New Year's Eve 2007
We spent New Year's Eve happily in the air-conditioned comfort of Astrid's house, only to come home after midnight to find it was actually hotter inside our place than the oppressive 35+ degrees out. The 4 of us all slept in our bedroom that night with the portable air-conditioner roaring noisily away, but the house was still so vile the next morning I stupidly started scouring internet real estate sites to try and find us somewhere nicer to live. Only to realise of course that we could not afford anything else. Normally I don't mind our lack of money but in the searing heat I couldn't find my happy space. Clearly it had melted.
New Year's Eve 2006
When all is said and done I would always value having a life partner who treats me nicely over one that spoils me with material goods, and this held true when, after howling and wailing at Fixit that I needed to get out to swim or to the movies just anywhere but this hellhole & I didn't want to have to do all the organising for once & I needed a break because I'd had to do the single parent thing since our Canberra trip because he'd been off having fun during the first heatwave & how the thought of signing a year's lease to live here was unthinkable when the summer was this bad so early in but that there was nowhere else for us to go & so on, he stroked my hair, he packed us all off to the pool and back, he minded the kids while I went to the movies on my own, he heated my dinner when I got home, he brought me a glass of wine and sat with me while we watched an episode of Jeeves and Wooster. And I felt much better.
Which made it, I suppose, on balance, a happy New Year's Day. So maybe I won't spend 2008 in a waterlogged state. Fingers crossed.
