1. Being blessed with the presence of friends and family for my birthday dinner on Friday night. I tried to explain to them just how much I love them and was so grateful, but could feel myself about to cry so just did a “thanks for coming, you’re all awesome” 5 second speech.
2. Seeing Brisbane Roar dominate the game against Gold Coast United, winning 4-0 (GO TEAM!) then being presented with the minor Premiership plate.
3. Putting up my brand new bookshelf/desk from Ikea in my room, and taking another step towards being organised
4. Seeing my dogs, they are forever bringing a smile to my face
5. Being wished a Happy Birthday from Mat (my ex, and this truly made my day; purely because it confirmed that we can still be friends, and that’s more important to me than anything else. I spent 11 years of my life with this man, I don’t want to just throw it all away and feel bitter about it all).

So, what’s your top 5 moments for the week?

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Last night my fiancee of 11 years and I split up.

We have been together since I was 15; we grew up together. He was the knight in shining armour when I had drastic family issues and needed a place to run to. He was my best friend, always by my side. He was the one stable thing in my life that I could always count on. Now he’s gone.

There were many problems with our relationship, we weren’t perfect by far. Young and dumb we got in over our head financially because we didn’t understand money or what saving was. We lived beyond our means for a long, long time. Then suddenly one day I woke up and saw the light, and realised it needed fixing or else we weren’t ever going to find the independence that we yearned for. It wasn’t until the last 2 – 3 years of the relationship that we talked shop: buying a house, getting our careers going, and eventually having children (although I was never keen on that last part). We had all these dreams and desires, and had no way of achieving them without some serious action.

I made this discovery before him, which meant that I had to do some serious pushing to get him to change his ways. He did it not because he saw the reasons behind it, but because he loved me and knew it was important to me. So together we pooled our money and started budgeting. A year later we still hadn’t gotten it quite right, and I was unhappy again; we hadn’t made any progress. So we started again, got loans consolidated and a different method of budgeting underway, and while the budget was strict, it worked. We started to make ground.

At the same time, I was pushing him in other ways as well. I felt very insecure in myself; my close friends had moved away and I relied on him for support. I started demanding more and more of his time, while in fact I never saw it that way. I just saw it as a girl wanting to spend time with her boyfriend, and what was wrong with that? What I was actually doing was dragging him down, not giving him the time he needed with his friends. He started to resent the time with me.

I’m making this sound very much like it’s all my fault, which I don’t think it is. He wasn’t perfect either; he could be incredibly rude and selfish or get drunk and become obnoxious. But for every fault he had a positive, and I loved him.

Then suddenly the time came where I started to question the relationship. I was pushing this guy so hard to shape up his life so that we could live happily ever after, and my efforts were sometimes backfiring. I became tired of pushing for what I wanted and started to wonder if it was worth it. I began to wonder if I did love him at all. Suddenly his faults seemed mountainous. At the same time I realised (with the help of my sister) that he and I weren’t having fun together anymore. My interests had changed and suddenly differed from his. I didn’t want to do what he wanted to do, so he would do it by himself. Then I would force him into doing what I wanted to do because I had no one else to do it with. He tried to enjoy it, he really did, again, because he loved me.

Six months later and we’re still not having fun. We’re spending more and more time apart, and he is growing more and more unhappy with his life. He feels like he has changed so much for me, and I have done nothing for him. He begins to question his love for me, which resulted in last night’s decision to break up.

He became positive that he no longer loved me.

We discussed it, and I thought I handled it rather well. He was positive that he didn’t have feelings for me, so rather than push the point I packed up and left. We agreed to sort out all of our stuff on a future date.

Today I find myself a weepy, emotional mess. Part of me is incredibly sad that it’s over and I think a large part of that is because I loved him. I can talk tough and say I didn’t, and I know I questioned my own feelings 6 months earlier, but reality is that I have deep feelings for him. I don’t know if it’s love, but there’s a lot of caring for him. I’m also scared of the future. I now realise how good I had it when I knew that I had a place to call my home, where I could go at the end of the working day and relax. I know that I am welcome to stay at my mum’s place for as long as I need, and even move back in permanently. I can’t do that though, I need to have a place where things are mine, where I feel the master of my domain, where I can kick back and relax and not worry about someone else’s routine.

