Here are the hits:

1. I know, I know, I always say it, but HOW GOOD ARE SCHOOL HOLIDAYS? Can they go on forever please? Or at least another few weeks.

2. These Veuve smoking slippers, or whatever the hell they are.

Yes, you can wear them with socks Jools.

I want need them, and I need them immediately. Gives new meaning to the term “I’m putting on my drinking shoes.”

3. Sleepover visitors. How GOOD ARE THEY? Especially when they are My Friend and his Little Mate. So good.

So good to hear the laughter of little kids playing together, dressing up and mucking about.

So good to share food and convos around the table with people who you love like family (and who you wish would stay for longer). Blessed, I tells ya.

4. Working from home. Do you do it? Perhaps you should try it..?

The Joint, joint (See what I did there?)

Years ago, after the birth of The Evil Genius Mark II, I had some very insightful friends suggest that perhaps I could work from home. I scoffed at first (because I didn’t think of it), but eventually I came around, and I have to say it has been one of the best decisions of my working life. No travel and being able to hear the sounds of family all around are some of the perks, but most of all it has brought an all new level of loving service to my work. You can’t invite people into your home who you don’t love, so the home office has ensured that my practice is full of people who I consider to be my extended family. I love ’em, and I hope they kinda like me right back.

My motto is “For everyone you love” and I think it goes right back the other way- my place is for everyone I love. Not a bad way to spend a work day. Not bad at all.

5. A long weekend coming my way. Goodonya Queensland for moving the hol from that first half of the year where there is a GLUT of long weekends, to now, when we can enjoy the sunshine and the spring-that-thinks-it’s-summer with gay abandon. Long weekend, I can’t wait to get in you.

What are your best bits of the week? Anything amazing to share?

Did you bake the Big Batch Big Biccies yet?

…From The Ashers xx

Some hits and misses this week, but if you’re playing along, you’ll know that already. Here are the hits:

1. These beauties from a gorgeous friend. How kind are PEOPLE?

Sunshine in a vase

2. This:

A drink by candlelight

A Floris to drink, in tribute to my friend. Drinking it on the balcony of my spesh mate. Candles were lit. The dearly departed did not blow them out, so that was annoying. Perhaps they were too busy visiting the homes of the beautiful children and husbands they left behind, so I guess that was okay.

3. This little fella.

Kermit the fright

He makes a racket every time there is a tiny skerrick of rain, but I’ve never seen him before. He thoughtfully chose last night to hang out on the gate when I was trying to stealthily sneak in after curfew, and almost made me squeal. I do like his “roaawk, roaawk, roaawk” though.

4. School holidays. How good are they? How sweet is it to do what you want, when you want and stay in pjs much later than what is socially acceptable? Bloody good is how good.

5. My Mum. I don’t talk about her on here because firstly, she is insanely private, and secondly, doesn’t read the blog, (and she would be cross if she knew I was talking about her on the internets), however I’ve just gotta say how lucky I am to have such a strong, centred, loving, helpful and kind lady around. She is a rock, and an awesome babysitter to boot. I couldn’t ask for more (other than for her to keep the Evil Geniuses at her joint for another week)*

*Some statements may be coloured by the fact that she is currently in possession of said Geniuses until Saturday.

So what are your hits of the week?

Did you also have a shit week, but were able to get some good stuff out of it anyway?

…From The Ashers xx

I didn’t get around to wrapping up the week with the Hitwave this week. The Apple was being a little tetchy, and quite frankly, I didn’t have the mindset to sort it out. You see, when we have a transfusion looming, there is an undercurrent of stress in my life that doesn’t properly surface until that cannula is finally in place and the ‘danger period’ of the first bag of blood is over. It’s only then that it comes frothing to the top, and I almost cry with the relief and the gratitude of making it through. And that’s when I exhale. When I know we haven’t drowned.

In the week or so leading up to transfusion day, the only times I really stop flipping the scenarios over and over in my mind are when I’m at work, or when I’m tapping away on these keys.

Blogging as therapy? Say yessir. Work as an escape? You betcha sweet corpuscles. And so in these weeks- the ones at the pointy end of the quarter- I am even more grateful than ever to have such wonderful things in my life. Places where I can be in the moment, focussed, and in flow.

I’m pretty lucky to have these two domains, these things that I see as my life’s work.

