Silly sent me a message this afternoon that said, “I miss dollygirl. Bring her back” so I felt loved and wanted and because I love any tiny modicum of attention, I thought I should maybe try to revive this sad little pink page in case people do miss me (I like to think positively).

So. What’s happened between then and now:

Jamie O’Neill wrote back.

I’ve gained another kilo (Krystal at the Dharma centre pointed this out yesterday. She says it in a very nice way though, like it’s a compliment. Like, “Oh! You look so pretty today. That’s such a nice skirt. Oh… you put on a bit of weight? *giggle*” and because she’s all round and happy and has this huge smile all the time, and because she can recite 5 mala rounds of migtsema without breathing, it’s actually okay for her to say that. But hell, I do need to lose some weight. None of my trousers fit anymore).

Two books I edited have come out. Hurray! Then one day, as I flicked through it, I spotted an enormous spelling mistake on one of the chapter headings, freaked out silently in my head, freaked out to the next person I saw, and vowed never to look at it again. I could just get better proofreaders to help me.

I got elected onto a committee to build a Vajrayogini chapel. When I told A that, he said, “What the hell do you know about building a chapel?!” which is funny, really, because I really don’t know very much at all.

Not only that, but I’ve been elected in as vice-chair and I have about as much common sense as a fly so I don’t seem to be able to come up with any good ideas and even when I do, I can’t come up with any logical processes to execute anything properly. I told Wendy, who’s on the committee, who’s an accountant, that I think in circles, so she better help me out with her nice accountant-linear-logical-process thinking. Thank god for clever people, truly.

I have signed papers for our gorgeous interior designer to start working on the apartment. (Truly, he is sooooo gorgeous. You don’t think it’s possible for someone to look that gorgeous but he does. And this isn’t just my weird mind and weird taste talking – many other people agree).

I have also written out a ridiculously large cheque out to them to start work. Never has my bank account been so quickly depleted – it better be pretty. The living room is all white and blue and full of white, round shapes from the 60s. Our bedroom is a sort of geometric-zen. And my study will look like a bohemian threw up in it. An ID’s nightmare, surely. Still in an eternal dilemma – pink walls or orange for my study?

I went to France and met His Holiness Gaden Tri Rinpoche, the head of the Gelugpa school of Buddhism. It was an amazing journey that was just so crazily spiritual, it actually made me a little bit scared.

We had tea with HH in his little apartment, had a wonderful interview with him and got forewords to our future books signed and endorsed by him. (So anyone who tells us we’re wrong lah, our lama is wrong lah, we’re practising evil black magic lah, can go fly a nice pretty yellow kite).

I think I should be saying really profound but all that really sticks out right now is me trying to zip my hefty calves into my knee-high boots (a big production, since my calves are so, well, hefty) and Gaden Tri Rinpoche standing in the foyer of his apartment looking at me and laughing as I tried to get them on. We wonder if maybe he rang the Gaden Shartse Monastery abbot after we left and asked, “Are you sure those are the right people that just came to see me?”

I’m taking a creative writing course. We’re supposed to spend the first half hour of being awake writing – it’s an exercise in spontaneity, tapping into something other-worldly of our half-sleep but really, what I write in the morning sounds just the same as what I write the rest of the day. I have failed in this anyway because I never wake up in time.

We also have to write at least 1000 words every day. So by today I should have written a total of 15,000 and I’ve only written about 2000. Pathetic really, that even with the one thing I love most in the world (writing), I can’t myself organised. I asked the course facilitator what he thought of blogs and he said he thinks they’re just too self indulgent to really merit being good writing…. We should be creating new characters, looking for new stories, expanding the stories we know – not just continuously writing about ourselves and our angst. So that just made me feel… well… self indulgent and not really like a serious writer at all.

But then I got Silly’s text which made me feel wanted and ego overtakes effort, so bleah. This blog lives on. Huzzah!