The last couple of days have been spent reflecting on how the year has gone, the friendships made and those put aside, achievements and disappointments and cleaning the house in preparation for the New Year.
For most of the year, it was a continuation of the year without alcohol. This stretched out to 14 months before I actually had a drink & when I did, I felt so wretched the next day that I decided I would be better off avoiding it again. Of course, just to make sure, I did have another drink or two or more before going back to the alcohol free life! Being alcohol free has challenged others more than me at times. There were times that I felt like I could have had a drink, but I resisted.
The year started with some confusion as acknowledgement of a teaching position didn’t come through officially, but when I phoned the school, I was assured that I was to start at the end of January. Disappointment followed upon finding out that I was to be paid at graduate level as I had not worked in the State Education system. Negotiations continued in the first week as the contract had not been drawn up and eventually I was offered a rate above graduate, but not commensurate with my years of experience. Still, an opportunity to teach in a small school and to put aside some money to continue my education and to pay the rent on my rooms.

Easter came and we made the trek to Heathcote, looking forward to playing in the labyrinths. The weather was great, yet I didn’t do any work on the labyrinths this year, except for a small tidy up. One of the other campers was in an unresourceful state, so after long deliberation, we have decided not to return in 2011- which will break a 20+ year tradition – we will do something different!

In June we headed off to Cape York. I had an uneasy feeling about it before leaving, yet nothing happened on the Cape York part of the trip! It was on the homeward leg from Birdsville to Innaminka that got tricky and took 5 and a bit hours to do about 100km.

Back in Melbourne and a week of NLP. Love it! Goes so well with the Hypnotherapy. Most weeknight evenings were spent online listening to lectures for the Cert 4 of Business & Diploma that I have undertaken. So much information, some challenging and taking up the challenge has been a journey.
New friends through new ventures and a wardrobe restyle for a new look. So much has changed this year. There is the saying “Change your mind, change your life” and this has been so true. The time came to make a decision about teaching and in a way that was made for me, when a child struck out at me and then picked up his chair and came at me. Neither he nor I wanted to be at school at that time and place. Days later my back gave out and I couldn’t walk for a week. The gift was being able to meet with some amazing people and teach some incredible children in that time and have positive memories to take with me.

One door closes and another opens. I’m taking a tiny peek through the door to 2011and loving the feeling of excitement that I’m getting……..

Once upon a time, in a place we shall call Mogadon Meadows, there lived a giant and his wife.
The giant was fond of a certain type of food and each morning would get into his shiny red car and drive through the golden arches to get his breakfast. He was proud of his girth and thought he looked somewhat like a Sumo wrestler, just lacking the topknot on his disproportionaly small head. Usually garbed in a blue singlet and trackpants he liked to prowl the streets in his red car, driving slowly and menacingly close when he chanced upon the woman next door walking her dog.
Mr Red the giant, so named because red was his favourite colour, also had a big red truck which he liked to wash early every Sunday morning and shine the chrome with an electric polisher.
His wife, Mrs Red liked to help him with this although she preferred to hold the hose and water the garden, sometimes accidently letting the water go over the fence and splashing the woman next door as she sat in her garden studying her big, strange books. Mrs Red liked red too, so much so that she had the brightest red hair in the street.
Mr and Mrs Red didn’t care much for people who had their noses in books all the time, thinking that it was a waste of time and paper. Besides, all those ideas could be dangerous and why would you need to learn a foreign language? They enjoyed decorating their windows with colourful anti migration posters when the woman next door hosted a party for exchange students and Mrs Red accidently turned the hose on too hard when she started the watering.

Mrs Red got really grumpy when the children next door and the child over the road found the ripe cherry plums and made patterns with them on the road. They squished under the tyres of the big red truck and the red car and made a dreadful red mess on the road outside her house. Even hosing them away didn’t make her feel better.

One day Mr and Mrs Red noticed that the man next door was sometimes away. He had a job in the big city and worked long hours, so it was often late when they heard the gate being opened and shut.
Mr Red thought it would be nice to phone the woman next door late at night, but at the last minute he felt quite shy and would hang up. Sometimes he would try several times and each time just as she answered, he would feel bashful and tongue- tied and not be able to say anything.
Seven years passed by and one day as Mr Red drove slowly past the house on the corner he noticed something had changed. There in the hedge was an auction sign. He stopped the car and reversed to read it more closely. He wasn’t sure what to think. He and Mrs Red were looking forward to the auction and were disappointed when they discovered it was sold 2 days before.
Another seven years passed by and the children next door were all grown up. They had forgotten about Mr and Mrs Red, although the woman next door still felt her heart flip and a slight panic whenever she saw a particular type of red car near her new house. She didn’t worry about phone calls anymore because the phone company had a device that showed who was calling. Mr Red didn’t call anymore because he couldn’t tell when the man next door was away.
One day the girl next door got a phone call from a friend, a kind young girl, who was quite distressed.
The kind young girl was working at the local supermarket when one of the regular customers, a grumpy old giant had become unwell. He went white, then blue which wasn’t good at all, so she did the CPR she had learnt for her other job until the paramedics arrived. They took over but he died on the floor of the shop in the health food aisle, which was quite ironic because he wasn’t healthy at all.  Later that same day a grumpy old lady with short, bright red hair came in and was very angry with the kind young girl for not saving Mr Red’s life. The kind young girl got to wait for another 3 hours with the now dead Mr Red, for the Coroner to arrive.

The girl next door told her mother who had finished reading all her books and was now a healer. The woman next door said “That was probably Mr Red” and thought nothing more of it until the kind young girl arrived for a session to take away the vision of the grumpy old giant’s face turning blue.
The kind young girl arrived and began talking about the grumpy old giant. She said his name was Mr Red and the woman next door and her daughter both looked at each other in astonishment.
The woman next door ran a gamut of emotions and was able to realize the extent of the gift that Mr and Mrs Red had given her.
The woman next door had moved to a fairytale house in the trees where she felt safe every night and was able to finish reading her books without getting water on them if she sat outside to become a healer and talk to a remarkable young woman who showed care and concern for a stranger.
And Mr Red got the greatest gift of all, passing from this lifetime attended by a capable and caring young healer, despite his grumpiness. The woman next door and her family knew that they were finally free from the threats of the grumpy giant and his angry wife when they found out that one of the Coroner’s staff was a friend of the boy next door.
Even more surprising was when the woman next door went to get her hair cut a week later, the hairdresser had just cut the hair of the aunt of the late Mr Red, proving that it is, indeed, a VERY small world.