Saturday, March 31, 2007

It's been a little while.

I needed some time and space to think, and privately. Dad had a couple of stents in during his angiogram, which in itself is good, if it stops more of these hospital visits and makes him feel better. The fact that he needed them so soon after his bypass surgery is disturbing.

My Dad means the world to me and I needed to ponder life and death and how everything fits together for me at the moment. The good news is, that for me, life is fitting together ok. It could be better, but it could certainly be worse. I'm so glad I have BabyCakes in my life because I think that without him, I'd be lost.

We had a big disappointment with the sale of BabyCakes' Commodore falling through, again. Young guys these days don't seem to realise that when negotiating a cash price, they should actually have the CASH in their hands... we've had 2 guys negotiate a cash price and then have their finance fall through, one is still trying to find someone to give him the money... the other just wanted the price to be dropped to what they could get.........

Last night we went to a bridal expo, which is a very interesting experience. everything from a very hard sell to a guy who made me feel like I should put his business card back on the table... I doubt I'll buy from him even if he had anything I wanted.

BabyCakes and I would really like to get hot rods/muscle cars for our wedding cars, and anytime we've found anything close to it, they've been self drive hire cars. I don't understand it, I would have thought one would want to look after their babies... I certainly don't really want any of our families to be responsible for a car that is not their own. I just want some drivers to pick us off, drop us off, take some pics with the cars, drive us to the next spot and then I can forget about cars.... I guess I'll keep trawling hot rod websites and see who can help us out :)

I'm starting to realise that time is creeping on at this point, and the more we can get settled soon, the better off we will be. We had a celebrant turn us down due to not wanting to book a long weekend, which is fine... but our first "unavailability".

I haven't even contacted a dress maker yet, and I'm pretty sure I want a dress made for me. I think it might be time to start getting a bit serious.

We have a cake, and venues for wedding and for reception picked.... it's a good start.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

What a week - already!

Dad is in hospital again. More unexplained chest pains. Hopefully today's angiogram will help work out why this has happened again. Dad's doing fine, I think we're all more freaked out than he is!

I went and saw Dad last night and had a great meandering chat with him, which was fun. We talk about everything and anything, which is a good way to get a lot of topics covered!


On a completely different note, this little flash movie was brought to my attention. Cuke Skywalker, Darth Tater, Tofu-D2 - comedy gold I tell ya!! It cracked me up, and a giggle is always a nice way to start the day!

I've already sent this one round to a few people, because there was a chance to win a Trans Am! It's cute too, and what I think things would really be like if someone less cooler than The Hoff was Michael Knight!

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Happy St Patricks Day.

Last year this was one of the most stressful days of my life. Solicitors and bankers really do forget that they are talking about one's live and usually the biggest financial commitments one can make. My mortgage is one year old today!

I remember being very nervous, sitting in a flat full of boxes, hoping like mad that everything would go ok, and that I'd eventually get the phone call to say I could go pick up my keys.... MY keys... ones that no one else would have a copy of (in theory).

As soon as I did take delivery of those keys I was around here in a flash. I slept on a matress on a floor of my lounge room, with BabyCakes to share the moment. We'd had a bottle of bubbles and a fantastic floor picnic, it was very exciting. The move was left until Saturday morning, and my brother came to help. It was a relatively stress free move, except for the sofa bed - the boys tried to talk me into buying a new sofa, and leaving that heavy and over sized monster downstairs in the garage. I stayed strong, as my budget required, and they got help from my Dad and step-brother, and together, they got my sofa bed over the balcony rail (from the back of a ute) and into my lounge.

This year, "my" flat is now "our flat". BabyCakes and I are getting married and planning a life together. Congratulations BabyCakes, you are now half responsible for my mortgage!! Once we're married we can make it all legal like, since I'll be changing my name on the accounts anyway.

I've had a year of owning property solo. Today I publicly acknowledge that it is not solely mine any longer, but ours. Welcome to the I've-got-a-mortgage-which-means-I've-got-huge-scary-debt-club BabyCakes! It's fun!

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Last Week I Rediscovered My Local Library

It had obviously been a while since I'd been to a council library - they turned off my card. The guy behind the counter couldn't even find my record to reactivate it, he had to put in all my details again from scratch!

I had a sudden realisation last week as I scrolled through eBay, looking at all the things I "needed" to buy. I didn't have to buy these reference books - I could borrow them! After searching the elibcat, I was even more delighted to discover that they had cake decorating books at my local library! I had just saved my self considerable money by not having to buy so much wedding porn (as BabyCakes likes to call it). It also saved us both a lot of time at the cake tasting, because we had an idea of what we wanted before we got there and just had to worry about the finer details once we had a specialist with us.

Whilst wandering the shelves I also remembered that I can borrow novels... and borrow novels I did! Consequently, I've read a lot in the last week, a couple of days I read one book a day - not working* affords one all kinds of luxuries.

The first book I read was called "Faking It" By Jennifer Cruise. Despite being told not to judge a book by its cover, we all know we do, and this one was picked because it was bright and cheery - if we are looking for books that we've not read before, what else do we go on? I read the back and it seemed interesting, so the book came home with me. It was a fun and easy read. A romance novel without the Mills and Boon sensibilities. I enjoyed the quirky and bohemian household this story was set around. I easily read it in a morning, and will probably forget about it just as easily... fluff, but fun fluff.

