I have been having a very hard time with this lately, folks.

Why?

Because life is so good. It’s been a while since I could honestly say that. Throw me challenges, I can handle those. I know what to do with them.

But sweetness? Undreamt-of success? The happiest relationship I have ever been in?

These, I am having a hard time with. Cognitive dissonance, it’s called.

It’s why all those Lotto winners quickly end up as broke as they were before their big win: they can’t adjust their mindset to their circumstances, so they alter their circumstances back to what they are accustomed to.

I ain’t gonna do that. Not this time. I am too self-aware, and too grateful, in my non-accepting way, to let that happen.

Instead, after my delicious Maltabella (weird South African thing) porridge and home-brewed coffee, I made this little book full of what if questions, printed it out, and then answered those questions for myself.

If you have a hard time accepting the good in your life (or opening to receive good things) feel er…free… to download and print your own copy of The What If Book!

Thank you all for being such a big part of why my life is so wonderful! Namaste *

I’m tired. When I am tired, I get paranoid.

Have I mentioned this before? Anyway, KNOWING this fact doesn’t actually help much with the actual experience of the paranoia. Some things do though. Sleep. Watching cooking shows.

And writing lists of what I’m grateful for. Even if I am too frikkin tired to be really grateful for anything.

So here goes!

• Poh’s Kitchen. Podasted straight to my computer and watched prone on the couch. Cooking shows are my go-to medicine for misery. I don’t know why, I just know they work.
• Sleep (of course).
• How my BFF texts me whenever I most need to hear from her. How can she tell? That woman is creepily intuitive.
• Learning, albeit slowly, the correct use of ‘No’ in getting unstuck and staying in flow.
• Parties! Even though they are the cause of my fatigue.
• Taking risks. Calculated risks, but risks nonetheless.
• Yoga.
• Skyping with my family across the sea.
• The *amazing* conversations that have come out of some of my recent blog posts.
• Feeling disciplined. I am, you know, despite being a bon vivant. No more procrastination for me!

Have a lovely week, everyone.

But hey, a three-day weekend, who’s complaining? Not I, not I!

It’s been spent in Lorne, in a house with the What What Wine Club crew. Perfect.

Thanks for the pics, Pam!

That ass being kicked? It’s mine. Clearly, there was no silliness AT ALL this weekend.

So, here’s a list of Happy in honour of an unexpected extra day off, and the frivolity it brought:

• Planning Big Big Things with Kerry. Big things. Exciting things. Oh yes!
• How holidays, however brief, can take you out of your quotidien worries and reset your brain.
• Friends
• Boyfriend. He took such good care of me today, and I needed that. I was a little…off.
• Food (always so good with the What What crew!)
• Wine. We did a blind tasting. I got nothing right. I need some more educating.
• Cuddling on cold nights. Hell, cuddling any time!
• Putting my iPod on random and seeing what happens. My taste in music is a little eclectic, so the results are often really, well, random.
• Miso soup
• The wonders of Modern Technology. How else would I text my mother when she’s halfway across the world, in another time zone?
• Getting emails from my dad asking if I’m OK. I am now, dad, because you asked.
• Feeling toasty warm inside my lovely new jacket, while the world outside is breath-mistingly cold.
• Sleep. Melbourne’s wet winters definitely make we want to hibernate. Could you bring me tea and honey toast occasionally and wake me up in the spring? Ta.
• That people continue to show up for yoga class despite the chilly weather. You guys! Amazing!

Photo: mattyp on Flickr

• Autumn weather: sometimes sunny, often crisp, always changing. It’s a beautiful season & I really love watching the leaves change, then fall.
• Seeing people sitting in the sun on the State Library lawn.
• Parties! There were lots this weekend, and one even had cupcakes. Perfection, I tell you.
• Braiding my hair like the girl on the cover of the current issue of Frankie. Who says I’m not a fashion whore?
• Red pears. They are in season, they are cheap at the markets, and the are beautiful! Ditto persimmons. They just about make up for the fact that cherries aren’t in season year-round.
• Doing my yoga. I just don’t feel right without it.
• Girly time. So essential, so very essential!
• Melbourne. It’s so odd that it took me all this time to find a city where I really, truly feel at home. This is it. It’s also rather a pretty city, especially in the Autumn light.
• Coming home to my lovely, girly, overpriced flat. I know it’s overpriced because I’ve discovered that friends are paying the same as me, for three times as much space, just a little further out of the city. But I love living here, with my wrought-iron bed, and my pink bedlinen, and the french poupee on the bed. I have never been able to indulge my own taste to quite this degree before. It’s luxurious!
• Resolution. I’ve been having incredibly intense dreams lately, redolent with obvious themes, all of them about endings. For example, last night I dreamt that I was an old lady who had to put her husband in a home because his Alzheimers was so advanced. Except he knew what I was doing and I felt terrible, and he also wanted to take his large carved wardrobe with. On the tram. We left it on the platform, in the end. Very obvious imagery, and the emotive state around it was mixed: relief, sadness, guilt, and sunshine. Yes, sunshine has an emotional tone. For me, anyway. The end, the legal end, is coming, and I can see sunshine after that.

