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Dear Baby Girl
You’re another year older, wow look at you grow! It seems like such a short time ago since you were turning one… I now understand why people say you blink and then they’re all grown up. Now you’re not all grown up, you’re only two after all, but I do need to seriously revise calling you “Baby Girl” – however you still respond to it by giving me squeals and hugs and giggles… so I might persist with it a bit longer.
For your birthday I gave you a sensible gift, I’m sorry, a shirt and a dress which hopefully you’ll love to wear. I made up for it though by giving you a keyboard and microphone for you to woo audiences with karaoke style! I may be in your parent’s bad books for quite a while on that one, but given the excited zeal coming from you as you embraced the microphone at Sizzler last night and started to slobber on it… I trust my decision was sound. (pardon the pun).
I saw you a little less this year, and I was away for three months but fortunately you remembered me when I got back. All those wizzy dizzys and swooshes I gave you paid off in that respect but as you get a little larger Aunty Kim’s back isn’t coping so well with picking you up and swinging you around. I’m working on finding a more ergonomic way to achieve flinging you in the air but until that solution is found, I’ll just try to increase my strength at the gym to keep up with your growth.
2009 has seen you grow from a cute toddler to a little girl and I’ve loved seeing you learn and discover new things and watching your family be so proud of you. Your brothers dote over you, your Mum and Dad love you and you love them in return. You run around in circles excited when you hear Daddy come home, you snuggle up to Mum whenever snuggling is required, and I'm sure in time you will gladly deliver coke and pepsimax cans to them both.
I look forward to seeing what 2010 brings for you, as you grow even more, hurt my back even more, and you fine tune your piano skills much to the delight of Mummy and Daddy.
Sending you lots of love Baby Girl
-Aunty Kim
Melbourne always creates a strange stir of excitement, warmth, and insecurity in me. I'm not really sure if this is the forum anymore to discuss that kind of thing, but there you have it.
The other thing that melbourne brings, is gluttony! In terms of the food lovers update to Melbourne, this morning I applied the same rule to locating breakfast on Lygon street as one does to choosing a dimsum location. I walked along, eyeing off restaraunts empty, a few stragglers, and then there it was, I knew I had found the spot, a cafe chockers with Italians! And breakfast, hopefully pictured below, was delicious! The bittersweet taste of my mocha, the tang of berry compote smoothed by ricotta.. Delightful!
Tomorrow morning I'll walk further afield to see if I can find another such wonder... And sit by the street, sipping my mocha while hopefully reading the final few chapters of my book.
For now it's off to the city for lunch with my brother and maybe, just maybe, some shopping.
I woke up in a bit of a fever at 3am, though physically I was fine. In the land of my subconscious most of my face had been sunburnt to the point of being red raw and gooey and required urgent medical attention. Now, I have all sorts of strange dreams to be fair, but this one really stuck in my gut. And according to an online interpretation of sunburn,(because I believe everything I read on the Internet) there’s a fair reason for it to be stuck:
To dream that you have sunburn indicates that there is an emotional situation or problem that you can no longer avoid. There is some urgent matter that is literally burning through to your soul and demands your immediate attention.
Bugger.
Of course, it might also relate to the start of sunny days again....
Sunscreen SPF50+, anyone?
This is one of my favourite shots of Llama, who got up quite close through the crowds of people to check out the Mona Lisa. 
Although I haven't exactly shared my South America photos on livejournal yet... I feel like starting in Paris and maybe working backwards :P
And where better to start than the Eiffel tower? 
Posted Fri Aug 21, 2009 2:02pm AEST
The first US retreat for internet addicts has opened its doors, welcoming a teenager that was captive to the World of Warcraft online role-playing videogame.
The 19-year-old boy went from pursuing quests in Azeroth to bottle-feeding baby goats and building a chicken coop as part of a reStart Internet Addiction Recovery Program at a rural five-acre spread in the state of Washington.
"We are a cold-turkey place; no technology," reStart psychotherapist Hilarie Cash said.
"A gamer is not going to be allowed to game any time they are here because it is the gaming that is their drug of choice."
Ms Cash and therapist Cosette Rae opened the internet addiction retreat in July as a live-in centre for re-connecting cyber junkies with the land of the living.
The retreat has beds for six patients. A 45-day stay costs $US14,500 ($17,500) plus cash for daily expenses such as renting camping gear for wilderness adventures.
It also treats internet addicts as out-patients, with typical patients ranging from 18 to 28-years-old with "extensive exposure to porn, but not much to sex".
The main cause of saying this isn't for the yummy bottle of amberly chenin, my favourite white since 2001, or the biscotti's that I'm going to get into (mmm biscotti!), the ticket to see broadways greatest at His Maj (theatre! eee!), I mean all these things are BRILLIANT but really, REALLY what really gives the love?
The thought out cards.
There was some card gold this year! and in past years the quality has spoken for itself, and this year was no exception. The card from my eldest brother receives extra special mention, you have to see it to really understand but it was a card about a prison for morons, GOLD! Gold I say! You just can't buy that kind of love!!! ..well okay you can, but whatever.
Coming in with equal weight to the cards were the hugs. Ahh I love a good hug with a cup of tea in the morning, or a pint of cider in the evening, or heck, with a pasta for lunch. A good hug is memorable, there are a collection of great hugs that feature in my most favourite times of my life. A great hug is a gift, and I appreciate them and look forward to many more.
Now I sleep, in happy coordinated linen bliss!
Mmmmm domestic sleepy snuggly bliss!
My addiction? It's worth it.
