V is for Veterans and Victory: ANZAC Day 2012 (#atozchallenge)

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When the letter calendar came out for the A to Z Challenge I was excited to see that the letter V fell on 25 April. Today’s blog topic was the first topic that I slotted into the Challenge because it was an obvious choice.  25 April is the day Australians and New Zealanders celebrate ANZAC Day.

ANZAC Day is akin to Veteran’s Day in North America – it is our national day of remembrance for those who have fallen, those who have served and those who still serve in the defence forces. ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps and today marks the 97th anniversary of the first military campaign fought by the Australians and the New Zealanders in World War I.

In 1915 Australian and New Zealand soldiers formed part of the allied expedition that set out to capture the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey in order to open the Dardanelles to the allied navies. The ANZACs were to lead the Allied assault on the Peninsula, providing the covering force and landing before dawn at about 4.30am. The British would be landing later that morning and would be covered by the guns of the British Royal Navy.

The Australians were landed from row boats. Most of the troops were still in their boats when the Turkish forces opened fire with many men being killed or wounded in their boats. It became apparent that the Australians had landed about a mile north to the intended beach for reasons that are still unclear today. Despite water-logged uniforms, thick scrub, steep slopes, unfamiliar terrain, confusion and enemy fire the Australians took the first slopes. However, throughout the day, the Turkish forces, led by Col Mustapha Kemal held back or annihilated the Australians. They were later joined and reinforced by members of the New Zealand Division. For the next eight months of the campaign the Allies attempted to expand their toehold in Turkey, the main offensive being the Battle at Lone Pine. The Peninsula was finally evacuated in December 1915 without the objectives of the campaign being met. By that time Australia had more than 28,000 casualties, including 8,700 killed and New Zealand suffered 7,500 casualties with 2,700 killed.

It is traditional for ANZAC Day to begin with a dawn service. During the War, dawn was often the most favoured time for an attack. After the War, returned soldiers sought the quiet and mateship they often felt at dawn and the dawn service became the favoured form of commemoration. Wreaths are laid at war memorials across the country and servicemen or their descendants march in a public show of support.

The Gallipoli campaign could not be considered a victory on any analysis. However, the battle was a victory in terms of Australian patriotism, mateship and the fighting Aussie spirit. It is where the term “digger” originated, a term used in the Aussie vernacular for the ANZACs, but also now a slang term for “close mate or friend”. If someone refers to you as a digger you know that they are loyal and will do anything, including laying down their life for you. This year marked the first year where no surviving diggers remained to take part in the ceremony.

Whether you agree with the concept of war or not, the troops deserve our support and recognition. ANZAC Day is the day to give thanks to the troops and to truly appreciate the freedoms their service has enabled us to experience. Listen to the sounds of our peaceful skies and look at the people gathering in masses to express their opinions. None of this would be possible without the sacrifices of those who serve in our defence forces.

So on this Anzac Day, we say the Ode (which comes from For the Fallen, a poem by the English poet and writer Laurence Binyon):

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old; Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them.

and give thanks for the liberties of this great land.

Lest we forget.

U is for Underwater: Getting Reacquainted With The Dive (#atozchallenge)

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Is there anything more soothing and magical than the ocean?

I have always been drawn to the ocean and consider myself lucky living in a beautiful harbourside city with amazing beaches. The rhythm of the breaking waves, the blue azure of water on a sunny day and the glinting of the sun all combine to seductively draw me to its presence. Even just walking along the cliff tops, gazing out at the Pacific Ocean, letting my mind wander is incredibly cathartic. Occasionally, the water throws up one of its inhabitants in the form of a dolphin or a whale to remind me of Mother’s wonderful nature.

About 18 years ago, the Italian Stallion did a PADI dive course and obtained our open water diver qualification. This enables us to dive to 18 metres. We have not dived as much as we have liked as we put diving on hold when our children were born. But the lure of it is ever present.