Hope you are all having sun-drenched weeks, literally or figuratively!

Oh, and I know I have been the dead zone for comment replies: I plan to remedy this just as soon as I have a bit of time. xoxo

Taasha is awesome: all feminine and sweet, and when she cusses, as she does frequently, it still comes out sounding pretty and feminine. Hilarious! I have The Girl Crush.

Other highlights from this week include:

• Watching Fantastic Mr. Fox. How could I not have done this before? I mean, it’s based on a Roald Dahl story, and he was only my favourite ever childhood author. And it’s directed by Wes Anderson, and HE is only my favourite ever director. I have been stuck in yogaland too long, people. Must get out more. I loved this movie. Loved. Will be rewatching till I know all the words. oh, and did I mention that George Clooney is Mr. Fox?
• Home-made Mexican food. If it can be Mexican when its makers aren’t. Yummy nonetheless.
• My man-friend. He’s been around for a while, but this kind of personal stuff never makes it onto the blog until I am SURE about it. He is fah-bu-lous. He makes me weak at the knees. Sorry, that’s all the info you are getting for now.
• Cooking. And eating. Of course.
• Teaching. I really love my job. I love the community that’s developing at the Docklands classes, I love the chats I have with people after class. I love watching how people react when they suddenly realise they can do something they previously thought was impossible.
• Running into people I know, everywhere I go. This is how I know Melbourne is home now. At my local, my coffee is made before I have even ordered or paid. I run into students and friends on the street in the city, in Docklands, in St Kilda. It’s like it was in Jo’burg. Yay!
• Collaboration. I am so lucky to work with amazing people like Emma and the other teachers at Moksha (keep your eyes peeled for the Big Reveal on a secret project we have in the pipleline) and with Kerry whose kinesiology and teaching background marry so well with my yoga. It’s so much more fun when you aren’t just plugging away on your own!
• Actually, Kerry has a competition on her blog at the moment. I do love me some free stuff!
• Getting gussied up and going out in the world. It’s so *very* nice to wear something other than lulu every now and then. That said, my lululemon yoga gear is the best I have ever owned: I don’t actually mind spending five or six days a week in it: it’s comfortable, indestructible, does amazing things for the rear view, the tops give good coverage without cutting at the underarms. That’s gonna make a girl happy, too.
• Off-colour jokes. Again, the man-friend. His jokes Lower The Tone faster than even mine can. We three (Pam included) were in politically incorrect hysterics quite a bit last night.

Have a wonderful week!

Click the image for photo credits

So, le list:

• Sitting on the couch, knitting & watching Poh’s Kitchen. I am really keen to try the onde onde recipe. Not the durian variation though. No, not that
• The beginnings of a snood. Yes, that’s right. A snood. This one, actually
• While I am on about knitting, one day I also hope to have an appropriate reason to knit one of these scarves. I have found a Noro stockist in Melbourne. Exciting times! Boys, put your orders in now.
• The changing of the leaves
• The changing moods of the ocean. Every morning, before I hop on the tram to class, I look out over the sea and check her mood
• When the wind blows just right and it smells of the sea. It doesn’t happen that often in Melbourne
• Walking along the beach on Saturday mornings
• Being fed, lushly, by other people, all weekend. Good thing I went for that long walk on Saturday!
• Looking forward to seeing Taasha and Tristan from the Audreys live this weekend. Woo woo!
• Going to Kerry’s awesome kinesiology workshop in June
• Great excitement about the workshop Kerry and I are going to do together in July! Stay tuned for details!
• Drinking endless cups of the Best Green Tea in the World, given to me by my friend Han. I can’t read what it’s actually called, since it’s all in Chinese, but I am pretty sure it’s called The Best Green Tea in the World. Apologies to today’s students: I will do my best not to talk too fast or appear too overly caffeinated
• Eating chocolate hedgehogs with my tea. Yes, I not only got fed, but was also given takeaways. Eat your hearts out, because I also have biscotti in my kitchen right now, oh yes I do!
• Teaching yoga. I have the Best Job in the World ™
• My BFF. She picked me up off the floor (again) this week, despite being too busy at her fancy new job to even see her kids right now. Thank you, darling

It’s been a weekend of good food, good company, and a little bit of high drama for effect.

