Showing posts with label Love. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Love. Show all posts

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Dot points of happiness

A few things that are making me smile (and not able to sleep due to my excitement) lately:

  • My Dance Husband gets here next week.
  • This is my last weekend in London. Next weekend I'm in Durham, UK, the weekend after I go to Oxford. After that it's Bulgaria, then Paris, then home!
  • I'm going swing dancing next weekend... AND I have a dress for the movie premiere night that was on sale, and will double as my long-coveted black day maxi dress!
  • I now own this ski jacket and salopettes:
  • I got the above ski outfit for only £40!
  • I now know that the fancy name for "ski pants" is "salopettes".
  • His Travel Romance moves into our new house next week, and I'll be there just a month later.
  • His Travel Romance booked my ticket home recently, and I get to fly in an A380 via an afternoon in Perth catching up with everyone I miss so dearly!

Monday, January 17, 2011

Thank you cat, for giving my tongue back

I realise there has been a scarcity of words on this blog over the last few weeks, but who can blame a girl for being absent from virtuality when in reality, she's seeing His Travel Romance for the first time in seven months?

So, my luck with flights continued to a strong degree when it came to my flight out of Charles De Gaulle for JFK - I was only delayed by a couple of hours, and can now say I've been to Canada as our flight stopped in Montreal to refuel before attempting to land in the Great Blizzard of New York! By the time we landed at 9pm local time, we were only the second flight to have done so for the entire day. It took over three hours for the ground crew to get our bags off of the frozen plane and across the icy tarmac, during which time the great majority of us sat on the floor around the baggage carousel and waited. I emerged from the terminal to find that, due to the conditions on the roads, hardly a yellow cab was in sight so myself and two others paid $70 each to share a private car which dropped us at our respective hotels... A yellow cab from JFK to Manhattan is a flat fare of $45 plus tolls and tip so, all in all, not a bad night to be a hire car driver.

His Travel Romance arrived the following night after similar baggage delay issues and actually waiting the hour and a half in line for a yellow cab, and a visit to the wrong hotel room at two o'clock in the morning when the hotel gave him the wrong room number and a swipe card to someone else's room... Oops? And there commenced just under two weeks of remembering what it was like to be in a relationship when the person you're with is actually with you. It's a novel idea, this being with the one you're with!

There were fabulous dinners and delectable breakfasts, long walks on snow-compacted sidewalks, lots of shopping and browsing, and lots of catching up with good friends. We went to Duane Park for New Years Eve, mocked the tourists who continually feel the need to hold certain parts of the Charging Bull's anatomy, and saw the Statue of Liberty from a dinner cruise. The Statue of Liberty was lovely lit up at night. We stayed at the New Yorker and I fell in love with Art Deco, we had a horse and carriage ride through Central Park, visited Tiffany's on 5th Avenue, and ate a Candy Apple in the snow. We also took a day trip to Washington DC which was a long day, but well worth the early morning... Especially when I got to have a staring competition with Johnny Depp and play the piano with Duke Ellington...

Vietnam Memorial

Vietnam Memorial

The Lincoln Monument

The White House

Will Smith watching on as Johnny and I stare it out

Duke and I at the piano

Her and His with the Washington Monument in the background

We skated around the Rockefeller Center's ice rink, saw the NYC skyline from the top of the Rock at sunset, and had a minor Australian celebrity moment when we saw Scott Cam coming out of the Rock with his family!




We had such a great time, and it was so lovely to see each other again, that we've decided we don't want to keep doing the long distance thing. He's decided he can't do without me, and I've decided Europe would be much better with him by my side. We are both very excited about the prospect of a little less travel (for now!), and a lot more romance :-) In roughly six weeks time, after a ski trip to Bulgaria and some holiday time spent with my dance husband in a yet-to-be-decided location, I will be hopping back to the land of the Kangaroo and wearing corks on my Akubra once again! Ok... maybe no Akubra, and the corks will be coming out of the bottles of wine, but you get the picture ;-)

Sunday, January 2, 2011

2011














Happy New Year! I hope 2011 is as fun for you as last night was for me. x

Friday, October 8, 2010

Crossing the bar


The last week has been incredibly hard.

Last week my Poppa was taken to hospital and we were told that he only had 24 hours to live. I woke up on Friday morning to an email from my Mum telling me this news and there commenced a frantic scramble to try to get a hold of family back home to see what the latest update was. Since then, it's been an emotionally exhausting existence, trying to work out if I could get back home and accepting the fact that I couldn't, calling the hospital every night and every morning to see how Poppa had gone over the last few hours - fearing before each call that I was about to hear news I didn't want to hear, and checking in with my Mum and my brother every day to make sure they were also ok, and so that they were I assured I was "ok" too. 

The first time I spoke to Poppa after he was hospitalised, he was barely there and couldn't speak. Our conversation wasn't helped by the fact that I was sobbing on the other end of the line, trying to tell him how much I loved him and that I hoped he wasn't in any pain. The next few days he was always asleep when I called.

The second time I spoke to Poppa, he was sounding much better. He was still weak, but was able to carry on a conversation with me, and we spoke about my travels, the postcard I had sent him from Mallorca, and his morphine-induced hallucinations of water flowing on the ceiling.

That was the last time I spoke with my Poppa.

I have received some lovely emails from friends offering support from afar, but one in particular gave me a quote to which I have been clinging... "Don't cry because it is over, smile because it happened." I'm not done crying yet, but it does warm my heart when I think that Poppa is now back with Nanna again, caught up in the whirlwind of their youth when they first met and were just starting to fall in love - Nanna beautiful and glowing with happiness, Poppa dashing in his navy uniform.

