I know my LJ has become one big tumbleweed (I'm a bad person, I know), but I've just had a chance to sit down and attempt to catch up with all your lives and Miss ginmartini 's holiday talk has forced me to blog, because:

WE'RE GOING ON HOLIDAY!!!

In August.  For 2 whole weeks.

And yes, we're going to NZ again, and yes, we're staying in Wanaka again but hot damn!!! Snowboarding again!  2 weeks where I can go to bed at 9pm if I feel like it, and I don't have to think about work!  

I'm beginning to think that 2 weeks off out of the year may not be enough to keep me sane.  Hmmm. 

This last month is killing me though.  I can feel all my muscles screaming because they're so tense and wound up (my massage therapist can only do so much!!!), and I'm getting really cranky.

Anyway, I should go because it's my second day "off" (I'm working 5 til 9 at another shop though!) and I haven't done anything I wanted to do.

THE LIST:
Washing
Put away the 3 loads of washing that are dry
Tidy the bomb site that is the living room (although cleaners came today, hurrah!)
Start to pack things I won't need in the next two months
Do filing from work that I've not done for, ahem, 2 months.
Gear up for HOLIDAY!
After holiday, gear up for the big MOVE!  Into our OWN HOUSE! Well, our own mortgage, anyway!

It's do-able.

See you later, kids!!!

Cat xoxo

First of all, this is a really beautifully sad song by Kate Nash, "We Get On".  Every time I hear it I'm so glad that I'm not single!!!  Not that being single is bad, but it's moments like that that make you hate the whole dating game...

Secondly:  conversation with me (Cat) and the Apparently Licky Ant (ALA) while we were in bed this Easter long weekend enjoying a lie in:

Cat (semi-serious, semi-hysterical):  Ant! I'm nearly THIRTY!  What have I done with my LIFE?!?!?!
ALA: Um...let me see, you've gone to uni, gotten a degree that's put you in a good job, travelled extensively, worked interstate & overseas, bought a house, have a dog who loves you and the man of your dreams? *cheesy grin*
Cat:  Well if you put it THAT way...

I love my boyfriend.

He also forgot that I have my health, a family who loves me and supports me, and fantastic friends.  Sometimes you need to sit back and take stock of a situation.

We're teaching our dog how to bark on command, in the hopes that it'll also mean we can teach her to NOT bark inappropriately.

So we hold up a treat, and say "Speak!" and she goes, "Rrrr.  Ruff!" 

It is the cutest thing.

Ant's car has been parked outside our house for a couple of months now.  It's unregistered and we have to make arrangements for it to go to a wreckers.  As Ant works mostly weekdays, it's taken some time to get it sorted, and it's still not really sorted.  Last Friday night at 8:3opm we had a notice stuck to the windscreen from the council saying that local residents had complained and if we didn't move it it would be towed within 24 hours.

First of all.  Friday at 8:30pm.  PM!  Secondly, that was the Friday before the Adelaide Cup long weekend.  Thirdly, we had cleaned it out a week before, when our next door neighbour came out and said "Is this your car?"  Ant and I, sifting through glovebox crap and CDs WERE tempted to reply, "No, we're just looters, move along," but replied in the affirmative.  Whereupon he said "Oh, well can you move it soon, because this (gesturing to pavement plants etc) needs a clear up."  We said yes, it was getting sorted.

Did he knock on our door, since he knew it was our car?  No.  Did he slip a note under our door?  No.  He rang the council to get it towed. 

This is the same neighbour we have to listen to having sex every Friday night.  And he's old and the sex lasts for literally 15 seconds.  Do WE complain to the council that our neighbours fuck too loudly?  NOOO.  But now we're going to have to launch "Operation Erectile Dysfunction".  Well, more than it already is dysfunctional...

What we take umbrage at (besides all the above) is that a white Mitsubishi Magna was parked outside our house for 5 MONTHS.  And did he call the council then, when it was inconvenient to us?  No.  When we park in a space that is DIRECTLY OUTSIDE OUR HOUSE - council gets called.  Asshole.

