Circle of Friends thingy

Thanks to my lovely friend and "psychic twin" CT for this little award and her thoughtful words. She was the first person I didn't know that found my newly born blog (apart from a sleazy Portugese guy who I think was attracted to a sole reference to breastfeeding) and became a friend. CT's warmth and love of life truly leap off her blogs and her comments.

So.....all I need to do now is say five things I love to do and then award this to five other friends, which I may leave until the next post. (I'm having a trying day and it ain't over yet!). A note to Miss Prudence, if you are watching - I tried right clicking on this blog award thingy and saving it as a picture and then I cut and pasted it into my post. I'll try that with your award and see if it works).

5 Things I love

1. Eating chocolate - Lindt if possible but usually Cadbury would do - especially their nice fat eggs full of caramel. (This particular joy was dimmed briefly by a disastrous year of seeing my dentist much more than I would have liked to - a year which culminated in a root canal procedure which saw a tiny piece of instrument break off and lodge in my root canal where it still resides despite a traumatic session with a dental specialist. However, I am now back to my usual chocolate scoffing habit especially when feeling PTSDish over the continuing root canal saga).

2. Looking at my children, especially when they are asleep and not expecting me to be their slave.

3. Seeing the thinnest of thin crescent moons shining in the night sky - always give me a surge of witchy magic and makes everything seem ok.

4. A good chat (and some chocolate) with my female friends and a good belly laugh over men, sex and other funny things.

5. Sleeping - alone in a very big bed with lots of room, and lots of peace and quiet. It could be a whole 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep at night or a blissful afternoon nap with the afternoon sun shining in the window - I'm not choosy.

(PS I love my tall handome boy, too)

When I have another spare 5 minutes, I'll pass this on to some worthy blogging girls (although I am partial to Quilt Dad - I doubt he knows who I am.)

Little guilty pleasures

I'm hoping that title doesn't attract any sleazy sex obsessed cyberspace visitors the way my post on breastfeeding did. (I deleted the post and the comment).The guilty pleasures I'm talking about are all pretty innocent and didn't involve taking my clothes off. (Oh...except for the part in the shower this morning when I luxuriated in using my new L'Occitane lemon and honey scented bath gel which I got for Christmas after giving my husband lots of unsubtle hints).

Anyway....my day got off to a fantastic start because not only did both children sleep ALL night long, but the puppy slept in until 10 minutes to six instead of demanding attention at 5am. Unheard of! So strange that the Daddy and I both emerged sleepy eyed at the same moment to see what was happening. The Kipster was awake but lying quietly on his little bed! We took him outside and had a civilised cup of tea on the patio before the girls woke up. Because the Daddy is on holidays, I could go off for one of my two working days in the city in a leisurely fashion without having to dress/feed/sunscreen/pack lunches for/brush teeth of and deliver two children before racing for my train. I even had time to put mascara on!

After a brisk walk to the train station, I settled in for 25 minutes of precious uninterrupted reading time (The Book Thief by a guy whose name escapes me right now). Soon, I'm back from Nazi Germany and at my desk checking emails and thinking about some fruit toast with cinnamon for morning tea. (Washed down with a chocolate bar from the machine). I'm actually one of those annoying people who loves their job - I work as a historian for the Brisbane City Council, researching and writing the history of the city and its heritage. After all these years, I still love the thrill of rummaging through old documents, photographs and newspapers and piecing together the pieces of the next puzzle I am working on. I also get to meet great people, like the charming war veteran who wants to put a plaque in Newstead Park by the river in memory of the men who worked on patrol boats during World War II. Our chatty emails flew back and forth from Sydney all day. I told my husband about it, saying "If he wasn't 80 years old, it would be almost like flirting". He replied "How about 'If I wasn't married, it would almost be like flirting'"!)

I don't usually get the luxury of a lunch hour as it takes me three hours of travelling time to get my girls and I where we have to go and then get us all back home again after work, but today, I could relax and enjoy the day. So lunchtime found me wandering through the city sunshine, with a beef and ginger sushi and a blueberry Nudie juice, heading for the chocolate shop for a choccy covered fig (and a choccy covered dried peach and a peppermint truffle - let's be honest!). Next stop, the city's only stationery shop that has decent scrapbooking paper to buy some cute farm type paper for our farmstay photos. Then I meandered back through the grounds of the city's oldest church - the tiny 1850s Pugin Chapel sitting serenely in its pocket of green grass. We are not Catholic but my husband and I used to go in there sometimes and light a candle for the baby we lost when I was 10 weeks pregnant in 2005. I looked at the blue sky and the old stone walls and thought about that tiny soul. Then I just had time to have a browse in the American Bookshop and read the first few pages of "Twilight" that Tammie has been discussing with great erudition!

Time to head back to work, but still a wee bit peckish, I have a sudden urge to buy a piece of Kentucky Fried Chicken when I walk past the stall. Haven't had it for ten years! I gobble up the yummy crumby bits and throw the rest away, thinking that will do me for another decade. Back at my desk, I spend the afternoon writing a piece about Brisbane's most famous Lord Mayor before heading home. The walk home from the station at in the dusk is lovely. I steal a sprig of pink Pride of India from someone's garden and then another piece of sky blue plumbago to show the family what I'd like to plant in our slowly developing garden. Then a little white car appears. The Daddy and two small tired girls have come to find Mummy. Soon I am home (in a VERY messy house) but feeling so loved. For most of their lives, the girls have had a stay at home Mum so Daddy is usually the exciting parent but occasionally, they desperately miss me and climb all over me when I come home and that makes me feel truly special.

PS I left out another small guilty pleasure - food related of course. At the station, I had a craving for a McDonald's icecream sundae but couldn't decide between chocolate and caramel. I asked for both and the girl obliged. I truly don't usually eat like this!