I’ve already discussed how to bathe your cat without losing an eye and while it’s important to know how to do this, there is one essential step to the whole process, a step you simply can’t avoid and it’s rewarding your cat. It’s so important to give her positive reinforcement with treats and of course, the all-time-favourite, head scritches and chin rubs!

I was going through my photos and found a stack of photos I’d taken after our most recent bath session. After giving her some private time to start licking herself dry, I found her in the sunlight in the spare room and gave her some one-on-one pats, head scritches and chin rubs and she absolutely loved it!

You can never have too much attention! I love getting the purring going and sometimes she even drools a little, but shhh… don’t tell her I told you!

I’ve been completely flat-out for the last couple weeks due to a number of reasons, but perhaps the main reason would be that I am playing piano at a friends’ wedding this weekend so I’ve been gathering music and practicing every spare moment I have so that everything goes to plan. Last night, as Phill and I were heading to bed, I rattled off a verbal check-list to ensure I had everything ready – the music for each part of the ceremony had been chosen and I had the sheet music printed off and ready to play. Everything was ready.

Then, Phill asked, “So what are you wearing?” and I had a mini panic attack.

I’d sort of forgotten that I need to buy a dress for the wedding. I’ve already mentioned that, this year, Phill and I will be attending four weddings (three of which involve the same bunch of friends) so I have to buy at least three dresses. I groaned when I realised I had only left myself a day and a half to purchase a dress, since I work Thursday afternoon. And then I groaned again at the prospect of having to go dress shopping because I absolutely detest dress shopping. Which is why, this morning as I spent three hours trying on dress after dress, I was becoming grumpier and grumpier.

Here’s 10 reasons why I hate dress shopping:

1. Having to undress and redress numerous times in numerous dressing rooms in numerous stores throughout the day. It’s a pain in the backside and today, without thinking, I wore jeans and a T-shirt which proved hard to pull on and off. I should have worn my maxi dress, which would have been so much easier.
2. The inevitable let-down when a dress looks stunning on the rack but terrible on me. It’s a crushing blow to my self-esteem, especially when the size I chose should have fit, but is too small, or clings badly.
3. Not being able to find my size. I found a few gorgeous dresses today, but only in size 6, 8 and 10. It’s terrible going through the rack, checking each size with growing dread, which explodes into frustration and annoyance when the last dress is only a 10.
4. The extortionate prices! Seriously, how much does it cost to create a dress? I know I’ve got to be prepared to shell out a bit of cash for a dress suitable for a wedding, but prices upwards of $500 for a dress that doesn’t look like it’s gold plated is ridiculous. The dress I wore to the previous two weddings this year cost me $100 and I haven’t worn it since, so I was determined to spend less this time around and to buy something that I would definitely be able to wear again. I ended up finding two dresses; one sexy black number for $50 and a blue flowy one for $20, which was half price. I couldn’t believe it. The black one isn’t appropriate for a wedding but it’s something I might wear out to dinner or an engagement party.
5. Having my OCD cause me to triple check dresses before buying them, discounting them immediately at any sign of damage. I find the perfect dress, it fits wonderfully, but then I spot a tiny snag, or a pleat that isn’t sitting quite right, and I can’t buy it. It’s frustrating! So today I made Kate history when I bought the blue dress because one of the pleats isn’t quite right, but I can iron it into place. I struggled for a while with the decision, but for $20 I couldn’t refuse!
6. Annoying shop assistants. They either stalk you to the point of walking into your dressing room or are nowhere to be found when you actually want their help. The first store I went into, I couldn’t even get changed in peace because the shop assistant was banging on the dressing room door asking me if I was okay, but the second store was worse because I had tried on a dress and it didn’t fit, but when I stuck my head out to find an attendant to grab me another size, there was nobody there. I had two choices – take the dress off, put my clothes back on, then go get the other dress, come back and get changed again OR I could rush out into the store barefoot and in the badly-fitting dress to grab another one. Guess what I did.
7. Having to dodge the terribly sparkly prom dresses the attendants try to force on you. No thankyou, I don’t want to look like a giant piece of glitter, I want to look sophisticated and mature. I walked into a new store today, nearly had a heart attack and walked back out again. Every single dress was covered in sparkles and diamontes, with low fronts and even lower backs – it was like a horror movie.
8. Having to come face-to-face with my huge hip problem. I have child-bearing hips and I know it, but it’s still frustrating to try on a dress that fits everywhere except for the hips. That’s why I was so surprised with my little black dress purchase – it’s the first tightish-fitting dress that didn’t make me look like my hips were huge!
9. Annoying zippers that simply don’t zip up! It’s so hard when you’re in a dressing room by yourself to zip up your dress when they put the zippers in the weirdest and hardest-to-reach places. The amount of muscle spasms I gave myself trying to zip up my dress was crazy. And then the material gets caught in the zip and gah… so frustrating!
10. Not finding a damn dress! That’s the most frustrating thing about dress shopping! You spend hours and come up empty handed. So sure, today I found two dresses but normally, I promise you I don’t find anything. I’m very surprised at my success today, it’s most unusual.

