See you soon Paris!

In just over 2 weeks we will be leaving the country for nearly 8 weeks. 8 weeks of travelling around France, Italy, Greece and a Dubai stop-over to see some gorgeous friends. (Friends that actually set-up Hubby and I!) It also means 8 weeks of no Jack, our beloved puppy. But I won’t get into that now, that’s a whole other Puff Piece!

If you haven’t been by Puff lately, you’re new or you’ve been living under a rock I’m 13 weeks pregnant. Yep that’s right I’m up the duff and about the embark on a whirlwind overseas holiday before baby comes along in October and makes 4. (Me, hubby, dog and baby).

Our preggers news has been met with hugs, kisses, screams of delight, happy dances, you name it! And it’s been really lovely. Combine that with news of our trip though and the responses have been a little mixed.

“Fantastic idea, get the trip in before bubs comes along.”

“Have a great time, and you’ll be fine travelling while pregnant, especially since you’ll be into your 2nd trimester, when you’re meant to have all your energy back!”

“Oh, does that mean the baby wasn’t planned?”

“Oh you won’t be able to drink wine over there.”

For those that know me they’d know that the whole wine thing is neither here nor there for me. The thought of not being able to drink is kinda like meh for me. But yes I will miss the soft cheeses. I am slightly in love with soft cheeses, originally started by my Great Grandmother feeding me lots of camembert as a kid, but at the end of the day I wanted a baby more than I wanted soft cheese. If however you’d like to give me an extra special, somewhat unconventional ‘you just pushed a baby out your vagina’ present, feel free to give a seafood platter with a side of soft cheeses and prosciutto.

So where was I? Oh yes, different people’s reactions. I found the question of ‘was it planned’ to be a relatively weird one. I kind of understood why they were asking, but in all honesty I don’t think I’d ever ask someone that unless they offered that type of information.

Some people might think I’m crazy travelling while pregnant, but we’re not backpacking or going to Iraq. Where going to Europe where we’re going to stay in nice places, well as nice as my Husband would let us book without breaking the budget, and I don’t plan on doing anything outrageous, except sightseeing and shopping.

What do you think about how different people react to different things? (And it doesn’t just have to relate to my story!)

Quick easy order, 2 chicken tandoori burgers. Our drinks arrived quickly, but then time started passing by when it came to the food.

A young waitress came out and said are you waiting on two chicken burgers. Yes, we replied. More time passed and one burger arrived with the promise the other wasn’t too far away. My chips were cold and the burger was cold. But hungry and in a hurry I ate the burger anyway, but not the cold chips. I had just about finished when Hubby’s finally arrived. Hot chips, hot burger, clearly they had only made one and then realised there was 2 for the order.

So where is my lunchtime story going? Well I’m glad you asked. We didn’t whinge, complain, nothing? But afterwards we thought maybe we should have said we weren’t happy to the man behind the counter when he asked, How was everything today?

It takes something pretty appalling for me to actually complain in a restaurant or cafe, but then Hubby bought up a point yesterday, that if you owned a cafe would you want to know about unhappy customers?

What do you think? Should we have said something? Do you mention your unhappiness if you’re not happy when eating out?

We live in a warehouse that my other half converted about 6 years ago – the joys of living with an architect! Due to where we live our section of the street is zoned both Residential and Commercial, which gives us the ability to build to zero lot alignment, basically right to our boundary. So my very talent architect future husband designed a master bedroom/ensuite that popped out over the front courtyard. Yay for us!! The design was fantastic so we started to roll through the approval process.

We then discovered that Energy Australia’s power lines went diagonally across OUR property. And so it begins! Thankfully John’s brother is a lawyer so we had everything checked out legally and guess what? Yep, Energy Australia can do whatever they bloody want and they’ve got the law to prove it. We could have had the powerlines moved, for a small fee of $30,000 and then some. Remember their powerlines are on OUR PROPERTY!

So, plan B, the extension was re-designed, we get through Council in record time and the builders get underway. Inside framing up, outside framing up, then it was time for the roof to come off.

Smooth sailing? Yeah, no, not quite. Energy Australia then decided that our powerlines needed to be ‘tigertailed’, basically wrapped in yellow and black stuff because our scaffolding came within a certain height restriction. So for less than 2 days work we now have to pay them $8,500 for their troubles. And not only that, they’re taking their sweet-arse time to come and do it, so we have had NO BUILDERS for the last 2 weeks. Think I’m stressing much?! Only 82 days till the wedding!!

Anyway so after that long winded short version of the story, I do have a point! WHY do the big people, in this case Energy Australia have ALL the power (pardon the pun!)?! They’ve been out and seen that we have started our extension so know that we’ll just pay the bloody money so we can get on with it.

Julia Roberts as Erin Brockovich

It would probably cost more time and money to fight them and they know this so they just get away with it. If you walked to the next block from our house you’d notice that the power pole is closer to the corner and no where near the person’s house. So while I’m having a little bit of a ‘poor me’ moment, it honestly annoys the crap out of me being the ‘little guy’.

