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Weird is good

2019-03-21T20:05:00.000-07:00

'Weird is good'. It's my motto of sorts.

So, imagine my "I must have it" moment when I saw this ...

Sadly, the image is a little blurred so not the best quality photo - but it was a significant moment for me.

'Weird is good" has been my response to my kids over the years when I would share something, say something or do something and the inevitable response would come - "Mum, you're weird!". It was my way of saying that I was okay with their response. I didn't feel any pressure to suddenly become 'unweird' in their eyes - and there's no such word by the way - perhaps it was my way as a mother of not folding to peer pressure. Weird and I have become good friends. I see it as my personal synonym for individuality, so seeing this sign in the window of the delightful Mad Hatters in Crookwell was like discovering there was someone else in this world that appreciated weirdness enough to create it.

It seems to take way too many years in a lifetime to stop worrying about what other people think of you. Am I there yet? It's probably fair to say I've come a long way, but it's just as fair to say I've still got a ways to go. I am however learning to better celebrate my identity, to be thankful for the me that God created and not to put myself down as a matter of course.

To have this 'motto' in a prominent place on my wall is my reminder that who I am is okay.

Stay Weird - Viva la difference!

Song for this occasion: Cyndi Lauper was the epitome of different when she released her 1983 album She's So Unusual. What an appropriate collection to house the perfect song for a post about 'staying weird' and being encouragingly yourself - True Colours.

Goulburn Rose Show

2019-03-20T20:07:00.000-07:00

We are both pretty keen to have roses in any garden we create, so it was timely that we got to visit the Goulburn Rose Show to have a chance to appreciate what thrives in this region. The show’s theme was celebrating 150 years of the Goulburn Railway and many of the displays such as the one below featured the golden Goulburn Rose in all its glory.

The old world travel themed rose displays were nothing short of stunning - check out a few!

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Here are some of the beauties that jumped out for consideration for Bountiful.

In a traditionally shaped red rose, it was hard to split these two:

Apart from the Goulburn Rose, it was hard to go past this sunshiney stunner, which won a blue ribbon at the show:

And whilst we love a traditional rose shape, I admit I'm a bit of a sucker for a peony style rose. I was pretty keen on this beauty:

It was a great experience and only added to the excitement of planning a garden that will be home to some cold-climate-loving roses.

Do you have a favourite rose?

Song: (I beg your pardon?) I never promised you a rose garden by Lynn Anderson. I was about six when this was released. Songs really sow into the tapestry of your life.

What in the World? versus Appreciating

2019-03-20T19:59:00.000-07:00

When I decided to write a blog, I wanted to include a regular post, something akin to a thumbs up or a thumbs down to comment on both what is good and what I'm finding a struggle. For those of you that are of my vintage and are Australian, you will remember Hey Hey It's Saturday on television and its brilliant segment "What Cheezes Me Off". Much as I'd like to rip off the name because it's so cool and self explanatory, I don't think that would be the right thing to do - it would likely cheese off someone in charge of copyright somewhere!

So I looked back at my Bountiful Collage and chose two of the terms I saw there to cover both possibilities - so What in the World? will be what causes me enough cheesing to post about, and Appreciating will be my way of giving a good old thumbs up.

Whilst I know it isn't a song, I had to include a clip of "What Cheeses Me Off". Others may scoff, but I loved every nostalgic second. Appreciating you, YouTube! Enjoy.

Blogging for Dummies

2019-03-17T20:37:00.000-07:00

I didn't think I was a technical dinosaur, but going through the process of creating this blog has made me think again!

Whenever I have tried to learn anything new, I have always made it a habit of telling the person teaching me that I wanted the 'for Dummies' version. Please do not assume I have any prior knowledge, I'm a complete novice, and teach me from scratch. If you do that, I'll be fine.

So when I made the decision to get moving with learning how to set up a blog, and more particularly, setting it up using Blogger, I quickly discovered I had landed plum in the middle of a minefield.

Those who had been blogging for a while were encouraging with comments such as "you just have to play with it, you'll get the hang of it", or "it does take a while, but you'll work it out in the end". My hubby is one who loves to play with computer programmes and applications, wending his knowledgeable way through tech-speak and always getting a result. Me? I'm time poor. To wade through a programme to work it out is definitely not fun for me. I don't need to understand why something works, I just want to be shown how it does so I can get the result I want.

Impatient, much?

Different, certainly.

We were not created robots. Techno-speak is not a language I am fluent in. What we do have in common is that we all learn differently. I write my own instructions when I'm shown a task because I know that works for me. Or I've learned via video tutorials - I could barely open Photoshop when I first got it, but once I'd enrolled in some online scrapbooking classes, I was off and running. Big shout out to Jessica Sprague, Cathy Zielske and those who make it easy to graduate from dummy to proficient in at least one computer programme!

