Not growing up or getting old with the 50s Housewife...old school style!

Awesome weekend!

It was a heat wave up our way, with temps hitting about 39 degrees at one yucky, sticky point, with no relief to be found anywhere.

So what's a girl to do when her child is away visiting the grand-parentals than hit the shops for her first look at the post Christmas sales?

Well I have to say the sales totally bite the big one. I don't think anything I saw around the traps was any less than it is every second week during a 10-20% off sale. Boo!

A few notable exceptions though:

Colette, oh how I love thee. You're the sushi of handbags - cute, lots of variety, delicious, stylish and affordable...even more so when you mark selected stock down by 50%. I'm loving my fire engine red little bag and enormous electric blue tote that I scored for a grand total of $52. Yes indeed.

Myer - I generally have an issue with your pricing however when I spy a gorgeous fire engine red dress (a wrap dress, but of course) marked down from $140 to the princely sum of $35, how can I resist? Never mind the 5 other wrap dresses in my cupboard...I will make room. I will make room. Amen.

Total score!

OK so that takes me to about 10am Saturday morning and even in the air con I'm starting to sweat and my hair is not even feeling like hair anymore...

So backstory on the hair: in Brisbane I had the most gorgeous hair place which sadly for me came with the price tag to match. Achieving this lovely head of mine definitely comes at a cost. However I had promised myself many moons ago when I was working part-time and broke, that when I went back to work full-time that my gift to myself would be a regular 8 weekly appointment with my gorgeous salon.

Oh how I looked forward to that day, and it was a treat that I never denied myself for 6 plus years.

Then...

About a year or so ago prices just skyrocketed to the point that I could barely afford to live and feed my child, let alone part with $285 hard earned dollars to (ahem) 'enhance' my natural look.

So I had to make the tough decisions: the expensive hair had to go.

(yes I cried).

Since then I have to say I've been bodgy self dyeing (with better results than others) when I can't stand it anymore and getting a haircut at the cheapest place I could find whenever my hair looked so bad I couldn't bear to look in the mirror. As an aside, sometimes you REALLY get what you, ahem, pay for (or not pay for, more to the point). It's a bit depressing when you walk OUT of the salon feeling worse than you went in. I'm just sayin'.

So anyhoo, back on point: lately my hair has just been so vile, it's stringy and sticky and feels dirty even when it's not. The bottom inch or so felt like straw. My gorgeous fringe non-existent. To combat, I became the proud owner of about a gazillion pretty headbands to a) get the strings off my face and b) to try to deflect from the sad state of my locks.

So Saturday morning I was feeling hot and bothered and having a particularly bad hair day. I went to the bathroom, caught an unfortunate glimpse of myself in the mirror and decided this had to stop.

In I walked to Oscar Oscar and said that I was having a hair emergency. Fortunately for me, someone had just cancelled like that minute...it was kismet.

One keratin treatment and quite possibly the best haircut I've had in forever later by a beautiful girl called Jess (who is about to shave her head for Shave for a Cure and will likely look knockout, hair or no), I now have not only a new hairdresser but a brand new girl crush as well. Bring on my next appointment, complete with fixing the 11 different colours I've had through my hair in the past year or so...

I love you Jess.

Even the sweltering heat and the disheartening prospect of trying on a zillion dresses which didn't fit right could take the 'swish' out of my gorgeous hair for the rest of the day.

OK so moving onto Sunday...

I was 'persuaded' to drive to Brisbane, lured by promises of icy cold DC (diet coke for the uninitiated) together with DC cupcakes by Miss Housewife herself (aka Cathy, aka Betty Detox) for a total girly gossip session blog business meeting. Yes, we have big plans for this blog in 2013, so God help you all.

So I hit the road, air con on blast to negate the effects of the heat streaming through the windows, music blaring (see Daggy Roadtrip songs, oh yeah).