I’m also excited about the future. There is nothing holding me back from achieving my goals, of which I have a lot on my list of things to do. I can’t say I’m motivated yet, because the fear and regret of our breakup is still sticking in my mind. I know that it will pass and I will become happy again, but right now at the forefront of my mind is the desire to have things end happily ever after, and until last night, that fairytale included Mat.

I’m finding it very hard to cut him out of the picture just yet. I hope this feeling passes quickly, because I’m sick of fighting tears. I want to be strong. I want to be independent. I just wish I didn’t have to go through all the pain and heartbreak to achieve it.

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Today we randomly up and left to Toowoomba to visit Mat’s Dad (and his gf). It was great to see them, not so great for the car to break at the same time.

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Every time I try to declutter things though, I get roadblocked by Mat. No, he wants that and no I’m not allowed to throw out his magazines. It makes it tough to really make any progress unless I feel like getting into an argument.

Then Sunday, Mat hit the peak of unhappiness with this place, loudly proclaimed it’s too unorganised, and started ripping stuff out. He finally reached a conclusion last night after completely working his way through the room (minus the food cupboard and under the sink). All up, we donated about 4 large bags of things to the Salvation Army: cups, mugs and tons of general stuff laying around the living room. His hat collection has been moved to the bedroom (which is quite plain, we only have basic furniture in there) making a huge difference to the living area. He packed up all our trophies from netball, and moved his car models to the bookshelf (previously they were on the hutch on the computer desk). You can probably sense a theme here, Mat likes to collect stuff.

His Mum had previously given Mat about 100 small collector bottles (old whisky bottles etc) from his grandpa. 100 is probably a conservative guess; they were EVERYWHERE. The bottles have also been packed up and put into storage; good riddance.

Mat took the hutch off the desk, threw it out and repositioned the desk to run alongside the back of our couch, then mounted the microwave on the wall using some shelves we bought about two years ago for that exact purpose. In his final attack, items on the bench were either relocated or donated.

The effect has been tremendous. The room is now much more open and feels less chaotic, a change I can definitely handle. The best thing about it all is that I had hurt my back Friday night (not the good part) so while Mat was doing all of the cleaning and decluttering, I laid on the floor and watched tv.

Oh yeah, who’s a lucky girl?!

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It was the first time we have taken our new Nissan Navara offroad properly, as it’s touched dirt roads before but had never been transferred into 4wd mode. After a weekend of taking it down some of our favourite tracks, Mat and I were both blown away by just how well it went. It did everything we asked of it and more. Wow.

I videotaped most of the weekend, and tomorrow night will be compiling it all together to upload. There’s some keen (vain) boys eagerly waiting on the footage so they can see their trucks on the screen. I’ll be sure to post it here as well so that you can get an understanding of what we do when we go 4wding exactly. It’s a lot more than just dirt tracks! Throw in a bit of crazy angles and wheels in the air, and you’d be closer to the mark.

So now I find myself sitting at home on a Sunday night, wondering how the weekend just blew past so quickly. Another working week is ahead of me, and then a weekend that will be dedicated to putting together my first uni assignment for my forensics science module. Given that one of my resolutions for next year will be to get a High Distinction in this subject, I need to make sure this assignment is pretty awesome.

So what did everyone else get up to, and what’s planned for the last weekend of November?

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If you haven't heard of this snack bar, you have led a disadvantaged life.

A friend of mine on facebook is currently doing an “almost a photo a day” project, similar to my Project 365 project. He recently uploaded a photo of space food, which totally made me jump in excitement. Space bars are AWESOME!

When my mum first bought them for us as children, I eyed them off warily; more healthy food crap she was trying to force upon us. I just wanted friggin chocolate or museli bars thanks! But after trying one, I knew she had hit upon jackpot. It was so good, and from that point on whenever she bought a box it didn’t last long. So when my friend posted a photo I had flashbacks to childhood.

Just to go off on a tangent, my friend’s wife pointed out there’s no longer an astronaut on the box anymore, but rather a motor cross rider. She pondered the question “are astronaut’s not cool enough anymore?” I think it’s more worrying that they somehow link a motor cross rider with space. NO! Just NO! Don’t you understand space bars are based on the food eaten by astronauts when space travel was cool?! Silly people.

But back to my story.

I excitedly showed Mat the photo on facebook, and was horrified when he asked what it was. He had never tried them before! OH MY GOD! How have I been dating this man for over 10 years now, and never realised that he was a space bar virgin!?!

