Privacy exposed

So last month with different things to do with the house and landscaping Hubby was calling me often at work asking me to move money here and there across different accounts so we could pay for things. Apparently whilst doing this one day I must have accidentally clicked the print icon and printed the screen I was on. Because I did not realise I had done this I didn’t go looking for the piece of paper.

Normally if someone finds printing on the printer that does not belong to them they put it to the side or if they know the owner they deliver it to them. But no…

Someone found this statement which had my name in bold letters at the top of the page, a list of all 5 of my accounts and their names (meaning mine and Hubby’s) (including our mortgage account) and instead of handing it to me or leaving it to the side of the printer they took it and put it on the notice board in the staffroom. Front and center for all to see my financials. Including recent transactions which showed my pay coming in too, so now everyone knows that. Let me be clear in stating that there is no way any team member would have thought this was the place to put lost print outs. It is 3 rooms away from the printer.

Two team members noticed it yesterday morning and ripped it down for me.

What an awful, malicious thing to do. What a dick!!! Management is furious, but completely impotent in this matter because we don’t know who did it, we’ll never find out unless they decide to continue whatever this BS is against me and escalate things.

I don’t get it though. I am not mean to anyone. Even when I stand up for myself or someone else I am not mean about it. This is awful. How dare someone expose such private information about me. Plus, why??? What could they possibly get out of it? There was nothing in the accounts. Are you trying to shame me because I am poor? I don’t understand! So weird!!!

There are only one or two women at work that are malicious enough to do something like this so I am pretty sure I know who it is. She won’t make eye contact with me and twice today I have walked towards her and when she has seen me she has changed direction. Then we went out for a staff luncheon and I made sure I sat next to her. She put her bag inbetween us and moved away angling herself away from me and did everything she could to avoid conversation with me without appearing rude. She has been fine with everyone else so I am pretty sure she was the one who did it.

Do you guys think this is the beginning of something and I need to look out for myself or just a one of heinous act?

 

Losing my habit

Many moons ago I was studying for my higher school certificate (HSC for the Aussies, final school exams that give you your marks to get into University for everyone else 🙂 ), I had always had issues with exam anxiety. It wasn’t that I didn’t study or didn’t try, I just got in there and somehow convinced myself things were trick questions or they wanted more than what was on there or had blanks. It was a bad time. My grandmother was also very ill and going through cancer treatments.

One day I went to visit my grandmother with my Mum and the doctor chose that day to tell us that she would not be getting better. I blocked up all my reactions and when we left the hospital I kept striding towards the car until my Mum yelled for me to stop. I sat down on a short wall and started crying. My Mum had her cigarettes sitting next to her and I just took one and lit it. That was the day I first started smoking.

I was a pretty considerate smoker I believe. I stood away from people and crowds when smoking. I held the cigarette away from myself and blew the smoke away from myself to reduce the amount the smell stuck to me. I would also eat a mint, wash my hands and give a spritz of perfume after a smoke and like any decent person I binned my butts.

Because my hubby, siblings and mother smoke I have always found it very difficult to quit or cut down. I would also use smoking as an appetite suppressant and didn’t feel I could quit and lose weight at the same time and because I was always trying to lose weight I never really quit.

I always thought I would quit when I got pregnant. For many years of trying I didn’t think of quitting. Then when we found out how much IVF was going to cost us I decided I didn’t want anything risking it not working and I just completely quit on February 15 this year. One day I smoked the next day I just stopped, that evening I was sitting at a table whilst my Mum and Hubby enjoyed a smoke and a cuppa together and it was hard, but I didn’t smoke.

I have now not smoked for 155 days.

I am so very proud of myself. It was not easy. It was in fact very hard to break a habit I had for over a decade. I feel I am healthier for it. I used to always get bronchitis in winter, I have not (touch wood) had anything awful so far this winter (although I also had the flu vaccine for the first time this year). Whilst all my colleagues have been falling around me I have marched on with sometimes mild flu symptoms. I have been an asthma sufferer for years and since quitting I have not had one attack. Not one use of my inhaler. That is incredible to me.

