KEEP IT IN THE PHAMLY

I took Baby Pham to visit the work crew and one of my colleagues asked when I'd gotten engaged. I forgot I'd started wearing a ring on my ring finger because it no longer fit on my middle finger. I told him my fingers got fat after pregnancy and they haven't deflated to the size they used to be. I have no plans to marry.

Boyfriend Pham isn't a huge romantic by any stretch of the imagination. He compliments me by comparing me to food. He's really into carbs: pizza, pita, roti, milk buns, tortillas - if it has any type of flour, he's down. So when he tells me I'm a "fancy loaf" that's about as close to sweet-talk as we get.

Keep this in mind when I tell you that one day when we were in the car, I think he was driving and I was the passenger. He looked over and told me, "You can marry me if you want." Then looked back at the road. What? The audacity! He said it as a joke, but he also would marry me if that's what I wanted. Luckily for both of us, I'm too frugal to get married so that flop of a proposal isn't our proposal story. 

If I want more legal rights then I'd opt for power of attorney over marriage since commitment isn't an issue for us. We've bought a home together, share all our finances, adopted a cowardly little lion (Rei Pham) and we now share our genes with Baby Pham so we're linked for life even if we break up. That's commitment enough for me. It's now an ongoing joke whenever he does something to annoy me, I say I want a divorce and he says I have to marry him first.

If Mum Pham were around I'd marry Boyfriend Pham so Mum could have a big-ass wedding, invite every person who has ever crossed her path, and months of bragging rights. Mum Pham only had a small wedding being a refugee in Germany. I'd have spent tens of thousands of dollars to make her happy. But Mum isn't around now I've found someone worth marrying, and Dad Pham does not give a crap about matrimony so I'll use my money to pay down our mortgage.

So Baby Pham is a bastard. My bastard. If he wants his parents to marry when he's older, then I would consider it. But for now, it's not a priority. 

Boyfriend Pham and I aren't married - hence, calling him Boyfriend instead of Husband - and his surname isn't Pham. Even though I love my name - Jade Pham, short, sharp and to the point - there are a bazillion Phams out there and thousands of Jade Phams because 'Ngoc' meaning jade is a very common Vietnamese first name.

When it came to picking a surname for Baby Pham, it was a no-brainer. Boyfriend Pham's surname is so unique he's related to everyone in Australia who has his surname. So: decision made. No patriarchal reasons. If I had a less generic surname, I'd have used mine. If you know a Pham in Australia, chances are I am NOT related to them. The surname was easy.

The first name was a little trickier to pick when we had every name in the whole wide world to choose from. But once I put together a short list of names, we quickly realised we don't like most names. We whittled the list down to two options. One option we'd 'matched' on Baby Name App (a Tinder-style app) where we swiped yes or no to names we liked. It was our only match. The other option was the only name Boyfriend Pham didn't cross off my shortlist.

When people asked about Baby Pham's name before he arrived, we'd tell them we were tossing up between two options (without revealing what the options were). By the time I was in the birthing suite, I was pretty confident I'd ruled out the Tinder-style baby name - I'd only swiped yes because it sounded cute but have you met me? I may make a cute baby with my off-the-chart wide chubby cheeks, but he's very unlikely to grow up to be cutesy. If Boyfriend Pham and I live up to our expectations of ourselves as his parents, Baby Pham will be confident, kind and smart. So we chose a name that's direct and to the point like we are.

So far he's living up to his name. I wish I could share his face with you because he has very stern eyebrows when he's considering things. You'll just have to trust me that our little dumpling gives the People's Eyebrow vibes:

Baby Pham was induced a day before his due date because he gave us all a scare with decreased fetal movement and a sporadic heart rate. He was meant to be induced a day earlier after my check-in with a midwife spiralled into a trip to the hospital and nearly having an emergency c-section. The c-section was called off literally at the last minute because Baby's heart rate stabilised and I was meant to be induced that day but the Birth Centre was too busy to take me.

Instead, I spent a restless night in the maternity ward listening to new mums with their newborns, while I was hooked up for two additional CTG rounds to make sure Baby's heart rate remained normal. The next morning, I was moved from the maternity ward to the birth suite with the midwife and a student doctor.

