6/100 (a tentative love note)

Dear Queensland Summer,

I don't want to speak too soon; after all, it's only been -- what -- almost six years? But I think I'm finally beginning to like you. Don't worry; I'm surprised, too.

Please continue to be kind?

Yours in wary affection,

Danielle

5/100 (letter to a closing year)

Dear two thousand and twelve,

Dude. I feel like you've been hanging in the shadows a bit. One moment you're on the way, and the next moment -- or so it seems -- you're leaving. It's my fault, really. I should have paid more attention to you. I should have slowed down, stopped to look at you from a different angle, analysed you, explored you. Instead, I got caught up in living and you drifted by while I was hardly noticing.

I have to say, 2012, you're not my favourite year. We don't part as best friends, that's for sure. But we're definitely not enemies, either. There are things you failed to provide, but there are many many things you brought with you, too: opportunities for writing, learning, working, and being challenged. I'm especially thankful for doors that opened onto new chances to learn from clever people, and the privilege/burden/adventure of getting to do some brain-moulding of my own -- not wisely or well, but with gusto at least.

While spending your year, 2012, I let slip old habits which I'd once thought very important, and formed others that I hope might stick around a little better. Some friendships got shuffled around in the busyness of the everyday humdrum, and suffered for it. Other friendships -- some of them surprising -- blossomed and deepened into very cool things (it's always the unexpected ones). Still other relationships -- the long-term ones, the friends-forever ones -- grew solidly and well with only the much-loved, occasional watering and sunshine of face-to-face meetings.

2012, you answered some questions I hadn't even realised I'd been asking, some that had been floating around in the back of my mind and heart since I was a little kid. That was a gift I'm very thankful for. But the gift of the year -- your crowning glory, 2012 -- is the one you brought in September: a new nephew to love on and squish. Thanks for that.

I feel like you passed by unreported and unexamined in some aspects and I wish I'd had -- made -- taken more time to really look at you while you were here. But you're leaving now and I think it's for the best. You were good, 2012, but (and no hard feelings here) I'm ready to replace you with another.

Leave the door open for 2013, will you? It's soon to be shuffled in straight from the Timemaster.

Farewell,

Danielle

2/100 (letter to a piece of plastic pipe)

Dear S-bend under the vanity sink,

There are only brief spaces in time that I actually feel like a grown-up. I may be in my early thirties (ugh) but most of the time I feel as though I'm stuck somewhere between about seventeen and twenty-two.

However, there are occasional moments that my psyche has somehow determined to be marks of maturity.
Filing my tax return is one of them. Buying jars of vitamin C tablets is another. Leaving the house before 8am for social appointments or work also gives me that no-longer-a-teenager vibe. And the other day I felt that unexpected grown up mood when I went all plumber-fu and pulled you apart in order to remove whatever was blocking my little vanity unit drain.

You're just a piece of plastic pipe, bent into a weird gravity-defying shape. I don't know why pipes exist like you anyway. They make life difficult for girls like me, who invariably hover over our bathroom sinks doing facial scrubs or straightening our hair. And though girls like me try to be fastidious about not letting the insoluble detritus of tooth-brushing and face-scrubbing and hair-straightening slip through those tiny pizza-slice-shaped gaps in the plug hole, of course stuff gets through. Obviously, otherwise I wouldn't be writing a letter to you right now.

And I write not to remind you of what a pain you can be, just sitting there whitely and plasticly, catching stuff that you should let go of, causing blockages and weirdness, and reminding me that I'm a girl and not a manly man. I write to thank you.

Because I put aside my natural ineptitude for DIY and instead I tackled you head-on. I pulled you apart, emptied you out, ran some bleach and baking soda through your system, and narrowly avoided turning the tap on to rinse out the pipes attached to you (this would have been an altogether different letter, in that case). Then I put you back together, tested for leaks, and saw you ran like a dream. And didn't I feel grown up. So thanks, lowly s-bend. For just a second, you helped me act my age.

Of course, then I went and ruined it by taking weird self-portraits in the bathroom mirror. Oh well. You win some, you lose some.

Yours (just a little smugly),

Danielle

* * * * *

Conversations:

Andrea -- we are book brain twins currently! You'll have to blog your responses to the books you're reading :).

Katie -- oh no, your world does sound particularly busy! I hope you survive through the rest of term okay.

Caitlin -- I'm reading Hard Times, and loving it just as much as I did when I was younger. I honestly think it's my favourite Dickens, even though hardly anyone else seems to like it. Narnia exhibition? Sounds amazing!

Bloss -- loved your comment, as always! Ooh, you have to try more Dickens! David Copperfield is brilliant. So too is Hard Times, the one I'm reading currently.

Staish -- you are welcome.

Meaghan -- goal for tonight: de-sting eyes by not staying up too late. 

