“I can hardly believe myself”

This is Lauca upside down on some sort of roller coaster giggling helplessly and saying “I can hardly believe myself”.

The kid has received so much spoiling in the last few weeks I can’t keep up. Her aunts and uncles have flown into town and she’s been breathing in attention like oxygen, and riding roller coasters and dancing at Wiggles concerts and swimming in pools and doing all sorts of Christmas-ey things. Incidentally I would not have chosen to take my 3 year old child on such a ride*, but I wasn’t there. I was at home soaking up evil, planet-killing air-conditioning and being pregnant. I was also helping a new friend of ours with his job application. During the tedious hours that are involved in preparing a job application I made us both some salad rolls for lunch. He ended up taking one home for his wife to try. Not that my salad rolls are that good, I actually think he couldn’t finish the second roll and didn’t want to appear rude. For some reason. Maybe because our new friends are Muslim and manners, particularly for guests and hosts are very, very important to Muslim people. We could chuckle about how if I lived back in his birth country I’d be stoned to death (for being unmarried among other things) but he couldn’t reject the second salad roll I’d made. The following day I got an email at work from him saying that his wife was so impressed with my salad roll that she wanted the recipe. Hah! Too cute. I wish I’d served something up which had actually warranted this compliment. Aaanyway, they’re going to have us over for dinner in the new year – a real Afghan (vegetarian) banquet, sounds promising.

Looking back I see that last year I posted quite a bit about Christmas, because this is probably my favourite time of year and this time not at all. I blame pregnancy. I’m still silly as a wheel for Christmas but every time I sit down for a moment to write I get so damn sleepy. Were it not for all the delicious wriggles and kicks of this baby in utero I would totally fall asleep during my work meetings. Instead I sit there with a beatific smile on my face, like the Virgin Mary. I can hardly believe myself.

Happy Christmas if it is your thing and Happy Salad Rolls (the secret is the sliced kalamata olives and the avocados) if it isn’t.

*That would be her father.