.com, my numerous journals outlining my life experiences, my poetry and artwork, but most importantly I also hope that I will leave behind good memories of me for people to think back on. I would like to leave with grace and have no regrets when I go, and I would like to think that my children and my grandchildren felt as though they had a chance to get to know me properly and that I had managed to pass along some life wisdom to them that they would in turn pass along to other generations. 
I have no desire to leave behind wealth, I would rather leave a legacy of love behind than any sort of material legacy. However, the thought of leaving behind a debt for my loved ones is not something that I would want to burden anyone with either. Hopefully, in some ways I will leave a clean slate, but also some good seeds which will grow at some other time in the future.
I am not intending to be morbid in this thinking, and I apologise if I have come off that way.  I genuinely have no desire to die anytime soon, so please don't misunderstand me. I think that it is important to take stock of what your legacy will be after you depart, because even if you live to be 100, time is fleeting.
I suppose what I am trying to say is that what you do with your time is not nearly as important as why you do it and who you spend it with. No one will remember you for the car you drove, or the house you lived in, or how far you travelled around the world; they will only remember you for the way that you made them feel. So, I suppose that all that anyone could ever really want to leave behind when they go is a good feeling in the people's hearts that are left behind. And maybe that is the whole purpose of life, the whole kitnkaboodle in one simple sentence - you want to leave behind a good feeling, and I think that that is something pretty damn grand to aim for. 

Just spent the last two days at Sovereign Hill with the Grade 6 students at the Asylum Ragged School; yep they finally sent me to the asylum! Just kidding, our school sends the year six students to Sovereign Hill for an immersive, historical experience every year. This year I went along and donned the Sov Hill drag along with the students to get a really authentic feel for it all, which would have been a lot more fun if it wasn't over 30 degrees on both days. I had seriously forgotten how sweaty and revolting those costumes are, blah....I was sweating like a sinner in church. I cannot believe that I spent almost six summers at the Sovereign Hill bakery during my twenties in front of a wood oven in that garb, torture!
Crinoline on crinoline and lace on lace, I have never felt more like a trussed up Christmas turkey in my life! Layer upon layer like a Sara Lee pastry and sweltering in the heat I carted my sorry arse up and down the main street and back and forth from the school, which was conveniently located at the very top of the hill, for two days, and now I am utterly exhausted. 
The women of the 1850's really didn't have great lives, well no-one really did back then to be honest, but when you are standing under a lace parasol in 30 degree heat surrounded by layers of bouffant frills the reality of how horrid it must have been in summer for ladies is well and truly driven home.
I declared as I was putting my outfit on for the second day (as my body was physically trying to reject it) - no wonder that all of the men thought that most of the women were bat-shit bonkers back then, these clothes are enough to make the strongest woman lose her shit!
However, in spite of the heat, and sweaty discomfort, it was a really fun couple of days with the children and I got a lot out of my Sovereign Hill 'immersive' experience. However, I will not be sad to get into modern garb for work tomorrow and I thank my lucky stars that I was born in an era that doesn't require me to feel so damn uncomfortable all of the time. 

