Australia!

Me, Amy and Beth on a beach in Australia in 1982. The words on the back of the picture say "Cape Patterson Liptrap" but I'm not sure Liptrap is a word, Mom.

My friend and fellow blogger, Kady, is on a world tour right now. She sold all her stuff, quit her job and put all of her worldly belongings in a backpack (apparently a HUGE backpack that she never actually carries on her back), and took off to see the world. She just finished visiting Australia. You can read about her adventures here.

She recently wrote a post all about koalas. After reading it I am officially putting koalas on my "I wish they were extinct" list. Anything that has an upside down pouch where its baby can just fall out is a contender for the list. Add to that the fact that they feed their babies poop for several weeks in order to get them accustomed to eating poisonous eucalyptus leaves for the rest of their lives has firmly put them on the list. Watch out koalas.

When I lived in Australia when I was twelve, we were constantly straining our necks to look up into the eucalyptus trees to try to spot a koala, and we saw them sometimes. They are pretty cute, but I remember once Queen Elizabeth was visiting either the Sydney Zoo or the Melbourne Zoo, and she wanted to see a koala up close, so a zoo keeper was going to get a cute adolescent one for her to gush over. The mother of the adolescent didn't like the zoo keeper touching her baby so she slashed him with her gigantic claws and he was gushing blood. Fun times for the queen. I wasn't there, I just heard about it. It's probably not even true, but ever since then I've not been the biggest fan of koalas.

Watch out, Kady, that koala has murder in its eyes.

I just looked through our Australia photo album to see if I had any koala pictures of my own, and I didn't find any koala pictures, but I did find some doosies. We spent the year there because my dad went on a teacher exchange so he did an Australian teacher's job and that teacher did his job for a year and we lived in each other's houses. Like I said, I was twelve. It's an awkward age. This is the picture that my sisters still pee their pants laughing about and threatening to make public. Well Amy, Beth, I'm taking your power away and I'm publishing this picture on the internet for the whole world to see because I'M PROUD OF IT. Here it is:

It's me, in a hoody tied tightly around my head, with my gigantic photo-gray glasses, in a graveyard, holding Barbie. In my defense, we were touring Port Campbell and it was a cold and rainy day and, no offense Mom and Dad, it was kind of boring. That's why Barbie is so prominently featured. She was keeping me entertained.

Just so Amy and Beth have no other gems that they're saving for future Christmas cards, I'm also publishing this one:

and this one:


The upper one is me panning for gold, which is kind of cute, so I don't know why they think it's so funny. Maybe it's the white-man's-overbite I seemed to have in almost every picture from that era. The lower one is me learning the hula in Hawaii. I really liked that dress, but I was so afraid it would slip down my stick straight torso and someone would see my brand new boobs.


This picture was taken the same day as the Barbie/hood picture. I remember we were sitting in the van playing with Barbies and Beth, the little one who was 5 at the time told us to "Shut the damn door!" when we were coming in from outside. It was hilarious.

This post has veered off of Kady and her trip. She has some interesting and hilarious stories to tell. Check out her blog!