Category Archives: Events

Free Comic Book Day

So there is this annual event called Free Comic Book Day. Never heard of it? Check out the information here http://www.freecomicbookday.com/ We have an amazing time with it at our library service with kid and family friendly activities that run all day. We have actually had people tell us they are visiting us rather than the big comic book stores which is amazing! I have taken my nephew to it for all of his 5 years he has been around.

I have been asked to participate this year as a character. Huge excitement!!!!! I get to choose who I want to be and source the costume which hopefully means I can find something that fits okay.

So here’s the thing… have you ever looked for plus sized costumes? Pretty much all of them have the word “sexy” in front whilst men get these awesome looking things like the below with options for fat or skinny people.

04302015_Mens_Headline

Where are all the awesome costume options for shapely ladies?!!

At this stage I am pretty much assuming I am going to have to put one together myself so I have started thinking about who I might like to be. One of the other librarians is going as supergirl. I found some interesting costume (DIY) options for wonder woman which I think could work well. Another one I am pretty interested in currently is Claire Redfield from the Resident Evil comics/world… at least then everything is not as clingy and bodysuity… plus I really like the character.

Here is the current list I am considering:

Untitled

  • Claire Redfield – Resident Evil
  • Alice – Resident Evil
  • Wonder Woman – Wonder Woman
  • Lady Mechanika – Lady Mechanika – would be awesome, but huge amounts of prep.
  • Poison Ivy – Batman – would be a GREAT costume, but worried about doing a villain and having the kids be afraid of me when I am trying to get them involved with stuff 🙂 Also sometimes kids might “fight” villains.

Side note: I would totally love to do Abby from the new Ghostbusters, but that character isn’t from the comics 😦

What are your thoughts? There are other comic book characters I love, but I need it to be fat friendly, movable to some degree so I can interact with kids and hopefully more than one piece for ease of pee breaks 🙂 I would LOVE some suggestions from you all!

Annnnnndddddd…….. GO!!!

 


Egg collection & fertilisation

Egg collection went well. I was hella nervous, but managed to keep myself together for half of the procedure. I felt like he could have been a bit more gentle, but then obviously I was a lot more tender than I would normally be so maybe he was.

The first half was okay. The general anesthetic hurt, but a needle inside your lady parts is always going to smart a little. That was all pretty text book and my meditation breathing was calming me down. Then he put the anesthetic in the left side and it hurt like hell. I managed to keep my pelvis still, but my back arched off the bed. The doc said ‘oops, sorry, I’m sorry’ so I think something happened there.

That pain broke the emotional barrier though and I was suddenly overwhelmed by what we were doing and the silent tears just started falling. Next thing I know the lovely English nurse is by my side chatting to me and rubbing my arm and giving me tissues. Totally love her!

Onto the good news… numbers. We got 9 eggs. I was personally hoping for 11 because I was going by the 50% drop off rate for each stage and had thought that would be a great starting number. 9 is great though… plus in the end it only takes 1 right? ! ☺

Further to this news is the call I got not long ago to say that they put the eggs and sperm in together and overnight 6 eggs fertilised. Got of the phone and burst into tears. I was so happy. The last time I was this elated we were getting married.

For the first time in my life I have embryos. Not one… six!!! That’s such a good number and way more than I was hoping for.

I do understand that not all of then will make it to day 5, I am being realistic with this, but after 4.5 years of trying for a child the knowledge that we are on day 1 with 6 embryos is amazing!

Originally we were going to test all embryos and do a frozen cycle transfer next month. However, the specialist and the scientist convinced us that because we are healthy and young and there is absolutely no history of any abnormalities in our families if we get a 5 day embryo of good quality we will do a transfer this cycle. That decision is exciting and surprising. Now I just have to keep sending my embies strong growth vibes. Come on kids! ☺


We got our house keys!!!

I have some amazing news. We got our house keys last Thursday morning. I know, I know, I should have probably posted before now to tell you, but honestly we have been so, so busy.

