Sunkissed

I've been kised by the sun. I'm a lovely warm honey colour. My arms, face and neck are anyway, let's not mention my legs.
Things are going alright we're leaving Sunday night so I must admit, I'm excited about that. Pat's sister Meg came down the other night and I actually enjoy her being here, takes a little pressure off me I think.
I did all my sounvenier (I cant spell that stupid word) shopping yesterday and spent up big, I don't even know why I bought a couple of the thing I did, never mind, it's all about being a tourist.
Anyway, I should go as I want to catch the 9:48 bus back to the "condo" so I can scrapbook while they're all down at the pool because with the page I'm working on at the moment it's hard to scrapbook with Emily sleeping because I need to hammer. I also need to buy a carton of cigarettes, so so so cheap down here!!
Take care, miss you all lots and lots!

Update

so here i am, down in sunny florida with a cool breeze which is making it a little chilly at times. it's been a little nippy down at the beach so whilst i've put my feet into the gulf of mexico i haven't swan in it yet. i need to buy new boardies though because the ones i bought when i left home come undone when i get in the pool, which is downright embarrassing if anyone notices. the break in routine and the event on wednesday morning have made me a little down and on edge, i don't know if i want to be with the family anymore. last night i dreamed i packed my bags and went home without telling anyone. and mum said she'd pay for my ticket home if i wanted to seriously come back and whilst i do love it here at the same time i'm like, it would be so easy to just go back. but then all i'd do is work. which coiuld be handy since i've no bloody money.
anyway, florida is like the gold coast. so many old people where i'm at, so many rental apartments (i should say "condo's") and green trees everywhere. i feel like i've been here before. i've still got until sunday so hopefully the weather really picks up because i wanted to get super brown.
after i fork out $10 to use the freaking internet (rip off) i'm going to go and buy postcards and some water (i'm thirsty) and have a look around at the souvenier shops. i finished my book this morning so i might try and find another book because its hard to scrapbook when my mind is as wound up as it is.
anyway that's all the new. if anyone is worried, don't, i probably won't come home because as i said to rachel, soon i'll have 10 month to go, then i'll have 9 months and it'll be like im'm pregnant and pregnant people always say the time flies so we'll work on that concept.
have fun!
if there is terrible typing and spelling tghen blame it on the miniscule keyboard i'm using!

I think the party is finally over...

So I think today was my last day of birthday. Last night we went to Hooters for my birthday dinner and had an awesome time. The girls got me a big giant brownie/fudge cake and the Hooters girls bought it out (I didn't know they'd got me a cake) and they all sung me Happy Birthday. It was such a blast! I had so much fun.
Then we went to Firkin's and by this time there were about 15 or so of us. Firkin's is like a bar and it was all done up for St. Pat's and was surprising not packed so we got a table easy.
Anyway, so I'm sitting there talking to someone and these guys had sat down at the table next to us and the next thing I knew they said my name and Happy Birthday how exciting you're 21 show us your ID and I'm like, what?? Completely confused as to how they got that info and I'm like, how'd you find out? And they're like, we asked your friends what the occassion was. So the three Navy guys joined our table so we increased again and I think we were entertaining the table saround us with our constant picture taking, giggling and mucking about. And I drank! Oh god, I drank bourbon (I still think ew but I ain't drinking girly vodka and they don't have Bundy) and then topped it off with a shot of whiskey (don't ask! It was a goodbye for Krissii) so I was again, a little rosy.
Anyway, it was an awesome night. Then today I got Lozza's present (thanks Lozz!! Awesome choice!) and a card from Tara and Juraj (next door neighbours back home) so that was exciting.
Chelle says to me last night (via text) that (I'm trying to remember the exact words, I may have forgotten them due to alcohol and happiness) it seems like I found my youth. I was so responsible at home and I guess getting a second chance at being legal was just like, I'm going to do what I missed out on. To hell with how much it costs. If I want a beer at dinner, god damn I'm going to have a beer with dinner. I get a year to play and have fun then I can come home, go to uni and not worry about the partying because, been there done that! I feel really happy right now, content. Which for me, is slightly unusual. If something isn't working then so be it because then obviously right now it isn't supposed to be working. As long as I try my best to fix it I shouldn't push it to the point that I break it (reminds me of breaking Chelle's CD player when we were almost in Canberra while she was attempting to sing the Australian anthem to the tune of Working Class Man - still mentaly scarred by how mad I was).
So tomorrow I'm heading downtown to the aquarium. I didn't have time to tell that to the folks tonight as mum talked, and talked, and then added in a little more talk. Which is cool, I love talking to home, it's so exciting!
Tonight I went and saw She's The Man. I completely recommend it!!! Oh my god, that guy is so damn hot that I think he'll be in my dreams tonight (no more strange dreams to report on, I guess the abortion killed them off). Anyway, it was an awesome movie, hilarious, I loved it - YOU MUST GO SEE IT (when it comes out that is). I'm just going to take a little break tofind out who the hot guy is (I'd like to join my first name with his surname). Ok it's Channing Tatum. Uh, maybe I'll keep my surname. Anyway, HOT. Oh and I worked out what other movie he's in!!! He's the white guy in Coach Carter, also another movie I highly recommend.
Anyway, I'm boring you. I'm going to go to bed now. Check that guy out though ladies, sizzle sizzle sizzle.
Hope you had a good weekend!

