I Need Another Baby

Just found these pics of nurserys.

Are they too gorgeous for words or what? I snagged these pics from pewter + sage . So makes me want to have another baby. I guess I'll be waiting for grandkiddies but since my oldest is only 16 I'm kind of hoping I'll have a long wait. But when that day finally comes that kid is going to be spoilt rotten!! I just don't know which look to choose....

Monogram Madness

Living in Australia is great. It is a really nice place to live and I've always felt fortunate to be born here. We have a pretty good health system and welfare system and a pretty decent standard of living. It has its low points but on the whole I'd rather live here than Iraq.

But I have (not so) secretly been harbouring an obsession with all things American my whole life. The introduction of this thing called the Internet has only served to deepen my addiction. Now I don't just have TV to get information from. But reading other peoples blogs has led me into a whole new territory.

Before I started reading blogs I didn't even know what a preppy was. Gossip Girl is sending my head into a spin. Do people really live like that? I'm coveting head bands, park avenue apartments, anything J Crew. FAO Schwarz, Central Park, dorm rooms, pep rallys are making me salivate. How did I ever get by without having anything monogrammed?

These kind of things just don't really exist here in Australia. I'm sure somewhere in Aus someone has a headband. But its just not the same. I was sitting here wondering if the sale of a kidney would get me a plane ticket over there then it struck me like a brick in the head. We live in the Internet age. We live in an age where we can order anything from anywhere! Yes I know I'm a little slow but better late than never right?

Then I saw it. Jen from A Girl in Pearls and a Boy with Toys has posted a pic of a tote bag from L.L. Bean that her soon-to-be-husband had bought her.

This is it. So I ordered it! I got it with the black trim and I had it monogrammed!!! My first monogrammed item. I feel like I'm going to cry....

I'm so excited even though it will take 2-4 weeks to get here but when it does I will post a pic of it with my very own initials on it.

In the meantime I am going to monogram everything I own.

Jen also got these as a gift from her bridesmaids.

Aren't they too too adorable? I guess I'll be needing a cute passport cover soon too because I'm going to get to America or die trying. You can live on one kidney right?

Photoshop will be the Death of Me

Am I the only one in the world who finds it hard to use Photoshop? I thought I would put some pics of our trip to Granite Island on here but I wanted to blur the kids faces first. I think I'm going to have a stroke just trying to figure it out. Any tips would be great!

Sincere apologies

I'd like to apologise for any bad behaviour I may have exhibited in the last few days. I didn't get any more than 3 hours of sleep a night for the last week and I think I went a little crazy. If I offended anyone by my rantings and ravings I sincerely apologise.



I like nice. It's why I read blogs. If everyone turned mean and nasty I wouldn't come here anymore. I just don't want anyone to have to pretend their own opinions don't exist just to make everyone else happy. It stems from my insecurities of constantly letting people treat me like a doormat.



15 years ago I was in a check out line in a grocery store. This woman came up, stood right in front of me and started putting groceries on the conveyor belt. In these situations I never say anything but it always makes me mad and I stew about it for days so at this particular time I decided to be assertive and not let her get away with it. So I very politely said 'Excuse me, I think I was here first'. She turned around and very snappily said 'Well actually I was here first. This is my stuff'. She pointed at some items that were on the end of the belt that I hadn't even noticed. I was absolutely mortified. I embarrassingly apologised and stood there red faced hoping the world would open up and swallow me whole. I have not said a single word to anyone who I think has pushed in front of me since, even those who I know for absolute sure weren't there before me. In 15 years! I know, I'm a total coward.



My sister is worse though. She has way more friends than me. I know this because she is constantly rubbing it in my face as though this little fact somehow makes her better than me. But the reason she has more friends is that she has 'Please walk all over me' tattooed on her forehead (figuratively not literally although sometimes I wonder).



I am a good friend. I will listen to you cry about your latest break up. I will help you move even if its from the middle of nowhere to a 5th floor apartment. I will babysit your kids. I will invite you to all my parties and not ever expect a gift. I will lend you money. I will pick you up when your car has broken down or run out of petrol. I will do all these things for you but if you are never there for me when I need you, I will cut you from my life. I have better things to do than constantly be running around after selfish ungrateful prats who don't appreciate me.



My sister is the exact opposite. Her 'friends' are a bunch of users but she will never stop being friends with these people because she wants (needs!) the friend count on her Face Book page to be a higher number than mine. She has one friend who invites her shopping all the time....but only when she needs to purchase a large item (my sister owns a van and she does not). She has another friend who has moved houses 5 times in the last 2 years. Of course my sister has done all the heavy lifting each time but her friend was unavailable to help her out when she moved last year. She looks after the children of another friend on a regular basis but has never had the favour returned. Another of her friends invites her to all her parties...the ones where you have to buy something that is. Tupperware parties, lingerie parties, kids birthday parties, yes. New Years Eve parties and dinner parties, no.