DC and guacamole...all the essentials

Pulling up at the housewife's lovely abode, it's totally stinking. I mean, OMG, if Toowoomba was a hot box, Brisbane was an effing sauna. Gah. I was dying of heat exhaustion wandering up the garden path. Ugh.

So meanwhile the housewife hadn't yet baked and not wanting to sit in the sweltering kitchen for even a second, I suggested she put off the DC cupcakes for another time (your son's Australia Day party - I'm holding you to it).

So icy cold DC in hand, we then proceeded to lay on her bed with our heads practically in the fan gossiping and Facebook stalking I mean talking serious blog business. Just like old times.

By the way, check the housewife's Christmas present score - a Laura Ashley apron, just for those special 50s housewife Friday sessions. It works perfectly with her patented black and leopard print fashion style. Unfortunately the cooking sherry wasn't included, but I'm sure she will improvise nicely.

Many hours later (which seemed like 5 minutes) I departed back for home, sides hurting from laughing and not even remotely gossiped-out.

And yes, we talked about the blog. I mean, as in, as I was leaving, 'oh shit, we were gonna talk about the blog'.

Oops.

One of the most exciting things was planning Cathy's 40th birthday party in March, where she'll be recreating the nightclubs of our teenagerhood complete with a dodgy cellar venue and goth decorations. I mean 'classy goth'. There's a difference.

Bring it on babe, I can't wait.

The title of our blog was something I came up with in desperation back in the beginning when I had to call it SOMETHING and didn't really know what. Funnily enough it's become more fitting and more apparent every day that it suits us and our blog down to the ground. It never becomes more clear than when we're together, giggling like the immature little mini me's we were back in the day, and even reflected in our home decorating styles. Cathy pairs (and very successfully) beautiful candle and flower decorations, and skulls. Lots and lots of skulls. Me, I have a penchant for pretty old style china teacups and saucers interspersed with Monster High dolls.

As you do.

It really does seem that we'll never grow up. Or get old. And that's quite all right by me.

So to leave you with yesterday's daggy roadtrip tune that just barely escaped my previous list, simply for the attribute that it didn't quite make the 'daggy' cut. In fact, Wendy James was and is one extremely cool chick. Who seriously doesn't care.

Hope you had an awesome weekend! Stay tuned for some exciting 2013 plans for our blog...once we finally stop gossiping and discuss them.

Bec xx

I'm a natural blonde. Please speak slowly. #dumbblonde101.

So today, for about the third or fourth time in six months, I locked myself out of one of our office computer programs because I repeatedly entered the wrong password.

If you type the wrong password three times, you're locked out for 24 hours or else you can contact our Finance Department to unlock you immediately.

If you're REALLY special, you can then sometimes lock yourself out promptly within minutes of being unlocked. Well I'm sorry, three times and you're out? That's simply not enough goes. On a particularly blonde day I would say I need at least 5.

Now I'm becoming (in)famous within my organisation for forgetting my password and I have just been advised that our Finance Department actively look forward to it because I apparently keep them entertained with my email communications, ie:

First email upon being locked out:

Hi lovely ladies

Is this something you can do to unlock me? Apologies, it’s a blonde day…

‘sorry your account has been temporarily locked as you’re an idiot’…

And today's effort:

I have stupidly managed to lock myself out again due to repeated incorrect password entries.

Is it possible to unlock it so I can code our expenses?

(there has to be one in every organisation and it appears I get the title).

and...

Thank you - perhaps I should change my password to dumbblonde01, then I may not forgetJ

So clearly today I'm on fine form. I'm a bit 'special'.

At least I can go home knowing that I've made several ladies' days, having had them in stitches, albeit at my expense...

Happy Friday all.

Hope you're enjoying your #dumbblonde101ness as much as I am today.

Cheers

Bec xx

Lessons I have learned from The Jersey Shore.

So the 'shore' is officially done and whilst some would argue that it has definitely lowered the bar in reality TV, no-one who watched can deny that they learned a thing or two along the way.

