floating downstream

Posted by trish on Feb 29, 2012 in Blog | 6 comments

Forget what you think the Universe is trying to tell you.  Don’t worry so much about why that bad thing happened, or why that good thing hasn’t happened yet.  Don’t think so much about what that means.  Don’t question what the lessons are that you are supposed to be learning. Don’t start to doubt what you know for sure.

Just focus on your goal, on the absolute truth that is in your heart, the thing that you know, deep down, you really, really, really desire.  Don’t doubt that it can happen.  Don’t listen to the people who tell you it can’t happen: their fears about you come from their own insecurities, they have nothing at all to do with you.  Don’t listen to them, don’t let them convince you.  Those are their fears and concerns and they are not relevant to you because you know in your heart that everything is going to be OK.

Remember what it is that you want, and just allow yourself to move toward it.

Don’t do anything that distracts you from your path.  Don’t engage in a discussion with your doubters.  You don’t have to convince anybody else that you are on the right track – you know that you are, because you can feel yourself gliding effortlessly along it.  You can feel yourself floating downstream towards the life that you have imagined for yourself.  You are floating downstream.

Don’t stop to argue.  Don’t stop to doubt.  Don’t stop to wonder if this is too much to wish for.  Just go, just drift along without anything tugging at you, pulling you in the wrong direction or just holding you back.  Do nothing that turns you back upstream.  You will know when it’s starting to happen, you will feel the water pushing against you, and you just have to turn and go with the currents.  Let go of all the other stuff, you don’t need it.  Let go.  Float.  Be happy and content and free.

The Big Dog

Posted by trish on Feb 28, 2012 in Blog | 2 comments

PJ is away on a work trip at the moment so the girls and I are trying to get through our week without him.  It’s interesting how the absence of one person upsets the balance in this house.  Ella was away at school camp for a few days last week and the mood in the house was quite noticeably different, though I can’t put my finger on exactly what the mood was.  Maybe we just missed her.  But PJ has been gone since last week and won’t be back for another couple of days and the mood is clearly defineable – we all miss him because his presence raises the level of decorum in the house.  There is less yelling on my part because a) the kids are better behaved when he’s around and b) I’m much calmer.

The puppies are going a bit feral, too.  They’re peeing and pooping all over the place, which they haven’t done since they were only teeny little babies.  They’re a bit clingy; they follow me everywhere, perhaps worried that I’m going to disappear, too.  They have been leaping up onto the furniture and barking at people walking past the back gate and chewing on everything.  Usually, PJ is here to growl at them but he’s not, and while the Big Dog’s away, the puppies will go completely nuts.  I’ve been trying to growl at them but it hurts my throat.

So we will all wait impatiently for his return, when life as we know it will go back to normal and the balance will be restored and I won’t be spending my days mopping up the floors and getting cranky at the girls – who, to be fair, just miss him a lot, too.

Product Review

Posted by trish on Feb 27, 2012 in Blog | 5 comments

I don’t do these, even when asked.  I only do them when I come across a product that I am SO impressed with that I simply have to tell the entire world.

Aesop is an Australian skin care company.  I have been using their Parsley Seed Eye Cream and Camellia Nut Facial Hydrating Cream for about two years.  I’ll be honest, I don’t know if these two products are having a significant impact on my rapidly ageing skin but I will say that my skin has never felt better in my entire life.  It’s hydrated, clear, soft and mostly unblemished.

When I do get a pimple, however, my first instinct is to crawl under the bed.  It’s like my face saves up all the oil and gunk and delivers one perfectly formed, enormous pimple every 28 days or so.  Sometimes, it delivers two or three.  Always on my chin.  And they always last at least a week.

But not anymore!  Because I have discovered AESOP CONTROL!!!

I’m not kidding, this stuff is miraculous.  That’s why I added three exclamation points.  THREE.

I bought a 9ml tube about three months ago, and I’ve been using it on every single pimple I’ve cultivated in that time and have kept a mental diary of the results.  After three months and about a dozen zits, I can honestly say that this is the most amazing skin care product I have ever bought in my life.

Do you know those pimples that start forming on your chin under several layers of skin, that start to appear as a kind of raised mound, not unlike that which a baseball pitcher stands on?  There’s no obvious central point, it doesn’t look as though it’s about to break through the skin, but it’s there, lurking, like the swollen bulge of an active volcano, a few days before it erupts.

I had one of those two weeks ago.  I resisted the almost irresistible urge to try to coax it out with some external pressure and instead dabbed some AESOP CONTROL!!! on the general area.  Within 24 hours IT WAS GONE.

