wherever we find ourselves

christmas celebrations

2014-01-01T20:46:00.000+10:30

I had a whole post written about our first Christmas celebration of the year because it actually occurred almost an entire fortnight before the day itself. In the craziness of the lead-up to Christmas, though, it never got finished or posted. One of my resolutions for this year is to be a better blogger, but more on that in a post later this week.

We celebrated early with Tom's family because his sister, Millie, & brother-in-law, Ben, would be (should I now say were?) holidaying in Vietnam with Ben's family for Christmas.

I love Tom's family. I love how his Grandma can't hear anything, but barely wears her hearing aids (despite her son-in-law being an audiologist). I love how she makes fun of herself and I love the stories his Mama (other grandmother) tells about being brought up by Catholic nuns and going to dances hoping to meet a soldier and the long line of girls kissing their suitors goodbye outside the hostel just before curfew on a Friday night. I love how well everyone gets along and how Tom's parents welcomed my mum to the festivities and how openly they welcomed me to their Christmas festivities two Christmases ago.

We started with an array of dips and fresh bread form the markets and then moved onto fresh oysters and prawns. There was an outrageous amount of food for dinner even though there were only ten of us. Turkey, lamb, pork, steak, roast vegetables, potato bake, three or four salads ... it went on forever. The lemon tart I made for dessert was a hit, too.

My favourite part of the evening came after dinner, though. Armed with wine and santa hats we toured the neighbourhood Christmas light displays. Ben and I developed a rating system with bonus 'trick points' for installations that made good use of flashing light patterns.

On the 22nd, Tom and I hosted Orphan's Christmas for my two best friends and their partners. The night involved a failed attempt at a light walk like the one we enjoyed with Tom's family. Unfortunately no one in our area seems to care much for Christmas so it ended up being a wine-time walk with no lights to speak of. Nevertheless, the night was perfect. Tom made a roast lamb and I made another lemon tart (because if it ain't broke, don't fix it). Good company and good conversation is the best kind of christmas.

On Christmas Day itself, we went to my mum's for brunch. I love Christmas brunch with my family. Always featured are my two favourite dips, warm croissants and seemingly endless amounts of smoked salmon. It was the perfect way to spend Christmas day. My dad was over from Melbourne so he even came too which made it even better. It's the first Christmas with both of my parents for about six or seven years I think. We drank mimosas in the sunshine and ate fruit and I taught my Popple to use his new ereader and my Nana rolled her eyes at his acquisition of yet another gadget that she cannot understand.

We spent the remainder of Christmas day driving to Naracoorte and then drinking beers in the garden as the sun set. Along the way we just had to stop and take a picture of this sign:

Hope you all had wonderful Christmases and spent time with those you love.

Back in a day or two with some words about and pictures of our little road trip. xx

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year (rolled into one)

2013-12-31T17:42:00.002+10:30

The last couple of weeks have been ridiculously busy, so I'm looking forward to bringing in the New Year with a nice, quiet beer at home with Tom.

I hope you all had a wonderful festive season, watched the Doctor Who Christmas Special (unlike a certain Doctor-hating boyfriend who will remain nameless) and are gearing up for a brilliant 2014.

I'll be back soon (tomorrow?) with a recap of our Christmas celebrations and the brief roadtrip we took to Melbourne & back this week. The picture above was taken a couple of days ago; the sun was setting just as we crossed the border back into South Australia, so we stopped and enjoyed it from two places at once.

Salted caramels with real ingredients

2013-12-14T08:04:00.000+10:30

I wrote this post yesterday (as promised to anyone following me on instagram) but couldn't put it up for reasons unknown to sensible human beings.

For Christmas this year, my two best friends and I decided to skip gifts and instead exchange delicious treats. This came in response to the incredible fudge Josh made last year that Claire and I desperately wanted to see feature again this Christmas.

I decided to make salted caramels because I'm crazy for anything with that flavour combination at the moment. An obsessive salty caramely lust has crept upon me in the last few months, so it felt necessary, nay, essential, that these flavours comprise my contribution to Orphan's Christmas celebrations.