The midwife was the same one we saw the day before at our regular check-in - she'd referred us to the hospital to check on Baby's decreased movements in my belly. She offered to break my waters and get the show on the road but I wanted to wait for Boyfriend Pham so we could share the whole birth experience from start to finish. I'd told Boyfriend Pham to take it easy before he came in that morning because it would be a big day for all three of us - and possibly his last chance to relax in a long while. So, Boyfriend fixed his car and chilled at home for a bit before coming to the hospital with a pit stop at the coffee cart.

After my caffeine hit, my waters were broken - the sensation of it gushing out was very weird, though not as odd as birthing the placenta that night. The midwife started my synthetic oxytocin drip. The dosage was gradually increased every hour or so and I watched the monitor where I was shown that my body was contracting, but I didn't feel any pain for the first couple of hours. Then the contractions started to twinge and gradually build until about the fifth hour of induced labour when it started to hurt. Boyfriend Pham attached the TENS machine with the midwife's advice because the instruction manual told us to apply the patches too high up.

Labour pain is the most intense pain I have ever felt in my life. It's gruelling having your lower abdomen muscles contract for hours with increasing frequency as time goes on. The TENS machine helped distract from the pain in my belly, by directing pain sensations to my back. I didn't take pain medication because I didn't want anything passing through the placenta and making him sleepy. Gas would have been the only medical option I'd take but by the time I could have used more pain management than the TENS, my contractions were so close together I couldn't catch my breath or organise my thoughts enough to ask for gas. I was a wild animal by the end of my 8-hour labour; my body took over and I was letting out uncontrolled guttural moans with each contraction.

My labour would have been longer if it wasn't for Baby Pham causing more drama. In the final hour, my body was telling me to push but the midwife told me not to because Baby wasn't ready yet. O lordy was it painful to resist the urge to push. I ended up shitting myself because the pressure from Baby's head and contractions were so immense; the midwife had to wipe me clean a couple of times. When I was finally ready to push, Baby's heart rate dropped worryingly low a number of times and disappeared altogether. The midwife didn't know whether it was from him being so low in my body that the monitors couldn't detect him or if his heart had stopped so the situation escalated quickly in the final moments.

The senior midwife was called in and suddenly there were two new faces in the room, and I was being told to PUSH! because my baby was exhausted and needed to come out immediately. I tried to push for two contractions with no luck, then the senior midwife told me Baby couldn't wait for contractions any longer. She coached me through how to push without a contraction; I had to hold my breath and push with all of my might. I strained so hard that I thought I was going to break myself, which in a way I did. I could feel myself tearing as I pushed Baby Pham out, and the midwives pulled him free, but with all the adrenaline I didn't feel any pain.

All I felt was concern that I'd taken too long to push him out until suddenly, there was a baby lifted towards my chest and I could see his little chin quiver before he let out a healthy wail. My boy was alive and he was alert! I was flooded with relief and love for both my baby and the best partner I could wish for in Boyfriend Pham.

Boyfriend Pham is the most supportive and wonderful birth partner. He coached me through each painful contraction, breathing with me while I clung to him. We didn't realise what we were doing is hypnobirthing (deep breathing techniques) until a midwife told us afterwards, Boyfriend was using yoga breathing techniques he'd learned from Yoga with Adriene.

Our little miracle baby was here thanks to his persistence through our fertility journey, and his support during pregnancy, labour and birth.

Our fertility and pregnancy experience

Fun fact: Boyfriend Pham sent me the 'how is prangent formed' video while we were office buddies and we both laughed deliriously - who knew we'd be trying to get prangent together a few years later. I was clueless about how is prangent formed when Boyfriend Pham and I first started trying beyond the general birds and bees talk. By ‘trying’ I mean we stopped avoiding pregnancy. My first GP doctor said to try for 6 months before seeking help. My second GP said to try for 12 months. All in all, we tried for over a year before getting a referral to see a fertility specialist. 

The first fertility specialist we went to was part of the Monash IVF group as one of my friends was using Monash IVF at the time and recommended them. She put Boyfriend Pham and me through a bunch of blood tests. Boyfriend Pham did a sperm test and I had the fun experience of having contrast fluid shot up my uterus in a hysterosalpingography (HSG) X-ray to see if my fallopian tubes were blocked. All our results came back good. There wasn't anything obvious stopping us from falling pregnant naturally.

After 8 months, I still didn't know why we couldn't become pregnant. Even though there's a lot of information out there about fertility and ways to boost fertility, I figure there isn't much research into the root causes of infertility because IVF exists as a workaround.

