Some Addictions...

I have a few addictions - nothing illicit, but perhaps occasionally questionable in terms of health-giving properties or savings-account levels.

My first is magazines. Love em love em love em. Love reading, flicking, clicking, folding, ripping, scanning, filing. Love dissecting, studying, appreciating, analysing, marvelling, absorbing. Love to lay in bed with lots of pillows and flick. Love to sit on the couch with a hot mug of green tea and flick. Love to sit in the salon and have someone fiddle with my hair while I flick. In taxis, on trains, in queues, on aeroplanes. On the treadmill, on the loo, in the kitchen... flick flick flick. Ahh magazines - I love you.

There is much I appreciate about most magazines but only a few I collect. Martha Stewart Living, Blueprint, Wondertime, Domino, Donna Hay. Sometimes a gorgeous house magazine... my favourites are British House and Garden and occasionally Better Homes and Gardens (US). These last ones, I pluck and keep selectively.

For fashion magazines, I'm over Vogue but well into Harper's Bazaar. I also enjoy French Elle and In Style - Australian, British and American.

Trash mags? OK magazine. Woman's Day Australia, for a bit of sentimentality, but what on earth has happened to the Australian Women's Weekly?????

My second addiction is handbags. Last count? near 80. Maybe more. Please bear in mind that I do live in Beijing where everything costs a fraction of what it does anywhere else, so 80 handbags is not really a considerable financial drain on my family... just more of a psychological torture for my husband, really.

Third addiction - sweets. Like chocolate but love chocolate bullets. Like liquorice but love liquorice allsorts. Like bonbons but love sugar sprinkled jellies and soft jubes. Also love lolly teeth because I can stick them up into my gums where the sugar gets absorbed really fast, and make faces at the kids. Also like lolly snakes, but only in yellow. Occasionally red. Love love love clinkers, especially green inside. Love the snap. Minties are great for home sickness. Oh - and red liquorice.

Chocolates of choice - Roses chocolates, the hard centres. Cherry Ripes, Crunchie and Freddo frogs because I like it when the kids chase me, screaming for a chocky amphibian friend.

But my deepest, dearest sweetie friend... is rocky road. Big, fat, puffy, choc coated slabs of marshmallow jostling for space with chewy nicks of cherry and the odd crunch of peanut, all wrapped up with a delightful toasted coconut tang on the tongue. Sigh.

Fourth addiction. Champagne. Et oui, mes amis Français, c'est la version français - vraiment le vin que j'adore.

Fifth addiction. Martha Stewart magazine, website, show, cookbooks, furniture, craft items. Enough said.

Sixth addiction: travel, seeing somewhere new, running nonstop so I don't miss anything, mopping up the culture, language... oh this is a whole other post. Absolute favourite place so far (with 100 incredibly close runners up) - New York City.

Seventh addiction: paper. All kinds. Luscious, fragrant, decorative, crunchy, textured, smooth. And things made of paper too. Also have a bit of an obsession with stickers. Thank God I scrapbook and journal otherwise I would never be able to justify this obsession. I have been known to make villages out of paper.

Eighth addiction: books. There's that paper problem again.

Ninth addiction and most important of all : creating and writing. I can't help myself.

Hmm - seems many of my addictions are paper related. Maybe I was wood pulp in a past life.

Et voilà! I think that is enough for now. I am sure more will pop up later. After all, what is life without the odd, sweet addiction?