It was very early and we were very tired when we took this photo, but I swear we are ecstatic 🙂

we got our house keys

We have done a lot of work there over the weekend already and our tiles were starting to be laid today which is hella exciting 🙂

I also had to share with you my new little friend and first Pop! Vinyl 🙂 Dancing Groot 🙂

dancing groot


House update # 3

So a LOT has been happening house-wise. Before Christmas we were told there would be a 40 day delay.

So naturally I was pretty pissed. We have already been waiting over two years (from when the land was first purchased) and I think I have been patient enough. I decided we had been nice long enough and I started to make some noise. My first step was a scathing email in response to their 40 day delay letter with their “evidence” and I went through how this evidence was anecdotal and therefore completely unnaceptable as a reason for delay. They didn’t respond so I started calling. On the first call I asked why my email had been ignored, said I wasn’t impressed that my concerns didn’t seem important to them, then I said that from now on all calls, emails etc. were to go through me (not my Husband) because obviously I needed to keep a closer eye on the builder as their communication skills to date have been abominable. All of a sudden we are being told there will be no delay and our house will be delivered before time.

Haha. It’s amazing what happens when someone who is normally lovely to their builder all of a sudden becomes politely assertive LOL.

So it looks like we will be getting our keys possibly as early as next week which is just a little bit ahead of schedule 🙂 This works out well because we have to then get our floors done. Another last minute nasty surprise we found out we would have to pay for.

Here are some photos of the build:

 

getting close to lock up stage

Getting close to lock up stage!

 

IMAG0264_BURST004

Lock up time. LOVE our garage door!

We kind of snuck in the fence to do these photos 🙂

If you missed out on the earlier house update posts and want to catch up please check out Post 1 and Post 2.

 

 


The Brazilian Files

Warning: I’m talking waxing people

They say “beauty is pain” – I don’t know who started that, I even Googled it and could not figure it out, suffice to say in a lot of cases it is true. Today however I am talking about a specific kind of pain… I am talking about the dreaded waxing… the brazilian!

Now, I don’t know about you, but I like to get all my waxing/beautician stuff over in one go. I go in once every 5 weeks and do the eyebrows, bikini line etc. I have thought about permanent hair removal, but that is about as far as I have got with that… thought about it LOL.

Recently I went on my regular visit to the beautician I have been seeing for many, many years. I even followed her when she moved a few suburbs away, she is good and she is reasonably priced. So this day I went and she was on her own because the other lady was on a half day, should be no issue right? So here I am in a tank top and a g-string on this table legs all over the place and she has got her hot wax and is putting it in the kind of places where you really want someone giving it 100% focus as a little stray wax could put you in a world of pain and the phone would not stop ringing. Seriously what would normally take a maximum of 10 minutes took us 30. It was insane, she kept having to leave the room mid wax and I would lay there listening to her conversation on the phone or hearing her talking to the random that had walked in until she came back.

Eventually she gave up and brought the cordless with her and then I had the awesome experience of having her waxing between my legs whilst fielding phone calls, that was seriously bizarre, I mean I have heard of multi-tasking, but that is not something I want you to do whilst you are applying hot wax to my lady parts!

Then someone came in the front door again so she had to go out, I happened to look to the side and see the mirror they have there so you can check your wax before going out and paying in case there is anything you want them to fix and had to laugh at how ludicrous I looked. One leg up and out and one to the side, at some stage of mid wax (I wasn’t entirely sure where we were at so I didn’t want to put my legs together in case things then got stuck – Oh my god can you even imagine that!), pretty much bare enough to cause significant embarrassment if someone walked in, listening in to a conversation I shouldn’t have been dealing with before my morning coffee (apparently her bf was going to ditch her if she didn’t bald her beaver – I felt like screaming at her to dump him if he doesn’t return the favour and bald his balls!!) and apparently a bit of the cotton she had used had not made it to the bin and was stuck to my knee. I had a good giggle at myself and then realised how much we really bare to our beauticians, my beautician has seen more of my body than my doctor, she knows more about our house dramas than most of my friends, she knows and remembers the name of my Hubby and our nieces and nephews – some of my colleagues don’t even know I have any.

