Lookee here...

Well, it's been a month to the day and guess what today is??? That's right it's the 12th and you know what that means. Right again, it's time for the monthly 12 of 12 photo post. Maybe, I should rename my blog to to "Being Normal - Pictures" I'll have to think about that one for awhile. Anyway, I really love taking the pictures for this monthly endeavour and can't wait to see what I find today to feed into the lens of my camera. We will just have to wait and see. It's early morning on this the 12th day of April and I am about to head in to the city (Sydney, Australia) to take this months photos. So, stay tuned and I'll see you later today. Wish me luck...

12 of 12 for March 2010

Well, I haven't been posting very well as of late but I hope this post will makes up for that. I also have not posted a 12 of 12 for some time so I'm really excited and happy to finally be able to share these photos with you. I took 162 photos so it was really hard to pick just 12, but I did pick some. All of these photos are from around our new home back in Sydney. We moved from Tasmania back to Sydney in January. Actually we are just on the north side of Sydney in a suburb called Freshwater. We kept our house down in Tassie and have leased it out who knows maybe when retirement time rolls around it will make a nice place to go to for those golden years. Anyway, as I said these pictures have all been taken either around our new home or around the area that we now live. So, without further adieu here are this months photos. I hope you like them and with that I say...Enjoy

We planted this Frangipani right after we moved back and we are extremely happy that it is blooming and doing well.

Just and interesting picture of a plant we replanted and placed in the garden.

This is a spider called a Golden Orb Spider. They are everywhere in our garden. This one has been in this same place for over a month. It is a female as they are bigger than the males. They can bite and are a bit venomous but not enough to kill you. I'm going to find out.

This is the mystery photo so you can guess what it is.

Just a bit of greenery which I believe is a Christmas cactus.

A very beautiful plant of which we have several in our garden. I don't know what they are but this one is actually about four times bigger than what I have shown you here.

I took this picture from the car on a trip back to the house from running errands. I wanted a picture of the beach that holds the name of the suburb in which we live AKA Freshwater Beach. However, inadvertently I got more than I bargained for and I'm sure you can figure out what I mean. I actually thought it was quite funny.

A better picture of our beach.

This was taken at my brother-in-laws. they live about five minutes awy, literally around the corner.

We don't know the name of this tree but I just think it's beautiful.

These are my brother-in-laws dogs. The older one is named Diesel and the puppy is namec Bronte.

And last but not least I saw this bug which I identified as a stink bug. However, the only stink bugs I can remember when I lived in the states were all green. As you can see this one is definitely not just green. Anyway, that it for this month I hope you liked some of the photos and I hope very much to take some next month. See you then...

My how time flies...

...when you're doing other things besides writing in your blog. Hey there everyone, believe it or not I'm still alive and well. I'm sure some of you have given up the ghost and decided to stop coming by to read this blog and that's okay. As for those of you who do check in every once in a while, I admire your will of conviction to stay with something and I thank you. I understand that this venue is my space and it lives when I say it lives, it breathes when I say it breathes and sleeps for as long as I want it to sleep. I quit promising that I would actively keep writing in this blog because I hate breaking promises. So now that I'm comfortable with posting when I want, or at least as comfortable as I'm going to get with not posting except when I want to post; I am then able to come here when the urge hits and today the urge hit.

My life has been one huge roller coaster ever since a fateful day back in April 1986. That was the day that I found out that my life would change forever. That was the day I thought I was going to die sooner rather than later. That was the day I found out that I was HIV positive. A lot has happened since that day and hence why I said my life has been a roller coaster ride and sometimes the ride from hell. There have been many twist and turns, a few big loops, a couple of really long drops and one to many bumps. Non the less I continue on this roller coaster I now call my life, twist, turns, loops, bumps and all.

Since that day I fought tooth and nail to stay with the program but at times I felt like giving up as it is/has been all too much. I have been so sick that I was at deaths door one to many times. The disease took me there on a few occasions and other times I took myself there by abusing my body with one too many drinks and a lot of other substances that I should have stayed away from. After all of that I'm still here and sometimes I can't believe that I am because technically I should have been gone so long ago just by way of abuse not to mention giving the disease a leg up.

Oddly enough during all of this time I have been able to love and be loved. Now, I have loved many times in my life but specifically I found love three times since that day. I never thought I would be able to have love and live long enough to engage in relationship with another person but I did. Unfortunately for me of those three loves I lost two of them I did not lose them due to incompatibility in the relationship. I lost them to a demon that I could not battle nor win against Those two loves/lives were taken from me by the angel of death.

After the first death I never thought I would be able to love again. I had my heart torn out of my chest the day he died and that hole took a lot of time before it filled back in. The second time death stole love from me it not only ripped out my heart but it took a large part of my soul with it also. I knew then that I was never going to love again as I could not bear the thought of enduring that type of pain and emotional heartbreak ever again. Love on the other hand is a a funny thing and it had different plans for me. Whilst I was grieving the lose of my second love I met a very kind soul who put out the hand of friendship and understanding. This person allowed me to pour out my heart and all the time whilst I relieved my pain they just sat there and listened and listened and listened and then they listened some more. They allowed me to talk for hours on end and at the end of each emotional dumping on my part they where still there to tell me that I/it would be okay and eventually I believed them. What surprised me the most about this friendship is that I found out that I could also love again. Love was something that I had forgotten and it had dropped completely off my radar but even though i didn't see it love was till there waiting for me and waiting for the right moment for me to let it back into my heart.

