Doggie!

Self indulgent pet post coming up....

Last night I was persuaded to switch over to Crufts just to get a glimpse of my favourite breed appearing in the grand final - the awesome flat coated retriever.

My dog Max was a flat-coat, descended from a Crufts champion no less. But he was the pedigree puppy nobody wanted to buy because his paws were so massive they could tell he was going to be a hulk, and already walked with a wiggle so no good as a show dog. He was the only one left in the litter when we got there. He might have been a reject, but to us he was perfect.




He was still just about a puppy here, sitting with an 8 year old me on the steps to my Grandma's house (check out my awesome tracksuit and wicked cowlick fringe).

Like Topsy he continued to grow and grow... and never really seemed to emerge from his puppy state of over-the-top friendliness and enthusiastic tail wagging at everyone he met. So we ended up with a giant soppy monster of a dog who everyone was terrified of when they first saw bounding towards them (but soon learned to love once they realised he was just saying hello).


Here he is at full adult size with my best friend Catie (aged about 14 here), who will be my maid of honour in just ten weeks time. Check out her amazing purple docs and tie-dye skirt. Yeah we were cool.

For all his dogzilla proportions in comparison to the rest of his breed, Max (or Maximillion Bogbrush as we elected his "show-name" to be) was completely chicken. He never dared go into water deeper than a puddle and was often seen being chased angry terriers who he's over-eagerly tried to befriend and only ended up enraging. We used to go on canal boat holidays every October half term, and my step-dad would have to carry all 27379429303 kg of whimpering dog over the gang-plank as there was no other way to get him on and off the boat.

Max ended up with all sorts of horrible eye problems in later life, which is sadly quite typical for pedigree gun-dogs. He was quite blind (yet still very cheerful) by the time he died. Max was such a lovely animal, but I think if I ever get another dog it'll be a resilient mongrel or cross-breed. It was horrible seeing him suffer so much, and he did well to get to his 10th birthday. Poor lovey. Maxy-Bog, gone but always in our hearts. Long may your tail wag!

Naturally (in spite of being the only naughty tail wagger in the line-up) Jet the flattie won Best In Show last night. How could you resist that face though? Woof!

A Snotty Love Story

Sam and I are snobs about being poorly. We both have immune systems of steel, and mock people who update social networking sites with how sorry for themselves they are about their two-bit colds. Maybe they should eat some vegetables, get some exercise and not clean their house so obsessively, we chuckle.

Oh how smug and superior we are.

In fact, in the coming up for four years we have been together I think Sam has been ill once. I have been ill twice. And never at the same time, so the other one is always capable of dashing to the shop for Lemsip (always in a mild state of panic that the other one must be dying because they are simply never, ever ill).

How the mighty have fallen.

The endless parade of working days and days and days has finally caught up with me. My body has given up. And instead of just getting into bed and admitting defeat, I have continued to train, defiant, insisting that I can "sweat it out". So what might have just been a cold has now morphed into a behemoth of a virus, with painful chest, sweats, dizzy spells, achey muscles and misery for all around me. And poor old Sam has got it too.

So there's nobody to look after anybody else, and our house is a house of Sorry For Itself.

(I have resisted posting anything on Facebook)

The annoying thing is that when I'm off ill now, I do not get paid. And not getting paid when you're only on the cusp of a 5 figure salary anyway is a bitter pill to swallow. So just as well I have an immune system of steel. And let's just say I won't be gloating about it anymore. I am just going to be quietly grateful for it. And NOT force myself to train when I'm ill.

Regardless of how worried I am about squidging into my wedding dress.

Collapses At The Finish Line

Hurrah, I in the last two hours I have come to the end of my work marathon! I HAVE TOMORROW OFF!!!! I HAVE NO MORE WORK UNTIL 7:30AM MONDAY!!

What's better still, after I finish work on Tuesday morning I am being whisked off to Manchester by my wonderful best friend, who has just informed me we have an appointment to try on dresses at a VERY exclusive bridal boutique in Didsbury. Yes, yes, I know I already have my wedding dress upstairs in my wardrobe. That's why Catie has told the shop assistant that we have a budget of £1,500, so that there is no way I will get tempted to buy anything else. AND WE GET TO TRY ON AMAZING EXPENSIVE BRIDE STUFF! Let's face it, this is my only chance to live the bridal dream. I'm totally taking my camera.

And I have a Mac makeover booked for Wednesday to experiment with "wedding beauty" (eek), and then I'm going out for cinema + dinner with Sam. We're going to Thai Sabai which is where we had our first date (and haven't been back since, as we seem to go out to eat together twice a year at the most). Basically I am being spoilt and finally getting to properly enjoy wedding preparations and excitement. Which is brilliant because I am crawling with knackeredness and missing spending time with my friends.

The other good news is that Aerockbics made it into Stylist magazine's Top 5 Things to Do in Leeds this weekend! Time to push the media boat and get my Monday night busy enough to expand....

Working Weeks (and more weeks and more weeks)

I am currently in the middle of a 13 day working week, and my GOD you'd think I was recreating the universe I'm so tired and moany. I must be updating Twitter about every 20 seconds with another whinge about how exhausted I am and how I'm jealous of everyone else's lovely weekends of rest and tedium. I bet God didn't do that. Mind you he only had six days and then he got to put his feet up, the lucky bitch.