I don't mean to alarm you with what is, really, a self evident statement. I have a problem. And not just the one, but I'll try to keep it to specific for the sake of this entry.
My name is Kim and it has been 34 minutes since my last manchester purchase.
I sit here with post-manchester-purchase bliss slowly embracing my senses, like the satisfaction, bliss and exhaustion which overwhelms you after hours of love making. I take comfort listening to the whirrr of the washing machine swirling my new linen around. I am already anxious about the wait for it to dry, but I know it will all be worth it in the end.
My manchester addiction really isn't something new. I recall with some fondness a few years ago now, the time I nursed an egyptian cotton sheet set that I simply couldn't resist buying in Melbourne, and then carrying under my arm all the way back to Perth. We still have a good life together, and I think that sheet set will become really close friends with my new addition to my bedding range.
As I drove along the Mitchell Freeway today it became obvious that perhaps this time I had gone too far. I have now been to countless online stores, I have been to 3 baines, adairs, lincraft, k-mart, big-w, Ikea, target, myer and who knows where else... but I couldn't find what I was looking for... In the last week I have purchased three new doona covers, and returned two, eager and obsessed on the search for the image of bedding perfection in my mind. One of my purchases had been made with far too much haste, and post-bad-manchester-purchase regret soon ensued. I learnt my lesson though, as I burned up precious petrol on the way to Joondalup to return what I had foolishly thought was the answer to my awkward bed situation.
This would not happen again, I stupidly thought, not having yet fully appreciated the length I will actually go to for linen luxury... yes dear reader... I would even go to Carousel on a Saturday afternoon which we all know is practically a kamikaze mission into chaos. My first port of call, Adairs, having born witness to the bedding luxury in their most recent linen lovers catalogue (thank you Pete, for feeding my addiction ;-) ). Alas, Adairs did not have the object of my affection in stock, gasp! But after buying a back up doona cover in K-Mart Belmont (yes, Belmont), I called Carousel Adairs again a few hours later (just incase) to find that they did indeed have my King Size 'Willow Tree' doona cover in !! they had just opened the box with it there! So I went back out to Carousel a second time, a dubious decision given I barely survived my first trip, returned the K-Mart doona cover, and bought the one I really, deeply, truly wanted.
I understand that my manchester-addiction is masking other needs, really I do... and maybe one day as I get stronger I'll be prepared to face that side of things, but for now I'm content with my purchase and I feel as though we're going to have a long happy life together in sleeping bliss.
Some people have alcohol, some have cigarettes, others have gambling... I personally have manchester, and I'm okay with that.
---- Volanos, Lakes, and Man made water falls ----
It seems that to be a town in South America, you are required to have your very own volcano. Everyone has one, they´re a dime a dozen. I pass one now and *yawn* what was that, another volcano? Same as waterfalls, those places that don´t have their own natural waterfalls create man made waterfalls, and they are sign posted as such.
To be honest, you never get tired of volcanos, though you do get over the waterfalls. Pucon is surrounded by lakes and volcanos, literally SURROUNDED. You can´t so much as sneeze without bumping into one - Main Volcanos Villarrica, Mocho or Quetrupillán and Lanín. Main lakes: the Villarrica, Caburgua and Tinquilco lakes. I took a horse ride around the base of what I assume was yet another volcano, along the shores of yet another river, and it was such a great time.
This is what I horse rode along the base of...
One of the things that I was most excited about entering Argentina apart from the great coffee, with these cute little cookies.. mmmmm yummy
Anyone fancy seeing Tori Amos with me in November? :)
Go on, you know you want to!
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Mendoza is probably the best known region for Malbec wine and while the wine I tasted at the wineries really wasn´t that impressive, other Malbecs I´ve tried from the region have been simply divinely delicious. The food as well, though quite italian following with the wine / olive oil theme, was fabulous if you went to the right places. Yumm.
More photos available in the Argentina folder on my flickr page.
She´s the daughter of one of the local handicraft women who have darling husbands who farm alpaca wool, then they make the fibres themselves, knit products from them, then every day make their way to a specific point which, as you can see from the photo ain´t close to town, and involves a hell of a hill, where they sit and wait and hope some silly gringos rock up and buy something. The price was almost robbery, as in, for the work they put in for what I paid? I felt almost guilty, but you know, they were happy as well, so I guess it all worked out in the end.
Did I just say that? man, Im a photo geek sometimes. Well, I am looking forward to it, so ner.
In short, day one of our trip through the salt flats - national park - desert - volcano area of Bolivia involved waking up early, buying last minute things in Uyuni after realising that yes, it is bloody cold, and then heading out to the train cemetry, then Colchani villiage for one last loo stop, salt souvaniers, and a visit to a small salt ´factory´. Then the salt flats themselves with a llama bbq, then Fish Island (Isla de los Pescados) which is an island of fossilised coral covered in 1000-year-old cacti, and then after following the wrong car and getting lost, finding the right hotel made of salt and spending the night there.
Salar de Uyuni is the world's largest salt flat at 12,000 sqm in size, and up to 20m deep in the centre, it´s... well... huge... and great for photos... which have been uploaded and can be viewed if you go check out my flickr page, under Bolivia.
The Proclaimers and the B52s are coming to Perth!!!
Sun 6 Dec 2009
Sandalford Wines
Caversham, WA
Tickets about $90, I´ve already bought two if someone wants to come with me!!! I did promise myself I wouldn´t look to see what concerts were coming up in Perth, in order to save my budget, but by jove the subject line came up in my email and there was no stopping me, mwahahaha.
Anyone?? anyone at all?? :P