Dear Alice,

I have carried you inside me for 34 weeks and they have been the best 34 weeks of my life so far.

I have been very lucky, I have had no sickness, a little tiredness and lots of good feelings since you came along, from the day I found out I had you I felt lucky and told people I had won my own personal lottery.

I was happy to stop drinking if it meant keeping you safe, luckily I had given up smoking too but for you any sacrifice seemed easy to make.

It was wonderful to have you at our wedding, Auntie Fashion made a beautiful dress for us, and yes you as a little bump were taken into consideration.

Everyone was so excited to see the little black and white scan pictures of you and my heart soared when I saw little images of you moving and heard your own heart beating.

When I first felt you move I was so excited and then when your Daddy felt you move I was overjoyed, some mums complain of being in pain, but you never really hit me that hard. I worried that this meant something but I think you were well cushioned in me and never needed to hit hard.

Myself and your Daddy are looking forward to meeting you and getting to know you, you are coming into a big family who are all looking forward to meeting you and getting to know you.

You are so special to me and I love you very much. I hope that you are always happy and that life is everything you want it to be. You deserve the world.

How often do you find a woman asking to be told she is wrong? Not often I bet.

I have been trying for the last two years to track down an old flame. I can honestly say that my intentions are not bad. at least I don’t think they are??
I don’t want to start things up I just want to talk to him.
I have found him, first on Friends Reunited in 2008, then on MySpace in 2009 and now this week on Facebook.
I have emailed him after finding him each time and never received a response, previously he has not been active on the sites so it would appear that he has not read the email. I sent an email yesterday on Facebook and checked his page today to see if he had been online and he had but no response from him to my email. Now I know I need to be a little patient and give him a chance to respond, also I can hear you all saying

“Erm hey stalker, step away from Facebook, leave the bloke alone!”

Well I’m sorry but I can’t. I will obsess over this until he has ignored me for a few months. At which point I will either email him again or give up.
I know one friend in particular would be livid with me and accuse me of only trying to contact this person out of my own selfish need for the adoration that others give me. But no that’s not what this is about. I don’t think??
Don’t tell me to let sleeping dogs lie; I’ll just ignore that advice.
Because I still have dreams about him every now and then. Nothing major, normally we just talk, he shows me what he’s doing with his life. And then I wake up and realise that things are still as I left them with him 9 years ago, with him either being extremely hurt or pretending to be extremely hurt by me. You see I was never sure how sincere he was, my friends scoffed when I told them that he had declared his love to me.
My mother whole heartedly disapproved of the match and in the pit of my stomach, in my head, in my heart I knew that what I was doing was wrong. It was wrong in the crucible, it was wrong in the scarlet letter, it was wrong when my dad did it to my mum. Having a relationship with a married man there’s no justifiable excuse for it really.

My friends didn’t like the fact that I was seeing a married man, half of them had read the same English texts books as me so knew that literally speaking it was wrong and as fiction consistently proved it would all end badly and the other half had fathers who had cheated on their mothers, I instantly became the wanton hussy that had turned their fathers head.
When I first saw him I didn’t know he was married, I very poetically let him know exactly what my intentions towards him were and he told me he was married and there it ended, for a few days. But then we started talking, then we started going to lunch, one evening we went shopping and he stopped me from kissing him. A week later he kissed my cheek, whilst we crossed a bridge and sometime after that we kissed properly.
At this time I was starving myself as I believed that if I lost weight my boyfriend would think I was perfect he had told me that he was sure I wasn’t the one and that when she came along I’d have to bow out. Also that his previous girl friends had been more attractive than me, he wanted me to know that he was clearly lowering his standards by being with me.
I was left thinking very little of myself, I hadn’t thought that much of me before him so I was quite a pitiful wretch, although I still had a good sense of humor. I only lose that when I’m spitting blood angry.
Someone else out there didn’t think I was fat, they didn’t think I was unattractive. I couldn’t understand that someone thought I was perfect, I wasn’t, I had been told so. It was nice to hear though.
19 going on 20 and I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, I knew what I wanted and I knew that it was nice having someone be nice to me. On top of that I made him happy, he enjoyed my company, at least he said he did, again I wasn’t sure of his sincerity. He gave me the strength to end the relationship I was in and saved me from a lot of heart ache.
It’s funny how you can go from heady anticipation to dread when seeing a person. I had once been blind punch drunk in love with the one who said I wasn’t the one, and always looked forward to seeing him, until the night I broke up with him, however five minutes later I felt great, I felt free and I was happy.

