These are the days my friend

Thank you daylight savings for your lovely six month stay. We were sorry to see you go with your balmy evenings and late sunsets and toddlers that slept till 7am.

How absolutely bonkers is it that putting the clocks back ONE MEASLY HOUR can turn your whole world upside down? For the first week, I feel like I had a daylight savings hangover. Morning wake-ups at 6am instead of 7am and afternoons that dragged on like a Logies telecast.

"Can it really only be 6.30pm?" I moaned every day last week when my body was expecting to have already eaten dinner and would have been anticipating the joy relief tender moment when I lay Francesca in her cot to sleep. At 6.30, she was still demanding to eat 'gwapes in the barf'!

My body clock caught up with itself this week. John and I decided we would take advantage of the early starts and Indian summer weather by taking the kids to the beach this morning at 6.30am, followed by brekkie at our local cafe.

I'm so glad we did.

The water was warm and calm. While the kids played on the beach, John and I struck out with long strokes across the bay - him shearing through the water with strong freestyle, me setting a more languid pace on my back. We duck-dived to the ripply sand on the bottom and shot like arrows through hazy green and blue back to the surface. Such a beautiful start to the morning.

These are the days my friends. You know . . . the days. The ones we'll look back on and think "Life was bloody good."

Grand Dames & End Games

A year ago today, the Barraclough clan gathered at the home of my splendid mother-in-law Dorothy. We sat around her antique mahogany dining room table, spread out the place mats and coasters like she always showed us, and ate Shepherd's Pie. We talked and told stories and even laughed a little while down the hall, Dorothy lay in her bed (her own bed, mind you) dying.

And it was beautiful. Sad, of course, but also beautiful. Being together as a family, surrounding her with love, going as far as we could on the next part of her journey with her. It felt like the highest honour.

While we ate dinner, a carer sat with the sleeping Dorothy. Her jobs done, her patient comfortable, she sat there holding Dorothy's hand, stroking her hair, talking to her softly, crying occasionally. Why was she so devoted to this dying elderly woman, lavishing so much love and care on her? She had barely known her patient and the Dorothy she had known was not healthy, vibrant, golf-playing Dorothy, champion roast dinner cooker and witty raconteur. She was at the end of her life, fearful of leaving, tired of staying - a combination that will make anyone a tad cranky.

But something always shone through. Even when things were at their most grim, Dorothy had a light inside her that still burned brightly and an elegance about her that never left. She was a Grand Dame in the full trouser-wearing, razor-witted, glamourous Katherine Hepburn-esque meaning of the word.

The formidable Ms Hepburn once said "If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun" and that was so true of my spririted MIL. Her grandchildren adored her because she had such an enormous sense of fun, setting up games of indoor bowls and encouraging them to raid the biscuit jar when parents weren't looking. She told me only a few years ago that she still felt like her 21 year old self in her mind. I'll remember that when my own body starts to fail me.

Kate Hepburn also said "Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get, only with what you are expecting to give, which is everything". Truer words were never spoken. Dorothy gave and gave, with never any expectation of return, a quality that I admire and strive to emulate. It's hard to do (try it!), but she made it a way of life. Giving - love, money, food, golf tips, an ear to listen - was her modus operandi. Even at her sickest in hospital, she would learn all about her favourite nurses lives, asking them questions and taking an interest in them. I suspect this may also have been one of her wily ways of detracting attention from herself. The nurses and carers were all devoted to her.

She could also be tough, especially in a debate. But so damn classy with it. A velvet sledgehammer sipping Irish whiskey.

Tonight, I'll be thinking of that final dinner in her home, the night she breathed in and out for the last time and drifted off to meet her badly missed husband on the other side of this life.

She's with us though. We like to keep her around, not just in our hearts and minds, but in the photograph that sits on top of the piano where, in her wedding dress made of pure white parachute silk, she keeps an eye on Jack's fingers skipping across the keys. In the quilt that rests on the back of a chair in Francesca's room. In her favourite crystal tumbler from which John drinks his nightly whiskey. And she is brilliant about finding me car parking spots when I most need them.

I wrote this poem (actually that seems too posh a term for what is just a few rhyming sentences) and read it at her funeral. For it is the minutiae that can sometimes offer an insight into a person.

