Black dogs, pink avatars and a little blue.

Today I am doing something I have not done before. I am having a mental health day. When I rang to say I would not be in to work and was asked if it was for The Green Eyed Girl who has been unwell (here’s hoping the third lot of antibiotics do the trick) I took a breath and answered,

‘No, it’s for me. I’m calling a mental health day, I have some things I need to sort out.‘

Just admitting it, out loud, made me feel a little better. Admitting that actually some shit was getting to me and yes I needed to take a step back was a huge relief. An even bigger relief was going to my GP and talking about it there and leaving with a referral.

I said in my Hump Day post that I would be writing about all the pink on Twitter this week, I still am. It’s just that for me this means patting the black dog and letting it sit at my feet just for a little. It means acknowledging that all the urging to support breast cancer awareness makes me drown a little. It means (this time) supporting this cause while also saying the things that I usually just think.

It means taking responsibility for my mental health instead of swallowing the blackness back down again and just getting on with it.

There have been, there still are, women I am connected with in a number of ways that have been affected by breast cancer. Friends who have family members fighting it.  Family friends have died from this insidious disease. I have watched mothers with babies battle this cancer and the side effects of the aggressive treatments they undertake to fight back against it. I ran in the Mothers Day Classic for this cause, I have pink shopper bags, pink ribbons, I check my own breasts for lumps and get the GP to do it too when I have a pap test.  (Which I do every year, not every two because cervical cancer reared it’s head in our family.) I even have a pink avatar for #feelthemupFriday self examination reminder on Twitter.

But… I also have the word blue across my pink toned avatar face. And this is why:

Each year in Australia, close to 3,300 men die of prostate cancer – equal to the number of women who die from breast cancer annually. Around 20,000 new cases are diagnosed in Australia every year.*

Each day about 32 men learn news that they have prostate cancer – tragically one man every three hours will lose his battle against this insidious disease.*

As many men die from prostate cancer as women die from breast cancer but… a national survey by PCFA in 2002 showed that while 78% of women felt well informed about breast cancer – only 52% of men felt informed about prostate cancer.*

*quoted from Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia Website

This month is Blue September raising awareness and encouraging men to face up to cancer & health. Us women are getting pretty good at talking about our bodies, breast checks, pap tests. Everything from water bottles to hairspray has a pink ribbon, and so it should. We are reminded to have a pap test every two years, and so we should be. The more we know about the ways to detect cancer, the more money ploughed into research the better.

But what about our fathers, brothers, boyfriends, friends, sons… are they hearing the message about their checks? Are they seeing support on water bottles? Beer bottles? Manly shopper bags from Bunnings? No, not really.

So, here I am, with a pink face and a blue word. In the background black is lurking.  But I will not let the dark swallow me whole. I said I would let the black dog sit at my feet, but I did not say he could stay, so I have a letter and an appointment to begin my own journey. So I can learn to sleep and breathe and say go on get! Get out… go! to the back dog.

Today is Blue Friday. I have a a black dog. We all have pink avatars. Let’s remember our men as well as our women and remind them of the checks they need to make. The more it’s talked about the better it is surely. It’s time to step beyond the man flu jokes and really support and encourage, because equally as devastating as a Mum dying if cancer, is a Dad dying of cancer.

Tags: cancer, the black dog, wellbeing

Hump Day Happiness

Dear Wednesday… where have you been? It feels like it should be Friday already. As the end of term three creeps closer, and the lurgies bite, as Winter seems like it may never end (although it almost has) the days begin to drag. But, the top of the hill is here, it’s a short ride to the bottom and the weekend… I can all but hear the collective sigh at that thought…

So, on we go then with this weeks hump day happiness… the  time of the week we reflect on what has made us happy the past seven days.

This week I only have one happy.  It’s a good one I promise. You see, I have been waiting for this day for just under nine months.  I knew it was coming… I have felt feet kicking through a tummy wall… I have kissed a blossoming belly… and I have laughed, and talked, and wished… but yesterday I got the good news… You see my darling friends welcomed a new member to their family. I have written of this family once before, and the loss of their precious Layla.  Their big boy has a baby brother… I am an auntie again, and the joy I feel can only be described as love for my friends and their sons.  So, that you see is more than enough for me this week.  Now, I’m off to sort out flights to wrap my arms around all four of them.

