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

I mentioned here yesterday that I have a problem with loss.

So in the interests of full disclosure, I think I should also reveal I have a problem with shoes. Not in in losing shoes, mind, in finding them.  It appears from the straw poll I performed this morning regarding how many shoes other people actually own, I may* have a problem.  Not a massive problem, just a little one.  Or, not so much little, as errr… Well you be the judge.

Here are my shoes:

42 pairs, give or take.. Mainly give, as I found four more pairs after this photo-shoot, and I remembered I left another pair at a mates house in Melbourne last time I was there…

In my defence, I live in Queensland, and it is quite hot, so I require lots of thong-sandal-flimsy kind of shoes. It does however cool down in the Autumn, so I do require a few shoes for that change of season. In addition I am likely to go to Melbourne at least once a year, so I require black things and warm things to do that.  Plus, there is the fact that I like to give the impression of being kind of casual-sporty, so I have no choice but to have a pair or several of Cons. (You may notice there is one pair of actual running shoes. I wore those in 2011, and I will say they were very comfortable that day.)

So there you have it.  This is what the shoe situation is like for a person with many and varied tastes.  I would also like to remind you, before you mock my abundance, that I wear every single pair of these shoes, except the white wedding shoes, but I will wear those this Friday.  These shoes are my friends and allies.  I have The Menopause, so sometimes it is impossible to find anything to wear that makes a girl feel good. My feet are never fat, and my shoes never fail me.