KEEP IT IN THE PHAMLY

I've been lucky enough to be COVID-adjacent for most of the past year and a half, going through lockdowns and closures and restrictions without drama beyond postponing or cancelling plans. But this most recent lockdown has been COVID-ful. Lockdown began like any other with the cancelling of plans and working for half the weekend instead to be productive... and then we got our first vaccinations, learned Boyfriend Pham had been in a close contact hotspot, went to a 24-hour testing clinic that just opened up in 8 Miles Plains, and got our negative results but still need to quarantine for a few more days.

The bright side of this latest lockdown is that AstraZeneca has been made readily available from GPs, and now I hear local pharmacies too. The tune has changed around not wanting anyone under 60 to have AZ. Boyfriend Pham and I booked in with the GPs for our first doses mid-week and, boy, was that a mistake. They do warn you that there are some side-effects for 24-48 hours, but really the messaging should be prepared to be out of action for 24-48 hours. 

I guess I'm writing this post so you're prepared if you choose to vaccinate with AstraZeneca. Please stock up on ibuprofen (we had Nurofen but any brand of ibuprofen will do) in case you need it. Not everyone's immune system responds the same way. From the six friends I've heard from since sharing my experience, the symptoms are exhaustion through to flu-like symptoms and lasts for half a day to the full two days.

So what did Boyfriend Pham and I experience? Immediately after the vaccine, we felt fine. I drove us home and we went back to work. About an hour later I started feeling flushed, my forehead was starting to burn up so I popped some panamax (not strong enough, it turns out) and kept working. After work, I walked the whole two metres from the dining table to our couch and felt utterly depleted of energy. Boyfriend Pham was still going strong. He played Xbox games while I played braindead.

When bedtime rolled I crawled into bed in a tee and Boyfriend Pham screamed 'cause my hands and feet were freezing. I couldn't tell my body was cold because my head was still on fever fire. So I got back out of bed, put on pants, a jumper and fuzzy socks and climbed back into bed. This time no matter how I curled up I couldn't get warm. I quietly suffered on my own until around 8.5 hours after our shot, Boyfriend Pham suddenly dropped off a cliff. 

He too started burning up and feeling freezing cold. He spent the next few hours physically shaking because his body was so cold. Eventually we fell asleep I think for about 1.5 hours then he got up to go to the bathroom, and I got up to get water because I'd sweated myself into dehydration even though I still didn't feel warm. We spent another few hours suffering before exhaustion put us to sleep for another hour. By morning I'd already told my boss I wasn't going to make it work work at my dining table that day. Instead, we spent the day on the couch feeling sick and sorry for ourselves. 

I can't even remember what we ate that day but I didn't have much appetite. Me! Yeah, I know, it means I was super sick. I had enough brain power for a family-friendly Disney movie. By 4pm, about 26.5 hours after our shots, Boyfriend Pham was able to get off the couch. I could shuffle about but I dreaded the thought of doing anything as focussed as cooking dinner. Instead, we ordered fish & chips and Boyfriend Pham drove us to collect it. I mainly ate chips 'cause the fish was too rich. We went to bed exhausted but at least we could feel the warmth of two blankets this time. The next morning, we woke up and it was like the last 30 hours hadn't happened. 

I'm told the second dose of AstraZeneca doesn't trigger any reactions. I have the day off work anyway to either stay home and feel sick or just to have a long weekend to celebrate my 100% vaccinated status. Good luck to anyone getting vaccinated, and good on you!

We made the right decision in installing an outdoor cat enclosure on our balcony so Rei could get natural sunlight when we're not home to leave our doors open. When I worked from home, Rei would follow the sun from our bedroom balcony door to our front door. She's squish up against the door ledge and it made me feel guilty that when I was in the office she only got morning sun in in our bedroom. 

Now that we have a cat enclosure, I barely ever see her during the day if I work from home. She'll come down a few times to check on me and each time I'd be boring work-mode at the desk so she'd go back upstairs. Basically, if I'm not sitting on the couch, my lap is useless to her.

Boyfriend Pham got a few quotes for cat enclosures and we ended up going with the most expensive quote because of the quality of their builds, and also the people seem like genuine cat lovers. Daniel, who came and did the installation, is indeed a cat lover. Once he finished the install, he stayed a while longer just to watch me coax Rei over the invisible line keeping her inside, and enjoy her new outdoor enclosure. There were cheaper, clunkier looking options, but being a townhouse, we wanted to have as little impact on the exterior as possible so body corporate would approve, and also so our house wouldn't look ugly. 