Blogger has apparently made some changes in 2019, so a lot of video tutorials I found spent time telling me about the updates, and assuming I was already proficient in the older version. Not helpful for a newbie learning from scratch.

The fact that you are reading this means that I have achieved some measure of success, even if the backend of blogging still presents to me as a screenful of gobble-de-gook. I hope in time that as I graduate from my L-Plates, that this blog will bring enjoyment to you and a whole lot less confusion for me.

If you are someone struggling with this Blogger journey, here are some links I found helpful, with a bare minimum of prior knowledge assumed.

Melecia At Home: her YouTube Beginner's Blog Tutorial was such a help to me - and I admit, I checked it out because it said (SUPER EASY). Yep, that's what I need! It's a little out of date now but the basics were there and she didn't speak to me as if I already knew everything and just needed a few tips and tweaks.

I know I will make mistakes from time to time but I will endeavour to ensure that links I put here are explained so you know where I'm sending you. Some of the easiest written tips and tutorials I found have come from a website called chron.com. It turns out that this is the website of The Houston Chronicle, one of the largest newspapers in the USA. The website boasts a daily readership of 825,000 which jumps to 1.4 million on a Sunday (who doesn't love a Sunday paper?) but as well as readers of the newspaper, they purport to be one of the top newspaper websites with 15 million individual visitors every month, and 95 million (!) page views. Well, one of those 15 million visitors was little old me from across the ocean, most grateful for the clear tips I found available to me by just a few Google clicks. For example:

Click here for How to Create A Blogger Header.
Click here for How to Add a Custom Header to a Simple Blogger Template
Click here for How to Make a Tabbed Navigation Bar in Blogger

I have created a Bookmarks folder in my Internet Browser called Blog Tutorials and Tips and I'm storing the links there so I don't have to rely on the old memory banks.

Do you have any Blogger tips for Dummies that you can share?

Song for this occasion: Trouble with the Computer by Skyhooks (1978). Forty years ago the escalating price of electricity was explained by a computer glitch. Sadly today - it's reality.

Motherhood - whose opinion counts?

2019-03-13T02:29:00.000-07:00

I’m sure we are all guilty of at some time judging ourselves by the world’s standards and finding ourselves wanting. There have been times in my life when my skill level at this has been nothing short of expert.

One of those times was when I was a much younger mother, and my kids were under six.

By the world’s standards – which were my standards – I was a CRAP mum because I didn't measure up to my friends, or the other mums around me. Into that mindset bounced my pastor who suggested with great enthusiasm that our church needed a MOPS group. (No, MOPS has nothing to do with cleaning, he was talking about a Mothers of Preschoolers group). At MOPS, mums come once a week or fortnight, bring their littlies who are cared for by the team so the mums can be adults together with other young mums. Often there would be guest speakers and always a scrummy morning tea. The ideal was that MOPS was run for mothers of pre-schoolers by mothers of pre-schoolers.

So who does our pastor approach to co-ordinate such a group?

Me.

The CRAP mum.

I thought to myself, "God, are you nuts? Why me, of all people?"

But God is very good at using the bad stuff for good to accomplish His purposes. For me, my negative experiences had given me a passion for the mums who weren’t residing in pink fluffy motherhood land. The ones whose friends all seemed to be going great guns at this motherhood thing, but they themselves were struggling and felt like failures. Society expected women to automatically know how to be awesome mothers, and that something was very wrong with us if we spoke out loud that it wasn’t the thing we loved best in the world.

As this struggling mum came alongside other struggling mums, God gave me one of the most valuable pieces of wisdom I have ever received. I will never forget it. He said:

The only person whose opinion counts about how you’re doing as a mother is mine. Not even the opinion of your children counts against mine.

Have you ever thought about asking God how you're doing?

I had the absolute privilege of coming alongside a beautiful young friend of mine in church a few weeks ago. We had been messaging the night before as she was upset that she had lost the plot with her little one, and I could see she was still struggling with it. Of course there were deeper layers, her fears went back to her own childhood and a terror that she would repeat those ways with her own children. “What sort of a mother am I” she asked.

And I was able to give her the same piece of wisdom God gave me about twenty years earlier. To remind her to ask God for His opinion on her mothering before she listened to anyone else’s. I can give her that advice because I trust the Heavenly Dad we share to give her the wisdom she needs.

We all have days where we don’t like who we are, how we look, how we’re doing. Days when the voices of this world are deafening – TV, movies, magazines, advertising, the Internet and the list goes on. If we don’t look or behave or achieve in a certain way, if we aren’t picture perfect, if we make mistakes or don’t have it all together ... or if we think we have to be someone else’s version of ourselves to be acceptable or worthy of love.