The affair went on for a bit less than a year starting sometime after Valentines 1999 ending sometime after Christmas 2000, we went to lunch every week day and talked for an hour. The whole office suspected that something was going on; we were both spoken to by our managers. We broke it off about three times the last time with me telling him a lie to make him hate me.
I thought it was best he hate me and I didn’t think I would live to regret my lie. 9 years on and I haven’t counted the dreams, with the hate filled accusations, the silent stare as I yell my apologies to the wind, the fact that he is always just a little out of my reach and I can’t explain, I can’t say sorry no matter how much I want to.
Tell me I’m wrong to want the chance to apologise, to find out what he’s done with his life and tell him what I’ve done with mine.
Tell me I’m wrong to keep trying to contact him.
Tell me I’m wrong.

Libby Brickland If you know how to fix your pc problem then go away, fix it yourself and stop bothering me, don’t tell me how to do my job and waste my time ! I HATE MY JOB.
Tues at 16:37 · Comment ·LikeUnlike

Austin Edwards You can fix PC problems by getting rid of it and get a Mac instead.
Tues at 21:29 ·

Libby Brickland LOL All good points. Except that a mac is only good for doing pretty things and Qantas are all about Windows…plus they are cheap…I’d take a Kiwi macca customer over what I’m dealing with now!!!!
Yesterday at 10:35 ·

Austin Edwards Mac’s are not only good for doing pretty things, they are so much better than pc’s. They are more efficient, secure, faster, etc.
Yesterday at 12:24 ·

Libby Brickland I’m sure your mac looks very PRETTY on your desk
Yesterday at 15:58 ·
Libby Brickland oh and …http://www.guidenet.net/resources/win_vs_mac.html

you appear to be wrong
Yesterday at 16:01 ·

Austin Edwards Firstly, that article was written in 2004, so it’s long out of date. The video subsystem point was probably true at the time, things have changed now. I don’t agree with the point about raw speed, even at the time the processors pissed all over PC’s because of the way they were programmed. Even more so now. I know that to be true because I have seen a lot of bench tests myself. Web design and software availability, again probably true at the time, things have changed now.
Today at 01:47 ·

Libby Brickland We all know the stereotypes. Apple… See more’s popular commercials have painted the picture in stark terms: There are two types of people, Mac people and PC people. And if the marketing is to be believed, the former is a hip, sport-coat-and-sneakers-­wearing type of guy who uses his computer for video chatting, music mash-ups and other cool, creative pursuits that starchy, business-suited PC users could never really appreciate unless they tried them on the slick Apple interface. Then again, Windows PC enthusiasts probably think that Mac guy is a smug slacker with an overpriced toy that can’t do any serious computing anyway. Funny thing is, both stereotypes are wrong. With a 7.5 percent market share, Macs are no longer just the computer choice of artists and unemployed writers. (Apple is, in fact, the fourth largest computer manufacturer in the world.) And now, more than ever, the guts of both platforms are remarkably similar. Both types of machines use Intel proc­essors (although some PCs can be configured with processors from AMD). Both buy memory, hard drives and graphics cards from the same small pool of suppliers. The underlying operating systems have distinctly different flavors, but in terms of functionality, Microsoft Windows Vista and Mac OS X Leopard have surprisingly similar built-in multimedia, Internet and productivity applications.
Today at 10:26 ·
Libby Brickland so macs are better now because they use the same inards that windows use
Today at 10:27 ·

Austin Edwards It’s true both of their hardware architecture are getting more similar. The processors that macs use have always been better than a pc, which is why run more efficiently. A few years ago the macs would come with other hardware that was probably not as good as a PC and you couldn’t do much about it even though it is was good enough for most things, … See morethese days you can customize a mac more easily because they are being used more for things like video editing, and 3D animation where you need top spec hardware for a decent quality result. The mac OS is far more secure because of the way the it is programmed. It’s rare that you get a virus or an intrusion on a mac. A lot of banks are switching to macs from pc’s for that reason.
10 hours ago ·

Libby Brickland But generally all big companies the world over use windows. I do IT support for Fujitsu and I know that from europe to asia to america, from the air line companies,to the governmental companies to they all use windows pc’s.
In all the companies I have previously worked with the pc’s and servers purchased were windows and linux with a few mac exceptions for those in design based roles.
This is because in general people are more familiar with the windows layout and windows pcs are vastly cheaper to source than mac’s, because Apple know that Apple proud consumers will pay.
With regards to security if you have the right up to date protection then attacks won’t be a cause for concern. I’ve not tested security on a mac but it think it would be foolish to assume that they don’t need any tools for security prevention.
There are far fewer Macs in the world than there are Windows PCs. As a result, most malicious code writers choose to target Windows so that they can have a much wider impact. … See more
I’ve not heard of any banks doing this?

