It's Rebecca's birthday. She embodies beautiful things to numerous to count, but as she's six today, here's a double 3BT for her:
Her eyes are subtly different colours. They're green, like her father's, but the right eye has a large amber splash.
She has a warm heart, and a compassionate nature. Empathy comes naturally to her, and she is nurturing and kind to those close to her.
She is fiercely proud, and protective, of her little sister. And patient.
She loves dogs (and has been agitating for one for some time). When we're out and about and she sees a dog, she always asks the owner politely if she can pat it. And she knows how to approach and greet a dog gently so it will respond to her.
She could talk the leg off an iron pot, and argues with cunning, skill and exhausting persistence.
She loves to climb trees, to brachiate, to climb from rope to rope, and to show off new tricks she's mastered. Every day she gets stronger, more coordinated, and more daring.
Look at the beautiful sky! It's all pink and purple! I realise she's probably never seen a dawn sky before; it fills our kitchen window, and we stand and stare before getting down to breakfast.
At work, my friend T gives me a stuffed toy puppy she's picked up for Maggie to cheer her up while she's poorly.
Jack is eager for R to go to sleep so he can show me the birthday presents he picked up for her today, and which he's been hiding in the car.
The view of Cape Palliser from Island Bay: contrast between cape's distant mauves and sands and the immediacy of the bright white ferry on the deep turquoise harbour.
Moss green and coppery gold seaweeds mingle and blur as the sea gushes in and out of the rocks.
Maggie's happy cry of Turtles! when we take her into the marine education centre. But the octopus tentacling up the side of its tank leaves her wide-eyed and speechless.
Reading in bed with Maggie on a lazy Saturday morning.
I return home and walk into the kitchen. Maggie is standing at the bench on a chair, next to Jack: Mummy! I making pancakes!
Picking up a reserve, J.M. Coetzee's Summertime, from our local library. I've been waiting months for it as it's in demand, and had almost forgotten why it piqued my interest in the first place. Then I get hold of it, read the front and back blurbs, leaf through it, and remember.
As she issues the Coetzee, the librarian tells me the book I reserved yesterday is waiting for me in the central branch.
I spend a happy half hour in the bead shop in Cuba Street, restringing some shiny scarlet beads and interspersing them with black. I'm please with the result: two red, two black all the way around is simple and striking.
Jack gets Asterix in Belgium (1970) out of the library; he comes in excitedly to show me a caricature it contains of Eddie Merckx, Belgium's most famous cyclist, who would still have been competing when it was published.
Looking forward to next week, which will be busy in many good ways.
An afternoon spent on research. It's been a while.
A workmate sets out Lindt dark chocolate with orange bits in it. It proves the theory that with really good chocolate, one piece is plenty.
The din of torrents through the gutters as I walk up from the station to collect Becca. You have to have a sort of grudging admiration for a storm like that.
To my relief, Jack picks us up at afterschool care. I clamber, drenched, into the car and he hands me a punnet of Bluff oysters and a flagon of ale. Poverty food he says, grinning. My hero.
Another rose shows us its colours for the first time, pale yellow centre blushing outwards into crimson, like a botanical Tequila Sunrise.
What I thought was a dark purple rhodo turns out to be a frothy mauve-pink speckled azalea.
Becca's mermaid costume for her school's Sea Day: blue beaded sparkly headdress brought back from Egypt several years ago by Aunty C; royal blue shimmery Middle Eastern dancing top from my pre-pregnancy days; J's sky blue fish scale sarong. Not a bad effort for a 10-minute rummage in the dress-ups box. Mind you, one kid showed up wearing a huge papier mâché Nemo outfit – actually, it was more like it was wearing him...
To my surprise and relief, Maggie sleeps, so I potter, and drink coffee on the deck, enjoying the late summer and the cicadas, and make silly alternatives to the Wellywood sign.