Isn’t that an incredible amount of trust? Not that I am saying it is a bad thing, I just had never thought about it before and was quite amazed to be honest.

Don’t worry, she didn’t leave me stranded, she came back and finished me up and apologised profusely throughout the entire thing. Funnily enough (even with Clomid going nuts) I wasn’t upset about it, because I knew that they had recently moved areas and that they were in a small collection of shops rather than a mall now and she was very ill with fluid on her lungs for a few weeks so she really needs the business. Then I realised I knew her well too. How interesting that both of us share so much of our lives with someone we see once every five weeks.

How much do you share with your beautician?

 


Is it okay to eat the world?

It’s been a bad couple of days and it has been really hard to talk about it with anyone because I just am not even processing things at the moment. The only place I am functioning well at is work. I can shut off that emotion crap and get lost in my role. Currently the person I am at work is very different from the person I am at home. I am great at work, I am sparkle girl, I am organised and I get told that I have amazing initiative and they are so happy with me.

At home, as of last night at about 6pm I completely withdrew and basically went mute for a few hours.

I am going to talk about something I haven’t on here before, in fact I have only ever mentioned it to one person on WordPress and that was in comments on her blog. I want to talk about my brother. My brother has a reliance on pot. It worries the hell out of me because over the past few years I have seen it get worse and I have seen him change, he has 2 children who are almost 4 and 3 and the problem has gotten worse since the second one was born (I need to be clear though on the fact that it is never around the children and he never uses it where they can see and he doesn’t keep it where they can get to it). Both babies were unplanned and my brother and his partner were quite young for the first one and had not been together long. Please don’t think I am saying that he doesn’t love his kids, he does, he adores them, but he cannot handle them for long periods of time because his patience is just not awesome. He does know this about himself and is careful.

Basically in general both he and his partner are not dealing with life and their two toddlers. She isn’t working at all, he has casual jobs and seems to get sick a lot which means no pay when he doesn’t go to work. They both seem very dissatisfied with their life and bitch about each other to members of my family.

So now you know the background. The basics anyways…

Which brings me to Clomid – it has had its side effects and at first I thought that my want to withdraw all the time was the side effect, but I am not sure whether it is the side effect or withdrawing is my reaction to the fact I am emotional and don’t want to snap at anybody. Either way I have been trying to deal with that and if I am honest I haven’t been too awesome at it.

So last night I get home from work to my parents and my brother, his partner and my two nephews are there. There was a weird vibe going on and my Dad said not to ask about it, after awhile they went home. I assumed they had had an argument or something. I asked my Dad infront of my Mum and he said it had been a weird day and long story short she is pregnant.

Queue me shutting down in 3…2…1… I just emotionally shut down. I couldn’t deal with it. So I made the right sounds of shock and disbelief and the murmurs of concern and then went about my normal routine of getting dinner ready. Hubby came out (he works from home) for a coffee break and tried to engage me in coversation, I tried to make the right sounds, but we have been together for 8 years so it wasn’t going to fool him. He stopped me from flurrying about the kitchen, made me look at him and asked what was wrong. I couldn’t say it for a second, then when I did I just whispered it, “X is pregnant”. He looked at me for a second and then burst out laughing, “you have to be kidding me?!” he chortled, “what idiots, are you serious? How stupid can they be?!”. Then for just a minute my carefully constructed facade of nonchalance cracked and I started to cry. He engulfed me in a hug until the sniffles subsided and I sent him back to work pretending I was okay.

But I’m not. I am not okay you guys. This is not okay.

Apart from the fact that there is all the emotional issues related to the fact that we have been trying for over 3 years (which really would be enough) I am beyond concerned for this baby. Unless they both completely change their current lifestyles this child is going to have a mediocre life at best and I am not dealing with that. My oldest nephew is a very smart child, but they do not spend time with him teaching him things. They don’t take the boys out for experiences, basically the only place they go is shopping, we live 30mins from the beach and neither of them have ever been. The 3 year old is beyond coddled and is still taken out in onesies all the time, he is referred to as Bubby and is completely emotionally clingy and dependant on his mother and barely talks (he might say 4-5 individual words – no sentences) – there is not a medical reason for this, it is purely because they have not spent time teaching him things. They have just magically expected him to develop this stuff on his own as he grows. Neither boy has any kind of schedule and will sometimes be up until all hours of the night.