Dorothy’s Pearls Of Wisdom

Bridge is wonderful, you must learn how to play

Don’t ever call in during Home and Away

The best bananas are Lady Finger

After one’s putt, one mustn’t linger

In arguments or debates, you must be a ninja

Every dish is improved by the addition of ginger

Skim milk is awful, you must drink full cream

When sewing one must do a neat French seam

Religion is suspect, have you considered Buddha?

Some of those priests and ministers shoulda

Embrace golf and bridge but give bowls the flick

And Richard may be Rich, but not Rick or Dick

Those new fangled tech investments are far too risky

Whatever you do, don’t drown the whiskey

The only dog worth having is a golden retriever

Behave like a lady, never a diva

When on the tee, just breathe and swing

On the car? It’s a scratch, never a ding

A book must have a decent plot

And the name is Dorothy, NEVER Dot!

Vale dear Dorothy. We miss you every day xxx

Genea wins Masterchef with new soup

As if it wasn't enough that Genea has a 30% higher success rate than the average of all other IVF clinics in Australia, the good doctors and scientists there have had another amazing breakthrough, increasing your chance of getting pregnant by a further 26% per embryo transferred.

Talk about a bunch of show-offs! But seriously, if you're thinking of trying IVF, you want this bunch of clever show-offs in your corner. In fact, I would go so far to say in the manner of loud television infomercial host "why go anywhere else?!"

A few weeks ago, Genea received TGA approval to use their new and improved 'culture medium' (the solution that the egg, sperm and embryo grow in) for all IVF patients going forward.

If it were Masterchef, Matt Preston would be declaring that the cook's clever inclusion of lemongrass and chilli have made the soup literally POP with flavour to create an absolute winner!

I think my favourite IVF doctor Prof Mark Bowman summed it up beautifully (you can read the full article here):

"We are very happy with this. I am a big believer in minimising the randomness of IVF. We can give patients a better chance to have a successful pregnancy in a shorter time. It saves money and heartache."

Saving money and heartache. Isn't that what it's all about? Ask any couple embarking on IVF what their two biggest fears are and they will be (a) fear of failure and (b) how much it's all going to cost. This new development in the land of IVF minimises both of those things and in my opinion, that's not just a scientific coup but another warm blanket for IVF couples to wrap around themselves on a journey that can sometimes feel long and lonely.

Letting Go

Letting go . . . 

I've been thinking a lot lately about the concept of 'letting go' and conversely, why we become so attached to things and people in the first place. Buddha is good on this. Do you know Buddha? He's that laid back guy sitting under the tree in the park with a smile on his face.

Of course there's the cruel attachment one forms with one's favourite TV shows and the agonising wrench of having to let go of Don Draper or the good folk at Downton Abbey at the end of every season. It's difficult but achievable, especially as there are always reruns of Modern Family to fill the gaping hole with lovable humour.

Harder to let go of are people. And not just the horrible-nasty-no-good-very-bad-just-plain-mean people who pop up in everyone's life at one stage or another. They should be let go, and rightly so.
But sometimes it's important to let the people you love go too.

Let me explain . . .

We've just moved to a house high on a hill overlooking the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean. Every morning at dawn I stand in the still, cool air on the deck of our house, high above the world. From this vantage, the sky also seems bigger - I can see banks of clouds running towards us through the blue overhead and big bashing storms forming out to sea. And perhaps because I feel so small in the universe amongst all of that, I suddenly feel more 'me' than I do at any other time of the day.

Not a mother.

Not a wife.

Not a daughter.

Not a business owner.

Not a friend.

Just. Me.

All alone, with my childhood dreams, my sense of wonder, my knowledge of all that I am. A happy introvert. A sentimentalist. A believer in love and forgiveness. Too emotional at times and sometimes not emotional enough. A former fairy-believer. A tryer who is sometimes trying. A girl who wants to be everything all at once and fails to be anything often. A dreamer who would rather write a cool novel than make a cold call. A shower-singer. A total dag.

And it's such a gorgeous, liberating feeling to have those few minutes just being grateful and accepting where I am right now. My place in the universe.

But to get to that place, it's necessary to let everything go. Fear and anxiety are inherently linked to the things and people in our lives. Worrying about something happening to the children, anxiety about jobs, money, the future. It's all too much. Modern life is overwhelming. It wakes us up at 3am and gnaws at us. No wonder we're all so tired all the time. It's fricking exhausting being a human being on this earth, being harrassed at 3am by an internal harridan about the cupcakes for the school fete and the screechy brakes on the car and the mean kid who's telling your child they're not allowed to play.