Happy Cat Enclosure installed Rei's little outdoor sanctuary on our balcony in a day. They were meticulous in securing the netting to the wall, ceiling and floor of our balcony. It's hours of detail work and the end result looks fabulous, and feels safe and secure. Rei has climbed the net and leaped from it daily and it holds fast. She spends hours each day lazing in the sun, watching the birds in the trees, climbing the netting when she sees a bug, eyeballing dogs and humans that walk past, meowing at us if we're down in the front yard, and overall just being a happy cat. 

My only regret about bringing Rei into nature is that she sometimes brings nature to us. The other day she brought giant grasshopper inside the house. It was so big we don't even know how it got inside the cat enclosure because its giant bug head looks bigger than the net spacing. I dread what bugs she'll drag in next, but ah well, it's all about happy cats right? Not so much an unhappy human screaming in the corner while Boyfriend Pham chases cat and grasshopper around the house. 

If you're considering a nice, minimalist cat enclosure I highly recommend the folks at Happy Cat Enclosure. Happy Cat Enclosures do all sorts of spaces either adding frames where needed or fixing to existing building structures like ours. They did a great job with our balcony, and recommended the glazier who installed a cat door for us too. Rei is a much happier cat now she can go outside inside.

Happy Cat Enclosures Brisbane

info@happycatenclosures.com.au

Do it! Your cat will love you for it, even though you'll see it less.

Temp desk before moving offices. Tad cramped.

In May 2014 a lady named Giselle contacted me about my 2012 Scrabble Letters post, asking to buy JADE off me for a room in her house that has a feature wall dedicated to scrabble words using the letters TYPO sold in 2012. Gisele collected them on eBay and Gumtree, and stumbled upon my blog on her hunt to build more words on her wall.

At the time, I had the letters decorating my desk. They were a gift from Little Sissy Pham and had sentimental value. Over the years, the letters have moved with me from office to office, and desk to desk until finally this year when I moved to desk too small to fit my standing desk and the letters. So I felt ready to finally say goodbye.

I reached out to Giselle on the off chance that 7 years on she may still want the letters and wouldn't you know, she did! In the spirit of Buy Nothing, I gifted the scrabble letters to Giselle. She lives interstate so it had to be shipped which is not in the spirit of Buy Nothing that aims to reduce environmental impacts by keeping items in your local area. But I figured it'd be better the scrabble letters continue their life in a home where they'll make someone happy, rather than go into storage and probably eventually landfill once I inevitably move desks again.

Fungal acne outbreak on my forehead in 2020. Alas, do not have a close-up pic.

I had a fungal acne outbreak last year - well, more accurately, malassezia folliculitis outbreak. At first, I thought it was my regular hormonal acne playing up due to pandemic stress. The small bumps were red and sore, then one day I used a chemical sunscreen that I've safely used before and my skin began raging and itching like crazy. I was so uncomfortable I struggled to sleep. 

That's when I went to the doctor and he gave me a round of antibiotics, and told me to ditch the chemical sunscreens and use a zinc-based sunscreen with minimal ingredients. This began my journey to overhaul and minimise my skincare products. This website has been my hero: https://folliculitisscout.com/ You can look up ingredients in skincare products and it will rank them for safety, potential irritants and things to look out for. 

It took nearly half a year to find products that weren't triggering, and soothed my skin. My new routine is a lot less complicated than before - no more serums, no eye creams, and no daily sunscreen (replaced with my UV blocking umbrella). 

I cleanse with Simple Gel face wash. I remove eye makeup with Bioderma micellar water. I moisturise with Innisfree Aloe Revital Soothing Gel. That's it. That's all my skincare products these days.

When I have beach day or go in the sun without my trusty umbrella, I use Ego SunSense Sensitive Visible Screen SPF 50+. It leaves a white cast on my skin, and also clogs my pores a bit so it's not for everyday wear. I haven't found a non-comedogenic zinc sunscreen to use daily yet. I don't feel the need to since I am not in the sun much, but if you have any recommendations, please hit a girl up.

During peak acne outbreak, I used BareMinerals powder foundation to cover up the splotchy red all over my face (thanks to Mecca in Indooroopilly for helping me find a safe foundation for my skin condition and for the colour-matching service). I don't wear foundation normally but if I did, I would definitely use BareMinerals. It's light and easy to wear, and great for sensitive skin.