Then I had one of those big pimples that just kinda pops up right in the middle of your cheek, you know those?  It had a very obvious central point, and was extremely red and tender in the days leading up to its debut.  I decided to try an experiment.  I didn’t squeeze it, I just dabbed some AESOP CONTROL!!! on it and watched, and waited.

It came to fruition much more quickly than I would have expected.  And then, when it was ready to pop, I… I… gave it a little squeeze.  I’m sorry, I couldn’t help myself.

So I was left with a red, oozy crater in the side of my face.  Nice.

I dabbed some AESOP CONTROL!!! on the spot when I went to bed and the next morning… are you sitting down?

The next morning there was barely anything left to look at.  The swelling was gone.  The redness was gone.  There was a small mark where it had been, which was easily covered with concealer.  It was barely noticeable.

This is unprecedented.  Pimples never clear up less than 24 hours after I squeeze them.  Generally, they get big and angry and they sometimes reform and come back with a vengeance.  Not anymore.  Now, they’re pretty much gone in a day.

If you have trouble with pimples, I highly recommend you get yourself a tube of this miraculous stuff.  It costs about $23, and the tube is small, but I reckon this will last me at least 12 months.  You only use a tiny little dot.

blissripple

Posted by trish on Feb 22, 2012 in Blog | 4 comments

Love is the Seventh Wave

(Sting)

In the empire of the senses
You’re the queen of all you survey
All the cities all the nations
Everything that falls your way
There is a deeper wave than this
That you don’t understand
There is a deeper wave than this
Tugging at your hand

Every ripple on the ocean
Every leaf on every tree
Every sand dune in the desert
Every power we never see
There is a deeper wave than this
Swelling in the world
There is a deeper wave than this
Listen to me girl

Feel it rising in the cities
Feel it sweeping over land
Over borders, over frontiers
Nothing will its power withstand
There is no deeper wave than this
Rising in the world
There is no deeper wave than this
Listen to me girl

All the bloodshed, all the anger
All the weapons, all the greed
All the armies, all the missiles
All the symbols of our fear
There is a deeper wave than this
Rising in the world
There is a deeper wave than this
Listen to me girl

At the still point of destruction
At the centre of the fury
All the angels, all the devils
All around us can’t you see
There is a deeper wave than this
Rising in the land
There is a deeper wave than this
Nothing will withstand

I say love is the seventh wave

My favourite chorus is the one in bold.  If I have this song playing in the car at just the right volume, with the sun coming through the window at just the right angle, those words can reduce me to tears of joy.  Feel it rising in the cities, feel it sweeping overland… goosebumps.

Since writing that first post about happiness and joy, I have been inundated with messages from the universe – and from all the lovely people who commented on my blog – telling me that this is something that so many people are feeling right now: the need to edit out any unnecessary sadness, anger and angst, and instead concentrate on the things that bring us happiness and peace.  It’s not about shutting yourself off completely from the world, and it’s not about ceasing to care about others.  It’s about looking after yourself by limiting your exposure to those things that make you feel bad, that you don’t really need to be exposed to.  It’s pretty simple.

The first words:

In the empire of the senses
You’re the queen of all you survey

… have never made more sense to me than they do today.  You are in charge of the way you feel.  You are in charge of your feelings and emotions.  Nobody else can tell you how to feel, only you can do that.  And if you’ve got your head buried in tweets from all those journalists and hacks you follow on Twitter then it’s your own damn fault that you’ve fallen into a funk over the state of federal politics.

I’ve just started a new Twitter feed – @blissripple.  I made that word up.  To me, it describes how happiness and joy and bliss can be sent out from a central point in waves that other people can feel.  A blissripple can be an emotion or a fragrance or a sound, a response to some kind of event or happening… it’s energy that comes from somewhere and can be felt as it hits you and passes through your body.  And then it keeps going and going, catching people in its endless, outward journey, getting stronger and bigger as it goes.

Does that sound a bit twee?  A bit cutesy?

I don’t care, because for me it perfectly describes what I’m going to try to do more of with my life… send out blissripples and to keep my mind and my heart open to feeling them when blissripples come to me.

I’m going to use @blissripple to follow tweeters who only tweet blissful, happy, positive, joyful things.  I’m keeping @eatshootblog open for everything else, but I’m about to unsubscribe to a bunch of tweeters who seem overly obsessed with Australian politics.

more on being happy

Posted by trish on Feb 21, 2012 in Blog | 5 comments

The VMCA (aka Vanessa) said something interesting in the comments -

It never ceases to amaze me how all those tragic stories draw readers like flies to honey, yet write a blog that is filled to the brim with happiness and light and you run the risk of ‘not keeping it real’ or being called a fraud, because afterall how could *anyone* be so  happy all the time.

