I completely forgot to do Music Monday and Teaser Tuesday this week, so sorry about that. Instead I bring you cool things you might like to take a look at.

• Ten Rules for Being Human by Cherie Carter-Scott
• Beauty Tips by the lovely Amelia
• Politics Explained (humorous)
• Pictures of celebrities as Disney legends by Annie Leibovitz

I’ve had a very uneventful weekend, which is just the way I wanted it! Yesterday I got to spend about one and a half hours playing with my 7-month-old niece while her big brother and mama did some gardening. She’s the most delightful creature! I get so much joy from making her laugh and seeing her do all these new things she’s starting to do. She’s a very happy baby and spends most of her time smiling and giggling, and, let me tell you, it’s some of the best stuff for fixing a dull mood!

I’ve been experiencing a lot of anxiety and depression recently that has been very disruptive to my life, so much so that I took myself off to the doctor to figure out a plan for getting better, which I am now very slowly-but-surely doing. Anyway, my real point is that, during times when I have these struggles, I tend to isolate myself from friends and gravitate more towards family as they are my net, my extra-support system and so on. My niece and nephews give me a lot of joy and that’s what I need most right now; their giggles and fun. It’s a true pleasure to have such magical bundles of light in my life and I feel very lucky.

So, yes, uneventful but nice weekend. Last night there was nothing on TV and I didn’t feel like watching any of my own DVDs, however I remembered my aunt had left a few of hers at our place, so I ended up watching The Sound of Music. It’s quite long and I could never sit through it when I was little so it was actually the first time I’ve ever seen the whole thing from start to finish and, I have to say, I really enjoyed! Julie Andrews is a truly amazing woman with so much talent—she’s a real joy to watch.

I went grocery shopping with my mum over at Glen Innes because we were meeting one of my my sister’s and her kids at Spotlight, which is just down the road. Glen Innes is a shit-hole and one of the more unsavoury areas of Auckland, though it’s situated next to some of the most expensive areas, ironically. So, while we were there we got to see a woman whack the child in her care on the thigh with a rolled up newspaper. The kid would have only been about 2 or 3 and it had walked away from the woman and was sitting on the side of this building that had a ledge along the bottom, merrily waving its legs and singing a song. Along comes this woman and BAM on the leg, yanks the kid up and marches it away. It was a hard hit and the kid started crying obviously. Never do I feel more despair for humanity than when I’m witness to something so repulsive as child abuse. You know perfectly well that what you see someone do to a child in public is only the very tip of the abuse iceberg it no doubt experiences on a daily basis, in many forms, in private.

I wish that woman had gotten into car so I could have taken note of the license plate, though who the hell knows if any car she would have would be registered or whatever. But still, it would have been better than not being able to do ANYTHING. I could have yelled out, but what would that do? It’s not a safe area and I would not want to put myself in danger, nor make things worse for that child as the woman probably would have blamed it for my yelling at her.

It’s such a huge problem and one that I can’t see an end to because, no matter what age we live in, stupid people will keep having children and those children have almost no chance of being anything other than what their parents/carers are like.

I’m going to, well maybe, start posting a playlist every week or so of what I’ve been listening to. Just because, really.

March 26 – April 2 2009

So, how are you?