1/100 (a letter to July)

Oh July,

Dear seventh-month-of-the-year, I have to apologise. Quite honestly, I haven't always thought of you with kindness. Actually it's worse than that. Mostly I have never thought of you at all. And if it's a sad thing to be thought of with distaste, it's a million times sadder simply not to be considered in any way. And this is what I have done to you, July.

It's not that you are so very worthless. It's just that... the other months have always had so much going for them. Sure, December is either stifling or sticky, but it has Christmas. March brings Autumn with it. April gets by because it sounds pretty and, well, September actually is pretty, you know. And while we all know that (with a consistency that follows through year after year) August has the most disgusting calendar pictures ever, it also has my birthday, and I quite like birthdays. So there's a lot of competition right there, July. In the lineup of good months of the year, you barely even rate a mention.

You're just there, July, in the middle of Winter -- neither the relieved end of something, nor the exciting beginning of a new season. If I look back and consider your presence in my childhood, mostly I remember chapped, dry winter hands and that terrifying moment after stepping out from the bath into the breath-stealing air.

July, you have kind of been a nothing month to me, and for that I am sorry. But I'm also happy to say that my perception of you is changing. I don't want to be discriminatory or anything, but I like Queensland July better than New South Wales July -- and that's saying something, because Queensland and I have had something of a rocky relationship. But you, July-in-Queensland, you are quite lovely. You remind me of Autumn in New South Wales, which is special because I have always loved Autumn.

You're a month of dramatic moods, July. You are beautiful, brilliant, and crisp. Your days are bright, bright blue and clear skies. Your nights are cold and cosy, sharp and bitter. There are whole weeks of heavy grey rain that turns the ground to chilly swamp and sends us all a little bit crazy. But that also gives us the chance to wear ugg boots, cover our laps with quilts (and kittens), and sip chamomile tea. You have dolphins, July. Dolphins. I saw them carving and leaping through the water last week while I was sitting with a coffee in one hand and a textbook in the other. It was quite amazing.

I guess what I'm trying to say, July, is that I'm warming to you -- even though my feet are cold.

(Newly-developing) love,
Danielle

* * * * *

(This is the beginning of my new creative blogging project, picking up where the last project finished off. 52 pictures gets replaced by one hundred letters -- to anyone (or anything). I'm excited!)

* * * * *

Conversations:


Andrea -- once a week is a lot easier to keep momentum than once a day!


Lauren -- thank you :D

Deactivation station:

Oh, facebook.

You inspire such love and loathing in me. One minute I can't bear the sight of you, and the next I'm logging on so I can be sure not to miss some important tidbit of information. What is this mighty weapon of influence you wield over me?

I've deactivated you once or twice before, always temporarily, mainly because I needed to get on top of my emails or curb minor distractions from my life for a season. I've always come back to you. But lately the dissatisfaction just can't be assuaged. You annoy me, facebook, and I think it's time for a separation.

Facebook, it's not you, it's me. Okay, it's partly you -- especially lately, with your weird new layout and cluttered way of showing me information. We're supposed to talk to each other before we have makeovers. I don't like what you've become.

But yes it's me, too.

It takes two to tango, and though I could blame you for making me crave information, for making me desperate not to miss out on things, I'm really the one at fault. It's my problem if I have to know what's going on in the lives of acquaintances I haven't spoken to since primary school. It's my problem if the green-eyed monster emerges when I see that friends whom I've been trying unsuccessfully to pin down for a coffee date have caught up with other friends three times in the past fortnight. It's my problem if I share things and judge their coolness or intelligence based on whether others 'like' them. It's my problem if I'm scared that I'm going to miss out on something.

So I'm calling for a time-out, facebook. I understand I'll be out of the loop. I understand I won't get invited to things. I understand people won't notice I'm gone because -- well, that's your nature. It's what we see in you that keeps us interested, facebook, not what we don't see.

But that's okay. I'll handle it. And -- for now, at least -- I'm going to kick it old-school, you know, emails, texts, all that jazz.

Facebook, we're kind of over (even if only temporarily). Don't call me.

Oh, and here: have a butterfly. He was hanging out with me today.

Sincerely,
Danielle

* * * * *

Conversations:

Laura Elizabeth -- Whoa! Your weekend sounds insanely busy! Four emergencies? Yikes! I'm glad you came out the other end unscathed. The DW episode was The God Complex; I might watch the last ten minutes on iView so I can at least see how it ended! (I liked the dollhouse episode even though it was kinda creepy for a while there, too).

Carla -- haha, good spotting, eagle eyes! That's my favourite box design from there, too :).

Ruth -- please please steal this idea! I'd love it if you did. And I stole it from somewhere myself, though of course I can't remember where. Imma email you back! I'm sorry your kidlets had sniffles :(.