We were given the option to do artificial insemination as a next step, but during the paperwork process, the fertility specialist encouraged me to jump straight to IVF because I was 38 and about to turn 39 soon. Age 40 is an egg quality cliff for women better to sign up for IVF now in case it took a while. She specialised in private IVF but knew money was a concern for us so told me to get a referral to a bulk bill IVF clinic.

I went home and picked a bulk bill IVF centre based on location. I'd heard good things about Adore Fertility but they were across town, and I wanted convenience so I picked Life Fertility in Bowen Hills as it was closest to home. I read reviews that had mixed vibes about Dr Glenn Sterling, but I figure I'd judge for myself when I met him. At my first appointment, I realised why he may rub some people the wrong way. Dr Sterling has a great sense of humour and is big on Dad jokes, which is allowed because he's a father. I can see how some couples felt he was disrespectful or confronting for making light of a serious life situation. However, I love that he can share his medical knowledge while making me laugh because I'm someone who prefers to laugh at uncomfortable things than stress or cry. I really enjoyed the humour and the lighthearted way he explained how my body works and the somewhat daunting process it was about to go through.

It wasn't until we started IVF that I began to understand the timing, logistics, and magic that goes into creating life.

Next time on Keep it in The Phamly... IVF hormone injections and symptoms. Spoiler: I did not have a good time.

Our fertility and pregnancy experience

Boyfriend Pham and I don't have much in common in our daily lives. We share core principles and values though how we enact them is worlds apart, we share a love of food though mostly different foods; and our favourite colour is green - I've never asked for details but I'd assume different greens based on our history of not having much in common.

Boyfriend Pham is not one to do things by halves so when we painted our downstairs feature wall midnight blue-purple, he also painted a feature wall in our bedroom. We've binged quite a few Never Too Small videos on YouTube during the 2020-2021 lockdowns when we started to think smarter about how we use our space. He ended up buying the Never Too Small book by Joel Beath and found inspo in a tiny apartment that had a dark green wall framing balcony doors. It framed the jungle beyond the glass doors and made the view pop.

We own a mortgage debt for a humble townhouse in Brisbane and, well, let's say the previous owners or original builders did a bit of a hack job with paint colour combos. Our bedroom has four different shades of cream and beige across the walls, door, frames and skirting boards. Why?!

Boyfriend Pham plans to repaint the whole house room by room but first, he wanted to learn how to paint by doing small feature walls. His first attempt was the desk feature wall downstairs. Our bedroom was attempt two. We used a grey paint base under the forest green. The dark feature wall instantly changed the feel of the space. It's now cosy and warm and snug as we fall asleep; not beige, boring and bright.

We got new curtains that look nice... so long as you don't look down and see how we hemmed them with double-sided tape. Regrets. We wish we'd sewn the hem instead because ironing the tape ruined our rug by getting bits of glue on it, and also made the curtain hem permanently wrinkled. We did not research curtains at all compared to the weeks and months of pondering the feature wall colour and painting. Oops. We'll replace the curtains in a decade or so, I guess. How long do curtains last? I might know if I researched them. 

One of our favourite coffee spots is Passport Specialty Coffee in Northgate, Brisbane. They do divine coffee beans and, I, the person who can barely smell and has reduced taste due to constant congestion from hay fever allergies, can clearly taste the difference. Anyhow, this story isn't about their coffee. This story is about how Passport Specialty Coffee tried and failed to paint their shop interior the colour of Australian passport blue.

Boyfriend Pham discovered this place in a chance drive-by and was very excited to bring me here for a coffee date the following weekend. The first thing I noticed when I walked into the unassuming brick building was how warm and welcoming the vibe was. The place emanates quality and class without a hint of snobbery. They're keen to educate people who want to learn and serve delicious brew to those who simply want a good coffee.

I got a good chance to absorb the space and analyse why I loved the feel so much when we sat upstairs in the mezzanine space to wait for our coffees. I realised it was the deep purple-blue colour of their wall offset by the warm, wooden furnishings and coppery gold trims that made it feel cosy and classy. We spoke to Passport's owners about their wall colour, and they explained they weren't happy with it. It was meant to be passport blue but after five coats on a white base, the colour didn't come out with more purple than they wanted.

I became obsessed with their incorrect colour and have fantasised about having a feature wall in this shade for over a year. Christmas break 2022 Boyfriend Pham turned my dream into a reality after 6 months of research and sampling colours. I wanted Passport purple-blue for the feature wall I look at while sitting at my home office desk.

