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!

Weekend journal:

Queensland knows nothing of middle ground, it seems. There's no subtle progression from autumn to winter to spring to summer. It was autumn last week (winter, technically, but in title only) and now, suddenly, we seem to have bypassed spring altogether and fallen straight into summer. The forecasters are predicting thirty this week. Thirty. My soul is not ready.

I haven't done a weekend journal post for ages, but I suddenly missed the old habit of recording those magical two days of non-daily-ness, so I'm here with my pictures. On Friday night, my mum, little brother and I kind of spontaneously headed to Red Fest, a local festival celebrating the launch of strawberry season with lots of music, fairground rides, and ethnic food stalls. In past years we've spent whole days there on either the Saturday or Sunday, but there was such a relaxed vibe going along on opening night for just a few hours. Fewer people were around and we just strolled past the sideshows, burnt our mouths out on purportedly mild Indian food, and ended up in a hall where The Hillbilly Goats were playing a rollicking show. The show was high intensity and lots of fun, and the night itself was chilled out -- a good welcome to Spring/Summer.

Saturday I had to knuckle under and really make some headway on my major assessments for this semester. Both are fairly big projects (a memoir plus exegesis and a picture book manuscript with a number of illustrations and a publishing rationale) but they're also predominantly creative rather than academic, and I'm really enjoying that. When I finished my Bachelor degree, I really knew I wasn't ready to leave school behind, but now I'm nearing the end of my Master's, I can tell that it's time. My fingers are itching to have the freedom to explore some projects. Even more than that, I'm hankering after the brain space to actually remember that I can be a creative person and I can generate ideas. There has to be space in life for that to happen, and I'm looking forward to finding a bit of that space. Obviously, no one knows what lies ahead, but I'm hoping that I can continue in my current work situation (although a few more students would be great) and use the time I would've spent studying on writing instead.

So studying was the order of the day on Saturday, but there was still time to go and vote in the federal election -- and then, of course, to watch the results as they came in live on almost every television station. I felt quite strongly emotional about this election this year, and even fifteen minutes before leaving for the polling booths, I felt somewhat undecided about my vote. Political parties are much like anything else in life, I guess: you're never going to find one that you can say is 100% perfect -- or perhaps that's just my experience. What it came down to for me was not total alignment on every single policy, but weighing up which issues were the most important issues. This is, of course, highly subjective and probably quite ridiculous. For some, straightening out the economy is of key importance, so voting for a government which will make serious cuts to spending and keep out people who might require Australia's generosity becomes necessary. Others are justice-focussed and vote for policies which make the greatest effort to help the largest number of people, whether within our borders or beyond. I really had no feeling about which way things would go, but now that Tony Abbott is our PM, I hope that we'll honour his leadership where we can, support the policies that are great, and work respectfully to bring change where change is so needful. I have really strong feelings about our prime ministers. Even when I don't agree with them, I respect their role and the immense pressure it brings. It's not a job I'd ever want.

Today has been, in this precise order: church, birthday gift shopping for a certain sister and a certain nephew, a really terrible yum cha experience, drooling over stationery at Kikki-K, and weeping over The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. I was supposed to study today to make up all the time I've lost over the past couple of weeks being unwell. But sometimes it's good just to take it slow.

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?

* * * * *

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 XXX :: uncle nick

My brother Nick is in town for a week, supposedly to catch up with everyone but really to meet the new little pork chop. On Sunday, we all had a family picnic together, and Nick got to spend some quality time with Abby Victoria. Things went along swimmingly.

And Abby thought the attention was grand -- at least for a little while.

But eventually it was all too much. She Is Not Amused.

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Conversations:

Katie -- I can relate to that, too. So many of my dearest friends are ones I met online. One of them (hello, Ruth!) I met when she lived in far NSW but now we're both south east Queenslanders. It's very cool. Hopefully you, too, will end up with an excellent online buddy right around the corner (and I mean that in the least weird way possible)!

Laura Elizabeth -- I still haven't found The Eagle available ANYWHERE in Australia but I finally caved and ordered it from Amazon UK. I hope it arrives this week! I've lurked a few YouTube clips which of course are all a bit slashy owing to the bromantic nature of the story and I like what I've seen. I hope it's not too terrible!

Jessica -- it's definitely a cool story. It amazes me still, now, four years later! Haha and you're right about the 'present husband' bit. I amended it a little ;).

Mothercare -- she is :)

Rebecca Simon -- yes, it's such an awesome little present from God! I'm amazed how many people I've met long distance who have become friends to keep in touch with throughout all the new seasons of life -- you included!

Bek Axe -- YOU are the seriously cool one.

Weekend XXIX :: mum is the best (seriously)

To celebrate the excellence of Mum, we came from our various homes to meet at the point for a barbecue picnic breakfast. It was bright and sunny and actually cold. It was awesome.

James had the food cooking business seriously in hand.

We ate sausages, hash browns, eggs, and pancakes under the friendly arms of a big sprawling fig tree.

It was all fantastic, until this creepy guy with too many legs crashed the party and (quite literally) ended up in the drink.

Mum, thank you for being who you are.

I almost forgot. There was a little ham with our eggs, too...

Actually, that's a whole lotta ham.

* * * * *

Conversations:

Mothercare -- you're my biggest (only?) fan.

Katie -- thank you :).

Staish -- :D

Eweight -- I asked for your new address but you never replied so I couldn't send you the mag. However -- I got a sweet little card from you today and the BONUS FREE PRIZE is that I now have your addy and can mail you the mag. Love!

Weekend XXVIII :: easter

Fireworks seemed the most appropriate way in the world to celebrate life's victory over death.

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Conversations:

Anonymous -- I love it, too :).

Carla and Alastair -- thank you! Come see it sometime :D.

Samantha R -- thanks for sharing my enthusiasm :D

Laura Elizabeth -- as IF you could ever sound like a stalker! You just sound full of squee, which is just perfect, because it gives me permission to be all bouncy and excited, too :D.

Meaghan -- please come help me mess it up! I mean, I can do that all by myself, but it's much funner with friends.

Katie -- my pleasure!

Rebecca Simon -- it's attached to my parents' new place, so the best of both worlds! Nesting is fun. Enjoy!

Staish -- thanks for visiting me, you. xxx

eweight -- :D :D :D

Abbie -- yay! Your warm little candle is on my kitchen benchtop as I type :).