It’s been a big day for my little girl and I. If you follow my spamming on any of the Socials, you would have seen some of the details. You might know that they couldn’t get the cannula to pierce a vein cleanly: not the first, the second or the third time. It took four punctures, a new doctor, my insistence of using the Accuvein (the infrared vein finder) and a smaller cannula, to finally get the sucker in.

Coco is only seven years old. I think that is a lot for a kid to go through.

Showing off the new blood

So today, I have two hits:

1. I am insanely grateful to the wonderful Cass, who played and played and sang her heart out during all of this.

Cass is the music therapy chick at the hospital. She is sweet and gentle and kind, and a bit of a hippy. If I am to be honest here (and what is the use of this blog if I’m not?) I thought she was a dickhead when I first met her. She came into our room, at a particularly harrowing moment, espousing the benefits of music for kids undergoing procedures.

I wanted to tell her to fuck off.

We were right IN something. Something BIG. Bloody pop tunes weren’t going to help our situation. I gritted my teeth and said, sure, play if you want (and in my head I probably called her a few names).
And so she played.

And it made all the difference. She has a voice of an angel and an energy to match, and Coco resonated with her immediately, and the beauty of Cass calmed her, in a beat.

So now I am in love with Cass and her presence. Today she played everything Coco requested (except that song from Frozen, but ain’t nobody got time fo’ dat): Riptide, Happy, Eye Of The Tiger…. Plus an improv of her own about Coco’s favourite things, where we yelled out stuff, and she made it all into a song.

Cass, I don’t even know if you are real, or if I dreamt you up, but bloody hell, you ROCK.

2.  Blood donors.

Of course.

I wish you could all see the change in our kid today. She is strong and brave and tolerant, and so if you met her earlier this week you would think that she’s just a normal kid. You might not realise that she really was just going through the motions, at times. The motions of breathing and walking and eating. Sure, she still laughed, she still had fun, she still raced to watch Family Feud every night, but tonight? Oh man, that kid is ALIVE.

She is drunk on life and energy and joy. I wish you could hear that laugh of hers that is ringing out over Sunrise Beach tonight, because it truly is an elixir for the soul.

Perhaps if you close your eyes you might hear her at your place? I can tell you right now, it’s worth a try.

I couldn’t get a good pic- there was “too much” laughing!

…From The Ashers xx

**Warning: Now with added swears**

This Champagne Life

The Hits today are a little different.

Usually I try to think up a list of things that I’ve had fun doing, going to, or being with, in the week gone by. Maybe even give you a mini-review of something that made my synapses sing.

This week has been a crazy, rollercoaster with all the ups and downs that such a ride implies. There were more ups than downs, but the downs were spectacular in their depths. So I guess DeMartini might be right, in that everything must balance out in order to stay in the light.

At the end of this exhilarating ride of a week, I am left with a feeling of thankfulness and, dare I say it, gratitude. Gratitude at this wonderful experiment of a life, where there is love, laughter, karaoke, dancing, family, friends, meaningful work, support, chocolate, sunshine, peace, creativity, teamwork and tacos.

I have so much to celebrate, in a life so full of wonderful connections and opportunities to learn.

So here’s cheers with a fancy bottle of Veuve, to a grouse bloody life, where I can still go out and rock the stage to a bit of Rod with one of my chicks, have a young and handsome totally inebriated man boy young enough to be my son try and pick me up (not in the carrying way- in the rude way), and then come home to a house brimming with energy and actual verve, and the absolute loves of my life.

If that isn’t a week of hits, then I don’t know what is.

And if the week passed you by in a bit of a blur, like mine did, there’s always the best cat in the world. I call him “The fuck is this? cat” for I think it is, in fact his real name. I love how shocked he is by the world (or a fly).

Happy Weekend. May yours be full of things that surprise the fuck out of you.

…From The Ashers xx

What were your hits this week?

To save you doing that Facebook thingy, just jot some down here.

It’s been a busy week around here with me working FULL TIME (I know, unheard of!) as well as fitting in being a FRONT PAGE celebrity in the local paper…  By the time you read this I will be safely ensconced in the bath seminar room of the QT, enjoying a weekend at the ProBlogger seminar, getting pissed and going to karaoke bars with Nikki enriching my mind with ALL of the things a pretend professional blogger needs to know.

