Memories of Dogs and Dresses

Hello, dear people! Today I thought I'd take a take a delightful stroll down memory lane and recall the dogs I've loved and dresses I've worn. Why not? 

Incongruous perhaps, but that's how my mind works. Or doesn't work, as the case may be. Details. 

DOGS

Samantha

My devotion to dogs began early. At the age of around 3 or 4 mum and dad bundled my brother and I into the old Datsun 1200 and we drove to my auntie's place at Fairfleld.  My cousins were getting a puppy and we decided to do the same. Why not get one from the same adorable litter? 

Enter, Samantha the sausage dog.

Samantha and I circa 1981

She had to be Samantha because Bewitched was my favourite show at the time. Side note: let's take a minute to also appreciate my mum's glorious garden and my original shade of red hair (see above). It's hard to believe I was bullied and called a red headed rat rooter (among other things) because of it! 

Things I remember regarding Samantha:

• Singing the Olivia Newton John song Sam (badly) to her
• She went ballistic when the milkman came to deliver milk (remember those?!) Later we discovered he'd been unkind to her. And she wasn't about to cow down. Not our Samantha! 
• I believe I tried to smuggle her into my bed once. Mum was very house proud and dogs were not allowed on beds! 
• She loved food and became quite portly at one stage.
• Eventually she was plagued with the back issues that effect the breed and passed away.  That was a devestating day for us all. 
• She was truly unique. I know everyone thinks this about their dog but she was! Of all the dogs I've loved she was definitely the most intelligent. I swear she understood everything you said as if she was human. But better. Cause everyone knows dogs are better than humans. 

Skippa and Penny 

Left: Samantha and I circa 197?
Right: Penny, Skippa and I circa 1985ish

To be honest I can't remember which of this duo came first. They had a litter of puppies together. Skippa also had the same back issues, but Penny plodded into old age and keeled over in my parents backyard one day. They were both sweethearts. 

Betsy and Jake

My parents didn't have any more dogs for a while. Then they got a beautiful beagle named Maggie. By then I was out of the house,  married to Mickey Blue Eyes. Maggie had a litter of puppies and I wanted one. Enter, Betsy.  I earnestly promised Mick I'd  pick up after her etc. Spoiler alert: I didn't. Oops. 

My beautiful Betsy girl

Now in the meantime we had also ended up with Jake. A little yappy overgrown rat. Betsy and Jake were quite funny together and chased each other around the outside of the house. Watching their antics was hilarious. 

Admittedly, I had a love/hate relationship with Jake but Mick adored him. He yapped his little bum off until the ripe old age of 17. 

Cookie 

The magnificent Miss Cookie 

Another very special girl. Cookie was our first rescue dog but she rescued us, really. She was so sweet and gentle. Unfortunately she'd had breast cancer before we adopted her and it returned. We had to let her go last year and it broke my heart. I'll never forget Cookie.

DRESSES

All of the following dresses were sewn by my talented and generous Mum. She's a bloody legend, and I have been rather spoiled over the years. There has been some talk of selling them, but to be honest I'm not sure I can let them go. To have such beautiful garments, including my wedding dress, handmade by my mum is something so special I can't put it into words so I'll let the pictures say everything: 

Year 6 Formal

I don't have any scanned photos 
of 11 Year old me wearing this but I did.
And I adored it. Still do. 

Year 10 Formal 

Gotta love the hand on the hip pose. 

Year 12 Formal

Other formal dresses 

Wedding dress

The Vogue pattern mum used 

And that concludes today's memories of dogs and dresses. Cue wistful sighing.

Until next time,

Ness 

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Countries I Have Visited #LifeThisWeek

Hello there, lovely people! It's time to reveal the extensive list of countries I have visited. Here it is...

Countries I Have Visited:

• Holland.

The End.

That was a quick post.

Byyyye!

Just kidding. I'm the queen of rambling. Can't get rid of me that easily. So ner!

It's true, though. The only country I've visited is Holland. Technically I should change the title of this post, but why nitpick?

I was certain I had already blogged about visiting Holland before, but when I went looking for the post I couldn't find it. Weird.

I went there as a ten year old with my parents and brother. It was 1981. I can still remember it. Well, bits of it.

We stayed with some friends of ours in Rotterdam. We ended up riding bikes everywhere. My parents have all the snapshots because obviously 1981 was a very long time ago. They also have footage which they had made into a DVD and gave me a copy, but I don't know how to upload it here.

In the footage I can be seen as a ten year old, skipping amongst the tulips.

Not the actual tulips I skipped amongst.

