My Poor Stolen Dresses

It is with a saddened heart that I write today.


A little while back I played at Dunedin Elim Church's annual Women's Conference, Replenish.
We were informed that the dress code for all the musicians playing that day was black.
Pretty standard.

I knew immediately which dress I would wear.
My black Glassons dress with the high neckline and leafy lacey patterns on it.
It was perfect.

When the morning of Replenish came, I got up and went to get the dress I had planned to wear.
I scoured my closet for it, but couldn't find it anywhere.
How odd?????

I phoned Lyndon and asked him if I had left it at his place.
Sometimes after church (where I ALWAYS wear a dress) I come back to his house and change into his clothes because they are warmer and comfier. It would be a pretty safe bet that it was hanging up on his clothes rack.
He told me there was a dress hanging up so he would bring it when he came over to drop me off at church.

When he finally arrived, he had my knee-length purple-ish flower dress.
Not the one I was looking for.

I was very disappointed and a little worried.

Where was this black dress????


I put on my other black dress (not as cute) and went to the Conference.


I continued to wonder where the black dress was but tried not to stress too much about it.



On Saturday however, I awoke to the sinking feeling that I hadn't seen my creamy navy spotted dress in awhile either....
In my efforts to find the black dress, I had gone through every single one of my dresses multiple times, and it only just occurred to me that I never saw my OTHER dress either.

I'll be honest. I have a LOT of dresses, so it is very easy for me to lose track of them.
But I do realise if I'm missing one EVENTUALLY!

So I jumped out of bed and rifled through all my dresses with much haste, hoping beyond all hopes that I was mistaken and my super cute spotty dress was hanging safely in my closet.


It wasn't.



At this point I started feeling very worried.
Where in the world were these dresses?

I went through all possibilities of where they could be.

Did I leave them when I visited my parents in Kaitaia?
I haven't been anywhere other than Queenstown this year and I didn't leave them there.
They weren't in any of my bags.
They weren't in a box somewhere.
I ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS leave my dresses hanging up with all their other dress friends.
I'm not the kind of person who would put them somewhere else.

So the fact they weren't in the closet meant that something was amiss.



For the first few months of the year my bedroom door had no lock on it, and I am rarely ever home.
The front door isn't consistently locked either.
Did someone come in and steal my dresses??!?!?!

I could think of no other answer.


Before losing my mind completely with grief over my lost dresses, I called my mother to ask if by any chance the dresses were in Kaitaia.
She was happy to hear from me and went on a tirade about the FIFA World Cup and how Brazil was going to beat Columbia because they pay people off and how the players are huge showmen when another player lightly taps them and they act like they are in sooo much pain.

She eventually detailed all the clothes hanging up in my old bedroom, the dresses I had lost were not there.

:-(


At this point I started crying.
My poor lost dresses. I hardly knew them.
I was so very sad.

They weren't my favourite dresses, or my most comfy, or my most expensive, but I still treasured them.
They held special sentimental value and I would never have given them up unless I gained 10kg and couldn't fit them anymore.
Maybe not even then!!!!!!!!


So so so very sad.



It saddens me more that I am trying to live a minimalist life but when it comes to dresses I CAN'T HELP MYSELF!
I WANT TO BUY AAAAAALLLLL THE DRESSES!!!!!!!!!!!




What is more sad was later that day, after Lyndon accompanied me on a frenzy of dress-buying to make up for the dress-sized hole in my heart, I realised that ANOTHER one of my dresses was gone.

I hadn't gotten any new dresses since my birthday last year.
That's over six months of not buying any new dresses and is a HUGE accomplishment for me.



I know I am going on and on about dresses.
Maybe only girls will understand. SOME girls.


I guess anytime you lose something, or its taken from you, its hard.
As much as I try not to be materialistic, it is difficult to lose things you have paid for and which meant something to you.



On Sunday I decided to just let it go and get over it.



