Willow is the alpha cat. She has always commanded respect. She exudes confidence and authority. She joined our family almost 13 years ago except then it was just the two of us. She has lived through a lot of change in her almost 13 years.

Back then we were footloose and fancy-free and she arrived one March, the runt of the litter but like many runts, feisty and determined and full of high spirits. As a kitten she had a penchant for climbing up the arms of visitors innocently sitting in our funky yellow leather chairs, a house-warming gift from my parents, and meander around under their hair and onto their shoulders, settling in the crook of their necks.

And now, as I sit curled up in my sofa corner, Willow lies across the back of the sofa behind my head, purring, occasionally lashing out playfully with one paw when I move my head to glance at the TV, reminding me that she’s top cat.

She has seen off two canaries, tolerated the addition of a baby in year 1, a house move in year 4 closely followed by another baby, a kitten in year 6, another baby in year 9 and a house renovation in year 11.

You’d think that that’s more than enough to put any cat through in one life time. But we’ve always pushed Willow to extremes and so, before Christmas, along came Alice!

When we brought Alice through the front door, Willow shrank back against the stairs and then scurried under the kitchen table, inflating to the size of an overstuffed cushion within seconds. She remained there for quite a time. You could see her brain performing somersaults and the permutations of a manic number-crunching computer as she considered the situation and determined her strategy.

It didn’t require a great deal of spitting and hissing or turning on her tail and hiding. Willow assessed this problem, faced it head on, stood her ground with the confidence that has always been her forte and placed herself both psychologically and physically above our new dog.

And so Alice leaps and bounds into the room and tries to provoke a reaction and Willow glances gracefully in her direction, generally from a position of superiority atop the sofa or willow sill, and with calculated poise, lowers her gaze downwards, disdainfully, and Alice puts her head on her paws and glances shyly upwards with her large puppy eyes.

Not only is Willow top cat but she’s top dog too. She could teach us all a lesson in how to deal with people who mess with us.

I hate that. I sat here watching tv and chatting to my husband. Yes, you see I do have a husband, not a partner not just the father of my children. But I don’t like the word husband very much. I think I associate it with the cultivation and nurturing of crops (that’s husbandry) and I don’t like to think of anyone cultivating or nurturing me. I can look after myself, thanks very much. I’m not a weak sapling that needs propping up or watering and I certainly don’t need a man to do it.

Anyway, I had a thought. We were discussing various things and I said “I could write about that” and rushed into the kitchen, grabbed my laptop, settled myself in my favourite corner of the sofa and couldn’t for the life of me recall what I had intended writing about. We’ve gone through the gamut of subjects we were discussing but it evades both of us.

So, I’m a wee bit scuppered.

Billy Piper was on ‘Tonight with Jonathan Ross’ tonight. I remember her as the young girl who married Chris Evans, 16 years her senior, back in 2001. She was fresh and effervesent and fun-loving and natural way back then. I studied her tonight as she was steered professionally by Mr. Woss. She flicked her hair, she ran her tongue irritatingly around her lips, she pouted, she feigned sincerity, she acted magnificently. She has changed. She has learned the tricks and she uses them to her advantage. She came across as a fabulously confident, very sexy, very risque, very sassy, slightly fragile lady. She’s daring, judging by the acting she is currently engaged in. Lots of woman will have watched and envied the sultry, intriguing lady she has become. It’s all very carefully orchestrated. Chris Evans may have been watching and may be smarting or regretting or nodding knowingly or saying “good on ya”. Her husband will probably be doing the same.

We are a very curious species, we women. Who do we fool when we tell each other than we’re thrilled for our exes when they start seeing someone else? We’re so over them, we’re happy in our current relationship, we’re big enough to move on. Yeah right! Inherently, we are the most important people in the world. We don’t want the men in our lives to value other women above us, no matter how over them we may profess to be. It undermines us. We want our men to place us on a pedestal and never recover from us. We want them to compare all other women to us. We want them to be tortured forever, glimpse us in the street and harbour feelings of regret for days thereafter, look at their wives at night and grieve for what they might have had. We want power.

One of my very favourite songs is one I heard on the radio when I was in my early teens, “You needed me” by that superb Canadian songstress, Anne Murray. Another is “I can’t say goodbye to you” by another singer of similar vintage, Helen Reddy. Do you see a trend? I don’t think I’m alone. Womankind needs to be idolised by mankind and she is not truly fulfilled until she is. Mankind can take it or leave it, can do the one night stand and move on. But we women need to be remembered. We get off on the idea of bumping into the men in our lives and leaving them gazing longingly as we walk away and they return to lifting their child, the child of the woman they left us for, off the slide in the playground.