We got sample dark blue pots and Boyfriend Pham smeared patches on the walls but they were all too blue with no hint of purple. So we went back to Passport to learn where they'd gotten their paint. One of the owners, Aaron, kindly dug up the CMYK colour code on his laptop and even printed it out for us. He directed us one minute up the road to the local paint shop PaintRight Virginia. We went there to get the CMYK colour converted into a paint colour after some coaxing from Boyfriend Pham who luckily is a graphic designer and has done print production and apparel production and understands how these conversion things work. We got there in the end and came home with some sample paint.

Boyfriend Pham did more sample splotches and bingo! We'd found our colour. Over Xmas break, we got all the paints and undercoats and tools from the gentlemen at PainRight who stepped us through the items we needed and gave us tips. I then sat on the couch and offered words of encouragement to Boyfriend Pham who did all the sanding, washing, prep, painting and cleaning.

I think the main issue Passport Specialty Coffee encountered was their painter used a white base coat and because we were newbies to house painting, we didn't make any assumptions and asked PaintRight what we should use. The experts told us we needed to use grey and ordered it in for us since it's rare for people to use bold colours in their house - they only had 1L when we needed 2 for another feature wall upstairs. Our wall is a lot more midnight blue in certain lighting but still quite purple during the day without any unnatural light on it. I love the colour because of the way it shifts throughout the day as the sun goes up and down and we turn on our lights.

I half jokingly wrote about planning for chaos at the start of the year, and to teach me a lesson Chaos smacked me right between the eyes, and suddenly it's April and I haven't written a single blog in 3 months.

Normally, in retail life Jan/Feb quiet down after peak Xmas and holiday trade. Me? I jumped right into another round the clock workload and just as things started to let up in March, Dad Pham spent a week in hospital with fluid logged lungs (he's OK now). And of course, I was interviewing for a role I really wanted the day after Dad got out of Emergency. Somehow my sleep deprived brain managed to not say anything that got me axed by the panel and - oh, hello! I start a new role in a whole new industry later this month!

It's always tempting to stay in your comfort zone and do what you know you're good at and enjoy. But, lately, I've started to wonder what untapped potential I may have. What more can I contribute? Life has a funny way of nudging you in the right direction when you're ready to listen. A recruiter hit me up out of the blue about a role in healthcare, and it turns out I can contribute to people's healthcare experience through technology projects. I feel very lucky to have this opportunity to try something new and contribute to my community in a different way.

I've been at the same retail company in various project roles for 6 years, 6 months and 26 days. It had been so long between jobs, I looked up how to resign in case HR guidelines had changed. I've had the greatest time with some of the best people I've ever met (including the Work Pham and Boyfriend Pham!), but a chapter must end in order to start a new one. I'm looking forward to the next chapter of my life.

The Xmas Eve feast that cancelled Xmas for the extended Phamly.

The first full week I've had off work all year and, of course, the very first event I go to on my very first day off on Christmas Eve had a relative who tested positive to COVID-19. I am writing you from Day 3 since close contact, Day 2 of isolation because I didn't find out until Christmas night I had to isolate and get tested. Boyfriend Pham and I went to get tested the very next day. Being Boxing Day with all bar a few testing centres open, the queue was hectic. We got to the drive-through testing pop-up just before it was set to open, and it was a 5.5 hour wait from start to nose/brain-poke. We were prepared for the long wait, and brought our books, snacks, and water to keep ourselves from getting stir-crazy inside the car.  But it was still a bit trying in the Brisbane heat and trying not to kill my car's battery with the constand stop/start.

While we wait for test results, we are reliving our daily routines of the original 6-week lockdown. Home quarantine is much more pleasant in a 3-bedroom townhouse with courtyard overlooking luscious green trees, than a 2-bedroom apartment with balcony overlooking a busy street. Still, Boyfriend Pham is one of those people who is constantly doing something and can't be still for too long so the most challenging part of this 4-day quarantine is keeping him busy. [Edited from 7-day to 4-day: Originally thought we had to stay in for the full 7 days and take a second test, but because we weren't seated at the same table at family feast, I only needed one negative test result! Which makes me question the logic of casual contacts testing on day 1 and getting negative results by Day 3 if the incubation period is 4-5 days after exposure. But oh well - it's what the rules say. I'm free!]