Today, as my Poppa is laid to rest back home, I cannot help but cry because his time in this world is over and my heart aches with missing him, but I do promise to raise a glass of Scotch for him, and I will smile because I knew him, and because the life of Harold Douglas Coleopy, my Poppa, happened.



Sunday, June 13, 2010

The Last Weekend Before The Last Weekend

This weekend is the last weekend I have here in Perth, before my last weekend in Perth. With me?

I decided to get in a little tourist practice so, after dropping the ever lovely Yak off at the airpot this morning, after her keeping me company and looking after me for the last few days*...


... I decided to go and explore the beautiful buildings and grounds of the University of Western Australia. Having driven past this delightful place a thousand or more times, and having always wanted to go in and look around, and with time to kill before my afternoon's activities, I finally made it through the front gates. I'm so glad I did.











"Verily by beauty it is that we come at wisdom" - what a fabulous line to remember whilst traveling around Europe.

* Yak and I had an absolutely lovely visit... We are both nanna's you see, and so spent a great deal of time curled up on the couch together, in our trackies and hoodies, drinking red wine and watching movies. It was lovely. The problem is, we never take photos of ourselves. For being such good friends, we have surprisingly few photos of us together. Apart from Yak's wedding photos, I can actually only think of one photo we have of the two of us. This makes story-telling on a blog quite hard because blogs are about being visual and this is mostly why I have avoided talking about the last few days but, for the record, Yak looked after me like a little mother-hen, gave me lots of love, cooked me some amazing meals, and gave me cuddles at all the right moments. I love my Yak, and I can't wait to see her again in a week and a half's time.xx

Saturday, June 12, 2010

True Love

Nothing makes you feel as special as having a gorgeous little muffin-head rest her chin on your hand and purr as she lets you stroke her fluffy little head.

Photo by the lovely Yak, on her iphone.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

A Quick Catch Up In Pieces

The last few nights have really been quite cold here. Not as cold as it gets where I'm going obviously, but cold enough for me to proudly adorn my body with a combination of track pants, thick jumpers, and fluffy socks... It's a hot look, let me tell you!


This weekend His Travel Romance and I are off on a mini-break to the Margaret River region for three beautiful nights of relaxation, food, wine, and together time. Always fans of boutique-style accommodation and B&B's, we were recommended Hilltop Studios as a fabulous place to stay - the place looks amazing and the scenery reminds me a little of the bushland from our stay at the Southern Ocean Lodge last year so I can't begin to tell you how much I'm looking forward to it. HTR and I haven't actually had a holiday together all year, and we're about to be separated for at least six months due to his work and my travel commitments, so that makes this weekend extra special.


A little while ago I decided I needed to purchase a new handbag. More specifically, a new handbag that could be the official travel handbag for the amazing adventures of Her Travel Romance, which would be big enough to give me some extra packing room for my flights, would also be able to cope with carrying my macbook around, AND which would still look stylish on the streets of New York and London... The other day I found the perfect bag! A big, brown, soft, and gorgeous leather bag by Marcs which has carry handles and a shoulder strap for the convenience of choice and which also, happily, matches my new travel document wallet from Tusk!

(My apologies for the sub-par phone photo - it really doesn't do them justice...)

It's one month and five days until I leave Australia. 28 days until my last day at work. Not that I'm counting... US dollars purchased? Check. US dollars and 2x passports packed into new travel document wallet? Check. New travel document wallet packed into new travel handbag? Check! Waiting for the Aussie dollar to climb up against the British pound again? Check.

I realised the other day that I haven't done any knitting for quite some time... Annie decided to help me catch up.


Sunday night we had Annie's kitty-sitter over to check out the house that will be her home for five months, and most importantly, to meet the beautiful little fluff-chop. We ended up serving a delicious roast chicken with Yorkeshire puddings and gravy, minted peas, and roasted carrots and royal blue potatoes, and I made my first ever bread and butter pudding for dessert. The pudding was just amazing, and so simple! If you're interested in the recipe, it's right here. Kitty-sitter's boyfriend has already requested that we leave a copy of this out on the kitchen bench so she can make it for him at least once a week whilst she's here!

Quick blog catch up: check!

Saturday, May 8, 2010

Things That Make Me Smile

Kittens snuggling into necks...

Yoinked from Maddy

Lips painted like little animals...

Also yoinked from Maddy

The Best Lead pulling hilarious faces whilst dancing...

Photo by Aileen Ryan

Puggles named Cooper who live in New York...



Excitement in writing...



And my gorgeous niece, who is always willing to pull faces with me...



Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Nine More Sleeps!

Although my little ticker is telling me that I will be leaving the country in exactly two months, two weeks, and two days, something else very exciting is happening in just nine sleeps time... My birthday!

I am very much a birthday girl, and I relish the opportunity to have a day that is all about me! Well, me and St George apparently, but I'm happy to share with a guy who will protect me from dragons and encourage me to wear red roses on my lapels... (Note: my birthday, I get to mix traditions and make them up as I go along. That's the rule.)

To celebrate my birthday this year I have taken my inspiration from Jessica Claire (which I realise I've mentioned before...), and I am super supremely excited to be lucky enough to be having my birthday in the garden of Wonderland. Mr & Miss Wonderland are absolute darlings and have just made my day by letting me invade their perfect little walled garden - more than they can know - and I know they read this so thank you so very, very much.

Paper hearts are being cut out, tissue pom poms are being planned (along with wet weather contingency plans) and my little heart was just fluttering away in delight waiting for the ever so lovely Yak to put together my birthday invitations. They arrived about a week ago and ever since I have been trying to set aside some time to photograph them so that I can show you. So, without further flurry or ado... My beautiful, beautiful birthday invitations!





My dearest Yak designed, printed, ribboned, and posted these little marvels to me and I am ever so grateful for her skill and warm heart. xx

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