And how do I know all this? Because everytime I see her she bitches and moans about the latest hurtful thing they've done. I'm not sure if she enjoys being a doormat or if she just likes to whinge. Maybe her need to be surrounded by people is greater than her need for a nice stress free life. Who knows? But these people have been invited over to dinner numerous times. I've never been invited once. She makes time to go out and do things with these people. I've never received an invitation although I've been rejected many times. She'll buy things for their kids, never mine. I think I might have some more cutting to do :)

It's Done!

Well I did it! I spent 5 hours last night and 4 hours tonight going through the backlog of blogs that I had not read yet and I am finally caught up. You people have to stop writing such amazing stuff. I can't keep up!

But it did get me thinking about replying to comments on my posts. My followers, being the absolutely brilliant and thought provoking writers that they are, often leave comments that I would like to reply to purely because they made me think. But I wasn't sure how I should go about it. I noticed that some people reply to their comments in their own comments section but I thought I have so much trouble keeping up with the original posts, I never go back and check to see if the blog owner actually wrote a reply to my comment so I'm guessing most of you don't either so then you wouldn't see it. Then I thought about posting a reply on your actual blog pages but it seems silly to reply to a comment you made on my blog by putting a comment on your blog about my post. Nobody would understand what I was talking about. So I am just going to write any comments I feel I need to share at the end of my actual posts. I figure you must be receiving my posts to be able to comment in the first place so then you'll actually see my replies.

Did any of that make sense to you at all? I'm sorry, I haven't been sleeping much lately and I'm not even making sense to myself.

Erin - I love you too! Don't get me started on the religious stuff. People act like I'm some sort of freak because I'm not religious. It matters not that I don't look down on them for being religious but they seem to think its ok to condemn me for my beliefs. Must be that good old Christian attitude I hear so much about. Be religious, don't be religious, its all good to me. I don't condemn although apparently I'm going to this thing they call hell. I just don't feel very religious when everyday I see children dying, suffering, being physically and sexually abused, being kept for 18 years in a backyard within a backyard (what the??) Thats just me.

4evernite - I was actually quite flattered when you said I was above you in higher education and self dependence because that is everything I crave to be. I let things hold me back too though. I hold on to certain horrible things from my past which causes me to live in fear in certain situations. Its not good and I'm trying to overcome it. I recently bought a book called The Essential Laws of Fearless Living but I'm too afraid to read it. Ha ha. That last part was actually a joke, I just haven't got around to reading it because I've been reading all these fabulous blogs!

There's No-One Like Me....Or Is There?

I feel very out of place where I live. I bought a house here because my husband and I were just starting out and it was very cheap. The plan was to buy this house, fix it up then move on. Eighteen months later we were divorced and I was stuck with a house that I am unable to renovate because when I agreed to fix up the house I really expected that he would do the work and I would stand around holding things. With the way house prices have gone up in the last 7 years and with the way things around here have deteriorated (pool collapsed, rumpus room burnt down etc) I am now stuck here with a dodgy hammer and some You Tube vids trying not to kill myself while dangling from a ladder with a chainsaw (that actually happened...I'm not even kidding).

But I digress...

While those are all stories in themselves (quite a few actually), I actually wanted to talk about why I feel out of place here.

I haved lived here (or in areas surrounding here) for 14 years now and I am still yet to meet anyone who is even vaguely like me. For starters there are an awful lot of elderly people. There seems to be a new old age home being built every day. All the women want to do is talk about their medical ailments and put their pensions into the pokie (slot) machines. All the elderly men spend their day in the pub, drinking beer and putting their pensions into the pokies. I don't drink or gamble and I like to keep my medical problems to myself so score 0 for having anything in common with them.

Then we have the bogans whose uniform is tight black jeans, flannelette shirt and of course, your standard goatee. While flannelette shirts are comfy in bed at night, I can't grow enough facial hair for a small moustache let alone a full blown goatee. I also don't like car parts on my lawn or sitting on a ratty old sofa on my front porch making lewd comments to everyone who walks past wearing a skirt. I also have all of my own teeth. So score 0 on the compatibility scale.

