Delicious scents (66/100)

Tonight I'm thankful for my nose and yummy smells I got on the way home. Just around the corner from work I got a strong whiff of wood fire. It is a cozy, evocative, wintery fragrance. Walking home, because of a strong wind, the air was nice and fresh. Finally, as soon as I entered my house I smelled the chilli bubbling on the stove – another homey scent of comfort on a cold night.

Bohemian like you (65/100)

This afternoon I went to a poetry reading in a funky, alternative suburb. A member of my writing group was the featured poet. I may have been to a poetry reading once in uni, but I don't remember any specifics. There were a few stereotypical characters at this one: an older man wearing round blue spectacles, over which he layered his reading glasses (atypically he sported a suit tailored with a hole to reveal the tattoo on his back); a woman who read in a sleep-inducing monotone and several people too terrified to get up on stage. Overall, though, it was surprisingly unterrible. As another friend who went commented to our featured friend, 'I'm glad you didn't suck!' Today's excursion served to prove that stereotypes do exist in real life even if they are poor form in fiction, and to add some novelty and culture to an otherwise nondescript weekend.

No longer a forgotten minority (64/100)

Comment if you want the recipe.

Today I'm revelling in gluten free products. I don't mean the items that say gluten free even though there's no logical reason why they would have gluten – like fruit juice or popcorn. I'm excited about gluten free versions of food I love but have been without for the past eight years. This morning I made breakfast pizza on a gluten free pizza base. At the grocery store this afternoon I found pain au chocolat, crumpets, and cheese and bean burritos. It's not a daily struggle to live without crumpets or chocolatey croissants, but it will improve my mornings for a while as I eat my way through my newly stocked freezer.

Contrarian (63/100)

I like the word 'contrarian'. I like that it sounds old-fashioned and its hard sound fits its meaning. I like that it's a word not many people use nowadays. Also, I like its definition and am pleased when I get to do something that proves I am one. For example, tonight I finished reading a book that a friend had leant to me. It was good enough – moving in places, humourous or ironic at times, made me think about the state of the world and other cultures – but it wasn't brilliant. It didn't have a particularly astonishing ending. Therefore, when I read the last part of the blurb on the back, which said something like, 'once you finish this, do not tell others what it is about,' I felt my hackles rise. I stared at the book for a moment, then thought, 'you can't tell me what to do; I will tell others if I want to.'

This got me thinking about another form of impersonal command: chain letters, and more recently chain emails and posts. 'You must send this to five people before the end of the week or...' I admit in my superstitious years while at school, I would sometimes pass the letters on (in the days before email and Facebook). Now, however, I relish the idea of stopping the chain, not falling for the silliness, and not letting an inanimate object tell me what to do. So I say, embrace your contrarian nature once in a while.

Free stuff! (62/100)

Today I went to the chemist near work to get more migraine medication. After I had paid and was about to go, the pharmacist said, 'I have a gift for you.' I thought it would be a $5 coupon or a sample of something I won't use. In fact, she gave me a medium-sized paper bag filled with goodies, saying, 'It's VIP day.' When I got home, I went through the contents: 7 mini bottles and tubes of moisturiser, 5 little containers of cleansers, a small bottle of roll-on perfume and some random stuff like vitamin water mix and an eye-wash kit. It will take me ages to work through all these lovely little bottles of unguents, especially since we've just been away so I likely won't be needing travel-sized items anytime soon.

(61/100) - Posted on The Migraine Game blog as well as Twitter.

Pikelets and personal leave (60/100)

Click here for the recipe.

Today I'm giving thanks for finally mastering a childhood lunch favourite – pikelets. We had them for lunch because my husband and I took today off. This has been the best way to ease back into non-holiday life. Next time we go away we'll make sure to book the first day back off from work. This time it happened partly because I mistook which day we were arriving home on. This happy mistake has been a wonderful way to get caught up on laundry and shopping before getting fully into the stressful swing of regular life.

Sweating out the bacon (59/100)

Today it's beautiful and sunny so we were fairly active. That meant being sweaty because it's hot and humid. First, we rode about 2.5km to RainbowWaterfall on clunky bikes hired from the resort. Then, after a swim and lunch, we had several table tennis matches. My husband and I were tied until it got too hot to keep score. This exercise was a tiny way toward working off the bacon from breakfast every day this week. It's going to be a shock when we get home and have to make our own bowl of muesli for breakfast, then bundle up to walk five minutes to the tram for work.