So, that’s all the happy I need this week.  Because right now, all is love at my house.

Now over to you… what has made you happy this week?

Happy Hump Day!  And welcome to the world little one, you are loved beyond words xxx

N xxx

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Tags: freindship, hump day, the family that was made, wrapped in love

Hump Day Happiness

Ah, Wednesday I wondered where you’d been hiding. So happy to see you!  Now, if you could just give Thursday and Friday a bit of a push and get them to move along quickly I’d be ever so grateful.

After a bit of a hump day hiatus, it’s good to be back in the swing of things.  I’d forgotten how much knowing I had this post coming up made me look for the happy… sometimes the happy is big things, and sometimes, like this week, it’s little things.  To me, it’s often the little things that matter most, because as nice as the big, the momentous, the thrilling are (and believe me I love a big do!) it’s easy to find the happy in them… what is not always so easy is finding the happy in the small and the every day… so that was my challenge this week, to find the happy in the small… and so then, here they are.

As you may know, I have a LOT of black clothes. So, in an attempt to get out of the black rut I wore this red cardi, with a grey top... the only black I wore was boots! I added this vintage fabric button my sister sent me last year... What's not to be happy about with that button on?

On my running leggings there are splashes of mud. Running in the rain and the low cloud, in thermal gear this week was utter, utter bliss.

The Green Eyed Girl's new sequined high tops. Seriously, what's not to smile about?

So, what has made you happy this week? I’d love to know.

Happy Hump Day!

N xxx

Tags: freindship, hump day, running

Meditation, roller coasters and teeth that light the night.

Life is long and lingering some days.   It has been for me a lot of late.  Sometimes it’s also full of underlying menace and dull ache. Sometimes I yearn for the blue sky and the kindness of sunshine, however weak and far away it’s warm rays may be. Sometimes the greyness of winter is more than the weather.

Sometimes an offer to accompany a friend on a trip to Luna Park for her daughter’s birthday celebration can surprise us both with the belly aching laughter and joy it unexpectedly brings.  Sometimes being with the carnies, the screamers, the scared, the cold and the fairly floss eating people is better than all the medicine and comfort that can be mustered.

It seems that what I needed to quieten the noise in my head was to be surrounded by the screaming, the laughing and the thrill filled fear that riding on roller coasters and vertical boat rides can bring… along with a hazy trip back into childhood safety on a merry-go-round.

As we walked out of the menacing mouth with it’s teeth all alight, there were smiles, and laughter… and lightness of spirit. Looks can be deceiving, and a wide gaping mouth on an eerie glowing clown can, it seems deliver joy after all.  On the drive home there was talk of meditation classes and the arrangement of pick ups to attend them.  Safety in numbers, and the encouragement of one another seemed like a good thing.

So perhaps this quietening I yearn can be found… and in more places than one.  While I can’t promise a trip to Luna park every week, I can decide to go to meditation… after all, if I can find peace on a roller coaster… I can find it in a chair, in the hills, with a friend by my side…

Tags: freindship, meditation, people watching

Hump Day Happiness

There has been a bit of a break in hump day posts. It’s not that there has been no happiness, more that I have not really been in a place where I wanted to post about it.  I know this is contrary to my very own reasons on why I started this post.  It’s also contrary to the rules I made up for hump day comments!  But there you go, that’s the way the cookie crumbles.

But Hump Day is back! So, here goes…

We had a very full, and very satisfying weekend here… more than enough happened to keep me happy.

• I had a whole hour on the train into the city reading.  I had Mumford & Sons on my iPod and a book in my hand… what a lovely start to the day.
• I walked through the city I love seeing the rumblings and promise of the day to come.
• I met up with the gorgeous and oh so lovely Jodie and Megan for brunch.  We chatted away like old friends, not all that surprising as we chat most days on twitter and various blogs… so we could skip all that new friend chit chat about weather, and Hubbies, and where we live and what we like, because we know all that already! It was lovely.
• The football.  Two codes in one day.  What too much? Perhaps, but we did it! Dad got us great seats at the MCG.  So, with Mum, Dad, the Blue Eyed Boy, Green Eyed Girl and Hubby I saw our beloved Pies win.  Then, Hubby, The Kids and I went to the Rugby at Docklands, and surrounded by a sea of All Blacks we watched our beloved Wallabies lose.  But the spark in the kids eyes was worth it.
• Spending an afternoon meal together with family in our lovely hills, in a small restaurant.  Great food, great wine, great family.