Material possessions do not define me.

I asked for God's peace to fill me.

And if someone DID steal my dresses, I ask God to bless them and for them to come to know Him the way I do.

I am thankful that I even had those dresses.

They were good dresses.

I will miss them.



I couldn't find any pictures of the third missing dress, but I bought it when Joella worked at Farmers.
She picked it out for me.
It was navy blue with strappy things over the neckline.
It had pockets and was super comfy.
It was only $15.

I don't remember with whom or when I bought my black dress, but it was from Glassons.
I wore it on my birthday last year and to a gig at the Hub.

The creamy one with navy spots was also from Glassons.
I bought it as a 22nd birthday present to myself when I was with Jaimee Northcott.
I wore it a few times when I played gigs, most recently at Samstock.

I may never know what happened to these dresses, and while I am sad, I hope you can see that I am trying my best to move past it.




I will probably never stop loving my dress-children, but hopefully I can learn not to find my happiness in them, and realise that all earthly possessions will one day cease to exist.



It's what you DO, not what you WEAR, that really matters.

How I Met My Husband

How I Met My (Future) Husband/Current Fiance

Also known as:

The Tale of Lyndon and How He Got Out Of The Friend-Zone.

This is going to be a long-ish tale.

I shan’t tell you every little detail that led me to Lyndon. Or the way that our romance blossomed over the course of two years.

But I will give you SOME KIND OF AN IDEA.

I don’t tell you this story to try and rub in your face that I found happiness.

It is to prove to you that even if you haven’t met your future husband/wife, THERE IS STILL HOPE!

Before Lyndon and I got together, I didn’t ever see myself finding the right person.

I had given up on love.

It sounds like a movie trailer.

The story of Lyndon and me could easily be made into a Romantic-Comedy. It has all the ingredients!

So without further adieu, here is my best attempt at explaining what would eventually be known as: Lyndinette Grilliams (no one has ever called us that...)

To understand the course of events, you’ll need some background information.

To make this more fun, I may write some of it as if it were the script or plot of a movie or novel.

I may refer to myself in the third person.

You’ll just have to use your wits to figure out what’s happening.

Back in 2011, I met a guy. Now, if this were a movie, you would think this guy was the Leading Man.

He has all the right attributes, or so you would be led to believe. And the chemistry between him and the female protagonist is BEYOND QUESTION.

The girl becomes involved with this guy by the end of 2011 and all throughout 2012.

She gets to know his friend group. She accompanies him to social gatherings. All seems to be going well. We’ll call this pseudo-Leading Man, Earl.

It really seemed like Earl and I were made for each other.

But during the course of the year, things were not going as planned.

Meanwhile, in May 2012, around the time that things seemed to be going in a better direction while still going in the completely wrong direction, I met Lyndon.

He was tall and good looking.

My friend Joel introduced us casually. Lyndon didn’t seem too fazed by me.

A while later I saw him again, at Earl’s surprise birthday party no less!

He basically told me it didn’t matter what he said to me or if we got along because we were never going to see each other again after this particular party.

I remember sitting outside next to Lyndon, chatting to him casually.

I couldn’t tell what it was about him but for some reason I felt drawn to him.

He was funny, though very very sarcastic, which I didn’t like.

I left the party early to attend another friend’s 21^st, not thinking about Lyndon once I’d gone. I was still very much caught up in my drama with Earl.

But then, for some reason, Lyndon and I kept running into each other.

I got to know him better.

I don’t know why but we somehow thought it would be a good idea to hang out sometime.

I think I partly did it to get back at Earl. To try and make him jealous.

Hanging out with Lyndon was fun. He accidentally touched my boob when we watched ‘The Lorax’ -together on our first ever “hang-out” together, and he was really embarrassed about it, even though I told him it wasn’t a big deal and laughed it off.

After that we started hanging out more often. He would come over to my flat to watch TV with me.

