Project 289 - Day 288 : More Up, Up and Away-ingness....

After a lovely chilled final morning with my Mum and Dad at the Ancestral Estate in Alstonville, I caught a flight home at 1pm (passing by the Giant Prawn, a Ballina icon for the last 19 years, and about to be demolished), and made it home with just enough time to partially unpack my bags - got everything home including the fruitcake and the coffee table book without incident, or excess baggage fees! Yay! - before heading back to the airport to collect my beautiful guy from his time in Melbourne with his family. 

It was wonderful to see him, and after spending time getting re-acquainted at his place, we went out for Thai to our favourite restaurant in the whole world, Stir Crazy in Erskineville, which I am fairly certain has featured in this blog more than some of my friends!! The night was cool, the breeze gentle, the company exquisite - god, I had missed him! - and it was lovely to have stay at my place that night....

Project 289 - Day 287 : Last Full Day at the Ancestral Estate

 I know everyone always remarks on how quickly time goes by, and that it seems to move at light speed the older you get, but these 6 days with Mum and Dad and my lovely siblings have just screamed by like an overwrought diva hurtling around in a glitter haze backstage before her fabulous stage show starts....

It's not like it hasn't happened before - the time passing that is although I am rather partial to a melodramatic glittery haze on occasion, in drag or not - but each year as December races past me desperately trying to reach Christmas Day, I always think that the week or so I have at Mum and Dad's will be languid and relaxed with nary a care in the world... and to a large extent it is just that. There is time to just sit and talk, eat far too many Kipling's fruit mince pies, jubes and Lindor Balls, watch the DVD box sets that have been gathering dust for months, and the outings, such as they are, are really restricted to the occasional swim at the beach (not today due to rain although naturally the rain stopped perfectly at Byron Bay the moment we got there!) or shopping at Bangalow or Byron Bay....

So, so much, so chilled yes? Yes, and I always get back to Sydney feeling wonderfully refreshed. But somehow in the middle of this slow realised festive break, time jumps on roller blades, greases them up, and shoots down the road like a speed-taking bat out of hell. How the languid and the frantically forward moving can exist in the one holiday is beyond me, but co-exist they do.

Today was a perfect example. I started the day with a relaxed chat with my Mum in the kitchen, read the paper, watch the final episode of season 1 of Sanctuary - I must see Season 2 NOW! - surfed the web, read some magazines and snoozed before heading to Byron Bay for more shopping, beach viewing and strolling around with my brother and his girlfriend. The economy of BB thus bolstered, I came home to a delicious dinner of Italian pie (a childhood favourite), curried sweet potato and potato, and broccoli, with a Kiplings fruit mince pie to chase it down. Add in a relaxed phone call to my wonderful friend Kerry, some short chats with my gorgeous guy, a documentary on the coronation of Queen Elizabeth and now some blogging, and you hardly have the makings of a frantically rushed day.

But rush by the day has done, and tomorrow I jump on a plane for the trip home, seriously overweight in the luggage dept, and hoping Virgin doesn't notice! But for now, I am at home, my mother relaxing by listening to a CD on church history, and my dad pottering in his study, and all is well.....

Project 289 - Day 286 : Lots of Lovely Zara Then None At All

What a split kind of day!

All sorts of activity this morning which involved mostly holding Zara, or feeding her a bottle or carrying her around, or holding her for an  hour while she napped and I watched Ice Age 1 with my sister Rachel. I cherish any time I get with my gorgeous niece and this was a particularly full on, fun morning with some snuggly quiet interludes.....just perfect....

We also got serious with Wii Fit and we all got weighed and profiled....it was all fun and games with a serious intent , which is to get my Dad who suffers from a form of Parkinson's more agile and limber.... the only dark moment was having Wii Fit tell me I am obese (hardly!!) and that I will never have a career at a champion ski jumper.....snow balls every time my friend!

