My friend Jess, from the Tasmanian Pagan Alliance, is awesome. She has just fostered six Turkish Van cats, who were kept in horrific conditions. In her words, “they ha[d] been forgotten – skin and bones, with no food, litter trays, beds or toys, their original owner no longer in their lives, left with someone who doesn’t have the time or want to care for them properly.”
She has taken them all under her wing, and is trying to get them all back to good health. These cats are beautiful, purebred cats. I cannot understand how anyone could just leave them behind. I believe three of them are desexed, so the other three need to also be desexed, and all will need vaccinations, microchipping and possibly further tests.
I have put my hand up to adopt one. I know we shouldn’t, we already have a cat, blah blah blah. But as soon as I heard that Jess had rescued these beautiful cats, I couldn’t say no.
We have one on hold for us – her name is Thorn (all the cats were named after tree species – Apple, Cherry, Willow and Ash – Luna is the only one who isn’t named after a tree!) and she’s magnificent. She’s a bit of a runt, which I love, and we won’t be bringing her home for a while, but when Jess gets them all back up to good health, we’ll be adopting her. We’re thinking about giving her a different name – all our pets have been named after musicians or songs (Layla, Hendrix), so we’re thinking Lennox (maybe too close to Hendrix?) or Quattro. We’ll see what happens when her personality starts shining though.
Here’s a picture of the beauty that is Thorn:
Well, not really. Because the things that people wanted to hear about are things I’ve already posted about 
So for reference, here are the posts about the bigger events that happened in 2009.
The New Place – moving back into our own space was excellent, after living for something like 9-10 months at my parents’ place. We’d lived together on our own before, so it wasn’t a particularly outstanding achievement or event in itself, but it was a regaining of our freedom and independence.
New Beginnings – moving to Terri.nu was a big change – I still use the name ‘Inspirata’ for my website design stuff, but I felt it was time to move to something bigger and better. Terri.nu was a domain name I’d wanted for a while – it’s me, of course, and my name isn’t changing any time soon! Again, not much to this event, but it was something I did that stood out this year.
The Wedding Post – and of course, the biggest thing that happened in 2009 was our wedding. What can I say but it’s the start of the next phase of our relationship, true commitment to each other. The happiest day of my life.
And that’s about it. I did get a job in 2009, as well, which I am grateful for. I didn’t listen to the radio at all, unless I was in the car with my parents. I watched far too much TV and spent too much time playing The Sims 2 & 3. I lost 8kg in 12 months without even trying.
We lost Layla in February, whom we miss dearly (RIP Mama-Puss), which was a real breaking point for me, since I loved her so much.
Thankfully, though, Layla was our only loss this year – I wish it could have gone without any losses, but I suppose when a person’s or animal’s time has come, there’s not much you can really do about it.
In general, 2009 wasn’t bad. But, bring on 2010!
Wow, I posted this everywhere but my own blog – that’s a pretty good effort, isn’t it?!
So, on Thursday night Michael and I decided we will get married later this year, on November 7th. We have been dwelling too much on the When, Where, How, Who and What for so long that we forgot all about the Why, so we decided to just do it and get it done with!
So as for the details we have so far (and none are confirmed just yet):
- Ceremony – @ the Tasmanian Arboretum
- Reception – @ our local RSL Club (which we are members of and go to often, know the people there, etc.). We won’t be having a sit-down dinner; just finger-food and drinks, which we think allows people to mingle a little more and not have them restricted to talking to people at the one table.
- Celebrant – we’ve decided on Emma for our celebrant, she’s very flexible with the ceremonies and we don’t want anything denominational (but I’d like an element of a Pagan handfasting in there somewhere).
- Dress – I love this dress as it’s so unique, but I need to try some on locally to make sure it’s the right style for me first. Also, I would change the red lace to hot pink (because of course I need to have hot pink as one of my colours!)
- Wedding Party – Michael has asked his brother-in-law to be his Best Man, and his cousin to be his groomsman; I’ve asked my sister to be my Maid-of-Honour, and my best friend to be my bridesmaid. We decided to choose only two people each, as we thought there might be jealousy amongst both friends and family if there were more and someone didn’t get chosen (!).
- Bridesmaid’s Dresses – I have asked my bridal party to wear whatever they feel is suitable, as long as it’s hot pink or close enough. I don’t want them going out and buying a specially-made dress and only being able to wear it the once.