Anyway, we're going to Melbourne for the weekend, and Ant's working late tomorrow, so we won't have time to get a wrecker out, and we DEFINITELY don't want to come home to a $5000 fine.  So we had to move the car.  A 1993 Holden VR Commodore.  That has no battery and won't even jumpstart.

For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of meeting us, I'm 5'3" and 60kg.  Ant's probably 5'7" and maybe 70kg.  Ant's Commodore is a big freaking thing and maybe 1400kg.  Let's think about those figures.  Then take into account that the wheels are slightly flat and the power steering doesn't really work, and we're looking at about an 8 point turn, then an uphill push into our driveway.  Not to mention I couldn't really turn the wheel without being in the car, so that leaves Ant pushing 1460kg like a maniac.

Then, with the nose out in the middle of the road, I called a halt, so a car could pass.  It crept past, then the dude pulled over and asked if he could give us a hand.  We hesitated, but then realised we needed another person and accepted with thanks.  And the car was pushed into our driveway. 

Thank you, nice stranger who stopped at 10pm at night solely to do a good deed. The world needs more people like you.

In the meantime, I may firebomb my neighbour's bedroom when next I hear him start grunting. 

I am unable to burn DVDs.  Boo.  I thought I could do it on my WonderMac, where stupid people can use technology, but I think I'm doing something wrong :(  Sadness.  Now I have to wait for my boyfriend to come home, like a helpless, useless female. 

Some horrible person rang us at 3am this morning, then hung up after we got to the phone within three rings.

I turned on the tv while waiting for a DVD and while Dr. Phil is on during the daytime, Lite n Easy ads bombard you.  My thoughts on this:  If you are able to be on the couch, watching Dr. Phil during the daytime, you are time rich enough to get your ass to a gym AND prepare healthy foods, including finding said healthy meals on the internet.  It's the people who don't have time to prepare food because they are out working who would probably find getting healthy meals delivered a great help.  Lite n Easy should put ads on during the late news, because sometimes, that's all the tv people get time to watch!

That woman, crying on the Biggest Loser "I'm not in this for the money!!!"  Well, in that case, why didn't you get a PT and a nutritionist and do it yourself, WITHOUT your humiliation being screened on national television???

My dog's asking for a walk, so I guess I'd better get changed and do something with her.

I'm actually a much happier person than this blog represents!

Soooooooo.  My dog's been scratching herself and licking her back knees or chewing on her back knees for about a week.  It's been driving us crazy and a lot of sharp "Minty!  Stop it!"s have been issued from these lips.  I went to the vet on Monday and told her I'd only recently treated her for fleas, so was it just summer itch?  She examined her joints and said that there was no pain, so it probably was just summer itch.  Then on Friday, I got so frustrated I rolled her over to examine her tummy, because she's constantly scratching her tummy and it's mainly fine white fur.  And there were these little black specks on it.  Ant suggested "Maybe it's flea poo?" just as a super fast critter surfaced on the fur and skittered between my fingers to disappear again.

Cue the Yukky Dance.  And Catherine completely losing her shit, as Minty was lying on our bed at the time.  There was a trip to the supermarket, two shampoos with flea shampoo (during the first rinse I had a dead flea appear, blech!), I wanted to firebomb the house, but Ant dissuaded me, so settled for washing everything that my dog ever came in contact with on the hottest, longest cycle we have.  Then I made the mistake of going online to read about fleas.  People, just say no.  I am sure that the flea "experts" online are the same morons that you read on forums who say things like "I've never snowboarded before, but I'm going for a season and I'm looking to buy a board.  I don't want a beginner one, because I don't want a board that I'll quickly outgrow.  I'm 5'8", very athletic and I've seen it on tv so I know I'll be good at it."  That one's true.  I read it.  I stopped reading forums after that because they are terrible for my blood pressure.

If you believe everything that you read, once your pet has fleas, your life is over.  They lay up to 50 eggs per day, and these eggs will lie dormant in the carpet/soil/bedding until the eggs experience vibration (indicating a host is nearby) whereupon they hatch.