But then stupidly even after saying everything I have above, when my Mum said she had talked to her about the fact she needs to really think sensibly and that she does have ‘choices’ and whatever she decides is her choice alone – I couldn’t process it. I couldn’t process the fact that someone would be lucky enough to fall pregnant, but be so irresponsible and lazy that they can’t make an effort to get their lives together so that they can have it. That they would choose the easy way out.

Oh god I have to stop. I can’t. I am getting to upset about it again.

So basically I went through the motions, I made dinner, I ate dinner, I hid in the back room and watched Netflix and ate a LOT of chocolate, I brushed my teeth and went to bed. This morning I got up, brushed my teeth, had a coffee, Hubby tried to talk to me about it and I changed the subject, I caught up with my WordPress reader and then went to work. Once at work, work me emerged and got business done. But now, now I am home again and at home the problem is real and I don’t know how to deal with it yet. I want to eat everything, can I eat the world? On top of everything else I have weird achy feelings in my lower abdomen, they are really weird and I haven’t felt anything like it before. It is almost like when you get bloating before AF, but it is only in my lower abdomen. Is this some weird pre-AF Clomid side effect too? Or is hiding my emotions just wrecking havoc on my body?

I am really hoping the dam doesn’t break at some really weird time. Can you imagine me finding a handbag I adore and just bursting into sobs hugging it? My next blog may be from a padded room hahaha.

If any of you have some advice for me I would completely love to hear it. I am wide open to any kind of advice at the moment 🙂 Thank you for reading my rant and I am sorry if it upset anybody.


Netflix

So I am feeling a lot better and went back to work today. Still a bit tender in the sinus area and the area has heat coming out of it, but I am much better than I was that is for sure!

Over this period of illness I have learnt some things. I have learnt that I like to be left completely alone most of the time I am sick and I have learnt that my personality changes when I am sick and apparently my sick personality has weaknesses when it comes to addiction…

Here’s how my Netflix experience went over the course of my sickness…

Step 1: Thursday morning:

penny step one
Step 2: Thursday afternoon:

step 2

Step 3: Friday…

Penny addiction

Step 4: Saturday…

big_bang_theory_season2_screen03

Netflix is a wonderful and dangerous invention… beware 🙂 The funny thing was that I wasn’t even that interested in the show, infact there were times it annoyed the hell out of me, but every time an episode ended the next one just automatically began. IT JUST BEGAN argh!! It was interesting to see actors I knew (including some Aussie ones) pop up during some episodes. Who knew that Stephen Amell (AKA Oliver Queen in The Arrow series) was once a wannabe alpha wolf named Brady? I think I am making excuses now. Sigh… it’s trying to suck me back in.

One thing I will say I have been loving Netflix for is the ability to turn on what you want for the kiddies. My nieces and nephews drop over all the time with their parents and it is nice to be able to flick it on and find a movie or TV show within minutes that you are happy for them to watch and click play. Seriously it’s a lifesaver sometimes 🙂

Tell me of your worst Netflix binge 🙂


Sneaky Hobitses!!! They stoles it from me!!!

So, recently (meaning last Friday) IT did a “PC upgrade”. Now being that it was called a “PC upgrade” I honestly took the dictionary meaning of “upgrade,” which for Oxford is, “raise (something) to a higher standard, in particular improve (equipment or machinery) by adding or replacing components”… in short… better than what I had before, right?

Well, apparently the IT guys have a different definition because I now get random programs that are set to start when I turn on my computer that are completely useless to me and have nothing to do with my work and Internet Explorer… well the version I have now is 2 less that what I had on my old PC. I used to have IE11… back to 9 now. GRRR.

