all about table|and labels

I adore great homewares & accessories, yet I constantly see much of the same. So when I recently fell across a gorgeous homeware & accessories store, Ondine, in Double Bay, Sydney, it was hard not to get just a little bit excited.

Talking excitement | It wasn’t that long ago that my niece suggested that both my sister and I maybe had ADHD (so we already share a love of Ottolenghi and breast cancer, so seriously, what is one more thing)! You might well ask why I drop the big “BC” in from time to time…it is simple…to serve as a constant reminder to you all to stay on top of your mammograms and take excellent take care of yourself…which has always been and quite possibly continues to be the only true purpose behind my blogging, camouflaged as incessant food chatter.

“When it rains, look for RAINBOWS.  When it’s dark, look for STARS”. FionaChilds.com

At first, I wasn’t totally comfortable being handed yet another label. Still, then I didn’t much care because I know our niece loves us both equally, and it was never intended as a criticism, more an observation.  Regardless, I thought about what she had said and decided that if this is the label we get for being mindfully energetic, doing with our minds what our body is way less inclined to do, gymnastics, then so be it.  So my sister and I love creativity in any form. We are constantly looking for something new to challenge us. Rather than this being viewed as something positive, it can be considered unhealthy hyperactivity and labelled as some medical condition.

However, it makes me question why we are all so quick to try to hang labels on our behaviour!  I love shopping. I love homewares. I love clothes, so the love keeps on pouring out all over the shop…so does this mean I am a shopaholic or does it simply mean I am passionate about beautiful things?

Interestingly, I googled shopaholic the other day to see if I had any of the same traits.  Remarkably, I almost got a perfect score.  So now I have ADHD…and I am a shopaholic! So help me if I start reading up on people who need to hang all the same colours together in their wardrobes or store their spice jars in alphabetical order!

I love and adore my family and friends, and I can become equally obsessive when it comes to that, yet there doesn’t appear to be a medical label for excessive heart matters. Why is that?

I always hate to digress, but let’s digress anyway…after all, I am hyperactive. My sister and I recently undertook a spring cleaning of our mother’s bedroom. Something which could only have been done when your Mother is in hospital having a total hip replacement and incapable of moving (at 87, I am still so totally in awe of her having had her hip done).

We ruthlessly tossed away bottles of unopened perfumes and handbags (after all, surely you only need about 10 good bags, so the other 20 odd starts to become somewhat obsolete).

As the clean sweep progressed, so did my self-awareness, which somehow and sometimes I had morphed into my mother. I adore my mother, so maybe this is not such a bad thing.  Seriously, why do we think she has a problem? She stashed away 30 plus handbags (and the rest, but I am doing my best to be nice here). Does it really matter in the bigger scheme of things? Can’t we just be happy being and accept these little habits, obsessions, and delights? However, we want to describe them. Indeed they can simply be attributed to who we are as people.  It is these things that define us rather than label us! The way I see it is simple, if it makes you happy and feeds your soul or the soul of others, then embrace it. If it makes you feel somewhat anxious, you may just need to give it some kind of attention.

Now back to earth | another one of my obsessions, homewares. I adored the earthy heartiness of these Danish ceramics pictured below. I am a little frustrated that I did not purchase any and bring them home to add to our already heavily (maybe obsessive) range of plates and serving trays.  I am sure I can find a little more space…just might need to move the other half out!

Photo |Ondene Transvaal, Double Bay, New South Wales. A Nordic range by  K. H. Wurtz (an internationally sought-after Father and Son team of studio ceramics, located in Horsens, Denmark. Exclusively sold in Australia at Ondine.

Photo | Ondine carries another gorgeous range by Rina Menardi, Italy.
Photo | Another piece by Rina Menardi, Italy, available at Ondene, Sydney.


Photo | K. H. Wurtz Go see for yourself just how wonderful they are  | There is something fabulous about the tools, colours, and textures sitting so harmoniously together on their website.

Photo | taken from K.W.Kurtz website.  It reminds me of that utterly sexy scene from the movie “Ghost” with Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore getting down and dirty in clay. This was one of my best movie scenes and soundtrack of all time. Maybe I am getting old when I think potting is the new sexy!

My time to get down and dirty | So it is only to be expected that I now want desperately to do a ceramic class. When I told my sister, she said, “but you know you won’t be content making an ashtray…you will want to make a full dinner set”. I wasn’t sure what point she was trying to make because I wanted to make a complete dinner set (who smokes anyway)! I enrolled and started my first lesson today!  Stay posted; you never know what fabulous things I might come up with, or be warned, you might never know what you might get for your birthday.

IMG_0013Photo | This photo was taken today at my first pottery lesson (SO not sexy). When I asked Graham Hay, my instructor, where the potting wheel was located, he said, “we are a ghost-free studio”. Oh seriously…what have I let myself in for!

from the heart | attachment

I always said my blog would be mostly about entertaining and sometimes purely from the heart.  This is one of those.

From time to time, I ask myself why I blog, and I keep coming up with the same answer, I have no bloody idea!  My friends would argue that I am one of the most private people they know, yet here I am not only opening up my house, friends and family (and so it seems nobody is off-limits), but I am also sharing personal things about myself.  Nobody could be more surprised about this than I.

In part, you feel a sense of freedom writing, a little liberated by sharing your words.  Paper provides you with the breathing space to think, and it leaves you feeling lighter somehow.  So indeed, that is reason enough for now?

My sister sets the challenge |my sister phoned me (and I am fast thinking I might need to retitle my blog… “a  day in the life of my sister and me” and she told me how a friend of hers had just returned from a yoga class, and the teacher gave them one word.  I could hear where this was heading, and I didn’t like it.  She would occupy some of my refreshed headspaces to undertake some challenges.  She must have listened to my sigh because she gently pushed on regardless and added that the word was “attachment”.  In my head, I am thinking, so the challenge begins!