Between quitting smoking and the IVF meds I did put on about 8kgs (my IVF doctor was not pleased) and my eating was just out of control because I was using food to fill the smoking hole. Last week I signed up with weight watchers to help get my eating back on track. In the first week I lost 2.4kgs so I feel like this was definitely a good move.

I knew going in that quitting smoking would be a long road. I was prepared to put on weight and wait for my body to get used to being without cigarettes before attempting to lose it and now I am ready to build a new lifestyle that does not include smoking.

It was a massive part of my life. My husband who generally succeeds at everything he does lasted half a day. I am not mad at him for this because I know how difficult it is. I believe in him and know he will get there.

I have had difficulty because I used to use a smoke as a time of stress relief. Suddenly removing that from my life I believe had a bigger impact than the cravings. To deal I replaced it with watching Netflix and eating chocolate basically everyday. As a chocoholic I must admit I loved this, but my fat jeans did not. They no longer fit 😦 It also did not solve the problem because I was avoiding de-stressing by submerging myself in another world. It was all still there when I turned the TV off at night.

After our fresh transfer for IVF failed I went into a dark hole. I knew I needed to make changes to help my mental health and help me heal from this devastating result. So we took a break from IVF to allow my body to balance out all the hormones and we vowed to stop having timed intercourse for a couple of months (anyone who has had to do this knows what it does to your relationship and we have been trying to conceive for 4.5 years now) and I decided to make some changes.

So what has this loss of habit brought me?:

I no longer have asthma symptoms, I can breathe easier, I don’t get sick as often and if I do I get over it pretty quickly.

My decision to change my lifestyle began 155 days ago when I quit smoking. I knew I was in for a long journey, but so far it has totally been worth it. I have been going to Pilates for 3 weeks and love it. Yesterday I added in some treadmill work before Pilates which my body was not used to, but was very good to me. Pilates has also helped my headspace. I plan to increase the number of times I do it a week because I feel that this could provide me with the de-stress I have been craving. Long soaks in the bath have also helped with this and finding ways to spoil myself a little that has nothing to do with food or smoking has helped with the de-stress too.

The combination of quitting smoking and having a break from IVF has hubby and I connecting like newlyweds, we are coming up on 9 years together and 5 years married and I can with confidence say that our relationship is everything  have always hoped for in a marriage.

Whilst I put on weight initially I am now losing it slowly in a healthy way and filling my body with awesome nutrition to support the beautiful embryo we have frozen just waiting for transfer.

Making the decision to lose this habit has had many positive impacts in my life. It was one of the bigger challenges I have faced in life and I am proud of myself for overcoming it.

 

Response to the discover topic The Things We Leave Behind

 

 

The saga of A & E

I am posting from a place of serious tiredness today. I am not entirely sure my brain is functioning in any sort of what you would call ‘normal’ capacity lol.

Last night my brother took ill and had to go to hospital and his 3 and 4 year old daughters came to stay with us. I didn’t know this had happened until I checked my phone when I finished work at 5pm. Then I raced to get the shopping for dinner done and got home to enjoy the onslaught! Honestly I don’t know how my brother and his girlfriend do it. Major props to them. I adore these girls I truly do, but seriously they are cheeky, devious little ninjas who will always find the most inappropriate thing to play with and make the biggest mess possible.

I arrived home and immediately asked what was in E’s (3 year old’s) hair. Apparently she had decided her hair needed to be shampooed so got into the shower, pumped the heck out of the shampoo bottle and smeared it all through her hair.

It was like this! She went full Shia LaBeouf on me!

The she decided she wanted to play a game that was housed in a ziplock bag so instead of asking for help like a normal person she chewed the bag until she could get to the parts inside it! Seriously you can’t make this stuff up. Her sister A (4 years old) was actually pretty well behaved this visit, I didn’t have to talk to her too much for misbehaving except when she started acting out because E was getting attention for being naughty. A has been pretty well behaved at our place since she found out that if we threaten the time out corner we mean it lol. But she was still trying it on a little bit and not doing what she was told and whining a lot and interrupting and ignoring/pretending not to hear you if you were asking her to do stuff she didn’t want to – you know, normal kid stuff.