Post-holiday homecoming is bittersweet (61/100)

After we get home from our holiday there are several things I'm going to miss and a few things I'm not going.

I could probably think of more, but at the time of writing it's a hot holiday afternoon. I'm so thankful for this time away and seeing a place's culture and wildlife.

60/100 – I couldn't post because of lack of wifi.
We rode 2.5km from our hotel to Rainbow Waterfall, which was beautiful but so hot. Then in the afternoon we saw more adorable animals. Hanging in a dark corner near our room was a tiny, wide-eyed bat. We didn't get a picture because we didn't want to disturb it with the flash. Minutes later while we were swimming, the resort's baby elephant had a roll in the sand. It was cute and ungainly, but we didn't get any pictures. It looked a lot like this, though.

The anarchy of adults in the rainy season (58/100)

It was interesting to note how different people here at the resort responded to being rained in all day yesterday. Other days when it's been rainy there have been breaks of sun. Yesterday, though, it rained consistently all day with intermittent heavy torrents. At about four o'clock some people started shouting and whooping across the resort; others replied with cries and whistles. For a while it sounded like people were running through the hallways. It was like all these adults suddenly became small children or rambunctious puppies.

My husband and I, similar to the other non-shouting guests, spent the day reading or watching reruns of TV shows on the laptop. We ordered room service sushi and crab bisque for dinner with a bottle of prosecco. I wonder what anarchy will follow tomorrow if it remains rainy.

Adventurous spirit, sensible brain (57/100)

Yesterday was a day of increasing adventure. It started with kayaking down the beach from our hotel. I kept an eye out for sharks but didn't see any. Then we spent some time on the beach watching the various semi-wild creatures.

Later, we were going to ride scooters ten minutes south to get a market town, but my sensible brain dissuaded me with many logical arguments: I've never ridden a scooter; the gas and brake on the same handle seems like a confused disaster waiting to happen; there's a lot of traffic on the road there including some large, fast trucks; it would likely rain, reducing visibility and becoming slippery; and so it went. I was torn between an adventurous spirit and a prudent brain. Instead we took a shuttle into a nearby town, then got a truck-bed turned taxi to the open-air market. Although we didn't buy any goods, we got to hold a baby lemur.

After dinner in a local restaurant, we bought some treats at a grocery store and went back to the hotel for dessert. It was a day of simple pleasures and manageable adventure.

Temple trek (56/100)

Yesterday, despite the monsoon-style rain, we got a ride to a nearby town to see its temples. They were colourful and elaborately carved. Looking at the flame-like ornaments on the roofline, I got the sense of the joyful celebration of worship as well as the power to connect to eternal ideas. I don't know if this was what the builders were going for since I know very little about Buddhist worship. After looking at the temples and deciding that we were wet enough, we had a soft drink in a little shop and tried to ask the owner if we could call a taxi. He offered to rent us his scooter, but he didn't understand 'call/phone' or 'taxi/car' in the way we meant them. Eventually we found a young guy working at the port office who leant us his phone. While waiting for the car to come from our hotel, we stopped at another tiny, family-run restaurant and had tasty, hot tea and coffee. We got back to our hotel sopping wet, but warmed by the kindness of strangers.

I couldn't stop grinning. (55/100)

Yesterday we took an excursion out of our resort to an elephant camp. I had been worried about the treatment of the animals and whether we might be supporting an inhumane business. When we got there, the elephants were tied to poles with rope or loose chains. I was relieved to see that where the chain circled their ankle there was no blood or sores.

The guides brought the elephants up to the mounting platform mostly with calls and the odd tap of a bamboo rod. Then we swayingly rode through a disused tin mine and a working rubber plantation to a large lake. There the elephants were unsaddled and brought into the water. We got to swim with them for quite a while, then I rode ours bare-back over to the mounting platform so it could be re-saddled for the meander back to the shop and parking lot. Riding an elephant is more scary than riding a horse because it's significantly higher, but less scary because it wanders rather than gallops. Overall it was one of the best experiences of my life and I would jump at the chance to do it again.