We don’t see ourselves as older. We see ourselves as eternally in our twenties. We like to imagine that men see us like this too. We harbour fantasties of ourselves in positions of power and our men friends nudging their mates and whispering “I used to date her once. Why did I let her go?”. And their mates saying “What?! She’s fabulous”.

I caught my three year old gazing at herself in the full length mirror in my bedroom recently, her nose pressed up against the glass, saying “I’m fabulous”. In reality, we’re all that three year old. We may suppress it, we may fight it, we may smile engagingly at our ex-boyfriends as they introduce us to their new fiancees but we don’t believe that anyone should really get over us and move on. We want to be unique and special and worshipped and never forgotten and never got over and fabulous!

If my smallest is testament to anything, it’s to the fact that the sins of the mother are visited upon the child!

And now I’ve remembered what I was going to write about, my eternal moral dilemma – driving offences. I believe I may now be the unproud owner of 6 penalty points! I mean it when I say I’m not proud. The most recent two (I had two already) are as a result of taking a phone call whilst stopped at traffic lights and the further two (which I’ve yet to receive but suspect I may do) as a result of complete and utter distraction due to having too much on my mind whilst driving in a 60km zone slightly over the limit, I think. I received two points in the same spot several months ago and am now very aware of it and slow to a crawl when driving in that area. But three days ago, my mind was very much elsewhere. Which brings me neatly onto the question as to whether anyone is ever really in control of a vehicle?

If, as a friend of mine suggests, handsfree sets, speaking with a phone to one’s ear etc are all equally immoral, then I firmly believe that all driving is immoral because I have undertaken many a journey and arrived at my destination unable to recall any part of the journey, so jaded or distracted or bored was my mind. So should driving be legal at all? If I’m honest, I don’t believe it should be. The accident scene that I passed on the motorway two nights ago and which is very likely to be a result of the driver of one vehicle being either on the phone or speeding or merely, like I so often am, distracted, bored or tired, suggests that I need to cop on and put less pressure on myself because I do feel pressure to answer every call to my phone and to be where I say I’ll be when I say I’ll be there and to get to my destination no matter how how little sleep I may have had or how full of worries my mind may be. Driving is a power that really isn’t very fabulous at all!

Ah Ha! The list making has started again. Before Christmas, there was frantic list making, not just weekly lists, daily lists even then followed by no lists for nearly three weeks. Yippee! I wonder how I coped? But then there wasn’t much to do, it was the holidays after all, my holiday from lists!

 What is it with lists? I like a long list. Break down the things to do into small actions and work through it. Strike off a few easy ones as quick as possible now that is seriously motivating. Maybe even put the same thing down twice for when I am getting particularly sluggish and then at that point one activity might give two results. Yippee. The list is moving. I also enjoy not seeing it for a few days and then having immense satisfaction of striking off numerous items all at once. Now how is that for putting a smile on my face!

 It was nice, my holiday from lists,  but was I so laid back that I could not face making New Year resolutions because I did not want to unpack my notebook and pencil or could it have been something more serious? My lack of a New Year list could be avoidance, lest I don’t succeed with any of the resolutions that could have potentially gone on aforementioned list!

 Granted, New Year and all it entails is not my thing. What is it about New Years Eve that suggests we should kiss strangers and turn over a new leaf? Why is that necessary to make me a more fully functioning human being? I could have tried a list with 1. no kissing strangers and 2. no new leafs! Now that would have got straight to the point!

 Mr Mack is extremely resolute this year, as always. He loves planning and making plans especially of the self improvement kind that potentially makes him a more rounded male! He list goes like this: learn French so that he can converse better than he currently does, learn to cook a few dinners from a cool recipe book, have more sailing lessons and go for extra long walks at the weekend, at least once.

 On contemplation, for me it’s a one item list, be a less rounded female!

Another New Year resolution is to read over what I write before I post it and think about how it might be interpreted by people reading it. Let’s just say that my previous blog caused mini- consternation with people wondering was I ok. Of course I am. Perhaps I really am far too enmeshed in this football world and am not really thinking clearly about things any more.