Back to E for while… apparently E has spontaneously developed a fear of the toilet. Before I came home she had already weed somewhere and after I got home I was desperately attempting to wrangle them both and throw together homemade pizza, E was playing with the doll house then climbed up on the kitchen bench. I told her to get down, there was some back and forth, but in the end she did it, then I see watery stuff everywhere. It took me a bit to figure it out (I actually figured I must have spilled something whilst cooking because why would I think the kid peed on the kitchen counter?), I realised there was more watery stuff on the floor and I could literally trace it to her. I talked to her about it (she is advanced for a 3 year old and truly knows she should be using the toilet) and asked why she didn’t go to the toilet to be told she “didn’t want to” and that she liked to wee in her pants. So we clean up her and everywhere she has been since she peed and I go back to making pizza. In the end something that usually takes me 10-15 mins to throw together took an hour by which time they were taking turns attempting to steal things from the pantry and fighting with each other and whinging about being hungry. Again normal kid stuff haha. Then there was the whole A standing on the table throwing a basketful of toys around the place whilst screaming with joy. That was so entertaining!

Pizza is cooked and even though they both adore pizza there is all this kerfuffle and a bunch of cajoling to get them to sit down to eat it. E is actually placed in her seat whilst claiming she doesn’t like pizza because it is too spicy. I go to the kitchen and debate with myself whether to try and make my mini pizza or just eat their scraps. Mum convinces me we should do the former, so we embark on that mission. Minutes later E comes running through the house with a piece of pizza flying about in her hand, I catch her and lead her back to the table whilst wondering if it is legal to restrain a child until they finish dinner. I finish making my pizza in record time and bung it in the oven. The girls are behaving because you know… food. My pizza is done and Mum and I ask Dad to keep an eye on them so we can eat.

Haven’t even gotten one bite out of my pizza before hearing Dad yelling. Apparently his view of ‘watching’ the girls is somewhat literal and he is barking orders from his chair whilst E merrily dances on the kitchen bench. I get her down and rowse on her, turns out they have finished their pizza. I give them a second slice. I decide to gobble down my pizza whilst watching a bit of netflix or something and go hide in Hubby’s office. Only to find that his recent rebuilding of the computer has meant everything works weird. So I sit alone quietly in the office eating my pizza and ignoring the thunder of little feet for awhile until I feel sane enough to emerge and help Mum and Hubby (who is now home and has fixed said computer issues).

The girls are bathed. E’s shampoo is properly removed from her hair. A decided to get her hair all wet in the bath so her hair is all messed up too. Both girls have very long hair, A’s is waist length and E’s isn’t far behind. When you have two little girls with very long blonde hair and a serious tanty throwing hate of the hairbrush you wish long and hard that they were yours and you could just shave it all off hahaha. After many months of work with them I am now the only person in the family (including their parents) that they will reasonably behave with whilst getting their hair done. I put in the ‘magic spray’ (AKA detangle spray) which ‘magics away all the knots’ and then when we are all done I do their hair very nicely (usually plaits because that is the best hair style to avoid knots for many hours hahaha) and we all look at their hair and ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’. I still get some tantys during the process and so it can be a very long process. E wasn’t too bad because she was really tired by this point. She was complaining about it and I said she could go to bed as soon as I got her plaits in which she apparently took literally because about 10 minutes after I was done we found her in bed fast asleep.

A took longer. She is not into bed time and fights it like a pro! Her hair took a while because it was seriously bad guys. There were parts in there I thought I might have to cut out because they were matted with whatever she had managed to get stuck in it, but with a mixture of part conditioner part water I managed to work it all out. I plaited her up and then the had multiple stories and was put to bed, then put to bed again, and again. This happened a few times before I stood outside the door and sent her back to bed the second I heard her get up. Then she took to yelling out, she got in trouble for this and I told her if she woke her sister she would be in the corner for a long time. Eventually she drifted off at some ungodly hour at which point the clean up commenced and I poured myself into bed sometime around midnight.

In the morning I wake up to a massive crashing sound and E screaming blue murder. I come out to find Mum cleaning up her cup of tea after E apparently climbed up onto the kitchen bench (seriously she is obsessed) and when told to get down she somehow Chuck Norris’d Mum’s tea all over the kitchen.

