I have succumbed to the interview meme that is working its way around blogs at the moment. I asked the very lovely Stomper Girl to provide my five questions. She has asked me some incredibly tough questions. This post has taken me almost an hour and a half to write! I have been very reflective in my answers and I hope that Miss Caroline is pleased with the answers I have given. I have rushed my response because I know she is about to head off for a few beachy days and I’m certain she cannot begin her holiday without knowing the answers to these thorny questions…
What is your favourite ever love song and why?
You hit my soft spot straight away, but OH, I hate to play favourites. I’m a sucker for a love song, basically I love any falling in love moment. There are a lot of lines in songs that come to mind immediately when I think of love songs. It is often just one line that gets me, a single thought of love expressed as poetry in a song. When I hear that one line it takes my breath away, it pulls at my heart and very nearly makes me cry.
Hey There Delilah – a thousand miles seems pretty far, but they’ve got planes and trains and cars, I’d walk to you if I had no other way.
Sew My Name – Know I’m always thinking about you and how you always wear me well, you can’t outgrow something sewn under your skin, so I will always wear you well.
Don’t Worry, Baby – If you knew how much I love you baby, nothing could go wrong with you. What she does to me, when she makes love to me.
First Day of my Life – Yours is the first face that I saw, think I was blind before I met you. (watch this film clip with a tissue)
There She Goes – There she goes, there she goes again, and I just can’t contain this feeling that remains. She calls my name.
You’re All I Have – It’s so clear now that you are all that I have, I have no fear because you are all that I have.
My absolute favourite, the one which is the truth, the one which I can hardly sing for tears, but I manage to… really loudly.
This is the way, I always dreamed it would be, the way that it is, when you are holding me:
I have an arrangement with Fixit that I’m allowed to heartlessly dump him should Billy Bragg, Hugh Grant or David Tennant ever call me. Who is on your list?
Straight up, it is Johnny Depp – he’s been there since the 21 Jump Street era. I am very loyal. He rarely disappoints me. Others come and go – Hamish Blake, Wil Anderson are up there, but I’d dump them for Johnny too.
When I read quilting blogs I’m always struck by the element of supportiveness you have with each other. Coming from dancing, which can get a bit competitive and occasionally bitchy, I find this wonderful. Does it ever get bitchy or competitive in quilt-world? (Digging for dirt here)
Get a group of women in any place and there’ll be bitchiness, it is a genetic guarantee! Having said that, I do find quilting to be very supportive. I very rarely hear of one quilter trying to bring another quilter down. Although it is a competitive industry there is a distinct lack of negative competitiveness. Quilters do have to be careful with their copyright and I am an enormous advocate for people protecting their intellectual property. I would never copy the pattern of another quilter and am quite happy to openly articulate my disapproval to anyone who does.
Besides your gorgeous children, what are your 3 best achievements in life to date?
Three things. This is kind of tough. I don’t know. I am very proud to have been published a number of times in quilting magazines. I have a degree and am well respected in my workplace. I am most proud of the life that I have created with my Pete. We live comfortably and happily. We don’t stress, we don’t worry, we know that whatever happens we will always be fine. We could have lived a more ambitious life – we both work in industries that would have rewarded us for our ambition and talents, but we have the most wonderful balance in our lives. We don’t aspire to material gains, we don’t need for anything, so why would we accept extra stress? I hope we created a life that left our children happy, not because they had ‘stuff’, but because we were all in it together.
You’ve got 4 weeks to get fit, what would you do?
Hmmm. It is just over four weeks until I come to Melbourne to visit you. Is there an underlying message to this question?
If I had four weeks to get fit I would walk and walk and walk. Then stop to stretch and walk again. I’d get a massage or two during that four weeks, just to work out the knots before I start walking again.
Please, everyone leave me a link below to any love songs you think I have forgotten. Tell me that line in the song that gets you. I’ll have a box of tissues here at the ready. I definitely need to hear this from you Stomper.
If you would like to be interviewed and you think you can stand the heat of five questions from me, then you need just ask. I’ll email your questions to you.
Thanks for the questions, Stomper. You were very thoughtful in putting together this interview. I enjoyed it.
While you are eating your breakfast check the radar loops to see if there is any rain imminent.
Next check the simple loops to see where cloud is building across the country.
Now check the analysis chart, comparing it with the simple loops information.
Finally check the forecast for your city – be sure to look at the extended forecast, the detailed forecast and the current conditions.
Repeat this process daily. (except the current conditions, this can be checked hourly if desired)
I wrote this post a few days ago, so all of the images are old. We are now in the shadow of a cyclone which is moving through the Gulf of Carpentaria and it is very rainy. Due to the influence of the cyclone on our weather I also have to check the current tropical cyclones page.
Long, long ago when my Pete and I looked like this:
we decided to set up house together. One of the first essential items we bought was a fridge. With our very small, just out of our teens, budget we bought a very small fridge. As it was the eighties it was a fashionable almond coloured fridge. It was not frost-free (too fancy!) and it had no features other than a light which would work if you jiggled the button in just the right way after you had opened the door.
