It's kind of sad....

how little is expected of other people in the way of courtesy. While shopping for groceries this morning (don't even get me started on the $400 bill!!), I was getting out a trolley and noticed a lady walking towards me, as she approached the trolleys I offered her the one I had and then grabbed another one - I mean I was standing right there!!! She was soo grateful..said I had done my good deed for the day. I said thank you but suggested that I could probably do a little better than that for a good deed. Really people - this is all it takes to make people happy while going about their daily chores - just a little courtesy, nothing much. It sort of makes me sad that such a small gesture is even considered a 'good deed' rather than just a common courtesy.

The walls are built... and my vegie patch will soon be a reality!!

You shouldn't send emails when you've been drinking....

Cause I've just sent my father an email. Despite numerous attempts to contact him over the years (and knowing that he must have received the letters) and getting no response, I considered it wise to send him an email at 10pm on a Wednesday night (having found his email address on Google of course) asking him for medical information because I thought it only fair given I'd suffered an unexplained Cardiac Arrest last August and could tell no-one my medical history (mum's adopted, dad did a runner)... so there you go. Drunken confessions on a Wednesday night - I'll be sure to keep you all updated...

The attempt to make my house look like something out of House and Garden... sort of

The new table:






Note the lovely suede chairs - the plastic that comes over them when they are delivered.... it's not coming off for another 18 years or so ;)

And here is a photo of our sideboard, complete with lavender infused decorations straight from the tree and shells from the beach - my attempt at H&G type decorating :)

Day 3?? of Landscaping..... the Water Tank Arrives

Updates January 2009

1. Day Three (well really 2 because not much happened yesterday) of landscaping. The slab for our new mega-10,000L water tank has been finished. I love that 2 seconds after concrete was laid it poured down for exactly five minutes and then fined up. Joel insists that he brings the rain with him... I suggested he should not be doing the concreting jobs and he totally agreed :)


Before dirt for garden


After some dirt has been added for garden





Before slab laid for water tank



After slab laid for water tank


2. My new toys.......





the bike is part of my new fitness craze - trying to get some physical activity into my life and find some calm 'me' time to ensure 2009 and is not a repeat performance of 2008. The bike is in conjunction with Yoga (starting today) and yes, the aforementioned pole dancing.... which for all of you who are wondering is NOT to spice up my sex life. I can barely move for 2 days after training, I have bruises on my shins which are not pretty and I look anything but sexy doing the dance... more like "how the fuck am I meant to get my leg up there?" sort of look on my face. But it's clearly a workout as I've lost weight already and can feel that slow burn in muscles that I didn't even know I had!!! And no, none of you are invited to the end of semester concert... that means you Geoffrey ;)

The pool table? Okay so not really an exercise strategy - more one of 'learning to wind down at the end of the day'.

ciao
xo

Okay I'm going to fess up....

I have pole burn... figure it out, send heaps of shocked comments my way and then I'll elaborate :)

Day 1 Landscaping....The Tree is Felled (don't worry more will be planted in it's place!!)

A good laugh to start the new year

The world in 7 minutes by Charlotte Rose

In Libby's Kitchen

Merry Christmas from Queensland Transport!!!

How can this not make you feel festive? And my Go card needed topping up - he wouldn't take my cash - wished me a Merry Christmas and said "I know you'll top it up"... Trust, festive wishes and a good heart. The spirit of Christmas lives on with Brisbane Buses - who would have thought??

At last.....the floppy hat

Nearing 2

Her first sentence...

"I did a wee Daddy" ........ and she did too. On the toilet and all :) she's growing up

yaaaaaaaaay!

Building and pest fine.

Finance unconditionally approved.

Settlement set for 12th December.

Bring on the stressful move 2 weeks before xmas!!! :)

Crazy Hair Day at School (or Check out the 'tude on my daughter)

A Life Update

Well hello dear readers. 'tis been awhile. Again, not due to lack of content but rather lack of motivation to get to the computer and write it all down. I think I've mentioned before that if they could hurry up and invent a mind to computer recorder I would blog a lot more often. Then at 3am while I was narrating a blog entry in my head (yes I do actually do that...how sad is that) - it would be automatically blogging to my site. How cool would that be!!??

And so begins a life update:

My Health

Is doing quite well thank you. I can't wait to see the specialist in a few weeks to get my meds reviewed though - there've been a few blackouts of late when I've stood up too suddenly and I've fainted momentarily because my blood pressure must just drop... of course, they may not change my medication at all....after all, keeping my BP low is the point I think. Anyway, I'm braving work one day a week as of the first of December (always good to return to work during the silly season don't you think??) so we'll see how that goes.

My Princesses

I never feel like I can do justice to this section of my blog. So much happens during the day with them both that it's hard to capture their hilarity, their drama, their ability to stun me with their personalities..... so some snippets.

******

(note well: we've been quite aware of charli's fascination with death and dying lately - a stage I'm told - but all the more because of my cardiac arrest.... )

So Dave and I are sitting in her room playing trains. She lays two of the wooden people on the floor and says "they died". Dave and I look at each other in horror. Maybe they are just sleeping charli? "No they died-ed". Then she looks sad, hangs her head and pouts her lips. "What's up Charli?"
"I'm just so sad that they died"
"Charli, it's okay - they didn't really die, let's not play this game ok?"
Charli looks up with a big grin on her face:
"It's okay mummy, I'm not sad, I'm just pretending - they're not really dead you know, they're just toys".
Blimey.....I can't keep up with her.

