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

**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.

Well, it’s been a week.  A short one, but a week of hits none the less.

1.  Fancy Champi with friends at Mum’s place.  What kind of (overgrown) kid would I be if I didn’t have a party (of sorts) at my parent’s place when she is away.  I only hope I arranged the cushions properly when we left, otherwise I’m gonna be busted…  Hope she doesn’t read the blog.

Note: Two glasses. Sorry fellas.

2.  Finding my old English assignment- what was then called an ‘Option’.  It is neither good, nor insightful, or even well put together (However, much of it IS excruciating).   But I do remember loving doing it, going through the process of creating something from nothing, and having free reign to do so.  It was probably about the only part of the work in my later years of schooling that I actually liked.  It is interesting to note that I didn’t recognise how much I loved to write until this late stage in life, and so instead went off doing science degrees and the like.  Which is not at all my forte.  Lucky I had my eyes on the career at the end of all the mindless biochemistry, or I would have been stuffed.  Finding it was a fun trip down memory lane.

3.  Cooler nights: not a hit, but uggies and early nights and watching telly under a blanket, well that was kinda nice.

4.  This book:

I’m only just wading in, but it’s pretty good so far.  Intense, but good.  I think we will be great friends.  And in other news of books, one of my patients, Allison Paterson, has just completed the finals on her book called ANZAC Sons, a compilation and story behind over 500 letters sent from three brothers on the Western Front.  Gives me the shivers just thinking about it.  I can’t wait for its release (Remembrance Day this year).  A final bit of book news: you know Anna Spargo-Ryan?  Well she is one of my fave authors, and this week she sent me a bit of her novel-under-construction to read, for which I feel humbled and honoured.  As you would expect, it is wonderful.  I am by turns insanely jealous, and stupidly excited that this will soon be a thing.  Well done both of you girls, your tenacity and ability to write such a lot of words, is frankly, quite amazing.

5.   The soccer World Cup starting tomorrow morning… NAH, just joking, I couldn’t give a shit!!  But it’s 10pm, I’m tired, I worked my tiny phalanges to the, well, phalanges today and I can’t think of another hit right now.  So go Aussies, fare you well, and in another more interesting front: GO DOGS.

P.S.  For those concerned souls who have been asking, Woofa the Shitcat’s eye appears to be fine.  Over a grand later, we called enough, and just didn’t make an appointment for yet another (fifty dollar) eye pressure test.  In all my vetinary wisdom I took her off the meds, and we went about our business.  Liam and I did the ocular testing (hung a thingy in front of her eye and watched to see if it looked like she could see it, shone a torch into her eye to see if the pupil responded- being the old school type of vets we are) and she seems fine.  So fingers crossed all is well, because I don’t suppose we can go back to that vet again…

Happy Second Long Weekend if you are in Maroochy Shire (bastards), otherwise, Happy Normal Weekend.

And don’t forget to send me some of your shit poetry as mentioned on the blog yesterday.  I know you have it saved up somewhere.. Janine and I can’t be the only ones.. Can we?

…From The Ashers xx

So here it is, the hit list of the week:

1.  This stuff. Mmmmm. I don’t think I need to say any more, other than thanks Sam and Ben and thanks Mum for some supplies.  Also thanks Me (and Uncle Dan) for having the good sense to get a bottle to farewell my beautiful Sue*.  We didn’t have the ‘correct’ glasses for my taste, but, Mmmmm.

2.  Evans Head.  We had the opportunity to spend a few nights there over the long weekend, and that joint was awesome.  We emerged from the time-warp of a coastal town of thirty-seven years ago, three days later, rejuvenated.  Go there if you can.  But not if you want fancy shiz.  (Gulpers of green smoothies in Mason jars or Salted Caramel Macaron Munchers need not apply.  The RSL does NOT have Himalayan Sea Salt, nor is the beef Wagyu.)

3.  A fun little idea that might become something with this here blog… It might not, but it IS fun to dream a little dream sometimes doncha think?  Stay tuned on that one… You KNOW I’ll be sharing the news if it’s peachy.

4.  Michael Franti.  I’ve said it before, but I’ve gotta say it again.  How good is this song?

5.  Great teachers.  Our kids have hit the jackpot this year, with awesome teachers that suit them perfectly.  I know it’s only the first week, but we are pumped…. Or maybe that’s just me and the euphoria of a house that says tidy, and air that stays whinge free for five whole hours a day.

What are your hits of the week?

*OOPS, that sounds weird, like she’s dead- she’s not, just DEAD TO ME for leaving me without a coffee buddy for the next year whilst she gallivants around from girt to girt.