Up there with the best!

I can confidently say that so far I feel like I've had a whole week of birthday and it just keeps going, it is definitely up there as one of my favourite birthday's of all time! Which is strange cause I didn't think I'd enjoy myself so much being away from family and friends, but like Michelle said, I have a terrible complex about people forgetting me and seeing as Monday my time it was my Australian birthday I had emails coming in the droves and text messages after midnight so it had become Tuesday, such a massive ego booster.
Anyway, so I mum and dad have given me these two beautiful Royal Doulton whiskey tumblers (they sent me pictures of them) as well as some little things for me to unwrap. Rachel gave me these beautiful simple white gold hoop earrings (little hoops), Pat gave me $30 and the kids each gave me a top, all of them fitted perfectly and are really nice! I spoke to home and Chelle and Nana which was good and when the kids got home from school I got to open my presents (which they'd arranged around my door before I'd woken up that morning) and we had ice cream cake, nicer than the usual! Then I went shopping and off for a massage. It was just a really good day.
Then, last night I went off to TGI Friday's with the girls and Sharmain drove so I could have a drink and it was just so nice to have such awesome new friends. Kellie went and told the host that it was my birthday (I didn't know she did that) so all of a sudden out waitress comes up with a sundae and I'm thinking, who ordered a sundae and they said, we hear it's someone's birthday and I swear to god, I've never been so red with embarrassment my whole life! They screamed out to eveyrone in the bar (thank god it didn't fill up til 10 minutes later so it was resonably empty) that it was my birthday and then sung to me (all the people working at Friday's). Then Magda sang me happy birthday in English, Austrian, German (half of it) and Spanish. And we shared my sundae! And then we sung. It was just awesome. My hair looked great (I had it cut the other day, paid a massive $13 for it), I felt good, I was wearing new clothes, just was a good night.
So I was thinking, today it won't really be a birthday day because nothing special is going on so I went into the bathroom this morning (very hung over, in an hour and a bit I managed to consume three shots and two Corona's, let's just remember I haven't hardly drank since my last night at work [oh what a night] and an hour is a short time) and pulled out the scales as I do once a week. Now last week I lost two pounds (just under a kilo) and this week I was 100% that I'd put it back on thanks to the alcohol, the ice cream cake, some Macca's french fries I ate yesterday and al this other crap, BUT GUESS WHAT?! I'd in fact lost 4 pounds, which is like 2kg!!!!!! This is THE BEST BIRTHDAY EVER!
Tomorrownight we're going out to Hooters for my birthday dinner and to say goodbye to Krissii and Angelika. But I'll go see Angelika on Monda before she actually leaves. But yes, you read right, I'M GOING TO HOOTERES!!!

Tornado Warnings and All!

