THE GREAT HARDWARE ARGUMENT

What is it about a Hardware store that has men and women at each others throats!!! 

We all know about men, their love of sheds and their great desire to spend hours cruising around the Hardware store to fill them.  

Mr G can spend hours in the Shop checking this and that and coming back armed with more things than he intended…he just loves it. He comes home as happy as a chipmunk!

That is, until he takes me along!!!!

I think the problems lies with the fact I am an ideas person and I can come up with ingenious plans for fixing all and sundry.   He is a ‘get the precise item and no veering from the choice made at home’ sort of guy.

Our latest experience had us in heated debate in the middle of the shop - over the silliest item.  

Hooks!

I had an unused mirror stand and I wanted to take the mirror off the stand, attach hooks and hang it!!  Sounds simple doesn't it?  Maybe I should have left it to the ‘expert',  but it was my sort of my project and my mind was sifting through all the possibilities.  And the trouble with me is I don’t really know what the possibilities are until I get to the Hardware store. I need to see what there is available for goodness sake!!!

I cruise up and down the aisles looking for the elusive hooks, while Mr G is off researching picket fences.  

When he finds me in the hook aisle I have come up with a myriad of possibilities.  I spit out the list of options and this is where it all goes pear shaped.  

Well, we do have to remember men’s brains are a one thing at a time processing plant and to subject them to a list of options will cause confusion and mind blowing ‘sufferability’!!!

Mr G was not impressed.  There was no way possible that he was able to process, let alone imagine, any of the suggested options while standing in the hooks aisle.  

He told me point blank that I knew nothing about this sort of thing – this was his domain and I should leave things to him!! Ummmmmm.......

Anyhow - I just found this little peep into life in my old file of stories and I did have a laugh!! 

And the point of the matter is, the mirror is up and has been up for years now and so, Mr G was right!!!!

Whatever HE did – did work!!

So now, if we should go to the dreaded Hardware Store - I head straight for the plants section and let him find me there!!!!!  

Well, hey, isn't that what life is all about....... you live and learn!!!!

What would you do if your husband told you he wanted to be a woman?

I was listening to the radio today and the interviewer was speaking to a married couple - and the reason for the interview - to talk about the fact that the man had recently told his wife that he no longer wished to be a man.  

He had decided it was a woman he now wanted to be - operation and all!!!

DING DING DING!! Can you imagine that?  What a shock it would be for you, the wife, trying to get your head around your whole married life.

The man/woman (well she is a woman now) is the father of two young girls (incredibly devoted), was a Captain in the Army (position still be negotiated now he is a woman) and seemingly a great husband (ummmmmmm). 

The wife sounded shattered and sad - trying to come to terms with how she plays a part in all of this.  There she is married to the man of her dreams to living with someone who looks like him but has longer hair than her and wearing a dress.  No wonder she sounded sad!!!  

I wondered how the wife would cope in the future.  Things are going fine for her husband/woman as it is all his/her way!  He/She has experienced marriage, the creation of two beautiful little souls, and managed to carve out a 'masculine' job for himself.  Now he wants change!  Now he wants to be a woman because he always felt he wanted to be a woman. 

Who wants to be a woman that is not already a woman!!! It's not the 'bees knees' you know!!!!

Anyhow, he felt like it, he wanted it, he had the hormones and the surgery!! 

His dear wife is a saint in my books as she stays to support him and cope amidst the tatters of her marriage.  But without him at the moment she has nothing and would be all alone in her own worst nightmare!  She says she doesn't want to leave the 'marriage' because she still loves him and cares about him.  But where would she go!!!  She has a roof over her head and arms of love that still encircle her and that is at least something!

But I am thinking (and it is just a presumption mind) that the minute the 'husband/woman' finds himself a bloke he/she would be off like a shot and the wife will be hurt yet again!!!  Or is he/she now a Lesbian and want a woman!!!!  Boy oh boy!!!!  What a muddle!

So my advice to his wife, think about yourself in all of this, and the kids.  Go and fulfil your life as you would like it to be.  At the moment while you are grieving the loss of your husband, having someone who is sort of your 'husband' around, is probably comforting and makes everything seem alright for now. 

Go to their website here and let me know what you think!!!! 

It's called Just Like You, but I beg to differ!!!!     

Or read about my attending the Mars and Venus Conference where a transexual spoke at one of the presentations and get his heart felt story. 

Click here

Ummmm, I am thinking of the joking remarks made about OTHERS.  

Would they be considered humorous or hideous?  

Most of us would be happy to make a joke about ourselves and laugh heartily.  But does this give us the 'right' to do the same to others.  Maybe, just maybe others take things seriously and are sensitive about anything or everything. 

What is 'right'!  Well, I guess 'right' is to never say anything!  Watch out and mind your tongue and never open up about 'life' and life's funny situations.  

Many people  make a jokes about common topics without malicious intent.  Seeing funny situations and trying to make funny stories is everyone's prerogative, isn't it!!

We live in a world where we can have our say or be slammed for having it!!!!  So what to do!  Zip that mouth shut and never express your feelings because you may say something which may be taken in a bad way.  Or express your feelings and hope that it is taken as a point of view!

I guess it is all about the person who is speaking, how they are talking, the nature of the topic and who is listening!!!!