So here are the hits:

1.  YOU.  As you RRs would know I plagued the blog with posts about the ridiculously low blood stores this week, going on and on and on about it, until you were all so sick of hearing about it, you went and gave up the claret.  Well done.  Maroochydore Blood Bank rang me and said they had a bumper week, and even though it’s still not enough, it’s something.  So goodonya you lot.  Coco and the rest of The Ashers thank you from the bottom of our corpuscles.

2.  My big, almost ten year old boy, Liam.  As you might have figured out by some of my posts, he hates his sister and even once wrote a note plotting out his vengeance.  See exhibit A.

Exhibit A

Despite that, this week he started up a blog of his very own, and THIS was his post on Day 3.  Warms the cockles of me old heart, I tells ya.

Oh, and feel free to checkout the whole blog.  He’s at DJ Asher.  He would love to get some comments… Like the one he got from his Uncle Darren, who said, “I usually don’t read shit blogs like your Mum’s, but I’ll read yours.”  Liam thought that was hilarious.  Don’t worry, I banned him from the computer for a week for that. (I can’t have him being more successful than me you know.)

The dude even added his own little category of YouTube videos, unbeknownst to us.  How?  We don’t know.  And so the world turns….

3.  This yummy spread.  How good is it when you have older patients who bring you in awesome stuff they’ve made?  Bloody good, is how good.  I got this baby from a lady this week.  It’s delish, AND cute, with a sweet little love-heart topper.  Who even does that these days?  Grouse old chicks, that’s who.

Mmmmm, lemmmon

4.  And whilst I’m going on about food, how good are these?  Have you had one?  Of course you haven’t because you can’t have just one.  You have to eat the whole damn packet.  A perfect sweety-salty treat to keep me going on my long afternoon shift.  It’s just a shame they cost a bomb (considering my consumption rate).  They aren’t as expensive as printer ink, but they are close.  Get yourself some anyway.  Just tell the kids they are healthy and then you can eat the lot yourself.

Pumpkin = Healthy

5.  The QT.  It’s very colourful, and a bit too crazy for my eyes to take it all in at once, but I think this extremely comfortable bed is going to suit me just fine.

So soft

The only drawback so far is that the minibar stinks of cantaloup.  I don’t know how or why, but it’s doing my head in (as Smelling All Of The Smells is my superpower.)   My $9 Corona has a distinctly unsavoury odour.  But I’m soldiering on.

Well that’s it from me…  Have a great weekend.  I suspect I will.

Send me your Hits if you have the time.  I’d love to hear what you’re up to.

…From The Ashers xx

It seems a bit trite to cobble together a list of five hits, in a week where I would have preferred to hang out in my bed, listen to the waves or dreary old Smiths songs, and let the days crawl by.  A week where I know I should be feeling grateful to be alive in this time, this place, with these people.  But nonetheless a week where I didn’t want to force a smile or glibly pretend that everything is fine and everything is fine and all manner of things will be fine.

Helen Razer wrote a book once, called “Everything’s Fine” but it came with a sticker that you could stick on the cover and obscure the ‘fine’ with a ‘fucked’.  I would have kinda liked that sticker this week.  Not for the entire week of course, for there were many moments of joy to grasp onto, but to have it available on and off, then on again.

So in this week of weeks, what I’d mainly like to do is to give thanks.

Thanks to Friend for tweeting Q and A with me on Monday night.  I can’t imagine what you handle, and I don’t want to, but you still make me laugh and I’m in awe of your strength.  Hayls chose well mate, she was a clever cookie that one (and I WILL win that dinner someday; I will get a tweet on Q and A yet).

Thanks for all the sweet comments on Blog’s birthday.  She liked your style.

Thanks to Suze for the gift of bold colour.  I love that we didn’t need any words, but that you knew that something bright would be good for my heart.

Thanks to my long suffering Husband.  Man you put up with some moody shit Nath.  I don’t know how, or some days even why, but I guess I must be a bit like Hayls: I chose well.  I might even give you one of my beers as a reward (see below).

Thanks to both of my beer delivery ladies.  Undeserved as they were, they shall be savoured with great satisfaction, come the weekend. Mwah.

So there you have it, no hits, but lots of thanks.  And don’t worry, this isn’t going to turn into some kind of Facey thing with lists of gratitude every day.  I wrote this lot to remind me that I am very lucky.  That yes, I can be sad, it is allowed, but that I do have much to be happy about, once the clouds have shed their tears.

Okay, come on, just this once, tell me what you need to give thanks for.

…From The Ashers xx