Other random memories of Holland:

• When we arrived I allegedly slept for a solid 17 hours due to jet lag. If I ever travel overseas again as a middle-aged/old lady I'll likely fall into a coma, never to wake up again.  

• I lived on bowls of custard and those round Dutch crisp bread thingys for a month. It was awesome.

• Dutch liquorice called Drop (I think), is the most vile thing I've ever tasted. A million times more salty than vegemite. Yuck!

• They served hot chips with peanut sauce, which struck me as revolting at the time. Now I realise it was probably some sort of satay type sauce and I'd probably love it.

• Yep, we did visit a windmill. I think that was day my mum was filming away merrily only to discover later there was no film in the video recorder!

• We visited some sort of touristy place where the bins would speak when you passed them saying "Papier here!" Or something. My memory of this is a little vague.

• There was a lot of punk and new wave types about and I definitely gawked stupidly at them.

• We went on a boat ride on the canal but as soon as it rocked I freaked and wanted to get off. So my dad got off with me. He doesn't like boats either and I provided him with a convenient smokescreen. Shhhhh, don't tell anyone! 😉

• I remember some of the music that was popular at the time. Such as Double Dutch Bus and Grace Jones's Strange (I've Seen That Face Before). My parents bought a single of the latter, my brother the former. This was in the prehistoric days of vinyl records!

• We almost missed the plane coming home! I'm not sure exactly how my parents got mixed up, but we were meandering around the airport thinking we had aaaages. Suddenly we heard our names being paged and had to bolt to the departure gate. We embarked red as beetroots, as all the other passengers gave us filthy looks. OOPS!

Those are snippets of memories from a very long time ago.

Sadly I've never visited any other countries, but if I could I'd visit the US, Canada and Prince Edward Island. Also; the UK. Not very likely at present, but you never know. Fingers crossed!

What about you?

Which countries have you visited?

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My Last Year Of School

In 1988, I finished my last year of high school. Almost 30 years ago. Yikes. I'm OLD.

I have to admit, I don't remember a great deal about it. I certainly wasn't studying like a maniac for the HSC. I had a bit of a laid back, I'll-do-it-tomorrow approach to it all. Coughs. Nothing's changed...

I was most likely too busy doing other important things. Just like every 1988 era 17 year old. You know, like watching The Comedy Company (which apparently premiered in February of that year) and  listening to my Carpenters and Barbra Streisand records... Oh wait...

Okay, I have no idea what regular 17 year olds did. But I suspect they had boyfriends and would sneak out to drink and try to get into night clubs...

But I totally did wild and crazy things too! Like staying up really late and watching the US today show when it came on at midnight or something. I'm such a rebel. Snorts. Oh yeah, there was an embarrassing incident when I sarcastically announced to the class that I was rebel, but I don't remember the finer details. Hmmmmm.

I had absolutely no idea whatsoever what I wanted to do when school ended. To this day, I still don't. I'm sure I'll figure it out one of these days.

Anyway, I don't feel like ruminating about all of that. So, instead let's just laugh at the fashions and hairstyles.

Here I am with my infamous mullet-perm.

I was kind of cute in a dorky way. Sort of. Maybe. Oh, shut up.


As I've already mentioned, I loved The Carpenters and Barbra, but predictably, I also loved Madonna. It was 1988. I was 17. I think it was compulsory.

I was stupidly shy and insecure, but at the school formal I thought I was pretty special in the dress my mum made me (Pictured above). It was ruched and strapless, and then it had this tulle over skirt thing with a gigantic bow. I think bows were a thing in the 80s.

Also, check out the lovely old carpet my parents had.😂

Not to mention to the beautiful doiles on the armchairs. Noice.

The only other thing I remember is that I completely bombed out in the HSC. Sigh. Sad face. 😭 I guess I am one of those reasonably intelligent people who just doesn't do well in structured exams. That's what I tell myself, anyway. Or it could have been that lack of studying thing... Oops. 

Anyway, fast forward 29 years and here I am smashing life and being delusional awesome, so all good. 

To be perfectly honest, I'm glad those school days are over. I was always a Nelly No Friends and therefore desperately lonely. Sigh. 

So I'm quite happy to be old after all. 

What about you? 

What do you remember about your last year of school? 

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Magical Moments

There are certain magical moments in life you wish you could capture and bottle forever. Then, when you're in other less magical moments you could open that bottle up and sprinkle some of that magical fairy dust stuff.

Thinking about it, there are probably several such moments for me. The one that immediately comes to mind is the day I found out I was pregnant with Mr (almost) 16. Words cannot describe the sheer joy.

I've blogged about it a little before here.

After five years of trying to conceive, I was certain that it would never happen. That was a crazy happy ecstatic and joyous feeling. Unbelievably awesome. You rarely have such moments of absolute elation in life.

