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Next January, I’m going to be 28.  I don’t want to be that close to 30 but what can you do? I guess I could always just pretend it’s my 21st I’m going home for and not my baby brother’s. I was going to do one of those nifty 28 by 28 lists this year and realized that now I don’t have enough time to get everything I want finished before January.

So here’s 29 things I’d like to tick off by my 29th birthday:

1. Buy a house to call my own
2. Move back to Australia
3. Learn to knit / crochet
4. Renew my drivers license in NSW and switch it for an EU drivers license so I can drive around London
5. Buy my Fiat 500
6. Buy a DSLR
7. Visit the Pope in his ‘hood, The Vatican
8. Try out some amateur food photography – cook a meal, photograph it, blog it – once a week
9. Visit 3 museums / galleries in London
10. Take a ride to the top of the Eiffel Tower
11. Take the dog back to Regent’s Park
12. Have an article published in a reputable publication
13. Create the Ultimate Daggy Songs Mix Tape (or CD)
14. Break my dependency on Potato Crisps!
15. Make a point of going out on the weekends instead of staying at home
16. Drink more wine, eat more chocolate
17. Stop stressing about situations from the past that I can’t change
18. Learn how to edit photos in Photoshop / Go on a photography course
19. Re-decorate my house
20. Finish making my wedding album
21. Adopt another puppy
22. Adopt some ex-battery hens and give them the home they deserve
23. Lessen my addiction to the net
24. Buy a brand new MacBook Pro
25. Watch a Football match
26. Go back to Las Vegas and see the fountains outside of the Bellagio
27. Refine my personal style
28. Study something
29. Get a promotion

I’ll keep little updates under the category of “29 things“. Maybe I can write a once a month review of how I’m going.

When I was nineteen, I thought I was so cool.

I had a job in the city, lots of friends to party with on the weekend and a really cute boyfriend too. One day I quit the job and chucked the boyfriend and as such, had combined leaving/”I am now officially single” drinks.

I had a friend, lets call her Alison.

Alison mentioned that she was going to pick up some “gear” from a mate over the other side of town. Stupid me thought she meant she was going to pick up some PJs and her toothbrush so she could stay over my house that night. When we arrived at her friend’s place, they quickly swapped money and my slightly drunken little mind started to whirr and it clicked that Alison wasn’t getting her nightie, she was buying ecstasy. I asked Alison if I could try some of what she bought, after all, I was so cool, living it up in the city with the big kids and newly single so I had no one to account to and therefore, no responsibility.

I don’t believe in lying, so I’m going to tell the truth about that night – It was a lot of fun.

I remember dancing a lot, talking a lot and drinking bucket loads of water. In hindsight, I also remember the next two days – not being able to eat, feeling like I’d swallowed a bucket of sand, grinding my teeth until I almost snapped one of them and not being able to sleep properly for about a week.

But all of that didn’t matter to me! I was cool! I took drugs! So the next time Alison and I met up – of course – we did it all again. This time the night ran to a slightly different beat. We started off at a bar with two guys we knew from our social circle in the office. Both quite cute, both over 30. (Remember, Alison and I were only 20 and 19) It all seemed like a bit of innocent fun until we left our friends and went to a well known bar in George Street.

I can remember bumping into a skinny, pimply young thing. He was probably about as whacked out as I was. He was Middle Eastern and I remember his face like it was my own husband’s. I remember him telling me to ditch Alison, she was busy with another friend – he would drive me to the train station near his place in Petersham and I could get the train home from there.  I remember arriving at his house and him trying to kiss me and me clearly fighting him off. I remember him calling his friend on his mobile, talking in a foreign language and me getting more and more upset and nervous as to what was going to happen next as the seconds ticked by. I had a feeling. A bad feeling.

I don’t know what happened. Maybe he got spooked by something or maybe he didn’t mean any serious harm towards me at all. But the last thing I remember is him pushing me in the car, getting in and locking the doors and driving me back towards the city. He stopped at Star City Casino and said he would unlock the door if I gave him oral sex. I refused and unlocked the door myself and ran across to the bright lights of the taxi rank. I always wondered if he thought I wouldn’t be able to unlock the door myself. Maybe I came across as that out of my head.

I never spoke to Alison again after that night. I have never told anyone of what happened when I left the bar – how I was so frightened that I would be raped or murdered. My mind wanders to that night quite often these days, especially when I lay in bed at night and sleep is not coming. My husband will often comment the next morning that he remembers me cuddling up to him – how could I possibly tell him why I need that warm comfort at night?

I often think that I should apologize to myself for letting me get into such a situation. It’s never too late to apologize, especially to yourself.

As far as I’m concerned, there is always room for another themed post. In this case, I’d like to introduce Fashionista Friday – where I post a picture of my favorite outfit of the week and anything else fashion-y that’s going on in the LLN household.

(Like I ever needed an excuse to post a picture of myself wearing something cute…)

Top £8 from Primark, Necklace £8 from Peacocks

Skirt £80 from Ted Baker, Stockings £2 from Primark

Just a selection of some of the pieces I sourced over the weekend from Peacocks.

Jackson felt like getting in the spirit of Fashionista Friday, so here he is modeling G's bow-tie - £20 from British Home Stores

I am in desperate need of a new laptop.

(Note: there is actually nothing wrong with my current laptop except for a bunged up DVD drive, a slightly bashed up case and a general covering of everyday dust and debris.)

But that doesn’t mean that I have started moaning every so often to the Mr of the house that I absolutely need one of those new fancy lookin’ MacBook Pros. Sure, they have way too much computing power for my needs and they cost about as much as I earn in a whole month, but who cares? They are unibody pieces of sexy machinery!

I know in all seriousness with the current state of our financials, I can’t really afford to go out and spend almost £2000 on a new computer, so I’m going to escape into my fantasy land where sexy new Apple products are free to all, as long as they can chose five things that they’d do in desperation.

1. I’d give up playing The Sims 2 for a whole month. This would be hard, as I’m quite loathe to even stop playing to do things like cook dinner or clean house.

2. I would go and sit through a repeat performance of my Year 11 teacher explaining circle proofs to us in 3 Unit Maths. Why does one need to prove a circle is a circle? Surely these skills were learned early in Primary School, right? Same applies to proving triangles.

3. I’d promise eternal love and “affection” to my husband daily for at least a year. Because we all know how “affection” can often persuade some men to say yes to whatever we want! I’m pretty sure I used this technique before too when I bought my first Louis Vuitton bag and it worked, it just didn’t last for very long.
P.S. In case you’re wondering, this one is a joke.

4. I would stop eating my weight daily in crisps. The fact that I eat my daily weight in crisps surely brings your attention to the fact that I like crisps and I like to eat them a lot. This would be of great difficulty and suffering for me.

5. I would never drink wine again. Enough said!

Do you think if I showed this to G, he would consider maybe letting me have a peek in the Apple store? Probably not, but he’d probably get a bloody good laugh out of it.

What do you want? What would you do for it?

{Image from here}

I love reading Blog This! on a Monday, when they post their New Member Monday entries. I was featured a long time ago, when I was blogging over at She is Jade on Blogger and when I was going through Blog This for posting inspiration, I thought, why not do it at my own blog? I guess you could call it another “about me” page.

In case you’re wondering, you can view my actual about me page here.

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