Reasons to be cheerful

It's Sunday. Will's at the beach (so many sharks around these days that we see him off with "See you, Will, have fun! Don't get burnt! Don't get eaten!"). Dave's been occupied all day writing reviews. It's stinking hot – 41 today and 41 forecast for the next two days with rain and thunderstorms – so I'm staying inside, in the cool.
I'm listening to Philip Glass on Pandora and I'm making my mother-in-law a quilt for her birthday in a couple of weeks.

Saw Life of Pi yesterday with my best friend Laura. Though some of the images were breathtakingly beautiful, on the whole I was ever so slightly underwhelmed, as I was with the book. But I'm glad I've seen the film and read the book.

Indian Ocean Gods

City Beach Bodysurfing from will sheridan on Vimeo.

My very clever son Will made this short film a few weeks ago, with his new teeny-tiny video camera. He's in it with Lily (back from Japan for Christmas), two of their best friends, James (with one arm straped to his waist following shoulder surgery) and Pelham, and our grandson Mack (towards the end, at about 4:20).
It's a lovely summery video, shot at the very best of our very beautiful beaches, for all you northern hemispherians up there in the snow and the cold!

My best friend Shelley gave me the Jerusalem cookbook, by Yotam Ottolenghi, for Christmas and I've already made three fab dishes from it: a chicken and cardamom rice casserole, a syrup-laden orange, coconut and semolina cake, and a kick-arse hommus. It's a brilliant inspiration: almost everything in it I'd love to try.
How was your Christmas? We had ours down south on Boxing Day so we could be with eldest son and the grandkids. It was all very merry but the start of the heatwave, and as successive days got hotter and hotter, we felt quite glad – unusually – to leave the bay and head for home and the air-con, where we rode out the worst of it in quiet comfort.
:: Lily's been home for two weeks and I'm already thinking that in just over a week she'll be back on a plane heading for winter and Osaka again. No! Does her mum's heart good to have her here!

R2BC

:: The annual craft fair at Fremantle Arts Centre (above) was on yesterday.
  It looked wonderful, and there were lots of colourful stalls, but OMG, some of the prices! And so much jewellery. I went prepared to buy lovely things for Christmas presents, but just enjoyed a browse in the shade of the lovely old trees with my best friends Dace and Jools.

:: I am reading escapist literature: the first of Joy Dettman's Woody Creek novels. Thoroughly engrossing and well written, set in a Victorian (as in Australia) timber town in the 1930s. Well-drawn, believable characters; lots of dark deeds. Do not be put off by the naff titles (Pearl in the Cage, Thorn on the Rose and so on), or the equally naff cover art.
There are three or four books in the series, so that's a fair whack of my summer reading sorted. Books one and three are on the Kindle and book two is a print copy I found at home and used all winter to prop up a coil heater which had lost a foot.
:: I am going to teach myself to make coiled baskets like these:

They were on display inside the arts centre, made by Aboriginal women who had been taught the craft by an African master basket maker – absolutely stunning.
:: I didn't do any Christmas cake making yesterday because I was having too good a time and the day just went.    

Reasons to be cheerful, part 3

:: We have assembled all the ingredients, even the St Agnes, and there will be Christmas cake mixin'n'bakin' in the morrow.

"Mixing" with the Adorables.

:: We went shopping at the Re Store this morning, and I wore my op-shop dress and felt like a real nonna. Which I am, of course. But I looked the part in my black frock. Especially as I approach my fabulous new almost-spherical shape -- attributable entirely to menopause and a desk job. Luckily, I had dealt with the moustache earlier in the morning.
:: Three weeks from today, Lily gets home. 
:: I have not one but two (2) brand-new pairs of thongs. I wore my new best, going-out ones ($7) to the shops this morning (which helped the nonna thing I had going no end), and now I'm home and I'm in my new everyday thongs ($3.50). Life is special.

Reasons to be cheerful ... continued

1. I am not at all stressed about Christmas this year. I am under orders from David not to be. It's working ... so far. Previous years have seen me making cards, making decorations making gifts, making wrapping paper, cooking feasts and wondering why no-one else in the house was getting into it while I wallied about like a banshee. Mind you, I fancy making a few wee birdy-type decorations for this year's tree on the weekend, and I'll make the cake because that is fun.
2. The blokes are back from down south, having completed firebreaks and mowing down all he winter grass. As I write this, Will is watching an ancient game of footy on the telly with the sound off and David is at a meeting.
3. I am about to try to invent something nourishing and tasty for dinner with two chicken breasts and a mango.

I shall leave you with a pic of St George's Terrace, the main thoroughfare in this mining town of ours, which, like the foolish virgin I am, I imagined would be a quicker route home. Wrong. It looked nice in the low sunshine, though.

Reasons to be cheerful

 1. Mum's home after a month in New Zealand – a trek and a half for her at 83, considering she's terrified of flying and very shaky on her pins. She had tricky stopovers in Melbourne going both ways, that were almost as long as the flying time. But it was lovely for her and my brother to see each other and, we hope, the first of many.
2. The blokes in my household are away down south doing the firebreaks and mowing the bush block in readiness for the fire season. And while I'd rather they were here, I am enjoying the lack of cricket commentary and bass rhythms.
3. A bit of sewing, above. I made this:

from this pile of Liberty offcuts from my best friend, Shelley:

and a bit I had lying around.