Riding a pig, violin lessons, the scale

1. Riding a virtual pig on a Kinect Carnival game (new for Christmas) and trying to steer the recalcitrant thing around hay bales and mud puddles.

2. My seven-year-old daughter's continuing enthusiasm for her violin -- a whole two weeks after receiving it. She keeps bugging me for practice sessions. I thought she would be sick of it by now, as it seemed only a passing whim when we bought it.

3. Seeing the scale lower than it was yesterday.

Ready for Christmas, baby bird, cheezles

1. Presents are wrapped. Gingerbread reindeer are iced. Ready for Christmas.

2. While walking after dinner, I came across a baby bird hopping across the grass. All the other birds grew up months ago -- a late hatching? Its parents swooped around me; not attacking, just trying to distract me. One perched nearby and called loudly. I thought she was speaking to me, but then I realised the baby had frozen and was sitting motionless. I think mummy was telling it to be very quiet and still. I walked on.

3. Cheezles with cream cheese down the middle.

Clean hair, cool and cloudy, nest

1. One of the nicest tactile sensations in the world: long clean hair, just washed, almost dry but slightly damp giving it extra weight and softness.

2. Walking on a cool (but not cold) cloudy morning.

3. Finding a nest in a bush in my neighbour's front yard. It is just above eye-level, and I can see two little heads. One is cheeping constantly (which is how I found them), the other looks contented -- just fed, perhaps.

Rest, lemon, book

1. I am so into the exercise groove that it feels weird today to have a day off. But my tired body is thanking me.

2. Cold water with a slice of real lemon instead of sugary cordial.

3. Another book in the mail -- number 3 of a series I am enjoying.

Sun, sweat, cupcake

1. Lying on a picnic blanket on long grass with the warm end-of-winter sun on the back of my neck. The bells are chiming above me from the Carillon recital, my husband lies next to me with his jumper shading his eyes -- he doesn't need it to keep him warm -- and the kids are throwing pebbles into the lake.

2. I look at the clock, panting and dripping sweat, and am horrified to find that I am only half way through my group exercise class. But I make it through the second half.

3. A lemon cupcake.

Birds, sunshine, skating

1. A walk in the beautiful late-winter sunshine, beside a lake.

2. Black swans, ducks, marsh hens, a pretty grey wading bird I didn't recognise, red lorakeets, bright green parrots with slightly duller mates, magpies, a glossy crow, what I call a peewit, and a cheeky willy wag-tail.

3. A man zoomed past on in-line skates. He wasn't moving his legs, he was using ski poles to push himself along at quite a pace. Keeping fit for skiing, perhaps?

Story, music, exercise

1. In The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss, Kvothe tells a story around a campfire. Condensed: A boy is born with a gold screw in his belly button. No one knows what it is for -- not his parents or grandparents or the wise folk of the town or anyone he meets in his travels. Eventually he meets with the most powerful king in the world and asks him about the gold screw in his belly button. The king opens a gold box on a gold platter and behold, there is a gold screwdriver. He takes it out and turns the gold screw in the boy's belly button. Once, twice, three times. And the boy's ass falls off.

2. Mopping the floor while my old vinyl Alison Durban record plays "Thank God I'm a Country Girl." Well I got me a fine life, I got my old fiddle; when the sun's coming up I've got cakes on the griddle. Life ain't nothing but a funny riddle ... Thank God I'm a country girl!

3. I worked-out really hard at the gym both days of the weekend and could barely stand afterwards, I am very grateful for the day off exercise today.