I’m back from the most interesting, fun, and sunny summer break ever. It featured an earthquake that left our building swaying (we were 12 stories up) for over ten minutes, a very near miss on being attacked by a shark (it came at me in murky surf up North three days ago and just swung away from its attack at the last minute when it was only 1m away – suffice to say this was a fright), a huge horde of family and much family related love, plagues of ants and baby hedgehogs, puppies, a new sister to bond with, a bicycle built for two, mechanical failures with a range of consequences that included being mostly out of touch (which was actually nice in an enforced break from everything kinda way), and nearly daily sea swims. Its been a big adventure.

Joel and I have our first art meeting in a couple of hours.

On the plane I was next to a teacher who had never been on a plane as large as a 737 and so was kinda nervous. She started telling me about her passion for children’s literature with the inevitable conversation following. She has urged me to join a programme, which would see me speaking in school classrooms all over NZ about being a writer, called ‘Books in Homes.’ Its designed to encourage kids to read and love books and to follow their dreams also (in terms of the role model programme I’d be joining). I’m going to see if I can do it and I’m really excited about it.

Right now I have a mountain of home sorting to tackle and a million and one just-arrived jobs. Ive achieved watering my orchids properly so far…