Friday Reflections : Go Confidently in the Direction of your dreams.

My choice for this weeks post is the quotation by Henry Thoreau, "Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined."

Last April, I took a flight from Kathmandu to see Everest. This is the photo I took. It is the closest I want to get to that mountain peak!
I am so sad to see the devastation now in the city where I spent several days this time last year.

This quotation is on a plaque on my kitchen wall. My brother gave it to me Christmas 2013, not long after I retired.  I had just been through a stressful time, I had moved country and and spent two months camping out in the bedroom while I renovated the house and made it fit for winter living.

The house is actually looking quite tidy here. It was much worse and it was November. Not the time to be missing a window!

This was a post I really wanted to write about. I wanted to give it due care and consideration but as usual I seem to have run out of time. Why?

When my kids were small, I dreamed of the day when they would be grown up, independent and I would be retired.  I dreamed of lazy mornings, lots of books, and travel. Just look at the clipart I found when I googled. Are all retired teachers the same? This just describes it perfectly. I worked to live, not lived to work.

Got it in one!

I drafted this post. As I did I realised something. I am not moving confidently in the direction of my dreams. And this is why my time seems so scarce.

I have spent the past couple of weeks making a new garden. I had some help with the structural work but the rest I have done myself.






























I have barrowed tons of earth. I have planned, dug and planted the new beds.































The herb wheel I bargained like hell for. Had done the deal on  a bigger one but couldn't get it into the car. This one fits the patch perfectly

Basil is in, am waiting to get the rest of my herbs.

The veggie patch is prepared. It's next.

The veggie patch is prepared. I have visions of juicy tomatoes dancing in my head.

Through the work, there have been countless coffee breaks. The garden seems to be a magnet and so is the smell of coffee. It seems to bring everyone passing in to sit and chat. Lots of Turkish practice for me.  Lots of coffee and cake for them.

The terrace waiting to be planted.

In addition, I have been following my passion for photography. While I haven't got to the sea yet this week, to do my "reflections in water" homework. I have revamped some of my older photos and am learning to edit.

 Kyemore Abbey in the West of Ireland, great reflection but the sky was overexposed.

Improvement but still needs some work.

Sikh Temple in Delhi 

Better fits the homework brief when cropped in tight.

These swans became.......

........these, using the drama filter in Snapseed.

Random girl at the Taj Mahal

I inverted the reflection to make for a more interesting photograph , in my opinion.

Today I spent in the kitchen. Tomorrow I have planned a picnic with friends. We will meet, with our cameras and have a ramble. I am even bringing my swimsuit with me, In hope of having my first swim of the season..........on the 29th of April .

This is where we will go tomorrow.

 

My home wafts with the scent of fresh bread, brownies and muffins.

Hot out of the oven, Garlic, herb and cheese rolls.

Lemon Cream Cheese Muffins, easy to make and nice and light.

Chocolate brownies.......look my hand shook taking these, not so easy to make, definitely not nice and light but seriously good. Did I mention one never made it back safely to the tin? 

I love these ginger snaps, especially as they have sour pomegranate sauce to add a little kick to them.

Oh yes, the salad greens. This is  my carbon offset, sorry, sugar overload offset!

Of course there is a very healthy salad first!

Thursday is singing group and on Friday I will meet with my knitting ladies. That leaves the weekend to get my tomatoes, peppers, aubergines and courgettes planted.

One last thing for today, I have booked my flights to Bangkok for the end of September, the first leg of my upcoming trip to Vietnam and Cambodia. This was going to be a solo trip but in December a friend decided to come with me. We will be away for a month.

Looking forward to this trip in October. Vietnam and Cambodia with a brief stop in Thailand.

 I have planned a photography day tour in Hanoi, we will cruise Halong Bay, take the sleeper train to Da Nang, bus it from Ho Chi Minh City to Phnom Penh as well as fly to Siem Reap to visit Angkor Wat. 

We have booked a four night stay at the Secret Paradise Resort on Koh Rong Samloem pictured above.
This will a penance for me.....very limited internet access...I am going into rehab!!

I think I can safely say, I am not  moving confidently in the direction of my dreams. I am living my dream every day, be it digging the garden, baking, singing or knitting with friends, recording it all on camera. 

This is why I have so litle time to sit in front of the computer and write As I sit on my garden swing I realise my dreams are actually my reality. I am living them every day. Lucky me.

Friday Reflections. Carpe Diem.

Firstly I would like to thank Mackenzie and Janine for choosing me as their  featured writer last week. I was surprised and very pleased. Next I must apologise as my Friday reflection has become a Tuesday one.