But it is really really strange how what we say can be poison or treacle!!!

Let me know what you think.  Are you never judgmental and 'politically' correct or do you say it how you see it?

Cheers Gigi  

I was watching a TV show the other night called something like 'Extreme Makeover'.  

The star of the show spends three months living with the client and then leaves him to exercise and diet who then supposedly comes up with great results at the end of the year.  In fact, the before and after photos are usually stunning - but last night, 'Shock upon Shock' - the participant failed!!!  

The 'obese' man (let's call him Bill) weighed in at an extraordinary 490lbs - which I assure you, is huge! He was so keen and excited to get slimmer for his wife and young child.  Things started well.  In the first three months with the star living with him at his house, guiding him on his way, he lost 110lbs.  Great stuff.  Then it was cheerio to the host and down to normal living.

Bill, of course, had to resume normal life.  On his way to work he must have passed 10 fast food outlets. Fast food was his addiction.  Once or twice he succumbed and at his next weigh in he had put on weight. 

The star visited him at home during the next 3 months only to find out that he had been sneaking all sorts of bad things into the house to eat and that he had gorged his way through all the fast food places practicably every day.  When he was weighed this time he was back well over 400lbs. 

This man wept as explained his addiction to fast food and his self loathing at eating it when he knew he shouldn't.  The last we saw of him was being deposited at the psychologist for something more than exercise and dieting.  He was in fact, a full blown food addict and it was destroying his health the same way an alcoholic or drug addict would do.  

He had everything at his finger tips to make the change but he had no control over himself, over his life.  He was well and truly out of control.

Here was a show demonstrating failure. Pretty remarkable when you think these weight loss shows are keen to inspire.  I was a bit scared that the 'back firing' result might be harmful to all those big people out there who thought that with all the will the world you could do it.  Not so it seems!

Life can get us when we go to extremes.  There are people who die when they participate in extreme sports, drinking alcohol will have your kidneys begging for a break and perhaps kill you, I can't imagine what a body riddled with drugs would be screaming.  And then there is food.  Stuff it right in and you blow right out.

Control folks. It is simple and as hard as that.  What goes on in our heads is the key.  Seek help if you are out of control and become a new you.  

Our New Years Resolution is to be in control.  To save ourselves - we can do it.....

Good luck to you all...........

Cheers

Gigi

Does weather bother you? Are you a big fan of living in exquisitely precise airconditioning?  

We have air conditioning in my office and I believe we are being 'cryogenically' held in an non ageing temperature akin to deep freeze.   I don't like a subzero temperature for my working environment even if it means I get to live til 200.  By the end of the day my bones are so frozen it takes the entire trip home for my hands to stop tingling as the blood returns to them!!!! 

Bad air conditioning can be very unpleasant.  I would prefer to be hot or cold - relevant to the days temperature - rather than forcibly operating in the preferred conditions of some psychopath who has control of the reins.  

Look, I am an Aussie and I love hot weather.  Sure throw on the air conditioner when you need to but don't forget it uses masses of power.  Try a jumping in some cold water or even whinge and complain, but if it is hot so we should be hot!!!! You are getting a free sauna, sweating all out muck through your pores and think about how good the sun is for you.  Your body is loving it.  

But I love cold weather too. Rugged up, snuggled under blankets or sitting in front of a warm fire...yes, cold can be good too.  You don't need to swan around in your shorts and T-shirt in the middle of winter do you? What is all that about!!!  Do you really need to live your entire year in a perfectly tepid temperature.  

Gosh we are a bit too precious if we can't hack the odd hot day or freezing winter - but then again I live in Australia and maybe the days are never excruciatingly hot or cold hence my point of view!!! 

I say put the air conditioner if you must for those unbearable days.  We really don't need perfect conditions or bad air conditioning if you ask me.  I've tried the odd complaint at the office and things did improve from below freezing to above - but its still not right. 

And the gym!!!!!My gracious, the air conditioning there is so cold  I am always complaining.  For goodness sake, it is a gym...we are meant to feel hot!  When you left the class in the good old days, you were a dripping mess and it was plainly obvious you had lost a truckload of weight.  

Now, as we wait for the class to start I have my towel wrapped around my shoulders as it is freeeeeeezing. Cold air conditioning spews forth and eight large fans spin!  Then at the end you feel weird if you ask me. I have cold sweaty clothes and any sweat that got a chance to ooze from my body is instantly dried so my skin is clammy.  Anyhow, I find it very bizare!  I say bring back the good old days when the room was like a steam room.

And how strange it all is.  I have just been alerted to the fact that Fitness Firsts have a new class called Hot Yoga!!!!  Yes, they have a room where you can do your slow Yoga as hot steam is poured into the room so you can lose your weight practically motionless.  Why not let the Body Attackers get hot and steamy doing their fast moves!!!

We humans do funny things to ourselves is all I can say! 

If you wonder what this blog is about, well it is just my ponderings on the relevance of air conditioning as we all do battle with the weather conditions.  

Today was apparently 37 degrees and I felt cold all day.  As I left the office and stepped through the door into the hot steamy heat - and as it wrapped itself around my freezing body, I was in seventh heaven. 

I could definitely live without air conditioning- could you!

Cheers Gigi