There are tons of salted caramel recipes on the internet; Pinterest overflows with delectable photos of the stuff (unlike the quick phone shot that I took). But candy is full of refined sugars and a myriad of other unholy ingredients and I wanted to try to find an alternative. I also wanted Tom to be able to enjoy a couple, and I may or may not have mentioned on here before that he has Type 1 Diabetes, so that added an extra challenge. Most artificial sweeteners have a metallic aftertaste and other natural alternatives such as stevia were not going to caramelise to the rich flavour that I wanted in my candies. Eventually I settled on organic coconut sugar, but since it is hard to find and exorbitantly priced when you do, I wouldn't suggest the substitution to those who aren't concerned about a blood sugar spike. Stick with organic rapadura, which has a natural caramel hint to begin with and don't undergo the excessive processing of it's refined counterparts.

I used this recipe from Holistic Squid; apart from the coconut sugar, I made no changes and it turned out beautifully so I'll send you over there rather than steal the recipe and slap it up here.

Anyway, since in not a food blogger and I failed to take pictures of a quality better than my phone, I'll stop pretending I know anything about this. The caramels turned out really well. I had no idea it was this easy, but if I had I might have tried these much earlier. Twisting them into individual papers was painfully repetitive and monotonous work, but once Tom came to help me it was much more fun. I'd suggest you Shanghai someone into helping you simply because you'll have someone to chat with as you go.

And for my next trick? Tomorrow I'll be nicking some rosemary from the hedge down the street and adapting the recipe from this lemon tart for the early Christmas celebrations with Tom's family that evening. Yet again I'm hoping to create something sweet without all of the crap that often goes into these types of foods. I make a great lemon curd, but with all the butter and sugar involved in it I thought I'd risk trying something a little bit different to my usual bent on the classic. Fingers crossed I don't have to make a last minute mad dash to a bakery to fix my mistake if it all goes south.

Right now, however, I'm going to go and drink some cold beer in honour of a friend's birthday and forget all about the kitchen. His celebrations are supposed to involve watching the Test, but I strongly believe that cricket is as much a spectator sport as poker. Not. Even. Remotely. That said, we met some guys from the Barmy Army at the pub last week when the Test was here and causing me a headache induced by overproduction of coffee. They sang us a song and I developed an iota of love for cricket in that moment simply because these men would travel across the globe to follow the Test and sing roudy songs, so perhaps there's more to it than I know.

26 things I love about you

2013-12-08T13:50:00.001+10:30

Your 26th birthday just passed. We spent this week consumed with birthday dates and anniversary celebrations, and I missed the moment to write you something lovely. I wrote you a long card, but I owe you more so now I'm writing you a list. Perhaps if you were turning 260000 I might be able to create a more comprehensive list, but for now I'll settle with 26 of the big and little things that make life with you such a blessing.

I love how you dream big and aim high, you never give up on your goals
I love the cheeky smile on your face when you attempt to be sneaky
I love your sense of humour and your lacking sense of direction
I love the delicious and overly complex dinners that you make for me
I love your signature dance
I love that you don't believe you have a signature dance
I love how I always feel at home with you
I love your weird and unnatural love for inspirational sports movies
I love that you believe in me when I don't believe in myself
I love that you always know how to calm me down in a crisis
I love how astute you are about people and their true natures
I love how impossible it is for you to hide your glee
I love the sound of your heart beating when you hold me tight
I love your evenhandedness - and how you can use this to make me see reason
I love your inexplicable love for spreadsheets
I love your drunken, but very serious, speeches about the honour of taking a knee
I love that when I ask you to come over and give me seven kisses, you always give me nine. One for luck and one because you say I deserve more than I think.
I love that you are like a kid at Christmas when you talk about fish or groundwater hydrology or your Honours project or Rocky Balboa
I love your big blue eyes
I love how you are the only person I can be sure won't tune out when I go on a nonsense rant about nothing in particular
I love your chivalry
I love your kind and gentle heart
I love how you make Harry Potter references just to humour me
I love the quiet, perfect nights we spend together simply enjoying one another's company
I love your pirate mojitos
I love waking up to your beautiful face every morning
I love the plans we make together
I love that you are always growing, but always, always, you

(plus one for luck and one because you always deserve more)

words in pixels.

2013-11-27T19:39:00.000+10:30

The last couple of weeks have been punctuated by both soaring highs and crashing lows. I've had moments of pure, unbridled bliss and I've also had a couple of the most severe and terrifying panic attacks of my life. I've started a dozen post drafts but not managed to hit publish on any because my mind is a jumble of thoughts and feelings that work against one another and leave me with the fallout- a strange feeling of loss, or perhaps the very opposite? I'm not quite sure. I feel like I'm floating around in a whirl of confusion but I'm also finding myself with a much clearer direction and desire to achieve.

