… I joined a dating website.
Here’s hoping for some interesting stories. I’m not expecting much.
So…
Greyden and I broke up. About an hour ago. Sort of. Well, not sort of. We did. It was very amicable. He is my best friend (beside my mother) and hopefully that won’t change too much (I’m not unbalanced enough to think it won’t change at all). I adore him.
Ultimately it’s for the best. It boiled down to a few things, but first and foremost was my overwhelming desire to be a mother and wife (I know, those words make boys’ giblets shrivel, right?) and his not having any idea of when or if he wanted those things. There was no fighting. A fair bit of crying (from both of us) but no fighting. It’s kind of weirdly wonderful… I’m sad that I’ve lost a boyfriend, yet I’m filled with a strange sense of excitement - like something entirely wonderful is just around the corner.
I’m going away to Melbourne with him for three days tomorrow (planned well in advance of this, FYI). It would be nice to think it will change things but it probably won’t. I’m (mostly) okay with that. In fact I know given how things are I should most certainly NOT hope for it to change things, because a relationship shouldn’t be based on a holiday. Holidays make everything seem rose-coloured and peachy and then you get back and you’re slapped in the face with all the reasons it wasn’t working…
Not that I have that much experience in this arena.
Greyden was my first real, serious, I-want-to-actually-marry-this-guy boyfriend. Needless to say, my break-up/a holiday will make it all better experience is limited. But I read a lot and it never fixes anything. Not even in Mills & Boon.
Fact of the matter is he’s just not ready to be that grown up yet. Maybe in the years to come he will be and maybe we’ll find our way back to “us”. For now though, we’re the best of friends and I’m happy with that. And maybe the guy of my dreams is out there just waiting to marry me and have 2.5 kids and a nice house and a big dog… Maybe he’s been waiting all along.
Either way, I just wanted to fill in those who care. Donations of cookie dough and/or ice cream gratefully accepted.
p.s. No Greyden-hating. This was a mutual thing and he is still my friend. Haters will be shunned. SHUNNED.
I think I mentioned previously that the dance school Little Sister and I attend holds a showcase at the end of each term to show off what people have been learning in their classes, and to allow the crews to show us what they’ve got. We went to see the previous Hype Night and I was blown away… that night I made it my goal to be in the next one.
Lo and behold, tonight Gemma informed our class that we’ve been asked to perform at Hype Night. I am so excited.
This is a brief video of a teensie part of the routine that we’re going to be doing. You’ll probably guess which one is me, so I’m not pointing myself out. I will say, though, that I need to stop wearing super-baggy clothes to dance cos they just hang off my curves and do nothing for me.
My dance diet starts tonight - junk food is banned from here on in.
WINNER!
Hey folks,
My apologies to anyone who missed me on my hiatus (sprinkled across the world - nay, the universe - as I’m sure you are**, hahaha!). I did try vlogging a couple of times but Viddler (my service of choice, although I can’t quite recall why) kept dropping out when I tried to upload my wonderful creations***. Trust me when I say, though, that Viddler did you all a favour.
Life since my birthday has plodded on in much the same fashion as it was plodding before my birthday. My birthday itself was fairly good - certainly well above my average birthday drudgery. My party went off almost completely without issue and I was liquored up without cost to me all night. This worked wonderfully until someone (I’m still not sure who entirely) decided it was a brilliant idea to do chartreuse shots.
For those who haven’t had the [dis]pleasure, chartreuse looks, smells and tastes like perfume. And not nice Jean-Paul Gaultier perfume (my scent of choice, hint hint nudge nudge), but the dirty ten dollar bottle you pick up for that relative you don’t really like because, hell, you can’t get them nothing.
I have next to no backbone as it is, and it decreases exponentially as the amount of alcohol in my system rises (oddly enough). When the boys brought the shot glasses over to our function area, I made it known (a tad too loudly, I’m told) that I was already suitable sozzled and did not feel that chartreuse was a good idea. I had been on a steady bender of a lovely rosé up until that point and - although quite saturated - I felt fine, if a little unsteady (and loud - apparently I was discussing strippers and masturbation (not my own) in front of my mother)…
Point? Oh, yes…
I didn’t want to do the chartreuse shot but I did it anyway because I don’t have a backbone and my feeble fight was quickly quelled. They gave me a swig of beer to chase it down with.
I hate beer.