Me? I can sit and read or write or death scroll or binge-watch my days away. With him? I need to get up and do morning yoga, coffee and reading on the balcony / cat enclosure. Tidy up the house. Play with the cat. It's nearing lunchtime? Great, time to cook lunch. Half way through the day now. Afternoon is spent doing at least one productive chore - be it, cleaning, baking, study, research, gardening - otherwise Boyfriend Pham will feel his day has been wasted. Play with the cat. YouTube break! Pre-dinner workout in the lounge room, followed by dinner and then it's time to relax on the couch and watch our latest TV show or a movie. Play with the cat. Bedtime. 

Not the relaxing, movie-going, massage-having, good-food outing holiday I had in mind but, such as life, hey?

Never underestimate the power of a good date night. I have friends who are quietly going insane juggling family and work life. While they understand why their partners don't take them out on dates because the exhaustion of raising little humans and the logistics of getting a babysitter makes it extra hard; they can't help feeling frustrated. Part of me thinks: yeah, it's too hard basket to plan a date day or night. Part of me thinks: make a frikkin' effort to show someone you appreciate them. Part of me wonders if it's because their partners don't understand how much date nights may mean to their significant other. Quality time can be important and invaluable to a happy relationship. It doesn't need to be a regular thing, but it should probably be a sometimes, special occasion thing.

Boyfriend Pham and I don't have set date night - that's too much commitment for us. We have gym nights, basketball nights, girls nights, boys nights, niece nights... That's enough regular nights for one couple, don't you think? When we do have a day or night out together on weekends or after work, we make sure to appreciate the quality time. No phones, no social media numbing scrolls, no games. We focus on each other. It's easy to get bogged down in your day to day routines, and go through the motions of life without the e-motions that connected you in the first place. If we do start our own Phamly, I want to make sure we carve out time just for ourselves. Please hold me accountable when the time comes if I forget. I do have a habit of viewing the world how it should be and not how it is.

Guys and gals, if you haven't taken your partner out for a while... or ever, why don't you organise a date night? 

 

I didn’t enjoy work from home life in a previous role. I got so lonely I started chatting to the spider that lived on my desk, and the two crows that came to perch on the fence. I was also single and didn’t have motivation to take breaks in the evenings, get out of my pyjamas or even shower for that matter. I became quite ill and depressed after six months, and resigned a few months after that.

I am thoroughly enjoying work from home life this time around. After nearly 5 years of long daily commutes, I’m enjoying not wasting hours of my life crawling through traffic. I’ve taken some lessons from my last experience working from home.

This time I make sure I get dressed every day like I would normally for work. In three months, there was one day where I was in gym gear because I did a workout and before I could shower and dress, work exploded in my face. And a second day where I did a morning of meetings in my PJs because I’d slept in, and didn’t get dressed until lunch time.

The gym gear day

It’s hard to be the first person to say ‘I love you,’ which is why I recommend you tell people ‘you love me’ instead. It makes things way easier so long as you’re comfortable coming across like an arrogant jerk.

It works well in situations with your partner. Whenever I do anything annoying to Boyfriend Pham like squeezing his arm non-stop and aggressively because it’s a habit from my childhood to adulthood with Mum Pham’s arms, and he looks exasperated and is about to tell me to stop. I remind him ‘You love me!’ To which he sighs and says in defeated tones, ‘I know.’

I’m not the only arm-obsessive, Little Sissy Pham has the same arm squishing habit I do. You guys don’t understand, Mum Pham’s arms were the best to squeeze affectionately and sometimes aggressively. So satisfying!

‘You love me’ also works well with siblings. I’m constantly reminding Little Sissy Pham that she loves me just in case she forgets, especially while I’m doing my big sister duties and birth right to poke fun at her every chance that I get. Like that time I teased her lisp relentlessly until she learned how to pronounce ‘crocodile’ and ‘smile’ properly. Or that time pigeon-toed me made fun of her funny, out-turned waddle walk until she trained herself to walk with her feet pointed straight ahead. Ah, she loves me.

I love you. I was talking to my girlfriends about this heavily weighted sentence. Some of them are in long-term relationships, others are in new relationships or dating.

The first time Boyfriend Pham told me he loved me was in the car as I was dropping him off at home on his last day in our office. We were both upset and spent the car ride talking about our next chapter and what we should do. The first thing I had to do, however, was to go back to work so when I pulled up outside his place, I anticipated him saying bye and hopping out. Instead he said those words. I was so surprised I thought I’d misheard him so my response was, ‘Huh?’ (I know, facepalm, Jade!) He repeated himself and I told him, ‘I love you, too.’