Then Helen (my sister and Zara's mum), and Rachel (my other sister) headed back to the Gold Coast and the afternoon was marked by long snoozy nap, episodes of Sanctuary (a sci-fi/fantasy show I am watching via a DVD box set, which is waaaaay better than waiting for the episodes on TV), a yummy curry dinner with my Mum and Dad (followed by an episode of UK car show, Top Gear, which I rather enjoyed, and Man Vs Wild, about this crazy ex-UK Special Forces guy giving you survival tips for staying alive in the remote Scottish Highlands; after watching it, I decided the simplest survival tip was DON'T....GO.... THERE! LOL), and then some relaxing reading befrore bed.

Ya gotta love the holidays!

Project 289 - Day 285 (Sunday 27 December 2009) : I Finally Left the House and....

Today actually involved some activity!

Well beyond reaching for jars, or opening the fridge, and consuming food! In fact I spent most of this morning not consuming food in a bizarre change from the usual Christmas pace! What I did do in place of consuming all those festive red and green calories was go to the Bangalow Markets with my brother Steve and his girlfriend Aimee and peruse the usual jumble of home made jewelery, soaps, glassware (same place as last year's blue and red pieces but bright orange and tres funky!), and for my beautiful guy, some locally made ginger beary syrup. Quite how I will get this home in a small suitcase etc is a challenge but he likes it and I thought it'd be a lovely post-Christmas treat.

I resisted buying more art from a lady who's work I really like since I don't have anywhere to hang it at the moment - maybe next year! - and we went through the funky shops in Bangalow where I got a fantastic book on the history and maps of mythical lands, and real lands where they got it all wrong at first i.e. Africa. A lovely thick hardcover tome that is also fabulously heavy but I had to have it and it will be so interesting to read. Unfortunately all this perusing took place in pouring rain - thankfully the markets were perused before the heavens opened - and so we curtailed going to the shops further down the street and headed for Byron Bay for brunch...

Alas the rain was POURING there and so right on cue everyone decided they needed to have brunch RIGHT THEN! LOL. So we stuck to trawling the funky homewares stores - I got the best anniversary gift for my guy and a great little device to tie up the seemingly unending cord of my iPod's earphones - I grabbed a quick sultana scone and we headed home, without the hoped for swimming....

I lolled around at home for a hour or two and then headed out for a coffee - well Powerade and chocolate cake in my case - with my long standing high school friend, Sue. We didn't actually go to the same high school  but shared a friend in common, and have stayed in touch, catching up each year when she and I returned to our respective carbon-based parental units for Christmas. As usual, it was just lovely seeing her - catching up on all the news, laughing and have a great discussion on the current affairs issues du jour. We only had 2 hours or so but we made the most of it!

Back home to a leftovers dinner - my favourite kind when it involves my Mum's leftovers!! - and I made a delish bubble n squeak from left over roast veges and ham, which I had with turkey and apple sauce.... got to love the all in approach of eating in the days following Christmas....

I finished the day off with a Glee marathon on Channel 10, which was perfect since they were all episodes I hadn't seen! After all that camp fabulousness, it was a wonder I could sleep at all but I did and in that brief moment when I did stir that night, I reflected and decided the day had been very good indeed!

Project 289 - Day 284 : So Lazy I May Melt Into a Puddle of Melted Chocolate

Today has been a deliciously chilled day. I slept in.... 

Got up to watch the end of The Bucket List (already on 8 a.m. when I awoke) which ended very sadly (not a surprise when you consider it's about two men living life to the full before they die)....... ate a red salmon omelette on wholemeal bread....... watched Rage....... read The Economist..... 

Ate Lindor Balls..... watched the start of the Sydney to Hobart race..... then napped, read, ate more food..... held my gorgeous niece while she used me as a replacement for her Jolly Jumper toy.... took some photos of her and I reflected in the baubles of the Christmas tree.... watched my two brothers-in-law try to out do each other on the parallel bars out the back.....had dinner with my Nanna and the rest of the family..... 

Went walking with my sister and niece around the neighbourhood.... tried to screen out the cricket that my brothers-in-law were watching...... organised a catch up on Sunday with my friend Sue, also staying with her parents....... and finally let myself slow down ......