But up on my deck, my eyrie, for those few minutes, I bring the people I love in close to me and I thank the universe for them, their health, and everything we have in our lives. Then one by one, I let them drift away from me. My husband, my parents, my children. I send them floating off into the sky on their own journeys, knowing that they will back with me momentarily, after I've had my fill of solitude. Of getting back to me.

It's like picking up a beloved book from long ago and rediscovering a gorgeous, warm story. One you can come back to again and again.

Happy Friday xx

Image author's own doodle. Note the excellent big hair and absence of tuckshop arms.

Empathy Trumps Ego . . . (sometimes)

Last Tuesday morning as I was emerging from the crazy, nonsensical land of the 5am dreamscape (you know the kind of dream I mean . . . where you're the curiously ugly ten year old love child of Don & Megan Draper living in a cave in the middle of Manhattan and eating pistachios through a straw), when I heard a muffled expletive. At first I thought I had dreamed it (perhaps Don ran out of whiskey & cigarettes) but then I heard the kitchen door open and realised it must be Ryan.

Ryan is our 22 year old rower and is often up at dawn's crack to scull the waterways of Sydney's harbour, so the fact he was awake at that time wasn't unusual. But something was amiss. I entered the kitchen to find him bleeding from the knee and shoulder. He'd missed a step in the dark on his way to the car, taken a tumble and shoulder-charged the tyre of the car whilst his knee made love to the pebble-crete path.

Later in the day, Francesca became fascinated with Ryan's injuries, with the following exchange occurring at least twenty seven times before bed time:

Francesca: "Ryry?"
Ryan: "Yes Francesca?"
F: "What happened?"
R: "I fell over"
F: "Hurt your knee?"
R: "Yes I hurt my knee"
F: "On tyre?"
R: "Yes on the tyre of the car"
F: "In dark?"
R: "Yes, in the dark"
F: "Oh"
Pause
F: "Okay?" as she pats Ryan on the leg
R: "Yes, I'm okay"

Pause for ten seconds.

F: "Ryry, what happened?"
R: "I fell over"
F: "Hurt knee?"
etc., and so on and so forth.

This exchange continued on for days, in almost exactly the same order. The most fascinating part of the whole affair seemed to be the bit about it happening in the dark. Sometimes we'd turn the tables and ask Francesca "What happened to Ryan?" and she would answer "Fell over", then add melodramatically "In the dark!!"

Oh it seems so boring written down like this but honestly it provided hours of amusement for us last week. What can I say, we are thrill seekers who love to live on the edge. And none of the good TV shows have started yet. We take our entertainment where we can get it. We're also cheap. No fancy Foxtel for us. We'd rather spend our money on booze and pills and pokies.

JOKING! We only spend big on booze.

The thing I really loved about the whole Ryan-falling-in-dark episode, however, was that it showed how much our little girl is growing up. The ego in a two year old is always firmly present - the self-absorbed pop princess diva is still in residence, ordering room service, leaving lipstick stains on the pillows and yelling at housekeeping - but the empathy gene is getting a look in.

Suddenly the plastic newborn doll whose head she was previously using as a step ladder to reach inside the cutlery drawer, is her special baby. She takes Baby to bed, cuddles her, feeds her and washes her. Baby often does a poo and needs her nappy changed with the assistance of MANY wet wipes. Baby also seems to be rather grizzly and in need of cuddles with her mama cooing "It's okay, it's okay" over and over. It's such a joy to watch.

Just don't try to separate the girl from her biscuit or you will discover that the toddler version of Nicky Minaj is alive and well and dishing out death stares in Collaroy.

The Other Byron

You know how sometimes you get back from holidays and you need a holiday after the holiday? Usually because the original holiday involved small children and having sand flung in your face and in your ear and in other places that sand should never normally go (except when you're seventeen and the dunes behind the caravan park at Torquay are the only place you and your boyfriend can . . . oh wait . . . my mum reads this. Hi Mum! I drank two West Coast Coolers there too. Phew! Okay, that's THAT off my chest!)

I love those holidays, I really do (even the sand, because you can wash it off in the ocean and who doesn't love to wash sand off themselves forty seven times in a two hour beach session?!), but they can be exhausting.