 Last week was a good but very busy. The H3A group here on the Bodrum peninsula was celebrating their 5th Year Anniversary last Thursday and I was busy sewing my  hexis together to put on display. I also had several photos in the photography exhibition. I received many compliments for both the hexis and the photographs.

The two on the left are mine.

The knitting display. Thanks to Cheryl for the photograph.

Whilst there, I also had the chance to work on tomorrows photo homework, "Shadows" The evening light reflecting on the dome of the hamam was too good an opportunity to resist for the Irish contingent.

The Irish contingent play with the shadows.

Unknown to us we were caught in the act by another member of the group who is a very well respected blogger. She lived in Bodrum for a number of years, in the early 80's, and returned again in 2012 to a very changed scene. Back to Bodrum

However it was back to earth, literally, the following day as I struggled to move a truck load of earth. I am making a new vegetable garden. This left little time for blogging and even less energy.

Proof!  My family were in disbelief. The shovel was way to big for me.

A vegetable garden in the making.

So my reflection this week is of lessons learned.

I was talking to a young friend a while ago. He hadn't long set out on a his teaching career. He had just got engaged and life was stretching out in front of him, full of  excitement and promise.

I on the other hand was just about to retire, My life too was in a period of change and for me also full of excitement and promise. As we were talked, I passed a comment about me being lazy. He said he couldn't believe that. As our chat went on I told him I wouldn't want to be young again for all the tea in China. He was astonished, Why ever not? Youth was everything. I replied that I would not want to start from the beginning again and have to learn all of life's lessons again. He then jokingly agreed that my initial statement was correct and that I was indeed lazy.

From the time we are born we begin to learn and these "life" lessons continue until we die. The question is, do we learn or do we repeat the same mistakes over and over again?

When I was teaching, the main message I used to try to pass on to my pupils was, never be afraid to try. It is from our mistakes that we learn more. I think this true for anything. For example, in a photography workshop you submit two photographs, one really good and the other not so. When people look at the first, they say wonderful photo, it may have been just a lucky shot . Looking at the other photo, if you are lucky people may say, you needed to have changed your aperture, ISO, crop it differently etc. It is from this we learn. If we are open to making mistakes to not being afraid to try then we can make our greatest discoveries. How many of us sat in a classroom afraid to raise our hand when the teacher asked a question and then kicked ourselves when someone else gave the answer that we would have given and received all the praise?

But I digress. There are so many lessons I have learned and so many still to be learned. While the above lesson is a very important one, the most important for me has been to "seize the day." Carpe Diem.

Sunrise in Bandipur Nepal.

When I was younger I used to wish my life away. If only I was old enough to join the youth club...... if only I was old enough to go to the discos...... if only I was finished college...... if only I could get a job......if only my babies could dress and feed themselves, if only they could get themselves to their activities, if only the summer holidays would come, if only the summer holidays wouldn't come to an end........ The list was endless.

It also consisted of " when the children are older I will....... when I retire I will......."

I had my children shortly after I married, at what is now considered a young age. By 25 I had three babies under 15 months - I hadn't counted on availing of the "buy one, get one free" offer!  My plan was to have a relatively large family, to have them young and then later enjoy an early retirement, the children would be grown up and independent, if not gone; and then it would be my turn! No empty nest syndrome for me. All plans for the future, I was going to wait 35 years for my day to come,

But then life happened. I worked in a small school. We were a staff of four. My Principal's wife died in her forties, of cancer. My close colleague was in a horrific car accident, with her husband. They turned a corner and a racing jeep, on the wrong side of the road crashed straight into them. They were not sure if she would survive. Then they thought they would have to amputate her foot. Luckily she came through and intact. Then my third colleague lost her husband to brain cancer. Again he was in his forties.

I got a call one day to say my husband had had a "turn" and was in the cardiac care unit of the local hospital. I said I would be straight down. I was told not to move as his boss was on his way to collect me. I was sure he was dead or dying, if not why couldn't I drive myself? Luckily it was not a heart attack. He was sent home the next day and told to watch his diet. A bad attack of gastritis combined with taking bloods had knocked him out for the count.

This all had a profound effect on me. What were the odds that two of a staff of four would lose their spouses at a young age? That another would be in a life threatening accident.  Tomorrow was not guaranteed. Life, with all it's ups and downs, was sweet and to be enjoyed now. It was time to live in the moment, to seize the day, carpe diem.