Lots to be grateful for this week. Let’s start with the food, shall we?
I mean, look at that yummy photo strip!

Le list:

• Cupcakes. Gluten free, home-made, raspberry topped and delicious
• French toast, home-made, berry-topped, delicious. You see a theme? Well, in all honesty, there was also the yummy restaurant French toast on Saturday
• Having people to share the good food with, people who climb off the furniture and sit on the floor at the first opportunity. Visitors all weekend, yay! The more dirty dishes get generated, the better the weekend
• Kids running riot in my house. A controlled riot, never fear. I wonder, if I abducted them and kept them for myself, would anyone notice?
• That gorgeous teapot you see up there? A gift, from the lovely Pam, out of which we drank many many cups of the best green tea ever, a gift from Han. Y’all already know how I feel about gifts…
• My Gran telling me she can’t wait to see me when I get to South Africa
• Skype. Which is how I spoke to my Gran in the first place
• My family
• Looking forward to spending Easter Sunday at my godparents house, just like old times
• Following the discipline of not working, all weekend. I can’t believe it!
• Getting enough sleep. Yes, I finally did. Long may that continue
• Walking on the beach with the waves lapping my ankles
• Waking to the sound of birdsong
• Falling asleep to the sound of wind in the trees
• Serendipitous offers of help
• Free Form Final Friday fun. The yoga was followed by pizza and beer. Kind of a perfect night!

Blue Yonder Mosaic II by Steffe

This week, it’s mostly about the weather. Finally, some sun, yesssss.

• Blue skies and warm sunshine
• Visiting Kate and her delightful partner in Castlemaine. It was SUCH fun, and I might have to move in under their kitchen table. That’s where the most sun falls. Will follow sun like cat
• Walks in the sun, yoga practices in the sun
• Feeling Kate’s baby move under my hand. It is truly truly miraculous, how our bodies can make another Life
• Coming out of sleep-deprived paranoia (an unfortunate but regular Sunday occurrence) with the help of my friends, specifically the lovely Jeannette, who ran the ten kilometre Melbourne Marathon event in under an hour, yay her!
• On the topic of sleepless paranoia, I spent some of last night (Saturday) awake and paranoid, but found I had a fairly new phenomenon going on: I could still hear the Voice of Reason, even in the paranoia. In such small steps do we measure progress. There was a time, not so very long ago, when I would have been certain the paranoid thoughts were reality. I mentioned this a while back. It’s an ongoing process, this
• Taking my asana practice everywhere I go! My weekends are often nomadic these days, as you will have noticed, and although that is wonderful, it can cause a disruption to routine. And if I don’t do my yoga, I get cranky, and my body hurts. But really, you can do yoga anywhere. You need no special clothes, no special equipment, not even a mat, although that does help, of course. Every time I re-experience this, it makes me happy
• Practising my yoga, feeling the strength and space in my body and my breath, the openness that results from even the shortest practice. It’s definitely a rewiring, every time. It’s why the paranoia doesn’t seem as solid somehow. I do my asana, and I feel the true nature of reality, even if only in the pause after my inhale
• Eight weeks till Fiji! Yessssss. Sorry, Linda. I will make it up to you when you come to Australia. And for those of you who feel like African yoga adventure, check out Linda’s upcoming retreat
• Food. Delicious food. Kate made an incredible fish curry on Friday night. I can’t cook fish, since I have been vego all my adult life, but I am willing to learn in order to eat that curry again. And pumpkin and feta flatbread accompanied by delicious chai at my local bar. Yes, ‘hotels’, as the are called here, have come a long way since the days of greasy fries
• Watching people enjoy their food. I am aware this is slightly creepy, but I love watching people eat when they are getting pleasure from it. And when people eat heartily. It’s a very visceral connection to our life force, food: second only to breath. So many people have conflicted relationships with food, and this seems to  me to be a way of not participating fully in life. Hurrah for those who do
• Nigella, and her lipstick-wearing, sexy finger-licking, food lasciviousness, for all the reasons I just mentioned
• Hanging out with the girls in my house. I have said this before, I will say it again. It could have gone either way, this uber-feminine house – five women and two cats, also female. It went well, very well
• Megon’s Smoke of Home. Still loving it
• Giving people handmade gifts. Now if I could just get myself back into a regular crafting groove. Maybe with slightly less nomadic weekends?
• Watching my friend Maria make incredible aprons without a pattern, and out of scrap fabric. She is a crafty genius
• Doing things for people that they like, or that make them happy,  just because I can
• Watching people blossom like, forgive the rather laboured analogy, flowers in the sun. New beginnings can come, no matter what preceded them

