Living the Dream and Donna Summer

I’m typing this in my new kitchen.

It’s light and bright and the ceiling is double height. It looks new. It still smells new.

More — no most — importantly, it feels like HOME.

The Bloke and I dreamed of building a house for a decade before we had the knowledge, funds and chutzpah to pull it off. Physically occupying the place we have been imagining for so long is gratifying. It also feels strangely familiar – we designed this home, right down to the last detail, and it has been a pleasure (and a relief) to see the final form take shape exactly as I had pictured it would.

We’re beyond happy with the result. And we’re all happy to be here.

Even the cat.

But the best thing is, it’s home.

Did I mention that already?!

The past few weeks have not been without their challenges, but they have also been filled with good things. Like curling up on our new couch with Marvel Girl and Miss Malaprop, watching Zan Rowe’s Take Five. The Tony Armstrong episode rocked (as does Tony Armstrong), and it reminded me just how great Donna Summer’s song I Feel Love is.

Incredibly, Summer recorded the vocal in a single take, ushering in a new age of disco and electronic music. It still sounds amazing, with its driving rhythms and floating melody. The legendary David Bowie told the story of how Brian Eno heard I Feel Love for the first time while they were recording in Berlin, and come running in to say he had heard “the sound of the future”.

If you haven’t already clicked on that link and started listening to it, do it now!

This house sounds and feels like my future.

I’m content, even though there are still a few boxes lying around (mostly of books, because my library shelves have not yet arrived).

We dared to dream and now we’re living the dream.

And, as I might have mentioned, it feels like home.

If Only I Was Barack Obama…

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Clearly the former POTUS follows my humble blog and can’t wait for MY Best of 2019 Lists….

Barack Obama tweeted his best books of 2019 today.

Because he is Barack Obama (and even though we live a considerable distance across the Pacific, don’t we wish we were still seeing a whole lot more of him), he simply put up a list of what he thought were his best reads of the year. No doubt book sales will hit stratospheric heights momentarily…

Now, as any of you follow this blog with any semblance of regularity may know, this is the time of year when I, also, typically put fingers to keys and let you know what my favourite books, songs and viewings were of the year. And while I cannot even begin to pretend to operate in the same league as Barack Obama (I suspect it sufficient, at this point, that we reside on the same planet), those of you who follow this blog already know that this year had not entirely gone to plan. That said, previous years did not exactly go to plan, but sometimes we need to learn lessons more than once to make them really sink in…

So far, December 2019 has brought us the end of the school year, more Christmas parties than we care to mention, a special outing to Cirque du Soleil (magnificent and something we would highly recommended were it not for the fact that we saw their final Sydney show of Kurios), and a godawful lingering case of the flu — which has now metamorphosized into equally lingering head colds that require us to take a family sized box of tissues wherever we go, even if it is only to the beach less than one kilometre from our front door.

Meh.

And so…yes, I know, I’m running late on all these posts and won’t get them done in the next day and a half before New Year’s…I will be letting you know what my Best Of 2019’s were in — yes, you guessed it…

2020!

Because good things come to those who wait.

hey

Happy New Year, y’all!

And I have lists. You know I do…lists of my final top 5’s and shortlists and even thematic lists (though they may not make the final cut — you’ll just have to wait and see).

With every best wish and several tenterhooks to hang off,

Blue Jai x