Got the heater going in here. Love old Queenslanders but they are not built for cold weather. Too many gaps, no insulation and, in this house, no curtains. Three degrees this morning. Bitter. Fingers just starting to thaw.

Couldn't sleep last night. Fell into bed exhausted at 8:30. Nights of insominia outnumber good nights especially since quitting smokes. Woke up at 1am. Too cold to get up and read a book so tossed and turned until 4, the last time I looked at the clock before 6. Then, when the most delicious sleep is possible, it is time to get up and feed everyone. I can hear Mallory playing with his bell in the next room. Tachimedes begins to do his vocal warm up exercises. Dimitri shuffles from one end of the verandah to the other and the outside galahs have quiet conversations with the wild ones. So I can't lay there and pretend I don't know everyone is hungry and waiting for breakfast, that the lorikeets will appreciate the warm nectar mix on a cold morning. That the wild galahs, perched on the overhead wires, don't really begin their day until they've had their morning wake up muffin at Glen Ellen.

One excellent result of the insomnia was the flash of a drawing I could try. Spent much of yesterday in abortive attempts to come up with an idea for the next work. Sketches on typing paper which came to nothing and met their fate in the compost bin. Funny how the idea came. I was in that hypnagogic state between sleeping and waking (have you ever tried to follow your thought processes back when in that realm? For me, impossible, as though an invisible curtain is drawn between the logical mind of sun and the fog-wreathed world of imagination, where I suspect the mind roams truly free, unfettered by physical rules and laws and regulations). Anyway, this image came to mind fully formed with such a jolt it snapped me out of that dreamy state. A good thing too for I didn't want to doze off and forget it or to remember later that I thought of *something* and not be able to remember what it was I conjured up.

Almost a week without a cigarette. No more morning coughing fits. No stink of cigarettes on me or in me, not in the house, in the furnishings, clothes or cats (yes, they stunk too - not to mention the years of second hand smoke - poor things, animal cruelty really). Trying very hard not to overeat. Not a problem during the day, have even reduced portion size, but at night, much more difficult. Eating fruit and munching pistachios, almonds and peanuts in shell.

Beating myself up for doing this, not doing that, mind like a hamster wheel spinning off dirty streamers of negativity. Walking the dogs yesterday I said to myself just Stop It! Stop It! Big sigh of relief. God, we're hard on ourselves. I'm hard on myself. I know I'm not perfect, far from it. I don't use my time well. I'm lazy and selfish and vain and all thos other labels I slap so freely onto my wrinkled forehead but I'm also quite okay. The animals are looked after and loved, my husband is looked after and loved, the house ditto, I turn out quite alot of art work, I still have an open mind and want to learn how to be with Balthazar in a way which is easy and comfortable for both of us. I give thanks daily for the good things in my life. I'm not sure I deserve them but I do appreciate them. I try and not think bad thoughts about people or things. I try and be mindful. I try and watch my tongue so that I don't score cheap shots by being 'right'. I generally try and be a better person than I was the day before.

I wouldn't let anyone else speak to me as I speak to myself. That book I never read, 'How to be Your Own Best Friend' is aptly titled. We aren't very good at it.

Haven't written about Dimitry in a very long time. Something has changed in that little feathered head. He (or I suspect She) is still timid and wary and easily frightened but she is also bolder, calmer and braver than before. I've put a cocky cage on the floor and feed her seed inside it. It was there for a month or so than I took it out to keep Marvin in while Terry lived in Marvin's aviary. When I put it back Dimitri was less cautious about me being nearby. Previously she'd leave the cage when I was 4 or 5 feet away. Now I am close enough to close the door if I wish. I leave when she goes inside to eat. If I move and she comes out I tell her to go back in and then leave when she does so. Want to gradually accustom her to having the door closed and then opened again while she's inside but if need be I can just close the door and move her - which is the whole idea. I want to get her off the verandah and into an aviary.

So she was a bit more confident when the cocky cage was returned to the verandah. The confidence also shows in the way she takes food from my fingers. She used to snatch and run even if the running was only two or three feet away. Now she takes the treat gently and slowly. I sit on the floor and feed her millet. After the first couple of times she hardly moves away at all but stands just in front while she eats. Get the feeling that one day she'll lower her head for a scratch. That would be an achievement, a break out the champagne moment.

I reread this post and think it's not written well enough for anyone else to read. I mean look at that first sentence or two. How boring. Why would anyone continue reading. Maybe I should delete them and go straight to what meat there is but then I realize, no this post is for me. When I wrote in journals I didn't write for an audience, I wrote for me. I wrote because I had to and it didn't matter whether it was worthy of some invisible reader. The reader was me. Writing a journal on a blog changes things, like a physicist changes the results of his experiments by observing them. Or, perhaps, reality tv shows have nothing to do with reality because the participants are always aware at some level they are being filmed. So, in an endeavour to be true to myself I'll leave the boring bits.