My partner also woke up sick today, with something completely different to me. I’m vomiting and my stomach is cramping while he’s got a very high temperature and a sore throat. He’s sleeping it off as best he can and I’m reading novels for uni. Both curled up in bed feeling sick and sorry. Both trying to look after each other when we can hardly look after ourselves. With both of our mothers in different countries, we have to be grateful for each other when we’re ill.

I think my stomach has settled enough to try a few more crackers, so I’m off to raid the Vegemite jar again. Thank goodness for Vegemite!

I have some kind of vomiting bug. It’s not fun. It makes me feel miserable and yucky and really really hungry. Everything I’ve eaten today I thrown back up. Except for the handful of steamed veges I had for dinner thank goodness.

So what I’m grateful for today is sick days. My ability to call in sick to work. For the lovely people who cover my shift for me. To go back to sleep and sleep out of this tummy bug. I’m going to try and fall asleep again. Goodnight!

I may have just spent a grand total of $4.20 and 28,012 miles purchasing a weird tea pot. And I’m okay with that.

And I’m grateful I can do a little bit of guilt-free online shopping!

Actually, Sixty Lights is a lot like The Lost Dog. They are both written in a similar style, both feature poignant little stories/memories/descriptions of loosely  related things that enrich the story being told, both feature Australia (in particular Melbourne) and India as places that drive the narrative. And I love the female protagonist in both Lucy in Sixty Lights for her photographic way of seeing the world (both literally and metaphorically) and Nelly in The Lost Dog for her artistic approach to dressing herself and to life in general.

I’ve written an interesting fiction-non-fiction piece on The Lost Dog that I will endeavour to polish and publish on one of my blogs in the near future, and I’m going to write an essay on Sixty Lights in the next few weeks for assessment for my current literature subject.

Anyway, what I’m getting at today is that I’m grateful for the opportunity to read new stuff because sometimes I discover absolute gems. Hooray!

What have you been reading lately?

Free Tickets (Friday)
I’m very, very, very grateful for the tickets my dad gave to me to go and see They Might Be Giants play at the corner hotel on Friday night. I’m also grateful I left the tickets at home the first time we tried to leave the house (because it meant we had to turn back and get them and we ended up then catching a taxi instead of a tram-then-train combo, getting us to the venue right on time). (And just quietly, I’m also grateful that we didn’t get checked for ID at the venue, as I’d also left that at home!) I’m not good at being organised when I’m flustered. Also, the show was great, even though I only knew a half a dozen of the songs.

Serendipitous Coincidences (Saturday)
I was supposed to start work at 6am on Saturday morning, and I decided that going out till after midnight on Friday, then trying to do a 6am shift wouldn’t end well, so I started contacting workmates asking to swap an evening shift with me. Turns out one of my colleagues who was working in the evening had a wedding on and needed to do a morning shift instead. Swap complete, everybody wins! Hooray!

My Legs (Sunday)
I had to go to the Triple RRR radio station this morning to record our demo so that we can be assessed as to how ready we are to go live to air (soon!!) and I left the house a little later than I intended… but because my legs are awesome, I still got to the studio on time. My legs also featured in such events today as “riding home from the radio station”, “walking to work” and “not collapsing while I make dinner”, so I’m just going to take a minute here and be thankful for my legs.

But through all of this, I’m most grateful for my partner who has sent me a copy of my roster from home (to help me rearrange my shifts), who has agreed to accompany me to go and see They Might Be Giants (even though he has no idea who they are), who is even going to bring me my Zoom h2n recorder from home and drop it off to me at uni on his way to work. He is amazing, and I’m grateful for everything he does for me, especially on a day like today.

My favourite thing to come out of Pandora lately is the rediscovery of Cake while listening to ‘The Cat Empire radio’. If I were in an iTunes purchasing mood, I’d do what I always do with music (and books) and buy back this childhood memory, but for now (mostly to keep my storage space free) I’ll be content to streaming music that sounds similar and finding new artists to fall in love with.

PS. Can I also be grateful that despite being having a free account, I haven’t had to listen to an ad yet? It’s actually making me consider upgrading to a pro account just to show my gratitude for how much I appreciate this app!

PPS. Also intend on reanimating this blog again! Stay tuned for (hopefully) more…

All of the Eddy stories begin like that. Then Eddy usually runs into his best friend Gimlie The Pig and they have adventures painting the cubby house Eddy lives in, buying paint from Mr. Benopolopolipilopily (Mr. B’nopoly for short), eating ice-cream at the ice-cream parlor run by Ingrid The Monkey’s mum and older sister, and having adventures at the beach or park with Ty The Leopard and Potatoflower The Tiger.

I’m grateful that Max still wants to hear these stories at bedtime, even though it’s been many years since I last told him one. Tonight we had fun rediscovering all the characters and places we could go adventuring with. He even told me he would never be too old for Eddy The Teddy stories and we decided that even when he’s 30 and has kids of his own, I can still tell him Eddy The Teddy stories and his kids can listen in.

“How do you remember all their names?” He asked me.
“Because I used to tell you these stories all the time,” I replied. “I had to remember them.”
“But, did you ever have to write them all down?”
“Nope.”
“Wow!”

“I remember he [Eddy The Teddy] lives in, like a small house?”
“Yes, he lives in a cubby house out the back of his mum’s house.”
“Good, cause that’s what I’ve been imagining,” he tells me.

“I think you’ve told me this one before,” he assures me.
“No,” I reply, “I’m making this one up right now, as I go.”
“How can you do that?” He wonders out loud. “But I remember he’s painted his house like this before because he was looking up at the ceiling when he was going to sleep and looking at the stars.”
I agree, “Yes. But he always used to paint stars on his house. Or dinosaurs, or jungles. Tonight he’s painting galaxies on the walls and roof, like the whole universe.”
“Ah, okay.” He’s satisfied with this reason.

And then Eddy The Teddy went back home and went to sleep.

I like the wind though. It makes me feel alive and super free. I’m glad this afternoon was windy