There is nothing like a dive, particularly in tropical waters. We have been lucky enough to dive in a few tropical locations and snorkel in a few others, including the Great Barrier Reef. Tropical waters are warm and clear and the visibility is amazing and that’s just the start! Then there’s the marine life, spanning the spectrum of nature’s palette, a world of grace and action, beauty and terror.

Great Barrier Reef - Australia

Our last diving experience was in Morea, Tahiti in the lagoon. We decided to take it slow with an introductory dive to reacquaint ourselves with this wonderful activity after our parenting hiatus. I remember the day vividly. I woke up nervously questioning whether diving was like riding a bike and whether I could really just jump back in and pick it up. We were the only people on the dive that morning, being escorted by Pascal, a  handsome fifty-something year old silver-haired Frenchman who spoke no English. Luckily I had five years of schoolgirl French in my repertoire and between a lot of hand gestures, bad French (on my part) worse English on Pascal’s part and miming we established basic communications. I think I must have inadvertently communicated my nervousness because Pascal looked as though he was stuck with a skittish nerveball on his hands wondering how he we were all going to survive the next two hours.

To do an introductory dive, you have to pass two underwater skills. One is to take off your mask and put it back on without it ending up full of water and the other is to put the breathing apparatus (called a regulator) back in your mouth once it has fallen out. We all jumped into the water to do these skills. I had done them before of course, but that was over a decade back. Hitting the water, I started to panic breath. Panic breathing (short sharp bursts of gasping breath) is not a good thing on a dive as it quickly consumes precious oxygen. Pascal tried to calm me down in his gentlemanly French way holding me in a death grip, liability firmly etched in his face.

Dive skills

Within minutes I started to listen to my breathing, found the rhythm, focused on the length of each breath and watched the bubbles. I was back!! Pascal was relieved and gave me the OK sign with his fingers. Quickly dispensing with the skills we set out to explore. The kaleidoscope of colours was amazing, the fish life incredible and the thrill of spotting a shark energizing. But what I will particularly remember is getting reacquainted with the slow and deliberate movements of the dive. You kick slowly and deliberately, you turn slowly and deliberately and you breath slowly and deliberately. There are not too many opportunities in life to just be slow and deliberate. I also remember the euphoric feeling afterwards and this huge jolt of confidence in my abilities.

Awesome

I am hoping to one day dive the Maldives and Palau, possibly with the children. In the meantime, I am content to explore the underwater world by snorkel from above confident in the knowledge that diving really is like riding a bike….. you never forget. Oh and it really does help to have a handsome silver-haired French diving expert and the Italian Stallion egging you on.

Are you a water person or a land lubber?

T is for Taste, Texture and Tone: Flunking Interior Decorating 101 (#atozchallenge)

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I was talking to a friend earlier about the topic for today’s “T” blog post because I was not really happy with my initial topic choices. It’s every good woman’s right to change her mind and I must be a very good woman today because I’ve changed my mind about my blog topic a hundred times. But enough about my blogging angst….

I have always pictured living in a house with personality – one that’s warm, personal and says a lot about its inhabitants. Understandably, this personality is not created overnight and requires something more than just a professional interior decorator’s touch. Our naked rooms are just begging to be dressed and I would like nothing more than to dress them. But I am looking straight into those oncoming headlights, just like those cute little rabbits that end up as someone’s rabbit stew.

Coordinating taste, texture and tone just seems like an impossible task. Scanning ads and the Internet for furniture pieces I like is easy. I’ve got a pile of torn out newspaper pages all depicting wonderful buffets, sofas and display cabinets. But matching pieces to decor, pieces with each other, pieces to fabric and having the vision to put it all together is beyond me. No number of trips to IKEA or items with really cool sounding nordic names will teach me the art of home decorating. Just digressing for a moment: those IKEA design names are so great, I wonder if they design first and wait for inspiration to name it or some manager at IKEA says make me a “pysslingar” or a “raskog”.

As a result, our rooms echo, our walls are bare, our sofa is old and our knick knacks are homeless. This friend I was talking to has so much talent in this area, I want to live in her house…. heck, I want to be her house! She decorated it herself and it screams “welcome” and this is a “home” from every angle. Thankfully, she has offered to provide me with some much needed advice, hopefully enough to overcome my decorating inertia.