And then there are the holidays that, for whatever reason, just feel easier. The days amble along slowly, full of long book reading sessions, delicious food, easy choices and simple pleasures. Even with kids. They seem to just fall into line with your holiday rhythm and put their best barefoot forward.

Our spontaneous January jaunt to the Byron region was just such a holiday. Notice how I said 'region'? That's because we did something we've never done in fourteen years of visiting Byron and booked three days at a cottage in the Byron hinterland.

The lush green chequerboard of verdant farm lands, avenues of macadamia crops and pockets of rainforest that stretches west of Byron Bay has always appealed to me since we attended a wedding there several years ago. So I convinced my surfer husband to spend a few days soaking up some mountain air before heading back down to the briny blue and hairy armpits of Byron Bay.

We're so glad we did. We all fell in love with it. From the adorable cottage we rented, to the roadside stalls where we picked up a tub of macadamia honey for $2 and bunches of flowers for $1, to the sneaky secret local's swimming hole where we whiled away hot hinterland afternoons under shady gums, we felt like we could stay forever.

Don't you just want to eat a scone piled with cream under this tree?

On our first afternoon, the clouds rolled in and it was magnificent!

One of the many avenues winding through the hinterland. I was hooked on the tree canopies overhead and the dappled sunlight . . .

Another avenue. More dappling . . .

Ah . . . a dappled avenue. Dappled, dappled, dappled!

Whoever invented the squatter's chair deserves a scone and a cuppa!

Daddy adoration

Because rustic French doors need fat patchwork chickens hanging from them . . .

Our swimming hole. I could tell you where it is, but the locals would kill me and throw me in it. Which wouldn't be pleasant for anyone.

A little apprehensive about the whole 'swimming in a river' thing . . .

. . . but soon got the hang of it!

Lunch at Harvest in Newrybar with our good mates, the divine Susie & Taffy. They were the ones whose wedding inspired me to explore the Byron hinterland. Did I say wedding? It was more like a fabulous three day love-fest and eating frenzy.

'Ladies who lunch' - there were adorable, irresistible photographic tableaux all over the cottage

My 95 year old grandma Elaine still uses one of these pretty weighted covers over her water glass. An underrated & sorely missed domestic apparatus!

There are roadside stalls like this dotted all over the lanes and byways of the hinterland and they are nigh on impossible to resist! They operate on an honesty system. I'm thinking of putting one out the front of our house selling single socks and textas without lids but I'm not sure it'll take off . . .

After leading a dappled mountain lifestyle for three days, we headed 25 minutes down the highway to Byron Bay for our beach fix, leaving behind the shady glades (dappled as they were) and quaint shopfronts of Bangalow. 

We stayed at one of those good ol' fashioned resorts where the married couple owner/operators can be seen doing everything from greeting guests at reception to skimming leaves from the pool. It had two tennis courts, a few barbeques and even a games room with a table tennis table which took me right back to family holidays at the army barracks in freezing winter-time Queenscliff when I was a kid, my cousins and I inventing ever more complicated rules for long drawn out battles over the table tennis table.

We drank coffee and ate giant bacon and egg rolls at Top Shop, brought the tone down at fancy-schmancy Wategos with our anatomically correct sand men sculptures, sat in the long rippling shallows at The Pass, and dobbed on The Rudest Waitress In The World who refused to ask the barman to make me a Cosmopolitan, even though it said on the menu "Ask our barman to whip up your favourite cocktail"!

When Byron insisted on getting all tropical on us and raining one morning, we dropped into the local bead shop for some serious hippy time, making groovy bracelets man, and giving our skin a breather from all that zinc cream!

Flying baby - her favourite game, when the muscly fellas in the family are up to it

So many beads, so little arm space!

Jack spent nearly 2 hours making the most elaborate bracelet. Which broke. Luckily we were still in the shop and the friendly staff at Bongo Beads helped us put it all back together again in no time.

Wategos - the classy Byron beach

Our anatomically correct sand man - and so the Barras bring a little less class to Wategos!

What did you get up to over the holidays? Catch some rays? Delve into a good novel or two? Dob in a rude waiter? Do share!

Holiday hugs xo

Through The Golden Door

Waiting for the Golden Door Glow . . . (head in the clouds already on Day One though)

When John asked me what I wanted for Christmas last year, I couldn’t really think of a single material thing I needed, apart from some new moisturizer (and a villa in Tuscany, but that goes without saying!)

