About Me: Perfectionist

I have been a very bad blogger this week – mea culpa. I came down with a cold a month ago and it’s still here. It has affected my energy and my time management skills. That’s really my only excuse. I just wanted to apologise to you all and say that I am just so thankful for the Queen’s Birthday weekend that we just had here in Australia. Public holidays are now the highlight of my calendar. I work full time and so they are the only bit of extra I get unless I take some annual leave. I really needed an extra day off this week to try to kick this cold (it hasn’t worked but I’m sure a 4 day week helped).

Bring on the weekend! I plan on sleeping as much as possible and resting. Resting should be easy to do. It’s not. When you’re a perfectionist with a brain that never sleeps (so much so that my sisters have actually nicknamed my brain as if it’s its own person), it is hard to switch off and rest. That is my aim this weekend. I have some things to get done (washing, cleaning) but otherwise I’m going MIA.

How about you? Are you a perfectionist who can’t ‘rest’?

Soooo not a “car-girl”!

I hope everyone is travelling along well in their lives this fine Saturday afternoon. I’m currently sitting in a local café, surrounded by people engaging in the convention of the lazy Saturday afternoon chat with friends and family. I’m sitting here by myself, typing, however, having decided yesterday that I needed to prioritise writing on the weekends. Now, it’s not that I can’t write at home. I live with my sister, Dakota, her husband and their daughter. My niece is adorable – 16 months old and I love spending time with her. She is also at an age where she wants to be involved in whatever you are doing. So it’s hard for me to ignore her desire to play games and actually sit down and write. In summary, home presents a lot of distractions and if I want to get serious, I need to be serious about this and leave the house for a few hours on the weekend and write.

Today is my first attempt at this and I’m feeling pretty good about it. My soy cappuccino just arrived and it tastes wonderful. I haven’t had a real cup of coffee in approximately a month, living on the instant stuff at home, while I worked at repaying my dad back for a loan he gave me. I’m now debt free and celebrating with a late breakfast and a cappuccino out, all while meeting me writing goal for the week.

Getting back to the title of this post, you might wonder what this has to do with cars. Well, I wanted to let you know that I am not a woman, who invests energy in cars. I don’t have a fantasy car or a back up fantasy car. I have owned exactly two cars in my life – both Toyota Carollas. My current car was brand new in 2006 but that was a little while ago now. This week I decided that I needed to take better car of old Lola Bunny. She hasn’t been cleaned in about a year. I don’t keep litter in my car but as you can imagine, after a year of tracking in and out, the floor is pretty messy.

But, this is how much of a not-a-car-girl I am – I’m sitting here, typing, enjoying the aromatic blend of Arabica coffee beans while my car is completely cleaned and detailed by someone else. The thought of spending an hour cleaning the dirt off myself – well, I’d rather be productive and get some writing done.

Dakota would say that I’m cheating but she is pedantic about her car. She cleans it regularly and would never be able to afford people doing that on a regular basis. It would add up to too much dough out of the bank. I’m not going to start paying for a total detail each week but after a year of nothing, my car needed the works. I might pay for an outside wash once a month though. That’s far more feasible now that I’m out of the red and officially saving for a holiday in November.

Ooh! My late brunch just arrived. It looks pretty good too: Smoked salmon, dill yoghurt, sourdough bread, two poached eggs, rocket, tomato and pickles. Mmmm!

Have you ever done something like getting your car washed that could be labelled as cheating? I’d love to hear your stories.

Stay safe and enjoy your weekend!
xx

About Me: Pets

Odette

Having grown up on a farm, my life has always been full of pets. At one point in my life, we have 8 dogs, three horses, 15 chickens and 1 cockatiel. That was a busy house! I couldn’t imagine my life without pets. When I was sixteen years old, I went on exchange for 6 weeks to Berlin. It was an amazing experience and I came back home entirely altered with a new confidence and assurance that whatever life threw at me, I’d be able to handle it. It was also 6 weeks where for the first time in my whole life, I had absolutely no contact with animals. There were no cats or dogs in the apartment I was staying in and no neighbour’s pets to bond with. I was forced to go cold turkey and it just felt… wrong.

Molly

Animals had always been a huge part of my life and for the first time, I had none. By the fourth week away, my eyes would seek out any pet dog walking along the street and I was dying to visit the Berlin Zoo just to spend some time with animals. When I finally got home, all I wanted was a nap in my own bed and cuddle with my dog, Tiffany.

Currently, my house is a little bit of a menagerie – although let’s be honest, it’s always a menagerie. I have two cats and 1 cockatiel (yep the same one from several years ago). My dog, Molly, is currently living on my Dad’s farm, and loving life. She is 13 years old and so fit. She does not look 13! My sisters’ two cats also live with me, which makes it for a very busy house.

Juno

I still couldn’t imagine my life without my pets and I know that I will probably always have a menagerie at home. Just to be clear, I’m not one of those people who refer to them as my babies and carry them around like a child. Having parents involved in the Veterinary Industry meant that we were taught from an early age how to treat them well but also as the animals they are.