One of the happiest, most positive blogs I have ever read was The Pioneer Woman’s blog.  She never complained about anything.  She celebrated the simplest things.  She loved her children and husband and her life on the ranch and was unapologetically up-beat, all the time.  The only reason I’ve stopped subscribing to her blog is that I found it all a bit much – the cookbook and the novel and the associated book tours, the tv show, the guest bloggers, the movie deal, the weekends at the Ranch that I could never attend…  even though she was still writing charming little anecdotes about life on the land, they were buried under what seemed to be, I don’t know, some kind of marketing machine gone crazy.  I’m sure she’s still keeping it real, I’m sure she’s not a fraud, and I sincerely wish her the best of luck.  But she has taken happy happy joy joy and made it somehow a bit unreachable, a bit commercial, a bit much.

I’m grateful for all your comments on that last blog.  It’s true, everyone seems to be on a bit of a high these days and have less time for all the bullshit that we used to allow in.  I’m completely zoning out on all the crap in the media at the moment (Australian politics is a hot mess right now) and I have also reduced the amount of negative ‘noise’ in my life by unsubscribing to people in the virtual world as well as a few people in the real world. I thought I would feel a bit guilty about that, but I don’t.  I feel good.

I think the most important thing to do – when you’re trying to find more happiness and attempting to feel more gratitude in your life -  is to NOT feel guilty about that.

You know when you’re going through a bad time, whether it’s to do with health, finance or family, there’s always some helpful bugger ready to point out that “there are people worse off than you” as though that’s supposed to make you feel better?

That always bothered me – that you couldn’t wallow in your self-pity or ask for a bit of sympathy because someone else decided that really, in the great scheme of things, your problems are miniscule.

So it would also bother me if someone told me I couldn’t wallow in my good mood, soak in my good fortune, bask in my happiness, marinade in my merriment, celebrate my contentment.  I don’t want to gloat, I don’t want to be thought of as a smug prat.  But it is difficult to be outwardly happy and positive (ie to fill your blog with posts about How Great Things Are Right Now) without turning people off. Especially here in Australia, where keeping other people’s feet firmly on the ground (and cutting down the Tall Poppies) is a national passtime.

Which begs the question… why blog about happiness and contentment if you’re worried about what people think?  Why blog about happiness and contentment at all?  What’s your point, exactly, and what are you trying to achieve?  Are you trying to encourage people to be happier?  Are you attempting to set an example and inspire people to try to follow it?

OK so it begs a couple of questions.

I’m still just thinking out loud.  I’m trying to come up with a way to celebrate and enjoy this time in my life, and to blog about it without sounding like somebody who has lost touch with reality.  I just want to show how grateful I am for all the blessings I have, but I don’t know how to do that.  I need practice.  I’ve never felt like this before,  I don’t know how to do it.

I love that quote, the one Phillipa added from India Knight:

“The older I get the more I just want to sit next to radiators.  You know, things that generate warmth.  If that makes me selfish, then so be it.  But I’m much happier for it.”

‘Sitting Next to Radiators” – that would make a good title for a new blog, don’t you think?

happy happy joy joy

Posted by trish on Feb 20, 2012 in Blog | 5 comments

One of the many bloggers whose blogs I read without any expectation or hope that they might read mine in return* recently linked to her three or four favourite bloggers.  She is a beautiful writer, and her favourites are also beautiful writers, and I clicked through to read their blogs because of her recommendation.

All of the bloggers she linked to write beautifully of their relentlessly tragic, sad, depressing, desperate lives.  I read a few posts on each of their pages before I had to click over to Pinterest and search for “puppies” to cheer myself up.

My husband has been a fan of Manchester United since he can remember.  We got Pay TV so he could watch the English Premier League.  I confess to not being completely up to date on what’s been happening in the EPL but I do know that some of the players have been involved in racial vilification that has in turn sparked some extremely ugly behaviour from the fans and grossly inadequate responses from the football officials.  It has gotten so bad that PJ has decided to stop watching the EPL until something is done about the racism in English football.  This is a man who would stay up for a 4am kick-off between Man-U and Liverpool.  He is now not watching football.

The thing is, misery-bloggers will keep on writing their cathartic stories and the football players will keep being complete arseholes, but me and PJ are opting out.  Because this is 2012, the Year of the Dragon, and a year of enormous, positive change for us.  We are in such a happy place right now, everything is going well, and to be frank we just don’t want to invite anything into our life that doesn’t match our current mood.  No, we’re not just covering our ears and saying “la-la-la-la-la-la-we-can’t-hear-you” or burying our head in the sand until global warming stops happening.  I’m just saying that we are making a conscious effort to avoid any extra sadness, anger, frustration, pettiness, conflict etc.

