The season of love:

I got to spend most of this past week down south with my precious friend Meaghan as she prepared to marry her true love handsomeface manperson. It felt like such a privilege being behind the scenes of all that pre-wedding busyness -- and then to actually walk down the aisle ahead of the bride's sister and niece and then the bride herself.

Wedded bliss might signal the end of our epic Meaghan-and-Danielle weekends (usually an annual occurence), and I will undoubtedly grieve the subtle shift of things, but at the same time, I'm rejoicing for her and for the great man she has married. Lives change all the time, every moment of every day, but it's very cool to get to watch and observe one of those new chapters as it begins. (Plus, pretty dresses and 1938 Fords were involved!).

Added to all that was the fact that so many wonderful people came together to celebrate Meaghan and Geoff, and we -- the guests -- took advantage of the cool company to catch up with friends and family we see only too rarely. Love was in the air, and not just wedding-love!

Weekend journal:

Meaghan-weekends at the end of Spring have turned into a sort of unofficial tradition (proof by the numbers: 2010, 2011, 2012), and I couldn't be happier. Meaghan is one of my dearest friends and normally we're separated by the stupidness of our big, sprawling country. The sheer volume of our text messages to one another definitely cancels out some of the distance, but it's nice just to get to hang out in person -- even if we do tend to stay up till 2am (finding everything deliriously funny after 11) on the first night and exhaust ourselves.

Although we are great at simply sprawling on couches and watching a selection of unintentionally bad movies (for the record, we are generally hoping to find good ones), this weekend was a really packed one. We zoomed from brunch out by the bay, to a catch-up with my sister Lauren and her little ones, to a barbecue party with my little bible study gang, to bed, to breakfast, to Supanova (Australia's baby ComiCon) in the city with my pals Ben and Hayley (and Batman and Gollum and Spidey and the like), to a girls' night of movies and party food, to bed, to breakfast, to the airport, to tears. In between all that, we also caught up with my lovely aunt and uncle who were staying with my mum for the weekend -- and of course we chatted a lot, too. I have a feeling I sent Meaghan home to New South Wales sleep-deprived, but I mostly felt Meaghan-deprived. I'm not usually a teary goodbye person, but I confess that I was glad I was wearing sunnies as I waved Meaghan off at the airport.

Meaghan is the calmly quiet to my loud, the brave to my wimpy. She is wise and gracious and organised and thoughtful. She speaks truthfully and with conviction. I'm so glad I've known her for these sixteen excellent years. They've been better because she is part of them.

PS. If you follow me on instagram, you've already seen all of these pictures. No regrets!

A(nother) Meaghan weekend:

My weekend spent with excellent friend and laughter-buddy Meaghan was so lovely. We didn't seem to do very much at all, and yet we also did a lot. We watched an unusual array of movies (the Mormon Pride and Prejudice was a rewatch must), lazed and chatted on a rug with a view of sky and sea, ate Fudge Sundae pop tarts (which were far less impressive than they sound), hung out with Lauren and her adorable bubs, face-timed our sisters who couldn't be there, chatted about life and families and growing up.

We went on a shopping trip that turned into an iPad purchasing experience, and then we ate Thai food and established an extremely precious and heartwarming love triangle between the three iPads. This in turn led to laughing ourselves hysterical over photobooth pictures and playing some silly iPad games, one of which (and I'm not kidding) consists of a race to be the last person to hit the reactor button before the clock counts down -- very quickly -- past zero. We live in a world now where we are all Pennys and our kindly Inspector Gadget uncle, aka Steve Jobs, plies us with amazing technology. It's incredibly funny to me.

Meaghan (perhaps to her regret) got me hooked on these adorable Kid History videos, and now our friendship vocabulary consists largely of phrases originally coined by four-year-old American children. Also on the popular culture front, K-pop star Psy was like a demented guardian angel hovering over our weekend for, once we realised we could teach ourselves Gangnam style moves thanks to YouTube tutorials, we kept finding reasons to practice them. We even pulled Mum in on the act.

