2010 - L'année du bonheur!

La Conscience est le meilleur livre du monde.

 C'est celui que l'on doit consulter le plus souvent

Blaise Pascal

Note to self: get my kids to read about Blaise Pascal too. He was homeschooled!!!

This is the book that keeps me sane at the moment.

It is by Isabelle Filliozat, a very insightful French psychiatrist who has written numerous books and studies on happiness and relationships (all types, not just Mars and Venus ones) So when when I first discovered it in Nature et Découvertes. I grabbed it!

By the way, j'ADORE this shop too because I can even stick to my Dottie Angel Challenge and buy in here as some of the products are made by hand en France by French artisans, some are fair trade too... Mind you, books fall into the Essentials category. Buying them new ensures authors get paid!!

So aside from Dottie Angel's challenge and the Creative Every day challenge, not to mention the general 'living in a house with Beaker and 3 messmonsters' whilst trying to paint challenge - this is another that I have set myself for the year:

365 'exercises' for life - day after day...

Du sport? Non! Well, pas vraiment

(c'est bon, le sport j'en fais déjà ;-)

Inside here,

pas d'agitation, mes amis.

Just CALM

Today, while I lunch with my 3 sweet girlie friends. I shall be mindful of my breathing, how I sit, how my body feels inside and out. Hmm, j'ai un idée... As I feel the weight of my body in that chair (please Isa, make lunch light so I don't feel too heavy), I will make special note to get to the bottom of what a laugh feels like. Seriously possums, deeply conscious laughing is one of the most fun things a girl can do!

Quelle inspiration!!

Speaking of inspiration, I'm going to be starting a new blog! It will be the hilarious account (and I promise I am going to make this humorous, because I like you all too much to see you ripping your hair out like I do) of our buying a beautiful old stone house in the Luberon in Provence, and subsequently trying to sell it.

There will be a real plot and real characters: In fact, they are so unreal that I don't even have to make them up!! The mind-blowingly incompetent real estate agent, the shady property lawyers, the very brilliant trainee surgeon turned sweet wood turner, the 'A Year in Provence' style French farmers and their protective SAFER (local, hands-on tentacle of the Ministry of Agriculture) and last but not least the quiet Dutch gay plastic surgeon dermatologist, and his fabulously boisterous designer/artist friend living in Aix en Provence...  And a beautiful stone house that was built over top of a Roman villa and possibly temple ...with all the 'magnetic' consequences that can have...

As I don't have to invent the cast and characters, you will have to allow me the liberty of inventing their names. The 'baddies' don't live happy lives, they don't need me to make it worse for them as they're digging their own hole all by themselves. They may be vindictive enough to call their  lawyers too so I'd better not be too blonde about that!

The goodies are very much innocent, and have become entwined in a tangled mess that I'm sure even they could never have imagined could actually exist. And how am I coping with all these characters? Thanks to ZEN books like Isabelle Filliozat's up there, I have learnt to observe the whole situation with detachment  and wry humour. But it's just too precious not to share! Will you join me? It starts tomorrow...

Keep your eyes peeled for 'La Fontiane: gentle guidlines for Australians (substitute with your nationality - even French) on how NOT to buy and sell a house in Provence!

PS - It's time to bring the Paris Episodes back... for there is a link between the two... The plot thickens hahahahhahahahaaha!!