New dress and an old friend, heading off to work for the afternoon. She was sleeping within five minutes of getting in the bus.

Met this gentle giant last week , when it chose to walk past all the other outstretched hands to take Lily’s offering. She was calm and happy as can be, even when her hand momentarily disappeared into its soft mouth. Each day since she has asked to go back to the animals.

We are so looking forward to summer. Lily has such a love of life and people that I can’t wait to see what adventures we have out playing in the sun. I have missed summer.

I have not blogged for nine months. That’s how long it took my body to build Lily’s body. So much has happened and though I feel like I am going in the right direction, it feels like I have been learning the same lessons over and over again. I now think life is grade school. You pass math, grade one, only to be rewarded with math, grade two, the moment your short lived summer is up. Only now, just like in math, the same lessons are so bloody disguised I don’t see them as the same lessons. This happened for me in math the moment they brought the alphabet into the equation. I can’t so easily pin point the start of my confusion now.

I know that as I consciously take less and less responsibility for those around me I am left adrift in my own thoughts wondering what it is I truly want. So long I have been wanting what I think others want me to want, or what I think will make me a good person, or any other ego driven reason that, I have not had to really discover what it is I truly want in life. I have no clue what kind life I want. I feel a bit like Captain Jack Sparrow, I have this compass that will lead me to whatever I want… But I don’t know what I want.

I do know I want to start blogging again, so, hello. Care to take a journey of self discovery with me?

 

Another month has almost come and gone, in just the blink of an eye!

I am surprised that it has been so long since I last wrote, I lost track of what this blog was doing for me, what was the purpose of it. I am at a point now where I think I know what it is about but I will wait and see if my thoughts are correct.

You see I think this is a daily account of what my life is really about, but I still hold back on the ugly side of life. I still paint the positive picture as much as I can. Right now that is easy, as life is so very good, but that could change tomorrow, we could have a rough patch, I could struggle with a belief system and fight rather than experience life. OR not, I could have another great day that is so unexpectedly different from what I thought an ‘adult life’ looked like.

I am working on learning about marketing and branding and the difference and the philosophy behind it. I have lucked out in that if I get all my baby steps sorted before the end of April a very successful internet marketer of Heilkunst will help me with the next steps. I plan on taking him up on this offer.

Ever heard that saying about waiting for your ship to come in? Well I am figuring out what kind of ‘ship’ to send out so it can bring back to me what I am looking for. I want to build my practice with patients who become students rather than patients or clients. I want to find the people I can assist to getting their goals of health. I want to reach out to those who know that somewhere someone is holding the key for them, and they will open that door to health and happiness and walk through if they could only find the key. I want to find the people who are ready to do the work to make IT happen in their life.

Exciting stuff, it’s all about new beginnings around here… again! Denis, Lily and I have moved into our own cottage this last week past. We were in a different cottage to start but decided that this one was more suited to having private family time than the original one we were in. Thankfully our friends agreed and said we could have whichever we wanted. So we claimed the quieter cabin for us. We celebrated by getting a puppy! We tried a rehoming of a older rescue dog at the beginning of the month but that dog wanted nothing to do with Lily so we sent it back when it started to snap at her in situations where it could have walked away but chose to show dominance. The puppy arrived on Lily’s 16 months birthday. She is a great little dog and Lily is in love. So new home, new dog and new information about how to find my ‘students’ of health.

Will work on photos.

 

Market day tomorrow, and not a day to soon. The cupboards are bare!

Tomorrow is also the day we pick up Lola, our new dog friend. She was rescued about 4 years ago and sadly her forever home turned into a situation where the lady has to head back to the UK. So Lola was again looking for a home to call her own. She is very shy, but seemed to like Lily right from the start. Lily liked feeding her biscuits.

