Just a girl in a gluten free world..

Forgive me father, for I have sinned. It has been a long time since my last blog post.

No excuse really. Except that I've been writing and haven't been sure how to write about writing.

Not sure that makes sense, but it is a quandary I've been in.

Before I moved up to Gympie I had plans. Big Plans. I'd get the first draft of my book done in six months and then reassess where to next.

It's been six months and sadly the book has not written itself. It turns out I have to do that.

Everytime I wrote and rewrote a sentence I hit a wall. Then another. And another. Until I felt I was in a maze with no way out.

So instead I parked it and focused on me. Anyone who knows me and has spoken to me in the last couple of months will know I've had a bit of a health epiphany. A lightbulb moment.

For years I had suffered with stomach upsets, sinus, headaches, drowsiness, nausea at weird times of the day and seriously unlady like gas.

Despite being a regular runner, netballer, rockclimber and salsa dancing aficionado, I never seemed to shift weight and felt like I was running in the same spot on a treadmill.

All this sounds all well and good I know, but what does it have to do with my writing? Well to put it simply, I needed to get healthy in order for my writing to get healthy.

Late last year I discovered that a protein which acts as binding agent in all breads, pastas, cereals, snack bars was  turning into darth vader the minute it entered my body. Gluten. My arch nemesis.

Within a week of cutting gluten out of my diet I discovered I also suffered from Lactose intolerance a type of sugar found in milk and dairy products. Within two weeks of cutting both out of my diet I felt like a new woman.

Sleeping the whole night, no more hayfever, no more headaches, no more stomach upsets, no more drowsiness or nausea and most importantly no more unladylike gas.

As I continued down the blissful gluten free yellow brick road I discovered I also couldn't handle much sugar, especially refined sugar. So I started to cut this out. I found low gi and low carb foods provided they didn't contain gluten seemed to agree with me most.

So I threw out my old way of thinking and re-wrote my own lifestyle habits, creating a new way of living. Gluten free and happy.

As I adapted, so did my body. Bit by bit I've lost 17kg over the last six months. Slowly my body  returned back to a healthy state and recovered form years of putting foods I was intolerant to into my body.

Somehow along the way, as I shut the door to gluten, lactose, refined and added sugars, another door opened. The one blocking the writing from coming out and making sense.

The phrase healthy body, healthy mind has never felt more real and relevant than what it does to me right now. For the first time both my mind and body are in synch and the writing is pouring out of me.

How I managed to ignore my food intolerances for so long, I'm not sure. All I know is that listening to it for the first time in my life means I now feel better than I ever have.

I'm in touch with everything that goes into my mouth including where it's from and if it has wheat products in it.

Sure its a challenge being a gluten free girl in a gluten rich world, but as the wise people say, when one door shuts another one opens. In this case, its the door to finally being the writer and person I want to be.

xx
:)

Kind of sums up where I am at the moment..

Who doesn't like their steak still kicking?

Last night at the restaurant it started out like any other night. The usual crowd.

A table of old ducks dressed to the nines swapping stories on long suffering husbands, grandkids and children over cheeky gin and tonics and lemon, lime and bitters.

Families dressed in R.M.Williams flannel shirts tucked into blue jeans, belt buckles boots and akubras.

The occasional first and last date type of couples and everything else in between.

It seemed like a normal night to most, with the exception of one thing really. The occasional 'moo' braying from the car park.

One of the farmers had a dairy calf in a cage in the back of his ute. Just a few months old. He'd bought her, daisy, that is, as one of eight yesterday as part of a charity auction.

Problem was, she was the last one to pick up and he had dinner booked with the in-laws from out of town.

What's a farmer to do in a pickle? Well bring the calf along for dinner of course.

Being a city slicker through and through I had to say hello to miss daisy. After all of my fondest memories as a child were when we visited our family's mccauliffe dairy farm at mothar mountain. Quite the novelty for a girl born and bred on the gold coast.

So naturally I was the first one in the car park to greet her. Rather than shy away, she leaned over and nuzzled
my hand with her wet nose, curling her long, coarse blue tongue in between my fingers. She then leaned against the barrier, pleading for a quick back rub.

I indulged her for a bit before racing back to waitressing duties. After washing my hands first of course.

Novelty over, the night continued as normal with other patrons barely battling an eyelid at the black and white resident in the car park.

Except the owners in-laws from Sydney. It was their first time to Gympie and clearly found the edition of a cow in the car park a bit unnerving.

It didn't stop them ordering steak though. All went well until the steaks started coming out. As if on cue, the minute the first set of rumps came out a 'mooooooo' echoed from the car park.

As I set the meal down with steak knives I noticed the customer's face had turned a shade of grey. Both looked at their plate and then out to the car park.

Then another set of steaks came out and the mooing intensified. Somehow over the course of the night more than 15 people ordered steak last night and every time a rump, eye fillet or T-bone came out, mooing erupted and echoed from the car park.

The chef kept asking if there was something wrong with the steaks because they kept being sent back to the kitchen half eaten. I had to point out it wasn't so much his cooking but the dinner guest in the car park that was putting diners off their meal.

