Nickie Muir: Being grateful in mid-winter

There are things to be grateful for in winter.

Right in the middle of winter it always feels like this. The footpaths have become secret night highways growing moss for trolls. Everything drips and not in a fecund way, but of decay and returning to moss and dust. If the dust wasn't mud. The day hasn't begun when we begin it and it's over before we get home.

Ennui sets in. It used to be fun: Ennui. When you're 20 and wearing too much eyeliner and spending the morning scribbling irredeemably bad poetry.

You can also drink far too much coffee and stay up watching French movies that no one understands. Now ennui means three baskets of washing might actually decompose before getting washed.

The lunch box didn't get emptied, nor the teeth cleaned - but didn't I say that yesterday? It occurs to me this might be a mid-life crisis and if anyone says; "Choices, Nicola. It's all about choices" like they're channelling Sr Mary Justine, I may have to shout rudely in their general direction.

What I would shout remains vague. It won't be; "Well, I'm not the one dressed like an over-sized Oreo married to a guy I can't see am I?" (In case you didn't endure years in a Catholic girls' school - nuns are married to Jesus.)

That didn't end well. I decide to take the Pollyanna approach and if that fails - just go off the rails. I'm calling it the Matariki life audit. It consists of making a list of everything I'm grateful for - if I don't feel better at the end of it I'll allow myself some bad choices until I do.

-I am grateful for the sounds of intense screaming and groaning in the living room at 4am. The concern neighbours might ring the cops is small and I'm happy to know where my life-partner is this world cup. Preventing the solitary victory laps round Whangarei at 3am shouting rude things at the English is a good thing.

-Grateful the neighbours don't understand references to the genitalia of his sister's parrot as an innovative curse. Grateful, not angry, daughter has picked it up. Remaining patient when life partner says I should find her better friends because she's picking up rough language from her peer group. In Spanish. In Whangarei.

-Happiness is a lemon tree full of golden globes of goodness. Happy, too, that the kind people of Whangarei sent 100 boxes to Christchurch from their gardens.

-The dead rat left at my door like a love letter from a hit-man. The cat keeping the deal.

-The pavers in the middle of town. New council has blasted them and they're no longer lethal. Kids can run on a wet day.

-Matariki night sky cloaking Parihaka. Nothing in the garden. Parenthesis. Pause. Promise.

-Grey heron. My familiar - totem; good luck omen is sitting in the pine at the bottom of the garden. The next day is a little longer than the last.