So this afternoon when we went grocery shopping I immediately grabbed a pack and threw them in our trolley. Mat groaned “urgh, you’re not going to make me try one are you?” Damn right I am! We got home and after unpacking everything, in true form I immediately went for the space bars. Suddenly, Mat realised he had tried one before and that he hated them. I was speechless, and just stared at him with my mouth gaping open while I contemplated continuing a relationship with someone whose taste was so bad. But eventually, I managed to overcome my shock and look at the bright side.

I now had a full box of space bars to myself. Fuck yeah.

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Mat made dinner tonight, and this is what I was presented with. Apparently only one rissole was happy to be eaten. The others weren’t so sure.

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I should have known better.

I should have remembered this was the guy who only last week took a bottle clearly marked as “face moisturiser” (and an expensive brand for any ladies paying attention) to be the same as the “After Sun Aloe Vera Gel” I had recommended he use for his sunburn. Hopefully the $10 equivalent he used on his back helped. It’s also the same guy who when half asleep took our new puppy dog out for a toilet break, stepped in dog poop, returned to bed and thought “hmm…my foot is really quite cool compared to the rest of my body” and fell asleep. In the morning, we discovered dog poo on the fitted sheet, top sheet, and doona. Quite the effort.

So two hours later I arrived home today to be greeted with a strong smell of corned beef. “Wow, that’s strong for something that’s only been on for about half an hour”. Glancing into the kitchen, to my amusement I found the aforementioned corned beef not in the slow cooker as recommended, but instead in our rice cooker, bubbling quite madly. My response was to laugh hysterically (the same reaction with the moisturiser and dog poo incidents – both times not particularly helpful) while trying to explain what he had done wrong. Mat didn’t know whether to laugh or not, but in the end he got shitty, declared he couldn’t tell the difference, and turned away. Apparently, the words “rice cooker” on the front aren’t clear enough.

Secretly, I think this is part of his plan to get out of cooking anything, ever. If he can’t get the most basic of things right, then he should never be left alone in the kitchen…correct? WRONG! I hate cooking, so he’s not getting out of it that easily!!

Not to be confused for a slow cooker

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Me: OMG, YOU SUCK! (giggle)
Amy: YOU BITCH! (laugh)
Mum: What’s going on? (confused look)

This year, we were on track to have yet another good year, which I didn’t think I would be able to cope with – two in a row could cause a system overload! We spent the morning having breakfast at my dad’s place, swimming at the river, then eventually at my Mum’s place to unwrap presents and have lunch. I begun wondering what I’d need to do to make it seem like normal…whether I should have a domestic with Mat or not. As it turned out something memorable did happen, something I definitely didn’t see coming.

Mat proposed to me, and I accepted.

As I write this post my brain is still trying to come to terms with it. Before I get into the specifics of how he proposed, it’s probably best to provide a brief history of our relationship.

We met in 1998 at a bbq being held by his sister, who worked with my mother at the time. It was a house warming party, and my mum insisted I had to come with her. Reluctantly, I went. Mat and I were the only kids there so were naturally forced together by every adult in site. He was turning 15, I was 14 (there’s just under 2 years difference between us). We hung out for the day, and became friends. Coincidentally, one of his best friends, Renee, actually went to my school and was a few years above me. One day at school she came and asked for my number on Mat’s behalf, so that he could give me a call. He rang, but unfortunately for him (not for me, cause ya know, I was just *so* popular) I was already dating another guy, but Mat and I continued to chat over the phone for the next year.

One day Mat rang and invited me to a party at his place. Mum dropped me off (I guess she thought his Mum was there), and we started drinking and playing card games. At one stage during the night, I think it was actually about 2am in the morning, he tried the official “pick up” line on me.

Him: What do you think about relationships?
Me: I dunno….they’re good?
Him: What about relationships with me?
Me: I dunno…I haven’t had one?
Him: Do you want one?
Me: I dunno!! *runs away*

It appears that was all he needed to do to win me over, cause 10 years later we’re still together. Since I was about 20 (we’d been dating 5 years by that stage), people have been asking how long until we get married, to which we both always made a bad joke or insisted we would never get married.

So the actual proposal.

As previously mentioned, we were at Mum’s house opening presents. I had just opened a present containing two stable tables, which I immediately tweeted as being the best present ever (stable tables are AWESOME). Everyone else finished opening theirs, except Mat hadn’t opened the one I had given him. He was standing up to my right, and I told him that he still had one from me yet to open. He said “yeah yeah, I’ll open it soon” (in my head I thought “why the hell won’t he open it??”) At the same time, Mum was midway through telling us all something, but as you can tell I wasn’t really paying attention (oops). As soon as she finished talking, he loudly declared “I have a present for Kel”.