So, there are mine.  More than three… but that makes up for missing the last few weeks!

Now over to you.  What made you smile this past week?

Happy Hump Day xxx

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Tags: blue eyed boy, freindship, green eyed girl, hump day, twitter, weekend

Goodbyes, god and a place called home.

I prided myself on the fact that I was a cut the cord kind of girl. That I could move on, leave behind, not look back. Fool. More to the point, Liar. (Yes, I just called myself a liar.)

While I am able to move on, and while I have in the course of my life moved a lot, I have learnt that saying goodbye and cutting the cord entirely are very different things indeed.  I think I used to say I was a cut the cord kind of girl as a form of self defence. I had, after all, learnt that for some people out of sight is out of mind.

But goodbyes are more than just the thing we say when we leave a friend’s house. More than just a word we use when we shut the door on one house and look towards a new one. While some goodbyes are a see you soon, some are forever.

But are they?  Are they really forever? Just because we say goodbye and move forward, just because we may never see a certain place ever again, is it really gone? Do we really wipe it from our mind and memory forever? Do we… perhaps I should say, do I.
And, while I’m talking goodbyes, lets change place to person. What about when we see a person for the last time… what then? I know for a certainty that I do not want to be a cut the cord girl then. Not usually.

Years ago when I attended my paternal grandfather’s funeral, my maternal grandfather, Pa, took my hand as we walked back up the aisle, and said to me, ‘Love, we all go in the end. Don’t be sad, life’s been good to me.’ (or words to that effect).  He was my Pa, I unashamedly worshiped him… I was 14. Within a year Pa too was dead. I did not attend the funeral, but he had said goodbye to me already so that was enough.

So, what am I trying to get at here, what am I trying to say?  Well… I’m not all that sure I know myself.  Goodbyes can be hard, I know that. They can be devastating.  Lets face it.  Last goodbyes can be ladened with grief, sorrow, regrets, remorse.  But perhaps they don’t need to be.  Perhaps a last goodbye can be a beginning…

A beginning of memory in which love and comfort reign.  A beginning of keeping alive the spirit.  Perhaps, for me, this is where God is… a god of small things, a god of love, a god of keepsakes.  As for home, well, for all it’s cliché, it is, after all, where the heart is.  So perhaps home is in the beginnings that a goodbye brings.  Perhaps home is opening the door to the  god of memory and saying ‘come in, pull up a pew, I’ll put the kettle on…’

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Tags: cutting the cord, god of small things, goodbyes, wrapped in love

The family that was made.

I have been struggling a bit with writing lately.  The words are muffled in my head and not coming out right.  So I trawled through my drafts and found this… I had forgotten to publish it.  It’s from earlier this month when I was home In Tassie… It made me smile, it made me remember sometimes all you need is friends, family and time…  so here it is.

Yesterday was one of those days you just can not plan.  It was a cool, but sunny Tassie day and I headed with The Green Eyed Girl and The Blue Eyed Boy to BestPam’s home.

We decided to walk down to the beach for a bit of fresh air.  About three blissful hours later we walked home, with four soggy, sandy kids.  It was one of those days that just happen, no money was spent, no need to seek out some over priced, over hyped amusement, we had each other, the roar of the waves, and sunshine.

Sometimes I think we can forget about these simple pleasures as we chase the tarnished rainbow of adventure parks and new movies.  Sometimes I think we forget all we need is our family… and by family I mean this and  this and this.

Sometimes all we need is people who know us and love us, and a chance to chat, and laugh, and cry, and talk about what is really on our minds… or not. This particular week in July is one our family that was made all remember for a range of reasons.  Reasons involving joy, and love, and loss and grief.  It is a week filled with tears and laughter and remembering.  It is a week filled with love.  So, thank you my Family that was made.