There is actually a lot of wonderful little things happening in my world that I've wanted to share, but in between those times my anxiety has been high and I've found myself prefering to fill silence with the voices of others rather than my own. Tom got a new job for the summer and has had a couple of interviews for really exciting graduate positions. It's too soon still to know what he'll do and where we might be next year, but I'm just so damn proud of him and have learnt so much from watching him work towards his dreams throughout honours and this painful job-seeking process. I find myself more driven simply by knowing I have him by my side and reminding myself of the drive he shows even, no, especially, when things feel like too much.

I've been working on a few little creative projects (pressing flowers, making succulent houses) and planning DIY gifts and decorations for Christmas. We put up our 'tree' (excuse the poor iPhone photo) for this year and downloaded hilarious carols albums from the liked of Boys II Men and Mariah Carey. I tested a recipe for Christmas cookies and brought the final product into work for my regulars to judge. My day to day has been full of little joys such as these; my feelings of overwhelm have sprung from within my own head, not in response to external stressors.

Most importantly, though, I've finally started on the path towards a dream of mine and can see both hard work and great reward in my future. My dad has been helping from afar and he has helped me to gain much more confidence in my ability to reach my own goals.

So why am I writing today? I don't know. Nothing has changed, I'm still feeling that paradoxical pang of bliss and overwhelming fear. It's about to reach 37 degrees , I'm standing in a lonely shop with no customers and I have a mountain of dishes to attack when I get home. But today, for some strange reason, these little monotonies of daily life are what makes me feel human and whole. I haven't served a customer in half an hour and yet I'm feeling more connected to the rest of the world and less like the stranger in a crowd.

ps. It hit 39 degrees this afternoon, which for those of you playing at home on the other side of the globe is 102 Fahrenheit. I have no words to explain the hate I feel for the sun right now.

My dream studio

2013-11-10T17:11:00.004+10:30

This morning I went up to a beautiful Open Garden in Blakiston. ~~I'll post a few photos of the garden tomorrow~~ (ed: the photos really aren't worth sharing and do no justice to the garden itself), but right now all I can think about is this studio. The garden belongs to the very talented artist Cassie Thring, and since Adelaide is Adelaide and the Six Degrees Rule here actually translates to about two degrees of separation at it's worst, we of course had a couple of connections and she invited us to have a look inside her studio. Excuse the glare from the windows, I quickly snapped a few photos with my point and shoot because I was just so in love with the place.

Doesn't this space just ooze creativity? Give me some indoor plants and a lazy cat and I don't think I'd ever leave.

life, lately.

2013-11-07T09:57:00.000+10:30

True to form, I've been forever in posting again. Following an incident involving a stupid girl, a flying bottle of vodka and a defenceless computer, Tom & I have been sharing my computer for months. He's been crazy busy with job applications lately and working on a paper he's getting published (I'm so proud of him) so I've been more ... analogue ... in recent weeks. Spring is bringing a lot of beautiful weather and flowers and things to look forward to, so I'm not really feeling the loss.

We went to the Gilles Street Markets on Sunday. We browsed a little, but mostly we just enjoyed people watching as we ate delicious food and basked in the sunshine.

I've been thoroughly obsessed with our garden's offerings. Not nearly as obsessed as our crazy neighbour, though, who has taken to conducting a daily count of the many hundreds of self-seeding poppies that have taken over our front yard. (She treats the garden as her own whether we like it or not) The other day she spent two hours with a notebook documenting the nature of the different interbreeding varieties. I'm having a go at pressing some flowers and leaves, which I vaguely remember doing as a child. It will either look drab and old fashioned or, I hope, more like a mix between art and a botanical study. I'll let you know in a few weeks.

What has been keeping you busy lately?

firespell - a playlist for creating

2013-10-21T23:00:00.000+10:30

I put together a short half-hour playlist of a bunch of beautiful women singing a bunch of brilliant songs. I used to make playlists (and mixtapes) all the time in high school, but iTune's Genius and Spotify's Radio have been doing the job for me more often than not in recent years since it's so simple.

Nothing, though, can replicate the love you put into a playlist you compile yourself. Songs that are speaking to your heart, songs that seem to know you, arranged carefully into something that makes some inexplicable sense to you.

Or perhaps I'm giving playlists a little too much credit. I hope you like it either way.

watch: Suspiria

2013-10-20T08:00:00.000+10:30

Who doesn't love a horror that wont keep you awake at night? I mean, The Ring was great and all, but it was also utterly terrifying. The first time I watched it my mobile rang during the closing credits and I nearly died in fear. But Suspiria is not a film that will give you nightmares. Suspiria is a work of art.