This was after she peed in Mum’s wardrobe, I’ve heard of people peeing in wardrobes when drunk, but this was the first time I have heard of it happening because someone was looking at pretty jewelry.

E and A then proceeded to argue much of the morning over normal kid things like stealing each others chocolate milk and whatnot.

Then they were playing nicely on Mum’s piano until E wet herself and the antique stool *facepalm* at which point I put her in the corner. She screamed and cried and I got her calmed down and asked her if she understood why I was going to put her in the corner. She said because she didn’t go to the toilet, I agreed and reminded her that I had said if she did it again that she would go into the time out corner. She went quietly, but tried to make a game of it and got pretty sullen when she realised I wasn’t having any of that. After her 3 minutes in the corner I told her she could come out and speak to Nan and she apologised for weeing on her chair.

Within 10 minutes we found her just as she was hopping off the kitchen bench again with a little bottle. Turns out it was nail polish remover and she wanted to ‘play’ with it. SIGH.

By this time it was 12pm and I had to go to work so I wished my Mum well, kissed and hugged the girls and came to work. I truly do adore my nieces through all of this, yes they can be naughty and cheeky and cause great messes and damage, but I love them so much and often get a lot of giggles out of their antics 🙂

I have no clue what transpired after I left or what condition I will find my parents and the house in when I return hahaha. GULP!

 

Long time, no blog.

There has been a LOT going on lately and my head is very full of all the ‘adulting’ I have had to be doing which hasn’t left much time for me to sort through the things that have been happening.

Most important of all is the fact that we very unexpectedly lost my uncle a couple of weeks ago. He was very fit, he did have diabetes, but it was controlled by insulin and diet. Initial results (which my cousin received the night of his funeral) indicate a heart attack. He hadn’t even retired yet. The whole thing was way too sad and I cannot write too much about it because to be honest I haven’t dealt with my feelings about it yet. Everything during that time became about supporting my cousins and their kids and supporting my Mum and Dad and just getting done what had to be done. My Uncle was not a blood relative, he married my Mum’s sister, but he was best friends with my Dad from a very young age (apparently they pretty much lived in each others pockets from the age of 12 or 13) and my Dad met my Mum because of my Uncle. I would literally not exist if it were not for this man.

He was a wonderful person, he always made time for you and even after he moved interstate (if you were to drive it would take 20 hours) he would call often. He always reminded me of Robin Williams, a soulful person who was quick to smile, always had time for others, quite compassionate, true family man, worked too hard, loved deeply and had sparkly blue eyes. I still need to make time to feel my grief for him. I have certainly had my moments, the funeral was one of the hardest moments of my adult life. Though my family are somewhat spaced around the place now (Russia, Western Australia, Far North Queensland, Sydney, etc.) so we do not see each other as often as we would like we have true love for one another. When a member of a family like ours passes away, the funeral is a truly heavy thing. It is like thick grief soup. In saying that the wake was a celebration of his life, we ate, DRANK, shed some tears, laughed, hugged, shared stories and loved.

Other things that have been keeping me busy lately include house stuff, fertility stuff, work stuff, healthy living stuff, preparing to move and some other family stuff. I shall save these for another day though because I feel like my Uncle Peter deserves his own post. Love you Petie!

In the wake of his passing I have been thinking about how friends and family are such a vital part of our life and have been making an effort to get in touch with people I haven’t seen for awhile just to say, “hey, how you doing?”. I’d like to suggest you all contact one person today that you haven’t talked to in awhile. It might be two weeks, it might be two years, it cannot hurt to just send a quick text and say, “hey, just checking in. How you doing?

 

 

It’s okay to be me

This post was inspired by WordPress’ Daily Prompt ‘It Builds Character’.

I have already accidentally deleted this entire post twice because of strange things that the new interface does. I am unimpressed to say the least. So I will now write this in Word and copy paste 🙂

When I think back on characters that have had an effect on me, there is one in particular which stands out as being integral to the person I have become.