I received devastating news recently about an old friend who took her own life, and I've been struggling to process her death. So here I am writing my way through the sadness and shock. 

Scar was a beautiful human being inside and out. She was a few years younger than me but when we met I wanted to be like her when I grew up. She was bright, bold, welcoming, and loving. We crossed paths in our early 20s during my warehouse party era and she influenced shy, reserved me for the better. Scar helped me come out of my bubble with her daringly open ways in our formative years. We drifted apart when I moved away from Melbourne, but all my memories with her are warm and vibrant and happy. I find it hard to connect her effervescent aura with such a muted and lonely goodbye.

I had no idea she struggled with mental health and suicidal thoughts. I am shocked, but not surprised that I was oblivious because Scar carried herself with such strength and grace through life. I am horribly sad she chose to leave this world, and I wish life had been kinder to someone who made life more colourful and enjoyable for others. I hope she found the peace she was seeking, and I hope the family and friends she left behind will be OK. 

Tigger Pham was my first time cat parenting. Back then, if you didn't know something you went on not knowing because you couldn't Google it up. I never knew she was a tortoise shell tabby, I just called her splotchy browns if I had to describe her. We also didn't have an online microchip register with dropdown options to describe your cat's colouring.

When we transferred ownership over, I went in to rename her from Ray to Rei and spent an hour googling the history of cat breeds to define what she was and her colouring. I've concluded with my Google degree in Cat breeds that Rei is a pale ginger classic tabby with her marble swirls.

Along with her name change, I needed to get a new name tag and number. Even though - or rather, because we're raising her as an indoor cat, she won't be street smart so we want a collar with our contact details to help get her home safe. You know how I found her collar, right? I googled it up.

Rei is a teeny tiny kitten so I wanted a collar that is sleek and minimalist. At first I wanted a plastic name tag to make it lightweight but then I stumbled across Saangoh's embossed leather design on Etsy. After hours of online shopping, I kept coming back to these custom leather collars because they removed the need for a name tag and had the safety release in case Rei got her collar caught on something and choked.

Saangoh's leather collars come in a huge range of colours for the band and the bells. For Rei's pale ginger colour, I chose the natural leather with a silver bell because I wanted something subtle and classy for my little lady. It looks gorgeous on her! So very glad I came across Saangoh's cat collars, they're such a simple, practical yet elegant design.

I've been a cat lady without any cats for 5 years since I lost both my lifelong friend Tigger Pham and foster kitty Frederick, the Great a day apart. I lived with Nolan Pham for a while then went into the rental market for a few years. Now that Boyfriend Pham and I are settling into our first home, I've been thinking more and more about how it'd be a nice home for a Pham Pet. It's been one month to the day since we got Rei Pham. 

Rei came to us in a series of fortunately, unfortunate events. After she became lost and squatted on Somebody's porch, Somebody left her there for a few days to see if she'd find her way home. She did not so Somebody took Rei into work. At work, Boyfriend Pham's family took her home when nobody else, not even the local RSPCA, could take her in. 

That weekend they had plans to visit family in Brisbane and Rei was too young to be left at home alone so they took her along for the weekend. They tried to rehome her at their sister's but the sister's partner said no deal! So on their way home, they still had Rei with them when they pit stopped to visit us. As they walked through the door, they asked if I was allergic to cats. I replied, 'No, actually, we were talking about getting a cat the other day.' His face lit up. His friend was visiting this week and deathly allergic to cats so how about we keep Rei for a week to catsit and trial her? See if we were her furever Phamly. We are.

She was timid for about a minute on her first night with us as she explored the house. Day 2 was playful fun. Day 3 she gained confidence to try more things. Day 4 she was strutting around like she owned the place. We knew then she was happy here, and let Boyfriend Pham's family know she wanted to keep us as her humans.

Rei has been multiple variations of her final name in her short few months of life. First, she was Reirei from The Lion King to match Boyfriend Pham's other pets Nala and Simba. But when they went to microchip her, they felt Reirei was tricky so she officially became Ray...for a week before I renamed her Rei after Rei Ayanami, the First Child in the Evangelion anime series. So, hello World, meet Rei! The First Child of Boyfriend Pham and me. She's settled in just fiiinnneee.

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?