I stopped procrastinating and started to make my dreams come true. I began to "make hay while the sun shines" if the weather was good, I would go out for the day. The housework could wait until the  evening  or the next rainy day.I started to live and enjoy the moments, when holidays weren't possible, a day out here and there. Money saved for a holiday abroad became a deposit on a mobile home by the sea. Later,as time went on, this was exchanged for a holiday home in the sun.   Each stage of the children's lives was to be enjoyed, tucking them in at night and reading them their favourite bedtime story. Taking them and their friends out for a picnic by the sea, the excitement as they headed out to a local disco with their friends, waving them off to college, attending their graduations, sitting down at the table with four wonderful young women and listening to them talk. 

I became proactive in my own life. I was never one to look backwards. When I met a setback, I would head for a corner and either have a good cry or a good rant and then emerge with a new plan. My problem was I was always looking to the distant future.  While I still tend to make plans for the future I now find it hard to tell you what I will be doing next week. I let life unfold.

 I have been lucky that as I imagined, I took early retirement.I am now living abroad, in Turkey.  What was a holiday home has become my real home. Somethings are not as I dreamed,some are better,  life goes on. When asked will I live here for the rest of my life I say I don't know, I no longer think in terms of where I will be, what will I be doing in five years time? I don't know. For now I enjoy the view from my bedroom window each morning I wake up. I consider myself lucky.

My morning view.

And I do not worry. I believe we are authors of our own fate. Yes it is true, sometimes we have no control over things that happen. But we do control how we react to them.  I believe that if we seize the moment, then we live our lives fully, the bad as well as the good. So much time was wasted dreaming of tomorrow. Now, even if I dream for tomorrow, I enjoy the day that I have and try to live it so that as night falls I can say, that was a good day. 

Diary of a Desperate housewife.

Do I feel desperate? Absolutely not! I am just a desperate housewife, that is to say desperate at being a housewife. Sometimes I wonder why begin a job that I know I will have to do again tomorrow or at the very least the following day after that!

Housework, I hate it!! I would love to have a nice clean shiny house but I would like it to be the result of a quick wave of a magic wand. Who wants to hoover floors and iron piles of clothing when I could be knitting, out taking photographs, planting the garden, trying out new recipes. or just plain old curl up in a corner with a good book. There are so many things I would rather do.

                          

So I usually clean on an "essential" basis, there are visitors coming or I can't see the table for the pile of ironing. If I don't wash the windows it saves on the necessity for net curtains. It is no co-incidence that this magnet has pride of place on my fridge.

                   

 Recently, a couple of friends came to stay for the night. We had a photo expedition planned for the next day. So I gave a quick whizz around the spare room with a duster and the hoover. Did I mention I live with two cats and they shed hair by the sackful?

Unfortunately, our photo walk had to be postponed. So we set up a "studio" in the their room as the theme of our photography homework was portraits. We decided to use each other as models.  Room set up we were ready to begin. I am trying to break out of my normal "stand in front and shoot" I have been experimenting with angles.  I got down on my knees to take an upward shot. I found the edge of the bed was in the frame. So I suggested we move the bed. Bad move!!!

Most people have heard of the Easter bunny. Well, have you heard of dust bunnies? They sometimes live in corners and hard to get to places in our homes. We  moved the bed. Let me tell you, there were no dust bunnies hiding under the bed. There were dust elephants, rhinos, hippos, herds of them galloping around under the bed. The shame of it. Red with embarrassment, I quickly grabbed a brush and tried to catch them. They wanted to roll around the floor. I had to chase them. Add a cat who thought the sweeping brush was a new toy for him ( He obviously hadn't seen it in action much) I was disgraced.

As for the windows, they were okay, or so I thought, until we reviewed the photographs on the computer. The camera never lies they say. Shame, shame, shame!

The following day, I decided it was time for a change,  not to be such a desperate housewife. I would make my house sparkle and shine starting with the sitting room and kitchen. After all it is officially Spring. Time for a good spring clean. Time to break out the hoover!

I have had a very bad run of luck with electrical items recently. And my hoover was no exception. In spite of cleaning the two filters I could.access easily, it still was not sucking up the dust as before. And I needed every watt of power available to me. My hoover is bagless. I sat and stared at the centre of the cylinder and guessed there must be a way to,access it. But how?

No problem accessing this filter.

Very gingerly I began to twist and turn and pull, afraid that I would worsen my run of bad luck and actually break the thing! Lo and behold, after several minutes of puzzlement, I found a couple of arrows, gave a quick twist and I was in! I had found the main filter.

I gave it a tap. The resulting dust cloud resembled that dreaded nuclear mushroom cloud. But I persevered. I continued to tap away, marvelling that one little filter could hold so much dust. I filled the dustpan three times. How had I not burnt out the motor making the hoover work so hard, fruitlessly.