Many people agonise over the right time and place to say this to someone new in their life. Me? I hadn’t thought about it before this moment because I don’t know how to relationship, as BF likes to remind me when I do some oddball thing people apparently don’t do in relationships. Boyfriend Pham? He felt it so he said it, which is a very him thing to do.

Other people are not so matter-of-fact about it. One friend wasn’t sure how to bring it up and for months wondered if now was the right time to say something. And when that time came and went and they didn’t have the nerve to say it in person, they wrote a lovely letter instead.

Some people don’t struggle to say I love you, but don’t know when to keep their mouth shut. A Tinder date who, after being broken up with, came to visit my friend at her place of work. Red flag! She again had to tell him things were over, yet he proceeded to casually call out ‘Love you!’ to her back as she was walking away. Red flag! Had never said it to her before then, and for good reason: They’d only been on a handful of dates and barely knew one another.

When you don’t know someone well, maybe don’t tell them you love them because it’s probably infatuation and you haven’t seen them in a rough patch yet. When you know someone and you adore the way they conduct themselves in good and bad situations, then you’re probably in love. And if you’re in love, there isn’t a bad time to tell your beloved. The sooner, the better. Love is special. Don’t keep it to yourself. We need to share it more with the world.

When I first moved in with Boyfriend Pham he was persistent to the point of being annoying that I keep up with my weekly dinner with the girls. Why was he so desperate to get me out of the house? What was he doing without me? Eating family packs of potato chips? Watching porn? He is supportive of Girls Night because he knows and has dated girls who didn’t have a close-knit friendship with other women so their worlds revolved, a little unhealthily, around their boyfriends.

Girls Night in practicality is a night in at one of our humble abodes where we wear cute Peter Alexander PJs (not me - too lazy to pack PJs), drink wine (except me - too allergic to alcohol), and order-in dinner. Girls Night in actuality is a sanctuary. A place where we feel safe to talk about anything and everything going on in our lives. We support one another whether it’s through sympathising and sharing a similar experience so our friends don’t feel alone in what they’re going through, or giving some tough love and sharing advice we know they won’t want to hear but need to.

There is no such thing as oversharing at Girls Night. We talk about bodily functions, our relationships and dating, growing or failing friendships, our career development and changes at work, our living situations, pets, parents, and family. Whatever is on our minds, gets aired at Girls Night to a room of supportive, loving friends.

While I call mine Girls Night, yours can take any shape or form. It could be a social sport, or nights out on the town, or a book club. If it’s frequent enough to be called a regular thing, then you’ve got yourself a Girls/Boys/Friends Night. A time to look forward to, somewhere to socialise, have fun and share whatever’s going on in your life with people who matter and care.

Not all of my gifts are joke gifts. Some of the time they are thoughtful and meaningful. Not this one though. This gift idea stems from pure selfishness. I needed an excuse to take photos of my camera-averse Boyfriend every day and now I finally have it.

When I lived in Melbourne I'd visit The Phamly 3-4 times a year and talk on the phone with Mum Pham every couple of days. Boyfriend's mum lives in Perth, which is about as far away from Brisbane as you can get within Australia so quarterly visits aren't so easy. They talk regularly, but for his first year in Brisbane his mum could only visit us once. She got to see where he lives and meet me and Dad Pham, but it's hard to learn what someone's life is like in one weekend.

When her birthday was approaching... then came...then went, and Boyfriend had only called her to wish her happy birthday because their family don't do gifting, my brain started to tick. We had to do something for Xmas. Life is too short not to show people you love that you appreciate them.

What would Mum Pham have liked if we lived far apart and we hardly ever got to see one another? Lightbulb! 'A year in the life of' photo project about Boyfriend for his mum. I pitched the idea as a daily calendar so it's sort of practical but mainly so she can learn more of his Brisbane life. We could send her prints in monthly packs so the moments captured would be recent and relevant. It's something she will look at every day to remember that a) she has a son and b) he loves her and misses her.

Boyfriend normally yells no to gifts, but he was fully behind this idea. He got to designing the calendar pages, while I took on the difficult task of photographing my favourite human going about his life. We found an iPad holder (like a compact cookbook holder) at Kmart which fit prints in size 6" x 8" nicely. He sent the iPad holder and photos for the month of January. She opened it today for Christmas, and it made her cry - hopefully, they were happy tears and not because I didn't think to set my phone camera to the highest quality for better prints. Oops.