Vacation values (54/100)

On a normal Sunday my plans would include cleaning the bathroom and floors, doing some writing, washing the sheets and relaxing so I'm ready for the new week. This Sunday, because we are on holidays, my plans are somewhat different. First, sleep in after our late arrival; second, don't get too much sun because we're still pale from Winter; third, get a Thai massage unlike any I've had before; finally, decide between orange crème brûlée and chocolate soufflé for dessert, then flag the other one for later in the week. Needless to say, we've had a wonderful start to our holiday and I'm so grateful that we could afford to come.

Everything should come with caramel (53/100)

My husband and I went out for brunch this morning and not only was I able to get gluten free French toast, but it came with strawberries and a flood of rich, gooey caramel. It was so sweet and indulgent. I decided that almost any food or experience would be better with caramel: fruit, bacon, oatmeal, ice cream, sweet potatoes, sex, massages, the movies and even a visit to the doctor. Admittedly some things wouldn't: lasagna, fish or childbirth. Nevertheless, it was the perfect way to celebrate the weekend and start a holiday with my husband.

Sun, glorious sun! (52/100)

This morning I rode to work for the first time all week. There were some dark clouds around as I left the house, then, when I was halfway through the park I use to bypass traffic, the sun came out. It took the chill out of the air and made everything seem to sparkle. I love how early morning sunlight after a week of rain and wind can elevate my mood.

Recognition = promotion (50/100)

I got the best compliment at work today: a raise and promotion. As is often the case, I was already doing many of the tasks associated with my new level and it doesn't come with any change in job title. In my last school the main form of recognition for us teachers was a PowerPoint slideshow at the end of each term showing pictures of events and activities from around the school, all set to cheesy '90s music. Occasionally we would get an email thanking us for a particular job well done, but that felt impersonal and false given that we had had little choice whether to take on the job or not. At my current job (I can't really call it 'new' anymore since it's been more than a year), students and teachers regularly thank me and my librarian office-mate for our assistance beyond the mere job description. Moreover, there are rumours and signs around the school that it is run on a tight budget. This makes it feel like I've earned my slight gain in salary even more: it wasn't an automatic incremental increase; other, less competent, staff members have not been awarded what I have; and it makes me even happier to go to work and help as many students as I can.

Blogs and buddies (49/100)

I'm grateful for two things I read tonight. One was a blog on Huffington Post that perfectly enunciates  something I've long struggled with as a teacher, but never really knew how to explain. Peter Greene writes about teachers' feelings of not enough: resources, support, time, of yourself to give. I think that was a part of why I left full-time classroom teaching; I got dispirited with all that I wanted to do but couldn't. The second thing was an email from a friend who used to live here and now may be moving back for a job opportunity. Therefore, again through the magic of the internet, my night has been improved.

Earning fried ice cream (48/100)

Tonight I'm grateful for not succumbing to the threatened migraine of this morning. This meant that I walked to work in the beautiful sun, then played an hour and a half of tennis with teacher friends who are on holidays. Finally we went out for Vietnamese food, topped off with a ball of delicious fried ice cream. A very good day all round!

Such a social Sunday (47/100)

I've been more social today than most weeks in the last six months. We hosted brunch with two other couples. Then I went to a meet-up group for writers, where I talked a little about writing and a lot about how difficult marriage and divorce is. I came away feeling more heard and empathised with after talking to a relative stranger about the intimacies of adult relationships and hurdles than I've felt in a long time. Finally, this evening I had dinner with my book club. Since we only get together once a month or so and each have very different lives with different careers and backgrounds, we always have a lively catch up. Unusually, this time we were fairly agreed in our positive response to the book, Persepolis. Now I'm going to fall into bed satiated on good company, empathetic new friends and delicious food.

Pink bears, Botticelli and back ally food (46/100)

Today I'm grateful for Saturday morning sleep-ins. Usually we don't do much on a Friday night because we're tired and lazy from work. Last night, though, we met another couple at an art exhibition, had some drinks and then went for dinner after looking at the works and comparing our favourites. It was a fun, Wintery night out with a mix of classic and contemporary artworks, which ending by being taken to a new restaurant on a little lane that we wouldn't have stumbled across on our own. The eggplant chips there were excellent! This morning I stayed warm and dozing in bed much later than I usually do. Overall a promising start to the weekend.

by Paola Pivi

(41/100) – Migraine Day – no writing

(42/100) – another migraine day, posted on The Migraine Game

(43/100) – Twitter – the twitter-verse ate my tweet and I can't remember it well enough now.

(45/100) – I had too much fun out and forgot to post.