Temperatures

It is far too hot to write, blog or work. I worked all morning but have spent the afternoon dozing in the heat and trying to clear out my inbox. Having made very firm decisions to write, paint, read and lots of other things including meditation to relax I am adhering to it reasonably well. These very high temperatures combined with high humidity make it almost impossible to do much in the afternoons.

So I have been reading. I finished 'All the Light We Cannot See', the best novel I have read in years and was then faced with the difficult decision of what to read next. Deciding something shorter and more memoir related would be a good choice I started:



The brave, inspiring story of one woman's recovery from a debilitating eating disorder, and the remarkable shelter dogs who unexpectedly loved her back to life.

“The dogs don’t judge me or give me a motivational speech. They don’t rush me to heal or grow. They sit in my lap and lick my face and make me feel chosen. And sometimes, it hits me hard that I'm doing the exact thing I say I cannot do. Changing.”

Pound for Pound is an inspirational tale about one woman’s journey back to herself, and a heartfelt homage to the four-legged heroes who unexpectedly saved her life.

Due to having such a large amount of time to read I finished this book in just over a day. I felt it was a little focused on her interactions with various dogs and nothing will make me change my mind about pit bulls but it shows how a passion can change a life for the better.

My next choice, given the hundreds of books I have on my Kindle app, was "Golden Eclipse: Heart Dog'.



Once in your life you may have a pet that is so much more. This animal will become one with you. Their heart and soul, and yours, will somehow join. Without words you both instinctively know what the other’s needs are, and you will live to take care of them. This is the true story of my "Heart" dog, Eclipse. Originally written as a way of expressing my grief over her loss, it was meant to be read only by myself. She was such an amazing girl, that I felt her story needed to be shared. All proceeds from this book will be donated to animal rescue. 

Please do not feel that this book is one that will make you cry throughout. Yes, tears may be shed. (Nothing wrong with that. It saves you money on eye drops) Eclipse's story will also bring many smiles to readers of her story. It's hard for one to hear of the joy she brought to the world and not be touched by it. This amazing rescued golden retriever came into my life at seven years of age, with cancer. She was used for breeding, and then went to a second owner. I had the honor of being her third, and “Forever Home!” She was to become a registered therapy dog, who worked in Hospice and nursing home settings. This book gives concrete examples of her amazing nature, what I consider to be her philosophy of life, and the absolutely tremendous difference she made in the lives of those she met, including myself. 
You will read of such heart touching moments, as when she attended wakes, memorial services, and even a funeral mass. 
You will even get to meet Mozart. Yes, he lived with Eclipse! 
After reading this book my hope is that you will start to live your life like a Golden Retriever.....Minus the shedding of course, which could make you a bit unpopular. 
{At the end of January 2014 I edited the book slightly by gettng rid of the typos. Now there are no messtakes.....Well, maybe some....

Yes, this book is full of lots of mistakes, both spelling and grammar, but it does not detract from the story of the author's journey with his wonderful golden retriever, Eclipse. I read this in less than 24 hours as I was so enthralled with his minute descriptions of hid dog's behaviour and its wonderful temperament.
A book I would highly recommend.

I am now reading: 

 This book looks to be both healing and informative. I need to sit quietly and absorb its wisdom in the hope I can learn how to relax through its pages.

 

 

 

Blogging

I love blogging but have never been able to find a way to insert a follow me button into my blog. I read and search for blogs for both work and pleasure. I love book and writing blogs and often save them on Facebook for fear of losing them. This world of sharing is amazing, gone are the days when people kept all their secrets about successful writing and good books to themselves. Reviews of new and interesting books encourage me to search for the books and decide whether or not to purchase them for my kindle. 

Reading 'All the Light We Cannot See' encouraged me to purchase another of Anthony Doerr's books:

  
I seldom purchase another of an author's books until I have finished the one I am reading but his writing style in infectious. A non-fiction book, I am really looking forward to this book.

On the recommendation of WLM members I have also recently purchased:


This looks to be an interesting book, I hope it lives up to the recommendations of WLM members.

