All posts in Adventures

Introduce me to my soulmate, win an iPad.

by tealou on July 12, 2011 in Featured, iPadofLove, LOLs, Relationships, Social Media, The Internet with 55 Comments

6 months ago, I ventured into online dating. Signed up for RSVP & the cesspool of sleaze, Oasis Active. Met some cool people that have ended up as friends (always the way), but for the most part am finding the whole thing ineffective.

A few months ago, a friend of mine had the idea to market himself via Facebook ads, which intrigued me… but a tongue-in-cheek comment on Twitter last night has led to me having a stellar idea.

I work with social media. I market online. Why use a dating site? Why not do something that drives real leads to me, that I control? And also pimp my own services as well? Seems win-win.

And, thus… my “find me a soulmate” competition was born.

Simple premise.

Tweet or share this article on Facebook.

The person who introduces me to “the one”, will get an iPad, or $500 cash (Added: $AUD).

The people who retweet/share on Facebook will go into the draw to win an iPad.

Clarification: Yes. If you introduce yourself and ask me out and I marry you… you get an iPad.

About Me


Age: 32.
Location: Perth, Western Australia.
Relationship status: Separated, divorce final in a month.
Height: 5’7″
Appearance: chubby but ok looking. “Hot” to some but I don’t believe it.
Education: lots, ongoing and crazy smart.
Geekiness: I can fix your computer, love my iPhone but not much of a gamer.
Music: My life. I play guitar & love recording.
Books: Love reading, but don’t get much time. Love Ben Elton and Nick Hornby. And Twilight can suck my arse.
Exercise: As much as possible, but not as much as I should!
Health: Lupus (managed).
Interests: Music, Neuroscience/Medicine (studying Biomed), design, funky things, pretty things, people watching.
Children: I have 3 children on weekends.
Politics: Left wing cynic, generally jaded.
Alcohol: I like a glass of wine or 2. No alcoholics please.
Smoking: sometimes, but rarely.
MBTI: INFP.
Astrology: Aries, Pisces rising. Venus in Pisces. I am a goat/sheep in Chinese Astrology.
Religion: “Culturally Roman Catholic”, but not religious. Philosophical.
Love Language: 6 – Words of Affirmation; 7 – Quality Time; 7 – Receiving Gifts; 3 – Acts of Service; 7 – Physical Touch;
Family: Estranged from most, including parents. Mother’s extended family still in my life. Love my sister.
What I am attracted to: over 5’10″. Not a bogan. Educated but not pretentious. Funny & relaxed, but ambitious. Professionals desirable. I like Meditteraneans and “exotic” men. err…?

Some background blog posts:

The Woo of Tealou

I Don’t Even Like Cosmopolitans

Added 17/7

It has been noted by a commenter on Gizmodo that I should also acknowledge the Android. Sure, why not. As to whether I’d date an Android fan, well…

Dear Grandma: A birthday blog letter.

by tealou on April 16, 2011 in Birthday Letters, Cancer, Death with 2 Comments

Dear Grandma Chris,

I know it seems odd that I would be writing to you, seeing as your ashes are sitting in my storage locker and, well, you’re not alive anymore. In fact, I am certain that there will be a group of people who will question my mental health by writing to a ghost. But, fuck ‘em.

I had the idea to write to you, because I enjoy writing the kids’ letter birthday posts… and you were always the one I could call up and talk to when things were difficult or I needed to process thoughts or go round and round in circles with a problem. Now, I am on my own and, truthfully, I am struggling without you. So, maybe writing to you as if I am talking to you can help.

I am also doing this because now my birthday is forever going to be associated with THAT phone call. The phone call where you were slurring, speaking nonsense, and I had to call the Ambulance because I thought you’d had a stroke. That happened 2 days after my birthday, after I thought it was odd you hadn’t called me to wish me Happy Birthday. Because you always did.

I can’t believe it’s been a year since that night. Jason says that I changed forever after that call, and he’s right. The pit of my stomach, ongoing pain at missing you is something I battle with daily. Your palloured face in its final days forever burned in my memory. Your mouth goobers, the gummy grin, your singing of Danny Boy in the hospice. The fleeting moments of lucidity where you would look me in the eye, shed a tear and tell me you were afraid. And you were never, ever afraid and I can never, ever forget that.

Jason said I’ve changed forever. He says it like it is a bad thing. I don’t see it that way. Sure, my grief makes it hard to cope sometimes. But your death made me take stock of my life. It made me decide to not die lonely. It made me decide to live a fierce, truthful life. And it made me commit to honouring the legacy that you left. And, on some level, it also made me unafraid to piss people off.

I’ll be honest. I feel in a state of flux at the moment. I honestly don’t know how, after you and Grandad divorced, how you could choose to live alone for the rest of your life. But at the same time, on some level, I get it. Because men… it’s just so easy to be jaded about them. You always said that you just couldn’t be bothered with them and boy, do I get that. Why anyone would put themselves out there, repeatedly, just to get hurt… it’s exhausting. And it’s taking its toll on me and how I see myself.