Tags: Best Pam, freindship, wrapped in love

Friday I’m in love…

So it’s Friday at last. I really did think it would never, ever get here this week. I have been absent from my blog most of the week for a few reasons, but mainly because this time last week I was just getting home to a full house. My BestPam was here with her own lovely children & GOB* and as I walked in the door wine was offered… and ahh…. well, fun ensued… *ahem*

I love having BestPam here. She is family. She just is. I believe that family is what you make it… and for me that means people that I am tied to by blood and those I am tied to by love. Yes L.O.V.E. love. I have written before about the family that was made… and on facebook my favourite quote is from Carrie in Sex and The City, because, really, truer words were never uttered…

I am lucky.  My family is made up of the one I was born into and the one I made for myself.  But really, I didn’t make it for myself, I made it with other people… some, like BestPam have been a part of it for a long time.  What I love about having this family is that we can, without fear, be ourselves.  Just as we are.  Not always in our best, well planned outfit… with a good hair day and our best manners…  but in PJ’s and trackies, and bed hair, and too much wine… we can laugh till we cry and have to race to the loo for fear of weak bladders, we can see each other for who we are, not what we wear, or what our hair looks like, or where we live.

So, thanks BestPam for another great time together.  I miss you already.

*GOB  =  Grumpy Old Bugger (who, despite grumpiness we all love anyway and who, truth be known isn’t that grumpy really.)

Image source

Tags: Best Pam, Friday I'm in love with you

Hump Day Happiness

So, here it is Wednesday again… and a whole week between posts.  It’s been a busy week here and there have been reasons to smile.  That is, after all, what this weekly post is all about! Looking for, searching out, reflecting on the happy. So, Happy Hump Day to you all… and here are my smile worthy moments.

My darling BestPam was here.  In my house.  In my kitchen.  Drinking bubbly with me.  It was great, as it always is.  We laughed, we talked, we drank, we laughed some more… we did french manicures…. at about 2am… after a wee drop of wine… as you do…

Watching my Blue Eyed Boy soaking up the history, the injustice, the tragedy that was The Titanic and the exhibition at the Melbourne Museum.  He has an amazing capacity for historic detail, and for seeing the injustice in social inequality.

Seeing Mia Freedman in real life! In the most gorgeous pink heels.

Watching my family, which includes BestPam, her GOB and her delightful kids, at the football… and our team winning! …. and just the fact that we are at a footy game, yelling out players names, yelling at the umpire… if you knew this family that was made at all… you’d be as mystified as we are at the fact we are there at all, let alone having the time of our lives!

So, Happy Hump Day to you all…. and, what made you smile this week?

Nay xxx

PS remember you can enter your own Hump Day Happiness link here!

Tags: Best Pam, blue eyed boy, freindship, hump day

Words from the weekend…

How was your weekend?   I must say, for me it was all in all a really lovely two days. I managed to get out in the veggie patch and pull out the now spent beans and sunflowers. I have saved the sunflower heads to collect the seeds. Even though they are brown and dry, I still love the way they look, and they are full to bursting with seeds. We only planted organic non-hybrid seeds, so seed collecting is now beginning.  I planted another tripod of peas and some cauliflower seedlings before applying another thick layer of pea straw.
Late yesterday I posted my last uni assignment. I am so relieved it is all over. I feel lighter, happier, and already more myself.
But without a doubt the highlight of the weekend for me was participating in the Mothers Day Classic. It was the first time I have done it. I have been training since the start of the year, thanks so much to Emily for getting me back into running.  I ran with Emily, my Green Eyed Girl, The Lovely Assistant and her two eldest children, and another teacher from work.  It was an amazing thing to be part of.  It really made my Mothers Day.  Doing something with family and friends, united with so many others for a common cause.  The Blue Eyed Boy was unwell and stayed home with Hubby, but he still got up at 5.30am to wish me a happy Mothers Day and give me the gifts he had chosen from the stall at school.

So, this was my perfect mothers day, low key, spent with family and friends, no muss, no fuss… and fish and chips for tea.  Happy me, happy kids, happy Hubby, happy day.

What did the weekend hold for you?

Tags: green eyed girl, running