Last night we got tornado warnings and the weather outside at the moment has the power to completely blow you over!! It keeps blowing open the door. I'm worried that Alex might fall over in it when she comes home and I'm picking up Matthew.
Anyway, my weekend was pretty good. I had the day off on Friday and did some errands and watched the beginning of Sixteen Candles then Sharmain, Krissii and I were going to go see Failure to Launch but by the time I picked them both up we were too late so went to Starbucks instead. Then came back to mine and got my clothes for Friday night and then headed to Sharmain's and got hers. Krissii cooked us spag bol at her place (yum yum) and went went to meet the girls and were going to see Failure to Launch but the cinema was full so went and played pool and bowled instead. Pretty exhausting so we had an early night.
On Saturday I worked and what a horrible day. Emily was still vomitting, Alex had woken up during the night and vomited and Pat was feeling well so all the activities were cancelled and I just hung around here and looked after Emily and Alex while Pat took Matthew for a bike ride, it was like 15 degrees here on Saturday, t-shirt weather! I spent over an hour in the arvo cleaning the house up because Pat had no energy and it was looking like a bomb had hit it. So I cleaned and disinfected almost every surface they all touch, I didn't want to get sick!
Saturday night Magda, Sharmain, Krissii and I finally went to see Failure To Launch then I came home and called Chelle. Failure To Launch was an alright movie, whenever I look at Sarah Jessica Parker all I see is the witch from Hocus Pocus.
On Sunday we all went to a flee market in Grayslake, I bought mum a nice lace table runner and dad some antique (but fake) Confederate money. There was some cool stuff but at the same time, it was a Trash n Treasure market and sometimes the almost could be trash is overly priced. We went to see Trans America in the arvo. Very good movie, I highly recommend it. Felicity Hoffman played the character so well.
Today I started work at 10 and it's my Australian birthday today so that would probably be why I hardly got a good night's sleep last night. I couldn't get to sleep in the first place so decided to plan my trip before I leave and look at dates for when I can go to Philidelphia as well as plan the week that I'm having off in November to spend with Chelle (hopefully) and Lozz (definitely). I was probably anxious about the tornado warning as well. I don't know! I woke up far too early as well and forced myself back to sleep, I was going to get up early and go to the post office but changed my alarm because of the lack of sleep.
Tomorrow I'm only working 8-11:30 and then going to get my hair cut before home and Chelle call me. I've got another massage in the arvo too so I'll try and get more relaxation than pain this time!
I was talking to Pagan (girl I flew over with and spent a week in New York with) last night on MSN and she said to me that out of the 8 Aussie girls who came over she thinks I was the one who had the busiest social calander. Can you imagine that??? Me?! Social. How strange. But Krissii leaves for Boston on Saturday for her new family and Sharmain finishes within about 8 weeks then I'll be left with Madga the Austrian and a couple of Mexican's. Hopefully at that point in time life will slow down and I will stop spending so much money. Angelika leaves this weekend so we're saying goodbye to her which will be sad and she's being replaced by another German. I need to start doing things on the cheap because I'm going through $80 within 3 days, which isn't good and doesn't fit in with my budgeting. It wouldn't be so bad if I wasn't using my credit card all the time as well.
But anyway, that's about all from me now. I finished watching Sixteen Candles before and Jake Ryan was a hottie! If I was Samantha I'd be wanting him too!
Have fun!

Something different.