Before long daisy's owner went down and gave her some hay for dinner and she settled down for a nap.

As the best of the eagles flowed out of the speakers in the restaurant, the dulcet tones of cow snoring started joining in.

Imagine a rumbling, half broken rattling chainshaw. That's what a cow snore sounds like.

All in all an interesting night and brought whole meaning to the question of how you like your steak done doesn't it?

X
J

procrastination consternation..

Procrastination: the act of procrastinating, putting off or delaying, or defering an action to a later time

Total words written today: 5,000
Total words re-written today: 7,500

Starting to think I meet to meet a dominatrix or whip master. Without a deadline, writing can be deadly.

I keep going back over words, phrases and passages and re-doing them. Its like a vicious circle with no deadline and only procrastination to keep me company.

So with that in mind thought I'd share the below which made me laugh. Good to know I'm not the only one..

A little bit less conversation a little more characterisation

I had forgotten just how many unusual characters walk through the doors of a cafe/ restaurant every day.

Back in the day when I was juggling waitressing, study and voluntary work at the local daily newspaper I would come across the most intricate characters, story ideas and unusual situations every day.

Enough to fill my weekly story list so I could pitch to the chief of staff with the confidence of a fully fledged journalist instead of a copywriter dreaming of one day owning her own desk and direct line.

Now I'm off deadline and on a personal deadline of 'must write this book' I've got a new appreciation for the characters that walk through the door.

For some reason, Gympie attracts characters. I don't mean this in a bad way, merely that it has a forgiving folk who indulge the odd eccentricity with good humour. Eccentricities which in a city would see an individual set as outcasts and as odd. Up here it's more or less welcomed, the more different you are, the better.

So it's no wonder I'm inundated with amusing characters throughout the day.

Enough to fill a book or at least stir curiosity as to the back story to their personality and their lives.

There's the girl who comes in and counts all our sweets in the display cabinet as well as the drinks in the fridges. She then orders a cup of hot water to drink while she sits and reads the paper.


There's the elderly couple in their 80's who come for a cheap lunch just to see me. His wife shares the same name as me and he always wants to know what my 'word' for the day is. He believes a word can sum up your day and as I'm a writer, is always keen to know what mine is. He still pulls out a chair for his wife before she sits, he stands whenever she goes to leave the table and tells me he fell in love with her at first sight at a local dance when they were both 15.

There's the man who comes in to dine alone. Only unlike other solo diners who spend their time perilously glued to their iPhone, laptop or books, he instead pauses with every forkful of food to look at it for a good 30 seconds before putting it in his mouth and swallowing it. After three weeks of him following the same routine I asked why he did it. He said - because years and years ago he'd been a prisoner of war and the most food he was ever given was rice and rotten meat. He swore to himself he'd never take another mouthful of food for granted again.

There's woman in her 30's with a nervous eye and arm twitch who spills coffee on herself and table every time she comes in. But her smile is so endearing that it begs for her not to be judged and also seems to promise that maybe next time she might just manage to drink it without spilling.

And then of course there's always the little things. A look, tone, a turn of phrase or even the way someone brushes the hair out of their eyes that can catch my attention.

I've always been a hopeless people watcher but now as I trek knee deep through what makes up the characters for my book, I can't help but notice everything.

I find myself stopping and writing down a word, a phrase or description mid- shift because I can't leave it rattling around in my head.

Suddenly there seems to be so much more to everything around me that I never noticed before. Has it always been here begging to be noticed and written about or is it just my overactive imagination taking charge?

I suppose only time will tell, until then the writing goes on...

X
J

if you don't ask, you won't get...

It’s now a new year and already people are well on their way to making and breaking their new year’s resolutions.

Here I am sitting at my laptop in dusty, little old Gympie at the start of 2012 and it makes me wonder how I got here and also of where I was last year. Of how its nearly a year since I moved back to Aus and all the experiences and adventures which have led up to now.

Rather than make a list of resolutions, I decided to make a list. The big list. My 100 list. The things I want to do before I die list, just to put life in perspective.

The whole of 2011 I wanted to be happier, healthier, less stressed and generally have a better balance in my life. But I never thought to plan for it or better yet, ask for it.

I didn’t make it a priority or even have it in front of me as something that not only I wanted to achieve but something that I could achieve.

In fact all my travel has been incidental. Things I have just wanted to do and done. Not part of a any deeper desire other than to just to see and experience the world.

So while making the 100 list I was tempted to put things on there I had already done, which technically would look very impressive on a bucket list, but I decided instead to list the 100 things I want to do and look forward.

It’s easy to look back and think wow, I really did run with bulls in Spain and make it alive into the arena, throw tomatoes at strangers in Valencia and drink a stein at Oktoberfest. I’ve swum on the Amalfi Coast, driven through Tuscan hill sides, ice-skated in central park (a huge list ticker for me), hot air ballooned over the valley of the kings and held a cobra. All experiences which have made me who I am today. All things you look forward to, but once they are done, they are done. You are left enriched by the experience but it leaves room for something else. And all that’s left then is the enduring question of what’s next?

