Today I'm grateful for warm spring evenings when I can drive across town with the music just below earsplitting and the windows down. Hot days might be annoying, but I just love a warm night with a breeze. Rather fond of unreasonably loud music too.

Today I'm grateful for old friends. A woman I've known and loved for years (and at times hated) is visiting from afar. The familiarity, the comfort, the distance and the closeness all at once are worth celebrating. When she arrived it felt like we were just picking up from the other day's conversation, but I haven't seen her since before Elissa was born. The fact that she's well and happy and loving life just adds to the joy. And now I need to stop before the sentimentality causes someone to lose their lunch.

Today - today I'm struggling for gratitude. It's not that nobody's done anything lovely - my sister has taken the boys for a sleep over, to their absolute delight. A friend came over with able bodied boys who helped Crash clean up the yard for Elissa's party (for cash monies, which is only reasonable). My mother has offered assistance for tomorrow. It's just that I'm feeling a bit beaten down by everything that must be done, now and always. I really am grateful for everything that everyone does, life would really suck without them.

Tonight I'm grateful for crickets. I love the sound of crickets through the open windows. I also loved the look on Charlie's face as he realised I may not have been entirely truthful when I answered his question by explaining the crickets were making that sound just to tell him it's time to go to bed. He has a pretty good appreciation for smart arsery.

Some gratitude and a brief review

We failed restaurant booking 101 on our trip to Melbourne, so we picked a random Japanese place - Shoya.

Overall, I was pretty impressed. The food was tasty and reasonable value. We had sashimi, teriyaki chicken, a salmon dish with roe, and a pork dish. That wasn't quite enough, so we ordered another round of the sashimi and some edamame. The sashimi was really good, and each of the dishes was interesting, the salmon was cooked to perfection and the pork was very tasty. We were all well satisfied by the end, and had also had our fill of house sake (which was ok, not fabulous, but serviceable) and Asahi. At $80 a head, I was happy enough.

I have two quibbles. The dishes all came in large pieces, not at all convenient to share. The sashimi dish came with 3 pieces of each type, which was very annoying for 4 people. Secondly, the wine prices were absurd. The sake prices started around $30 for a 300ml bottle and went well over $150. Sake just isn't that expensive - or more accurately, there is plenty of quite good sake that isn't that expensive. A quick look at the local wine prices showed some equally over-priced wines, although oddly there were a few that were more reasonable.

I'm not entirely sure I'd be prepared to spend the much bigger dollars on their degustation menu. I'd definitely want to hear some reviews that said the food was substantially better than the standard dinner menu to justify the >$100 pp (excluding drinks) price tag.

Also, it's gratitude deja vu today, because we managed to get back to Sydney on a Qantas plane without an engine shutting down - despite another flight turning back because of engine troubles today. So I remain grateful that we managed to dodge failing engines.

I can't finish a post without saying a huge thank you to my mother, David, Sophie and Nerida for making this weekend possible. My family are amazing beings, and I'm always grateful for them. 

Today I'm grateful for aeroplane engines that don't explode. We flew Qantas to Melbourne, and it was hard not to be thinking about the mess that A380 was in when it landed after it's engine exploded. I'm also very grateful indeed that such a huge problem was found without 400-odd people dying.

And now I'm grateful to be going out for a late dinner in a great city. Catch you tomorrow.

It's gardenia season

My first gardenia opened its petals today. I adore the smell of gardenias. Like jacarandas tell me it's exam time, gardenias tell me it's Christmas. Granted it's not exactly the silly season yet, but I've started my shopping in earnest, as well as my planning. There's nothing like an adorable perfume to make planning pleasant.

What are the early markers for Christmas for you?

Today I'm grateful for the amazing friendships I've gained from work. Tonight I had dinner with one of the guys I employed many moons ago. Now he's a good friend, and he's also a regular provider of his own expertise to my professional life. It's been pretty cool watching both our lives get better and better, both professionally and personally. This is what life's all about.

Today I'm grateful for access to fabulous food and wine to celebrate our 7th anniversary. Pomegranates, dates and sparkling shiraz.

Decadence on a $10 coffee table.