Seeing as my life is uneventful for the moment (except I just checked my credit accout and it appears I've been spending more money than I thought...) I thought I might write a schedule for how one of my usual 8-5:30 days go. I don't always work those hours, but I'd say at least 3 days a week I do.
7:20-7:40: Alarm goes off, depends how I felt the night before. Roll around in bed. Get up, get dressed and tell myself, tomorrow I will make bed.
8am: Come upstairs, Alex and Matthew already gone to school. Generally Emily and Pat are upstairs so I might unpack the dishwasher, stare out the window, make hot chocolate, make Emily's breakfast.
8:20am:Generally Pat is leaving about this time so I try and divert Emily's attention away from Pat leaving. Never works but the crying and screaming doesn't last so long anymore.
8:45-10:30am: Depending on if I'm going out or not during this time I will dress Emily, play with her, clean up and breifly check my emails to see if there's anything interesting. If I'm going to the grocery or out somewhere then we will head out at about 9:15am, depending cause not much opens before 10am.
11am-2pm this time at the moment Emily is napping. Generally she goes down between 11 and 12 apparently, but the previous week and a bit it has been before 11. This is my favourite time of the day. I sit down and watch DVD's, tidy up again, check emails, sometimes talk to people online, do some ironing and folding if I must, check the mail, have lunch etc etc. Today I'm thinking I might have a shower because it's too cold at night to wash my hair and sleep on it and in the morning I like to keep the feeling of sleep on me for just a little longer. Plus I love my arvo showers!
2:30pm: By this time Emily has generally woken up if she went down at 11am or before. If she woke earlier I give her lunch but 2:30 is the cut off because soon we will go and pick up Matthew from the bus stop.
3pm: If I haven't left already I am running late. Matthew's bus gets in from anywhere between 3:10-3:35 (that was a once off and it was yesterday, not happy Jan). During this time Emily goes through two moods, one of them is happiness, delighted by being able to point out all the buses, the other is sheer pissed offness which when you're sitting in a car and know you can't go anywhere is pure hell and if I turn and look at her half the time she gets louder.
3:30pm onwards: We get home and Alex is already here, hopefully sitting at the table and beginning her homework. I prepare arvo snacks which could also look like a meal, no wonder they don't want to eat at dinner. And these snacks aren't just grab something from the cupboard either. We're talking full blown put it in a pot and heat it up or heat up the oven, put them on a tray, put them in the oven, wait for them. If I can manage it I help Alex with her homework. Generally Emily is crawling all over things, being possessive over chairs and screaming. This is the bad time of the day because her mood has gone from slightly managable to plain out of control. By the time Pat gets home she's even worse. The two days of domestic bliss I had last week were lovely and I crave for more of them. If I get them, great, if not, I'll deal.
5:30pm: I've finished and it's dinner time. Seeing as I have dinnr here almost every night I endure another hour or so with the kids as sending myself off down the basement so early doesn't seem so inviting.
So that's my day. Bit different to every other job I've had. Sometimes it's full on, expecially if I didn't sleep well the night before or went to bed late because my patience and temper is very short so I end up doing a little bit of forceful talking. Sometimes I feel like I'm bashing my head against a brick wall. But other times it's fun and I feel my heart swell up when the kids make me pictures and tellme they love me. They're nice times. But I must admit, Matthew talks so much if he's to ask me this morning about what we were speaking about in the car this morning I would not honestly be able to say because I've become an expert at turning off and going on auto pilot with my responses.
Hope all's well.

So, I'm figuring things are settling in now. I'm here for the long haul. And everyone else's lives are moving on because the emails have definitely slowed down. Which is a nice thing of course but at the same time my decision to come here continues to sink in further and further. Even my parents are like, oh I don't have time to talk right now, I'll put you onto Rachel. Who doesn't listen to me. So I just talk away and have her go hhmmmm, uh huh, ok. I'm so woe is me.
So Emily is in complete testing mode again at the moment. She had me close to smacking her on the butt today for her bad behviour, but contained myself (thank god).
Anyway, I'm going to cut this short because I've got a game of pillow soccor going on behind me plus Alex standing behind me watching me asing how long til I'm done (apparently she wants to check her "emails" [she doesn't have email]) and I start work at 6am so I want to have a bowl of ice cream and go to my room.

Finally...