I make my way from the bedroom, down the stairs, and headed towards the kettle for my second cup of tea for the morning while emptying the dryer and feeding the goldfish.  We are extraordinary multi-taskers, we women!  As I make the walk (holding my mobile phone in my left hand and knowing that my steps are being recorded at the same time, because seriously, who else would walk around the house with their mobile phone in their hand), I picture the attachment as many things; clothing, MAC lipsticks, shoes, crockery, cheeseboards and I am starting to think that these are addictions not “attachments”, and I like the challenge even less now. I put my mind to my husband and my son, and the thoughts start to ramble and fill my otherwise quiet space, and I again realise these are not attachments but commitments.

I am multi-tasking my demanding and meaningful list of things to do. I also fill my arms with our over-flowing medicine chest because I remember telling myself yesterday that today was the day I needed to make good here. Unlike my spice drawer, which is filled with love and organisation, our medicine chest has been starting to resemble my son’s bedroom (before he left home). It is beginning to look a little like Niagara Falls, same cascading attributes just missing the abundance of beauty.  But hey, my mother told me my mind was filled with imagination, so I am confident that I can turn this exercise into something exciting (feeling my creativity fast depleting as I hold that thought).

Finding my attachment | I sit myself down with my cup of tea and our medicine chest, and in this lovely, almost mindful state, I start to again think about attachment. I am still struggling to see its point, further frustrated that my sister has filled my otherwise restful mind.

I reach where the bulk of the medicines have banked up and start to discard them.  One by one, I start throwing out Endone, Tramadol, Targin, MC Contin, Maxolon, Kytril, Glycerol Suppositories, Coloxy, Dexathasone, Naproxen, Ural, Lorazepam, White soft paraffin, Jelonet and the list just kept rolling out like a roll of toilet paper on a bad day.  Before me, I saw a group of medications that I did not even know existed before a breast cancer diagnosis.

As I look at these medications, I feel a certain sadness come over me, weird.  It reminded me of where I was just less than two years ago. This emotion is closely followed by some strange sympathy I extend to myself (which I never afforded until this truly reflective moment because I always believed I needed to stay strong throughout treatment). As I sat there thinking, I started to accept that this was why I have been continuing to struggle somewhat with my health and why I have been getting so frustrated with myself (and if I am, to be honest, sometimes truly disappointed) that I don’t seem to be able to find my way back to that same person I was “before BC”.

I look at all those tablets, and I remember how my body has been to hell and back and that I deserve to be kind to myself, not disappointed.

I sit with the thought that it is OK not to be perfect, not to be able to do maybe everything I did before, and if I find myself visiting my Doctor more times than I do my hairdresser, so be it!

So why did I hold onto those medications for all this time? A list that I never knew existed before BC, which I never needed to know existed. I haven’t needed them now for almost two years, so why?  Then, I see my “attachment” and why I have been holding onto them…just in case.

Photo | my bad…find your unhealthy attachment, look it in the face and kiss it goodbye!

Bugger the just in case!!!  Out the door went my attachment!!!

If I dig a little deeper, I might find that my writing has helped my recovery. Anxiety creeps into your head in the middle of the night, disguised as a friend, and before you know it, this other person has settled into your thoughts and your behaviour uninvited and unwanted.

I know that some of you who read my blog have also been affected by a breast cancer diagnosis and are, like me, still in treatment in one way or another. If not breast cancer, then it is something else.  Let’s be honest, a diagnosis pulls us up short, and it changes us. In many ways, the changes are good and, in some ways, just not always in our control.  I prefer to focus on the good and the sometimes great, yet it does not stop those times of incredible frustration and disappointment trying to wrestle for a spot.

This is why I blog. It is my therapy. Saying things aloud means that they no longer clog your otherwise poor recovering brain, which has already gone to war for you and keeps on fighting.  This is why we need our girlfriends to keep the talk happening.

Having found my attachment, I give myself a little more time to reflect, and I see that I have been mourning an earlier version of me, a more vibrant, energetic and healthier me.  I ran a business; how demanding can that get. Maybe these feelings start to creep in when we begin to create space.  Any diagnosis will do this, some more serious than others and some with unspeakable outcomes.  Whatever the diagnosis, it is natural for us and those around us.

And yet, I am now other things that I wasn’t before.  I am more compassionate, patient, understanding, a better listener, and more caring, and finally, I am more honest about my feelings.  What blessings! My diagnosis taught me many things, as I am sure it has you.

I am on tamoxifen, which comes with its own set of side effects, my legs don’t work like they used to, and I take pain killers to dull the nerve pain, etc. Recently I found myself watching a girlfriend, a healthier version of me, stand up from the table, and her legs didn’t work. She told me it was age.  I started to think that maybe I am attributing too many of these changes to treatment rather than just accepting them as part of life and getting on with it.

It is so easy to give things labels.  Once they have a label, they become an attachment.  My days of heavy treatment and a truckload of drugs were back then, and this is now.  Whatever challenges we have going forward is life, so there is little point in staying stuck. This is a new phase and can be a significant phase if only we start to be in the moment.  We need to embrace our lives the best way we can and enjoy them.

My spiritual friend recently told me that this is the path we are all on, an unfolding journey that every soul finds themself on, called life. When we are starting to move from singular beings toward a beautiful collective space. 

A thought | Be kind to yourself and keep talking with your girlfriends (coffee, cake, and chocolate are just fine with me). Girlfriends are better than any medicine.

        Love to all our sisters. 💋
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