Another tool I am going to use is the website, design-seeds.com. The site has delicious colour cards, presented in such a fashion that you mostly want to eat them. I am hoping to find at least a few cards that will give me some ideas on what matches with what. One of life’s little mysteries has always been that I cannot transfer my ability to colour co-ordinate my wardrobe to furnishings and wall colour. They are not so different, are they?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maybe it’s the thought that getting it wrong has big consequences. The possibility of having to stare at an olive green coloured wall next to pink skirting for the next 20 years of dinnertime does not bode well. But they looked really good on the colour card and that small postage size sample we tried out before committing. They did officer, honest…..

The time has therefore come to bite the home decorating bullet. My knick knacks need a home, the rooms need to be dressed and I need to get over myself. My tones will now learn to match my textures so that I can telegraph my taste. Onwards and upwards to furniture swatch, colour palette and wood grain hell heaven!

Have you had any interesting home decorating experiences?

S is for Success: A Moving Feast (#atozchallenge)

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I read this great blog post the other day by Amy Rhulin entitled Embracing Ourselves at Fifty. Being currently at the crossroads of my life lead me to Midlife Bloggers and some terrific material.

Whilst I am not quite 50 yet, the messages in Amy’s blog were ringing as loudly as if Quasimodo had taken up residence in a nearby belfry. For there I was doing exactly what Amy said not to do….dumping on my younger self. The rational part of me knows that we are all only human, that we can only make the decisions that we make with the information that is then available and with the armory we then have on hand. The other part of me (I won’t call it irrational) berates herself for making some of those decisions and for not understanding some things earlier. Amy’s blog however helped me to put parts of my journey into context and has given me a different perspective.

One of the issues I have thought a lot about lately is success and what it means. In my twenties and thirties I certainly bought into the conventional view of success. Success meant a prestigious career, promotions, a comfortable house and material possessions. The conditioning, I think, started from birth…school was about getting into university, university was about getting a good job and a good job was about having a decent lifestyle. What no-one told me though was that having all of these meant sacrificing in other areas such as friendships, spirituality and creativity. Success at this level also meant having to rely heavily on external validation and other’s opinions of my person and abilities.

Now being in my forties, I view success vastly differently. I have come to the conclusion that the concept of success is not complicated. In fact it’s simplicity itself ……

successful people are those that are happy and if you are happy then you have achieved success.

That’s it, full stop, period.

In some cases, pursuing happiness and ergo, success takes a lot of courage. Courage to be true to yourself, to buck societal pressure and norms and to give yourself permission to just “go for it”. I applaud anyone who has this sort of courage. I also applaud those who are achieving happiness through the pursuit of conventionial success as I have referred to above. Nobody is in a position to judge what makes another happy.

From where I am now, success depends far less on external validation and events and more on my own internal perspective and happiness. It’s less about material possessions and tangibles and more about connections, community and relationships. Maybe, it’s because these are what I had to sacrifice to achieve my conventional success. As a result, I feel far more in control now. There is more than a little irony here as I used to spend a lot of time and energy trying to control my career path, other’s reactions and behaviour. This sort of control, I discovered is a false illusion.

So to my younger self I say thank you for leading me to this point. I now realise that I had to go through the experiences in my twenties and thirties to fill me with the wisdom I am gaining in my forties and the possibilities I will have in my fifties.

And as for success, I have come to the conclusion that it is permissible that the definition changes over one’s lifetime.  And yes,  a thousand daily blog views, likes and comments would be nice, but to me this post is already a success. Why? Because my happiness has been enriched just by writing it.

Have a great weekend everybody!

R is for Reality: When Realities Collide (#atozchallenge)

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I have been married to the Italian Stallion for more than two decades. When we first met back in the dark ages we spent some time comparing our respective realities and decided that we were a pretty good fit. The big items were all processed and ticked (checked) and the courtship culminated in a marriage proposal….eventually…..after seven years and well, it was a leap year. We were married nine month’s later, went on our honeymoon and then we started to live together.

