Tag: Ultimate blog challenge (Page 1 of 5)

1915 photo of man in suit and bow tie. — Grandfather Berg

The Cold August Winds Of Change.

05/08/2025 / Maureen / 0 Comments

The July Ultimate Blog Challenge (UBC) is done and dusted for another year. August has arrived, and in my little corner of the world, August means windy weather. Cold and wet, windy weather. And this year, the August winds have brought with them a message of change.

UBC is designed to motivate bloggers to post a new blog on their website each day of the month. The July challenge was no different. Again, I fell short of the goal, but old habits die hard, and new habits are hard to establish. I tried. I failed. But I learned a lot in the process, and that’s what matters most.

Life Happens

My excuse is that life happens, and it is those life-happenings that are the canvas on which we create new blogs.

July came with no shortage of life-events, and now I have plenty of empty canvases, just waiting to be filled. But the winds of change are howling around me, screaming for me to abandon this site, for a while, in order to fill the blank spaces of my Family History blog site.

A domain name needs to reflect the theme of the website it belongs to. This website and blog, aptly named, is about me: my community, my travels, my thoughts, likes, dislikes, and my life in general. When I needed a more specific blog-site, I created Grandfather Berg.

My interest in family history centres predominantly around my paternal Grandfather, Alfred Berg, who started the Australian branch of the Berg Family, of which I am descended. Grandfather was born with a more Swedish name in Gothenburg, Sweden, in 1877, than he died with in Bankstown, Australia, in 1959.

Because I like a challenge, my research is focussed on my Swedish side, and Grandfather deserves a website of his own because so little is known of his early life. I don’t speak Swedish, but I understand a few Swedish words that help isolate vital information from Swedish records.

When did Grandfather change his name? When and why did he leave Sweden? These questions remain unanswered but deserve my full attention.

My Ancestors

Grandfather isn’t my only ancestor worthy of a blog, so I created the Family History Vault to capture the stories of both sides of my family. And therein lies the change that the August winds are prompting.

I fell short of the required thirty-one blogs for the July Ultimate Blog Challenge, but I managed to increase the blog-width of this site in the process. Now it’s time to abandon these pages for a while, to add to the stories that are waiting to be told on my other sites.

When I am no longer a participant in the race we call ‘life’, future generations will hopefully find a foothold in their family history search, through the stories I have written. And maybe by researching my family in general, I might unearth vital information about Grandfather’s Swedish family.

I hope that future generations won’t have to work as hard to find their ancestor’s stories as the current generation has in finding theirs.

And that is why I will continue to research, write, and fill the pages of the Family History Vault with the stories of those who have gone before us.

Their stories must be told.

As The Sun Sinks Slowly … Somewhere.

31/07/2025 / Maureen / 8 Comments

Will I beat the deadline and squeeze another post in before the sun sets on another Ultimate Blog Challenge?

I may have listened more closely to the gentle guiding forces that suggested I rise from my bed a little earlier this morning, thereby avoiding a potential catastrophe. Not early-early, just 7.30ish, which is early for me. By a little after 8 o’clock I was showered, dressed, and had made my bed (that’s a safety procedure so I’m not tempted to jump back into it on a cold day).

With a large glass of water in hand, I perused emails and checked Facebook to see how much the world had changed while I slept. It seems nothing too drastic happened and I could confidently step out into that world later today.

Then came an unexpected knock at the door. It was a plumber, sent to check the temperature of my hot water (thank goodness I was dressed!). Comparing the ‘hotness’ of my shower here, to the ‘hotness’ of the shower in my previous unit, the water here is a little too far on the ‘cool’ side. Being someone who overstays their environmental welcome in a hot shower on a cold day, I felt a bit cheated by the lack of heat of the current situation.

According to the plumber, the temperature meets safety requirements (not too low), which leads me to think I may have overdone it with the hot tap before I moved here. The temperature could be tweaked a bit to deliver a warmer shower, but I figured the effort isn’t worth it.

I should explain about how the hot water works in my little retirement world.

My first winter in my last place didn’t end without a few tribulations. I discovered, after running out of hot water in the shower one frosty morning, that the hot-water container stored a mere fifty litres of water. I had long hair, and I liked a long hot shower. It didn’t end well. Yes, I know I’m supposed to use a three-minute timer but seriously, does anyone actually win that race?

So, I applied to our Strata Committee for permission to install a big hot water tank on my front porch. After a bit of argee-bargy, they finally consented, and I was quick to find a plumber to install the new tank.

As a bit of an aside, you’ve probably guessed that I live a fairly chaotic life. Installing a new hot water service was no exception.