I can’t help but wonder if, like me, at some point you were an idealist or a romantic. But your life, the convent, your marriage, your sons, over time beat it out of you. You told me about you as a girl – you had a carelessless and a naive, gentle spirit that was like mine. But at some point, you got broken. And jaded. And as I have said to my friends recently… it’s one thing to always be skeptical… but there is nothing worse than an idealist who has been disappointed.

I keep being disappointed. Not just in relationships (because I know that is early days), but in friendships, with people, with the world. It all just feels… so… hard. Since your death I have had to remove my rose coloured glasses more times than I can count… and it’s been confronting. But, I am trying.

I am trying to get to Dublin for a pilgrimage to see where you grew up. I feel I need to do it. I want to see everything… the place of the stories. But naturally, money is a problem so I still haven’t been able to go. But I will go.

What I thought was safe, secure and known when you were here a year ago, is not anymore. And I am struggling sometimes. I am finding myself. And I am studying Psychology so I can hopefully help counsel family members who go through what we went through. And try to help them understand that it will be OK. At some point. It never goes away.

So yeah, it’s my birthday today. I’m 32. Which feels old. But despite me feeling like an epic fuck up most of the time, I think you’d be proud… or at least I hope so. I do wonder, often, how you would have reacted to Jason and I separating. I honestly don’t know how you would have reacted to the news. I can’t be sure.

But, I hope you’re proud.

I’m floating a bit. Struggling a lot. Figuring things out. And I miss you every single day.

But as the first year passes since THAT call, I put one foot in front of the other. Like both of us always have, and will continue to do. And for that, you live on in me.

Hope you’re well,

Téa

My last will and testament

by tealou on August 28, 2010 in Death, Uncategorized with 2 Comments

This started on Twitter and it made me laugh and I wanted to keep it :)

  1. I want a decoupage tombstone.
  2. @jasonjordan will MC my funeral in a Gimp Suit
  3. My funeral song shall be “Shaddup Your Face”
  4. My children shall be forced to live with their grandparents muahahahahahahahahaha
  5. The food at my funeral shall be an assortment of ball-shaped foods.
  6. My ashes shall be scattered #onyourface
  7. @sebsharp can have my sex toys
  8. I bequeath all of my debt to the animal shelter.
  9. I offer to donate my body to science, ONLY if they make a midget lift me onto the table. On his own.
  10. @sebsharp can have all of my sex toys, with the exception of the 13″ stainless steel one, who I bequeath to @shelly1912
  11. Scrap the ashes. I shall be stuffed and put on a seat at @Mooba as a deterrent for Exomod spies.
  12. My children are required to point toward the Apple store at hourly intervals and salute.
  13. I would like my bum to me made into a nice lamp.
  14. If my death is suspicious, I consent to an autopsy, limited ONLY to left ring finger.
  15. If you memorialise my Facebook account, clean my fish tank & harvest my crops whilst you are there, thanks.
  16. If you sleep with my ex, beware, he’s crap in the sack. Hence the toys.
  17. The invitations for my funeral shall cost no more than $1.99 & need to have bedazzling
  18. You shall, as a community, commit to tweeting no less than once every 23 seconds in my honour.
  19. If you find… the thing… in the… thing… you know what to do :)
  20. @jaso32 remember to put the bins out.
  21. If I could at all come back as a vampire, when I die tonight, please let me be a GOOD vampire, not a shit Twilight one.
  22. If I manage to communicate with you after I am gone, cover your ears for it shall be Dexter spoilers.
  23. If I do actually die, which is a certainty, I nominate @mrsisterchris to tearfully (vomitly) read out this list.

On Vindication

by tealou on June 23, 2010 in Parenting with No comments

It’s funny how half an hour with someone who gets it can suddenly boost your confidence as a parent.

It’s not something I thought consciously about, but it has been a long time since I was praised for how I parent. Most people are indifferent at best, but I’ll admit that the great majority of feedback I get about my parenting is either from condescending people who think they parent better (just because they parent differently), or from the internet (which is full of freaks), or from the school.

Mina had what started as mild asthma earlier this year, and has extended into what we thought was a heart problem, and is now just plain old anxiety. We think it’s a combination of the school reinforcing it and the stressors of the last few months, and she’s just not sure how to process it all.

Mina’s teacher emailed me with concerns and recommended she see a “play therapist”. I initially took this as an attack on my parenting and was actually very upset that they would see the fact that Mina was thriving on the “attention” of going to the office with “asthma” as a welfare issue. Because I have never received praise. I parent differently to most people – I believe in letting kids be kids. Letting them roam around but still very much monitored. She walks to school. I let her decide what she buys for lunch. Helicopter parents see this as neglect, of course, because I am not driving her to a million extracurricular activities, not hovering, letting her go to the park FOUR DOORS DOWN on her own.