Merry Christmas everyone, hope you have the best time showing your loved ones how much you care!

It might seem a bit impulsive to move out with someone I'd been dating for only a few months, but the beginnings of our friendship then courtship then relationship happened during some very trying times at work where we met.

I got to see how he handled himself in a tense situation and I fell in love with what I saw. He kept his cool and showed more integrity than I could have mustered given his circumstances. I was ready to rage-quit on principle, which would have been way more impulsive than moving in together so quickly. Boyfriend, being the level-headed person he is, convinced me to use my head and not my outraged moral compass. Another thing I love about him - he's got my back and always looks out for me. Except in his sleep when he sometimes accidentally punches me in the face (he vehemently denies this but I never woke up with a swollen nose when I slept alone for all of my life so...).

I'm grateful we went through tough times early on - it made us closer and I gained immense respect for him. I know him better than most people I've known for years. People show their true colours when they're under pressure.

It all worked out for the best. If we still worked together we wouldn't have moved in together; and if he hadn't left when he did, he wouldn't have found his current dream role. The only downside is we work on opposite sides of town now and live in between, so these days I don't dawdle at work or hang out with the crew 'cause I'm rushing home to meet my favourite person in the middle.

I've been distracted from writing of late. Two things - One: I met a boy. Two: we moved in together. So, in your face, Dave! I did get a boyfriend with my OnePlus 5t.

It's been a whirlwind year of 3-month upheavals. After Europe last year Little Sissy Pham's boyfriend moved in with us. Then I met someone at work and three months in, we started dating. A few more months of share housing with my sibling and her man, and it became obvious I was the third wheel preventing them from being a bike. By that, I mean, most bikes need to settle down with two wheels. I feel like I'm not making sense but you get what I mean. In short, a few months ago I was tossing up whether to live in a sharehouse for affordability (but people, ew) or paying 30% more rent to live alone (but expensive, ew).

New boyfriend of a few months gave me a third option when he asked if it would be crazy for us to live together. Well, yeah it is. But we did it anyway. And so here I am a few months later and we're living together in a cosy apartment - him with his black and white minimalism. Me in my rainbow splattered everything.

We're complete opposites in most ways. He likes gyms, I like swims. He plays basketball, I throw pokeballs. He raps, I can't. He sings, I won't. I dance, he don't. I love the outdoors, he prefers temperature controlled environments. I'm all about summer, he's all for winter. And let's not talk about the long list of things he won't eat. There's one thing I don't eat - animals.

We don't even use the same words to describe things. I say extra, he says spare. I say drizzling, he says sprinkling. I say yah huh, he says nuh uh. I say shut up, he says shush. Why does English have so many words that mean pretty much the same thing?

Somehow we work though. After all the bullshit and mind games of online dating and being with a serial liar and cheater, this is the first romantic relationship where I haven't felt like it is an effort to make it work. When it's right, it's easy. Unlike all of my previous boy history, this one comes Phamly approved. It's nice to be in love with someone worthy of it. I'm a lucky girl.

So, I've been keeping a secret. I'm dating someone. I've been seeing him for a while but kept it offline because we met at work and were avoiding some inconvenient office politics. The good news is, he's since left the company so I can write about him. He's great - he's funny, smart, and my friends' favourite part is he's upfront and honest (unlike previous people in my life). A bit too honest. Which is why at 34, I learned that I don't know how to chew and breathe at the same time. I am a mouth breather when I eat. Little Sissy Pham backed him up enthusiastically saying I am so loud when I chew.

We were listing things we found annoying about one another because that's totally healthy. We couldn't think of anything really so we picked petty little things we don't really mind. My two annoying yet tolerable traits are I don't push in the chair at the dining table, which I've since started doing and I chew loudly with my mouth open, which I can't figure out how to do quietly.

I have a persistent stuffy nose because I'm allergic to life. My hay fever is nowhere near as bad as it used to be in Melbourne, my eyes aren't red and sore most of the time but my nose lives in two states - runny or clogged, never clear. So while I can't chew with my mouth closed all the time like a regular a person, I can suffer through it until I run out of breath then try not to suck in air too noisily before I begin chewing again. My attempts have been very poor, according to him... but at least I try or, think about trying. Some of the time.

Such is my life right now. But hey, we're all learning and growing every day, right?