Wordless Wednesday - Stunning

I’ve joined in the Wordless Wednesday fun at  My Little Drummer Boys & Faith Hope & a whole lotta love. Pop along and see who else has joined in.

Carnival of Flowers – Part Deux

The Carnival of Flowers is a fine thing.  Yesterday's post was all about it.

Tourists flock to see the sights, hopefully spending all their hard-earned and boosting the local economy.

Unfortunately, it is hard to be a resident of a tourist destination.

The shops are clogged with flowers spotters; surely they should be looking at flowers and not in my way at the supermarket?

The roads are at capacity with people driving slowly, slamming on brakes if they see so much as a dandelion.  It is a source of constant amazement to me that people can drive badly when travelling that slowly, how can you drift out of your lane at 20 km/h? Caravans and buses abound, taking up multiple parks and sideswiping the unwary.

People will park wherever the hell they want, too close to an intersection/bus stop/driveway, but surely road rules don’t apply to THEM, they are tourists!

Pedestrians lose their minds, walking straight across the road, all common sense forgotten.   The worst are the oldies, pouring off the coaches and stumbling around in everyone’s way.

 

The park was full of screaming, badly behaved kids running riot.  Mind you, if my kids were that feral I might let them off the leash in the park in a desperate attempt for peace.  This theory fails though, ‘because everyone else’s brats are doing the same! Bedlam.

Normally we do one of two things.  Either we get out of town and go to the coast, or we hide out at home with the gates shut.  This year we did neither and suffered the consequences.

The flowers will still be there another day; we should have waited until the crowds weren’t.

Carnival of Flowers

It's that time of the year again.  

The Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers.

Times have been tough recently for our fair city so this weeks carnival is an important event on the calendar.

Nothing says spring like the millions of blooms, carefully planted en masse, and perfect spring weather.  The parade as usual was big and showy, apparently the best attended yet.  With open gardens, craft markets, bands and orchestra, side-show alley, it was all here.

The Flower Food & Wine Festival, with cooking demonstrations by celebrity chef Ben O'Donoghue and gardening demonstrations by the legendary Don Burke, was a huge hit as always.  How could it not be?

While the party is now over there is still plenty to see, hopefully without the crowds, so why not pop along and see our beautiful city for yourself? 

Tomorrow : Part II The down side ('cause with me there always is!)  

Wordless Wednesday - Light...

I’ve linked up with  My Little Drummer Boys & Faith Hope & a whole lotta love for  Wordless Wednesday. Check out their blogs for more.

Unexplained...

Our house always had a warm feeling, like home, part of the reason we bought it.  Yes we loved the look, the features, the location, but we saw that in others...when we first walked through the door we knew that this would be our home.

I am not sure what I really believe but we live in an old house and have seen things we couldn't explain.  Nothing spooky, more comforting.

Not long after we moved in both my husband and I both separately saw a figure in the hallway...it felt like a welcome and being "checked out".   I always thought if I saw something like that I would be terrified, but not in this case. 

I was going through some photos I took recently and came across this one.

My cats went nuts one afternoon for no reason I could see, so being a bit snap happy I took a couple of shots.  Most showed nothing but when I looked at this one I could see an "orb" near the picture frame.

Weird...

Do you believe?  Have you experienced anything you can't explain? 

Sad...

New & Old...

I am out and about today, so I thought I would leave you with a couple of shots from around my house.

The house is over 100 years old and still has a few old features, character we will call it.

Like my concrete laundry tubs...

Handy for drinks on ice too!

And the outside loo, not my favourite feature.  There is another indoors, don't worry.  The outside one is designated for the "boys".

Useful during parties or gardening!

We do have all the mod cons too, but where's the fun in them!

Wordless Wednesday - Before smart phones...

Yes, it works!

I’ve linked up with  My Little Drummer Boys & Faith Hope & a whole lotta love for  Wordless Wednesday. Check out their blogs for more.  

The biggest losers...

Ok, I may well lose readers over this post. Sad but if you feel that way then don’t let the door hit you in the arse on your way out.

There was an online article yesterday regarding some former “Biggest Loser” contestants complaining that they have put their weight back on again. Read it here.

Poor diddums.

They were contestants on a reality game show.  The TV station, producers, crew, even the trainers are there because they are being paid to provide entertainment.  Even Hayley (so much more sincere than AJ Courtcase) is there for the bucks. It doesn’t have much to do with how good you are at achieving weight loss at the end of the day, it is how well you play the game, and after all, that’s why you are there.

The sole purpose is to amuse the public, to make us feel superior (or inferior as the case may be), to watch people at their worst, tearing themselves and others down.  To provide a voyeuristic public with a view of fat people at their very worst.

The show takes people who clearly have huge problems, in a lot of cases horrible personalities and no shame whatsoever, and throws them to the mercy of some pretty twisted individuals who torture them for our viewing pleasure. Possibly the worst torture for all is that they are forced to do it in Lycra, while being screamed at and filmed from terrible angles.

Now these people are fat because they eat too much and don’t exercise enough. Full stop.

There are reasons why they do this, the past, abuse, family dynamics whatever.  These are the reasons why mental health professionals exist, to help people deal with the underlying causes of their “issues” so that they can then take steps to get healthy.

It isn’t really how you look at the end that counts, it’s that you can be there for your family, be healthy, and lead the life you want.  TV being TV though it is all about the dream outfit, the make-over, the magazine shoots, dealing with the superficial rather than the real problems.

