The Festival of Me

Yes - today is my day! I'm a brilliant 34 years old on this balmy Brisbane Sunday. With the heat and the humidity up, it is a very very slow day. We had strawberry and watermelon frappes out at the pool earlier on and Phil, our wonderful housemate is whizzing up an Indian feast as we speak. There's an interesting baked cheesecake chilling downstairs in fridge so the evening is lining up for as a gourmet's delight. And to top it off - tonight is the Spicks and Specks Christmas special.

I'm always curious what it must be like to celebrate a birthday from beyond the Christmas vortex ... having had 34 of them inside it it, it is strange to contemplate a birthday without the Christmas paraphenalia hanging around. As soon as the Christmas decoration go up in the shops, I know the countdown is on for my birthday. As a kid, my parents wouldn't put the Christmas tree up until my birthday was over and done with. They didn't want Christmas to overshadow my approaching birthday - and thankfully there were never combined Christmas and Birthday presents.

Today is extra special because I share my birthday with my awesome Dad (and last Sunday it was my Mum's birthday). Dad and I are born 22 years and 15 minutes apart - having both been born on Sunday December 16 - me at 2:15pm and Dad at 2:30pm (however on opposite sides of the world - as Dad was born in Scotland). He says the year I was born everyone forgot to wish him a happy birthday. Happy birthday Dad for all those years ago when you were forgotten in the maelstrom that was my coming.

A few years ago I began a 'festival of me' birthday celebrations. Three years on the only thing that remains is the Friday friends, film and daquiris event. This year I had the delight of sharing this with my lovely girfriends Genevieve, Bianca, Annie, Anna, Laney, Rachael, Kirsten and our subsequent tribe of children. The laughter and dacquiris flowed, along with the tears as we indulged in 'Love Actually' and then all jumped in the pool afterwards ... which excited our small tribe of kids who had patiently waited through the movie for the swim. The day ended a little after 10:00pm with Rachael extracting her tired and crying children from our house, and Genevieve tucking her two boys into the car, having enjoyed Moroccan lamb shanks from the tagine out by the pool - along with some heartening conversation and Phil's addition of Hugh Jackman's 'Christmas Kangaroo' skit from YouTube ... see you just can't escape Christmas on my birthday.

The most exciting things about this year were the lovely handmade gifts that I got ... green being the theme. In the corner is Genevieve's felted handbag (I seriously cried to be the owner of such an amazing piece of handmade craft!) and below is the desk caddy created by Dave and Dylan yesterday. Green ended up being a theme by default here (there was only yellow, blue and gree paint!) - but there are lovely emblishments of puff paint and fluffy wool.

Keeping with the theme of green - Anna knowingly indulged my Chaser habit with the Chaser's War on Everything Season 2 - part one (in a green cover) and Dave with a gorgeous jade necklace. Anyone would think green was one of my favourite colours.

So after a whirlwind week that has included going to the Spicks and Speck-tacular with Annie and Adrian (and screaming like a teenage girl at the landing of the Beatles!), celebrating and honouring my dear friend Nickole at her blessingway on Tuesday evening, revelling in the five rows back from the stage experience of the Chaser on Thursday night, Fridays celebrations and then Dave's Christmas Party last night (which was actually really enjoyable - thanks Kelly and Justin!) ... I think I'm ready for a few quiet days leading up to Christmas.

Photo Hunt: Small

A new photographic meme I discovered over at Smiler's blog http://fromsmilerwithlove.blogspot.com/.

The word small immediately evokes images of my son as a baby - I'm a hopeless nostaligic Mumma! Dylan is but a wee bub of a week in this photo and I'm reminded of how very quickly he no longer looked like a newborn babe. He was born beautifully and powerfully at home in our loungeroom, by candlelight, two weeks past his estimated due date (he's now three and a half!)

The Chasers War on Everything

Especially for Smiler ... this is the Chasers War on Everything. The APEC stunt these guys did made news all over the world - but this is an extended bit to show you what the show is all about.

Can't Wait

The birthday excitement has finally kicked in and then ramped right up. As it sit here typing, its 7:15pm and its almost time to jump in the shower and get ready to go to the Chasers Bore on Everything. To say my excitement is only barely contained - is probably the understatement of the year.

