Resolving to have a good time

I'm heading to the beach with some of my favourite people for the New Years weekend. No doubt it will be a weekend of beach wanders, wave dunkings, and lot and lots of laughter. Hopefully it will be the catalyst to the start of a year of goodness and joy for all of us. I hope, for you too, the new year will see sunshine and lollipops coming your way, and will be a year to remember for all the right reasons.
Oh, and good luck with your resolutions if you're making some:

Good from bad

It's 3:30am Christmas morning and I've finally finished wrapping all the presents Darling Mother and I rushed around purchasing this week. I'm exausted, and honestly don't know how I'm going to get up in four hours for breakfast with our neighbours. Or how I'm going to muster up a whole day of Christmas cheer.
When I was younger I loved Christmas. The lights, the tree, the confusing carols tra-laa-ing about snow and sleighs while we were sweltering in thirty degree heat - I loved it all. Even a few years ago I remember counting down the sleeps, getting Christmas-ed up the whole month of December, and pushing through the mandatory family arguments to find that magic everyone talks about at this time of year.
But the past few years I haven't been able to find much (if any) of the elusive Christmas Spirit. At one of supposedly the happiest times of the year I seem to be finding myself dragging my feet in the cheer department. I still love the gift giving, and even with an incredibly tight budget this year, I've managed to shower my favourite people with gifts which I hope they will love. But even that was (horrifyingly) a struggle. And it seems I'm not the only one - so many people I've talked to the last few days seem to be feelin the same.
Friends and family are feeling lonely, sad, or just poor. Others are sick, anxious about looming problems, or have recently had a loved one pass away. Still more are just feeling like Christmas just came too fast and left them behind. For whatever reason it's just not the jolly season it should well be.
I went to church tonight and the readings, as is typical, were about the birth of Christ and the reason we celebrate this holiday in the first place - how he came into a world of pain and suffering to save us from the darkness. The Pastor talked about the beginnings of the Christmas Tree - a fir tree - (apparantly it was all Mr Martin Luther's idea - smart fella) and how it symbolised the growth of new life even in the deepest, coldest, darkest winter.
And I talked to my neighbour who's boys have been ill for the past 15 years, and still fight every day just to live without pain. She told me how the oldest one is still struggling to recover from surgery over a year ago, and how the youngest one is about to undergo a long process of similar procedures. And how a boy - the eldest's good freind who suffers from similar health problems - has just passed away. And, even with all that was happening in her life, the chance to spend Christmas with her family and neighbours was wonderous to her.
And I realised that maybe that's why so many people love Christmas so much - becuase even when everything is hell, Christmas - the ideal of goodness, and faith, and love that we celebrate through Jesus, and Santa, and just by giving gifts and spending time - that's why it's so important. It reminds us that even with all the bad stuff, deep down in the core of it all, this life is something special.
John reckons so too, so it must be true.

So, from me to you, I hope your Christmas is full of joy and happiness. But if it's not - if there's pain, or sadness, or loneliness, or if everything just seems too much, my thoughts and prayers are with you, and my hope is that you'll find some good at the heart of it all.
Merry Christmas.

I'm sorry you have to hurt

This writer guy, he says that it's easy.

 You just sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.

But what if you're running out of veins?

From: I Wrote This For You

Sometimes people suck. Not all the time. For the most part I think people try to be good people and love, and give, and hope and dream without hurting others. But sometimes they don't.

Sometimes poeple hurt other people. Sometimes they take words or actions and sharpen them, grinding them down to a glistening, glinting, angry point that slides straight through your heart, leaving the splintering wood of the handle to callus and corrupt the place where you once dared to hope there was love in the world. Sometimes they create excruciating, unnessary pain and confusion. Sometimes they do this without even realising it.

Sometimes - and we are all at fault in this to some degree - sometimes people take something they've learnt, or know or simply believe, and hold it so much higher than anything else. Sometimes it gets in the way of their view of everything else possible, or plausible, or real. When everything else is shrouded by this overarching 'thing' they hold so impossibly high, there's no hope at all for them to care a thought for the damage they might do by whispering a half-formed thought filled with ignorance and spite. And that's when their poisonous barb jabs deep thorn into the soft skin of some other someone, who's done and knows nothing of the so-called crime they've commited.