BLISS

Project 289 - Day 283 (Friday 25 December 2009) : On The 12th day of Andrew's Christmas, I Decorated the Tree With....

Here it is! Christmas Day.....

Besides my birthday, the day of the year I most look forward to, and don't, all at the same time...not because I don't like Christmas - I spend most of December on a tinsel drip with bauble trimmings after all - but because when you reach Dec 25th, all of the decorating, present buying, events, exhausting though they are, are over and done with for another year.... and that's kind of sad....

But I do look forward to it, apart from all the fun of getting ready for it, because it is the one time of the year I am guaranteed to be up with my wonderful family at the Ancestral Estate in Alstonville, just near Byron Bay, and that is one thing I love.

Thanks to my niece Zara (who ate her first solids today, and wore the cutest Christmas outfit going... see above!) of course, I have been up here quite a bit more than usual, but there is still something special about the whole family gathering together at Christmas, handing out the gifts (not till the evening this year because Steve and Aimee, and Rachel and Michael were at their respective in-laws), eating my mother's delicious salads with ham and turkey, taking photos till our eyes are popping out of our heads from flash over-exposure (mostly thanks to Zara, pictured below with my Nanna at the Christmas tree, who must spend the greater part of her time at these events seeing everything through a glowing flash-induced halo!), and just enjoying being with each other in the coolness of the air conditioning.

I did my usual thing of having a piece of chocolate for breakfast - Helen (my sister) and I started it years ago as kids, and I doggedly keep it going figuring that Christmas Day is the one day of the year that you can turn conventional dietary wisdom on it's head!) - and then you'll be glad to know moved on to actual cereal. Admittedly till lunchtime when we had salmon with mango/chilli/lime/coriander salsa, that was the last real food I ate all morning, but at least my body didn't feel like I had lost all good food - intake sense!

The afternoon was wonderfully relaxed with my grandmother sitting around talking while the salads were made, Zara was played with and distracted (she was having a bad day with her teeth coming through), naps were had (a 2 hour one in my case as I tried to catch up on my sleep deprivation), more photos were taken, memories made, and we all prepared for the big meal that night.

Stephen and Aimee, and Rachel and Michael finally made it back around 5.30 and we started the present exhange which was noisy, fun and crazy all at once, and as always an absolute joy. We always take a photo of someone in the middle of all the wrapping paper, and this year it was supposed to be me and Zara, but she made it very clear, by wailing like a banshee, that she wasn't that enthusiastic about the idea, and so Aimee took her place, since this was her first real Christmas with the clan. 

I ended up with some lovely gifts thanks to my sister Helen (my not-so-secret- Santa! LOL) including another plush moose to add to the collection, and a calendar of Queensland firemen - HOT! Naturally, at her quiet suggestion, I opened that in private!

Dinner was fun too - all the ham and turkey and salads a boy could want - my Nanna still calls me a "growing boy" and says I need to eat more; I point out politely that I stopped that kind of growing years back, and I have substituted growing outwards instead!), and more photos and bon bons and Christmas hats and really bad jokes, followed by pudding and custard (with brandy!) made by my brother Stephen. By the end of it all, I was full true but it made sleeping easy to do, which I finally did about 11pm....

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope your day was as special as mine!

Project 289 - Day 282 : On The 11th day of Andrew's Christmas, I Decorated the Tree With....

So the Big Day is almost here, and Santa and his elves and Mary and Joseph and the Easter Bunny are all hard at work with Elvis in Santa's Workshop getting ready to deliver all the presents! 

Meanwhile I am rushing to finish wrapping presents, pack, check mail, grab some super glue (those ornaments will keep breaking!).... and take some final shots of the tree. Here today are the lynchpin pieces that hold it all together, along with the lights and the red tinsel - the red glitter sequin star at the top of the tree, the red bauble with silver glitter stripe and swirls, and the silver glitter sequin baubles. I know - all ruggedly masculine and not slightly camp at all! I love the colours, the effects and the way they give a perfect backdrop for the bright colours of the ornaments to shine and make the tree in it's entirety, which you'll see tomorrow, glisten, glow and look as Christmassy as I want it to.

