Me!!

I found out yesterday that Boob in a Box has been chosen to be the recipient of a Liebster Award.

I’d never heard of a Liebster Award until now, but a bit of Googling tells me that it’s like a Logie Award for Most Popular New Talent, except that it’s for people with little-known blogs and is awarded by another blogger rather than the readers of TV Week. I am also unlikely to get a contract with Home and Away as a result of receiving the award, which is probably a good thing, given that the sight of me in a bikini in Summer Bay would probably give Alf a flamin’ heart attack.

I was awarded the Liebster by another blogger called Felicity, but her blog tagline Bringing joy to others through the sweetness of a cupcake speaks to my heart and my soul, and connects with me deep down where I live. Thank you Felicity for choosing me for this Award, and for spreading the joy of cakeage throughout the world.

Over the coming week I’m going to pass on the love by nominating other bloggers for a Liebster, so stay tuned. In the meantime, as part of the Liebster Award, I have to answer a set of questions Felicity has posed for me. I’m sure this is to make me feel even more like a celebrity – stone the crows Alf, it’s only a matter of time!

What is your favourite quote?

My favourite quote is from the American poet Emily Dickinson, who wrote that ‘Forever is composed of nows’. I actually wrote a whole blog post about this quote in June last year.

Who would you have lunch with (dead or alive) and why?

My beautiful boys and a collection of my wonderful friends – because they’re my boys and my friends and they’re wonderful.

What is your favourite dessert?

I never met a sweet that I didn’t like, so my favourite dessert is whichever one I ate last.  At the moment that would be one called ‘The Bombe’ which I had at Stokehouse in Brisbane. It’s frozen white chocolate parfait, strawberry sorbet, toasted meringue –  I’ve stolen this photo of it from their website, but hopefully this plug on my hugely successful blog will be enough to prevent them from suing me for breach of copyright.

What is something you want to achieve in the next 12 months?

Continued remission. Easy peasy.

What is one piece of advice you would give new bloggers that you wish someone had told you at the start?

Seriously, who wants advice from me – I haven’t got a bloody clue! Sometimes I spend days crafting a post, only for it to get pretty much no response. Then I wrote, literally in ten minutes, a post about my son and his best friend, and it went viral, notching up more than 250,000 Facebook shares over a couple of days. Maybe my advice should be – expect it when you least expect it.

Summer or winter?

In summer I’d say winter, and in winter I’d say summer. Spring really is the queen of seasons.

Why did you start blogging?

For years I’ve followed a blog called Woogsworld. Mrs Woog put a call out to her readers for guest posts, I submitted one about how having cancer can be funny, she loved it and published it, and told me I should start my own blog. So I did. I am nothing if not suggestible.

What is your favourite social media platform and why?

I’d say Facebook, mainly because it’s the only one I actually use. Actually, I am on Twitter too, but that seems to be dying a slow death. So definitely Facebook, because I actually have zero interest in, or motivation to find out about, anything else like Instagram or Pinterest.

What is the hardest thing/biggest obstacle you have achieved in life?

I used to find these type of questions difficult to answer, until I got cancer. Then cancer became the answer.

The hardest thing I’ve ever done was sit quiet and still and listen to an oncologist tell me that I had a 50/50 chance of still being alive in five years time (October 2017 for those playing along at home). I didn’t scream or faint or wail, I sat in my chair and nodded. I still have no idea how I did that, or how I go about my life, day in, day out, happy and fulfilled, with that statistic still sitting like a great big steaming pile of shit in the middle of everything.

What is your favourite book and why?

My Brilliant Career, which was written by Miles Franklin in 1909. I first read it in high school and was just blown away by the story of a bright, feisty young woman born into a life of sameness and drudgery. What particularly took me about this book was that there was no happy ending – the main character Sybylla (such a fabulous name), both in spite of and because of her own choices – seems destined to never live the life she wants. I’ve re-read this book many times over the years, and each time I’m taken aback by the harshness of her reality, interspersed with her deep understanding of human relationships.

Our greatest heart-treasure is a knowledge that there is in creation an individual to whom our existence is necessary – some one who is part of our life as we are part of theirs, some one in whose life we feel assured our death would leave a gap for a day or two. Miles Franklin, My Brilliant Career

If you weren’t blogging, what would you be doing?

Paying for a therapist.