The plumber asked how many taps needed to be turned off to secure the water. ‘Three’, I replied, having asked Dave, our maintenance person, a few days earlier. Either the plumber didn’t hear me, or, well, I don’t know what went wrong, but… at a crucial point in the process, water gushed out from under the sink. Before long I was squelching through the carpet in the living area while I phoned Dave to turn the water off at the mains, somewhere along my street. Dave wasn’t on site, but I reckon he flew back from town because the water stopped gushing not too much later. Not soon enough to save the living room carpet, but soon enough to stop the water making its way into the bedrooms.

If I’d had Valium in the house I reckon the plumber would have asked for it (I don’t even have aspirin so he was out of luck). I thought plumbers would be used to that sort of thing, but not him. I wasn’t overly phased by it, and quickly hatched a plan for the coming days while the floors dried. It was July, and I wasn’t fussed on sleeping with the doors and windows wide open, and heavy-duty fans blowing all night (not to mention the noise). I was actually looking forward to a couple of comfortable nights in a hotel; kind of a mini-vacation.

Before I could Google ‘comfy hotel with extra-hot water’, the village manager arrived. His first words were ‘you can’t stay here’, followed by, ‘I can’t believe how calm you are’, and then, ‘there’s a spare apartment in The Lodge you can use until the floors dry’. I gratefully accepted, but not before enquiring about the calibre of the hot water in The Lodge.

Today’s encounter with the plumber was uneventful, and I’ve even commissioned him to install a new shower filter, as soon as I buy it. He was such a nice young person and reminded me of my grandson, who is also a plumber, but sadly lives too far away to come to my water-related rescue. As for my not-too-hot showers? Apartment living is different. We don’t have a separate hot water supply all to ourselves, we share the communal supply, and I’m fine with that.

And now, I await a call from my friend, Stella. We’re going out for coffee, as soon as she gets back from picking up family at the airport.

And somewhere in the world the sun is setting (or maybe just rising), and I’m ahead of the game, for once. My final blog post for the UBC is done.

I have loved every minute of this one and will continue to read and be inspired by the fantastic bloggers that I’ve met along the way. From the great works of Lily Leung that I discovered in an earlier challenge, I’ve learned to relax my writing, and write from the heart.

I hope one day to be even half as good as my Challenge Buddies, and I look forward to meeting you again, in another UBC.

Thirty Four Drafts – Seriously?

26/07/2025 / Maureen / 4 Comments

How many times have I sat in front of my laptop wondering what to write?

Tonight is one of those times. I had a few ideas buzzing round my head as I warmed my fingers up to start pounding the keyboard, but none of them landed anywhere where they might actually be useful.

And then I noticed I had thirty-four drafts in the Draft Folder of my Posts page. That means thirty-four times I’ve sat here wondering what to write, then actually wrote something, then abandoned it.

Seriously?

If I had been a bit smarter, I would have blitzed the Ultimate Blog Challenge for July. All I had to do was take each of those drafts and finish them. That would have covered the ‘write a blog a day‘ commitment, and given me a few left over as an early start to the next UBC.

But no, those poor little drafts sit there, all alone, and incomplete, while I sit and wonder ‘what will I write today‘?

Image by Pixabay: DKrue

Woman carrying a box. — AI generated picture (Pixabay)

And In An Instant, I Found My Way Back

24/07/2025 / Maureen / 12 Comments

The Universe works in mysterious ways, and my encounter with the laws of the universe played out over the last four days.

While my daughter visited last week, she suggested I could gain more space in my living area by rearranging a few pieces of furniture.

As I sat in my usual spot on Monday morning, coffee in hand, my mind wandered to the possibilities of the rearrangement. I thought I’d tried every conceivable position for everything, but obviously not. My daughter’s suggestion had never occurred to me, but it made a lot of sense.

An hour later, I had furniture moved and in position, but there seemed to be a lot of ‘things’ that were now without a permanent home.

‘Right’, I thought, ‘time to sort out the half-filled containers that, with a bit more thought, could hold double the amount and minimise the number of containers needed’. For practicality, in a small apartment, I use 4X4 cubes, with basket inserts.

By Monday afternoon, I had a few ~~neat~~ little boxes stashed around the room in varying degrees of ‘organised’ (or lack thereof), ready to be sorted into baskets. What threw the spanner in the organising works was Alexa, the smart little Amazon gadget that turns my lamp on and off, tells me the time, and answers random questions about the weather. In short, Alexa was missing.

I had moved her to a safe place while I moved the television into its new position, intending to put Alexa back beside the TV when I finished. And I didn’t even realise she was missing until I wondered what the time was later that afternoon.

