Life This Week 7/1/2019: Hello Again.


Hello again,

Happy Twenty Nineteen!  I quite like the way that sounds, actually.  I’m also glad I got the year right.  Pretty impressive considering we’re only 7 days into the new year.

It was a bit emotional, but the Christmas decorations have been taken down and packed away for next year.

I love that we collect new decorations and memories with each year that passes.  This year we’ve added a decoration made at kinder, those Coles Mini Shop collectables and some new gift boxes to store our decorations.
You know the drill about my summer staycations.  Running and lots of it.  Random selfies as evidence of.  I did get out of my comfort zone for New Years Day though with this piece of white activewear as I posed with the bins at Redleaf.  I quite like the white to be honest.  It’s a refreshing break from black, grey and khaki.

I can personally vouch for the charms of Redleaf on a summer’s afternoon.

It was heaven being bathed in the attention of the sea breeze as I walked the deck around the baths.

I like how the waters here are for everyone to enjoy.  Kayakers weaved in between boats beyond the walkway while young and old dive bombed into the water on the other side.  There’s a sturdy handrail along one side of the deck for those who need it.  Someone even propped their crutches at one end of the railing while they had a swim.

That really is an inflatable swan taking in the view with the swimmers and the boats.

That’s the thing about the languidness of an afternoon spent by the water.  It stays with you like the starter tan you picked up (incidentally, of course) in the course of the afternoon.

Mundane things like having to stop off at the shops on the way home for stuff like a 5 pack of Mi Goreng (there’s only so far I can go on the fitness journey and giving up instant noodles crosses that line) felt more like being a holiday in Hawaii on a sightseeing trip to the supermarket.  You know me and foreign supermarkets.  They’re a must-see wherever I travel in the world.

The year so far has been a fifty fifty mix of work and play.  Pretty much how I live my life all year round but I admit that I’ve been envious of everyone whose work shut down for a from Christmas through to the New Year giving them an uninterrupted run of days off.  Work has been unexpectedly nuts.  Besides coffee, the one thing helping me stay sane has been my new wall calendar and its soothing photo for January.  Superimposed on the image are some words of wisdom from the late Mr Muhammad Ali, ‘Don’t count the Days but make the days count’.  Breathe.  And deeply.

In a similar vein to Mr Ali, this quote popped up on my Facebook feed this week, ‘It’s not what you eat between Christmas and New Year, it’s what you eat between New Year and Christmas’.  I’ve been walking the talk and eating all the fabulous fruit we have at the supermarket right now.  The pantry and fridge have been cleared of temptation and I’ve gotten back into my usual routine.  Only with a glass or two of something in the evenings because these  summery days are practically begging for me to do this.
In the things that never change department, Lululemon launched their striped leggings collection last week.  So of course I ran rather than walked.
The above amateur flat lay isn’t just a celebration of summer white, it’s also in honour of my AirPods resuscitating themselves after I accidentally nearly killed them by pressing the reset button too many times and fiddling around one too many times with the settings on my phone.

Did you make the connection between this photo and the previous one?  Yep.  Ms Consistent here has succumbed to the allure of yet another Mecca sample.  It’s early but I’m calling it already.  Twenty Nineteen is the year of Byredo’s Eleventh Hour.  Some say its creator, Ben Gorham got his inspiration for the fragrance from thinking about what the end of the world would smell like.  Eleventh Hour is said to be his interpretation of the ‘last scent on earth’, a fragrance that manages to embody both hope and despair….

From the consumer’s point of view, I just love the way it smells of fig, pepper, wood and bergamot.  It’s the kind of perfume that takes me to a place far removed from nearly middle-aged, respectably tasteful and predictable working mum suburbia.  It’s not a pretty scent, it’s the scent of confident attractiveness.  It’s a scent a person would wear to please themselves (because it dries down pretty quickly to a faint, lingering cashmere kind of scent) rather than make a statement to others.  I wear it and I forget that I’m also wearing borderline orthotic shoes and a sturdy watch which has a very prominent second hand and date window as well as a collection of black hair elastics as bracelets.  But I guess that is the point of a memorable fragrance.  They take you outside of yourself, if even for the briefest of moments.

That was a bit deep for the seventh day of the year.

How are things with you?




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