Do you like dress shopping? Or clothes shopping? (If you do, you’re crazy!)

Anyway I’d better get back to the piano.

This morning I was up nice and early to go to an open house. Phill and I currently rent a townhouse and we’ve simply grown out of it – we need a house again. I’d prefer to move before Christmas so, while I hate the whole process of finding, getting approved for and moving into a new house, I’m getting started on it right away in the hopes of moving soon. Hence why I was sitting outside a really nice house this morning, five minutes before the open house was due to start, because I know turning up early means you might get a chance to meet the real estate agent and make a good first impression.

Hey, I’ve done this a lot.

I also like being able to “suss out the competition”. I can tell pretty much straight away whether we stand a chance or not depending on the other people who turn up. There were three other cars – two of which knew each other, so I could count them as one. There was an older couple and a heavily pregnant woman with a small child who was there with her mother. Damn. The house almost always goes to a family over a childless young couple.

We sat and waited for fifteen minutes, the duration of the open house. No real estate agent turned up.

At 10am the open house officially ended and, since the house was tenanted, we knew we wouldn’t be allowed in.  We’d hung around hoping the agent was simply running late (which happens often) but this was becoming more unlikely now that 10am had passed. The older couple drove off, leaving the pregnant woman, her mother and I still waiting. I didn’t want to leave before them but I knew this was ridiculous. The sun was hot and sitting in the car with the window down wasn’t very comfortable.

One of the ladies took out a mobile phone and called the real estate agent. After a couple seconds she hung up and called out to me. “There’s no inspection, it’s been cancelled. Apparently the tenant is sick and there’s already some applications on the house, so there’s no point.”

I was gobsmacked. Sure, they wouldn’t have known our phone numbers in order to call us and tell us it had been cancelled, but the open house time had only been put on their website last night – how on earth would there be applications between last night and this morning, since you have to view a house before an application will be accepted? Couldn’t they have asked the tenant to put a “Open House Cancelled” on their letterbox or something? We sat around for about twenty minutes in the hot sun waiting for an agent who wasn’t going to turn up.

What a waste of a morning.

The thing that really bugs me about this is that the last two routine inspections at my house have resulted in the real estate agent not turning up. I have to tidy up the house and rearrange my schedule  in order to be home for their inspections and it really shits me when they simply don’t turn up, especially since they have my home phone, my mobile phone and my email details and they didn’t even contact me. One day we will buy a house and rest assured, we are creating a list of real estate companies we won’t be touching with a barge pole – do they forget that young renters may wish to purchase a house in the future and will remember their bad treatment?

I’ve got another open house booked in for tomorrow at 11am – fingers crossed the agent turns up!

I have the next two days off work and I was hoping to have a sleep-in today. The damn crows decided I didn’t deserve a sleep-in and woke me up at 5am with their screaming. No sooner had I opened my eyes than Puddy jumped onto my chest and purred fur all over my face, drooling on my chin in the process. Yes, it is possible to purr fur – she’s shedding her winter coat as the days become warmer and her fur is so loose all she has to do is sneeze and I have enough fur to knit a (slightly creepy) jumper.

Anyway, I tried to get back to sleep but it was a lost cause. I kept waking up and falling asleep and waking up and falling asleep until finally at about 8am the noise of cutting cement started a few doors down and I knew sleep was hopeless. I got up, showered and fed the cat. I also made Phill breakfast because he was running late and I was in an unusually good mood. Don’t get too excited – I simply assembled cereal in a bowl and gave him a spoon.

I’m so domesticated.

Anyway, the painters arrived at 11am to fix the water damage in our ensuite shower finally. We only reported it over a year ago! They originally wanted to turn up at 7:30am but I’d asked them to make it later and thankfully they had been able to slot us in around lunchtime. The ironic thing was I didn’t end up getting that sleep-in anyway, but oh well.

While the painters were here, I set about doing some housework. It’s weird – I wanted to look busy, even though I had every right to lounge around on the couch watching Oprah and eating icy-poles if I wanted, since it was the first day of my “weekend”. I cleaned the kitchen, washed and hung out a load of washing, cleaned out Puddy’s litter, tidied the dining room table, cleaned our bedroom and scrubbed our bathroom. I was buggered by the time the painters left at 1pm!

So… the plan for this afternoon is to vacuum the house (since there’s now little white flecks of plaster trampled all over the carpet upstairs), tidy the office, vacuum the mattress on the spare bed (which is covered in a thick layer of black fur since it’s where Puddy sleeps and I’d forgotten to put down a protective sheet) and clean the spare bathroom. Then I have to bring in the washing, sort it and put it away. Oh, and find the cat, who disappeared the instant the painters arrived with a petrified expression on her little face.

Today has really made me wonder about what to do on a day off (a legitimate day off, not a sick day!) when it’s just you at home alone. Your friends and partner are at work, so it’s you and an empty house (and perhaps a pet or two). What do you do on your day off? Do you obsessively clean the house like I do? Do you sit on the couch all day watching TV and eating junk food? Or do you go shopping?

Anyway, I’ll get right onto that vacuuming … as soon as I’m done watching Harry Potter.

Hey, it’s my day off!