Welcome, 2012

Hello there, everyone.
Tonight I am grateful for the company of good friends. For a lovely dinner with the Turner family, including a game of pool, coffee, concert photo sessions, pigs on a truck in Bali and gossipping. For all my wonderful friends - Jarrah, Rere, Jake, Becca, Ryan, Gavin, Reegan, and anyone I may have accidentally omitted, it was grand indeed to welcome in the New Year with you. Thank you to the Beatons, for being wonderful hosts, and for the fireworks set off in the paddock and the lovely paper lantern. Grateful for meaningful conversations, a bit of crazy dancing, a very nice midnight message from Tahlia, armchair boats, toasts to anything we fancied and a rose which smelled delightful. It was a great night (and morning) and I'm glad that I could begin this new year and new adventure surrounded by wonderful people as I was.

We've reached the end of another year, and this blog has been going for exactly twelve months. It's been an interesting project, challenging at times but I think I got out of it precisely what I intended to - to be able to find the little positive things in even the worst, most dreary, want-to-hide-under-the-covers-forever type days. Even when everything seemed to be going wrong there was always something (there IS always something) that I was grateful for that day. If it was a friendly shop assistant, a lame joke, the completion of a difficult task...always, there is something to be grateful for each day. I hope that in some small way my blog might have helped the lovely people who read it to ponder what they were grateful for, too :)

I've got 221 blog posts for the year, and so many things that I have been grateful for in 2011. It has been a big year not just for me personally, but also a year of great change for the whole world. There have been countless devastating earthquakes, floods, fires and other tragedies. There has been a royal wedding and the death of Osama Bin Laden. Sudan gained independence, Egypt and Libya broke free from the tyrannous claws of dictators. Many talented people, including Elizabeth Taylor, Steve Jobs, Brian Jacques and Amy Winehouse have left the world and as always new talent is rising. Closer to home, Tropical Cyclone Yasi devastated the Far North Queensland Coast, Parliament passed a bill legalising same-sex marriage in Queensland and Darren Lockyer played his final football game for the Brisbane Broncos.

On a personal level, this year has also been a big one. We lost our beloved Grandad Col earlyish in the year, I was maid of honour at the Deb Ball and was honoured to be crowned Atherton Maize Queen. I graduated high school with not one 'C' on my report card and exited with an OP score of 2. I gained my teaching qualifications for BDA tap and jazz, spent an amazing week with friends at Mission Beach to celebrate graduation and had a blissful time at various musical festivals. I performed in my final Dance Connection production, acted like a fool backstage with all the marvellous people, drank champagne and giggled with the girls. I've been on camping and road trips. I've watched good movies, heard beautiful music, met wonderful and inspiring people. To all the wonderful friends I have kept and the new ones I have made - thank you, you are wonderful and the year has been so much better for your presence.

This is my final blog, and I feel that I'll miss the experience of keeping it. I'm so very glad that I did it, and am ever so grateful to those of you who have read it, regardless of how regularly that may have been.

Last year, my New Year's resolution was to keep up this blog for the entire year, which I have somehow managed to do successfully. This year, my resolutions are;

- to learn to speak Italian
- to get fit and eat healthier
- to work hard and save as much money as possible to go to Europe with at the end of the year.
- to let go, emotionally, of what is no longer needed, however rose-tinted and lovely it may seem, and look to the future in the hope of finding a more true and fulfilling sense of happiness and purpose within myself.

Thank you for your support, and for the last time I wish you a good night's sleep (or not, as the case may be) and the very sweetest of dreams. May this new year be as glorious and prosperous as you could possibly hope.

All of my grateful, grateful love.
Lise xx

Second last blog.

Grateful for Chris Lilley marathons with the little sister for the last two nights, a trip to Cairns with the family today, DnMs with Gracie and general sisterly comraderie. Goodnight, all.

Much love.
Lise xx

Dancing in the Rain

Grateful to have finally completed my blue card application forms.

So very grateful for a walk up Mt Baldy this afternoon. I have not felt that good, that full of joy and so content with the world, for a long time. It was certainly hard going on the way up the hill but the soft rain and the smell of wet vegetation and storms helped me along. I made it in half an hour - my new personal record. And on the way down, in the drizzly rain, twisting along the path with such a magnificent view stretching out all around, I felt better than I have in some weeks, perhaps months. Everything was beautiful and I noticed all the little things; tiny purple flowers beside the track, the feel of different trees as I brushed against them, the clear sweetness of the air, the smell of rain and pine needles. The very air was full of light and love and amazing energy, like an electrical charge of happiness. I may have done a bit of lame, cheerful, what-a-wonderful-day-to-be-alive type dancing on the flatter areas of my descent. :) it was just a half hour or so of the greatest tranquillity and joy and peace of mind and heart that I've felt in what seems like an eternity. I was very grateful for that.

Goodnight. Dream of majestic, stormy forests. Much love.
Lise xx

Dad's 45th Birthday.

A rainy day, a beautiful stormy landscape at the Nerada Tea Factory, family visits, still more food, herbal tea and feel-good movies with fabulous people such as a young Hugh Grant, corny enough to restore your faith in the possibility of true love. This has been my day and I hope all of yours were equally satisfying.

Grateful for a talk to Jorge, it's been a while and you and your family are in all of our thoughts and prayers. No words or kind gestures can make it feel better, but knowing that people love you cam ease the load of hurting on your own. Much love and light, and we're just a phone call away.

Goodnight, all. Happiness.
Lise xx

Season's Greetings

Grateful for a beautiful Christmas Eve mass, as ever, and a day full of joy, family and food for Christmas Day itself. So wonderful to be surrounded by people I love, and who love me, for what is essentially my last Christmas as a "child". If my plans come to fruition next year, I won't even be in the country for Christmas. I hope everyone had a similarly wonderful Christmas :)

Grateful today for a day of reading, rain and hot cups of tea. Beautiful in its simplicity.

Sweetest dreams and much love to all.
Lise xx

Drive, drive, drive your car...

Grateful for the opportunity to get my learner driver hours up today, chauffeuring Dad all over the town :) He tore his meniscus in his knee the day before we went to Cairns for concert rehearsals and is on crutches and in a knee brace. Grateful that we finished off the Christmas shopping and for a pleasant chat with Joel on the way to Big W :) grateful for lunch on the sidewalk and to have finally lodged my cheque from my camera, after almost two years! and to have gotten all the materials required for my planned goodbye gift to Rere :) it was a really nice day out with Dad :)

Grateful to have gotten my Christmas paper run tags done tonight as well; it makes me happy to do these things for other people even if it is such a tiny gesture :)

Congratulations to the fantastic Kate for her big achievement - Vice Chancellor's scholarship, you champion! You should be so gosh darn proud of yourself :) best of luck with everything, as always :)

Best be off to bed now. Dream sweetly.
Lise xx

Silver Bells.

Grateful today for a day of rest - it pretty much became one big nap, since I'd missed so much sleep the night before. But then, grateful for a Christmas-light-hunting drive around Yungaburra with the family, listening to carols, as tradition dictates, and a Christmas movie :) That was lovely :)

Goodnight!
Lise xx