That’s when each of us REALLY got acquainted with the other’s reality.  The first decade of our marriage was about whose reality was better. Ah, young love…aint it grand? The next decade was about making our own new, bigger and better combined reality, something we have done with moderate success. The third decade is still a work in progress but involves consolidating and building on that combined reality and helping our children create their own.

Let me give you a pictorial sense of our reality on a few of the more significant marital issues:

Pets

His Reality                                                                                                 My Reality

Our Reality 

Holidays

His Reality                                                                                                My Reality

Our Reality

Romance

His Reality                                                                                                      My Reality

Our Reality

Housekeeping

His Reality                                                                                                 My Reality

Our Reality

What happens when realities collide? Apart from the smoke and ash that eventually settles, it’s not really the black hole that one would think. Life is certainly not dull and we all bring our prespectives to the household.

And now, taking my tongue right out of my cheek, I am hoping to make this the best decade yet with the Italian Stallion and to continue to carve out our new reality in middle age. 

Q is for Quirkiness: It’s Quite The Thing To Celebrate (#atozchallenge)

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duncan’s photostream

I have a set of those magnetic word fridge magnets in my kitchen. The ones where each magnet is a word which can be combined to form sentences or thoughts or anything else that takes the author’s fancy. I thought having a set would promote creativity in my sons and communication within our family to assist with inventory control – there is much to take from a one word sentence: “milk”. Plus, I was just plain curious what my children would do with them.

The magnets have been used to comment on the garden, the weather, my sons’ self proclaimed awesomeness (well, they are teenagers) and my wisdom or rather lack thereof (well once again, they are teenagers). The other week, I woke up to find the following stuck on my fridge:

My initial reaction was laughter. My thoughts then drifted to the message being more of the same said self-proclaimed awesomeness variety and I found myself asking exactly to what apparatus was this referring? As far as I knew, my sons had not had a working chemistry set for at least five years. The thought then crossed my mind that in fact it could be my husband’s message. Well, I have to confess I have had more romantic overtures but for an attention grabber this scores about an 8.5.

I then paused and concluded that this was my younger son’s work, he of the quirky nature. I say this with a great deal of motherly love and affection for I love this quirkiness in him. Whilst this was on my fridge, to me it was totally off the wall. This type of humour for an almost 13 year old?  I’m not one to brag incessantly about my children. In fact, I survived mothers’ groups with my infants without once proclaiming they understood the theory of relativity at the age of 4 months. Oh, the pressure!

But, it has made me realise I am drawn to quirkiness and that parenting a quirky child is not without difficulties. The school system generally does not rate quirkiness highly, relying on pushing students through a mass transit system. A lot of teachers don’t value and just don’t know how to deal with difference. In the jungle of the schoolyard, there is a tendency for quirky kids to be ridiculed and abandoned. Tweeny boys look for and bond over similarities. It has been that way since the cavemen starting comparing their clubs.

My desire is that my quirky one enjoys his high school years and looks back on them as a positive experience. But I am conflicted, I don’t want him to lose his quirkiness, his uniqueness. I have this sense that as an adult his quirkiness will hold him in good stead and that it will make him stand out in the competitive crowd in positive ways. In my adult world political correctness, conservatism and uniformity abound. But ironically, it tends to be the few who are truly innovative which leave a mark on that world. And how does the innovative adult’s journey usually begin? As a quirky child.

So, on this Q day I celebrate quirkiness. May my son’s apparatus continue to rock the storm throughout his life.

P is for Plethora: So Many P Words, So Little Time (#atozchallenge)

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The A to Z Blogging Challenge is an interesting beast. There are some letters that I have struggled with and yet there are others where the ideas just come in abundance. I suppose that’s why they call it a challenge.. and challenging, yet gratifying it has been.