At the same time I was so proud of myself for solving the problem. I gave the centre piece one final tap. "I must have all the dust out by now", I thought,  Then the top fell off. Oh no, the dreaded curse again. I need to stay away from all things electrical.

Luckily I discovered it too had arrows. Why don't they make those arrows a different colour so they stand out? It would make life a lot easier for anyone like me who is a little slow. I digress.

 The top of the filter was supposed to come off. And you would believe what was inside? It was a whole herd of dust hippos.

 After one final clean, I quickly reassembled the Hoover and tried it out. It almost lifted the tiles off the floor it was working that well. I finished the hoovering, did the dusting and steam cleaned the floor. Not even a dust spider now to be seen, never mind the bunnies.
I should have taken photographic evidence of a job well done. Instead I collapsed spreadeagled on to the nearest couch, too tired to move. A whole Saturday gone, if not wasted. But my sitting room was sparkling. I am not a desperate housewife. You could eat your dinner off my floor.

         

 What a pity it was such a waste of time. Two days later it needed to be done again.

But now the sun is shining, time to gather up the hexipuffs, head out to the garden swing, sit in the sun and keep on puffing. Until the next emergency clean up.

A small collection of the hexis

P.S.  Ironic or what, my car is a Dacia DUSTER!

Friday Reflections. I couldn't imagine living without......

 As I make myself sit down to write this post, the first thing that sprang to my mind is ....."INTERNET"

The next thought that came to mind was how shallow is that?  But then you have to look at why I couldn't imagine life without the internet.

I grew up without internet. There were no mobile phones. Friends abroad were penfriends. I remember getting contact lists and eagerly sending off letters. I didn't have much success. Was it because I  wrote mainly to boys and included my photograph?? I grew up in a house of boys.  It was girls that were an exotic species to me. Who knows?

Growing up we had a house phone, the calls were rarely for me. It wasn't the done thing to spend hours chatting on the phone though I do remember one boyfriend ringing me regularly. I asked him to ring about 8 in the evenings, dinner would be finished and the family kneeling down to say the rosary. That worked a couple of times before the parents copped on and calls were banned during at this hour. After I got married, we hadn't a phone for over 18 months. Getting a phone connected was a long, arduous, expensive business.

But life has changed dramatically. There has been a technology explosion. From not having any phone I now have two mobile phones as do several other family members. Then there are the computers, laptops and iPads! At one stage instead of the one car of my childhood there were five  family cars.

In addition to this, I moved on from being a rather solitary child to being blessed with a cornucopia of good friends.

So how have I moved from what we might call a simple life to being unable to imagine life without the internet?

My family grew up and moved away. I also have moved away. We are far flung, Five countries, three continents. The internet is our lifeline, our umbilical cord. We send instant messages that all the family can read together at the one time and carry on a conversation as if we were in the one room. We check in with each other all the time. It is our modern day tomtom drums.

When I began to learn Turkish I used the website LiveMocha. I made several good online friends there, many of whom I have since met and stayed in touch with though I no longer use the site.

I have reconnected with school friends that I hadn't seen for many years. I even discovered one has a place not too far from me here in Turkey and we plan to meet again in June.

I have been able to stay in touch with people that I have worked with on school projects and that I have met on my travels. Some people you meet you know you just connect. Often times life and busyness makes us neglectful of this connection. But whatever one may say about Facebook, it allows us to keep that connection alive. It may be just liking someone's post, a comment on a photograph or a timely birthday reminder or a brief chat on Messenger. It keeps those connections alive.

Recently here we had a power cut, nothing new in that. Previously power  cuts could last for hours. In recent times that has been reduced to 30 minutes or so. But on this day, time crept on, no power, no internet. Eventually my phone went down too. Rumours began to fly. It wasn't just our area, the whole of Turkey was out. A terror attack, bills not paid, an effort to promote nuclear power? Who knew? But then this led to the certainty that we had no idea when the power would return.

I cannot begin to tell you the feeling of being cut off. I had water, I had lots of candles, I have an open fire. I could survive without telly. I could pass the time easily, reading or knitting but what if my family needed to contact me? What if my mother became ill?  These were the thoughts that were tumbling around in my head. The whole of the country was out so what would I, could I do?

The lights came on at 9.30 that evening. The first thing I do was check my phones to see if anyone had tried to reach me. I put everything I had on charge and settled in to answer emails, Viber messages and browse the net to see what family and friends had been up to for the past 12 hours.

The internet is my lifeline to family and friends and as such I could not imagine living without it.