If you could name my parenting philosophy (which is what wankers do), it would probably fit into “free range parenting” and the Montessori method of teaching kids. I regret not sending my kids to Montessori.

And I must admit, that because of that lack of positive feedback (not having a mother and having in-laws that make no secret of thinking I am a bad mother and wife), I seriously started to doubt myself.

But, we went to the play therapist and I was blown away because… well… I don’t really like psychologists. Especially child psychologists. But we went through what has been happening, all the stress we have been under the last 2 years, and rather than JUDGE me, she actually said we were not just good parents, but excellent parents.

That was a shock, because I have never heard it. My whole schtick has been about how I failed as a mother – couldn’t breastfeed, put them in a cot, worked or studied and put them in daycare, let them watch TV, tell them the truth about life… all those things… I have always felt somewhat ostracised by the world for the way I view it and the way I bring up my kids.

And then, I have a child psychologist, who reaffirmed that we have been through so much stress in the last 2 years that it is only natural for Mina to be worried. She’s eight. The world has opened up to her and become scary. She’s lost friends that were important to her, she’s been exposed to the truth of life, through us, and that’s hard to express because she lacks the cognitive development to intellectualise it. But it’s not because we have failed as parents, it’s because we are GOOD parents, that we didn’t try to sugarcoat anything, and we sought help early on and are open to strategies to help deal with her personality and creativity. The therapist even suggested that honesty is the best policy and we were on the right track with our parenting.

So what I initially took as judgement of our parenting style has turned into something really positive – being equipped with strategies to help our child, who is really just a very smart, very creative, very emotional person, to process everything that has gone on.

It’s bizarre how I had never actually realised that I had never been praised before. I mean, I have had old ladies take me aside and say they are well behaved children, and you know, comments from various places… but no one in authority has actually said we are doing an OK job. It’s OK to have a sense of humour about them. It’s OK to be annoyed and frustrated with them. And no, I don’t have to buy wipe warmers or sew ballet costumes to be a good mother.

The Eulogy I couldn’t read.

by tealou on June 21, 2010 in Cancer, Death with 5 Comments

Well, it’s all over. Grandma was cremated this afternoon. Today was really, really hard and it has now hit me that I will never see her again. Walking into the funeral home for her final service, and seeing the coffin, was just a little too much, and the last 2 months hit me like a ton of bricks. I wasn’t able to read out the eulogy, but here it is.

Grandma was born in 1931, in Catholic Ireland, to a single mother. She had 2 older brothers and a little sister, Josephine, who died when Grandma was 7. Her mother died around the same time, and grandma grew up in a convent. She never really spoke much about her childhood, and the memories she did share with me were always positive. They almost always involved her getting in trouble for being cheeky, or being chased by a nun.

Grandma never really dwelled on the loss of her mother. Her father was not interested either, and, knowing her like I do, even though she never really said much, I could tell it affected her view of the world.

To come up here and say she was a saint wouldn’t only be a lie, it would be an insult to her legacy. Because Grandma was a survivor. She didn’t always get it right and quite often got the wrong end of the stick, but her heart was good.

All she ever wanted was respect. Respect from the people who brought her into this world, respect from the family she worked so hard to maintain. She needed to know that nothing she did, all the hard work, all the late hours, all the cooked meals, all the cups of tea, and all the arguments were not in vain.

Although Grandma would not self-identify as a feminist, and in fact would go so far as to strongly deny it – there are so many ways that her influence alone informs how I see the world. Forced to go it alone, and never dependent on a man or any other person, we had a kinship and an understanding that, sometimes, we are forced to make our own luck. She never, ever let her beginnings or her disappointments affect her life, and even though the end of her life is a quiet one… That’s all she ever wanted. To be cared for, to be allowed to be vulnerable and yet still retain her dignity.

Which of course is ironic, because whenever I needed rescuing – there she was. She cleaned hotel rooms to help my dad keep me in school uniforms. She cooked me meals, she helped me to get my first flat. She wasn’t always the softest place to land, but given the circumstances, I understand why now. It was about keeping it together, and I often wonder what was going on in her head… And how she was when we weren’t around to see.

Because, with the suddenness of the cancer that killed her, I saw a different side to her. She didn’t fight it, and part of me thinks she knew for some time. But I knew her, and I like to think that I knew her better than anyone else and that she shared a special, softer side with me.

She was and always will be the main female influence in my life. I hope that the fighting spirit, the work ethic, and the strong sense of what is right, on some level, lives on in us all. And although this gathering is humble, she can rest knowing that she lives on, having lived a life with courage, conviction and dignity.

On a personal level, I hope that the last 2 months of her life spent with me and Jason, needing a lot of help, were as easy as they could have been. We’ll never stop missing her and I hope she’s proud of us.

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