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Today turned out to be an insanely busy day.... at least up till lunchtime anyway. I know that shouldn't be a surprise at Christmas, but I still occasionally cling to the crazy optimism that things won't be as full-on as they might suggest they will be.

I got up at 4.45 to go walking at 5 a.m. with my walking buddy, Fahmi, and after a brisk pounding of the pavement - with my feet, not my head in frustration at all the things I had to do - came home, started packing, put out a load of clothes, wrapped the last of my presents, arranged them temporarily under the tree to take photos for posterity before they were shoved into a suitcase or backpack, drove to my beautiful guy's to check the mail, came back and changed the water in the fish tank, ate a bagel while ironing my shorts and T-shirt and talking to my darling man, before ordering a taxi at 9.15 for 9.30, throwing on my clothes, doing last minute packing and racing, in humid hot weather to the front of my building complex to get the taxi..... PHEW!!

Thankfully getting through check-in and security, despite the madding crowds, was a breeze, and after picking up the mags I wanted at 3 separate outlets (I have a tradition of buying The Economist at Christmas, which I found at the final place!), relaxed at Gate 40 till the flight was called. I sat next to this lovely couple from the UK who were going to be spending Christmas in Byron Bay before getting married in Hayman Island, got picked up by my brother, Steve, before heading home to lunch and a nap....chill.....

The rest of the day was spending time with my family including my Nanna who came up for a curry dinner, watching Christmas Eve TV (including a few songs from Carols by Candlelight, which is a tradition to watch, but not for too long!), wrapping gifts with my sister Rachel (including the two big pressies my brother was giving his girlfriend!), and a lovely long chat with my lovely guy. It was wondeful that the day slowed down to almost nothing because I don't think I could havce sustained the morning's pace.....

Then off to bed to wait for Santa....or sleep.....hmm, at my age, Christmas junkie though I am, the latter was the more likely choice....

Project 289 - Day 281 : On The 10th day of Andrew's Christmas, I Decorated the Tree With....

Iconic. 

People, things, events that capture a moment or feeling, or a particularly chase slice of the zeitgeist, and then remain forever elevated in everyone's sense of what made that moment, or year or decades. In my pop culture laden world, iconic translates to ornaments bearing the likeness of Betty Boop (above), or Stargate SG1, which if you're a sci-fi nerd like me is one of the best sci-fi shows in, like, forever, or Rocky and Bullwinkle, which will be forever etched in my mind as the cartoon we always watched at 6 a.m. in my grandparent's lounge room when we visited them, trying desperately hard to turn their old colour TV on quietly which wasn't easy to do. 

So these ornaments evoke a happy nostalgia, or memory of watching a show with friends, or simply a zesty young gal with a squeaky voice who came to define a particular era, and then live beyond it. Every tree needs an icon or two...... three or more.... I have plenty....

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I finished a pretty quiet day at work with a lovely relaxed dinner on a breezy quiet night in Erskineville eating at Stir Crazy Thai with my lovely friend, Justin. We talked about work, Christmas and the need to just chill, savoured the Chicken Chill Jam and Tay Po Beef Curry, and luxuriated in a very slow paced catch up. Then Justin went shopping at the mall...not slow paced!! LOL.... and I headed home to blog, wash clothes, and send out emails with my Christmas blog URL in it......

Project 289 - Day 280 : On The 9th day of Andrew's Christmas, I Decorated the Tree With....

One of the fondest memories of my childhood was watching the inspired very intelligently-created silliness of Looney Tunes..... Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Foghorn Leghorn (see photo with Henry the Chicken Hawk), Speedy Gonzales (also in a photo), Pepe Le Pew, and Porky Pig (yep you got it - the other photo!) were all clever, funny and a delight to watch, and gave me hours of amusement.