After a month of being here I finally experienced real snow that leaves a lovely covering all over the ground. Matthew is currently outside rolling snow (it's sticky snow) to make a snow man. So it's real snow! No flurries, no sleet which doesn't last for even an hour, dead set decent snow which requires the snow plough to go driving outside to keep the roads clear. Obviously, this has excited me a little bit. The only feeling of excitement I've had all weekend.
After my completely selfish previous post of blah blah blah woe is me my week continued on just fine. On Wednesday night kareoke started when we were leaving and I was too tired to be bothered. On Thursday I got a massage. On Friday I was in pain from said massage. Good pain because I'd had my massage. I also watched Walk The Line (the movie about Johnny Cash) on Friday. I recommend it if you like a) Johnny Cash, b) biographies or c) country music. I extremly enjoyed it.
Friday night was pretty much an indication of how the rest of the weekend was to go pretty much. We went to 3 places and couldn't get in because it's Friday night and they don't want under 21 y.o's in the bar because we're not bringing in any money. Fair enough. We finally got into a 4th place, about an hour away from me. It was late when we got there so wasn't much in the mood for a big night plus we all wanted to get home early and get a good night's sleep because we spent Saturday night at a hotel and went to a club. Now, no point going into detail but I've come to the realisation that I must have a big sign on my head which is invisible to me but it has written in big giant letters - No matter what I've drunk I will always snap into responsible adult mode because you fucks can't take care of yourself and expect me to look after you. There are of course certain times when this sign has been not there. Whenever I went out with Swann people for one, and I've no idea why, oh except the Christmas party with George and Rose. Also, a couple of times in Wodonga before people pissed me off so much.
So with that said, paying $20 to get into a techno club was a big giant (everything is big giant tonight) waste of time and saw the need for anger management classes become apparent again. We got a limo home from the hotel (which had been turned into a whore house...) back to our LCC's Karen's house (she's like the support leader) where Sharmain's car was.
You know, it wouldn't have been such a bad weekend if I had more money to waste, was drunk enough and didn't have to worry about people forgetting their ID's and being too drunk to look after themselves or dealing with techno shit.
It amazes me how people lack complete respect for other people and property. It makes me angry and annoyed. Like the girls, get back from the club last night and decide to put on music and play around, yelling and all that. At 2am. That pisses me off. Drunk or otherwise, it pisses me of. I don't care if I'm boring or sound boring or not fun, really I don't. You can have fun not waking up people at 2am or not giving a shit about trashing a hotel room.
Apart from that, great weekend! Looking forward to a super week. I'm going to go to Michael's (craft store) tomorrow night as I've the 3 kids home from school and will more than likely want to get out of the house, plus I need to start making sure I've got enough stuff for when I go down to Florida in a couple of weeks.
Oh, and crisis update! I chose a course to study at Bundoora. I've now lost all concentration as I just hit my hit on the computer desk andit's throbbing. Bring on a good week.
Take care.

Getting Old

Today it dawned on me that after I turn 21 I turn 22. Which is logical. But my life to date hasn't seen me actually get out there and do anything with my life for the long term. And what I'm doing now still doesn't count because all I'm doing is following through with a statement, which is a start I guess but it's not really setting me up with a career or family, which are long term.
Since I finished school I've done a different thing each year. Variety is the spice of life but it isn't setting me up. I need to make a decision by August as to whether I will study or not, which you're probably like, it's so far away but it's not. It's less than six months away. It's March already! It's my birthday in two weeks (March 14, so you all know and remember) and I'll be 21 which was never anything big until I realise after that I am 22. If I'd gone straight to uni I'd be finished by the time my 22nd year is over so now I feel like yet again I missed the starting gun and watched everyone else run off and I got stuck behind which is where I always feel like I am, running in last (like usual!). So here are my options:
-Go home and look for work
-Go home and go back to Swann, begging for work
-Apply for fulltime study in September and work part time at Safeway or a supermarket while I do that
-Apply for part time study in September and look for a full time job
-Go home and sponge off my parents because I still don't know what I'm going to do
See, the last option is probably what people would go, yeah do that, but I can't spend my parents money, I still think about the money they gave me when I was still up in Wodonga and they had moved to Melbourne and I was always broke for some reason (smokes, alcohol and fuel is the reason why). And I think I want to study but I that leads me to believe I'm a commitment phobiac because it takes so much time. And I've also no idea what I want to study because that's like I'm already deciding what I will do for the next 40 years of my life. Which is also forever. And leaves me a nasty debt to pay off. And do I really want to be a teacher or should I go into PR or should I study writting and find a job in a magazine (sounds so glamorous).
So many decisions I have to think about. Obviously I've far too much time for thinking on my hands but if I don't think about it now when will I think about it? I need to be prepared. I need to stop using my credit card (I can already see into the future - I get home with a maxed out credit card, no money, no job and hopelessly depressed because I've no idea what I'm doing with my life).
It's a hard life.