 

Unfortunately, deluded people who are looking for a quick fix sign up for this show in droves, expecting miracles and when they don’t get them are looking for someone to blame.

In the article a former contestant who lost 25kg, a great effort you say, yes, but still dangerously overweight, has now piled on over 40kg since she left the show. And she is angry, I would be angry to, with myself though, not the show.  The show didn’t make her stop all exercise and eat the amount that it would take to put on that kind of weight. That is some dedication there.  The show stopped when she walked off-stage and back into her life.

Of course real life is going to get in the way, no-one has 8 hours a day to exercise, not much of a life anyway if you did, but the simple truth is that if you burn more kilojoules than you consume you will lose weight.

 

Now to do that you need to get your shit together, review your life, relationships whatever. Get help sure.  You also need to take responsibility for your own actions. No-one is holding you down and shoving the food into your mouth, step up and get on with it.

Alcoholics and drug addicts have to go through some pretty shitty things to get well, so why should food addiction be any different.  It is though. You can successfully navigate life without booze and drugs, it isn’t easy but you can, but you have to eat food to live…and it is everywhere - every magazine, TV shows galore, billboards. All of these addictions will trash your life and more than likely kill you, but there is no sympathy for the fat.

Society would never stand for a show with mentally ill people working through their problems in such a way but it is socially acceptable to laugh at the obese, whatever the reason for their size, including mental illness. To view them as entertainment. The TV stations are just cashing in on that…it’s their function.

But as long as people line up to get their fat arses on TV then people will watch. 

So if you are really serious about weight loss, get help, go for a walk, eat your veggies, whatever it takes but don’t blames others for your own behaviour.

It is sad, but probably the biggest losers are those who learn nothing from their experience.

Note: I am extremely overweight and struggle every day.  It is a process that I have to work though myself, a position I got myself into.  It is no-one’s fault but mine and I own it. If it was a matter of will power I would be a size 8, I quit smoking cold turkey several years ago and never looked back, that was easy, I just stopped.  It took a long time for me to get this size and will take a long time to get healthy again.  Everyone of has our own challenges, for example some people are just born arseholes, and there is no fixing that. I will do it though….and no Lycra shots I promise! Support is nice but not expected, I won’t bore you to tears with every kg lost, but I will be putting regular updates on the blog to keep myself accountable.  xxx

Disaster…

A friend of mine recently shared a couple of her own recent disasters on Facebook inspiring this list of my own top 10 disasters.  Here’s to you V!

There have been many occasions in my adult life when my bad luck, bad decisions  or general clumsiness and inability to stay on my own two feet – especially when sober – have caused disaster.  Drunk I am light on my feet and generally disaster free… maybe I should drink more often!

• At 18, on one of the few occasions that year I was not three sheets to the wind, I slipped over, smashed my face into a wall and damaged one of my front teeth (it was repaired but alas some years later I lost it anyway).

• There was the fish tank explosion leading to my concussion.

• I once fell up our back stairs whilst carrying laundry, landing on my left forearm; I didn’t break it but bruised the bone and suffered pain, weakness and numbness for weeks afterwards.  This is by no means the only time I have fallen UP stairs, just the worst.

• One New Years Eve (in the 80’s) I decided to wear a white lycra mini dress to a function…with BIG hair and red stilettos.  Disaster enough I hear you say, but no it was worse than that.  I had decided to team it with some lovely lacy underthings, problem was it was all ABSOLUTELY SEE-THROUGH…a fact that was lost on me until roughly half-way through the evening….

• There was the time at MrQ’s work Xmas party where, after ½ a glass of bubbly I turned my ankle and fell flat on my face in front of his entire office, I didn’t break the glass, in fact managed to keep a hold of it, but wore the contents across my face leading to evidence of unwise, non- waterproof mascara choices.  This fall led to crutches and a limp for weeks.

• The “laundry incident” earlier this year where I dislocated my right shoulder thus rendering myself unable to write, type or drive for weeks – these being the main activities of my occupation this was a problem. I could still talk though so all was not lost!

• Many years ago, whilst learning to drive when I snapped the indicator stalk off the steering column of the car, we were a couple of hundred km’s from home and I was not popular.

• Once when unpacking the dishwasher I unwisely pulled out both the top and bottom racks, leading to the machine tilting just enough for the bottom rack to shoot out across the kitchen, depositing 6 dinner plates, 2 bowls and an oven dish onto the tiled floor underneath the stove. There were no survivors.

• There were the mumps that stole Christmas.

• My first “real relationship” was a disaster, luckily the second (and current one) cancelled it out.

And for a bonus “near disaster”:

• Earlier this year whilst carrying a cheesecake  I “fell off” my wedges and performed one of those slow motion ” incidents” where you take a step to avoid a fall, have to repeat it to stop falling in the other direction and so on and end up running into something hard. Or is that just me? Anyway it caused me to cannon into my husband, who was carrying a carton of beer (all the food groups covered here), forcing him into a parked car.  Neither of us was hurt and his quick action saved both the beer and cheesecake…disaster averted.

So there you have it, my Top 10, can you beat it?

Disclaimer: This is by no means an exhaustive list as I am constantly adding to it. Also, regular followers will recognise some of these disasters from previous posts but they are up there in the top 10. 

Graffiti

Saw this whilst out and about in our town.

A little cleverer and more amusing than most graffiti I see...still annoying if it's on your wall though!

Just don't understand the need...