4 hours ago ·

Libby Brickland and I’ve done some research in to your claim which appears to be somewhat bogus…
http://ezinearticles.com/?Are-Macs-Really-More-Secure-Than-PCs?&id=2451612
4 hours ago ·

Austin Edwards The only reason PC’s are used more than Mac’s is because Apple made the mistake of not putting a copyright on their windows based OS before Microsoft came up with their version. If they did, Microsoft wouldn’t be what they are now and we’d probably all be using Mac’s anyway. Apple were struggling at the time, Microsoft took advantage of a situation… See more.

I’m not saying Mac’s are 100% secure, they are not. No system is 100% secure. Mac’s are far more secure than PC’s though. There isn’t that many companies writing anti-virus/security software for Mac’s for the very good reason that they are not needed very often. I’ve installed such programmes on my Mac and they have found nothing every time. I used to love PC’s, but they have so many drawbacks when it comes to security, I’ve had to re-install virus programmes and Windows loads of times on PC’s over the years. Never had to do it with a Mac though. I now have 2 Mac’s, my PC doesn’t get switched on very often anymore.

I think that article is probably only half true. It’s true there was a trojan on iLife for the Mac, I can’t find an article that goes into much detail about what it actually does. It could be blown out of proportion. (I’m not it might be nothing to worry about). I don’t believe for 1 minute that hackers can hack into a Mac easier than a PC. Everywhere I’ve worked and friend’s experiences of such things have always been PC related.
36 minutes ago ·

Libby Brickland I think you will find that Apple tried to take Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard to court on grounds of using visul GUI elements but Apple were told that it was not possible to patent ideas like GUI. Also Apple got their OS ideas from Xerox anyway and Xerox sued them first. The upshot of this was that apple agreed to make internet explorer their … See moredefault browser and Microsoft agreed to develop microsoft office and other software for mac. On top of that microsoft purchased $150 mill apple stock to help them out in their financial crisis and both apple and microsoft entered into a patent cross-licensing agreement. apple are still trying to find petty ways to annoy Microsoft but it doesn’t seem like they can make anythign stick.

Mac’s are not far more secure, it’s just because windows is more common there are more attacks aimed at windows machines. It stands to reason. Both Norton and McAfee create anti virus software for macs, there is also a free antivirus software called clamXav for mac, there is MacScan and Intego to name just a few and two of the biggest security companies out there. I have used windows on my current pc for the last 4 years and touch wood I have had no problems, also my husband has been using a linux based operating system on a dell machine for the last year with no security complaints (although he switched to linux as he feels it is supperior to windows and it is was a free alternative. But he is a programmer) He’s not interested in macs to quote him “the reason Macs suck is because the hardware is overpriced and prescribed. with a PC you can buy whatever hardware you like and put whatever OS you like on it.” He also agrees with me that macs are only used by real graphic designers and people who wish they were trandy”

We could argue for days about this but it’s quite clear that you are what they call a fanboi and telling an apple fanboi that macs aren’t all that is like tell christians god does not exist.
2 seconds ago ·

Well here we are, me and Mr. Brickland are due to get married in three weeks. My head should be full or love and romance. I should be excited about finally getting to walk down that aisle, relieved that the years of preparing me are going to pay off and rewarding myself from all that hard work in the gym by wearing my very special dress.

However, I’m not because some one has walked into my life and suddenly all I care about is that one person but I’m yet to be officially introduced.  I’ve fallen in love or at the very least I’m falling in love. Everyday I wonder how they are doing as I yawn for the fifteenth time, I wonder what they look like as I eat my fruit or my vegetables, I wonder if they are ok as my hand strays down to my stomach and rubs it. 

Is it a girl or a boy will it look like Adrian or me?

Have you guessed my secret yet? I’m 12 weeks pregnant and I don’t think I have ever been happier, when I first found out I said that I had won my own personal lottery, because for me having a baby with the man I love is all I have ever wanted, now someone will love me unconditionally and I will be able to pour my love into them.

I’ve been very lucky so far with no sickness and only a bit of tiredness, certainly I love my sleep at the moment and it is very hard to get out of bed. I have kept up with the gym but in the last two weeks I have slowed down. Hopefully A bit further along in my second trimester I will get the energy back, the books keep promising me I will. 

I’ve been eating well and trying very hard not to eat more than I need but for some reason my sweet tooth has gone into over drive and I am eating far too many sweets, trying to chew gum to avoid that and it does seem to be helping.

I quit drinking and smoking a week before I found out I was pregnant, it was a dry Christmas with no Disney movies watched, but I managed to keep the chocolate consumption down. I can’t wait till next Christmas and we have a little body rolling around the boxes upon boxes that I will shower upon them.

