T'was The Night Before Christmas...

...and all through the house, 

Not a creature was moving,

Except for my son who, on Christmas eve, decided that it was time to start walking. There we were, down at the lovely little beach house we'd hired for the week, and suddenly Toby is strolling across the kitchen. Literally like that. One second he's crawling and cruising around the furniture  just like always, and the next he's standing in the middle of the room looking at us all and wondering what all the fuss was about.

And since then, he's been on two feet as often as possible.

So now we have a toddler. For real.

It's really strange - yesterday while tidying my study I was looking at some photos from a year ago, when he was just a tiny little squidglet of a baby, and it's hard to believe that this little fella toddling around and getting into everything is the same person. I've been looking forward to him walking all year - looking forward to the independence and increased interactivity that it brings with it. But now that it's happened, there's also something ineffably sad about it. I hadn't expected that at all.

So... on to other news. We had a lovely week down at the coast. It involved beaches, swimming, lots of reading and sleeping and playing games and eating. Christmas day we cooked a nice lunch, and called families, and just generally had a mellow time. Our internet access was basically non-existent, which was a great excuse not to even think about work. The dog got to go to the beach, which she loved. Toby came to like the beach, although at first he was a little reluctant about the entire experience:

But he soon came around:

Now we're home again, and have another week until work opens again, which I intend to use to get a few outstanding jobs done around the house. I've also got vague plans to do some writing. I've got the first five thousand or so words of something new done, and I'm hoping to make a real dent in it over summer. It's tentatively called 'Orion: The Hunter' and it's a high pace, just a little silly, action adventure mystery - really different to my last couple of books, and is proving a lot of fun to write. I'll post a few more details as it progresses.

Anyway, the boy is awake, so now my day begins in earnest. Hope you all had a lovely festive season. 

Random bits of News

Happy holidays, everyone! A bit later today, our little family is off to Tathra, on the south coast, where we'll be spending the next week keeping to a vigorous schedule of surfing, eating freshly shucked oysters, catching up on reading, playing with the dogs on the beach and generally just kicking back. I've also got grand plans of really getting into the writing of a new project which I've been waiting for an opportunity to launch into for about six months now. I may or may not, depending on the vagaries of Optus mobile broadband, have internet access, so this may well be my last post for a week or so.

So - writing news first. I'm finally, and utterly, done with  Daywards. After a fairly mammoth effort this week, I got the final proofs back in the mail on friday afternoon. Hopefully this means that I'll never have to read that book again. Not that there's anything wrong with it, you understand - actually I'm really proud of it, and really happy with it as a conclusion to the trilogy but, as all the writers out there will know well, by the time I'm done with the final read through of any of my books, words cannot describe how completely over it I feel. Either way, it's done now, and on time, too. 

Next bit of news - we got a new family member for christmas. One of these:

For the uninitiated - it's a Roomba. A vacuum cleaning robot. I think I might be slightly in love with it already. We call her Betsy. She's awesome. If you, like us, have a toddler and the only dog on the planet disinterested in cleaning up under the high chair, then I cannot recommend one of these enough! Basically, this was Min and my christmas present to each other. The only problem with it is that it's supposed to be a labour saving device; just set her going and get on with other things. This idea falls down, though, because once Betsy is in action, it's just about impossible not to sit there watching - it's so damn hypnotic. And clever, too. Climbs small steps, goes around corners, table legs, untangles itself from carpet tassels etc... Actually, it makes me feel slightly inferior, intellectually. I got a little worried when she started following me around the house shouting 'EXTERMINATE, EXTERMINATE', but Imogen tells me that's a normal part of her programming...

In any case, have yourselves a merry little christmas, if I don't get a chance to post again before then. Hope yours is filled with family and friends.

Cheers

t

 

Excuses, Excuses...

Okay, I know I've been even more lax than normal this week. In my defence, by November 24 I need to have read, processed, marked and provided detailed feedback for:

1 x 100,000 word Doctoral Thesis
3 x 30,000 word honours thesis
66 x 3-5000 word creative writing portfolios
66 x 1500 (ish) word reflective discussion posts.

Plus, any day now, the final revisions for Daywards are going to land in my letterbox, and these need to be back no later than two weeks from now in order to actually get the book out on time.

So yes, I'm a bad blogger.

For what it's worth, here's what's been on my mind lately:

• Picturebooks. I like these. I have a MSS for one tucked away on my hard drive where it's been sitting for the last six years. I really should do something with it. It's called Brightwing. It's about a bird.
  
  
• Parenting. I'll be honest and admit that the entire Jessica Watson sailing around the world thing has been bothering me a little. Not that I don't believe she's capable of doing it, or that 16 year olds aren't capable of turning their hand to pretty much anything - hell, just look at what Steph Bowe's achieving at the moment - she's just doing awsomely. And I know a lot of other teens who are just as brave, adventurous, talented and skilled, that's not an issue for me, either. I'm just not sold on the whole concept of parents sending their little girl out into what (and I know this from personal experience) is a shit-scarey and very dangerous ocean, for the most part completely out of reach of assistance (Both physical and emotional). It doesn't sit well with me for a number of reasons, which I won't go in to. I hope she acheives everything she set out to, though - don't get me wrong about that - and that she comes home safely.
  
  
• UFO's. This is another shameless plug for Imogen's Blog
  
  
• Christmas. We've booked a house for the week of Christmas at my current favourite-place-on-the-entire-planet: Tathra and I am just *hanging out* to get down there, surf for a couple of hours every day, read all the books that I'm not getting read at the moment, and (hopefully) start writing my next project, about which I'm rather excited, but won't say any more about at the moment.
  

All right. That's that. Now I have to go and teach my final class for the year, and then I'm going home.

Have a nice day everyone.