Monday night turned into a game of hide-and-seek; Alexa hid, and I sought, to no avail.

Tuesday was spent going through baskets and boxes, not once, but many times, just in case I missed seeing Alexa the first time. In the process, I completely overhauled my storage system in the living area, and in my bedroom as well. I was so proud of what I achieved, but I still hadn’t found Alexa.

On Wednesday, I drilled down even deeper. She had to be somewhere; somewhere I hadn’t looked yet. The bedroom got an even better overhaul, with empty boxes relegated to the garage, to be disposed of environmentally, later.

But still no Alexa.

This morning (Thursday), I luxuriated in the extra space in my living area, resigned myself to the fact I probably would never find Alexa, and prided myself on how great my bedroom, living, and sewing area looked after the thorough ‘organisation-spree’ of the last few days. It was time to get back to the tasks I should have been doing instead of turning every inch of my small apartment upside down to search for the elusive little blue dot called Alexa.

I sat down to write, but my eyes drifted to the vacant spot where Alexa should be, and a light bulb moment hit me right between the eyes. I wondered, could I have absentmindedly put her there, and could she have fallen behind the cupboard? I doubted it, but checked anyway.

Luckily, I had the foresight to put castors on that flatpack when I put it together. I rolled the cupboard forward a little, peered over the edge, and there she was. Obviously, I had sat her behind the TV, but a little too close to the edge, perhaps.

And that’s where the law of the Universe stepped in. If I hadn’t lost Alexa, I would have procrastinated (something I do particularly well) and not tackled the ultimate organisation that was so desperately needed.

So today, I’ve found my way back to the Ultimate Blog Challenge, with no hope of ever catching up. But that’s okay, because my living space and bedroom look fantastic, and Alexa is in her rightful place.

Now I can write, worry-free.

Fun? What Fun?

08/07/2025 / Maureen / 2 Comments

Today’s blog post is supposed to be about something that is fun. Normally, I could come up with a lot of things to write about on that topic, but not today.

Life was sailing along smoothly: no problems, not too much to worry about. nothing much out of the ordinary, until a few days ago.

I can’t even remember what day it happened. Was it Sunday? Yesterday? Actually, it could have been even earlier than that because time seems to have stood still.

Whatever day it was, by mid-morning I realised something was wrong. My usual allergy to just about anything that moves outside my building was in overdrive. I couldn’t stop sneezing, and my head hurt every time I coughed, which was too often. And by that night, the reality sunk in. Somehow, I, who never gets sick, had a cold.

My bedroom lamp turns itself on (with the help of Alexa and a Smart Switch) at 9 pm every night. I beat Alexa that night and was in bed by 8 pm, which is a recipe for disaster because I normally only need 5-6 hours sleep a night. If I’m asleep before 9 pm, I’m going to be wide awake at some crazy hour of the morning. And that’s exactly what happened, Not that my sleep until then was peaceful, but there I was, wide awake at 3 am.

I lost count of how many times I trudged to the kitchen for a glass of water, followed by trips to the bathroom (because that’s what happens when you drink a whole lot of water). And so, the next day, and possibly the day after, depending on which day it all started, have been no fun at all. My constant companions have been a box of tissues, my water bottle, and a bucketload of feeling sorry for myself.

Between coughing, sneezing, and sleeping (yep, me who never sleeps through the day), my blog posts were the furthest thing from my mind. Until now. Perhaps I’m coming out of the doldrums and moving back into some kind of ‘better’. Not 100% better, just a whole lot better.

This blog is about how not to have fun – it’s simple, just catch a cold.

Healing, With Nature’s Gift for Body and Mind

06/07/2025 / Maureen / 12 Comments

I sit on my balcony, while my fingers tap out the words of this blog; my laptop poised precariously as I recline on my comfy bench seat. The sun above hangs in a perfectly cloudless blue sky, a distinct contrast to the grey sky of a few hours ago..

The ocean beyond the highway in front of me mirrors the blue of the sky above. Whales, on their migration north, mark their presence as they breach close to the horizon.

It is winter in my part of the world, the East Coast of Australia, but winter here feels more like autumn.

The dramas of yesterday are gone; vanished as quickly as the flash of inspiration recently lost on a busy day. My mind is focused on my writing; there is no room for worries, at least for a while. Even the noise from the busy highway between my balcony and the ocean can’t take away from the absolute bliss of being under the warm winter sun.

My body absorbs the Vitamin D; my mood is elevated; my soul is calm.

My body and mind heal naturally on this perfect winter’s day.