Next I read "Rules of Passion" by Sara Bennett. This one was picked because after finding the first novel, I realised that I didn't have to buy cheap romance novels, I could borrow them and get my escapist fix. This one had a love heart sticker on the spine - Librarians helpfully put these stickers on to identify the genre of books for lazy people YAY! (I pity the person who picks up the copy of "Beauty's Release" that I borrowed once - it might have been "Beauty's Punishment".... but that does not matter... The librarian had seen that the writer was Anne Rice (under a pseudonym), and stuck a horror sticker on the spine... I guess to some people it might be horrifying, but I think it would have been better served with a love heart sticker! - I don't know that hey have an "erotica" or "soft core porn" sticker). Anyway, this was an easily identified romance novel, set in Victorian England, lots of dukes and lords and stuff, and courtesans... now, that just screamed great romantic read to me, added with the fact that the main character decided she wanted to be a courtesan too, I figured there was a good chance this could be an interesting romance novel. It took a bit more commitment to read it in a day, but hey, I had time on my hands, so I did. I enjoyed it enough to go back to elibcat and find out whether the other two books in the series were at my library!

Then, I went with my "trolling by author" pick... an Anne Rice novel I hadn't read - "Christ the Lord". This was an interesting read. It took longer to read than the other two, over a good two or three days in a few hour or two stints. It is basically a fictionalised story of Christ's childhood - the bits the bible left out.
I found it interesting for the historical aspect of how a devout Jewish family lived, how they worked and loved. Anne Rice tends to write fiction within a shell of fact, truth, honesty, which makes it easy to believe it as a story, your brain doesn't have to suspend its disbelief so far. I liked it. I liked that it was a simple story of a boy of 7 or 8, who sees a lot of weird stuff, and hears of lot of whispering, which stops when he is near enough to hear. His isolation despite being part of a big group, a big family. It is a fictional story about a person/character that people get upset if you treat wrong. I liked it, but then again, I'm a believer who liked "The DaVinci Code" as a read, and didn't find it sacrilegious - it is a story - fiction! To be perfectly honest, I don't understand "sacrilege" other than disrespect, but disrespect is not something you are vindictive for, it is something you rise above. This book is not disrespectful.

Now, I am reading "Memoirs of a Geisha" by Arthur Golden. I picked this one because I read it years ago, at a friend's house when I was visiting Melbourne. I enjoyed it then, and wanted to re-read it to see if I still did. I haven't seen the "major motion picture" touted on the cover of this edition, but maybe I will after I finish the book.

I'm almost ready to take back the huge stack of books I borrowed, now that the cake selection has been done (I've added a couple of pics to the wedding cake post, if people are curious), I don't think I need to keep the cake making books, and I'm almost out of novels to read.... Luckily I have plenty of time to go back and pick out some more!


* My boss keeps calling me to tell me he doesn't have work for me at this stage. While the luxury of time off is great, it does get a bit disconcerting, to be at someones whim is a surprisingly difficult way to live. At the moment it is not too bad because he is giving me a week at a time off, which means I can make plans etc. It gets very difficult when each day to the next I think I'm working, to find out when I wake up that I'm not.

What all this extra time off is giving me is a lot of time to think - which has its pros and cons! I'm starting to think I want a second job, a casual job, which can be solely used to pay for the wedding - with any luck I could earn enough to pay for a kick arse wedding and honeymoon!

Thursday, March 08, 2007

We Went Cake Tasting Tonight....

...and picked out our wedding cake! It is going to have FOUR TIERS!!!!!!!! It is a very pretty cake too.... YAY!

We've decided to serve it as dessert at the wedding.

I'm so excited :)

We went to Merivale Cakes and Crafts, we've had one of their cakes before, at a wedding we went to, the proprietor knew the bride and groom.

Lightening = time for me to go!

More thoughts on this (five days later):

The cake is scaring me now... not the cake itself, the cake is pretty, but the price of it. I've had one person go silent in shock when I mentioned the price, and others tell me I should keep in mind that it is dessert for up to 100 people, and therefore the price is quite reasonable... I just know I could make a lot of cake for that kind of money.... but I also know, that that kind of pressure in the lead up to the day, is bad... being able to relax is worth a lot when one is organising such a big event!

These two pictures, from Peggy Porschen's "Pretty Party Cakes" are the inspiration for our cake. Ours will be white, round and stacked like the pink cake, but will have daisies, which will actually be closer to an aster, given they will be a lilac/purple colour. The cakes themselves will alternate between fruitcake and white mud cake. Now I just have to convince myself that the money spent (not due till closer to the time) on them will be money well spent...

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

A Cat Shows It Loves You......

By bringing you presents you wish you didn't have... like dead rats.

Don't get me wrong, I'd rather she picked on rats than birds, but still - EW!

Luckily BabyCakes likes me showing my feminine side, which manifests itself in this situation by giving him the plastic bag and asking him to "deal with it".

I guess now I have to frock up and show BabyCakes how much I like his masculinity in a decidedly feminine way!