I am trying very hard not to yell at the traffic.  I am also trying very hard not to still feel intense anger about my former brother in law and what he did to my sister.  I am trying every day to not let the kids’ silly arguments about whose turn it is to do the dishwasher get under my skin.  I am trying to surround myself with wonderful friends, beautiful things, uplifting music, romantic comedies, 1200 thread count cotton sheets and comfortable shoes.  I don’t gain anything from reading a beautifully written blog post about the death of a five year old boy.  I don’t need to read about somebody else’s marriage woes in order to better appreciate my own life.  I don’t want to know that English football fans have been booing the black guy – who had the audacity to report his abuser – every time he touches the ball.

Now that the kids have gone back to school I have thrown myself back in to writing and editing my book.  I am about to rip out several chapters’ worth of sub-plot and re-write an entire plot device.  My head needs to be clear of noise. I need to stay focussed and positive and clear in my mind about what I am doing.  I have enough distractions in my life with the two puppies sleeping at my feet.

*she doesn’t read my blog, so if you are reading this, you are not her.  I just wanted to make this distinction because a bunch of you are seriously wonderful writers and I didn’t want you thinking that this was about you.

Goosebumps

Posted by trish on Feb 14, 2012 in Blog | 0 comments

I had never seen this video of Whitney Houston singing the American National Anthem at the Superbowl until this week.  I have never in my life had goosebumps all over my body in response to hearing somebody sing.  Incredible.

(sorry, I don’t know where the video is… just google Whitney Houston American National Anthem Superbowl and you’ll see it, if you’re interested).

Shrooms

Posted by trish on Feb 14, 2012 in Shoot | 3 comments

My friend Kathy was looking for these pictures on my blog. They’re not there anymore, because I got rid of them all in a big clean-up.

You know how sometimes you feel like you should just delete your whole stupid blog and start from scratch?

Dont.  It’s not all stupid.

(Thanks, Kathy!)

In 2010 I went to Sweden and spent a couple of hours hunting for mushrooms in a forest with long-time family friends, Agneta and James.  It was truly magical.  I wish my girls could have seen this place.  Maybe they will, one day.

impulse purchase

Posted by trish on Feb 9, 2012 in Blog | 2 comments

I know, I know, I said I was only going to buy things that are grey or navy blue… but who can resist a  scarf?  Especially one this pretty?  Some impulses just cannot be ignored.

My dear friend Sophie made this.  See the little red stitching along the bottom?

It’s a ladybird.  So, there’s my little flash of red.  This is going to look gorgeous with all my new navy tops.  I saw it, and bought it faster than you can say “That’s going to make you look particularly chic on your bike this autumn, Trish.”

Sophie has been making beautiful things to sell in her etsy store for a few years now.  Proceeds from the sale of her clothes and things ‘for in the home’ go to supporting the work of the doctors at the Melbourne Royal Children’s Hospital’s Stroke Unit.  She’s just re-branded and she is now known as ‘The White House’.  Sophie is yet to blog about the meaning behind the new name, but she has hinted at opening a real, live, actual shop one day and I haven’t been this excited for her since she told me she was pregnant with her little boy…

Isn’t he divine?

Mini-break

Posted by trish on Feb 9, 2012 in Blog | 2 comments

I’m off to Byron Bay tomorrow, to meet up with a girlfriend (Brooke) and then attend the 40th birthday party of another old school friend of ours, Dan.  Dan and Brooke both came to Canberra for my 40th, he and I both went to Sydney for Brooke’s last May, and now we’re all going to be in Byron Bay for his and that just seems fair and right, doesn’t it?  Brooke and I are going to stay in a beach house that belongs to another dear school friend, Penny (who lives in Brisbane), but Penny can’t come because she had a prior engagement, in Sydney.

For those of you who don’t know, Byron Bay is on the northern NSW coast, not far south of the NSW/Queensland border, where it’s always tropical and warm and lush and green.  I’ll be taking my camera and practicing my landscape photography.

The theme of the party, by the way, is “80s Yacht Rock”.  So I’m thinking navy/white striped tshirt, wide-leg pants, sailor’s cap and enormous white-framed sunglasses.  Hilarious.

sweetie-pie

Posted by trish on Feb 6, 2012 in Shoot | 0 comments

This little poppet is the younger daughter of some friends of ours.  They’ve just moved back to Canberra after several years living, working and making beautiful babies in Brisbane.  I’m so excited that they’re back, and that I get to take pictures of their girls.