When I was young (prepubescent young), I was already aware that I was different from most of the other girls in the class. Whilst they were obsessed with ‘The Baby Sitters Club’ and ‘Sweet Valley High’ (both of which I read and enjoyed, but mainly they just gave me numbers for the read-a-thon each year) I was off reading ‘Matilda’ and authors like R.L Stine (not the Goosebumps books, the advanced stuff) and Tamora Pierce. I had great access to YA novels because my Mum was a Teacher Librarian at a High School.

Other girls my age wanted to play makeovers and weddings and I wanted to ride bikes and run through the bush. The girls I knew made games of imagining their weddings to a member of the Backstreet Boys or Hanson whilst I danced about the house singing to the score of ‘The Pirates of Penzance’.

Jo March from ‘Little Women’ was a trailblazer, in a time where it wasn’t proper for women to run through the woods, traipse about through brooks without shoes, yell out to or play with boys or write epic novels she did it all and everyone who mattered accepted her and loved her for who she was. Everything about this girl/woman appealed to me. It would be fair to say that as a young girl my biggest dream was to grow up to be Jo March. She was a hero to me. To this day she remains one of my favourite literary characters. In fact Jo March is probably the reason I have the guts to write online.

Jo also appealed to me because of her love of the written word and her strength of character and independence. You have probably noticed from my reviews of my books for 52 Books in 52 Weeks that I have a thing for strong female characters that shuck the norm and stereotypes. I still believe that this love of certain qualities in this character made me try to develop those characteristics in myself. As soon as I was old enough to work (14) I got an after school job. This made me feel amazing because I didn’t have to ask my mother to buy me things like deodorant and tampons (you have no idea how amazing it was as a 14 year old to not rely on someone else for your tampon stash!), this was my first step to real independence and I liked it. I saved my money from my job and when I graduated I paid my own way on a holiday with my friends, that is a pretty huge thing for an 18 year old to be able to do. Then when I was 19 I moved interstate to the desert, yup I moved to Ayers Rock, it was arid, hot, confronting and I was pretty innocent at the time (I hardened up quick though – read more about that here), I had no safety net there. I knew no one. It was the bravest and most awesome thing I think I have done. It was an amazing experience and I am so glad I did it to this day!

I believe I have a lot to thank Jo March for. I have previously written about my love of both the book and movie and after reading back over this post I realise how big an impact my love of this character has had on me. As far as role models go I am pretty proud that she has been and continues to be mine.

 

My curly haired Adonis

Warning: Some people might find this post uncomfortable to read because it is about lady parts 🙂

The other day I reached a new level of love and appreciation for my Husby, during the day I had a very slight itch in my nether regions, but it died off and so I never thought about stopping on the way home to consult a Pharmacist.

It’s very cold here at the moment and due to the fact it was a chilly 2 degrees outside I put the electric blanket on 30 minutes before we went to bed so it would be toasty warm for us. Now I am not sure why the delicious warms aggravated the situation [and I don’t care why it happened as long as it never happens again], but for some reason it did and all of a sudden I was in significant pain and itching like crazy. I have had thrush before, but this was like the Hulk version – seriously, bad (but not green, I must emphasise that NOTHING was green!

Completely mean, but DEFINITELY NOT GREEN!

I tried to manage it on my own with some Googling (yes the web doctor thinks I have cancer) and an ice pack – yes an ice pack… in 2 degree weather. What was I thinking? I’ll tell you what I was thinking, I was hoping with all my being that my twinkle cave would get frostbite and fall off. The ice calmed the itching slightly, but the pain was still horrible.

Queue my superhero checking out my lady flower to give his expert opinion of “I think it looks normal”, my response of, “trust me this is not normal, it has to be Hulk thrush or something”. He asked if I had a cream or medication for it, I replied sarcastically that of course I kept a stash of beaver cream for exactly this situation (I feel quite bad about this now, but at the time I had little patience). He calmly started Googling, I tried telling him I had already done that and tried everything, he ignored me which just added to my muffin pain fuelled rage, “What are you doing? Please tell me you are not playing a fucking game right now!” he shook his head no. So I ignored him for a bit and just lay there clutching an ice pack to my crotch feeling ridiculous, in pain, exposed (well obviously) and vulnerable.