The use of primary colours, clever camera angles and sharp lines create such an ominous feeling throughout the film and the soundtrack by Goblin is just so awesome and fitting. It is a joy to watch. (I made Tom do so last night.)

some rambling thoughts on sickness and twenty-three

2013-10-19T13:27:00.000+10:30

I've been dreadfully sick for over a week and am only now beginning to feel human again. When I get sick, my body doesn't allow half measures. I am fraught with nightmares and voices and a whole myriad of inexplicable weirdness.

But finally, finally, I feel better and brighter and this is only aided by the beautiful weather today. I'm sitting in my favourite spot under the Magnolia tree surrounded by colour. The garden is overflowing with wild flowers and the low rumbling buzz of happy bees.

It was my birthday on Thursday. I was beginning to feel better, but only slightly. Only the day before I had returned to work only to be entirely overwhelmed by vertigo and nausea. I went to lunch at Semaphore with my mum, nana (who celebrates her birthday on the same day) and my sister. It has become painfully obvious that I am looking into my future when I'm with those women. My mum is becoming more and more like her mother with time and I am becoming more and more like mine. Soon I'll be that strange woman making conversation with every child she sees and anyone standing in line in the supermarket with her. I had a great birthday, first with those three incredible women and then with Tom. I needed a long nap in the middle of the day, but my birthday marked a considerable improvement in my health, which was a nice surprise birthday gift.

We finally got to the end of Breaking Bad and were both thoroughly satisfied by the ending. We have had many debates about Walt, for whom Tom maintained sympathy throughout the series and I grew to loath more and more as it went on.

I'll give twenty-three some more thought over the weekend. I'm not sure if I should be marking the occasion with a "twenty-four before twenty-four" list or a dedicated theme for the year to come or to just let it pass as a milestone of it's own.

How do you like to mark another year of your life?

Lemons

2013-10-06T12:56:00.001+10:30

I didn't mean to take a break from blogging, but the air around me became heavy and I found myself burrowing into cushions and immersing myself in the worlds of fictional characters whenever my own became quiet.

Eventually, though, I felt that ray of sunshine that told me it was safe to come out. My periods of anxiety are shorter now, but just as intense and unexpected. Years have taught me that there is no clear trigger, no ominous warning signs, and all I can do is ride the waves as best I can until the waters again become clear.

I look back to that time only a few years ago when leaving the house was the most terrifying prospect and I could go weeks without leaving the safety and familiarity of my bed. I know that I am stronger and better than I have ever been, but in those weaker moments it is hard to know this truth; it is impossible to see the forest for the trees.

You might remember that I briefly mentioned a creative project that I was excited about. It sat in the back of my mind for those weeks where I did no more than go through the motions: work, home, marathoning bad tv, harry potter, wash, rinse, repeat. But it occurs to me now that this was the worst thing that I could have done, because it is only when I have a project to excite and consume me that I feel alive.

Which brings me to the other reason I've been neglecting this space. I'm putting my heart into this creative endeavour; I've been busy working on it in my free time for the last couple of weeks. It has to move slowly for mostly financial reasons but I will share with you very soon.

We've been discussing our next move. It's hard to know where we'll be a few months from now. We might be right here in our lovely little home or we could be making a new one in a bigger city or a small country town or on the other side of the planet. It all comes down to the jobs available for Tom. We have our fingers crossed for a Graduate position that has come up, but it's nice to know that we can be happy on any adventure together so if not this one something else will come up down the track.

It's almost two years now that we've been together and over eighteen months living together and we're more in love every day. I wish I could remember to count my blessings more often; I have so much to be grateful for and happy about in my life. It feels like such a failing that fear and anxiety can overwhelm all of that and reduce me to a wreck of a person drowning in her own tears.

Creativity and gratitude bring out the best in me. I plan to drown myself in those instead. You know ... the happy kind of drowning? I think that's my cue to shut up.

2013-09-17T19:55:00.001+09:30

“Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.”

― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

instagram loving

2013-09-09T09:27:00.000+09:30

For the last two years I have had a useless phone that called the wrong people, crashed for no obvious reason and generally just made my life difficult. But those days are over (!) and I'm now the proud owner of an iPhone 5 (the phone company gave me a great deal since the 5s is about to come out and I'm a loyal customer) and an instagram account. It's my new favourite thing.