So, today, I’d love to hear from you. Do you have pets at the moment? If not, did you have them growing up? Tell me about them!

About Me: Michael Buble

Hi everyone!

I just wanted to send out a big thank you to those lovely people who decided to start following my blog. I look forward to getting to know you as we proceed down this new road together. I’m going to aim to post as much as possible each week, although my disclaimer is that there may be the occasional week where that’s not possible. Apologies sent in advance.

Today, I wanted to let you all know that I love Michael Buble’s music. Maybe that made me instantly unpopular with some people – sorry! It’s the truth. Give me some “Sway” or “It’s a Beautiful Day” and I’m instantly dancing. I also like to relax to “Cry Me a River,” “Home” or “Feeling Good.” I’ve been playing his stuff in my car and on my iPod ever since Sunday night, when I was fortunate enough to see him live, here in Melbourne. It’s not the first time I have seen him live though – it’s actually the fourth time. I would like to say that I have seen him EACH time he has come to Australia but that would be a falsehood. I missed his first tour Down Under.

While I loved every second of the concert, complete with wise cracks and laughter, I couldn’t help wondering how difficult it must be to live that kind of life. Musicians need to tour live to keep their careers going and the frequency of those tours seems to be dependent on when their next album is out. Not to mention the fact that those tours are international, which means visiting a lot of countries in a short space of time.
Couple that with the fact that they have basically left their lives behind in order to go on road in the first place and I can’t help but wonder about the stress it must put on relationships. I can’t imagine simply picking up and travelling for 15 to 18 months every two to three years. I might come back home and find that I no longer know my friends anymore!

Anyway, it was a thought that occurred to me. To Michael Buble, (let’s pretend for a heartbeat he’s reading this post) as a huge Aussie fan, I’m forever grateful for each time you brought your tour to Melbourne. You gave me some awesome memories from each of those concerts that I wouldn’t part with for anything like laughing and dancing with my best friend and sisters. Oh, and I’m in love with “To Be Loved.” I’m already very excited by your next album (whenever that arrives).

About Me: Australia

The thing that I like most about WordPress is the way you can categorise everything you post. It’s amazing and a feature that I am strongly in favour of. So… as you may have noticed, I have just added a new category, called ‘About Me.’ I have decided to post different things – little things, big things, interests and so on – as a separate type of post. I’m not one thing, one characteristic, one interest. I am many things and for the reader who wants to get to know me, I thought that utilising these categories would be the best way to do that.

So in my first ‘About Me’ post, I wanted to talk about where I live and where I grew up. I’m Australian and was born and bred in Melbourne. If you don’t know where Melbourne is, it is the capital city in the southern state of Victoria. Melbournians, as a rule, are fiercely loyal. We think Melbourne is the cultural epicentre of Australia (Sydney people disagree) and for the most part, we love the ironic weather patterns we are subjected to daily. I say ironic because in one 24 hour period we are liable to see all four seasons show up. For instance, this morning, being 6 May 2014, the weatherman said it was a brisk 10 degrees Celsius. Upon stepping outside the strong winds actually meant it was more like a frigid 6 degrees Celsius. (Don’t ask me about Fahrenheit – I don’t know how to convert it!) By lunch time, as I look out my office window the skies are blue and the sun is shining, although the wind remains chilly.

Melbournians take pride in their city’s functional layout and easy access via street trams (are they called rail cars in America?). If you compare a city map of Melbourne to a city map of Sydney, you will see a huge difference. I like to think (as a loyal Melbournian) that our city was planned whereas Sydney was not. A lot of foreign visitors know about Sydney – you know, the place with the opera house and the Sydney Harbour Bridge? – but they don’t know much about Melbourne.

Our state of Victoria is where Aussie Rules Football originated (originally called VFL but now it’s AFL). We host the Grand Final every year at the Melbourne Cricket Ground and let me tell you, if you want to experience AFL, you should come to Melbourne during Finals season in September. Footy fever is definitely humming through the city at that time of year and everyone has an opinion on who will win the Grand Final.

The Melbourne Cup, called the race that stops the nation, takes place here in November every year. The Spring Racing Carnival with the horses and the fashion are hugely popular nationally and internationally.

So, as I said, I’m a proud Melbournian but I didn’t grow up in the city. I grew up on a 152 acre farm about 45 minutes away from the CBD. My father has beef cattle and so, pets and animals were a way of life for me growing up. This is something that hasn’t changed about me. I currently have four cats living with me (three of which were rescues) and my gorgeous Golden Retriever senior citizen lives on my dad’s farm, much to her endless delight.

So I guess you could say I’m a quasi-farm girl, with a deep seated love for the city of Melbourne. I currently live in the suburbs though. Living on the land is now something that I miss. I miss coming home to an open fire in winter or having a gorgeous view to look out at as the sun sets. In my small townhouse, I don’t have a gorgeous view of anything, which is a shame. There’s nothing quite like sinking into a cushy couch after a long day at work with a good book in one hand, a cup of tea in the other, in front of an open expanse of green fields and gum trees.

Anyway, I will endeavour to post more things About Me as time goes on so stay tuned.