The next part is kinda hard to remember cause it all happened so fast. He dropped to his knee, flipped open a box to reveal a stunning ring, and said “will you marry me?” I looked at my sister Amy in shock, to find she had tears and was looking a bit choked up. I looked back at Mat, stunned and unable to think. The first words that came out of my mouth were “are you for real” quickly followed by “holy shit”. I’m such a lady. Eventually, I also managed to spit out the word “yes”.

He had to take my hand, as I hadn’t even thought to put it out for him to put the ring on my finger. I think I also repeated “holy shit” and “are you for real” another five times. I’ve never counted on being proposed to which meant I’d never thought on how I would react. I guess it showed, because swearing and not offering your hand isn’t the best reaction for a guy to get from his girlfriend. Luckily, Mat knew that I was just brain dead, shocked and unable to think, and he was able to take charge. I also noticed that he had become a little bit watery in the eyes as well, then realised that I was also crying. What a girl!! I always try to think I’m big and tough, and the first sign of something romantic, I go and cry like a wimp. My reputation is ruined.

He put the ring on, and gave me a kiss. Mum immediately stood up and congratulated us before breaking out the bubbly, while Mat and I were also congratulated by my sister. In the meantime, Pauline managed to capture the aftermath on her iPhone. I tried to hide behind my stable table (I told you they’re awesome – SO many uses) before telling Mat he wasn’t allowed to open his present anymore. I hadn’t gotten him anything special, but no matter what it was, after being proposed to it was never going to be able to compare. I later found out that Mat had rung my dad the night before and asked his permission to propose to me, as well as asking my mother. What a traditionalist (yet so sweet).

My engagement ring

The ring Mat has given me is absolutely stunning. There’s 3 diamonds; the centre one is the largest, the other two are the same size. On the sides of the ring leading down from the diamonds are 8 sapphires – 4 on each side. The casing (I’m not sure if that’s the right word, but basically the rest of the ring) is white gold. He thought it through very well, because he knows I’m not a fan of gold jewellery. Everyone I’ve shown the ring to loves it, so that’s fantastic. I have no idea how much it’s worth, and don’t really want to know. I just know that I love it – it holds a lot of meaning for me now! It was designed by Mat, and created by a friend of ours, Stu, who is General Manager and Partner of a jewellery store – Underwood Jewellers. He had purchased the diamonds and sapphires when he went on a business trip to Belgium over 6 months ago. Amazingly, Mat had spoken with Stu about the ring before the business trip, so the cheeky bugger had known for over 6 months and not said anything!

So I guess that’s it! It’s been 5 days, and I still don’t know how to say “this is my fiance Mat”, or “I’m getting married”. It’s just so strange and foreign! I guess the first thing to do is try and organise an engagement party, then knuckle down and save for a wedding. I don’t see us being able to think about getting married in the next 12 months – we’ve just got so much planned, and we wouldn’t have the funds to pay for a wedding. No doubt I’ll be blogging a lot about weddings in the next year as it plays on my mind; who would’ve thought I could be so girly?

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Since I felt like yesterday wasn’t too bad I decided I was going to challenge myself today. After discovering the weather was going to be fine (via the Bureau of Meteorology website on the PC), I confirmed with Mat that I would ride my bike in. Normally this means that my iPhone would go in the front pocket of my backpack, earphones hanging out so I could listen to music while I rode. Today, I would have my iPod so I wasn’t completely without music. The only problem was that as I was riding in I realised I’d made a stupid choice for a playlist which had some non-favourable songs included. Typically one came on just as I was riding on the downhill/fast bit of the ride to work and I didn’t really want to stop the momentum just to change song (since the button on my iPhone headphones doesn’t work with my iPod). I frowned and kept riding, putting up with it.

The rest of the day passed in much of a blur. Towards the afternoon though it was time to go on a bit of a break (since I’d eaten my lunch working at the desk) and decided I would treat myself to a hot chocolate at San Churros. Catch was that I had to have it dining in. This is where the iPhone really shone – when you’re alone at a cafe/restaurant. Ordinarily I would spend the time reading through my rss feeds, catching up on facebook, or tweeting. With only the nokia I wasn’t confident in how it would go.