So, we kind of didn't do anything and yet we didn't really stop doing things*. Most of all, I just enjoyed hanging around this precious friend for a whole weekend. She is the sort of friend you don't really have secrets from, the sort you say dumb things in front of because you're so comfortable that you don't employ the usual filters. Then, when you feel stupid about saying dumb things, she makes you forget both what you said and the fact that you felt stupid about it. It's cool to know people like this.

*I said that twice, which is what happens when you write one blog post over two days.

[lately] a meaghan weekend

Meaghan weekends are too far and few between in my world. It had been thirteen months since the last one, which means I was well overdue for a dose of this excellent lady, and this weekend definitely hit the spot (though it was all too short).

I had ideas about introducing Meaghan to every cool local discovery that we've stumbled across since she was last here and since about 75% of those have something to do with food, it's probably a good thing we only had three days. As it happened, we were able to grab a sort-of-breakfast one morning from Bittersweet (their locally-made pastries are amaaaazing) and a sort-of-lunch (apparently we don't have the greatest internal mealtime clocks) from my favourite bookstore-and-restaurant, Riverbend Books. We also had very excellent mocktails from Hog's Breath (their greatest virtue being that they were so pretty and they were delivered by the world's most quirky waiter, Sunny).

In true Queensland style, Meaghan got to experience Autumn, Summer, Spring, rain, storms, and sunshine in her three days here. She made my baby niece laugh uproariously and she was kindly amused by my little brother's random hyperactivity. Somehow, we picked the most random assortment of movies to watch together (can you say "my dead brother turned into a shooting star and guided me to the place where my girlfriend lay unconscious and potentially dying?") with the exception of a couple, among them Soul Surfer, which was heartbreaking and heartwarming. Also, we were kind of excited when we found the three Carey sisters represented in Coke bottles (win!) and only wish we could have found bottles with Carla & Meaghan on them, in order to complete the quintet of longtime pals. Next time, Coca Cola will be more forward thinking with their promotion, I'm sure.

Good friends are such treasures. More Meaghan weekends, please, God?

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Conversations:

Un -- indeed they do.

Samantha R -- I'll definitely have to check out your latest Project 52 work :).

Laura Elizabeth -- thank you! And yes, we definitely had fun.

Carla -- :D we missed you!

Meaghan -- WDHF! WAHF!

Weekend Journal XXII :: Meaghan and me, again

This weekend was squished full of relaxing, happy times!

The gorgeous Meaghan, who has been a precious friend for almost thirteen years (we met the first week of August 1997), flew up from Sydney for four days of chillin' like villains. There's nothing that can replace spending time with a friend who knows you inside out and with whom you don't have to be anything. *yay*

We shopped -- and tried on sunnies that we'd never buy.

We laughed through a strange contemporary remake of Pride & Prejudice.

We ate chocolate French toast -- along with other sugary substances.

We drove to the markets and found some seriously excellent bargains.

We visited the newlyweds!

And made up rubbish faux dictionary definitions for a game of Balderdash.

We may have salivated over this bread display...

And been unable to resist this cupcake.

We also smiled a fair bit --

And were amazed when our ridiculous Balderdash definitions...

...actually came true.

Plus, there was some lazing around.
(Okay, there was quite a lot of lazing around.)

It was excellent. Pretty sure you wish you were there. Oh, there was also a miniature bushwalk through a trail of carnage, but those pictures are still to come...

* * * * *

Conversations:

Anonymous -- I bake goodly cos my mama taught me. Hell has nothing to do with it ;).

Rachael -- Paris berets beat Brisbane berets any day! Oh, and how can you not like Who? He's the best!

Ruth -- So glad you got the free Who link working! :D

Julia -- Can I be vice prez of our Fingerless Gloves and Berets Are Cool Society?

Samantha R -- :D

Staish -- Can I please have a real-life tour of your selection of vintage maps someday? It sounds amazing.

Mitanika -- OOOOOH! I wish I was breakfasting at New Farm that day, but the cafe I was in was bayside! You know, if you ever see 'me' again, you have my total and welcome permission to come up and say hi. That would be crazy funny -- although I guess that if it isn't me, it might feel a little awkward ;).