Today the clean laundry pile threatened to engulf the entire house. Here is the photographic evidence. You see? I really wasn’t kidding about the laundry pile. (See larger).

The other night I was mindlessly patting Lily to try and get her to go to sleep in her cot (and not our bed for a change) and after a few minutes I realised I had subconsciously slipped into the action of kneading her like bread dough – luckily I wasn’t using as much vim and vigor as I do when making bread but curiously it actually put her to sleep.

Does anyone else have a pile of clean washing in their bedroom that doesn’t even seem to get any smaller no matter how much sorting you do? I think I could spend all day folding and sorting little tiny socks and singlets and I would still end up with an enormous teetering, tower of washing essentially in a basket but piled up leaning against the wall. It makes me feel very grumpy.

I have decided to go COLD TURKEY and not watch Australian Idol this year. This means I manage to free up huge amounts of time to do other more important things like watch downloads of Project Runway, Survivor and The Amazing Race. I do like Bobby though, and I send him all my good Australian Idol vibes which I reserve for the occasional interesting contestant who shows up – the last being (in my opinion) Chanel Cole.

My parents have returned from their amazing trip-of-a-life-time adventure to Canada and the Arctic! They bring back stories of the Canadian wilderness, extended family and polar bears but what seemed to excite them the most is sitting next to the bass player from The Australian Bee Gees show on the trip home.

I am sick again – again! My immune system must be at an all time low. I have bought some new running shoes to start a daily walk to try and build up some strength to fight off the bugs which seem to descend every two weeks. If anyone has any good tips in how to build up an immune system please feel free to comment. I am going to make Chicken Soup today which will surely be a cure-all.

I now need to go and do everything that needs doing before Playschool finishes and chaos resumes.

Friday was Big-P and my 5th Wedding Anniversary, which means we have now been together for 10 years.

A lovely ten years that feels like it has gone by in a heart beat as well as feeling as though we have been together forever – as these things go.

About this time of year 10 years ago I had a big crush on a nice Canadian boy called Phil who had been introduced to me by an old friend and housemate who thought we might hit it off. We met and smiled at one another and my crush began. After a few weeks, and an initial flash of excitement on all sides, our mutual friend was trying to test out how keen I really was on this new boy. He said to me, “You know, he wears socks with his sandals.” and waited for my reaction. But I was not to be deterred plus I realised the sandals he was talking about were Birkenstocks which were very cool c. 1996, and also I was busy thinking “How Canadian! Socks with Birkenstocks! That’s how you have to wear sandals in cold climates!”, as anything remotely Canadian connected to Big-P seemed quite exotic. So I told him this wasn’t a problem, not at all. I was unshaken.

Then he went on to tell me that he was an enormous computer nerd, spending hours and hours in front of the computer at the expense of other bits of life. Nor did I see this to be a problem. In fact a very early get together was when Big-P set up my new computer for me and it was incredibly buzzy (if you know what I mean) to have Big-P being all manly and nerdy and computery just for me. I like nerds. Nerds are nice. If the internet was anything like it is now back then I am sure we would have been doing huge amounts of flirting over instant messenger.

So our mutual friend plowed on. He told me that Big-P wore enormously huge thick glasses when he was working at his computer. I later discovered that this wasn’t particularly true (at all), but something that our mutual friend fabricated to test my crush level. Never-the-less even when I thought it might be so, I was truly gah-gah. I couldn’t help but think how wonderful it was that this gorgeous boy with the sensational eye-lashes was obviously totally unconcerned with fashion and image and wore socks with sandals and an enormous pair of thick glasses. He was getting more and more perfect. And then our mutual friend said “and he has a tattoo” – No problem! – so he added “of a huge tiger – right across his back!” — “woooah!” I thought. How exotically Canadian he is, and how nerdy he is – and how weird (and a a bit tacky) too! An enormous tiger tattoo! Of course the tiger tattoo was also just a bit made up. Big-P does have a tattoo but unfortunately nothing so extreme as an enormous tiger.

Our mutual friend did a very good job of throwing us together. On one very memorable occasion, which has become part of our early relationship mythology, both our mutual friend and Big-P “happened” to turn up to a date I was on with another of our mutual friends — and Big-P happened to do a lot of accidental knee bumping with me under the table and then our friend drove us all home, dropping my date off first. It was sabotage! It worked!

Thank you, old mutual friend, who we have lost touch with more or less over these years, but what an important part of us he is – and I am very grateful. And finally Big-P and I were established as housemates and best mates. It was all very easy. That’s the nicest thing – it’s all been very easy doing this life thing with Big-P. Even the tough bits are much better for him being here. Love ya Phil. Here’s to another bunch of years.

What a long few weeks it has been. Today I woke up with some energy so it seems the antibiotics (again! sigh) seemed to be kicking my current evil bug – bronchitis.

We have Camilla’s beautiful calendar hanging in our bathroom in a place where it gets a lot of eyeballing. Last month I spent quantities of time gazing at August’s image – a peaceful little creature lying quietly on the branch of a tree surrounded by soft forest light and birds.

For the first part of this month I would think “sniff, sob, how nice to escape and lie quietly in a tree!” and for the other part of the month I would think “ugh, that’s exactly how I feel… I can’t even raise my head”. So when September 1st rolled around it was with some excitement that I turned the page to see what this month’s illustration would be and how it might reflect my mood for the month…

Oh dear.

*images reproduced with Camilla’s permission. Thank you Camilla!
Hopefully I will resume semi-normal posting in September. Fingers crossed. But then again – school holidays start tomorrow.