But when he pressed me to think of an idea of something I might really like, it suddenly came to me. The thing I really wanted was time. Time to think, time to write, time to be alone. To go to bed when I felt like it (which still seems to be 9pm despite physically holding my eyelids open and telling my brain to channel its inner naughty, midnight-feast-eating Enid Blyton schoolgirl) and get up when I felt like it (which happens to still be the crack of dawn, despite scrunching my eyes closed and telling my brain to channel a 16 year old and sleep till noon!)

With a house full of people, including two adult kids living at home, there is rarely a shortage of someone to chat to, someone to help with the kidlets and a totem tennis partner is always at hand. However, getting extended periods of bona fide, toddler-free time alone is hard to come by. As much as I adore my little Cesca-Belle, she is, like most 2 year olds, a high maintenance rock star diva who believes the people surrounding her have been provided simply to entertain her and cater to her every demand. Mostly John and I. But of course she is non-discriminatory; if you enter her orbit for more than five minutes, you too will be put to work in the manner of court jester, lady-in-waiting or lackey.

To be honest, I would have been happy to jump on the bus and head into town for a weekend of gallery hopping, scribbling blog notes over a latte in some trendy cafe and lolling about in a giant hotel bed with a bag of Maltesers and a good novel.

But my husband took my request for a little me-time and super-sized it into a 3 day retreat at the Golden Door Elysia in the Hunter Valley. Cue happy dance.

It was booked for January 6th and of course I spent some of the time between Christmas and January 6th worrying about leaving Francesca overnight for the first time in her life. And by ‘some of the time’ I mean AT LEAST thirty seconds. I am in the fortunate position of having a husband who is both willing and able to share the parenting load with me, as well as the two grown-up siblings, so separation anxiety is something Francesca has rarely experienced. She is surrounded by brainwashed adults falling over themselves to create a big love net for her to safely fall on.

So with kisses and squeezy hugs to all, I hopped in the Golf and set out for my big adventure in the Hunter Valley.

Two hours and a loud, long overdue reunion with Shania Twain later (let's go girls), I entered The Golden Door through . . . you’ll never guess what . . . . a GOLDEN DOOR!

The door itself, apart from being gold, is tall and thick and heavy. As it closes with a sigh behind you and you step into a cool stone atrium, you really do feel that you’re entering a sanctuary, encouraged, as you are at the gate, to leave your real life behind for a few days.

I don’t mind admitting that the first thing I did upon entering my villa was to check for a mini bar. Purely out of curiosity. I thought it might be full of cardboard tasting kale bars and cardboard crisps. And there is a mini bar. Sort of. It contains two kinds of loose leaf herbal tea and a tea pot. Perfect, if the only kind of party you’re after is a tea party, and a healthy one at that. Not a scone or sugar cube in sight.

My post-exercise spot in the villa - on the couch with Kindle & a cuppa

The good folk at Elysia tell you what to eat and when. Real tea, coffee, chocolate, sugar and alcohol are all banned, and mobile phone use is restricted to your villa only. But that’s where their preachiness ends. Everything else is optional and very un-preachy. The staff are beautiful, nurturing and funny and, while they encourage you to try new things and go outside your comfort zone, they also tell you to listen to your body; that this is your time and to do what you feel like.

There are a staggering number of activities available, from tai chi, yoga and pilates, to deep water running, bush walking and indoor hockey. If exercise doesn't float your boat, you can go get your eye bags attended to in the day spa with algae, minerals and all manner of goop. There are seminars on everything from nutrition to habit-breaking to art therapy. Or if you feel like lying by the pool wearing dark glasses and staggering from meal to villa in a fluffy robe you are more than welcome. But why would you want to do that when you can sweat, swim and spin and really feel that you’ve earned a bit of pool lounging.

The outdoor pool at Elysia

There is a risk of becoming what is known at the Door as a FOMO – Fear Of Missing Out. That was me on the first day. I did everything on the list. The poor white child from the boondocks wanted to get her money’s worth dammit. And if I wanted to workshop that with the Life Guidance Counsellor, then that was on the list too. And no, it wasn’t at all surprising that I fell into an established acronym category on Day One. I’m FOMO and proud!

But that was Day One. Day One is when you’re body is still operating on all that residual coffee, tea and sugar. Everything is just dandy on Day One. Then you wake up and it’s Day Two. Day Two is bad. Very, very bad.