What should the big corporations have all the power? I did have an Erin Brockovich moment and want to take them on, thankfully it only lasted about 5 minutes of ranting to my poor future husband before I realised it just wasn’t worth it.

So have you ever taken on a big corporation and won? Do you agree that it can be very frustrating and totally unfair, but at the end of the day really what are we going to do?

Such a shame – Erin Brockovich would have been so proud!

One of them is bad drivers. Bad drivers, I hear you say. Everyone hates bad drivers. So let me get more specific. I hate bad drivers that have fast cars, take off slowly then go a bit faster then slow down again. Yep that’s exactly what happened to me and as you might be able to tell it ticked me off to no end!

Here I was in the FAST lane and behind an Audi TT. We were doing 40 in a 70 zone. I couldn’t go round coz there was a Grandma in the left hand lane. I breathed a sigh of relief when Mr Audi sped up to 60. Better than 40 I thought. So we then get to some traffic lights and he takes off slower than a drunk snail and I find myself becoming increasingly irritated. We finally get to about 65 and then he takes off like someone just stuck a rocket ship up his exhaust pipe.

So let’s take a minute to think about all the scenarios of why this guy was such a (insert explitive here).

A. He was just being a d*%k.

B. He had no idea how to drive his car.

C. He was just a really bad driver.

D. He was precious about his precious car.

You know really at the end of the day it doesn’t matter. Some people just shouldn’t be allowed on the roads, no matter how nice their car is.

Well I’m glad I got that off my chest!

It took so long for smoking to be banned from outside eating areas and even then I think there is still a bit of a grey area. On Tuesday night I had to walk to the other end of the front of the airport to get away from the smoke, it was so bad. But who has more rights? As a non-smoker I have the right to freely walk the streets and shouldn’t have to worry about someone blowing smoke my way, but then I would imagine that a smokers argument would be that they have chosen to smoke and it’s their rights too, to be able to walk around and smoke.

Obviously I’m completely on the non-smoker side and I think that if someone has chosen to smoke then they should be considerate of the people around them.

Anyway, who I would like to call irresponsible are dog owners who don’t pick up after their pooch. As a new puppy owner the first lesson in being a good mum when taking your puppy for a walk is to pick up after your little darling. It’s not that hard to take a plastic bag with you and scoop up any little eggs that your furry friend decides to leave on the footpath during your walk.

But of course there are numerous people, well basically bad pet owners, that just don’t clean up after their pet. I was totally gobsmacked, yes gobsmacked, when I got home from our walk yesterday & was informed by the other half that a lady had pulled up in her car down the side of our house and let her dog out to take a crap (sorry gross I know) on the grass, then drove off giving my other half a dirty look for looking at her like she did something wrong.

I’m sorry but that is beyond despicable. Having a pet is like having a child. If you’re not prepared to look after it and take responsibility for it then DON’T HAVE ONE. Plain and simple.

Well I’m glad I got that off my chest.

Not following? Takes these examples:

‘I want to paint the house pink’
‘No’

So we don’t paint the house pink.

‘I want a puppy’
‘No’

So we don’t get a puppy!

Get my drift! So while I haven’t asked to paint the house pink, I have been for a while now on the puppy bandwagon. I gave up for a little while, probably because I was preoccupied organising the wedding, but a couple of days ago the ad for the upcoming episode of Bondi Vet came on and showed Dr Chris with some staffy puppies. Seriously, just too cute! Actually the vet and the puppies, but we’ll stick to the puppies for now!

So with the wedding all but under control the puppy mission was/is now back on the top priority list! I jumped on the RSPCA adopt a pet website and whattaya know first puppy looking for someone to love it is a little female tan staffy! At just 4 months old she’s still young enough for us to train. I call it fate, other half calls it, well he just said no!

I will be honest with you and confess that we don’t have a yard with grass and it would be slightly unfair on her but there are plenty of ways around this, I’m just still compiling what they are! Some of them, well, I’ll take her for lots of walks – a great way to help lose some weight before the wedding! She can go for playdates at friends places who also have staffies and big yards. We had always planned to pull up the stones in the backyard and lay some turf, so we can just bring it forward! And I work across the road from where we live and go home for lunch so I can check on her every day.

My final heartfelt plea to anyone that will listen….  well actually trying to cut a deal with the other half, if no one takes her and she’s going to go to doggy heaven then we were meant to have her.

Right well I’ve stated my case now have to wait for the verdict.

Sneaky road trip to Rutherford RSPCA on the weekend anyone?!

For example this Toast Check Pea Coat for women is $349.
While this Black Heavy Men’s jacket is a mere $199.

Am I having a totally blonde moment and missing something here? It doesn’t just apply to these 2 particular items. Myself and even my other half have noticed it through all the different collections and seasons.

Are they expecting that women will naturally spend more on clothes and therefore know they can charge more? They clearly haven’t spent enough time with my other half who doesn’t mind a nice piece of clothing here and there!

There are so many arguments around this little pet hate of mine, with the economy the way it is can we justify spending this sort of money of clothes, there’s the ongoing battle between what women and men earn, so if men typically earn more then why are women’s clothes so much more expensive.

Maybe you can enlighten me…..

I have to go shopping now!