Choices [Scanned]

Graham and I took a long hard look at our finances last night and I think that we are going to have to make a decision about our future soon.  And it’s quite a big one.   Basically, children or house.   Neither of us have fantastic prospects of earning huge amounts in the future and we simply cannot afford to take out a mortgage for the next 30 years and bring up kids.  I don’t know how people do it, I really don’t.  The prospect of renting for the next 30 years is also not a great one.   I must say though, for me, and I think for Graham, the choice is a no brainer.   Can you guess what it is?

Carpets [Scanned]

I finally lost the battle.   This weekend, we bought some marine carpet (great stuff, hard to stain and you can take it out and hose it down if you need to) to put in the back of the car to protect the carpet.   This, I was perfectly agreeable to.   The battle I lost was whether we had the back seats up or down.  I like them up.  I like our car to look like a car that’s used for carrying people (besides, things used to get stored down in the gap below the back seats in the old Subaru and after several years of accumulated gunk it was horrible to clean up when we traded it in.  I mean, we even had cockroaches breeding in the car *pause to shudder*) rather than a more utilitarian one.    And I was worried about the gunk building up again.   So, the carpet was bought and cut out to cover the whole lot, back seats down.  Sigh.   Still, he’s promised that it will be kept clean, and stuff won’t be stored down under the seats.   And definitely NO cockroaches.

I'm a comin' home! [Scanned]

I have my flights and everything so watch out Britain, I’m back for 2 weeks from Sunday 21st September J   I can’t believe it will have been nearly a year since I left last time.   Husband, unfortunately, can’t come because that would have been fantastic but we’ll get there.  One day.  One warm day…

Visa stuff

Well, it’s lodged. Now, I just have to sit and wait for them to tell me what hoops they would like me to jump through and whether or not they’ll be burning… Wish me luck.

Testing

Trying out the blogging by email thing which may help with posts, fingers crossed!

A long absence explained

Firstly, I am so sorry that it's been so long between posts :/ For some reason, I can't post at work, they've got some blockers up so that probably explains it all (as well as my absence on Facebook...). I will try and make more of an effort to get online more though, I really don't like sitting there at work when something occurs to me that I really want to post but then I can't and it just goes by the wayside and then you can't post them later because it just seems out of context, for example: 'Sitting here, at my desk, with my glue-stick, scissors, paper and sticky-back plastic in front of me, I realise that I've missed my vocation. I should have been a Blue Peter presenter' Which would have worked really well as a one off, but seems odd now. Anyway, married life is fantastic. We're loving every minute of it. We decided that we needed to do a married sort of permanent gesture and so we've bought an aquarium (because they don't interfere with Mr M's asthma) and we've got 2 baby barramundi* (Walter and Minnie), one goldfish (Arthur) and 3 angel fish (Rod, Jane and Freddy - which still amuses me greatly but went completely over Graham's head...). We've also got a couple of un-named fish who haven't displayed enough personality to warrant names yet. We've had a couple of fatalities (a goldfish called Bubbles (because he loved playing in the aerator - 'My bubbles! Mine!) and a barra called Gutso but we've dosed the others with medicine and they seem to be doing fine so fingers crossed they'll stay that way! I've been in my new job for a month now and I'm loving it! It's a larger office than the last place but still quite a small firm. I work with a paralegal for two solicitors, one of whom pours out a heap of work - enough to keep both of us busy and the other's quite quiet. All in all, we're generally busy, the atmosphere in the place is great and it's just a fantastic place to work. They put on morning tea for people's birthdays and if someone leaves, or arrives, or for any excuse really! I've got to put in my new application for my visa in the next week and have been gathering all the evidence needed. I'm worried, because I'm a worrier, but I really don't think that we'll have too much of a problem. there's an 8-10 month waiting list in Queensland at the moment so even if they do reject my application, we'll have even more evidence by the time they get round to it to make an appeal :) I hope to be online more often soon because we've now got a computer. We've got a little trouble because we don't have the power cord for the monitor, but we're working on that one. A friend is giving us a webcam so all we'll have to do is set up the internet and not only will I post more often but I'll be able to go on skype which should be great! I can't wait and will keep people updated on that one. Anyway, I'd better go, I have copying to do (honestly, the Department of Immigration must go through several forests a day the amount of paperwork they require). Love you all and miss you! *the spell checker doesn't recognise barramundi and suggests barracuda - I may be wrong, but I'm fairly certain that we don't have barracuda in the tank...