Today, Craig and I are enjoying our 23rd wedding anniversary. Are we off to do something whirlwind, spectacular and insanely romantic? No, we are not, and I am totally cool with that. A 23rd wedding anniversary is not really one of the big ones, and in my mind it hardly constitutes an enormous hoo-ha. Craig and I are not exactly known for our  'let's go out and paint the town red' attitudes at the best of times; we are however known as the people that leave events first and prefer to be around each other more than anyone else, and perhaps in that common and very unsocial ground that we like to tread together, lies the key to a long and prosperous marriage. Whatever the strange glue is that holds us together, it works and it does not appear to have lost any of its adhesive abilities over the past 23 years that we have been married to each other. 
This morning we just slept in and then spent the morning chatting over long coffees and a very late breakfast on the deck in the glorious morning sunshine. The small luxuries are most certainly the things that we like to celebrate together, and sleep-ins and late breakfasts are most definitely small luxuries to us. Just being together and being happy is a luxury if I am being completely honest, so many people will never know a love like ours and for all of its complications and intricacies, we really do have something wonderful.
We have truly created a mighty fine lives for ourselves together over our combined years of blood, sweat and tears. I have put more effort into my relationship with Craig than I have put into anything else in my life, and I wouldn't change a thing; Craig has been the most rewarding thing that I have ever invested my time and effort into. 
Craig is most definitely my very best friend in the entire world and although I love my friends dearly, Craig is my go-to guy on all fronts. No-one makes me want to do better, be better and try harder than he does. No-one has stood by me when the chips were down like he has, no-one has loved me in spite of all of my idiosyncratic shit like he has, and no-one knows and accepts all of my weirdness like he does; and I doubt that anyone else ever could have. 
Like all great romances, we have weathered the best of times and the worst of times together. We have loved each other harder than any couple could ever love and we have also hated each other more than any couple ever should as well; because really loving someone truly is the agony and the ecstasy. It is about accepting the sunshine but also welcoming the rain. It is about loving all of the beauty and all of the ugly bits as well, it's about being vulnerable and brave all at once. It's the guts and the gizzards, the nitty gritty parts, it's about every single bit of yourself seeing every single bit of someone else.
It's completely raw and utterly compelling, it's frustrating and intriguing and the best part of all is that it just keeps on evolving as you grow and change together - side by side and hand in hand. After 23 years of loving my man, I can honestly say that I love him more now than I did on the day that I said 'I do' 23 years ago, and I think that that may the best thing of all, the fact that it just keeps getting better and better all of the time. 

Woohoo! I got the job!
I'd be lying if I said that I didn't feel a bit crummy about knocking out my opposition, who would have wanted the role just as much as I did, but at the end of the day I cannot deny that it felt pretty damn fine to be victorious in my pursuits.
​Yes, it is official, I am going to a new school next year to try my hand at something completely different. My new position will see me working primarily with a blind child who is beginning his school journey in Foundation in 2018, which means that I will be required to learn Braille and take on an entirely new skill set. This challenge is extremely exciting to me and I am really looking forward to meeting my new little friend and gaining a better understanding of his needs.
As a learning support officer, you really do gain a great deal of knowledge from each child that you work with and this child will certainly not be an exception to that rule, in fact I envision that this experience will be both challenging and deeply satisfying, which is exactly what I look for in my employment. 
The truly bitter-sweet thing about this new job is that I must now leave my current place of employment, a place that has helped me to grow and that has nurtured me for almost nine years. In doing so, I also leave behind some amazing friendships and relationships that I have cultivated  there as well, and that is going to be the hardest part of saying goodbye at the end of the year.
Most people walk out the door when they quit a job thinking 'good riddance' but I will not be feeling that way at all. You see, I still really like my job and I love that I know everyone that I work with so well and I feel like I belong to a kind of weird and wonderful family when I am at work. Letting go of all of that will not be easy to do, but I am sure that the really meaningful relationships that I have created will continue to flourish even after I go, so there is some solace in that. 
Still, going to a brand new place filled with brand new faces and doing a job that is totally foreign to me, although invigoratingly new, is equally terrifying. I would be lying if I said that there wasn't some trepidation and apprehension tied to this most poignantly bitter-sweet moment right now; but that is the way that change always feels, and busting out of old routines and comfortable predictability takes guts. Right now, this change has come at the right time for me, because it really is a good time to change and try something fresh and new. And even though half of me is holding on tight to what I have, the other half has already started to let go and to reach out for something new.
You have to listen to those little voices inside of you that tell you that it time to give something else a shot or to let go of old mindsets, because that is when the real growth occurs. Someone famous once said that we would never reach new lands if we were always too afraid to leave the shore. Well, not me, I am leaving the safety of the shore and I can see new land across the sea; I am going on an adventure!