I have started writing again, just for short periods such as an hour, but my story of Chocolat is growing and growing. I am remembering so much about my love for her when she was ill, as was I. I depended on her for all my feelings and am sure she loved me completely in return. I am glad I kept a diary when my marriage first broke up, it is helping me to track both Chocolat's journey and mine. She is most unwell, seems to sleep all the time but is always there when either of us need a cuddle. Her lack of sight and hearing make it difficult to communicate either through voice commands or just calling her to say I am home. She is still eating well, is responsive to life and enjoys my company so hopefully will be able to see the summer out. Jay is virtually ignoring her, not sure if he senses her impending demise or is just afraid of losing someone else who loves him to bits. Chocolat can still get jealous and bossy and complains bitterly when cuddles and pats in the morning are competed for. The memories are wonderful, she is wonderful, I am sure she will remain happy for a while longer.

I have also started to journal most days and write my thoughts and feelings on a variety of issues. I am enjoying using a fountain pen again, but could not purchase a calligraphy pen yesterday, even though I had seen one for sale before Christmas. New ideas, new hobbies, life is wonderful. 

Weather

The first few days of the New Year have been wonderful. A very wet day yesterday meant I made a decision to relax all day and read, plan, look for recipes and learn to meditate. An omelette with cheese, spring onion and tomato concluded a day which revived and invigorated me. I am learning to make the best use of my time to achieve the many things I enjoy. I have started re-writing the story of Chocolat and have searched high and low for her memorabilia. I think there will be a story and a wonderful scrapbook. 

I am also starting to journal properly. I purchased a brand new fountain pen for myself for Christmas as I have so many difficulties finding good ballpoint pens. It is wonderful to write in a high quality journal, be able to read what I have written, and grow and expand my thinking daily. I do not need prompts yet but may resort to a book of journal prompts now and then. 

I am really enjoying 'All the Light We Cannot See' by Anthony Doerr. A very long book, 531 pages, I am now a quarter of the way through. While it moves frequently from one time period to another it is easy to follow. Doerr's descriptive language paints a wonderful picture which is imprinted on the mind. 

I am also beginning to catch up reading all the magazines which have come in over the last few months. having used by banking points I subscribed to Life and Leisure and NZ House and Garden. Both provide a wealth of information on NZ homes and lifestyles which one can enjoy and admire from afar. I am also several months behind on The Healthy Food Guide. I will need to read this more frequently, along with my plethora of cook books, as I hope to become a cuisine fanatic now that I have returned almost everything to my diet following the elimination diet I was asked to follow for 4 months.

Today I am going out into the country with a friend to have lunch at a country café. This is one of life's greatest pleasures and I hope I can enjoy it. The sun is shining again so life looks good. I am off now to practice meditating, I think this will be a very positive pastime for me.           

2016

Another new year, I am still unsure where the last year went, it was filled with happiness, busyness, friendship and losses. I have written up a new lot of goals which I need to achieve - everything from finally being able to try new recipes now that I have put back most of the foods banned in my elimination diet to reading the online magazines I subscribe to. Most of all I want to write and paint, and I hope to avoid losing all my 'own' time to the demands of work at CCS. I intend to keep the list of 'to do's' right next to my ipad and check them regularly. Top of this list, which combines well with my desire to cook again, is to get healthy. I hope to lose weight, work on lowering my blood sugar levels and try to work towards a much healthier heart. I hope to keep blogging about this along with my reading and books I hope to buy for my kindle. Music also fills my soul and my days - it is a lifeblood I have always fed.

On new year's eve I finished reading 'A Harrowing Tale' on my VRS, an exciting book full of danger and travel. Avoiding Somali pirates filled up the majority of the book as this couple wended their way across the Indian Ocean and into the Red Sea. A book I would thoroughly recommend.

I have trawled up and down the 300 or so books on my kindle and decided yesterday to read the Pulitzer Prize winner - 'All the Light We Cannot See' by Anthony Doerr.
  

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE
From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the beautiful, stunningly ambitious instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.

