It took me a week to untangle from work, then I lost my glasses. It took me a few hours to figure out how to replace them in rural Queensland (a very fun road trip with my brother Alain, as it turned out) and then, because I was in rural Queensland trying to chillax, whatever the INS calls itself these days raised a question about my green card application.

Since there was exactly nothing I could do about it, I worked hard on being Zen; and the next time I checked my email my friends in the States had sorted everything, which makes me feel very loved.

Even with these transpacific stressors, the holiday is definitely working. I’m sleeping about ten hours a night and taking long naps in the afternoons, and behold, my cough has nearly cleared up. My sister was here for the weekend with her kids, making eleven of us altogether. Kelly and Ross were just delightful with my girls, very patient and playful and charming. It hurt to say goodbye.

Mum and Dad and Alain are still here, all camping on the same site. It’s beyond perfect. Our world is defined by the shops across the road – good cafes and restaurants, a butcher and a baker; the spectacular beach with its shipwreck; the creek that runs down to the beach; the playgrounds and the pool. The feel of everyday life is like Burning Man, oddly enough – walks and fun interspersed with socializing and tea.

I haven’t spent so much happy, unstructured time with my mum and dad and brother and sister since my wedding.

I would like to have an editor like Gordon Lish; only, instead of ruthlessly editing my stories, he would write them, then let me collect the accolades, royalties and hot poet wife. Takers?

Me to Julia, idly: Do you like cats?
Julia, intensely: I. Love. Cats.

What I hate most about running is that I end up warm and energized, able to breathe more easily and calmer about whatever is worrying me. It’s so unfair. The odds are totally stacked in its favour. Exercise cheats.

To celebrate the 75th anniversary of the San Francisco Ballet, storefronts around Union Square have the original, embroidered and jewelled tutus on display. The effect is to make the expensive clothes that are for sale seem drab and dowdy.

Claire: This is my unicorn. These are its legs. And this is its metal claw, for killing.

I have always had this cold. I will always have this cold.

This cold has overflowed my five-year-old’s memory buffer.

Claire: Mama, you always cough and sneeze.

Seth points out that the dances-on-fabric are an established circus art called aerial tissu, or silks.

Lilysea and her partner have two daughters through domestic adoption. Not surprisingly, her perspective on Juno is a lot deeper than mine.

Disney phone: Hi! I’m Ariel! You’re my first human friend!

Julia (delighted): Hi Ariel!

Disney phone: Hi! I’m Ariel! You’re my first human friend!

Julia (disgusted): No! Stop it! (Tosses phone aside, moves on.)

Big-girl-bed girl thunders into the room and climbs with some difficulty onto our bed:

“EHN! EHN! EHN!”

The entire bed bounces up and down like a trampoline.

“Julia JUMP! Julia JUMP! Julia JUMP!”

Parents reluctantly concede that further sleeping-in is unlikely.

And another thing I liked about Juno; it would have been so easy to make the cheerleader character a caricature, like Reese Witherspoon in Election, but they didn’t go there. And ANOTHER thing. Her parents were so right-on in the scene where she told them – so right on that I clutched Jeremy’s hand and hoped to God I would be that cool in that situation.

We got the tree undecorated at the appropriate time. Jonathan, Salome, Robert and Gayatri and the relevant children arrived, exchanged presents and made cookies, I am told; I fled to the comforting steam of Kabuki, where Re-cheng and I compared notes and were pummeled. Sweet.

We converted Jules’s crib to a toddler bed. She’s completely thrilled about her new freedom of movement, and much too excited to go to sleep.

You used to be able to rock her to sleep in your forearm. Now she can take me in a fair fight.