My Week

Quite a few things have happened in the last week

I seem to greet everyone with 'Do you have any boxes?'
Had a fight with Mr Y.
Made up with Mr Y.
Mr Y broke my mobile phone.
Mr Y fixed my phone.
All hell broke loose at work.
Became the Union Rep for work.
Came home to complain about work.
Saw the movie "I love you Man". Slightly disappointed.

Not really as exciting as I had hoped!

Moving House

We have just found out we are moving house. It will be nice to get out of this tiny place but I am looking around at all 'our' junk (mostly mine) and kind of dreading the thought.

Planning a wedding

There are women who have wondered about their wedding day and began the planning before they had even found anyone to you know, be the groom. Since I got engaged I had been pretty indecisive because I didn't have a plan. On the upside, without a plan, I was open to almost every suggestion. I did a lot of reading of bridal magazines, specifically "My Wedding" and came across many gorgeous ideas.

One of the deciding factors for me, was the cost of the wedding. I refused to end up 'majorly' in debt, and we considered the wedding, one day of the rest of our lives. I wanted the day to be beautiful, fun and relaxed, without the regret a year later when we can't have the things we want because we were in debt.

Some of the better ideas I came across were

• fairy lights - use them to wrap around objects like a wire ball. Hang them from the roof, possibly above the dance floor.

• Instead of a guest book, spray paint a tree branch silver, or a colour that matches your wedding. Place it in a vase with pebbles so it is able to stand. Guests then write on little cards (business card sized) to hang from the branch. Great if you want to keep these to place in a photo album.

• Buy paper latterns to hang from the ceiling. You can buy them from all types of stores, from Cheap as Chips to Homeart and Ikea.

• Buying the same gift for every guest can become very expensive, and does not allow for individuality. Have a lucky dip that guests are able to 'choose' their own gift. Guests are then able to swap their gifts if they wish.

• If the ceremony and the reception are held in the same place, during the photos, hire some entertainment such as a belly dancer, bag pipes, dancers, characterturists etc.

• As a bomboniere, consider a pebble/paperweight with the bride and groom's name and date on it.

• Add bright fresh fruit to your table settings in a bowl. eg. lemon, oranges and limes.

• For an outside wedding give each guest a pot and a preplanted seedling. Write your names and date of the wedding on the pot.

I found that while looking through magazines, I saw things that could be made much cheaper than it would cost to buy them. If you don't mind putting in the time, it can save you a fortune.

Antagonising Mr Y

Going from a relationship via webcam to living with Mr Y has a long list of benefits...There are times I wish that I could just switch off the webcam however my favourite game lately goes a little like this....

Me: I'm thirsty
Him: What do you want? We have juice or coke.
Me: Whatever...I'm not fussed
He brings over the juice
Me: awww I wanted coke!

It works for many things..what to eat for dinner, what to watch etc etc Cute maybe for the first 5 secs but it soon wears off.

In search of work

At the moment I am stuck in a job that I am not happy in. Well that's not totally true, I am very happy with my job, just not my work place. So we have decided that Mr X has to get any job he can so I can leave next year even just for me to do some relief teaching.

I was just looking at this teaching website and there are so many jobs available, some don't have dates they commence, which is really not helpful. Mainly though, the jobs are all interstate or overseas. I would be more inclined to go overseas than interstate, because it would then serve more as a working holiday. The problem is that we have to be in the country so that Mr X can be given permanent residence. Adelaide isn't panning out too well for him and at the moment the Junior Primary positions are pretty dead.

So here we are, struggling with my current wage but we're together so the phone bills have gone down...I guess it all evens out =) (as you can see Mr Y has rubbed off on me and I'm just grappling to find a positive hehe)

Migration

It appears that my boobs are heading south for Winter.

Marriage Advice

Mr Y was recently told that while I may be the best thing in his life there will be times that he will want to cheerfully choke me.

umm....thanks?!

The C word...

Children.

Okay, first thing you hear is 'go out and meet someone' so you meet the guy...you date 'when are you 2 going to get married?' ...you get married to your mum's delight and next starts 'when you going to have a baby?'...what question is left?

The decision to have children is a pretty serious one, and one that we haven't made. It seems to be the question everyone asks...'So when are you going to have a baby?'. We don't have an answer yet but I swear I'm talking him around! =)

How we met

I always get asked how Mr Y and I met. I guess it's because he wasn't born here and until last year, had never been to Australia. They envisage this wild, passionate holiday romance and it really wasn't like that, or maybe in the couple of years of comfortableness I have forgotten.

Surprise, Surprise, it all started on the Internet. We were both in this chat room on www.okcupid.com one night in September (which they have removed now, but the site is still there). He was actually being annoying and generally driving people crazy. Turns out this is his default setting. Something about him though, got my attention. We chatted that first night until 6am and then everyday for the next 3 months.

At the time I was living overseas and was a 'free spirit', or at least behaving like one. Everything I did was rather spontaneous and fun. It seemed perfectly sane travelling to another country to meet him, until I boarded the plane, when it set in that I was about to meet someone that I had only seen on web cam. Obviously, as it turns out, this was the best decision I could have made, insane or not.

Before leaving, I had been talking to Mr Y about how I was disappointed I was missing out on Christmas with my family. Where I was living at the time, Christmas was seen as a time to put up pretty lights, but life went on as normal and people went to work on Christmas Day. The same could be said about where Mr Y lived but this was so very different from my home. I come from a family, where Christmas had always been a huge part of our lives. Everyone eats until they can't fit anything more in and if you didn't believe in Santa or at least pretend to, you didn't get presents.

As it happened, the only flight available was on Christmas Eve, arriving early Christmas morning. I really didn't need to worry though. I had my Christmas Day. Mr Y met me wearing a Santa hat (he had stolen from a friend of his) and clutching a little Christmas tree. It was the sweetest (yet a little strange) thing anyone had ever done for me. Mr Y has since done many more of these weird, sweet things to cheer me up.

After that first meeting, our lives never really went back to normal. I moved back home after a year overseas and we continued chatting daily. We really had no idea how it was going to work out but we both wanted it to. I swear friends thought I was making him up and couldn't understand why I was turning down dates with others. My mum was worried about me sitting around waiting for someone that might never be able to come to Australia. It wasn't until we started the VISA process that they finally understood how serious we were.

2 years after we met, Mr Y arrived in Australia and everyone was there to see us get married. I wouldn't ever recommend this to anyone, the wait was full of ups and downs, but it worked for us...eventually.