Follow me on @whereverwefindourselves

heading to the polls

2013-09-07T09:21:00.003+09:30

My first election was such an exciting experience. I was so pleased and proud to be participating in this critical civic duty. I deliberated over my vote and happily filled out every one of those eighty-something boxes below the line because I was not going to waste the opportunity by voting above it.

This year I'm not quite as enthusiastic. When the results come out tonight, no outcome will excite me. The major parties are a mess and their elected leaders are both ridiculous human beings, to put it extremely kindly.

If you're about to head to the polls today, have a quick read of this article before you do. It's giving me hope that the mess of our political system might actually work out in our favour eventually. An excerpt:

But if Abbott wins?
We already know he can’t open his mouth without saying the exact wrong thing. We already know that he’s terrible on policy, can’t think on his feet and dodges responsibility. At the moment he can largely get away with blaming the government; once he’s Prime Minister, that’s not an option anymore. He will look like what he is: a man of narrow views and narrower knowledge woefully out of his depth.

And look at the Abbott front bench: it's a viper’s nest. They’re not supporting Abbott because they think he’s an inspiring leader, since he’s demonstrated comprehensively that he’s not: they've backed him because the greatest strength they have had against Labor over the last 18 months has been in presenting a united front.

Once they’re in power this bunch of smart, ambitious and shrewd politicians are going to be a lot less forgiving of a leader who's an obvious and embarrassing liability. Hockey isn’t going to fade back into the benches. Neither is Turnbull. Neither is Bishop. Neither is Morrison. Those squabbles have been sublimated for the time being because they had a common enemy: Labor. Once in power, they’ll have a different common enemy: each other.

Even though the political system is a mess and I don't feel like any great difference will be made by filling out all of those little boxes (I will anyway, unlike my apathetic boss who prefers to scribble out his opinions on the party leaders all over the ballot sheet), I'm still looking forward to a walk in the sunshine to the polling booth at the local primary school. At least the election is being held in spring.

spring has swept in and it's okay

2013-09-05T07:42:00.000+09:30

I am reminded yet again that I shouldn't make promises on this blog, because when life gets busy and my head becomes overwhelmed, blogging is not going to be my highest priority. It's easy to fall out of the rhythm of posting regularly and as more and more time passes I find it harder to get back into a habit I've always found highly rewarding.

A dark cloud (literally) settled over Adelaide for a large part of August. I honestly think the lack of good natural lighting made the photography challenge of the August Break seem less enticing or, indeed, do-able. I swear that winter's last little kick tipped most of Adelaide over the edge. This city is just not made for Melbourne weather, we all tremble at the thought. Everyone seemed seriously miserable.

But the clouds have cleared and the rain has eased. Spring has most definitely come to town in the last week (which took me and my entire lack of Summer clothing by surprise). I've been wearing boots for the last three 30C (84F) degree days. Not ideal, to say the least.

How have you all been?

back to school

2013-08-15T18:11:00.001+09:30

I'm not going back to school until March, but since everyone on the other side of the world seems to be preparing to return to college, I thought I'd enjoy some imaginary back to school shopping.

Clockwise from left:

Midori brass pencil case // anything is better in brass.

Muji 0.38 gel ink pen // These are by far my favourite pens. I always have one on me and refuse to use anything else.

O-Check Design metal scissors // I just think these are cute!

Moleskine extra large cahiers // need I say more? These are the perfect notebook in the perfect size.

Leif pastel mini planter // a cute way to bring life to your desk

Bon Look black J'adore glasses // because glasses make you smarter and all that jazz.

Moleskine week-to-view 2013/2014 diary // I love these diaries, the extra lined notebook page

treat yo'self [day nine]

2013-08-09T08:41:00.000+09:30

taste

Because you deserve a friand after being woken by your drunk boyfriend at four in the morning. I normally go for citrus flavours, but everyone working at the cafe insisted I tried the chocolate. I was not disappointed.

waiting for a train to take me to a shift I don't actually have [day eight]

2013-08-08T23:23:00.002+09:30

a selfie

reading Rousseau's Discourse on the Arts and Sciences
watching True Blood, without shame
listening to this playlist

ps. I'll have to owe you a skyline for yesterday because my camera ran out of battery.

keeping up [days five & six]

2013-08-06T18:22:00.000+09:30

closeup

For yesterday's close up prompt, I have simply taken a photo of what I see most in the mornings: fresh, hot coffee pouring out of the group head. Is there anything better on a cold winters morning?