Love them or hate them, or more to the point, love them AND hate them, for five or so years this group got paid to party in a sick house on the coastline and entertain us.

And in typical car-crash viewing, this they did.

A la Honey Boo Boo, sometimes this show required it's own dictionary, and occasionally could've done with it's own subtitles (especially when meatball Deena got on the sauce. Which was always).

Thankfully someone did - what would we have ever done without the official Jersey Shore Dictionary, folks?

And then along the way, one went to rehab, most went to the slammer, and God help us all, Snooki became a mum. Oh. Dear. God.

So here's the lessons I have learned from this 'cultural phenomenon' (yes, the host of the 'Last Round' actually said that without laughing. I didn't cope as well):

• I didn't even know what a guido or guidette was before the show. Now I am enlightened, fascinated and horrified, all in equal parts. Apparently a guido is someone who spends more time on his hair than I do, with the result looking like some bad Aussie soap from the 1980s. And from the amount of cologne and perfume being sloshed about, clearly you can smell a guido at 100 paces.
• I also learned a new term for an unattractive female - the grenade. Apparently there's a 'war out there'. Lovely.
• Guidos and guidettes also tend to dance like they're having some sort of episode, which is apparently very cool. Personally I was tempted to call the medics on more than one occasion and will probably have a car crash if I ever drive along the Jersey turnpike.
• If I took a shot every time Mike referred to himself in the third person and/or simultaneously showed his 'situation' then I'd have been in rehab alongside him.
• Whilst it's perfectly OK to wear a top as a dress with nothing underneath whilst dancing the Jersey turnpike and also fine to pee in public whenever necessary, splitting your pants when wearing underwear is embarrassing.
• The cameramen must have had the most entertaining job in the world, considering how much the show needed to be censored. 
• Snooki is only entertaining when she's smashed. Being pregnant apparently makes you 'disabled'.
• Apparently acting like a total tool for 5 years makes you rich. Guidos with money, a lethal combination.
• I would NEVER be paid enough to be the poor cleaners who had to sort out the aftermath.

So there you go. See, you can learn something from everything, even the Jersey crew. Who knew?

Bec xx

Farewell holidays and nanna naps. How I will miss you.

My holidays are officially over!

Yesterday was my final proper 'holiday' day, seeing as I don't work weekends. And back to the grindstone on Monday....(cue mournful music here).

No more sleep ins. No more nanna naps. No more staying up far too late for no reason whatsoever and then repeating steps 1 and 2 all over again.

The past two weeks have flown by and suddenly it's nearly over and I'm scratching my head wondering where the time went. There were so many things I wanted to do this past fortnight and I've barely ticked off any...

Luckily some of the things I did manage to check off the list were catching up with people dear to me, including my sister and her family in Brisbane and also checking in on Willow and her adorable kids the other day for a good and well overdue gossip.

Priorities, right? I'd rather pop off this mortal coil leaving the housework undone than miss seeing those I love.

Speaking of the bloody housework...I finally emptied the mailbox after about a week or so and found another notice for a rental inspection...OMG that's like 4 inspections in 7 months! I definitely have the most overzealous agents in the biz...having said that, if I'm every a property owner I'll definitely be looking them up as they clearly don't let anything get past them.

So on that note, E and I had to kick up the planned cleaning spree into high gear. Luckily he's old enough to help out with most stuff...although I must say his usual vacuuming methods do leave something to be desired...after a 'proper' vacuum by yours truly today it was pretty clear that near enough is good enough for this kid. Half assed all the way.

Aww, he takes after his mommy, I'm so proud. Genetics are a wonderful thing.

I've also 'attempted' to tidy up my garden which includes finally mastering the whipper snipper in properly edging the lawn and making a half assed effort to cut back the copious hedges around my property. Without a ladder and a chainsaw I'm pretty limited in what I can do, I must say. See dad, I really DID need that electric hedge trimmer.

Hedges = 1. Me = 0.

I can't trim my own hedges. Go figure.