Needless to say, within about ten minutes of that fateful green perfume-shot, I was hunched over the toilet bowl expelling it and the finger food I had consumed earlier in front of one my closest (but still fairly new) work friends as she held my hair back for me. From that point onwards, I felt dizzy and awful which serves me right (though this did not stop my whining at length about my state). By 12am I was at home, showered, and in bed getting some of the best cuddle action I’ve ever had.
Something few things know about my partner is that he is a wonderful person to have around when you’ve had far too much to drink. Granted, this has only happened to me twice (and I’m not keen to repeat it, FYI) but on both occasions he has taken wonderful care of me and I have woken the day after with not so much as a trace of hangover.
Apparently I should have felt awful the day after my party. I didn’t. SB from work was most disappointed, as she felt it was fair penance for my antics the night before. Perhaps I just don’t drink enough (my mother would argue otherwise) to get hangovers?
At any rate, that was my birthday. It was awesome.
I had a week off work in the lead up to my birthday and was really, really hard to go back to work after having that time off. It doesn’t particularly help that things and team members have been changing and not necessarily for the better (in my opinion). The honeymoon period has ended, which is to be expected, and I’m getting really annoyed at the little quirks and other eccentricities (scratch that, I think you have to be cool to be eccentric) scowl-inducing habits of certain people, but hell I like having someone/thing to keep my career-bed warm.
Some days I am just biding my time - I’m already six months through, twelve months experience is just around the corner. Other days (last Friday, for instance) it is almost enjoyable again. My direct manager has said that once we hire another web developer I will be taken off priority for web-based stuff (i.e. the boring coding yuckus) and be free to exist in a graphics and layout world I have only dreamed of until now.
Okay, so it probably won’t be that exciting, but any step up from the dullness of what is currently my role (no creativity involved at all in most cases) is worth celebrating. All that’s left now is for me to get myself poached into the marketing team which, if I heard correctly in my interview all those months ago, was my previous manager’s plan for me all along. If SB has her way, I’ll be poached sooner rather than later. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
In a similar vein, I have been seriously contemplating starting a little something on the side, freelance-wise. I’ve been looking around and having seen what people will pay money for (some of it is just hideous, and you don’t have to be a designer to see that) I think I would make a killing if I can just figure out how to market myself correctly… More on that at a later date.
Dancing is going well. I’ve fallen in love with jazz, decided I don’t really like modern or contemporary (except to watch), and am slowly returning to a certain level of goodness in hip hop. Next term I’m aiming to tackle burlesque and truly unleash my inner sex kitten. Little Sister and I went and watched our dance school’s showcase night at the end of May and I was blown away by the burlesque performances. They were incredibly sexy but somehow not entirely smutty. It had my name written all over it.
I have decided that once I reach my goal body-shape, I will reward myself with this, and I will look freaking awesome. There will be pics - don’t even try and stop me!!
In short, I’m ba-a-a-a-a-ack!
* Hahaha. Not.
** I’m pretty sure you’re not. And I’m pretty sure if you didn’t pick up that I was being hugely sarcastic that there may be something wrong here.
*** Oh come on, you know they were awful.
But I’m in a bad headspace. I feel like this:
I will find my way back when I pick my self esteem up off the ground.
Yay! It’s my birthday. I’m go’n party llike it’s my birthday!
It’s my birthday on Saturday and as one might imagine I’m pretty excited. I would be more excited if I’d actually managed to get back into a size 12 (US size eight) in the 12 week period I’ve been having personal training for, but I knew it was a fairly unrealistic time frame (and that I wasn’t training hard enough to get those results… and that Krispy Kremes don’t help) so I’m not letting myself focus on that one too much. I have lost weight and my chubby girl clothes are starting to fall down without assistance so I’m headed in the right direction. I’ve shifted the focus to having fun and being healthy so now I am content to know that things will happen all in good time.
I am still pretty pathetic at (even women’s) push-ups, which annoys me greatly. Interestingly, I am better at pull-ups than push-ups even though (I’m told) pull-ups are harder. I’ve tried explaining that my muscles are wired oddly and that’s why I’m good at the harder task and awful at the easier task, but I’m not sure Sam (my PT) believes me. My arms are vastly improved on what they were when I started, but I’ve still got a ways to go before I’m happy with them.