Then I realised Husby was getting dressed, “what are you doing?? Where are you going?”

“I found a 24 hour chemist” he replied (at this point it was 12.30am), “I am going to go get some stuff to help”

“Wha…what?” I stuttered, “Where is it?”

“It’s about a 35 minute drive, I’ll be as quick as I can” he went to walk out of the room.

“Wait” I said, “Really? Are you seriously going to go to a pharmacy 30 minutes away at 1am and buy me vagina medicine?” he shrugged and replied,

“Sure, why not? That’s how I roll” he laughed and walked out the door.

I was left mystified as I realised I had the best Husby ever created, many of my girlfriends Husbands won’t even buy tampons at the supermarket and here is my curly haired Adonis off into the dark of night seeking a cure for my punaani’s ills. He came back an hour later triumphantly clutching antihistamines and thrush cream, I am not sure what the antihistamines were for, but they knocked me out for a couple of hours which was nice and the cream felt like when you put aloe vera onto sun burn…. I could almost hear the sizzle as my map of Tasmania cooled.

Best. Husband. Ever. 

Bum vs. Bottom

So I picked my (almost 3 year old) nephew up from preschool the other day, this is not an overly often occurrence, but it is close to home and he loves when I do so sometimes I pick him up on the way home from work and let him once again show me everything about his school. This day I decided to do it because it had been a long ass day and I could really use some Hendrix sized hugs, turns out I picked the right day. I come in the door and hear him bellow out my name and see a streak of toddler as he comes tearing across the room and flings himself into my arms. After a freaking amaze balls hug I put him down and he pulls me over to the fish tank chattering on about the fish and the shark (toy) and the fish flowers (tank plants) etc.. Here’s the interesting thing about my nephew, he was slow to learn to talk, but now he loves talking to anyone who will listen… at home; apparently at school he doesn’t say much of anything and when he does he gives one word answers, it’s something we are working on at home and with the teachers and we think it is either a shy or confidence thing. Well… not this day… His teacher came up to me as he was dragging me around the room showing me different things and asked to speak to me. She said that Hendrix had spoken a whole sentence with her extremely clearly today, “that’s fantastic” I said, his teacher looked uncomfortable Teacher – “Um yes it is, and we are so glad that he is starting to feel comfortable talking around us here at school so we don’t want to discourage that, but the sentence he said wasn’t the best thing he could have chosen” uh-oh Me – “Oh, okay, what did he say?” Teacher – “We were sitting on the floor and I was playing with some coloured balls with him and I put one behind my back and said to him ‘where is the red ball?’ He pointed at my back and I brought it back out and said, ‘you’re right, here it is!’ He then put the green ball behind his back and I asked him where the green ball was and he pointed and said, ‘up Hendrix bum’, he then pulled it out from behind his back with a smile and exclaimed ‘here it is’”

Apparently green ball went caving
http://clubpenguin.wikia.com/

Me – Simultaneously horrified and trying desperately not to laugh “Oh my god, I am so sorry I don’t know where he got that from” Teacher – “Look I think it was done really innocently, I don’t think he even meant it as rude because there was no cheekiness in it. The thing is that we don’t encourage the use of the word ‘bum’ at school anyway so…” Me – “I’ll talk to his parents” Out of the mouths of babes… Between my two brothers I have 2 nieces and 2 nephews, both parent pairs have brought them up referring to their bum as a bum rather than a bottom. I was always brought up to say bottom, but my Mum and Nan were all about the young lady manners. I do not feel that the word ‘Bum’ is rude and it is an acceptable term in Australia for bottom which is considered more English, where do you stand on the Bum vs. Bottom debate?

I have no problem with a good bum 🙂
http://www.panmacmillan.com.au/

…but some just prefer Bottom
Original pic from http://cheerybeggar.wordpress.com/2012/10/12/the-wisdom-ofnick-bottom/

                         

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Please also feel free to share when your tots mouths have landed you in hot or embarrassing water 🙂

Roaring laughter daily prompt

Standing on my soapbox

So I was trawling around the web this morning and came across two things that bugged me. The first was this video:

I have to say I loved how this dude talked about it. I have never actually seen either show before, but he is completely right about the double standard it is apparently not at all a moral issue that she welcomed half naked strippers onto her set that she then kissed, but it is a moral issue for two men to kiss on television. This woman has issues, honestly I have no problem with either, although to be fair I do not know when her show airs – if it airs at a time where young children are watching then I do have an issue with them parading strippers around because I find that kind of blatant sexual imagery unnecessary on general programming that children watch.