Sometimes, in believing too hard or protecting too strongly, people become exactly that evil which they are trying to guard against.

And then what?

Someone else suffers the consequences of their blind accusations and angry assumptions. 

And for what? 

So they can feel self-righteous in the belief that they've been stronger through the storm than the petty mortals surrounding them.

Sometimes my strength of faith in people is shattered by blind negligence, and the inevitable destruction it spreads because of the thoughtless actions of a person (or persons).

Sometimes I think faith in the good of others is something akin to trusting in my ability to write. Both require the decanting of some deeper part of you without knowing for sure what will be received in return. Both require the alltogether stupid belief that what you are giving is perfect enough to be not just accepted, but respected. Both risk utter destruction from the very moment of conception.  

So how many times do you tap another vein of faith and love for one's fellow man before you run dry? And how sullied or weakened is that love from all the times before?

When all is broken



"Let me be your wings

Leave behind the world you know

For another world of wondrous things"

 This beautiful picture (and words) is via ilovedoodle which I found through my amazing friend Miss V. It's specially for my beautiful Wabi who has a cracked heart and a broken wing.
Please don't despair - I know it hurts, and hearts are the hardest to repair - but I'm here, and my wings are good any time you need to fly.

Catching up

I'm a bad blogger. I have these lapses of weeks that slip by in what seems like days, and then I realise how long it's been. Then I feel like I should leave it until I have something really exciting to share so that at least the wait will have been worth it. But then I think what I find exciting (yarn sales, vintage button expos, food, food, and food) is maybe not what you'd find exciting, so that's probably silly of me. Instead, I'm just going to do a catch-up post and call my absence exactly what is is: laziness and writer's block. Or should that be blogger's block?
To start with, things I'd totally buy if I wasn't flat broke:
Irregular Choice sells the most amazing clothes, shoes and accessories and their site entry page makes me sigh. I'm pretty sure I want every single thing in the store, but just for now these are my favourite:

These little babies are called Abigail's Party, and they secretly make me wish I was Abigail.
While we're on the topic of shoes, Shoes of Prey = fantastic! For three reasons: One, you can design your own shoes. Two....actually only one reason but really, when it comes to shoes isn't one enough?
Oh, and on the topic of designing, let's talk about food design. In summer I love me a good popsicle (or ice-blocks for us Aussie kids), but I hate how sugary store-bought ones are, and I crave fruit non-stop. I've also always been a big fan of playing with my food. You know that old cliche about love being a four-letter word? Well that word is Zoku, because this little beauty lets you create popsicles on the bench top, in fifteen minutes. And not just any old popsicle, popsicles like this:

It's almost too pretty to eat. Almost.
On that note, let's discuss food blogs. One of my very favourite blogs is the darling Sasa, epecially her detailed account of the dreaded Hangrrr. Her witty and inspiring food/life blog always leaves me with something to think about, while also leaving my stomach begging for attention because of things like this:

Oh Sasa, why must you tempt me so!
Sasa also has a blogger friend I love. Alex's Cuts and Burns is the sometimes melancholy, often witty, and always amazing exploits of a chef experimenting with all sorts of awesomeness. What sort of awesomeness, you ask. This sort:

That's an artichoke salad that really is too pretty to eat (but I'd probably give it a go anyway).
And finally, after much poking and prodding from me and dear Wabi, one of our very best friends has created her own blog!

 The Other Renae, or Miss Vodka as Darling readers will have known her previously,  is already one of my favourite reads, and is sure to be filled with a mixture of musings on art, design, food, and coffee. There's also bound to be the odd post on music (pertaining especially to guitars) and everything French - Vodka's two greatest loves. So if you like ay of these things even a bit, or if you like reading my blog (please say you do), then you should go check her out. She's pretty cool.