On Friday evening I attended a friend's 40th birthday and while I was there I ran into an old friend that I used to go high school with. This person and I used to be school captains at one of the less reputable secondary colleges in Ballarat way back in the early 90's. After a few moments of chatting with him I realised that I have pretty much wiped most of the memories of that time well out of my mind. Why had I done that? Well, because I was a bit of teenage dirtbag when I was in high school, and so were most of the other people that attended our school, and although I cannot deny that I had some really fun moments along the path to adulthood, most of them I would prefer not to recall at all. 
I was astounded by how much this old friend of mine had retained from our formative years, he could quickly recall names, events and people that I had totally deleted from my memory, and up until I had heard their names again I had almost forgiven myself for all of the crappy and stupid things that I had done when I was a teenage dirtbag.
Yes, I did some pretty crappy shit when I was in high school, particularly in my earlier years when I was really trying to discover myself. Some things I did for attention, some things I did because I was too young and stupid to know any better, some things I did out of spite and some things....well.... I don't really know why I did some of the things that I did to be honest, as most teenagers don't. 
Anyway, it didn't take many moments of reminiscing to remember why I had long moved on from my high school experience and my generally confusing teenage years and happily buried those awkward and stupid years way down deep in the desperate hope that I would never have to relive them again.
When he started to tell me about a possible upcoming reunion on the horizon I nearly had a panic attack! Seriously, being in a room full of much older, fatter and hairier versions of my high school friends is not something that I need to put myself through. I don't want to see photos of people's babies and hear about how the last twenty five years have panned out for them because I don't even know them now, not at all. In fact I really didn't know them that well back then either, which is why I don't still see any of them these days. 
I suppose that for some people (like this old friend) that have retained friends from their high school days, a reunion could seem like a really nice chance to get back to together with the old gang. For me, not so much. Don't get me wrong I didn't leave the school with a million enemies or anything, but I never really had a clique in high school. I was a bit of a square peg in a round hole at school, I just drifted about, talking to anyone but not really getting involved with anyone too much either. In the past, I had tried everything to run with the popular kids, but it just never really worked out for me because I always felt like I never really belonged or I had to try too hard or lie about myself to be accepted. I never felt like I could just be myself, and then in year 11 and 12 I just stopped trying to fit in and things got a lot easier. 
I really enjoyed my final years of high school, but again, I didn't really have any friendships that lasted beyond graduation day. I was happy to leave it all behind me when I walked out of school on that very last day. Happy to let go of my teenage regrets, mistakes and embarrassments and just happy to be moving on. And that is the way that it is for millions of people when they leave high school; they just walk away and move on. You don't really spend too much time thinking about it after that; that is until you bump into someone that you used to know and it all comes flooding back in, swiftly reminding you why you put it all behind you so very long ago. 

Some exciting news in our household this week. Zoe and Lachlainn got engaged on Sunday and have embarked on the next thrilling and very adult leg of their lives together. After six years together and almost two years of living together, it wasn't really that surprising that Lachlainn got down on one knee (Craig said he should have gotten down on two because she is worth two knees) and popped the question. Of course Zoe said yes, she adores Lachlainn and the two of them have been googly eyed for each other ever since they first met in their formative years. I know that they do not appear to have lost any of that early spark for each other over the years and they make each other happy, so I see no reason whatsoever for them not to make it more formal and committed. 
With Zoe still short of 21, many people's first reaction is that she is too young; but why can't the young fall in love forever? Why is that the go to? Age has nothing to do with matters of the heart, when it's the real thing you just know and you grab hold of it with two hands. I was married at 21, and Craig and I have managed to weather the tests of time together; sure we've had our rough patches but we have managed to go from strength to strength. When you grow up loving the same person, you really do get to know an awful lot about them and I don't see that as a bad thing at all, it's actually quite lovely to have someone to spend your life with; especially when that person loves you equally as hard as you love them. Why wouldn't you want to make a vow of commitment to that person?
Age-smage I say, the heart knows what it wants and holding back on the really beautiful things in life has never made anyone happy. So, cheers to you Zoe and Lachlainn, congratulations to you both for being brave and bold enough to tell the world that you really do mean forever when you say it. True love never goes out of style and everyone knows that the first cut really is the deepest. 