With life as fleeting and unpredictable as it is, I’ve decided to make sure I make the most of it. So in no particular order here is what’s next:

1)      Skydive and land on the beach

2)      Go great white shark diving

3)      Go for a ride in a classic car in Cuba, smoking a Cuban cigar and sipping Havana rum

4)      Pose nude for an Art class and keep a copy of one of the works

5)      Compete in a triathlon

6)      Spend a week in silence

7)      Do a burlesque course/class and learn the art of tease

8)      Go zorbing

9)      Find and complete my family tree – including visiting my family’s town of origin in Tipperary, Ireland

10)   Bungee jump into water

11)   Do volunteer work at an AIDS orphanage in Africa

12)   Visit the wonders of the world I want to see:  (Petra, Great Wall of China, Christ Redeemer, Macchu Picchu and Taj Mahal )

13)   Own a Queenslander home with my own veggie patch, lemon and lime tree

14)   Spend the fourth of July in America

15)   Spend a week in Rio celebrating carnevale

16)   Do a rock climbing holiday in spain

17)   Visit Auchwitz to honour the lives lost there

18)   Complete an art class/course and complete a work to hang on my wall (that looks decent!)

19)   Eat the worm from a tequila bottle in Mexico

20)   Have guacamole in Guatemala

21)   Walk barefoot over coals

22)   See a grizzly bear in the wild

23)   Touch a glacier

24)   Take a hula lesson in Hawaii

25)   Stand on the edge of a volcano and see and smell the lava

26)   See and chase a tornado

27)   Lasso someone while riding a horse in Texas

28)   Save a life

29)   See a polar bear in the wild

30)   Take a picnic basket to Yellowstone national park and look for yogi and boo boo

31)   Play roulette and take a bet on 16 in Vegas

32)   Play a hand of blackjack in Vegas and tell the dealer to ‘hit me’

33)   Spend time at a hippie commune with nothing but the clothes on my back

34)   Go and dance at a silent disco

35)   Perform in a public play

36)   Go skinny dipping in the Bahamas

37)   Spend a week in a nunnery

38)   Run in a marathon – Ultimate would be NYC

39)   Spend a night sleeping above water in a glass bottomed villa in the Maldives

40)   Trek the Inca Trail to Macchu Picchu

41)   Spend a night in a haunted house in New Orleans

42)   Enter a fire twirling competition

43)   Go to Glastonbury

44)   Spend a night in a real native American tee pee

45)   Go to Vietnam and see the victims of war and enter a Vietcong tunnel

46)   Do an intuition course/study to improve understanding of my own intuitive abilities

47)   Visit and trek to Everest base camp

48)   Learn to ski for the first time and complete a run without falling

49)   Swim with a whale shark

50)   See the northern lights in Alaska

51)   Watch an AFL match live

52)   Go see a baseball match in Boston and walk the diamond

53)   Go see a Chicago bulls basketball match

54)   See Beckham score a goal live

55)   Pat a reindeer

56)   Feed a crocodile

57)   Learn to play the viola and play at least one song

58)   Take tango lessons

59)   Dance Cuban salsa with Cubans in Havana

60)   See a Tucan close up

61)   See a live American grid iron match

62)   Fly first class

63)   Touch a lion

64)   Pat a giant tortoise in the Galapagos Islands

65)   Drop a message in a bottle into the ocean containing a secret no one else knows

66)   Write and finish a book

67)   Become a published author

68)   Do an African safari and fall asleep listening to hyenas and lions in the night

69)   Be a vegan for a week

70)   Meet a cannibal

71)   Have my photography displayed in a gallery exhibition or published

72)   Act out a line from a favourite song

73)   Experience in NYC in Autumn and Spring

74)   Be vegetarian for a month

75)   Take a boat up the amazon river

76)   Go whale watching

77)   Attend the mardi gras festival in new Orleans

78)   Go quad biking

79)   Blindfold myself and throw a dart at a map and go to the place it lands

80)   Spend a night in an igloo

81)   Go swimming with seals

82)   Have a full Canadian breakfast in Canada

83)   Change a strangers life for the better and ask for nothing in return

84)   Streak at a sporting match

85)   Do the Kokoda Trail

86)   Get a dog of my own and raise it from a puppy

87)   See Ayers Rock

88)   Say Yes to everything for one whole week

89)   Do an epic cross country road trip (US/Aus/ Wherever!)

90)   Join the Mile High club

91)   Pilot a plane

92)   Read every single classic (100 in the NY Times Classic List and The Modern Library’s English Literature list)

93)   Go white water rafting

94)   See Ayer’s Rock

95)   Hang glide off a mountain/valley

96)   See mountain gorillas in the wild

97)   Visit Nepal

98)   See Lake Louise in Spring and Fall

99)   Fly over the grand canyon

100)    Ask a stranger on the street out on a date

countryness is next to goodliness

a few pics taken out and about in country land.. came across this abandoned shack/house/homeless hovel and took a few pics. It was completely overgrown with vegetation in the middle of nowhere..



isolation at its best..

playing with movement..

interesting grafitti..

roughing it...

an interestingly named spot on sunshine coast..