There you go – that’s the plans so far. We haven’t got a photographer or anything yet, and we don’t want one for the whole ceremony or anything – I have a large family so everyone will no doubt be taking lots of photos, so we just want a photographer for after the ceremony to take a couple of professional shots. We’re awaiting a few quotes from photographers before making a decision.
It’s all very exciting and nerve-wracking – I can’t wait!
Ok, so just as things are looking great for me – I get a job, and an iPhone – the shit hits the fan, as it always does.
Firstly, this weekend just been was the Queen’s birthday long weekend, so we had three days off. I thought, “Awesome, fab, groovy – three days off to recoup from the busy week prior”. But you can guarantee that the moment I have more than a couple of days off, I get sick. And get sick I did, and still am. Stuffy nose and head, achey muscles, shaky legs, nausea. Yucko.
But that’s not the worst of it.
Early on Saturday morning, my brother got caught drink-driving. Keep in mind he’s only 19 and only on his P’s (provisional licence), meaning he can’t have ANY alcohol in his system when he drives. On a full licence, you can have up to .05, but he had to have .00. He blew .102, so he was twice the full license limit.
So naturally, I was pissed off, and as was he. Since he’s the only one around at the moment to drive us around, while my parents are in Western Australia, this was a bummer. But, he was able to continue driving until his court date, 14th July, so I wasn’t too worried.
What I did worry about was when I found out he’d broken up with his girlfriend, and Mum called me to say he’d been done for drink-driving and such, and if our family friends Jan and Brian could come and pick us up, then go to see Sam (my brother) and take the car keys off him so he didn’t drive again after drinking. I said I can do that, and we went down there.
Well it was about 5pm Sunday night, and he wasn’t there – the car was gone and everything was locked up. He had taken off. So naturally, again, I was pissed off. I tried calling his mobile phone a thousand times, then called Mum and told him he had gone.
We then resolved that by sitting there at my parents’ house, it was solving as much of the problem as sitting at home would, so we went back home and continued trying to call him until late that night. He refused to answer, and eventually had his phone off.
Barely getting any sleep that night, I continued to try calling him on Monday, to no avail. He wasn’t answering and if he did, he would just hang up again. By this point I was seriously worried for his (and others’) safety, but I didn’t know what else to do other than continue trying to call him.
We went down to my parents’ and let the dog out, and made sure he had food and stuff. I grabbed a couple of groceries and went back home. I refrained from calling him after talking to my mum, thinking that might put him off coming home the more we called.
Later that night, Jan came and picked me up and we drove up the street to my parents’ house, and we were relieved to see the car there and the lights in the house on. I called my mum and asked her what she wanted me to do; she said to just leave him be, to get over whatever he was thinking/doing, and go home. So I did.
At about 8 or 9pm, we got a random call on the phone, which was just background noise, so we figured it was Sam. I called him back and asked him if it was him who called. He was quite obviously drunk, and had music up loud and another girl there. I told him we’d been worried sick about him, to which he said “Oh, get over it” and hung up on me. He refused to answer any more.
Come to today, where I find out that at about 1am this morning (Tuesday), he was caught drink-driving AGAIN, and his license was taken off of him. I presume he was taken home by the cops and his keys removed from him. I had to come home from work at about 3pm, simply because I couldn’t focus on what I was doing.
I couldn’t be more disappointed in him. The son of two police officers (one current, one ex-), more than anyone, should know better than this. Michael, my parents and I have all come to the conclusion that he’s self-medicating with alcohol, and needs psychiatric help. Maybe not to necessarily make him never drink again, but to help him deal with his emotions in different ways than drinking. So my parents have had to cut their holiday short, and they’re returning home to Tasmania in the next few days.
This totally sucks for everyone because we know he should be more responsible, and we know he has the ability to be. It’s not fair to put us all under so much stress. On one hand I feel I should just let him go, since he’s 19 and therefore a legal adult, and thus responsible for his own actions. But on the other, he’s my little brother, and I feel very protective of him and want the best for him, especially since I can see the potential in him to be an amazing person. It breaks my heart to know he’s hurting so bad he feels he has to drink to get over it.
I never thought I would be one to say that someone in my family has a drinking problem, but I do. And it’s my little brother. I love you, Sam – if only you knew how much.
Me, Sam & our sister Alisha – approx. 1993-1994ish
![Me, my brother Sam & my sister Alisha (by Inspirata [Terri])](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3303/3610542012_ed85be5e73.jpg "Me, my brother Sam & my sister Alisha (by Inspirata [Terri])")
