he is home and safe

and things are reverting pretty much to normal. almost in sync with his arrival, the weather turned cold and wet this week, and the autumn leaves that have been stubbornly clinging on are now mostly scattered across the lawns and filling the gutters.

his trip was an eventful one ... with snippets now trickling through as he remembers them. like yesterday morning when he came out and said " did i tell you how i got approached for a modelling job in singapore?" of course, he hadn't, so i pressed him for details :) apparently some guy had approached him in the street and told him they were looking for young guys for a modelling shoot the following week and would he be interested. gave him a business card and everything. my boy said - somewhat incredulously, that he was only in singapore for a day, and the scout looked most upset and asked him if he would be back in singapore any time soon. "not very likely" said my boy (who btw hated singapore). and the scout went on his way. joey went on to tell me the guy looked a bit dodgy, and apparently joey's girlfriend (who had been with him at the time the man approached) had run off as soon as he started talking to joey. lol.

anyway, he wasn't kidnapped for the white slave trade, and also hasn't started on the road to international modelling stardom!

he has struggled a bit this week with understandable tiredness and some asthma, but would go back to France in a heartbeat (and yes, me with him!!!)

had to stop for a minute and sort out a computer emergency ... all good now, thanks to the joey helpdesk (yes he is at school and i rang him on his mobile!)

the traveller returns!

tomorrow morning at 9.30am we go to the airport to pick up joey from his trip to France. i am looking forward to seeing him and hearing all the stories and seeing all the photos from his trip. i am excited about how much he will have learned about the world, and watching changes unfold in him as he processes it all and gets used to being back home again.

the three weeks has gone so quickly - for him and for us I am sure. I would so love to travel back there with him and share some of his memories and experiences.

love and respect

so i was reading in another blog about the possibility that what men most want in a relationship is respect, and what women want is love.

and i am wondering if your experience of life and relationships suggests that to be true ... or otherwise.

i can see some truth in it for certain ... i know that other things, material things, are not the priority in relationships for me - just the windowdressing of the comfort zone, for me having the assurance of love is most important as the foundation for adventuring into the world.

respect is something i feel needs to be earned - it is not automatically conveyed. in my family, physical affection and words of love were not casual daily events. they were reserved for special occasions, birthdays, events, celebrations of achievement.

so i have grown up to distrust those who throw out words of love too easily. to me, that wasn't real or true unless the other person actually knew me enough to really choose to love me or not.

i did make sure, though, in bringing up my own children, that words of love flowed more easily and they were never in doubt of how we felt about them. And we have encouraged them to hug and be hugged, or to ask for a hug when they feel the need for comfort. All things that never happened for me and my brothers as children.

in more recent years, i have developed a different idea about love and sharing love with others .... as an infinite resource, that can be dipped into at will and never runs dry. i have real concern and love for my friends who i have only met online, as well as those i have also had the privilege of meeting in the flesh.

and of course for the friends i meet and talk with daily or weekly.

amongst my women friends i find it easy to share an unconditional form of affection, and find it puzzling when in some cases, their male partners find the same women threatening, undermining of their masculinity, and who knows what else.

is it simply their own insecurities they are projecting, or is there something more? are they seeking respect from their partner?

i don't really have the answers, but i feel like i am swimming in the soup of these questions at the moment, perhaps because i am heading towards my mid forties, and around me, mid-life crises are burgeoning like many headed hydrangeas!

with love

Moving on and wondering ...

what is in the air at the moment?!! seems that there are lots of people experiencing dramatic life changes around me ... most of them painful. I don't know what is behind it all, or if they are simply coincidental, but i sure hope it all stops soon!

over the weekend i took part in an ashes scattering ceremony ... the weather turned out much better than expected so we were able to do it on the water at one of my stepmother's favourite childhood locations. it was very emotional and quite hard for many of those present, but provided a degree of closure - and the ability to begin to move on with life.

I loved connecting with the men of my family again - my brother and my father, who i see too seldom. One day I will persuade them all back to live somewhere near me!

I also had an insight into appreciating something that we all too often (we meaning I) take for granted - having a reliable memory. Surrounded by older family members and hearing the same stories repeatedly, i truly understood just how valuable it is to have good recall of not only what is going on right now, or who we have just told a certain story to, but also of our more distant past.

I love that older people (in their 70s or more) have such a wonderful recall and so many stories of their own childhood experiences. Not for the first time i have a desire to record those memories before it is too late.

podcast, swicki and video!

so there they all are now!

if you want to hear my voice (sounding as my son said like a public service announcement - i used my " radio" voice) click on the top link where it says Karen's test podcast and have a listen!

might record a more fun one at some point and add it in for my friends to listen to :)

play with clicking on the phrases in the swicki "cloud" and see what comes up for your searches - they can be quite interesting.

that's all for now, I have some other missions to take care of today ... spot you later.

check out the Adventurous women swicki at eurekster.com

http://gettingheard.mypodcast.com/index.html