“P” is one of these plentiful letters with great topics coming to me without pause. I really didn’t need to plow the dictionary or plunder the Internet for particular subjects. So being the positive person that I am, knowing that I won’t be pilloried by the wonderful blogging population out there and pondering that perchance this post will be pertinent to at least some of you, I have decided to publish a plethora of “P” words.

I have a passion for word play and punning. Some might say that’s a bit peculiar, but I have come to the conclusion that word play and punning are rather popular pastimes. Not one to procrastinate I throw on my pantaloons and pursue my passion with persistance and patience and without pause.

I also have a pechant for rhyming schloky poetry. I have penned a plentiful number of positive and philosophical birthday poems for plutonic pals and acquaintances. Some of them have even thought they were pretty as a picture and have framed them for posterity. They are rather unique pieces of prose and are in no way pedestrian. A poetic portrait, if you will. One day I may even find prosperity through my prose and passions. Pending that, I will have to participate in paid penance…er, employment and persist in perfecting my product  part time.

All “P” words aside, I really do love to write funny rhyming poems for friends’ special occasions and love to think about rhyming word combinations and puns. I’d love to hear from you if you (secretly or otherwise) love punning and word play. Let me know what form your punning/word play takes.

Just in case it wasn’t pitch perfect and painfully clear, this post was brought to you by the letter P and the colour purple. It was no problem or painstaking, and in fact was a pleasure to produce.

O is for Orchard: Finding The Sweet Apples of Life (#atozchallenge)

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In September 2005 Louise Eldrich published her novel, The Painted Drum. The book, which I have not yet read, contains one of my favourite quotes of recent times. So good in fact, that I had one of my friends, Toni Legates, who is a Photoshop magician, create a photo montage with the saying. The montage is reproduced below.

This is a quote that resonates deeply for me at middle age. I think if I had encountered it ten or fifteen years ago, I would not have appreciated its full meaning – at least not in the context of my own journey. There are some extremely powerful messages in the lines of this quote. Some messages, I already knew, some messages I needed to hear and some messages that I have embraced.

By the time I reached middle age I had worked out that no-one can lead a rich life without taking emotional risks. People and their reactions are things we cannot control and there are times when you just have to put it out there. Life does not come with 100% absolute guarantees and it never will. However, I think most people get to that stage sometime in their life that they develop the confidence to know that they will be able to handle any negative consequences that may arise from taking emotional risks. I now have. Being prepared to risk emotionally means creating the potential to reap rich emotional rewards, a potential that was denied to me in the past.

I can also now more fully appreciate the need to let myself sit in the orchard of life and just listen. Having emerged from a time when I thought there was NO time to sit and think, I have now made appointments with myself to do just that. We wouldn’t think to break a committment to others, but we tend to quite readily do so in the case of commitments to ourselves. Well, I am giving my appointments with myself at least the SAME amount of importance as I do with my appointments with others. We need to process and have enough clarity of vision and clear headedness to pick up on the cues the universe sends our way.

Having given myself permission, I now find that the sweet apples of life are everywhere. I take gratitude in the small things. The small wins are to be savoured and deserve just as much, if not more, focus and energy than the more remote possibility of a big win. Yes, it would be nice to win the lottery, but what are the chances…really? So I am not waiting for life to hand me lemons or one giant apple, I am reaching out for as many smaller sweet apples as I can and taking a huge bite of them. Happy to say, that I have encountered very few rotten cores to date.

When life hands you apples, you could make apple sauce, but I’d rather enjoy their crispness.

Have any quotes or passages ever resonated deeply with you?

N is for Notifications: 14 Notifications I Would Like to See in Real Life

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Hello little red/orange light. You shine out at me in a comforting glow and envelope me with your promise. I’m glad you found your way into my day. You beckon to me with that cute little number which signifies action and attention, a shift in the cyber universe, whilst the real one was spinning. I yearn for your presence everyday and today you have found me. As I reach for my mouse, my heart starts to pound, who…what? One click and you are gone to reveal your secret beneath. And your secret today…. Chris requests that you help him make two thousand pancakes at Cafe World, after he harvested and milled the two thousand wheat crops he grew on Farmville.

Facebook notifications, you gotta love them!