This fridge has been very good to us. It has moved five times and just kept chilling our food for all of these years. For quite some time it has been too small to meet our needs, but why would we replace something that was working perfectly well? Now, however, our milk goes off a little too quickly, we are too lazy to do those regular defrosts, we can no longer open the bottom drawers to see what is making that smell. A decision had to be made.
Today we took possession of new fridge.
Old fridge has been sent to sit in the corner before making its final ever move. New fridge is big and shiny and frost free.
It has to keep chilling our perishables until 2032 because we work on a twenty-three year cycle for replacing fridges.
This is a very cleansing time of year. I love the feeling of letting go and moving onward that this time of year promises. I love the expectation of a new year and the reflection on the old. There is always something to learn in the year that has passed – information that should be heeded before moving on into the new year.
In January, as we faced surgery for Philip, I learned the value of blogging. So many of you followed his progress and offered support across the internet. Lots and lots of you sent emails to the hospital to wish him a speedy recovery. He received fart jokes from all around the world. (we must admit that the fart is the international language of humour) Bloggers came to see me in real life with gifts of company, food and outings as we waited in a city so far from home for Philip to recover. We all learned the value of patience Philip took six weeks to recover from his surgery.
As the year progress I learned the value of letting go, as Ashleigh left us to live in France and cope with life all on her own. She solved her own problems, met her own day to day needs, learnt a new language and navigated the complexities of a new culture. She visited seven different countries, she ate food she couldn’t identify and she grew into a capable, self-suffiecient adult. That is the real value in letting your children go – giving them permission to be adults.
In July I learned that families face challenges together. When one of Ashleigh’s closest friends was killed in a car accident we struggled with the decision to bring her home from France for the funeral. We struggled with the decision to send her back to France two weeks later. We struggled with every minute and every thought and every decision made. We struggled with every day, day after day, week after week.
This one event coloured my thoughts and actions for many, many weeks. I am really not sure of what I did for the seven weeks after Ashleigh returned to France. We coped, that is all we did, just coped.
In September I learned the value of travel as we went to Ashleigh in France. We found a measure of peace in being together. We found strength in new experience.
In October I found the value of hard work. A request from a quilting magazine to write a profile about me prompted me to get moving on an idea I had been discussing and s.l.o.w.l.y developing since late last year. I have continued working on this and in a very short time I will have a website ready to reveal.
I am not sorry to let this year go. There were lots of reasons to be worried and sad in 2008. I am resilient, I do know how to solve my problems and move on rationally, but this year has tested every one of those skills and abilities. There were lots of reasons to be happy this year. Thank you to the bloggers I met in person. Fancy them finding me worthy of a visit! Thank you to the bloggers who chat with me over the internet. Your company and wit is always a highlight in my day.
We wish you, one and all, a happy new year. Come on 2009. We are ready for you now.
A song for you – it relates to nothing, but I dare you not to sing and dance along!
Santa did not come, for the first time in eighteen years. Presents were simply wrapped and placed under the tree for each of us. This meant that I did not have to do a midnight present placement. All presents were ready and under the tree well before lunch time on Christmas eve. The table was set for Christmas breakfast by 3 o’clock that afternoon. The food was prepared and ready to set out by 6 o’clock that evening. It was a Christmas miracle!
I actually went to bed at a reasonable time with nothing else to do. Once I got there I found that I could not sleep any way. Too many things to think about. So I watched ‘Hairspray’. I love a good musical!
On Christmas day my children were just beautiful. They were gracious and generous. They helped out, they spent time together. They had a wonderful day. We moved from family to family, but managed to find a little time for an afternoon rest.
It was a blissful Christmas. Everything just flowed.
Bring on the new year – I am ready to be finished with this one now.
Hazelnuts, marshmallow, white chocolate dots – all coated in melted dark chocolate.
They were supposed to be bite sized, but we got a bit enthusiastic in our spooning of portions.
Maybe we should eat this batch and make some more for the neighbours.
Edited to relfect: I am quite astounded to see this photo of Philip. This is what he looked like just fourteen months ago. He was a boy, he doesn’t seem to be any more. He now stands just two centimetres shorter than his father and is showing no signs of slowing down just yet.
The three girls have had plans to see the third movie in this series together since they knew it was being made.
At first we thought that Ashy would still be in France and wouldn’t be able to see it with Chelsea and Imogen. Thankfully she came home.
Next Chelsea went on a holiday with her family and left the day before the movie was released. They were happy to wait a little longer.
Then Chelsea’s dance conert took up her whole weekend and they had to postpone again.
Finally there were no more reasons to delay. They dressed up…
Ashleigh bought Chelsea and Imogen matching shirts in Paris before she left. Unfortunately there were none in her size (or so she tells us). So my sisters had one made for her that reads “Just call me Mrs Bolton”. She wore it… and a cardigan.
They put on their nail polish and their lip gloss and their belly tattoos.
Peppermint Patcher 