I missed yesterday's post because I spent the best part of it in bed. I'm not entirely sure what was wrong with me, but my legs were too weak to support my body and I cried for two hours begging Tom to make it better. On Saturday night I was in the middle of a sentence, holding a glass of wine and feeling perfectly fine and then suddenly I collapsed. I don't know if the two are related, but I'll probably get my doctor to take some blood tests to see if everything's fine. Tom thinks I simply need to eat more vegetables.

Today was a perfect winters day: 16 degrees and pouring with rain. The sky is grey and the world is tinted with the faintest hue of blue. For today's diagonal theme, I would love to have taken a picture of the heavy rain that has been falling diagonally all morning, but I have neither the skill nor the equipment to do it justice. Instead, the lines I see every day when I travel to work.

lazy morning [day four]

2013-08-04T12:27:00.000+09:30

love

a blissful lazy Sunday morning spent with my love.

yellow [day three]

2013-08-03T18:26:00.002+09:30

Life and death. [Day two]

2013-08-02T20:40:00.002+09:30

Circles

I'm struggling to disassociate Charlie from the limp, lifeless body he left behind in my lap. I want to to file that memory away in a different place from the memories I keep of his life. I want the Charlie in my memory to always be that beautiful dog sleeping at the end of my bed, following me around the house, running to greet me at the door. I want to remember him as the odd mix of wise old man and perpetual puppy that he was since he could fit in my hand and would steal my socks to keep in a pile in the backyard.

But this last memory is still so fresh.

Watching the vet inject that bright green fluid into his veins and feeling his breath quicken and then ... stop. Blinking away my tears because he deserved for his last moments to be seen and known, not lost in the blur of hot salty tears and grief.

Mum told me that she could never have another pet. She couldn't handle the pain of saying goodbye. That goodbye felt like poison surging through every part of my body, but I know that this brief period in which the pain is strongest is nothing to the years of joy and love he brought to my life. I haven't lived in the same house as him for over eighteen months; I feel guilty for the moments I almost forget that he is gone. But I don't see him in this house. I see him at the end of my old double bed, not the queen I share with Tom. I see him trying to sneak out of the front gate at my Mum's house, not under our Magnolia tree. And I feel the warmth of his body as I hold him for the very last time. As I say goodbye.

The August Break [day one]

2013-08-01T08:21:00.000+09:30

Breakfast

Black coffee & pesto on sourdough. The world wakes in dew and frost. I sit by the window and watch the garden. Every other day this week I've eaten before the sun has risen; this is a rare treat.

At the very last minute, I've decided to participate in the August Break. The idea is that you have a simple photo prompt and you can decide to write or not. If you're organised enough to have an editorial schedule it would be a nice break from the pressure of blogging.

But not only do I fail to keep to any semblance of an editorial schedule, I've also failed to hit the Publish button on a number of posts I've got sitting in my drafts folder in the last month or so. I've lost the habit and I think I've also lost a bit of confidence. I keep editing and editing (something I never usually do a great deal) but I never put these posts up because eventually I've edited my own voice out of my writing.

So rather than treating this like a break, I'm going to take this month of prompts to get back into the habit of blogging. I miss it. I'll write a little or a lot, but each day I will have a post up on the blog and hopefully I will remember what it is that makes this process so cathartic and rewarding.

saying goodbye.

2013-07-31T13:38:00.000+09:30

A few hours from now we are going to say goodbye to our beautiful little pup of twelve years. I grieved for him six months ago, when this subject was first broached. But we weren't ready then. We weren't ready to say goodbye. I didn't expect I would have to grieve so greatly this time; I had known so long that his days with us were numbered. But once the tears started falling I was useless to stop them. I felt his loss throughout my entire body. I'm not entirely sure I'm ready to say that last goodbye. But how I feel doesn't matter; I don't live with him anymore, I don't know how bad things get. How bad he gets. The unbiased voice in my head knows it's time, but I've been fighting that voice. I had thought that I was fighting for him, but the way to fight for him now is to let him go.

the new design is live!

2013-07-29T16:50:00.000+09:30

It's time to say goodbye to this old thing:

... and say hello to this:

Click through to have a look around. I'm really pleased with the final product. It feels much more me. It's clean and simple and I think a whole lot easier on the eyes than it's forefather.

Let me know if you come across any odd bugs, but I think it should be functioning perfectly. I'll be back to regular posting tomorrow. Hope you all had a lovely weekend! x