Total excitement today. I’ve been desperately lacking with The Dailies [SO SORRY!] and have lined up some major players for a few weeks of scheduling goodness. Yes, my little gift to you.

Today’s daily comes from Pia Bijkerk, who has been ALL over the blogosphere lately. Expect big things from this girly– not only is she a very dedicated humanitarian, but she is the former owner of both an Australian tea house AND boutique. Or what I like to call them— boutEEK! She is now an acclaimed stylist— talk about TALENT.

Welcome, Pia— and thanks for sharing your life with Design for Mankind!
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7:45am. French boy’s alarm alarms us, like it does every week day morning. He turns it off and we both doze for another 15 minutes or so, like we do every week day morning.

8:00am. While he gets ready for his work, I keep dozing. While he makes coffee, I keep dozing.

8:30am. I get woken up gently with soft kisses.

8:45am. Finally I pull myself out of bed. I notice my assault on the chocolate stash from the night before as I pass the evidence on the coffee table. Oops.

Meanwhile French Boy has made me a cup of tea just the way I like it, and we chat for 15 minutes before he heads off to work.

9:00am. I consider starting my day’s work. But instead I call my Mum (pictured with me above in the little picture frame) on skype while I sip my tea. We chat often, these days as I am missing her a lot.

9:30am. I make another tea, and glance over my diary. It’s pretty empty for today, except for one word I’ve scrolled across the pages: WRITE. Today is not a styling day, or a propping day, or a shoot day – it’s a writing day as I am currently working on a book. My publisher is wonderful and because of her I have been enjoying the long and intense process immensely. My deadline is very close, and I have been attempting to lock myself inside, but the sunshine keeps calling my name to come and play. I resist but just catch some sun by the window, and consider starting my day’s work. But instead I read emails, approve comments if I have some on my blog, and think about what I might like to post about for the day. This morning my mind is a very blank canvas.

10:00am. My belly growls at me. I make it some toast. And yes, I spread vegemite all over it.

10:05am. This might be the time to let you in on a little secret about where I live. Or what I live in. Some of my blog readers may have already guessed it … it is made of steel and wood, it has many little funny windows like the one above, and these are my neighbours…

Yes, I live in a houseboat. It is small but fits us just perfectly. I watch the ducklings and coot(lings?) play and fight, and sometimes I give them a little bit of toast while I enjoy mine and we eat together.

11:00am My third cup of tea in two hours and now I am buzzing and ready to get cracking on my work. I work intensely for the next three hours.

2:00pm My belly is growling at me again. “Okay, okay!!” I say, and go and raid the fridge for last night’s left overs. French Boy made a yummo chicken masala last night so I heat that up on the stove. I look at the dishes still needing to be washed from last night. Blaaaaaaa, I wash them up and leave them to dry, and realise, as each time I do, that I actually enjoy doing the dishes and don’t miss having a dish washer at all.

2:30pm I scoff my food down as I keep on working, I am on a roll and don’t want to upset the rhythm by having a break. Oh but let me just check if I have some comments. Yes! Oh yippee, I will just have a quick look at their blogs, see what my blog neighbours are up to today…

3:00pm. Oops, I lingered longer than I intended. Oh, I haven’t written a post for the day. I’ll do that now and THEN I will get back to work. I decide to write about my friend Joe and I playing name games with the boats on the bay back home in Sydney. Sigh.

4:00pm I make another tea and indulge in some bikkies (that’s what us Aussies call cookies). It’s daytime now in America and my publisher emails me to say she is loving what I have been sending. Another internal yippee, and it spurs me on to get cracking again.

4:15pm. Joanne from my agency here in Holland calls to let me know she has put my new images up on their site and I say thanks and tell her I will pop in soon for a cuppa and will bring my latest tear sheets to put in my portfolio. I doodle while we chat. “dag!” we say, and I smile, because my agency rocks.

6:00pm I’m hungry again. And I’ve realised I haven’t showered all day so I jump in quickly, get dressed, and make myself a pre-dinner snack of hummus on toast. I glance at the piano and feel a song coming on, so I sit and bang out a couple of tunes.

8:00pm French Boy has arrived home to find me in semi-darkness, head and hands fused into the keyboard and the screen. I look up at him as he enters the door and he’s all pixelated. I am busting to go to the toilet realising I’ve been putting it off for a while now. Pipelette mode kicks in and I start chatting away about my day, my telephone call with my Mum, what I ate for lunch, my latest epiphanies and the whole while I wonder when I’m going to shut up and ask him how his day was. He listens and smirks, and gives me a kiss. That silences me. And then I ask him how his day went.

We discuss dinner. He is going to make his béchamel sauced endives and I jump in the air announcing ‘miam!!!’. It is after all, one of my favourite French boy dishes.

I get back to work and he cooks for the next hour.

9:00pm. we eat. I talk. He talks. I try to encourage us to speak French but we always end up back to English and I can’t focus. I get back to work and he plays a bit of guitar. I finally pull myself away from my work at 11pm.

Since we live on a houseboat I can play the piano at any time of day or night and this is a serious luxury considering my whole life I’ve spent being restricted to small time slots. So I play French Boy a tune and he claps. We sit together and watch some TV and nibble on chocolate. We laugh at the Dutch ads in between an old re-run of Law & Order. We hope that Dr Wong will appear in this episode and sure enough he does and we both squeal with delight. We don’t know why we like Wong so much, be we do. Him and Ice T all the way.

Midnight. We are half asleep on the couch and pull each other up to drag ourselves to bed. We clean our teeth, hop into bed and while French Boy reads, I am out like a light as I hear little water bubble sounds under the boat and start dreaming about water-coloured roses and flying sea creatures.

The End.