******

Me: Zie, don't bite Charli - it's very naughty!
Zie: No
Me: Zie, that's it, you need to move away from Charli please, you're being very naughty
Zie: Runs across the room, slaps me in the face or sometimes bites me if she's in the mood and then runs from the room into her room and sits in time out before I can even put her there. (sigh) - love how she gets one last naughty moment in before punishing herself.

*******

Charli on one of our many house-hunting trips of late. Walks in the door at a house - walks up to the agent and says "My name is Charlotte, I hope you're having a good day, we're going to buy this house ok?"..... every real estate agents' dream sale.

*******

I promise I'm going to do more of these snippet blogs. there's a 1000 more tales on a daily basis. I'll be more diligent I promise...

The House Hunting

Let's see if I can condense this.

• We've been househunting a lot
• It hasn't been easy because even though I have all this time on my hands, I can't drive so I can't be doing any of it during the week - which means every Saturday we get to cart the kids around and listen to them whinge and whine the whole time. It's lots of fun
• We found a house they were listing as Gigantor!! It's ugly but it's huge. Here's a couple of pics:

It's on nearly 1200 square metres of sloping to flat land, there's odd structural issues like a pole in the centre of the lounge room (because it used to be the garage), there's shag pile carpets which HAVE to go and it's tiled floors instead of my preferred wood. There's no flow effect out to the entertaining areas and all in all it's a brick piece of lego that desperately needs to be prettied up. But having looked at a few houses now (to say the least), we've discovered if you buy a pretty house, then you're paying for someone else's hard work and the chances are it's either a) too expensive, b) too small or c) on a small lot which we've decided we don't want. *sigh*

• We offered 34K less than their asking price - a rude offer yes but one that sat well with us given what we wanted to do with the place. And the Brisbane market is falling so.....
• they said 'no' and didn't counter-offer
• we offered 9K more and said that was our limit (and meant it)
• They came back with an offer 12K more than that. I said no our offer was X and that's all we can offer. Goodbye
• Felt emotionally drained as yet another house passed us by but refused to wallow. This house hunting thing is a big game and there's no point getting stressed about it (or giving yourself a cardiac arrest ;)
• Yesterday (after a tiresome Hi-5 concert!!), we went to see another house at the same price as we were offering on the above house - prettier, all renovated, pool, same size block, good high fences to contain the children BUT we just didn't like it. Might have been prettier but it was smaller and still had lots of little structural things that you knew were going to cost money to re-do. AND there was moisture in the garage wall..... and above the garage on the lawn sat the pool..... we were suspicious!!
• Driving home we decided that for the extra 12K we may as well bow to the wishes of the vendors who own the home above and just buy it. It always helps to see comparably priced houses on the market so we planned to call on the way home and bow to their new asking price.
• The phone was in the back of the car and i couldn't reach it so planned to call when we got home.
• The phone rang and went thorugh to message bank.
• Turns out that it was the estate agent :)
• We called back (not mentioning that we were about to call him!!)
• He asked if there was any way that we could increase our offer (now if we hadn't just decided to call him, him calling would have PISSED ME OFF because I thought I'd made it quite clear we weren't going to offer more)
• But of course we offered 5K more because hell, we'd just been about to pick up the phone and offer 12K more but he didn't know that!!
• And as of 3 minutes ago (while I was blogging!!) our offer was accepted!!
  

WE ARE NOW THE PROUD OWNERS (subject to building and pest and finance!) of GIGANTOR!!! (and don't think I won't be getting a sign for that house that says that!! LOL

It only seems fair ...

to blog what Zie is saying since I did the same for Charli when she was about 18 months old.

Hellooooo (said in the most prim and proper way!!)

Mummy

Shoes

Dora (or D D Dora) as in repeating the D like the theme song - sheesh

Woof woof (dog)

wack wack (duck) - usually made with hand motion for quacking

Ta

Sharli (Charli)

Ba (Bath)

Nanna

(Notice no daddy... well tonight she actually addressed Dave by Da-da for the bloody first time)

She doesn't have many words yet, but boy does she make it well known EXACTLY what she wants each and every second of every day. Thankfully she comprehends well so if you can at least ask the right questions you'll usually figure it out with the Da (Yes) and No pretty easily!!

Love you baby girl.
xoxox

Appallin' Palin

Make no mistake, I don't follow American politics religiously, however, I do like to know what's going on over there at least superficially.... they may not be the only super power in the world but they do still hold some pull unfortunately. Now I make no secret of the fact that if I were American I would be a democrat - I've met enough Republicans to have been put off for life - however this video (the first one thoug feel free to watch both) of the Republican's candidate for vice president (Sarah Palin for those of you not in the know) terrifies me, and makes me thankful one more time that I do not live in that country. I mean my God - Alaska is surrounded by foreign countries (Russia and Canada) - and you lived in that state Sarah? You're right that does make you a prime candidate for VP of the US - holy shit people.

You have to sit through 2 advertisements before it starts... please be patient - and I apologise for the couple of minutes you will never get back of your life.... but well..... watch it.

And now watch the Tina Fey take off on Saturday Night Live