Then we have the young mums. Now of course not all young mums are the same. I'm sure plenty work or go to school and they look after their children just fine. I just haven't seen any around here. Now we do have kids in common. Unfortunately I'm not too fond of dropping my kids off to anyone who will take them while I dress like a whore and go clubbing and cracking onto other people's boyfriends. Its just not me. Compatibility score : 0

We also have a lot of single mums around here. I am a single mum. You would think this would be the perfect category for me. And believe me I have tried to get along with this crowd. But all they want to do is talk about their kids and smoke. 'So read any good books lately?' 'No but little Johnny read his first book the other day. The Little Engine That Could. Isn't that just precious?' ** Puff puff ** How about movies? 'No but we were approached by a talent scout the other day that said Little Johnny was just born to be in the movies. He gets his looks from me. Isn't he adorable?' ** Puff puff ** Any prospect of anything exciting happening to you at all in the foreseeable future? 'No, its all about Little Johnny and what Little Johnny wants. I have absolutely no bloody identity of my own!!!!' ** Puff puff ** Grrrr.... I love my kids like crazy but I also like when they are at school and I have hobbies and other interests to fill up my life. And I don't want to bore other people with the little things that my kids do that are too adorable to me but aren't really of any interest to other people. And I don't smoke so there's another zero.

Lastly, we have the mothers of my kids friends. My kids go to private school in the next suburb over and most of the mothers live there. For some reason they think their suburb is Beverly Hills and my suburb is Beirut. The houses there are only around $50,000 more than mine but they don't have any back yards. They are all squished in there on top of each other. I like my big backyard even though I am often too busy to mow the lawn. My kids like the big backyard too. They earn about the same as me but I don't spend my money on big flashy things. I don't have a credit card, I don't hire purchase anything. I like to go to sleep at night feeling good that I am not in debt. They are in it up to their eyeballs with the house and the school and the new cars and their kids walking around with the latest mobile phones. It's all a big charade...I know it, they know it. One of them loses their job and they lose the lot. But they look down their nose at me because my car isn't as new as theirs or I didn't go as far away on my last holiday. One of these woman (that I know of, there are probably more) has her 9 and 10 year old daughters walk home by themselves everyday to an empty house. How do I know this? Because they make it known to everyone within earshot. One actually rang me yesterday and asked if she could come to my house after school because she was going to be alone in the house and was scared. She did this on a mobile phone in front of the school with untold amounts of people walking past her. I only hope that a paedophile doesn't walk within earshot and follow her home one day. I might not have a fancy car or a house in their suburb but I pick my kids up from school everyday and I'm able to answer the phone without screening for debt collectors. So obviously I have nothing in common with them either.

I used to think that there was no-one like me. Until I started reading blogs. I no longer feel alone. There are several blogs that I read that make me think 'why are you writing about my life/the way I feel/what happened to me/what I think and believe?' I hope that I can meet some of them in person one day so I'll finally get to know what it feels like to understand someone and have them understand me. I just hope that if I do meet them, I don't end up disliking them because they're too much like me. What would that say about me????

How Rude!

I received a rather interesting e-mail today which took me aback somewhat. I wanted to talk about it here so I could get someone else's opinion about which one of us was being rude. Feel free to let me know even if you think it was me.

Here's the story:

I e-mailed a few football teams to see if they had a cheerleading squad. All I wrote was 'Hi. I'm wondering if your team has a cheerleading squad'. I don't know if that's rude or not but I believe in keeping it short and simple. Nobody seemed to mind. They just gave me a simple answer to my simple question, either saying yes or no. Some said no and asked if I was interested in starting one up. Everyone was polite and friendly as I would expect them to be. After all, they have published their e-mail addresses on the internet for the sole purpose of being contacted.

Then I received a reply this afternoon that was a little different. This is it:

While I applaud the concise structure of your email, it does not lend itself to being particularly informative. I have no doubts there will be countless other recipients that you have approached who may be able to assist you in your endevours, but will ultimately baulk at the idea of volunteering relevant information to an unknown party who is unwilling to share their own.At very least, can I suggest the addition of information to your email that addresses the obvious question of:-Are you a cheerleader looking to join a squad, or part of a cheerleading squad looking for a team? What exactly are you offering/asking of us? In any case, whilst we have a number of teams in our club, I do not believe we are currently looking for a cheerleading squad. Our supporters are a very entertaining and vocal crowd, and are sufficient for our present needs as far as I am aware. While a simple "yes" or "no" response would have been an easier method of fielding your query, I hope my taking the time to reply to this email and providing you with some constructive criticism has been helpful, and not in vain.

What??? For starters I'm not offering him anything nor asking anything of him other than the simple question of whether or not his team has a cheerleading squad. But instead of just answering the question (like everyone else did) he felt the need to take time out of his busy schedule to give me some 'constructive criticism'. I am so glad that he felt the need to analyse my e-mail writing skills and pass on his sage wisdom to me.

And exactly what information was he expecting me to give him? I pretty much summed up what I wanted to know in the one sentence. I wasn't asking him for his tax returns or his medical records. I didn't realise that the information regarding the existence or non-existence of a cheerleading squad was so confidential that I would have to provide all my details so he would know exactly who he was divulging this secret information to.

Maybe he was trying to be helpful. Maybe I'm just reading it wrong and I'm totally out of line for my rant. Maybe I'm just PMS-ing and overreacting. What do you think? Am I over reacting or is this guy a pompous jackass?