I don't know who decided to have five days of work and two days of rest, but they knew what they were on about. I know a four day week would be mint and all that, but at the other end of the spectrum, having six days of work and one day off is exhausting and I don't seem to be getting used to it at all. Five days on two days off is clearly needed for my sanity. And now I don't even have a day off on Sunday either! Well, not for a bit anyway. I've got pink rabbit eyes and blotchy skin and I'm hell to be around, snapping at everybody and making them all do press-ups.

My Pilates course is brilliant though, and it will all be worth it in the end.

In other news, today is Valentine's Day. I've forgotten what Sam looks like (tall? scruffy? think I passed him on the way to the bathroom at some point on Friday night) so it will be nice to watch a slightly weak film together and actually COOK and eat the same meal at the same time which honestly I don't think we've done yet in 2011. Shame on us.

Anyway, there will be no flowers, chocolates or champagne. Instead there will be daft "cards" drawn with felt-tip and Molly Ringwald on the telly.

Pretty excited actually. A lifetime of V-days like this will be great.

The Big Day

I've just watched the saccharine, ridiculous film Bride Wars (starring Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson). It's about two best friends who grow up dreaming of their big day. Isn't that funny, that so many girls supposedly grow up with a kind of vision of their wedding day? Who are these people who while away their childhoods imagining themselves in dresses and the handsome groom and the cake and the flowers and the blah blah blah? Do they even exist?

Is this a culturally perpetuated myth, that little girls always dream of their Big Day?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not some crazy feminist who never wanted to get married in the first place. I just didn't really think about that much either way. I figured if it happened, then that would be dandy, and if it didn't, oh well. Stuff like having kids, a career and owning a house all seemed much more important than prancing around being the centre of attention (which is what I thought getting married was all about).

So I definitely didn't have any set ideas about how I wanted My Big Day to be.

Until now.

I appear to be condensing 30 years of not being bothered into 5 months of being VERY BOTHERED INDEED. You may like to call it unhealthy obsession. I am at the stage now where 100% of my reading material is wedding based. I'm buying those silly bridal magazines even though I wouldn't dream of having a wedding remotely like anything they print and promote. I watch wedding reality TV non-stop. I am glued to Twitter for the latest update on the 123948293 wedding blogs I now regularly read. And apparently I am now watching really bad romantic comedies, providing their plot centres on the W word.

And MY GOD do I have spreadsheets, lists, and endless, gushing ideas of what we will be doing.

I am boring myself, frankly, so God help those around me.

So I started to wonder - maybe if I'd gone to tap class and pony riding lessons like all the other proper little girls I would have this shit LICKED by now. Maybe if I'd done my hair in ribbons and wanted to wear dresses when I was younger, I would have it all out of my system, because thinking about your wedding day is what those kind of girls do. I'D BE READY TO GO. But no, I chose to spend my youth copying pictures of Korky the Cat out of the Dandy and playing army with big sticks, and watching Predator when my Mum thought I was watching the Care Bears Movie.

So now I've ended up doing the girlie flouncy look-at-me-I'm-the-prettiest-princess-of-them-ALL shit as an adult who should really know better.

Oh it's so bad it's almost embarrassing.

Oh but my shoes WILL BE SO SPARKLY.

Engagement Shoot

Today Sam and I are having a photographer friend come round to take some pictures of us, ostensibly so we have something nice to put up at the wedding and on our invitations, but in reality so we can be silly and pose. Actually, what they call this in the whimsical (and often widiculous) world of weddings is "An Engagement Session"

See how the photogenic couple incorporate their hobbies and idiosyncracies into a set of adorable pictures? Did you throw up yet? Oh my God, when I first found out these things existed I nearly split a side. And yet after five weeks pouring over wedding blogs and endless engagement session shoots I have now decided it's quite sweet really. Especially as we have so few decent pictures of us together. And it was all our photographer's idea anyway, or something.

So the plan is to de-twee the whole thing and dress particularly nerdy, look highly unattractive and try and get the cat into as many pictures as possible.

Watch out.

EDIT: Here be some!

Friday!! Knackered.

Crawling towards the weekend on my hands and knees. I don't understand why I can't handle these long days, I need to toughen up. One of my workplaces shut down last week and I'm having to beg and plead my last 2 months wages out of them. Cheque turned up (finally) yesterday and they'd decided to pay me £8.50 per shift rather than per hour. I think it makes it more exhausting when you're working your nuts off and people are screwing you out of money so's you don't even know if you can pay your gas bill at the end of the month. Just as I've lost that job, my other job have decided to stop paying us for teaching classes, and stop paying us commission for signing up new members, so we're back on a basic wage there. Staff morale? Anyone?

Still applying for other work though. It'll come. Has to.

My own freelance P.T is good fun, and my clients are getting excellent results. My rock aerobics class is starting to build a following and I LOVE teaching it. I need to count my blessings that I get to call this part work. The self-employed side of what I do is brilliant, and empowering. It's the bits where I have to work for other people that make me a bit depressed. It's steady work though, it's needed.

Going out tonight with my Catie. Last weekend off work for 2 months, so I'm going to make the absolute most of it. Wedding shopping tomorrow with Ellie. Hopefully get to do something nice with Sam on Sunday. I love it when you cram so much into a weekend that it feels like three days instead of two.