So many of my friends have beautiful children!  It’s ridiculous.

on editing

Posted by trish on Feb 6, 2012 in Blog | 0 comments

The editing of the First Draft is coming along well.  Those of you who’ve read it will know that it’s heavy on dialogue, light on descriptive passages.  I’ve had feedback from a few friends who have suggested it could be improved by a few more breaks in the conversation to talk about what is going on in that scene, what’s going on inside the main character’s head, maybe a little about the setting and what is happening around them.  I think it’s good advice, so I’m going through and adding paragraphs and sentences here and there to break it all up.  Not surprisingly there’s a word for these breaks – they’re called ‘beats’ in editor-speak. (I’ve been reading my how-to editing books!)

I’ve had a bit of feedback about the syntax and structure, and some about whether or not a particular character would behave/speak in that way.  It’s tricky to give your characters different voices so that they don’t all just sound like the same person speaking.  I’m going through the text to make sure everyone has their own sayings and indiosyncracies and perhaps try and tweak the cadence if I can be that clever.  Hard work.  But rewarding.

To give you some idea of how much more work I have in front of me, the novel is a bit like a fixer-upper house, a big renovation project.  The ‘bones’ are there but the kitchen needs ripping out, the tiling in the bathroom needs repairing and every single wall needs to be repainted.  And there are a hundred little holes in the walls where someone tried to nail in picture hangers; those need to be fixed.

I’m really keen to get it in front of someone who can give me some completely objective feedback.  My girlfriends assure me that they’re not just telling me it’s good because they’re worried about upsetting me with a bad review, but I’d still like to hear it from a complete stranger.  Well, I’m not sure I’d “like” to hear it but I know I need to hear it.  The kids go back to school tomorrow and then I’ll be able to sit at my desk for a couple of hours of uninterrupted writing every day, and I hope by the end of February to have it ready for a Manuscript Assessor.

Pasta de la What’s In The Fridge

Posted by trish on Feb 1, 2012 in Eat | 1 comment

Penne with Broccoli, Peas, Pine Nuts, Goats Cheese Feta and some leftover herb/breadcrumb mix from when I made Cheat’s Chicken Parmagiana.

This actually turned out quite well.  I made a egg/cream sauce, so it was like a carbonara (one egg, 20oml of Philadelphia Cream For Cooking, whisked together).

While the pasta was cooking I toasted the pinenuts a frying pan and when they were done I removed them and toasted the breadcrumbs in the same pan.

I steamed the broccoli separately but in hingsight I could have tossed the florets and the frozen peas into the boiling penne when it had a couple of minutes left to cook.

After I strained the pasta/veg, I put it back in the pot and poured the egg/cream over it and tossed it gently until the sauce had coated everything.

I chopped the big cubes of marinated goats cheese feta into bits and sprinkled it on top.

I reckon this would be sensational if you started by pan-frying some pancetta or really good bacon.

there’s a hole in my brain

Posted by trish on Feb 1, 2012 in Blog | 1 comment

Several years ago I was working in the office of a very senior public official – a Member of Parliament, actually -  just doing a bit of temporary administrative support work, and I was given the task of writing a letter to a constituent.  I was given rough guidelines for what to write, and I sat at my desk and composed a really well written letter, if I do say so myself.

So I wrote this great letter to the constituent and then showed it to my boss, the MP’s Executive Assistant.  She read it, said it was terrific, then pointed out the glaring mistake.

I had printed it upside down a sheet of letterhead.

This is just one example of hundreds of small errors I have made in my life because I am seemingly incapable of mastering the art of paying Attention To Detail.  This is where I consistently, continuously fail.  I copy down the wrong number.  I make the wrong coffee.  I forget to call the guy back.  I don’t tick the right box.  I order the wrong photographs from the print lab.  I double-book the kids into haircuts and tennis lessons.  I don’t check the exposure on the image before I click…

I know that everyone forgets things from time to time but I’m quite convinced that I have a special talent for this kind of thing.  Working in the Cafe for six months confirmed it for me: some of the mistakes could be blamed on a communication break-down or simple misunderstanding but there were plenty of times when I would suddenly realise that, for example, I hadn’t put the right price tag on all the new packets of pasta that I had just priced for the store.  I would look at the price guide, then look at the price-gun thing, and wonder how on earth I managed to get that wrong.

There’s nothing like a small error to make you feel like a BIG idiot.

It’s a good thing I’m not a nurse, administering drugs.  You know those horror stories about patients getting injected with the wrong drug, or ten times the correct dose?  That would be me.