And an additional bonus has been my new friend and wonderful supportive critic of my writing is making her way down from the Sunshine Coast to take up the ticket that Dave is unable to use (last minute meeting in Darwin). So Catherine and I will get to meet face to face for the first time. Ahh - love the serendipity of it all.

Secondly - as if that wasn't enough excitement - tomorrow is my annual birthday celebration (my actual birthday isn't until Sunday) For the past three years we've gathered on the Friday before my birthday to watch a film, share in a communal lunch and simply hang out. My first birthday celebrated in this manner, we watched Dirty Dancing and two lovely friends gave a feminist dissection of the movie - all things that I simply hadn't thought of - drooling over Patrick Swayze doesn't really leave a lot of energy for real thought. Fame: The Movie, last year was a bit of a bummer - it wasn't the fun uplifting entertainment that the TV series was. I forgot that small detail when deciding on the movie. So this year, it Love Actually and I can't wait ....

Plus, singing today was just sublime and was topped off with a very successful and consolidating trip to the kinesiologist .... so I'm now moving from a place where I have an internal locus of validation. I seek my own self worth from within myself rather than searching for it outside of myself.

My business cards also arrived today - I know have a business card that declares myself a writer. How cool!

But now off to the shower for some pre entertainment pampering and fussing! Oh and before I sign off .. thank you Dan and Square for your affirming and supportive comments yesterday. love you two heaps :o)

Wordless Wednesday: Irony

Life Quake

Mystic Medusa has been describing the recent astrological disturbances as a 'life quake' and that is pretty fitting for me. My life has been thrown up in upheavals of epic proportions in the last two or so weeks.

It began with an exercise in the Artist Way called 'The Awful Truth' - building on work that I have previously done I realised that my terrible habit was being constantly busy, never saying no and being over burdened with committments (with guilt the constant spectre through it all). Then came the insult to injury - I wrote that I believed that I was not worthy of my artistic gifts and talents. If you're forever busy its easy to believe in that and create a reality around that (just as I did when I believed that I didn't deserve love or happiness!)

And that was really the crux of it - self worth, or lack of self worth. As I dug deeper and deeper I saw that I have based my self worth on my volunteer work, and most especially creating Down to Birth magazine for the past three years. I knew that like any nasty and debilitating addiction it needed to be stopped. I needed to go back to basics, to downsize and invest in myself. I need to base my self worth on 'me' - on my gifts and talents, my foibles, my strengths and weakness, my idioyncracies, my passions and my great loves - the best and the worst of me.

At our AGM a week and a bit ago I resigned from all my HMA positions and am now in the process of tidying up all the loose ends. I feel raw and vulnerable - and its doesn't help (or does it?) that I'm in my dark moon phase at the moment - so everything is felt and experienced even more acutely than normal. I don't quite know who I am any more - only what I want to be. I want to be free ... and I know that my writing sets me free. I simply have to trust in something that I have loved since I was a child - turning up to a blank page and turning it into a rollicking adventure, a sad mournful tale, an autobiographical introspective, a scathing social commentary, a suspenseful thriller, a heart wrenching romance - whatever I want it to be.

In 'Overboard' the 80's comedy with Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, Goldie Hawn's husband (who has abandoned her to the the wilds of some hick town) takes the wheel of his yacht and declares in a rather manical voice 'At sea I am a God' ... and there is something of that in being a writer. When you turn up to the empty page you are God/Goddess/The Universe at work - as you create mini little worlds. I can be the centre of my Universe, I can be the Universe at work - I just have to believe in myself, in my talents and my abilities ... all before breakfast huh, as simple as that?

At this point, as I feel like I'm shattered in the face of my future dreams, like crystal dropped on concrete, I have to hold fast to the promise that I made to myself in September - to just write. As The Buddha said "It is your mind that creates this world" ... I need to find the strong warrior dimension of my mind and hold on tight through the last of the upheavals ... knowing that at the end of the quake there must be energy and resilience to rebuild ... and rebuild I will.

I'm wondering if this is the forging of my truth that Lucy Cavendish spoke of to me at the Goddess Conference?

Tripod - I Was the Only Shepherd

From the final Side Show on the weekend.

There was something bitingly brilliant about this song.