God I'm boring, I'm almost looking forward to going back to work.

I can't believe I just said that.

What a crappy way to end a wonderful holiday huh? Although as I sit here able to see the floor in my bedroom for the first time in some time (don't ask) and have actually folded, clean clothes in cupboards rather than heaped in piles in the laundry. What a novelty! (as an aside to show you how bad it's gotten, I had all E's clothes folded and put away yesterday and last night he complained that he couldn't find any pyjamas in the laundry as he's so used to going and sorting through the piles haha).

So clearly I need to stop living like a teenager because I have a near teenager who's becoming just like me...terrifying thought.

I guess this is not the most opportune time to say that now the Christmas decorations have been packed away, my mantelpiece now displays a rather fetching tableau of Monster High dolls? Oh well.

On the mouse front...we've not caught any but the house has been suspiciously mouse activity free ever since the traps went out. No scratchings, no sightings, no nothing. Perhaps I've attracted a more intelligent form of mouse who decided to pack up their bat and ball and get the hell out now that they've outstayed their welcome? Time will tell.

Mouse = 1. Me = 0.

I will not surrender!

On a sad, sad note, I just read that Charlaine Harris is writing the final True Blood novel, like ever. No more Eric (Sookie I can do without). She could've warned me to take some valium before reading this news. Tragedy.

So hope you've all been having a lovely weekend or holiday, if you've been lucky enough to have one! I have one more day to whip this place into shape and then attempt to get myself out of bed before 8am on Monday. God help us all.

Bec xx

It's a jungle out there.

So it's been stated that I've either been on holidays for too long or simply not long enough. Reading between the lines, I think my 'friends' may or may not be telling me to get a life. My plans for my break were to finally organise my house properly and unpack my final few boxes...well it's only been 7 months, after all! 

Instead I've been actively avoiding anything to do with housework thinking I've got plenty of time to get it all done. Now suddenly tomorrow is my last 'official' holiday day, as I'm back to the grindstone come Monday morning and all I've managed to achieve is your basic general wipeovers and managing to take the Christmas tree down. Oh and keeping up regularly with all manner of celeb gossip (please don't get me started on the Kim/Kanje offspring. The only thing worse would be Courtney whatserface and her granddad husband procreating. God help us all).

So today at approximately 5pm after reading about how LeAnn Rimes calls the papps on herself, how being overweight (but not obese) can actually improve your lifespan (see I knew there was a reason) and the tragedy of the paparazzi who got hit by a car and in a further attempt to ignore the inside of my house, I got on a roll and decided to attack the garden instead. Or should I say jungle.

Note to self: do not ignore garden for 7 months, like ever again.

It's seriously a jungle out there. I have heaps of hedges and trees which are pretty much out of control and the only time I have cut them back during my tenure in this house is when I couldn't back my car down the driveway without brushing against them. I feel like I can't go outside without some sort of sad safari suit and a machete.

So question: how does anyone actually LIKE gardening? Two bottles of weed killer exhausted (and could have done with a third) and mowing the lawn and I was over it. Truly. And I've barely even started. I've declared war and will be preparing for battle, complete with pruning shears, definitely probably perhaps tomorrow. Or the next day. Or sometime in the near distant future.

As it was, I feel grotty and filthy and cannot get the smell of weed killer off my hands. Ugh.

I asked Santa for an electric chainsaw-ey thingame that does your hedges in one fell swoop for Christmas but clearly I was a bad girl in 2013. My stocking was empty. Not even a lump of coal for this little black duck.

I then asked my dad and he laughed at me and told me to get off my ass and get busy with the shears instead.

Huh. Sucks to be me.

So I have a friend with a gardening business (unfortunately Brisbane based and refusing to do house calls to Toowoomba, slack bastard) and am simply in awe of how he spends his days. Seriously, gardening sucks. It's the only time ever that I've missed apartment living.

So another resolution for 2013 is to save some money so I can outsource. Or find a man (as per my stepmother) and make him do it instead. Ugh, there's another jungle altogether.

