Well, here we all are then, staring at the ghost of Christmas past!! I still have mince pies in the freezer (made too early, buried too deep and forgotten), Christmas cake going strong, a ham in the freezer (because Aunty Sue, who hosted Christmas so wonderfully again with Uncle Charlie, already had one), three trees up and several appointments with boxes of chocolates still to keep.  I laugh as I open the pantry and recall the times I have told my girls "that chocolate has my name on it" because they have taken it literally and the chocolate they received this Christmas is emblazoned with their names in permanent maker!!
Not that THAT would stop me when the cooking chocolate had gone.
Mercifully I have stopped taking the steroids which forced me to eat everything in sight (and even some stuff that wasn't).
I'm feeling very pooped, probably a delayed reaction to the radiotherapy but possibly a response to all this heat!, and quite headachey.  See the oncologist in a week so will find out if there are more plans afoot for treatment, or if we just wait and see.  Meanwhile, my sister Marnie has been able to source me some lingzhi mushroom capsules - an ancient and highly respected Chinese medicine - which have a wicked, wicked aftertaste but I'm thrilled to be able to take.  They might possibly inhibit tumour growth or prevent tumours forming.  Watch this space, I guess.
John's been planning a horse trek with the girls to Lake Taylor/Loch Katrine area, but the horse transport is proving tricky.  Just a light trek, about one hour's ride in to a hut, an hour's ride the following day to the natural hot springs, and back out.  Honey, "my" horse on loan from Laurie O'Carroll will be ridden by Fern or Claire, and I will be in the truck with the supplies.
Looking forward, the following week, to a gift from Marnie and Genevieve of a girls' day out in town, featuring a pizza lunch, a trip around the Arts Centre and some jewellery-making at Beads Unlimited for the girls, a beauty treatment for me and an ice-cream for the girls at the mall, all topped off with a couple of games of 10-pin bowling!  Great fun!  At our current rate of outings, that's a year's worth of entertainment in a day!
My kitchen is my bolt-hole, and am enjoying a fabulous frypan, to which nothing will stick, from Mum and the Annabel Langbein cookbook from Mary. Angela Clifford and her sweet son Flynn today gave us some organic strawbs and a couple of fig trees, while Janine Youle from next door has given us a jar of beetroot relish she made with the bounty from their garden.  We live well!!!
My very best wishes to all for 2011.

And from James Blunt once again (it's one of the few CDs I have with me right now), plus it reminds me of the lovely house we rented at Amberley Beach, where I once woke to see the sunrise, plus Hector's dolphins frolicking in the waves. 

"Beautiful dawn,
lights up the shore for me
there is nothing else in the world
I'd rather wake up and see."

High, by James Blunt