What made you happy this week? Lots of things, I hope!

These happy lists are addictive!

Here is the round up for this week:

• Small children who take your toast, eat all the buttery bits, and give back the crusts
• The lady I saw on the train this week, clad in hot pink coat, hot pink boots, hot pink tights, and a rainbow scarf. With a shock of white hair. She was like a spring flower amongst all the black
• Teaching mother and baby yoga classes, and getting to hold the babies
• Tattoos. Especially mine. I can’t tell you how happy I feel every time I look at them. They are smokin’
• Shoes that show off my fabulous tattoos
• Rain-scented wind
• Doing the splits without pain
• Situations that make me look at myself veeeeerrryyyy honestly. I experienced one this week. It was profoundly uncomfortbale for a while there, but I see now some interesting patterns in how I interact with my world. And my ongoing desire for (perceived) control. Bless me
• Getting organic fruit and veggies delivered by the wonderful folks at Miss Organic
• Neti. Without it, my sinuses would be permanently clogged
• Belly laughs
• Coffee
• Chocolate
• Solitude
• Company
• Going to new places. I do this a lot lately! It’s fun, and I would never find these places unless people were kind enough to take me
• Eating dumplings until even my stretchy pants feel too tight
• Picnics in the sun
• Sleeping for eleven hours straight
• Getting my learner’s licence! AND having a flattering photo on it! What are the chances?

Now, lovelies, what made YOU happy this week?

Thank you all so much for the comments, facebook comments, and emails on my last post. I still have a few responses to send: bear with me, I am unaccustomed to receiving such high volumes of correspondence! It marks a first for this blog to get almost 50 responses to a post.

Which tells me that it’s totally ok to show you my deep inner self, perhaps even useful. So I have a few more posts about my recent experiences planned, but this particular one is a round up of all the nice things I have read, seen, acquired, experienced or done in the last week. Well, maybe not ALL. A girl still needs a little privacy!

It’s inspired by Gala’s TILT posts, and Babs’ Friday Five. I just never seem to get in on the act on Thursday or Friday!

Urdvha Dhanurasana by goisa janik

Without further ado, this week’s Happy List:

• Finally, finally booking for my Australian learner’s test. It’s been over year since I drove and I miss the independence.
• Tori Amos, and all that she does. You will see me at the Regent Theatre in Melbourne on 12 November. Oh, yes.
• Chatting to lovely friends halfway across the world, who tell you about Tori’s tour dates.
• Buying corsets and tatoo-showing, skyscraping satin heels from Sideshow Design
• Massages
• Free Form Final Friday. What a blast it was this month! And the after-dinner at Mecca Bah was great too.
• People who are brave enough to show up to Free Form yoga and just do their own thing. You guys rock!
• KeepCup. My favourite purchase of the year – now take-away coffee is also guilt-free and environmentally neutral. Providing it’s fair trade and organic, of course! And my dealer, er, I mean, coffee guy, throws in a free coffee with your cup purchase.
• Being stopped in David Jones by a girl who wanted to tell me that I have the best bum ever. I kid you not. I will secretly love her forever.
• Leigh-Ann Thomas. Because she loves booklets. And because she is responsible for the snazzy new look of this blog, and the awesome photos of me. Email her if you want to know more about what she does.
• Sunshine
• Champagne and late nights
• Pyjama parties and early nights
• Cleaning house on a Sunday morning
• Napping on a Sunday afternoon
• This album. I have only had it for two weeks, I know the words to all the songs, and I cannot listen to it enough.
• Planning trips to Fiji
• New friends
• Old friends
• Opening my heart in backbends. Deeeelishus!
• And, of course, all of you. And your lovely messages, and your open hearts.

I could go on, but I fear I shall bore you. Here’s to more nice nice nice things this week. I am so lucky.