But what if real life came with notifications? What if that blinking, bubble of a red light appeared with really useful information in real time?

Here are fourteen notifications I would like to see in real life. The characters referred to in these notifications are purely fictional to protect the guilty and I have taken these names from lists of unusual children’s names. I apologise in advance if your name or a relative’s appears on this list.

The clerk at the dry-cleaners found your sunglasses which you left there yesterday and has sold them on E Bay.

Kermit pushed his supermarket trolley into your car whilst it was parked at the mall and caused that big dent in the driver’s side door.

Kermit has no money to speak of and he has a wife who is a mean lawyer.

Decimus knows the obscure word which is the answer to  twenty-two down to complete that five hundred clue crossword that has sat on your coffee table for two months.

Puck is jealous and is stalking your every move in real life and on-line and looks at your profile every hour on the hour.

Laviszia has no intention of calling you, despite kissing you on both cheeks today with a breezy, “so great to see you, we must get together, hun, will call you.”

Although he denied it, Macky put his finger through the chocolate frosting on that cake you have been icing for the last hour and saving for guests.

Macky commented that it tasted delicious.

Goncalo placed the television remote control on the sofa cushion next to him and it has fallen behind the sofa where you will never find it.

Your bum really does look big in that.

You sat down at this computer three hours ago to check the timetable for the bus which in fact left two hours ago .. why are you still here?

Kerripaula just white-anted you.

The dog just let off gas.

No, trust me, it really was the dog this time.

These I think would be most helpful.

What notifications would you like to see?

M is for Mask: Desperately Seeking Authenticity (#atozchallenge)

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duncan's photstream

If you have ever been to Venice, you would have seen the amazing Venetian masks on display. The masks originated in Medieval times in Italy due to the religious oppression that then existed. Behind their masks people in Venice used to feel free to indulge in certain activities frowned upon by the religious authorities. They were made of paper- mâché and decorated in gold, feathers, gems, ribbons and fur. Today they are used in street carnivals. They look ornate and distinctive, but pick them up and they feel fragile. You will find them everywhere in Venice.

Many people wear masks, even when it is not carnival time. These masks are not decorated or colourful like the Venetian masks, in fact they are almost invisible. However, the principle behind them is the same, namely they make the wearer feel free to indulge in certain activities or engage in certain ways.

When I was in my early thirties, a highly ambitious thing and knee-deep in my career, I would put on my career woman’s mask. Back then I felt uncomfortable talking about motherhood, parenting, really any out of office life at all for fear of being judged not committed or dedicated in what was a male dominated environment. I would wait until either a male colleague or client would raise the subject of family or children first and then I would be comfortable in contributing. Talk about golf, rugby union and beer was highly accepted, sadly I was not into any of those.

I am happy to say that times appear to have moved on, both in the industry and in society in general. The other facet to this of course is that I have reached middle age, am comfortable with my skills and ability to deal with professional issues and have less need to hide my authentic personal self from my professional self. My intuition and bull sh*t detector also seem to have been honed over the years to the point where I am happy to rely on them in real life. I am going to leave the digital world out of this discussion as that world is a whole other ball of wax.

Apart from my professional mask, I’ve never really felt the need to have any others. However, I have known people who are not this way, some have more masks than Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have children. Just when you think you’ve managed to peel one off, another one is revealed. It must take an astronomical amount of energy to maintain these masks and then do they show different masks to different people, or have a different order in which they are removed for each person?

The vibe of an interaction between two authentic selves is totally different to one where one of the protagonists is wearing a mask. There is usually a real energy to such an interaction, which may not always be positive if you are disagreeing and I’m ok with that. I’d rather have an authentic interaction than one muted by a mask. It’s why I seek out people who are themselves authentic.

I am done with masks, masks represent fear. The next one I don will be at carnival time hopefully either in Rio, Venice or New Orleans and be covered in jewels, feathers and a whole lot of colour.

What’s your experience with mask wearers?

[Photo credit: picture of taking off the mask by frostmaster on deviantart.com]