What I really want to do today is whinge - the weather is farcical, who stole November and replaced it with August? But I'm aiming for some positivity here, so I'm going with gratitude anyway. I'm grateful for the generations of parenting that went before me. The people who've battled with the wisdom of the day, and tried to change it. I'm grateful for the parents of the 70s who were told that physical punishment was unacceptable, but had not yet been handed an alternative. I'm grateful for all the honest parents out there who have Bad Days and tell us all about it. Because I was channeling every single one of those magnificent people tonight when I was trying to cajole my three into finding their bedroom floors. They went to bed, only slightly after bed time, with clean floors and a promise of a visit from the vacuum cleaner tomorrow. Many thousands of years' of evolution have led to the dusty, but debris free floors of my children's bedrooms, and for that, I am eternally grateful.

Happy Birthday Elissa

3 years and one night ago I decided I'd been pregnant quite long enough and Initiated Proceedings by way of clary sage oil and expressing milk. About 5am-ish Elissa started the whole new experience of breathing and I ended the whole horrible experience of pregnancy.

So here we are, with a stubborn, witty, articulate, did I mention stubborn? 3 year old. She's something special, no doubt about it*. She took it in her stride that her party had to be moved back 2 weeks due to the pox invasion. And then, from the moment Crash picked her up from day care she asked "Where's my presents" approximately every 15 seconds until the presents were delivered. She told me she loved me and thanked me for her presents, and then screeched at her brother for touching her car.

She's sweet and vicious and funny and malicious and stubborn and stubborn and stubborn. She's a 3 year old, and I'm very grateful to have her.

Happy Birthday Elissa!

*And yes, I fully acknowledge that every parent says that, and they're all correct.

Today I'm grateful for my gorgeous belly dance teacher, who makes me feel fabulous no matter how badly I suck. I'm also surprisingly grateful to have the chance to dance without mirrors for a couple of weeks. Having to feel the dance instead of see it is fabulous.

Today I'm grateful for a burst of energy that came from nowhere and let me get through paid work and housework and even some Christmas preparation. Now to try to keep the roll going!

Today I'm grateful for the gatherings in the park after school. It's great to chat about nothing much at all for a while, or to solve the problems of the world. It's also pretty cool that I can pretty much ignore the kids for the whole time, knowing that they behave themselves pretty well, and look after/police each other. It's not uncommon for the kids to be the ones who decide it's time to go home.

Today I'm grateful for my husband. He's a wonderful man, and great dad. The latter doesn't come too easily to him - he was rather short on role models growing up, but he's committed to not repeating the mistakes of the past, and doing a great job. He's also marking another year of breathing today, and I'm grateful that he chose ribs for his birthday dinner. Mmmmm... ribs......

Tonight I'm grateful that I can cook great food - that I have the resources, the sources of inspiration and enough talent to pull it off.

Tonight we had pumpkin soup of the "roast it then stick it in a pot & boil it" variety and zucchini bites from a free recipe book. It was really good and a crowd pleaser.

Last night we had veal ribs - some done in the Masterchef sauce and some done in Masterfoods smokey BBQ marinade. The good news for Masterchef is that their sauce was indeed superior, although the kids went with the smokey BBQ. The ribs weren't executed to perfection - not enough time and no actual planning - but it's one that will be revisited and perfected. I might even try it with pork some time.

Today I'm grateful for a pre-school whose board considers it, and decides that it really doesn't want to do fundraising at the 60th Anniversary celebrations. Not that I would have got very involved, I'm overstretched as it is, but at least I don't have to feel guilty about not doing enough.

Today I'm grateful for a nearly-five-year old who came shopping with me for long pants, chose 3 pairs with only one brief bout of indecision and cost $20 altogether, and then cheerfully came home again - all in less than half an hour.

Today I'm grateful for a child care centre that my kids are happy to go to - at least as happy as Charlie gets about anything like that. Monday mornings suck enough, if I had to go through more than the ritual of 742 kisses, cuddles and "goodbye"s, they'd be utterly unbearable.

I'd also like to mention that I'm so proud of him saying "goodbye" so fiercely it makes people stare, because it's how he stops himself from getting more worked up and crying. It's a step along the way from screaming heebie jeebies to a casual "Bye Mum". Actually, it's a big step, this is much better.

Today I'm grateful for a beautiful belly dance teacher, a great friend to share her with, and belly dance itself, which nearly killed me tonight, but put a smile on my face.