I not only found that I could love again but I found a person to love and as I said love is a funny thing because I found love when I was least expecting it. I found love within the person who lent me a gentle hand and a non-judgmental ear. That man allowed me to pour my guts out and to talk days on end about the great lose of love I had with another man and yet in the end he was still willing to open his heart and allow me to feel so loved that at first it was a bit overwhelming. I was not sure I could or want to love again. The contrast between the warmth and kindness I felt for this man combined with the terrible agony that tore at my heart and soul from the lose of another man made my head spin. In the end I decided to throw caution to the wind and gave love another chance. I realised after all of those hours of talking that love is what you make it and sometime you fall out of love and sometimes love is taken from you but no matter what, you will always be able to love if you choose to do so. So as I said I chose to love again and because I did I have just celebrated the eleventh year of being in love with the most caring, kind, compassionate, warm, giving, and sometimes intense but always loving man I have been so blessed to meet. Oh and did I mention he's not bad on the eye either.

So, I say Happy Anniversary to my most wonderful husband and to him I say thank you for helping me find love again.

I just don't know what to do....

I want so very much to keep up with this blog because I put so much effort into it since I started it back in 2004. It just seems that I get sidetracked and then the next thing I know it's been like seven days or more since my last post. Sometimes I have a lot of things to talk about and then other times it's like pulling teeth trying to even get a paragraph out of my head. I know that I can always count on the 12 of 12 project which means, I can have at least one post per month. As it stands right now, if I can't find my camera which is somewhere in the final 20 boxes that we have not unpacked then I won't even have that post to put up here.

I keep promising that I'll do better and then I end up not doing it or in fact the length of time between post actually gets worse. When I say I'll post more regularly, I mean well, really I do. However, as I said I seem to get easily side tracked. Now, I could blame it on the fact that since we moved back to the big city (Sydney aka The Big Smoke), don't ask me why it's called that it just is, but since we moved back we have been extremely busy. There is some truth to that but not enough in so much that I don't have the time to sit down and tap out a few words on this here little ol' computer. The fact remains that if I wanted to post everyday I could but I'm just being lazy. On the other hand to be honest I'm not sure that my life is that interesting to warrant a post every day. I've never really thought about it. Maybe I should do just that, think about that is, and then get back to you to let you know what I find out from that little insight seeking excursion

Anyway, as it stands all of this rambling so far is going to constitute a post for now. Lets see what else can I tell you? Oh yes, I do know a few details of upcoming events. We are going to visit friends in Cooma NSW, which is about an eight hour drive from here. We are going up on Wednesday and staying for a few days. Then the week after that we are heading north of Sydney towards the Sunshine Coast to visit another friend who recently had a baby, which will be nice to see her but I'm not looking forward to the added heat and humidity. Other than that it's just business as usual around here and all that adds up to keeping the fort down and looking for work. Oh, one other travel item I recently found out that we are going to Fiji in July to attend a friends wedding, The same friends from Cooma, so I'm very much looking forward to that. I can guarantee that I will have things to post about after that trip if it's only just the photos.

Okay, that's it for now. I won't promise to keep posting everyday. I will just say that if you are interested in hanging around, I will post on occasions but I don't want to be responsible for you turning blue because you held your breath until I posted again. So please don't do that because there is so much paper work involved after a nasty non-breathing blue-turning episode. Until next time take care, stay safe and ENJOY life every way you can... .

I know you don't believe me...

...but I'm still here. I think we have finally settled into or new digs here in Sydney. It's kind of nice to be back. There are a lot of advantages to living in a big city. At the same time there are drawbacks. I am trying to acclimate to the weather. I loathe hot weather when it includes high humidity. We of course have had nothing nut hot days with humidity in the 85% + range. I told myself if I can just get through the end of summer I will be just fine. Technically there are only have four more weeks of summer so I'll just see how I go. I mean I lived here for six years before we moved to Tassie so I know I can put up with the weather. Probably the other big difference is the amount of people and traffic. We moved from Sydney with over four million of people down to Tassie with only 500,000 for the entire island of which Hobart only had a little over 200,000 people. So getting used to the buzz of the big city will take some time especially seeing that one of the reasons we left Sydney in the first place was to get away from all of the hustle, bustle and noise.

I begun the job search in earnest up here and I hope I have a more positive experience than I had in Tasmania. I at least have more options and more job opportunities available which will hopefully make looking easier. All I can do is try and as the say in the lottery "you have to be in it to win it" and so I have to apply for things as they won't just come to me.

Anyway, there isn't much else to tell at the moment. As I said we have just now settled into our new but temporary living space. We started house hunting and plan on taking our time in order to get just the right place. We are grateful to have our current lodging which allows us to take said time so we won't feel so rushed and pressured to buy quickly. Now, don't get me wrong if the right place came along this afternoon we would definitely take it but I don't think it will be that easy. We shall see what comes our way. I hopefully will now pick up on my posting. As usually I am also always on over at Facebook if you want to keep up with me that way. Okay, until next time, take care and try to enjoy life and the world around you.