Of course the incident to which I referred was to do with the shenanigans within the football club. As usual I have managed somehow to maneuver myself into the position of piggy in the middle and the middle at the moment is a large pig pen of muck. With the very best of intentions, it seems that I (and not only I) can not keep everyone happy nor do right by everyone. But ain’t that life? No one has died, no one is even sick. You can only do your best. And try not to be too sensitive when even your best isn’t good enough. On the subject of pigs, can I resolve to eat healthily forever more or will I have to resort to liposuction?

So the list thus far reads as follows:

1. Care more about people, friends and foes alike

2. Look before you leap or think before you post

3. Eat less

Or perhaps I could resolve to do just one thing  and that might solve all others – think less about myself and more about others.

It never ceases to amaze me how suddenly one can topple from the pinnacle of happiness to the very depths of despair.

I ended one decade in a state of joy and carefree abandon and within a mere two hours of waking up in the next decade stood on a beach populated with striding masses walking off the excesses of Christmas wiping tears from my cheeks before they could freeze on my face and before my children could notice. Only the playful antics of our new dog could lift me momentarily from my despondency.

It’s not important to know the reason for this sudden change in my mood. What is important is that you never, never truly appreciate the people in your life until they are gone or until they drop a bombshell upon you that they may have been juggling in their hands for ages but which you never really expected they would drop and certainly not on you.

And so my New Year resolution is to take much more care of those around me, those people who matter to me, who help me, whom I may take foregranted but without whom I would be a mere shell on a seashore.

Is it idle-wifely going to your Mothers for Christmas dinner? Or is it just lucky? Lucky, yes, I would say….. but real lucky would be going to Australia for Christmas and staying with your best friend in Australia! I can dream…..

 While I have enjoyed a variety of Christmas’ in my time including one in the southern hemisphere and one stateside, for the past three years my tradition is to go to my mothers for Christmas and lull around for a week. Or can I call that a tradition? My motivation is simple, Darling son gets to spend extended time with his cousins, who are the nearest to siblings he will have and I get to spend time with my parents and siblings who are not geographically accessible to me the rest of the year. That is to say during the rest of the year we are hampered by distance, work and other commitments and I visit as often as I can but we don’t have drop in relationships.

 Another bonus is that my home of origin is unusual in the sense that there is loads of room, oodles of company and heaps happening in and around the place i.e. you don’t have to go far for company or entertainment. It is a very comfortable house with ensuite bathrooms; sky tv, broadband and a sort of room service that if you leave your dirty laundry by the washing machine, it will reappear two days later neatly folded on your bed. Not ironed, as the housekeeping fairy that for paying quests!

And her kitchen…..by comparison to my kitchen at home, my mother’s kitchen is the cordon bleu in a simple unsophisticated way. Ample worktop space, every pot, pan or vessel in any number of varying sizes; double oven, endless store of vegetables someplace else, supermarket across the road just in case and to beat the band this visit, we could see the eclipse of the moon on New Years Eve from her kitchen skylight. Wow! On the downside to the more the merrier rule, the potatoes peeling was endless….

Actually, for the week the only thing you really need to do is put your head outside the door for fresh air every so often or even just to see if anything is stirring. Not that this need for air is essential by any means as the air inside is constantly turned over by all the hot air that is generated when we all get together! Exercise does not come into it!

So as it happens, Christmas 2009 was a marathon lulling around session. I read an article in a national paper last week where the author spoke about the likelihood that he was so lulled out that he could take a nap on the way to the kitchen to get some leftover stuffing to go with his bowl of trifle. Yes, my kind of lulling also, food coma here we come.

Or, maybe it was the lull after the storm. Mr Mack & I always have a hard time negotiating the festivities et al, if the truth be known. While I go for the bigger picture, he just wants a few half hours at home with his family to do the things he wants to do on the days that he just wants to do them! He is the sentimental one. So the process every year is stormy. Need I elaborate?

But this year to beat all others, on top of the natural rhythm of Christmas lulling, this year we had snow! A full week of snow, snow on the rooftops, snow on the roads and even snow driving home for Christmas. Then when we got here, there was a fabulous blanket of peace and quiet on the environs as well as added caution when contemplating leaving the house, icy roads, slippy footpaths, no water, hats, gloves and all that! Nonetheless, we still ventured out occasionally with a new respect for the world, respect in the sense of thinking twice before putting new footprints in the freshly fallen snow and changing the landscape forever.

And that is certainly a new skill to practice in the New Year, strengthened by a week old lulling. Bring in the new and respect the old. Happy New Year to everyone.