Naturally, and you can probably detect a pattern here, my love for them continued on into adulthood, where I better appreciated the wonderful comments on society and socials mores, and many of the inside jokes that sailed past my more innocent childhood mind.

So when it came to decorating the tree with pop culture ornaments, and making sure there was a healthy dollop of colourful, inspired lunacy, it's not like there was a choice was there? 
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So what did this day bring? A mixed bag really. It wasn't a quiet day but not really busy and while I was in very good spirits - my 5 a.m. morning walks really make a difference not just to my body shape and weight, but to my moods - I was very tired. Still, I found the strength to play "Stick the Red Nose on Rudolph" - fairly sure I got nowhere near his nose! - watch my boss Vicki do the same (see the pictures), hand out Star Wars and Hello Kitty candy canes (of course I couldn't give out standard candy canes!), and receive some delicious Sparkle cupcakes from one the Service Providers my division handles.... oh, and despite my plans to be sugar free in the lead up to the holidays, I ate a piece of white chocolate cheesecake, some Rocky Road (made by our HR lady's Maria's husband) and, yes, a cupcake!

There's nothing for it... more walking tomorrow! But first a good night's sleep, which is what I plan to go and do right now....

Project 289 - Day 279 : On The 8th day of Andrew's Christmas, I Decorated the Tree With....

I bought my first Smurf at a petrol station in Lismore as part of a promotion back in the late 70s, when they were something like $1 with each petrol purchase. As luck would have it, Dad's car needed petrol reasonably regularly so I ended up with a great collection of Smurfs, many of which were later sold off on Ebay which I realised you could get money for them. Thus began the semi-selling off of my childhood!

But I digress..... It was on Ebay that I realised I could buy Smurfs as Christmas ornaments and so began another mini-mania....tracking down as many of them as I could, a task in which I largely succeeded if the representative three here are any indication. Successful or otherwise in my consumer Smurf mania, the fact is they added just a little bit of my childhood, and their own place in the pop culture firmament to the tree, and I liked that....

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Tonight I finally made it back down to The Sutherland Shire where I used to live for dinner at GPKs (gourmet pizzas) in Westfield Miranda, with wonderful long standing friends, John & Susie, and Ellen, and Tracy (housemates). John & Susie and I traditionally do a Christmas get together/ present exchange but it's usually at John & Susie's place, with Susie's tree decked out in glowing lights and pop culture ornaments just like mine (my cast offs found a new appreciative home with her), but this time we took on the road, and had a lot of fun!


I miss these guys and we definitely need to catch up more often!

Project 289 - Day 278 : On The 7th day of Andrew's Christmas, I Decorated the Tree With....

I have loved Peanuts since I bought my first collection of comic strips in a cheap little paperback for 20c way back in the early 70s. There was something profoundly sweet and engaging about this group of kids and the cheeky, supremely dog owned by one of them, and that sense of connection has never left me extending now to ornaments on, and off, the tree including the latest piece, Snoopy on his Christmas kennel speeding through the sky, Woodstock holding on for dear life to a trailing banner, which I picked up on Pier 39 in San Francisco this year.

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Today my gorgeous guy left for 10 days with his family in Melbourne, and while I am glad he gets to spend this precious time with his lovely family, I will miss him terribly.

Getting him to the airport was a challenge however! We lingered far too long chilling at my place and had the grand total of 40 minutes at his place to wrap gifts, pack, and tidy up before dashing like the santa-clad hounds of hell were nipping frostily at our heels, to the airport. As it turns out, I got parking very quickly, he was checked in faster than Santa does his rounds on Christmas eve, and we got to spend some time talking and saying goodbye at Gate 31.

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I spent the afternoon napping, and then headed out to see "9", an animated adult's movie set in post-apocalyptic earth, where the last vestiges of humanity were dolls filled with parts of one scientist's soul. While the action was a tad repetitive, the movie had heart and soul, and spoke eloquently of the dangers of arrogance, and the love of power and the horrors that can befall when all else, including technology, is given over to power as an end in itself. It was short but charming and made all the more so by the fact that we saw it on free tickets!