The only thing that is giving me real problems or that is upsetting me is my temper. It’s not all the time and it’s not always the same thing but when I blow…well it’s unpleasant.  Luckily it’s only been three of four out bursts and Adrian is taking them all  in his stride and ignoring them.

We are going for our first scan on the 8th of January by then we will be near the end of our 13th week and all my immediate family will be in the country it’s all very exciting. I will now probably only want to write about the little growing person inside of me we are calling them Emcha at the moment, Emma for a girl Charlie for a boy, but of course it will be a while before we know.

Libby & Emcha

I was a girl from a small town in England, he was a boy from a small town in New Zealand, our paths crossed by the slimest of chances. If I hadn’t have taken that holiday in 2002 we never would have met. Star crossed lovers we are indeed. He likes metal I like all different sorts of music. His favourite colour is black and mine is red. I’m a hopeless romantic and so is he.

We met in June 2002 at a mutual friends party. I was wearing a union jack boob tube top and he was wearing a blue shirt with a leather jacket. He walked in to the room with a crate of beer on his shoulder, he put the beer down on the floor and we looked at each other and I thought. “I want him”.  At the end of the party we had our first kiss. We spent the night talking until we fell asleep next  to each other. We spent the following week getting to know each other. The day came for me to leave, he drove me to the airport and I have it on good authority that he stayed and watched until my plane was out of site. I was sitting in my seat, tears leaking silently from my eyes, heart broken and knowing that with each second I was moving further away from him when I should have stayed in his arms.

There we were, we’d known each other a week and wondered weather a long distance relationship would work. We talked to each other as often as we could and in the October of 2002 Adrian made his big trip to the UK. We spent another two weeks with each other and our relationship took on a new strength. London was fun, Adrian quickly mastered the undergound and I appreciated London alot more by seeing it through his eyes.

February 2003 I came out to New Zealand (via an unscheduled stop to Tahiti) to tear adrian away from his family and friends, I was finally introduced to his family and met some more of his friends. Off we went to the UK where we lived for five and a half years. It wasn’t until 2004 that Adrian met my parents, we found that quite amusing at the time.

September 2008 we quit our jobs and said godbye to all my family and friends, returned to New Zealand and here we are, we’ve been here nearly a year and now we invite you to watch us marry each other.

Everyone who knows me has seen me drunk, sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s messy and sometimes it’s a lot of fun. I have of late been cutting back on the booze to lose weight for the wedding. So I’ll have one or two drinks on the weekend, but sometimes I don’t drink at all. The lack of hangovers has been fantastic, however I miss that feeling that I’m having a great time and I don’t care what anyone else thinks of what I do or say. I do however like to feel safe. I like being in control and have the knowledge that little or no danger can come to me.

My birthday this year was actually quite a sober affair for me. I had maybe a bottle or two of bubbles and a few vodka’s between the hours of 17:00pm and 03:00am I also had some food (the reason for stating the time and amounts will become clear as the story unfolds.

All was going well until one of my friends started to be sick, I put aside all partying and took care of her. Whilst I was holding back the hair of my friend, one of my other friends took it upon herself to attack the first friend, she felt that first friend was being a bit of a princess and I should be just enjoying my birthday. This resulted in a third friend taking it upon himself to blow up at her. Now he had arrived in a somewhat black mood and I had an inkling that someone would end up in the fireing line.

The result of all this four people left and I was left with blokes. So it was about 2:00 am and it is around that time of night that drunken blokes get stupid ideas. Perhaps stupid is a bit harsh, the idea itself wasn’t stupid perhaps me going along, then again how much trouble could a girl like me get into? Ha, Ha, HA!

So the idea of a strip club is raised, at this point I’m uninhibited enough to go along with the idea that this would be a fitting way to celebrate my Birthday, there was some talk of leaving on my own, but I didn’t want to be left on my own on my birthday while my fiance went off to a strip club with his (our) mates. Not one of his shining moments, even he admits that sometimes he doesn’t know where his head is.

So anyway we all go off to the strip club, we smoke outside, we wait in line and we go in, I shout everyone as a treat and someone gets me a drink. We are in there about 30 minutes and in walk the boys in blue, a friend from work who happaned to be there walked up to me and warmed me to look sober as the cops were walking around. The cops went up to the mezzanine floor to survey the sceene. I was at the bar with the blokes, chatting about life.