When I finally understood that I was, in fact, pregnant, I was laughing and crying at the same time. It was unbridled and I couldn't control it. They were tears of pure joy. 

It certainly makes me all warm and fuzzy remembering that moment. Imagine, just imagine, being able to capture it forever. I don't have any photos of that particular day. I can't even remember if I have the ultrasound scans, though I must have them somewhere. The feeling of that day is something I've never forgotten.

I  always joke how it was better than winning the lottery, but at the same time. I've never actually won the lotto, so I would like to arrange that. You know, just so I can know for sure!

But you know what? There are other magical moments. But I don't distinctly remember them. They were unmemorable and ordinary. I felt neither panicked nor euphoric. There was nothing special or remarkable about them in any way. Just ordinary moments in an ordinary day. Forgettable for their very ordinariness. Do you know what I mean? Those even moments of equilibrium. I really wish I could bottle those. I could take them out as a balm when I'm anxious, stressed or worried. When I feel despondent, dejected, dreary and just plain in the doldrums, there would be my trusty bottle of equilibrium.

There are certain other feelings and/or moments that I can recall. Such as:

• The buzz of endorphins that kick in after exercising.

• Taking off and touching down in a plane for the first time when I went overseas to Holland with my parents in 1981.

• The time Mickey Blue Eyes, the boys and I went to Magnetic Island. It was SO spectacularly beautiful that you could imagine you were literally in paradise. 

• The feeling of freedom when you left school on the last day of term as a child (a slightly different feeling as a parent!). 

• Hearing Carpenters music for the first time. 

• Driving off for the first time by myself. Especially because I was a very late starter here. Never thought it would ever happen! 

• Belly laughs with my boys

• Moments in my boys development and growing up. First words and steps etc. (I do have some photos of these times to remember. So that's something).

I'm sure I could think of many more magical moments, but I'll wait and see. I'm hoping there's more to come, even without the bottle of magical moments fairy dust. In the meantime, I'll just take balanced and ordinary old equilibrium. And maybe a lottery ticket or two...

Linking up for Friday Reflections with the prompt:

Write about a moment in life you wish you could freeze and preserve. 

What about you?

What moment do you wish you could bottle and capture forever? .

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Anniversary

Today, November 11th, 2013, Micky Blue Eyes and I are celebrating 18 years of wedded stress! Uh, I mean, bliss. So here is a bunch of old photos I dug out of the cupboard for your perusal.

Here we both are in High School. Not the same one, though. Considering that Mick is 8 years older than me, so he'd finished high school before I'd started.

Years later we met. We gazed at each other across a crowded Rotaract function- and made absolutely no impression on each other whatsoever. However, somehow a year or so later we ended up dating. At which point I was so taken with him that I apparently wrote him a love letter which I also found helpfully tucked away in the cupboard with all the dusty old photos. It contained a rather charming poem I wrote which went:

Roses are red
Voilets are blue
I couldn't find anyone else
So I thought you'd do

Touching, right?  How could he resist? He couldn't. Here are two of my favourite wedding photos. I think I like them because I had no idea they were being taken. Of course Mick isn't in either them but that's a minor detail. He was only the groom, after all.

Here we are, happily married, having over priced lobster for my 25th birthday. I must be approximately a hundred years old now, because it feels that long ago. Sigh.

Skipping over a few boring years to my 30th birthday when I was rather up the duff but unaware.

Later that same year, heavily pregnant and by now aware of the fact but only just. Long story. Tragically I look in much better shape when I was very pregnant than I do now. Ahem.

A few years later at our friend's wedding where I was Matron of Honour.

Celebrating our anniversary in 2006.

At our niece's wedding at Mt. Tomah Botanical Gardens, NSW, February 2008.

Later that same year when I was extremely up the duffian with Mr 5.

At this point I seem to have run out of photos which is weird because I'm such a shy person show off who is always running hamming it up for the camera.

But here is one taken on Mr 12's birthday in July this year, even though I usually don't post photos of my boys because I don't want to embarrass them with their bogan parents. Then again, isn't that what parents are supposed to do?

Happy 18th anniversary Micky Blue Eyes! It does seem like a long time. That is until I think of my parents who are also celebrating their anniversary! 47 years!

Happy anniversary Mum and Dad!

Oh yeah, I haven't forgotten it's also Remberance Day so - we will remember them! It's a good way to remember your anniversary too. Ahem.

I must confess I'm not sure if this is my shortest post but I'm linking up with I Must Confess anyway. So ner!

When is your anniversary (if you have one)? How do you celebrate? 

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