So this afternoon after having a very long day with a lot of annoying things happening that just kinda made me do this…

I truly to love my job, but these days happen to all of us :)

I truly do love my job, but these days happen to all of us 🙂

I kept getting this thing pop up (one of those auto start programs that I cannot uninstall because I do not have freaking admin access ARGH!) whilst I was trying to wrap up for the day… ended up being there til an hour after I was supposed to finish… like I said, one of those days. This thing shouldn’t really have annoyed me as much as it did, but hopefully they wll see the funny side of it as well as get that I am annoyed about it.

The email had the subject, “Sneaky Hobbitses” – yup, seriously. Then it went like this…

~

IT…

What is this thing that always comes up on my computer now?

Capture

 

 

 

 

 

Is the whole point of this thing to tell me that I have spent $18 on printing since the inception of my account? Is that the whole function of this annoying ass program?

If so, how do I get it off? What a waste of time and space when there is no reason for me to know this information. Ain’t nobody got time for this 🙂

Here I was thinking I was getting an upgraded computer… sneaky Hobbitses, my nice computer with IE11 and no annoying random programs… they stoles it from me and replaced it with something… less. Upgrade… pfft… I call shenanigans!!!

Kind regards,

DTB

~

Hmm… yeah. Reading that over now, I am thinking I really shouldn’t have pressed send. But come on, at least I didn’t send them pictures or something too, I could have made it a lot worse by adding the following:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Or this one… I like this one…

This works too…

So you see, it could have been worse.

Have you ever sent an email and wondered if maybe you should have saved the draft and re-read it tomorrow?

 


The Rescue of Johnny Depp

Dewey

Last night some douche pants left this little prince in the library car park. He survived the night in spite of some terribly cold weather and was found under the bins this morning.

He is now in the capable hands of multiple library staff who are well versed in animal rescue 🙂 Or are really good at Googling.

Naming however has become an issue; our collections manager has started calling him Dewey which let’s face it is pretty awesome. However due to the fact that his natural colouring makes it obvious that he wears eyeliner better than any of us I am calling him Johnny Depp we are also considering Jack Sparrow. I also feel that Johnny Depp would be an appropriate name seeing as though he has captured the hearts of almost all the staff and thus is now a Library celebrity 🙂 He has already made it on to our Instagram account which means he will soon be stealing the hearts of our patrons as well.

Don’t worry about this little one’s future as many of the staff have already put up their hands to house him. The staff member who won out is well versed in raising kittens and has even hand reared them before. He will have a kind and loving home with her and her family I have no doubt.


Easter Delights

Hi all! Happy Chocolate Day for tomorrow!

I know a lot of people don’t do gifts for Easter, but my family does. The little ones are easy, I always give them a new set of play clothes or semi good clothes (because they go through them so quick LOL) and a small chocolate. My Dad normally gets a DVD (this year I scored The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies for $15!!) and a small chocolate and Mum’s changes each year. Where I struggle is with my brothers and their partners, one of my brothers is a complainer and has a whinge no matter what you give him (seriously, I am often tempted to give him nothing) and there is only so many times you can repeat the same gift for the others… sour lollies for one brother, peanut M&Ms for his partner and lollies for the whiny brother’s partner.

So this year I was kinda over it and decided to get creative and do something a bit different. So I went shopping and bought 4 masonry jars with lids and straws, I then bought a mix of all the stuff they like and filled the jars. This way I felt that they were all getting a little Easter treat, but also something they could keep and use for awesome beverages 🙂

I then did some Google image searches and found a vintage looking Easter-y pic I liked and created name tags.

The tags I made, the names were written on the reverse side. Sorry I don't remember where I got the image from.

The tags I made, the names were written on the reverse side. Sorry I don’t remember where I got the image from.

All that was left to do was a little dressing with some pretty purple straw packaging I kept from something IT related Hubby got delivered and voila… Easter presents 🙂

The finished product!!!

The finished product!!!

Thinking outside the box and inside the jar hahaha. What Easter creations have you made this year???