I was shocked by how fast the internet speed on the nokia was (still using optus 3g) but that was due to the fact that most of the websites have been adapted for mobiles (and therefore highly text based with absolute minimal graphics). While it felt faster than the iPhone, it was just downright ugly. I connected to facebook and even twitter, but gave up. Web browsing just wasn’t as fun with the nokia.

The rest of the day was quite uneventful. Before Mat left for poker tonight he advised me that the battery on the iPhone has also only dropped just a small amount. Normally after 1.5 days I need to charge it up! Definitely shows just how little Mat is using the phone, but I’m hoping that he will start using it more when he’s had time at home to actually play with it.

**Favourite moment of the day**

Getting 3 text messages from Mat tonight, the last one being “I can’t text message from this thing”. My, how technology befuddles him. Stark contrast from last night when he was so proud of making a phone call.

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After I had handed over the phone I started playing with the replacement nokia. While I thought it was a brilliant phone when I had first gotten it (one of the first phones to have inbuilt GPS with maps and turn-by-turn navigation) it just couldn’t compare now. There was no twittering from this phone, no wifi, and no way of easily locating apps to download and install. Of the “apps” that were designed for the phone, 99% of them are games, and dodgy ones at that. I could tell already this phone was purely going to be “just a phone” over the next week.

I decided to get off the computer (which meant no chatting to friends anymore – didn’t have my iphone to use beejive) and read a book. The night passed fairly quickly then, and eventually Mat and I went to bed. Normally in bed I would lay there for a bit and read google reader until I felt tired, would put the iPhone down and fall asleep. This particular night, I laid in bed and twiddled my thumbs until slumber came.

This morning I woke up and didn’t really have time to think about it (although it did feel a bit funny getting the nokia and putting it into my bag instead of the iPhone). It wasn’t until I had dropped Mat off at work and was driving to my own workplace I had thought about picking up some groceries to use for dinner tonight. Which then made me think that I should check my bank balance first. Unless I was interested in using a painful automatic phone system, then checking my account would be impossible. For the second time in less than 24 hours I missed my phone. I decided I would pick up the groceries at the end of the day after I’d had a chance to check the account using the work computer. Inconvenienced moment number 1.

Later in the day I had the radio playing in the background at work when I heard a fantastic song come on. I’d never heard it before and was interested to find out who it was. Without my phone I couldn’t use shazam, and typically the radio dj didn’t say who it was at the conclusion of the song. Inconvenienced moment number 2.

The only time that I truly had a problem about missing my phone today was at the gym. I use an application called c25k (iTunes link) which is designed to train a couch potato to run 5km in only 9 weeks. It’s absolutely fantastic. You start your ipod music on the iphone, then turn on the app. You can listen to your music (with full functions including skipping songs, pausing etc) and will get voice prompts from the c25k on when it’s time to walk or run, warm up or cool down, and when you’ve reached half way. Using this app means that you don’t have to focus on the clock – you can focus on your breathing or technique, or something else altogether. Tonight at the gym I was only equipped with my old ipod classic which meant I had to pay attention to the clock and make sure I was walking/running at the right times. It felt like it almost made it a bit harder, because I was looking at how much time I had left. Towards the end of the workout I found I could use that to my advantage though and started counting down the time remaining rather than thinking “oh god now I have all this time to go”. Still, I definitely felt the loss of the iPhone, and that app in particular. Inconvenienced moment numbers 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 (the number of times I changed pace during my running training).

I’ve now been without my iPhone for 25 hours and I’m travelling pretty well. I’m not a raving lunatic demanding to get it back (yet), though I daresay that’s because I’ve been able to access the *main* functions all day via a computer – twitter & chatting to friends online. At this stage I expect I will find the rest of the week fairly easy like today (unless a certain sister keeps calling stirring me up about what she’s doing on her phone!!) but the real challenge will be the weekend. That’s when the iPhone comes into it’s prime – when I’m out and about and have lots of time to kill.

Until then, I think I’ll manage. Just.

**Favourite moments from today**

Picking up the nokia to call a friend with Mat saying “where are you taking my phone” only to realise it’s technically mine at the moment. Then looking sheepish for it.

Waiting for a friend to arrive home, and Mat whipping out the iPhone to call them before putting it away while looking at me with a VERY smug look on his face (not sure if that was to stir me about the iPhone or the fact that he was proud he’d worked out how to use it all by himself).

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