Here is what I have an issue with… did this man do a brave thing? Yes, he did and in my opinion that is the problem! I believe there is something seriously wrong in our society when in order for this man to speaking openly about his sexuality he had to be brave.

Then I saw this video:

I made it to 4 mins, honestly I wanted to turn it off way earlier than that, but I persisted… until I saw the ignorant bigot couple that popped up around 3:45, I got so upset I stopped the video. Prior to posting it I have now watched the entire thing and I did find a beautiful beacon of hope in there at the end, all the other people in this video need to be sent to tolerance school!

Please do not take this post as a stance against faith; I think faith is an amazing thing to have. Faith is beautiful, it is belief, it is love and it is hope. However, I believe there is a huge difference between someone who has faith and someone who has religion. Some people use religion as a shield to hide behind in an attempt to hide their discriminations, this is not acceptable, you cannot blame religion for making you a bigot, that’s just not fair and it’s not right. It is actually incredibly offensive to those that do have faith to see people twist the messages of love, support and acceptance that having faith should provide.

http://pixels.com/featured/trees-of-faith-hope-love-triptic-cindy-micklos.html

This debate is not something I usually talk about because my opinions aren’t others and I don’t like people preaching at me about what the bible says. I know what the bible says guys; I went to a Catholic school… I’ve read it. But the bible says a lot of kinda crazy things that pretty much everyone ignores; how about don’t cut your hair or beard? Or, no eating or touching pig carcasses? No tattoos, no divorce, no braids, no gold, no pearls, no shellfish… the list goes on. Unfortunately with Tony Abbott now in “power” in Australia this is a conversation that is in everyone’s face almost daily… so here is my 2 cents worth… this is what I believe:

I believe every human on Earth has the right to love, they have a right to happiness and as long as they are not hurting others in the process (to be clear I mean going all crazy stalker) they should be allowed to revel in that love peacefully.

There is so much hate and hurt in our world already… why as a species are we so insistent on adding to it?

Thank you Mr. T.

http://theteachingmusic.com/

Queen Latifah:
And the winner of the 2014 Grammy for Best New Artist goes to… CatT.

The audience goes wild and my music fills the theatre as I throw my arms around my Hubby for a massive smooch and then make my way to the stage. Naturally I pause along the way to high five Adam Lambert and pound fists with Dan Reynolds. I make it to the stage and by some miracle do not stage a re-enactment of Jennifer Lawrence’s Oscar fall, I embrace and pay homage to the amazing Queen Latifah and accept my amazing award. I turn to the mic and clear my throat whilst trying to subtlety wipe away tears of joy.

Oh Jen, you fall so gracefully 🙂

Me:
Wow! Thank you. This moment… means more than I could ever convey in one acceptance speech.

I came here tonight fully prepared to bow down to any one of the amazing and talented nominees as they won this title; don’t worry I am not suggesting you need to bow to me. The thing is, no matter how hard we push and work and pour sweat, blood and tears into our work, at no point will you ever sit there and go… yeah, I got this in the bag… come at me Grammy. As one of the nominees for this award tonight I found myself in such esteemed company and I wish to thank each one of you for the amazing contributions you make to this industry.

I must also thank Universal Music Australia for taking a chance on an unknown artist from South-West Sydney, for believing in me, for hearing me and my music and helping me translate who I am for all the world to hear. Thank you for fine tuning me because God knows I needed it.  

To my fans, without you there is no way I could be here. Thank you for sharing this journey with me and for seeing something in my music that you love. I hope you continue to be touched by my music and I will do all that I can to keep this train going.

Mum & Dad… thank you for letting me play music too loud and for not yelling at me when I then sung over my too loud music with my even louder voice. Thank you for inspiring me creatively. Mum, thank you for always being my editor and grammar Nazi, you are my guiding light.