When I got my devastating dissertation results he came over simply to give me a hug.

We initially bonded over various things, such as our love of correct grammar.

There was something about him that was different.

He was different to other guys.

After that we continued to hang out more and more.

I would text him during my early morning caregiving shifts when the girl I looked after demanded I not look at her. He was the only person I knew that would be awake at 7.30am.

We started texting every single morning while I was looking after that girl.

Eventually I found that Lyndon was my favourite person to hang out with.

When I ended my friendship with Earl after almost a year of tears and anguish, Lyndon was there to help me through it. He helped me pick up the pieces of what was left of me.

He became my best friend.

I friend-zoned him many many times.

I would invite him round to hang out with me and my other friends.

He was just another guy friend of mine, even though he was my favourite, I didn’t let this fact be known to him.

I would call him things like: “buddy”, “pal” and “friend” just to get my point across.

I sometimes worried that he had feelings for me so I tried to let him know that the feelings weren’t mutual.

One day, however, the feelings became mutual.

It didn’t happen overnight. And because up until this point I had a massive hang-up about ages (I couldn’t stand the thought of going out with a guy who was younger than me), it took almost a month for me to come to terms with the fact I had special feelings for Lyndon.

I never expected it. It came out of the blue. Well, maybe not totally out of the blue.

But it was unexpected.

Almost a year after we’d first met, Lyndon showed me that he cared about me more than I even realised.

It was after my horrific graduation where I spent the entire morning crying that I asked one specific person to come over to console me.

Lyndon.

And when he came, he brought with him my one and only graduation present apart from the beautiful flowers my friend Briar got me.

They were charms for my charm bracelet. Four of them.

Up until this point my charm bracelet only had one lonely charm on it, which had originally been my mothers and I had somehow convinced her to give me.

My charm bracelet was in a sorry state, and Lyndon knew this, as I had complained to him about it before.

But when he threw the little ‘Pandora’ box at me and I looked inside, I was actually blown away.

I never expected him to buy me a graduation present, let alone ‘Pandora’ beads that are crazy expensive.

This is an actual photograph from my actual diary.
Yes, my handwriting is very very messy.

It was that moment that I realised I liked Lyndon a lot, and as more of a friend.

It wasn’t even about what he did, it was about who he was.

And he was a really good friend to me, and cared about me, and was nice to me.

He stopped being so sarcastic when I called him out about it almost a year earlier.

He tried food that he normally wouldn’t because I wanted him to.

He was willing to better himself and change and grow.

He’s still doing that now.

One cold winter’s night I decided to ask Lyndon if he liked me MORE THAN A FRIEND.

I decided this was the best way to find out, as it didn’t allow me to do any of the hard work. I simply had to ask HIM if he liked ME. If yes, awesome, if no, I wouldn’t divulge the fact that I felt differently.

Pretty genius.

Lyndon admitted he did, after much convincing and reassuring from me.

So we left it a few days to think and pray about it and then decided to go for it.

The rest is history.

Lyndon proposed to me seven months later outside his house.

He got down on one knee and gave me a ring he picked out all by himself (I really love it).

So as you can see, the relationship of Lyndon and me grew out of a pure friendship.

Before we became boyfriend and girlfriend we had never even gone out for a meal or movie together. We only ever hung out in groups. It was ALWAYS appropriate.

More appropriate than I’ve ever been with any of my other close guy friends. I don’t pride myself with always being appropriate, but with Lyndon, it really was. And I’m proud of that, looking back at it now.

So there you have it.

Lyndon got out of the Friend-Zone.

It isn’t the easiest thing to do.

He definitely deserves a high-five!!!!

I hope you have been encouraged by this tale, or at least found it mildly entertaining.

And because I know Lyndon will be reading this, HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, BABE!

Love you lots!

So excited to be married to you in eight short months hahaha. (I’m laughing because our engagement seems to be lasting forever).

Good things take time, right?