You think because you only have one coffee, one tea and a smidge of sugar in your diet each day that you can easily live without them. Fine, you think. I don’t need any of those things, you proclaim. But then you spend 24 hours without those daily stimulants in your body and BAM, it’s like a hangover, only foggier. A real pea-souper. I spent Monday in a fug of sugar withdrawal. I felt like I was moving in slow motion, a headache thudding dully at the base of my skull.

This was it. Detox. They warned us it would come and come it did. In spades. But if you’re going to spontaneously detox, this is the place to do it, surrounded by fifty other poor sods in equal or worse degrees of pain. They also told us that by the end of our stay we would have come through detox and achieved the Golden Door Glow. That seemed about as likely as Lindsay Lohan keeping her driver's licence.

Part of me was standing outside of myself that day, simply observing what was happening to my body, shaking my head incredulously. I don’t consider myself to be a sugar, alcohol or caffeine addict. However, my intake of those substances, whilst moderate, is regular. Without them in my diet for 24 hours, the effect on my body was truly interesting. Apart from the headache, lack of energy and inability to string a sentence together, I looked like a kid who’d got a hold of mum’s mascara with enormous black rings under my eyes, and when I closed my eyes for 5 minutes after the 9am stretch class, I woke up two hours later. (A nana nap! During the day!! Unheard of. Do pigs now fly? Are John and George back with the Beatles?!?)

It made me realise how much of a starring role sugar actually plays in my diet, mainly all that incidental sugar one isn’t aware one is ingesting. I have half a sugar in my tea and one sugar in my coffee each day. Doesn’t sound like much. But then, reading a few labels since I’ve been back reveals that so many of the other ‘healthy’ things in my diet actually contain sugar too. Muesli, yoghurt, even the humble lunch time cracker upon which I pile avocado and tomato.

Since I’ve returned from Elysia, l am flirting with the idea of quitting sugar for awhile. But flirting is one thing. I'm not sure if I'm ready to put a ring on it! Stay tuned.

By Tuesday I was back to feeling less like old, dying, wrinkly Episode 6 Yoda (“sugar addict you are”) and more like myself. I realized that in my delirium I had been confining myself to sleeping on “my” side of the bed. That night I threw off all the pillows and covers and made like a starfish across the full luxurious king size width! I also took full advantage of all the wonderful activities and treatments on offer, as well as spending lots of lovely quiet time in my villa reading, writing, watching movies and catching up on Richard Fiedler Conversations podcasts. It was heaven.

Elysia sits high on a hill with valleys and mountains surrounding it on all sides. It has been designed along curvy feng shui lines, with the main buildings and villas creating a skirt for Meditation Hill, a circular mount in the centre of the complex, covered in lavender with a stone plateau and running water feature at the top for meditation, tai chi or perfect, as I discovered, for sunset watching and daydreaming.

Every evening at around 8.30pm just as the sun was setting, I wandered up Meditation Hill to watch the twilight deepen and the stars blink on one by one.

I thought I would go into my cave a little and not feel like interacting with other people, but actually, come meal times, I looked forward to sitting down with the others and comparing notes. Some had been to Elysia before, others were newbies like me, but everyone was lovely and I had some stimulating, amusing conversations with people who’d come from all over Australia to be a part of the program.

Apart from the buckwheat pancakes served on Day Two for breakfast (I challenge the chefs of Australia to make buckwheat taste like anything other than tree bark) the food was, on the whole, very good. I also learned that the addition of beetroot to many dishes & drinks equals more regularity than one might normally be used to.

But it was always so bloody lovely to get back to my villa after dinner, to find the bed turned down, a candle lit next to the bath and the teapot set out with a calming herbal tea. There were so many little touches like this that made the experience a little bit spesh.

Was three days enough? At this time in my life, probably. I could easily have pushed it to five days, although I think I would have missed the family too much if I stayed for the seven day program. Did I leave with the Golden Door Glow? Definitely. I felt refreshed and rejuvenated, ready to start the year and hit 2013 with everything I’ve got.

My take-aways from the experience? Eat less sugar. Meditate. Kiss my husband in gratitude more often. Be grateful for my family's health every day. Belt out a Shania Twain number at least once every ten years. And never eat another buckwheat pancake.

The Golden Door Glow - I got there in the end (with thanks to the sunset on top of Meditation Hill!)