In a type of post Halloween celebration, I took Seth and met up with Helen and Carmel at Alfred Deakin Place on Saturday afternoon to celebrate the colourful Dia de Muertos (Day of the Dead) event that was held in Ballarat this weekend. Dia de Muertos is a Mexican national holiday where people honour the memory of their dearly departed friends and family members, and it is truly a colourful and lively spectacle of epic and magnificent proportions. 
It is commonplace for Mexican people to visit the graves of lost ones at this time of the year to decorate their graves with elaborate imagery and offerings. Altars called ofrendas are constructed in homes and adorned with photos, calaveras (skull representations), golden aztec marigolds, incense, food offerings and gifts. There was massive and highly ornate ofrendas constructed at yesterday's celebration in memory of the dead, it was so beautiful and had a massive cross at the foot of the altar that was surrounded by rice and salt to keep the evil spirits at bay. 
We perused the gorgeous authentic mexican crafts and cultural art pieces, checked out the massive dirt and bark skeleton installations, listened to the animated mariachi band, watched a performance of an authentic Mexican Day of the Dead dance and tried some 'Grandmother's' chocolate. Grandmother's chocolate, I was told by the very helpful young lady that was running the stall, is a traditional Mexican spiced hot chocolate that is only drank on Dia de Muertos and is usually drank with 'Dia de Muertos Bread' - a sugar and spice encrusted mini sweet bread that is baked and left out in an attempt to persuade the dearly departed to visit your home with its irresistible aromas. I purchased a loaf to leave out overnight in the hope that it would entice my nanna to visit, but unfortunately I can't say that I saw her. Perhaps Mexican sweet bread is not that alluring to her. 
We rounded out our Dia de Muertos celebrations with a delicious lunch of Chimichangas and Hendrix Muddles aka Hendrix Summer Mules, which is now my new fave cocktail and will be my summer go to drink for sure - so refreshing! Followed that deliciousness with a visit to the Ballarat Art Gallery to see the new Romancing the Skull exhibition, which was also terrific and I highly recommend a visit to. Then finished it all off with a quick pop over to the local Spanish restaurant for coffee and hot churros. Yummy!
Got home in the early evening with an over stuffed gut and still had time to spare for some utterly ridiculous D grade horror that was so very bad that I cannot even remember the name of it now! What a perfect day! Seth fell asleep around 10.30pm and I crashed into bed around 11.30pm and slept just like the dead myself. 

I have been meditating daily on this awesome app called Headspace. It's free, user friendly and above all else, it is intensely enjoyable. Yes, that's right, it is enjoyable and I'm not kidding! Sitting crossed legged and zoning out for a few minutes every day has actually been really lovely; and unlike positive visualisation (which you all know I love, but is essentially meditation with a purpose) the variety of meditation on Headspace encourages you to 'zone out' rather than 'check in.' It's kind of like a daily mind rinse that clears out all of the bugs and glitches in your head; and it only takes five minutes a day if that is all that you can spare. 
​Seth and I are officially addicted to it. Headspace has become a part of our daily ritual and we have found the act of meditation very calming and exceptionally useful. I personally have been using the zen practises of Headspace a lot this week, as I have now moved onto the second (and most terrifying) stage of my job interview process. Turns out that last week's engagement was merely stage one, which thankfully I passed, next Wednesday is stage two. We are officially down to me and one other candidate for the position. This information is both terrific and also intensely nerve wracking, as I am now a mixture of joyful hope and paralysing and crippling anticipation all at once.
As it gets closer to the pointy end it is both exciting and utterly nauseating, and clearly what my potential employer is looking for at this stage is to be dazzled. No pressure, just be dazzling on the day, easy right? Without a doubt, I am going to require some zen like meditation and preparation so that I don't rock up on the day resembling a plate of jelly. 
Well meaning friends have offered support by saying things like, just be yourself and they'll love you. Ahh, yeah, well, there is a big difference between me in my comfort zone and me in a space that is well outside of my comfort zone; and that can be the difference between lovable and should we call you an ambulance? So, uhhh.....yeah, let's just keep on trucking with the Headspace app and the positive visualisations and let's just see how we go shall we? 
For it is the fear of the unknown and unknowable that makes these moments so poignant, so challenging and so very gripping. All that you can do is attempt to put your best foot forward on the day and hope that it will be enough, and the rest is in the hands of the gods, and I will need to make my peace with that, however it plays out.