Zen and the Art of Personal Maintenance

Dear hearts,

Further to that busy weekend, I would like to share with you my thoughts on personal maintenance.

After a hard week selling pens, one of the things I look forward to almost as much as sport and that first gin and tonic, is my weekly manicure. Once a month I do the lot and have a mani/pedi. I realise this sounds like I'm spending time with a pscychotic child fancier (and we must blame the Americans for the abbreviation, as well as most acts of grammatical sabotage), but it is, as a friend suggested, the equivalent of having a small village attend to one. And I must say, I enjoy it.

My hands are kept busy, my feet are being attended to and I am able to comtemplate...Yes, this is the zen part of the experience. I cannot text, speak ( the girls respect my zen like countenance and think I am either in a coma or just plain sleeping) or gesticulate, even though I would really, really love someone to go and buy me a decent coffee. And they would, I know because they love Miss Mich, but there is no decent coffee to be had on the central northern beaches...sigh..

So I am forced to think. It is this down time that can lead to posssible subjects of discourse right here, dear hearts. Although more likely it is more about what to wear if one is going out, what those bright young dreadful daughters might be up to as we mani/pedi or how we are going to survive this disturbing GFC.

As my feet bubble away in the bright blue whirlpool below me and my hands are massaged, I come to the conclusion that I am doing exactly as K Rudd would want. I am stimulating the economy. I am taking time out to think about the best way I can keep the cash moving. I am nurturing myself and the my gorgeous girls who laugh at my Australianness and tell me about Vietnam and Laos. We laugh about babies, holidays, the bright young things at the cottage and our family experiences.

I'm not very fluent in Viet and they not so in English, but in a very zen way we speak exactly the same language - laughter and friendship.

Enjoy Monday.

Love Mich