The toddler has started saying “cuggle” when he wants a cuddle and a bit of me secretly hopes he never learns how to say it properly.

They say a picture tells a thousand words - and this one definitely does. I found it unexpectedly today while in search of another image and it stopped me in my tracks.

For my fellow geriatric millennials. A well spent Friday night after a loooong work week. The first album I ever bought with my own money. Still as good as ever.

Yesterday I had one of those moments of cosmic clarity, the kind that lets you see through space and time. I left work after 7 pm (for the second time this week), so by the time I got home all I could do was bathe the cranky, tired toddler and put him to bed.

I know everything is awful right now. But today my sweet little toddler said “hand” in his sweet little voice as he held out his sweet little hand to take mine and just for a second all was ok with the world.

Today is a really good day to consciously avoid what Oliver Burkeman calls “living in the news.” That doesn’t mean switching off or being uninformed. It means this:

Napping with a toddler is basically having your heart refilled with rainbows but occasionally a rainbow pokes you in the eye.

I take anti-immigration protests personally. My family left the Balkans in January 1995 with nothing but suitcases. I was 12 and didn’t speak English. I have been wearing the Australian flag on my shoulder since I was 18. Next January that will be 25 years of military service to this great land.

Today it toddler parenting: screaming because I won’t let him open the oven door and *get into the oven* 🤷🏻‍♀️

I am learning a phenomenal amount this year, but my biggest takeaway is about the value of time. The most important commodity - and too often luxury - is time to think.

I logged on to Twitter to look for something specific and boy oh boy that place is 100 times worse than it was when I quit it last November. Just hideous.

I think we’re already seeing this. People who can’t construct a sentence or answer a basic question without ChatGPT are already sticking out like a sore thumb.

The whole US beef thing is funny. Last time we lived in the US, I literally stopped eating meat and went full on vego until we got back to Australia. This will be the Starbucks fiasco all over again.

On knowledge bias in aviation: As the Air India crash preliminary report hit the headlines last week and the commentary focused on fuel cutoff switches, I fielded a bunch of worried questions from folks not in the aviation biz. 🧵

The exquisite joy-sadness of dropping off your sweet one year old at daycare to see him confidently toddle off towards his friends without a backwards glance.

Things are objectively crummy right now. Here’s a smol pilot wearing a smol pilot hat in a smol plane. Take care of yourselves folks.

Sharp early analysis of the US intervention in Iran from @warinthefuture.bsky.social, injecting needed nuance and context into the commentariat. mickryan.substack.com/p/america-bo...

As a long time appreciator of the m-dash who doesn’t use LLMs - because they make writing worse, not better - the current discourse about m-dashes being a giveaway for ChatGPT posts is absolutely hilarious.

I have a bad feeling that the Air India crash may be the result of flaps coming up instead of gear after take-off and I really hope I’m wrong.

Democracy is fragile, and we must work tirelessly to protect it. Civilisation is fragile too. The country I was born in, albeit not a democracy, went from hosting the Olympics to self-immolating in an orgy of ethno-nationalist violence inside a decade. I think about that often.

My little sister introduced the toddler to truffle manchego and now his two favourite foods are truffle manchego and raspberries. RIP our bank balance.

Turns out watching Saturday cartoons with my little love on a cold windy winter morning is the perfect antidote to <gestures wildly at everything>

One of my fave D-Day facts is that the deception operation which kept hundreds of thousands of German troops away from Normandy put Patton in charge of a fake army planning a fake attack against Pas-de-Calais. The Germans were so impressed by Patton they were convinced he’d lead the real invasion.

81 years ago today. The original anti-fascist movement. Lest we forget.

Between this and the fact they can’t read cursive, if Gen Z ever take over the world, at least it will be really easy to get it back.

Someone needs to make a Downfall sketch of Putin reacting to Operation Spiderweb.

Top 5 most destructive natural forces: 5. Bushfire 4. Volcano 3. Category 5 cyclone 2. Tsunami 1. Toddler who missed his nap and wants another snack

The toddler’s first real word is “snack” and it couldn’t be more fitting.

“Police are urging runners to "stay vigilant" on Canberra's trails after a teenager allegedly attacked a woman who was out jogging.” This makes me so mad I could scream. I’ve felt this fear in other parts of the world, and I now I have to feel it at home too? 🤬 www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05...

A South Korean P3 Orion has crashed a few minutes after take-off, killing all 4 crew on board. Judging by the crew complement, it sounds like a pilot training mission or a transit. Vale to the lost aviators. www.reuters.com/world/asia-p...

I try to always give other women the benefit of the doubt and support their endeavours. Not only do I not pull up the ladder behind me, I pull others up it with me, often at great personal cost. Still I sometimes get bitterly disappointed by callous conceit. Today is one of those days.

On the left is one of the many stacks of Angus’s book around the house. On the right is his current favourite book, the one he demands we read together. I don’t know either.

Childcare staff informed us today that the toddler is bossy. I’m taking it to mean that he has command presence.

Getting invested into the Order of Australia is nice and all but tonight I made lamb biryani and masoor dal and the baby DEVOURED both with the ferociousness of a velociraptor so that is now my favourite achievement of the week.

Mother’s Day with my loves. My heart is full.

A very special day today, to be joined by beloved family at Government House for my investiture as a Member of the Order of Australia. I am beyond grateful.

Is it just me or did this year’s Met Gala feel even more “let them eat cake” than usual?

When aircrew fly their last flight at a squadron, it’s customary that they are greeted back with a fire truck salute. This was my last flight in May 2018. I was leaving 10 Squadron on promotion, excited but worried I’d never fly the P3 again.

Watching Antony Green do his election night thing for the last time is both awesome and sad. He will be so missed.

I grew up in a place where elections were neither free nor fair nor safe. Every time I have the privilege of voting in Australia, I find myself reflecting on and reveling in the marvel that is our open and inclusive democracy. Happy Democracy Day, Australia!

Yes yes yes. My favourite example of this is when people mispronounce a word because they learned it by reading. Like I used to do over and over as a 12 year old learning English by reading Nancy Drew stories from the school library.

Garmin should have a separate workout setting for “run while pushing a 90th percentile toddler in a pram”

The toddler: gleefully eating handfuls of pasta and spreading bolognese sauce all over the highchair tray, his face, his hair… Me: holding on to my chair to while whispering to myself “trust the process, trust the process”

I’m endlessly bemused by people who think they can profit in the long run by being on the “right side” of an authoritarian regime. They should read about Lavrentiy Beria, who went from the height of power as the head of the NKVD to being executed after a show trial and buried in a communal grave.

Service transcends generations and binds us together in something bigger than ourselves. To all who have served - thank you. Lest we forget.

South Canberra is redolent with petrichor right now.

Watching dad do touch-and-goes this morning to show Angus that boys can be pilots too 😉

The baby has discovered chorizo and manchego. Dios nos ayude.

Katy Perry is an astronaut about as much as any random Uber passenger is an F1 driver.

Through my entire flying career, if a dude made a dumb mistake, he might get corrected or counseled and that was it. But if a woman made the same mistake, it was evidence that all female pilots were incompetent and shouldn’t exist.