The policemen make a beeline for me and ask me to go outside with them, I ask why and the question is repeated with a touch of annoyance. I go outside, my partner follows and the police follow him. One of our friends is outside and when he realises that the police have pulled me out he walks over to us. What followed was then a good 40 minutes of the police harrasing me and accusing me of being intoxicated to the point that it is illegal to serve me (I have the cctv footage and noted the times). My partner and his friend are laughing at them because out of all the people in the bar I am one of the most sober. The police press on and tell me I am not aloud to go back in the club.

It goes to show how low the standards for being a policmen must be I imagine the testing to be something like the following:

 Can you speak English? Yes.

Can you understand English? Sometimes.

Do you like the idea of abusing power? Yes, very much.

Are you happy to make up false claims? If it means harrasing innocent females where do I sign up?

You’re hired!

I am still bitter, even though this ended up with the bar being taken to court and the police being shown to look like total idiots when we all watched the CCTV footage of me standing straight and tall, talking perfectly normally to the two policemen accusing me of being extreamly intoxicated.

Here’s to next year!!!

Many, many, many men are the reason why I love this song….that and the fact that the Stone Roses are the best band ever!!!

Down down, you bring me down
I hear you knocking at my door and I cant sleep at night
Your face, it has no place
No room for you inside my house I need to be alone

Dont waste your words I dont need anything from you
I dont care where youve been or what you plan to do

Turn turn, I wish youd learn
Theres a time and place for everything Ive got to get it through
Cut loose, youre no use
I couldnt stand another second in your company

Dont waste your words I dont need anything from you
I dont care where youve been or what you plan to do

Stone me, why cant you see
Youre a no-one nowhere washed up baby whod look better dead

Your tongue is far too long
I dont like the way it sucks and slurps upon my every word

Dont waste your words I dont need anything from you
I dont care where youve been or what you plan to do

I am the resurrection and I am the light
I couldnt ever bring myself to hate you as Id like

I am the resurrection and I am the light
I couldnt ever bring myself to hate you as Id like

Mine and Ade’s song

If the sun refused to shine, I would still be loving you.
If the mountains should crumble to the sea, there would still be you and me.

Kind woman, I give you my all, Kind woman, nothing more.

Little drops of rain whisper of the pain, tears of loves lost in the days gone by.
But my love is strong, with you there is no wrong,
together we shall go until we die. My, my, my.
Inspiration’s what you are to me, inspiration, look… see.

And so today, my world it smiles, your hand in mine, we walk the miles,
Thanks to you it will be done, for you to me are the only one.
Happiness, no more be sad, happiness….I’m glad.
If the sun refused to shine, I would still be loving you.
If the mountains should crumble to the sea, there would still be you and me.

True you ride the finest horse I have ever seen
Standing sixteen, one or two, with eyes wild and green
And you ride the horse so well, hands light to the touch
I could never go with you no matter how I wanted to

Ride on, see you, I could never go with you
No matter how I wanted to
Ride on, see you, i could never go with you
No matter how i wanted to

When you ride into the night without a trace behind
Run your claw along my gut, one last time
I turn to face an empty space, where once you used to lie
And look for a spark that lights the dark
Through a teardrop in my eye

 I’ve got a thing for the old Irish tunes about deception…

As I was going over the Cork and Kerry Mountains
I saw Captain Farrell and his money he was countin’
I first produced my pistol and then produced my rapier
I said “Stand and deliver or the devil he may take ya”
I took all of his money and it was a pretty penny
I took all of his money yeah and I brought it home to Molly
She swore that she loved me no never would she leave me
But the devil take that woman, yeah, for you know she tricked me easy
Musha rain dum-a-doo dum-a-da
Whack for my daddy-o
Whack for my daddy-o
There’s whiskey in the jar-o
Being drunk and weary I went to Molly’s chamber
Takin’ my Molly with me, but I never knew the danger
For about six or maybe seven in walked Captain Farrell
I jumped up, fired my pistols, and I shot him with both barrels
Musha rain dum-a-doo dum-a-da, ha, ya
Whack for my daddy-o
Whack for my daddy-o
There’s whiskey in the jar-o
Yeah, whiskey, yo, whiskey…
Oh-oh, ya
Now some men like a fishin’, but some men like the fowlin’
Some men like to hear, to hear the cannonball a-roarin’
But me, I like sleepin’, `specially in my Molly’s chamber
But here I am in prison, here I am with a ball and chain, yeah
Musha rain dum-a-doo dum-a-da, ha, ya
Whack for my daddy-o
Whack for my daddy-o
There’s whiskey in the jar-o
Whiskey in the jar-o
Musha rain dum-a-doo dum-a-da
Musha rain dum-a-doo dum-a-da, hey
Musha rain dum-a-doo dum-a-da
Musha rain dum-a-doo dum-a-da, ya