The guys also take their course on green building of log homes/buildings this weekend. It is going to be a busy weekend, especially tomorrow. I think Sunday will find Lily, Lola and I relaxing and rebooting, preparing to have a bunch of very excited guys on our hands for awhile. Today Denis put up the gates on our ‘Lily fence’ and worked on my little raised planters for my garden. V and G (the other guys) got 400 old tires and cleared our view to the lake. The tires are for building retaining walls behind the workshop, we will plant succulents in the little moons of dirt to pretty it up but the tires are an affordable choice for the amount of work we will need to do.

Speaking of living on sand, it is near impossible to keep Lily clean for more than a few minutes. Our sand is fine and soft and inviting, plus it has a black layer very close to the surface so Lily is always covered in patterns of dust. I discovered while we were out for a walk today lots of concrete slabs from a old building that was taken down… I think I will be asking for a concrete patio out the front of the house soon. A little space to play outside that is not in the sand. 🙂

Another thing we discovered on our walk around today was large cat tracks. Not large as in lion but large as in way bigger than a house cat. Seems a caracal is a local resident and the reason why no one has pet house cats. Sad we can’t have house cats without them falling prey to the wild cat but the wild cat is pretty cool looking.

Off to bed, as the computer is attracting flying ants.

 

Whats in a bit of space? Peace of mind.

I am the type of person who deals with change but in my heart I like a bit of routine, a bit of space to call my own, that I can always turn to and know it will be just the way I left it, that it will be waiting for me no matter what… that I don’t have to share it or wait for it or clean up someone else stuff from it. And now I have that little bit of space, Denis built for me a desk, in front of the window in our bedroom. He built it into the shelves that hold our clothes up off the ground. We are unpacked and I have my sacred space that I have not had to call my own since we sold my boat!

The first thing I did was write a mom about Heilkunst and Unschooling and what I do. I started listening to a lecture today about organising my time (mind) to be more efficient too. Funnily enough I was in the middle of making dinner, but now I can finish it in peace, here at the foot of the bed when Lily takes her long late morning nap tomorrow! Maybe I will even start on it again tonight for a bit, now that she is sleeping and I am rocking this new energy and excitement for a space to call all my own.

As a friend told me this evening, all this hard work is paying off and life is really giving back now.

A view of my new office! Just add some cushions to the photo and that is my magic spot. 🙂

I fell asleep last night, with every intention of writing before I did so. Seems that our little girl is growing up fast and her not needing to nap with her is making me a little more tired at night.

Tonight I was hoping to stay up for a conference call with the IHA (International Heilkunst Association) but I think I’ll have to catch a recording or beg for someone else’s notes. The time change is a bit rough for EST evening meetings when I am in South Africa. Even napping with Lily would not make up for that kind of lost sleep.

I found a dead scorpion in my living room, after the tool box was taken out. Funny, it did not make my heart speed up at all, and I keep forgetting to check my shoes before I put them on! That is what lots of travel does to you, you just kinda are not phased anymore. That said the baboons were eerie today. I did not expect them to give me that feeling but the way they moved… it made me aware of their ‘wildness’ in ways that all the other wild animals I have witnessed have not. It has given me a bit of a unusual wariness towards them, especially when it comes to Lily. She on the other hand, thought they should come to her like a dog, and when they did not she was determined to go to them. Which might be part of the reason for my feelings.

Speaking of Lily, she cracked my up this afternoon. I gave her a little bucket of water to play in and when I came around the corner (I was in the kitchen) a few moments later she had climbed in… shoes and all. I helped her out of her shoes, socks and dress and she proceeded to play in this little bucket, lounging like it was a recliner chair. She is so funny.

We got hooked up to unlimited internet today. First thing we did was Skype Gramma in Canada. Lily was so excited to see her, and I never saw the smile off of gramma’s face either so I guess she was just as enthralled. I still remember my first time travelling, no internet to stay in touch. My poor mom! I was off having an adventure and she had no way of contacting me, funny how that was just the way it was and now we  can have a live face to face chat in real time by just clicking a button!

Simply stated, I am happy.