In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge.

Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, he illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, a National Book Award finalist, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times). 

I have only read a few pages so far but the descriptive language is fabulous. I felt as though I was in the room with the young girl and can of course empathise with her blindness. Although this is a very long book I am sure the pages will fly by as I become engrossed in the story.

I love the magazines the Blind Foundation sends to me but I tend to save them up until I have finished a book on my VRS. At present I am listening to the selections from the Readers Digest, it seems to be a thoroughly interesting issue. I just wish there was a key on the VRS one could press to discover how far one is through a book or magazine. I put in a lot of guesswork trying to discover how many hours I have listened to.

Jay is lying beside me hoping I will give him an early dinner while Chocolat has again retired to the rug near the door. She does not sense when I move, not does she see or hear me. She seems to be sleeping the last of her life away which is sad. I suspect I need to offer her a change of scenery and some fun in her days, perhaps this is something I should add to my daily list of 'to do's'.    

 

Dream Catching

The Christmas season has been overshadowed by Chocolat's health. She lies next to me getting as close as possible without tripping me up when I make a move. I think she knows her time here is short and she is determined to make it as fulfilling as possible. She wheezes and snores as I run my fingers gently over the area where the lump appeared just a matter of weeks ago. An aggressive sarcoma will come back, when is the question. I just hope I can keep her as comfortable as possible as she continues her decline. 

Reading has become my major pastime as I try to relax during the summer holidays. Just lying around sleeping and absorbing knowledge from an interesting book as well as eating good food and catching up with Facebook make my relaxation time wonderful. This morning I have a CD of Malvina Major singing some of her favourite songs in the player, perhaps this will be a day of music, who knows!

Fed up with a rather boring modern novel I was listening to on my VRS I changed in the night to 'A Harrowing Journey'.



A retired couple who spent many years living on the Kapiti Coast in New Zealand purchase a yacht and save, plan and dream of sailing around the world. Eventually they leave, as part of a group sailing to Tonga, and carry on from there across the Indian Ocean which is frequented by Somali pirates. It looks to be an interesting read full of danger and adventures.


  
After a lifetime of city living, I fell for a farmer and, well, Love at the End of the Road. My memoir, a love story about life - present and past - on a remote coastal farm, features a very gracious old dame - our gorgeous villa. The book inspired an episode of the much-loved Kiwi TV show, Country Calendar, and was deemed "charming" (in a good way) in a NZ Herald review. Check it out here:http://www.raeroadley.co.nz/media-room/ 




Soon after returning to her hometown in Northland, New Zealand to work as a journalist, Rae meets farmer Rex Roadley through a rural dating service.
Rex’s beef and sheep farm at Batley, on the Kaipara Harbour, has been in his family for almost a century, however these days the only evidence of the spot’s fascinating historic past is a magnificent two-storeyed villa standing alone on the point.
Neither Rae nor Rex are youngsters and their love affair, developing relationship and life together go through many twists and turns before they eventually marry.

Meanwhile Rae, a lifelong city dweller, learns to cope with mud, managing a large house and garden, the intricacies of farming, and the frustrations of life in New Zealand’s backblocks, all the while getting to know the locals and an assortment of animals - from wild kittens to wild bulls.
Rae’s charming story is beautifully written from the heart and, not only does she find love with Rex, but she finds out more about herself than she ever knew. Woven through her account is the story of the great house itself at Batley and the history of the surrounding countryside. 

 

This is a book which is not only easy to read but evokes memories of times spent at the beach, travelling in Northland, and the family tensions which predicate on a marriage into a family farm. I am enjoying it but have wondered if the journalist in Rae has cultured a need to explain things too simply. Much of the book is written at the level of a 12 year old, a rule often used by journalists to target their audiences.

 

 

 

   

Sadness

I have not posted in a while due to work pressure and huge achievements with our CCS project Measuring Accessible Journeys. Having received many accolades both nationally and internationally we are now invited to speak to the OECD. A huge honour.