It’s against that backdrop that it's a blessing to be one of God’s kids. Because God can't lie. He always tells the truth to His kids and that has saved my life and my sanity over and over again.

The world is all about the outward appearance. God looks on our hearts – on our insides. It doesn’t matter if I’m a great mother or not. What matters is the relationship I have with the one that told me.

If you have children under school age and would like to connect with other mums, see if there's a MOPS group near you. Check out this blog post from the current Chair of MOPS, Karen Dickson, you may relate to her feelings about mothers groups.

Song for this occasion: Press on Mums by Colin Buchanan. I clung to the last two lines more times than I could count.

Thoughts on being 55

2019-03-11T21:08:00.000-07:00

As a lover of nostalgia and pop culture, it would be impossible for me to reflect on arriving at my mid-fifties without a look back at where it all began.

I was in-utero when JFK was assassinated in November 1963 and just three months old when The Beatles toured Australia. As a 1964 baby it’s fair to say that I experienced a lot of the 1960s in retrospect – the fashion, the music, the history were probably better appreciated from the seventies, eighties and beyond.

From as early as I can recall, my grandmother was a faithful reader of The Australian Women’s Weekly. It began publication in 1933 when she was just 21 and remains one of the country’s top selling publications some 85 plus years later.

The covers are a microcosm of the great changes that The Weekly’s readership has seen between 1964 and now. I love those from those early weeks in March 1964 when I was born.

You can check out a selection of The Weekly covers at Trove, an electronic database hosted by The National Library of Australia and an invaluable resource for all things Australian. I was only a couple of years out of high school in 1983 when The Weekly moved to a monthly format - though wisely retaining its 50 year old name – can you imagine The Australian Women’s Monthly?Yeh … nup.

Today, we’re still into fashion – clothes, shoes, accessories, hairstyles – but perhaps creating our own clothing has largely gone the way of black and white television and library cards. We’re still eating, but it feels like there’s less time for cooking. We’re still having babies, but the involvement of science in giving the birds and the bees some personal coaching has raised some challenging issues. Gender has become a word with more connotations than years The Weeklyhas been printed, and the roles of women have changed beyond compare. I personally hope that ‘superwoman’ has been called out for the unrealistic and stressful bar it held over us for way too long. You might have been able to ‘have it all’ … but odds on you were too tired to enjoy it.

The inside pages of The Weekly were sprinkled with society goss and an ongoing love affair with the Royal Family (you always kept the editions when there was a key royal event – births, deaths, weddings, coronations and of course, Australian tours). My mother in law thoughtfully put aside The Weekly editions from when my children were born as I was just a little pre-occupied at the time.

Today, it is celebrity that tends to dominate the covers and prompt us to part with our heard-earned to buy a copy. In my birthday month of March 2019, the Royals are there with a very pregnant Meghan, and celebs are gracing the cover with Joanna Lumley and the terrific Amanda Keller. Given Amanda’s popular roles on The Living Room, the reboot of Dancing with the Stars and her radio programme Jonesey and Amanda on Radio 2WS, audiences obviously agree you can be awesome in your fifties and belong on our airwaves and screens. Check out Amanda chatting hard with Tom Gleeson.

You couldn’t have grown up with The Weekly and not be familiar with a woman whose name was synonymous with it – Ita Buttrose. Ita was at the helm of The Weekly during my high school years, a time when I was looking for role models, particularly in journalism. I remember reading her editor’s columns where she’d often share about her kids, Kate and Ben, who weren't that much younger than me. It was probably my first experience of someone in the public eye writing about their everyday in such a way as to make it relatable. Ita was articulate, elegant and somehow able to appeal to the everywoman – as well as women-to-be like a teenaged me.

I’ve discovered that the confidence that she managed to engender into people hasn’t dissipated over the years as she was recently appointed Chair of the ABC. I am an avid watcher of the ABC, but I have longed for a national broadcaster that could not be so obviously identified with either side of the political fence. I’d love to see more reportage and less agenda across all our networks. Can Ita manage it, taking on what appears something of a poisoned chalice? One thing I am confident of – her age (77) won’t get in the way.

Ita once said that words are like little drops of ink, so in this world of the blogosphere I guess I am sprinkling my own version of pixel drops. I’m loving being in my fifties, and I embrace sharing these years via one of the most significant gamechangers that twentieth century readers of The Weekly could never have imagined - the world wide web.

So, viva being 55 and new horizons, including this blog, Bountiful Life.

What new horizons are you enjoying or looking forward to?

PS: I am a firm believer that there is a song for every occasion and I plan to prove it whenever I can on this blog. For this post, it has to be Ita by Cold Chisel (1980). They obviously believed in her too.