Last Friday I ran out of internet, so I was unable to write but we are back up and running. The weekend was great, we went to the market again but we were late because of other commitments and much of the fresh produce was gone. Which is wonderful for the sellers and only slightly frustrating for us. We got most of everything we needed it was only the greens for the juicing that we missed out on completely.

I also found a few treasures that I will be wanting to get next week again as well. I found a couple that sell gluten free bread, and… raw, fresh goats milk! My desire to get my own goats has completely disappeared for the time being with this discovery. They also make cheese but they were further down the line of vendors than the first cheese maker, where I got cream cheese for rice cake, tomato and avocado snacks. There is a great supplier of natural products for the skin, everything from sun care and bug repellant to soaps and medical help. Jams, free range/organic meats, nut butters, and of course the fruits and veggies. I had so much more fun this time as I kinda had an idea what to expect. Next week I have my sights set on some heirloom seeds to start growing our own greens and herbs.

We did part of the market past the food this time too, and I got a lovely pair of sandals. Lily was being her usual cute self and was given a little purple bracelet with a cross on it. People are so shocked at how cool she is about meeting and interacting with strangers. She just wanders around and finds people that interest her and she goes up to them to meet them. Anyone can interest her, she is not only drawn to little people or momma people or men, she likes who she likes. People talking to her in the local language does not slow her down, she simply makes herself known and her desires as well.

Sunday we went to a cool little place with a great kids park and lots of little shops. Lily chased chickens and followed a monkey as best she could. Watched other kids at the park and tried her hand at a swing, she likes the slide a lot more at this point. She is a very brave little soul, wanting to climb up the slide and go down free from assistance. After the other kids let we went to the beach and the lovely restaurant on the beach called PiliPili. Lily and Denis played on the beach with a couples dogs and then we had pizza for supper. The couple found us at the restaurant and gave Lily a knitted hat of a cartoon character… little yellow guys, I have not seen the movie. After our big days, Lily passed out on the car ride home and then today she had another big long nap late morning. I think she is working on that 8th tooth that just seems to cause her grief rather than pop through.

The fence is coming along and I got up my clothes line today, slowly slowly we are making a home!

Building our home together is an incredible experience.

Today Denis worked more on getting my kitchen space workable so I can play without restraint. What fun to watch Lily watching us. She is so inquisitive and wants so much to help, so today at one point you would have found her standing on the box case for a circular saw peeping up onto my new counter top to help make a salad for lunch. For the same meal we made a soup, and she demanded to ‘taste’ the soup like I did while cooking it. She gave her approval of the seasonings by asking for more, and more soup. At another point Denis and Joseph were tinkering with a post hole digger that had lost a nut, she sat right in the middle between the men watching every move they made. She watches everything!

I thought last night was our last night in the rental cabin but we needed one more day to make the move easy, a few little things like baby locks on doors and the kitchen construction being done will make life nicer for Lily. There is only so much of the “no, please don’t touch” that I am comfortable with. I agree kids need to learn what no is, but not to the level that it would need to be said for her full time living space being in a construction zone. So, with any luck tomorrow we will be able to mostly Lily proof our cottage and we can move in. Just in time for the Saturday market!

What else to tell you, our eating habits are still in a new healthy state, vegetable juicing each morning and of lots of veg, some fruit and good protein sources thought the day. However, I am craving ‘treats’ also known as crap food. High calorie and low nutrient foods. Thankfully I am not close to a shop and the chocolate bar that we had incase we needed a treat for Lily to chew on during take off and landing is still in my bag but I am loath to eat it. I might eventually eat it but for now it is safe in our luggage. It is the fear of having these cravings last longer than is holding me back, nothing more than that. Plus, my belly is massively bloated again, probably part of the process of detoxing. It is bigger than when I was eating grains but has only come up in the last two days, so we will see how long it takes to go away again… permanently.

Something more pleasant to share. The nights here are full of the sounds of little creatures singing their songs, it is peaceful and soothing to my mind which has been excited all day. It is late and way past my bedtime… Goodnight.