New Year's Eve

Well we made it to 12 noon... it's in the 40s here and abounding in mosquitoes after all the rain over previous weeks so sleep was a little hard to come by last night.  The gym was only open for 2 hours this morning so, as I left, having tried to protect the garden from the searing to come, Steve and I agreed we wouldn't even try for midnight tonight.  Midday will do.  So we've had a glass of bubbly and will have another tomorrow morning for New Year in Europe and the States.
It was lovely at the gym.  I go to Curves which is very girly but it suits me fine.  Today a young girl in a pink fairy costume came in with her Mum and was determinedly copying her.  Two ladies were doing their stretches together, chatting away and unconsciously mirroring each other's moves.  I've been in a girly frame of mind over these holidays.  Some years ago I bought a book called The Evolution of Woman from a stall in a small town just outside Armidale.  The book was written in the 1970s and I've been saving it for a suitable time - it's not very large and I thought I could breeze through it in a day fondly remembering our feminist attempts from that time.  But I'm still only about halfway through.  It's is not the bra-burning call to arms I was expecting but an academic anthropological work which dovetails neatly with some of the stuff I've been thinking about recently, like when did humans start to consider themselves as separate from other animals?  This of course has implications for when you stop being a carnivore and start being a cannibal.  Very interesting stuff and it's doing my brain in.
Perhaps in response to this, I have only one NY resolution: to  wear nice underwear from now on.  I'm quite good at keeping my resolutions so feel I've achieved Nirvana at the age of 57 - well, I'm as good as I'm gonna get.  And mulling over all this as I was driving to the gym, I thought how wild it would feel to be in full burqa with only fabulous underwear on underneath, and perhaps some freedom-impeding stilettoes.  And then the terrible realisation that the Coolgardie would be covering charcuterie not fresh meat.
You'll be pleased to know I have no photos of any of this.  So I thought I'd share these with you - symbols of hope for the new year.  Here I am some years ago reading on my favourite redgum on the Darling when we were deep in drought and I was deep in depression.

 

Here I am at the same tree a cuppla weeks ago.  Very different headspace and a very different river.

I've had a fabulous 2010.  Best year this millennium so far.  Here's to 2011.
Flow river flow.
(But not as much as in Queensland.)

Christmas at last

Very quiet Christmas for us but absolutely perfect (well, as perfect as possible when there's no upturned table and reindeer footprints all over the house; no Hallelujah chorus to welcome guests;  no tangle of children and dogs; and no Mel sipping tea from the Arzberg china.)  We did at least dust off the Arzberg...

and Steve cooked a fabulous repast of 24Sage Leaves Chicken with rosemary potatoes and beans.  We'd started the ham on Tuesday, the day we got it from the butcher, so had a little rest from it.

And then the party was over.

Thank you!!!!