Also, I am very sad as my old retired guide dog, Chocolat, is most unwell. Yesterday she had surgery to remove a lump I had found on her side but it could not be taken out as it was attached and through to her abdominal wall. I now await pathology reports to see what the next step is.

Reading has taken a big back step while life has been so hectic, I have only just finished 'The Little Paris Bookshop' and have now started reading on my Kindle:

 

A house and marriage violently disintegrate. Left along to raise an infant in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina while her husband lives it up in Miami Beach, Julie is surrounded by the rubble of her life - stripped bare by love and loss. It is a time of unprecedented clarity. She must acknowledge her own pain, while sharing the heartache of others in her community who are also rebuilding their lives. NAKED is a powerful true story of loss but also of triumph, a path to true love of self. Struggling to find meaning in her journey, Julie shares a remarkable story with humor and tenderness.

A member of my WLM group, Julie's story has been on my kindle for several months. I am always interested that members such as her, well educated and worldly savvy write such popular and plain English books. Not sure why I expect more, imagine such clever women would write more academically and in more depth. 

An inability to concentrate for any length of time has meant magazines on my VRS are taking precedence as well as in real life. I have a huge pile of unread magazines I hope to get through this weekend which is given over to minding Chocolat.  

Forums and Twitter

Preparing for a large, and very important forum, in Wellington is very stressful. I am sure once it is over I will wonder what the worry was about but having to speak to influential people is rather difficult for me. On top of this CCS Disability Action asked that I open a Twitter account or be linked into theirs. I felt it was easier for me to write in my own account and then ask them to retweet. Unfortunately they are not as dedicated to passing on the results of our survey as we are. After I have spoken with them next week hopefully there will be more attention to the detail.


 

Audere, agere, auferre.To dare, to strive, to conquer.For generations, privileged young men have attended St. Oswald's Grammar School for Boys, groomed for success by the likes of Roy Straitley, the eccentric Classics teacher who has been a fixture there for more than thirty years. But this year the wind of unwelcome change is blowing. Suits, paperwork, and information technology are beginning to overshadow St. Oswald's tradition, and Straitley is finally, and reluctantly, contemplating retirement. He is joined this term by five new faculty members, including one who -- unbeknownst to Straitley and everyone else -- holds intimate and dangerous knowledge of St. Oswald's ways and secrets. Harboring dark ties to the school's past, this young teacher has arrived with one terrible goal: to destroy St. Oswald's.

As the new term gets under way, a number of incidents befall students and faculty alike. Beginning as small annoyances -- a lost pen, a misplaced coffee mug -- they are initially overlooked. But as the incidents escalate in both number and consequence, it soon becomes apparent that a darker undercurrent is stirring within the school. With St. Oswald's unraveling, only Straitley stands in the way of its ruin. The veteran teacher faces a formidable opponent, however -- a master player with a bitter grudge and a strategy that has been meticulously planned to the final move, a secret game with very real, very deadly consequences.

A harrowing tale of cat and mouse, this riveting, hypnotically atmospheric novel showcases New York Times bestselling author Joanne Harris's astonishing storytelling talent as never before. (less)

Like all of Joanne Harris's books I am finding this book fascinating. The theme weaves in and out of the pages as one waits for the next event to befall this school. I am listening to this on my VRS and finally have a book I can stay awake to listen to. 

 

I have been reading this book in short spans as there has been some good TV on lately. I am a little lost on some of the themes but am enjoying exploring the mind of Perdu as he takes his Literary Apothecary on a journey from Paris to the south of France. Many ideas are interwoven and I am sure I will have a better idea of where this books is journeying in the next few days.

Two neighbours are meant to be moving this weekend, it looks as though Sharon is packing and I am sure that Margaret will be very happy to see the back of her boarder. When Carolyn is leaving is in the lap of the gods. She has told one neighbour she is going on the 27th and another on Monday, tomorrow, so not sure. 

The dogs are both well although Chocky is definitely reaching her most senior years. I hope she improves as the weather warms up and can enjoy the summer and just lazing in the sun.