Christmas is here again – and this year the extended family will here at Menagerie10, although a few are away this year living it up in Sydney! Lunch duty rotates through the siblings, so this only happens once every three years, making it all pretty low stress overall. Last year we celebrated at house-of-Sibling#2, the year before at that of EldestNiece (stepping in for Sibling#1). Each family grouping has their own particular way of doing things; ours is always predictably VERY casual, with bathers (aka swimsuits) in play, along with damp hair and a relaxed vibe. This makes me happy as I’m not fond of unnecessary formality, particularly during heatwaves.
Yes, Perth has been in the grip of some very tedious temperatures for the past few weeks – a real energy sapper, particularly in the run up to Christmas. This means that watering, chicken minding, dog walking and feeding, baking, wrapping gifts and so forth all need to be done in the cool of the early morning as far as possible. Yesterday was a small fail on that front as the baking took longer than anticipated, resulting in frequent trips out to dive into the pool to cool off – then staying in my damp bathers to hang on to the coolth as long as possible. But the Christmas cookies are all done, almost all the gifts are wrapped, the barbecue is clean and ready for action and the cooling water jet sprays on the patio have been refettled and are ready to spring into action. Oh, and it looks like Christmas Day will be a very mild 24 degrees – so those sprayers may not even be needed! Hurrah.
As I look back across the year, it feels like not much happened. Then I remember that we went on a lovely holiday to Melbourne-Adelaide (etc), Himself became an orphan, I had fairly epic surgery, we got a couple of endearingly ugly (and raucously noisy) chickens and organised a kitchen renovation, which finally gets underway on 6 Jan. Himself shifted to a 4-day week as phase one of ‘transition to retirement’, bought himself and electric car, built a palatial chicken run and has been playing around with home automation (amongst other things). I played many (many) games of MahJong, bought – and used – an e-bike, created a random mosaic piece for the wall near the chicken run, tried fluid art therapy – aka acrylic paint pouring (not really my thing), gave fused glass jewellery a whirl (very satisfying and hardly terrifying), planted – and harvested – many vegetables, and included chair Pilates (briefly) and aquarobics in my physio/rehab. MissCassie has continued to amuse and provide enthusiastic affection, following me around the house and generally being quite adorable. No doubt there were other things, but those are the things that popped to mind when I thought about our year.
The rest of the family have had their own adventures of various sorts, far more than I could cover here. But a couple of interest points are that DaughterDearest, Son-in-Law and Grandkitties (Cloud-George-Corvy-Zeffy-Dany) are still up at Gallifrey Forest Farm, where DD has been writing some delightful tales and the two of them have a viable and thriving aquaponics system in place; BoyChilde, LovelyLass and Grandpup (Halley) continue to enjoy beach time (and send me many cute photos and video) and have taken up pottery – although Halley is more commentator than participant!
Collectively we wish you and yours all a safe and enjoyable festive season and a safe and happy 2025. We’re still hanging on to the hope that the good guys might win!
