I spent the day uploading old travel pics and making pages here. I found an old disk I’d saved my photos on from a trip to the UK in 2003, and there’s some nice ones on there. The disk is very scratched though so I thought I’d better upload and save them somewhere, so you can see them here in the June/July 2003 archives. I’m not quite finished yet (I took hundreds of pics!) but hopefully I’ll get the rest of them saved here in the next couple of days.

OMG what a pallaver! We bought Banjo a special lead thing which goes over the muzzle and is supposed to control his head – he hated it. Between Ben and I, it took us ten minutes of wrestling with Banjo just to get the thing on. Ben took Banjo up and down the alleyway next to our house, and Banjo struggled with the muzzle the entire time. He managed to pull it off a number of times, and refused to budge. Ben tried to drag on the lead and the whole thing, much to Banjo’s happiness, came right off. Banjo was able to twist his head around and tried to chew on the straps which came from the muzzle part – doubt if they’re going to last long.

So I got my exercise just trying to put the stupid thing on the dog. I’m not sure what the next stage will be. Just thinking about it is exhausting!

It’s Saturday morning, the kids are at their dad’s place. I had a sleep in, and woke up at 9am. I lay in bed thinking about my life. I’ve fallen into such a rut. I’m overweight, uninspired; I feel as though I’m me living inside someone else’s body. Every day is the same…some time ago I lost ‘me’, my excitement for life. I’ve been spending years just trying to get through each day, and spending alot of it asleep to pass the hours.

So I was lying there today thinking this has got to stop, and the only one who’s going to do it is me. So I’m off to the shops to buy a dog harness and I’m going to take the dog for a walk. See that cartoon picture of the dog up there in the top of this website? That’s supposed to be Banjo, our black labrador. Well, picture him at least twice that big compared to me. He’s huge and very strong. The plan had been to take him for walks for me to get fit again. I only took him out once – he pulled me down the driveway like I was on skis. I managed to pull him back inside and haven’t dared take him out walking since. The neighbourhood here is not conducive to dog walking – there are too many dogs out on the streets that have escaped from their yards. Dogs in Australia don’t seem to be all that well socialised. As soon as they see another dog they think it’s an invitation to fight. Walking along with your dog on a leash is all fine and well until you come across a stray pit bull who wants to eat your pooch for lunch. It’s pretty scary. Banjo is huge, but a big old softie. I have no idea how he’d go if another dog had a go at him.

Anyway, I’m off to buy him a harness because apparently big dogs are easier to control with them. Then I’m going to take him for a walk. This may be the last post I ever make hehe…