As per an agreement with Sam, I’ve started doing one-minute sprints on the treadmill in three-minute intervals. I didn’t go to the gym at all last week so I was surprised to find it was easier than my last attempt at running several weeks ago. I have consequently (and perhaps regrettably) agreed to participate in The Sunday Mail Suncorp Bridge to Brisbane fun run, which is held in September. I’m going to aim for the 4.5km (about 2.8 miles) because I’m fairly certain Hell will freeze over before I’m capable of running 12km (about 7.5 miles). And really, let’s not over-reach, hmm? One thing at a time.
Dancing is still wonderful (except contemporary, which I no longer attend because it’s kind of lame and not at all how I thought it would be) although I have hit a wall of sorts in hip-hop and I’m just not nailing the routines like I was when we started. That annoys me because I hate not being good at things I really like. I don’t just like hip-hop, I adore it. It’s probably not helping that I get annoyed at myself but that’s the nature of the beast. I’m so focused on getting it perfect that sometimes I can’t get it at all. And that’s annoying too.
Next term (which starts 9 June) I am hoping to double-dose on hip-hop, continue on with ballet, and start doing burlesque as well. I may possibly start jazz, but we’ll have to see about that - Mum’s quite adamant that I should be very careful not to spread myself too thinly as I am wont to do. Whatever happens, hip-hop comes before all else. There’s another dance school I’ve found who are more local and do American All Star cheerleading, which I’ve always wanted to do but have never had the confidence for. It’s looking like that would interfere with hip-hop though, so it will have to wait.
I’ve talked about posting pictorial progress updates in the past (got enough p’s?) but never actually done anything about it. I think I might be ready to start doing that now, seeing as my confidence is somewhat more sturdy thanks in large part to dance. Those of you who have told me you want to dance, but don’t have the confidence - trust me when I say just take the plunge. The confidence will come.
Heh. I should listen more to my own advice.
Mr G and I were talking on Monday evening and we came to some new conclusions about our future plans. It all started because he thought it was a better idea to give me $1000 towards my car than to spend a mere weekend at a hotel for my birthday. While there was a part of me that was thinking ‘Awww, but I’ve never stayed in a really nice hotel…’ the more practical part of me (yes, she exists!) thought ‘Hey, that’s $1000 off a car loan. Bonus!’ So we’ll still go out and have a posh old time (in my pretty dress), but the Hilton will no longer be part of our plans. And I get a contribution towards my car. High fives all round.
Related to that was our other big outlay of money - our travel plans. Or more fairly, my travel plans. As it turns out, Mr G wasn’t really that keen on traveling. What we will do instead is probably head to the States for our honeymoon, whenever that should come to pass, and with the money we would have spent traveling in ‘09 we are going to save to move out together into our own place. I’m also thinking maybe a little vacation to Fiji or Vanuatu (or similar) once Summer graces the southern Hemisphere again later this year.
All of this financial responsibility is a pretty huge thing for me, largely because I have a history of being pretty awful with monetary decisions - usually choosing the option that will satisfy me most immediately as opposed to the one that’s a better long-term solution. Having run all of our new plans past Mum, I’m even more convinced that these are better ideas than the ones we had initially. Not that I needed convincing, mind you. I just like knowing Mum thinks I’m doing the right thing. Makes a girl feel good inside.
Further to the idea of moving out, Mr G has issued something of a challenge - whoever pays off their credit card first gets to choose where we live - the only proviso is that wherever it is has to be within walking distance of a train station (he gets free train travel because he works for Queensland Rail… once he’s been there ten years, the spouse gets it too!) which rules out my favourite location in Brisbane, but opens up some new opportunities. So the race is on!
Anyway, I’m a little sad I won’t get to meet my overseas blog-friends as soon as I’d planned, but I’m hugely excited about moving out. And about the fact I appear to be turning into an adult.
I’m not sure what I’ve done (if anything), but I’ve had a rotten headache for the past two days. A rotten headache that isn’t getting any better. A rotten headache that wasn’t improved with either painkillers or caffeine (I thought it might have been a caffeine-withdrawal headache, but I’ve had enough caffeinated beverages in the past two days to keep a small country awake for a week and nothing’s changed).
I briefly suspected severe eye strain, but I haven’t been at work staring at my computer until today so that seems somewhat unlikely (although it most definitely made things worse). Nonetheless, I probably need to go and have my eyes checked anyway. They kind of ache as well.
I’ve been drinking plenty of water, eating fairly regularly and, with the exception of Saturday night, getting more or less enough sleep. If it’s not my eyes causing this then I’ve either put my neck out (quite possible, I sleep funny somtimes) or there’s something quite wrong.
Bother.