I brought home a nit comb the day after the flea shampoo, and found one live flea and numerous dead fleas.  She's stopped scratching as much and we don't think there are any more (spot combing checks!), but I've bathed her again (cue unhappy Moodle!) and hopefully that will be the end of it!

I feel like my kid's come home with nits.

On happier news - we're going to Melbourne on Friday for a weekend getaway and we're going to Sound Relief!  Excitement plus plus plus!

Cat xoxo

Everything went off without a hitch - I am now the proud owner of 30 years of debt.  Hurrah!

WE BOUGHT A HOUSE!!!


Excitement plus!  We saw it at 10:30am and I'd signed the contract by 3pm.  Which sounds incredibly impulsive, but strangely enough there was no emotion involved, it just ticked all the boxes for me. Big yard, tick.  Lots of land, tick.  Extremely reasonable price for the land, tick.  Huge freaking mortgage now, tick.  I was also partially in shock, seeing as we'd only spoken to my lending manager at 9:30am (left the bank to look at the house, then went back to the bank to get finances sorted, then signed the contract!)

Ant was freaking out, and I guess I can understand why, but it was going to auction the next morning, so to put an offer in we had to move fast.  There's a tenant in, and we've told her she can stay another 6 months as a tax break for me (it's in my name alone so Ant can claim his first home buyer's grant later on down the track).  Also, seeing as we hadn't been intending to buy just yet (in fact, we weren't even sure if we would stay in Adders or move to Albury or compromise and move to Melbourne), we have no money, because I just bought my car:


So rental income is welcome while we stay on at my sister's and save for things like a fridge, a washing machine, etc.

So that's something exciting.  On the work front, I'm moving back to my previous workplace as a manager, so that's an exciting and slightly terrifying prospect.  I've not been in such a position of responsibility before!

So it's all happening!  Sorry I've been lack but today is my first day off after 6, and that 6 started off after just 1 day's break, so my life is a hideous whirlwhind of slavery to my Filofax, without which I would have no income because I WOULDN'T KNOW WHAT I WAS DOING.  Now I'm trying to organise income protection insurance and life insurance and I will have to write a will, which is a VERY SCARY prospect!

I have to go and sort my life out now, take care guys!

 

Cat xoxo

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Cat, at 10:40pm, finished a 12 hour day and angry at her stupidity in ruining a grand's worth of technology in one fell swoop.
(the Apparently Licky Ant in background determined to conquer Knights of Cydonia on Guitar Hero, goddamnit!)

I didn't cap the lid of my 1L water bottle properly before throwing it into my cavernous handbag last night.

Result?

My new phone and 32GB touch iPod are DAID. 

My new ipod, which I'd just put all my contact email and phone details into, because of my brilliant "I'll change phones and lose data but I'll always have my iPod!" reasoning.

Outcome?

I'm getting me an iPhone for my birthday, bitches!!!

Cat xoxo
 

My boyfriend just reversed his car into my sister's.  That is too, too funny - my ribs may never recover.

About to embark on holidays to NZ (after a practice run or two at Falls).  I'm excited and nervous at the same time - I really want to pick up snowboarding so I can share in something with Ant that is such a huge part of his life and who he is...but at the same time kinda wishing I took out that income protection insurance before I leave the country.

I hope I'm not as unco-ordinated as I remember being at school...

There has been a white Mitsubishi Magna parked directly outside our house for nearly 2 months now.  I'm not exaggerating, there's leaf mould growing on it.  We live on a narrow street with not much off street parking, so parking's pretty valuable and there's a pub next door, so on Thurs and Fri it's packed.  Nearly 8 weeks.  Has not moved an inch.  That's a pretty severe case of acute onset agoraphobia, to park your car then not go out for 2 months.

We rang the police and it's not "a car of interest" to them, so we have to just let it sit there.  It makes me furious when I have to come home late after working and find there's no parking anywhere on my street because this frigging car is RIGHT outside my house, and _I_ have to park 3 blocks away.

Tell me, is it wrong to want to torch it to see who claims it?