But either way, it's a jungle out there man, and I've discovered I'm more of an indoors girl. Only not in my indoors where I have to clean, more like, say the mall. Who am I kidding, I always knew that.

Priorities.

I'm thinking of even cleaning my blinds instead. God help me.

Bec xx

Man or a mouse?

I have an embarrassing confession to make.

I have at least one, and possibly two, mice in my house. And I'm not talking the technological variety.

I first heard some scratching in my bedroom after my Christmas party where I successfully managed to 'quality control' copious quantities of Croser champagne, so wasn't sure if I was just hallucinating or whether the bloody neighbour had decided to get up early and garden instead of allowing me to sleep off my hangover enjoy a luxurious and not-often-enjoyed lie in.

However it was all confirmed when out of the corner of my sleepy eyes last week, I caught a glimpse of movement in my mirrored cupboard doors (bad feng shui, I know. I'm a renter, what can I say) and saw the little rat bastard scurry for all it was worth to hide underneath my lovely tallboy where it seems to have made itself at home.

Since then there've been sightings in my room, the kitchen, E's bedroom and the laundry for some godforsaken reason. We can't categorically decide if it's the same bloody rodent or a goddamn family.

Ugh.

Now the only time I've ever had a mouse in my house was in Cairns where I took the incredibly grown-up approach and promptly packed my bags and stayed with friends until my neighbour kindly informed me he had caught the offender.

Wussy? Probably. But just the thought of the horrible little things scurrying around my place makes me feel quite ill. Seriously, I am having nightmares about these things and their ghastly little feet crawling across my face at night. Eeek.

Just the word vermin turns my stomach. Vermin. Such an ugly, dirty couple of syllables, right?

However this time I decided to take a much more mature approach. I would simply be inhospitable and ask it/them to leave.

Google research (which is always right, don't you know) said that they hate peppermint oil, so we've soaked bags of cotton wool in the horrible stuff and left it lying around the house. We also cleaned everything and put everything in plastic containers to cut off the food source.

It kinda worked in the way that sightings popped up in heretofore unseen places. Little fucker(s).

Mouse 1. Me, well zero.

And then I took a lovely box of chocolates all giftwrapped to my sister's place the other day, only to find the little asshole had eaten through it and nibbled on some of the chocolates. How humiliating!!!

Mouse 2. Me, still effing zero.

So I've realised I have to bring out the big guns. However, here's my second uncomfortable confession: I'm a kinda girl when it comes to these things. Yep, I'm not a man, I'm a mouse.

Uh huh, totally squeamish at the thought of having to dispose of this crawling, scurrying waste of space, no matter how much it's starting to bug. Plus some of the ways to catch the little fuckers according to the internet sound downright barbaric and there's no way I'm 'finishing off' a half dead mouse cause the bloody trap didn't work properly.

Ugh, squick. Yuck.

Anyhoo, thanks to Google (but of course) I have now found the answer in a self contained trap that has a little indicator when the mouse has been caught and then you throw it away, trap and all.

Sorry Mickey but you've driven me to it. The chocolates were the last straw. I gave you the opportunity to leave voluntarily but you've left me no choice. Big guns it is. So who's laughing now????

So it turns out I might be more of a man than a mouse after all...well kinda. Time will tell.

Bec xx

What are the Best Worst Daggy Roadtrip Songs of all time?

Welcome to 2013!!!

I hope you all had a fabulous NYE and are awaking today sans hangover or riding the porcelain bus (I am happy to say I woke up after a luxurious sleep in feeling fantastic).

So I've been thinking, what should my first post of the new year be? Now that we've partied like it's 1999 (remember when that song came out and 1999 might as well have been the year 3000 the way we looked at it?) I thought I should do something to commemorate the new year.

Starting as I mean to go on and all that.

So I was gonna go deep. And then I thought....

Nah.