Mr. T. … Thank you for being who you are, thank you for being my soul mate and for keeping me laughing for the past seven years. Thank you for encouraging me to sing and not being afraid to tell me when I was flat, thank you for letting me listen to any genre I want and for letting me play Adam Lambert’s music in the car really loud… thank you for learning the words so you could sing along too 🙂 Thank you for missing me singing around the house when I go away, thank you for missing it so much you learned every Adele song so you could sing them to stop yourself being lonely without me. Thank you for loving me, thank you for being my best friend and always being there, thank you for your support. I know you are happy sitting down there right now… really happy, because we are married… and being married means half of this award is yours. Congratulations on your Grammy baby 🙂

Thank you all.

 Inspired by the Daily Prompt

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Relationship potholes – Baggage check

Daily Prompt from the Daily post:

We all have complicated histories. When was the last time your past experiences informed a major decision you’ve made?

Just over seven years ago I met my Husband and we became friends, at the time I had just started seeing another guy. We had gone on a few dates and he was a really nice guy (let’s call him David), he had a great job and earned incredibly good money (approx. 90K p.a.). After about a month I had realised that whenever I went out with David he usually managed to find a poker machine at some point in the night and spend a bit of time there. This was a serious red flag for me as the last two men I had dated had hidden their poker machine love for some time into the relationship, but then two days after they had been paid they were out of money and looking for permanent loans from their girlfriend AKA me.

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I had already been aware that my attraction to my new friend was steadily growing and I didn’t feel that was fair on David, so I had some thinking to do.

After the experience of my last two relationships I had serious baggage when it came to any kind of gambling, I had just seen too much of my money go into that coin slot and even when my ex’s won they didn’t pay me back the money I had loaned them.

The worst experience was one night my then boyfriend said he was going to the bar to get a beer, I asked if he could get me a coke while he was there, he then asked me for some money to pay for it. I only had a $50 on me so I gave him that and off he went. Lines at bars can be really long so it wasn’t until the time reached 45 minutes that I started to worry, I went looking for him and found him at the poker machines, he handed me my drink and I looked at it in dismay, because the pokie area was also the smoking area, my drink had gathered some friends in the form of cigarette ash. I pointed this out to him, he suggested I get a new one as it was only $2, I asked for my change so I could and he looked at me surprised and said, “Oh did you want the change?” Now quite aggravated I replied,

“Well I assume you used my money for your beer too so that was $4, my ash coke was $2, that’s $44 change… naturally I would want $44 in change”

“I don’t have the change” he said

“Why? What happened to it?” I asked. He gestured to the poker machine that had only $5 credit left on it, “you put MY money into a poker machine?” by this point I was raising my voice.

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“Well, yeah. Is that a problem? It was just change” I was completely shocked and couldn’t understand why he wasn’t in the least contrite.

“Are you kidding me? How could you think it was okay to put someone else’s money in a poker machine? Part of that ‘change’ was supposed to pay for a taxi home from the train station. I now have to walk two kilometres home in the dark! Does that sound like a problem to you?” He then had the audacity to get made and said,

“I thought we were going by the whole ‘what’s mine is yours’ thing, I’m so sorry that $44 is more important to you than your partner having fun” at that point in my life I was stupid, insecure, young and naïve. I was stupid enough to believe it was a mistake because he’d had quite a bit to drink and that it wouldn’t happen again. I am cringing right now because I can’t believe HOW STUPID I WAS!!!!!

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I learnt a huge and harsh lesson from that relationship and I was determined to never make the same mistake again. So when David started showing a penchant for gambling alarms were screaming in my head. I decided I didn’t want to risk it and broke it off with him. We parted amicably and still interact on Facebook, it turned out he didn’t have a problem with gambling so I felt bad for judging him prematurely, but at the time I couldn’t see past my past experiences.

Silver lining for both of us though – eventually I started dating my Husband after we both realised being friends wasn’t enough for us and David went on to meet a lovely lady who he is now engaged to.

So everything (luckily) ended up happy sparkle time 🙂

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