So instead I'm going to do my countdown of the ten eleven best daggy songs to sing out loud on a road trip.

Why? Well over the past couple of weeks I seem to have been in the car more than out of it, bound for Tenterfield, bound for Brisbane, etc. And as I have already permanently damaged my poor son's psyche by belting out some of the best, sing-along daggy tunes, I thought I'd share. Cos I'm caring like that.

Now I do have to add that not only do I sing these LOUD, I also sing these...well...

Let's just say my singing voice would probably shatter glass and the eardrums of any lesser individual. Let's be frank...dogs howl and cats yowl when I get started. I'm bad. Seriously bad. Which made this particular pickup line I was on the receiving end of in my twenties particularly amusing:

'You look like you're a really great singer'.

And the following comment after drunkenly taking to the karaoke mike (never a good move) to belt out my own personal rendition of 'Should I Stay or Should I Go' by The Clash:

'Well, at least they got up'.

Um...yeah...

Do I care, however?

Not particularly.

So here's my New Year countdown of the 10 11 Best Worst Daggy Songs to Sing Along To on a Road Trip. OK now that's a mouthful...but then again, so's my singing...

Why 11 you may ask? Well I was originally going to compile just 10 but there were 11 just screaming at the gate, not to mention dozens more in hot pursuit. Clearly I need to revisit my music collection...STAT. But then again, if I de-daggified my tunes what would I sing along to in the car? And why do so many of them originate from the 80s? Questions to ponder...

So here we go:

Number 11

That's What Friends Are For by pretty much all the greats from the good old 80s. I don't even butcher this one. Hardly. Keep smiling, keep shining... 

Number 10

Sweet Caroline - Neil Diamond. Come on, who can't resist belting out the chorus at top volume (including the 'BOM, BOM, BOM', despite the fact that no-one really knows any of the other words? Blurry memories of smoky pubs abound. Neil is the gift that keeps on giving.

Number 9

Baby Got Back - Sir Mix Alot. Seriously bad song, seriously good singing. Brings all sorts of visuals of Cameron Diaz daggy white girl dancing on Soul Train. Turn it up Sir...

Number 8

U Can't Touch This - MC Hammer. Now why is it that I song I couldn't stand in 1990 suddenly makes me want to (badly) emulate Mr Hammer and his happy pants dance? And let's face it, can anyone hear 'Stop?' without responding 'Hammer Time'????? Although watching the vid makes me exhausted.

Number 7

Oh Yeah - I don't even know who...ahem...sings this one. Considering there aren't even any lyrics, I still get a massive kick out of screaming out the sound effects along with the random 'Beautiful'. Thank you Ferris Bueller. Yes I do feel very sorry for my kid....

Number 6

Candy - Mandy Moore. So poor Mandy actually refunded anyone who bought her first bubblegum pop album because she's so ashamed of it, which makes butchering Candy a particularly guilty pleasure. And how cute is she?...

Number 5

I'm On My Way - The Proclaimers. Sung complete with accent. Enough said.

Number 4

King of Wishful Thinking - Go West. Julia Roberts hooking up a storm. What's not to love?

Number 3

If I Could Turn Back Time - Cher. Well, what can I say? Will any of us ever forget the image of Cher straddling a cannon surrounded by sailors...there are some things you just can't unsee, no matter how much you want to...where's the bleach?

Number 2

Make Me Lose Control - Eric Carmen...I'm not sure what it is about this song that reminds me of hot summer nights and daggy 80s dancing...oh wait. Digging that 'do, Eric. Not really.

Number 1

We Are The World - USA for Africa. None of this new-fangled revival shit, mind you. Who can't help but sing along?

So there you have it. Arguably my top 10 11 but even as I've been 'researching' I've come up with heaps more so there may well be a volume II in the pipeline. God help us all.

So what's your favourite guilty-pleasure tunes to road trip to? Make your own list and let me know so I can laugh along?

Hoping your intro to 2013 has been as much fun as mine!!!

Bec xx