So we agreed to fork over TWELVE THOUSAND DOLLARS for a new kitchen.

Now we are not so sure.

Maybe we could get it cheaper elsewhere. We were silly enough to go with the first quote we got, because they had an offer going where we got some of our appliances free if we said 'yes' on the first design inspection.

I can't believe that we did this. Sometimes being young is a pain in the arse, because it really does seem to go hand in hand with being stupid. And this isn't even the fun kind of being stupid where you end up with a hangover, or with rug burn on your knees (or both). This is... "oh my God I have just agreed to give a stranger twelve thousand dollars" kind of stupid.

We discussed this with Daniel's mum, who was the one who planted the seed of doubt in the first place. She thinks it's a bit expensive and that we should be able to get it done for less than ten thousand, maybe even eight or nine. We all agree that Daniel and I are covered by a cooling-off period. I think it's five working days, though his mum reckons it's seven.

Either way, Daniel is going to ring them up tomorrow, because he is much better at sounding assertive than I am, and is less likely to end the conversation with "sorry, OK, bye, sorry, sorry". He will tell them the truth - he will will ask them not to go ahead for now because we believe that the quote is expensive, and that we understand that this means that we don't get anything for free any more. We just would feel more comfortable if we had more time to make the decision, so that it can be a more informed one.

I feel better about this because twelve thousand dollars is obviously a lot of money, and it's easier to hand over such a sum if you're confident that what you're getting is value for that money.

We nearly got burned this way once before, when we almost bought a unit in Heathcote. In residential terms the unit was incredible and we still reminisce over it wistfully. It was enormous, with a huge balcony the likes of which we are unlikely to see again on a unit, and just so... nice.

It was also an industrial unit downstairs. This was great because it meant that if we bought the place, the business downstairs would be paying us rent, which would make it pretty easy to pay the place off. Without this rent, however, it would have been completely out of our price range.

This was what made the place a bad risk in the end.

The catch came when two valuers independently agreed that the unit downstairs was poorly designed for industrial purposes - the previous owner, who had added the amazing residential unit upstairs, had gone for high ceilings in the home section upstairs, and very low ceilings in the business element downstairs. There was also some sort of fire hazard in the way the air conditioning vent was constructed. Therefore the rent that the business would be paying us was deemed too high, meaning that the business owner could well decide to move his business elsewhere to get a better place for the same rent.

It took a lot of hard thinking but we backed out in the end. We felt so guilty because we'd gone a fair way in trying to work out a deal with the owner, as well as putting lease contracts together for the business operating there. And to top it off, we just loved the place. But the thing is, if that business had decided to move somewhere else, it would have been hard to get another business into its place, and we could never have afforded the repayments. We made the right decision, but later than we should have.

For the place where we live now, we really did our homework, and when we decided to buy it, it was with relative confidence. We knew what we wanted, and to an extent, what to watch out for.

Now we have potentially made exactly the same mistake with this kitchen - leap in without doing the homework, and then pull out feeling sheepish, tail between legs.

I hope this teaches us a valuable lesson. I am ashamed enough as it is to admit that the Heatchcote experience didn't. Maybe any decisions involving such expenses in the future should be preceded with, "remember the kitchen".

Like Alice in Wonderland, I give myself such good advice, but I very seldom follow it.

I forgot to mention this in my last entry, but last week - the day I got my driver's licence renewal and car registration done - I noticed that I had one earring missing, while I was driving to the motor registry. I have two piercings in each ear, both on the lobe, so it wasn't that noticeable to look at (though I'm sure that if you were to look closely enough at my licence you might be able to see the imbalance). I tried not to think about it, because I had a feeling that I'd lost it at home, probably in bed, so I might find it again.

Days slid by and I had put a different earring in as a stand-in so that the hole wouldn't start to close up. I had done a search of the house, especially under the bed, for the lost earring but had given it up as a lost cause and decided to move on. It was a shame because mum had lent me this pair when the butterfly backings for my usual pair both disappeared while I was at the beach, miraculously leaving both earrings still in my ears.

Then, one morning about three days later, I was in the bathroom - on the toilet, actually, and this is relevant because our toilet faces the shower. You know what it's like, you're generally not thinking much or looking very hard at anything when you're on the loo. But something caught my eye, a flash of light as I moved my head. On the floor in the shower.

There it was, my gold earring, clasp undone, lying there on the tiles in the middle of the shower.

It had been there for three days and not washed down the drain, despite Daniel and I each having at least one shower a day, plus at least one together (potentially the time that I lost the damn thing in the first place).

I gratefully picked up the earring between my fingers and with a bit of effort put it back on; the clasp had always been hard to do up. But such luck - I think I was right. It is going to be a good year.

I finished reading The Power of One today. This book is incredible. It's not at all like I thought it would be, but then, like always I have been judging the book by its cover. It seems that some part of my simply refuses to learn better about doing this, and yet I've read a number of great books now that had really crappy covers. Another being Wuthering Heights, which had a baby-pink hard cover with some bland eighteenth-century painted picture printed on the front showing a man and a woman, obviously lovers. This was another book I really enjoyed, even if it was mostly because I desperately wanted Heathcliff to die and couldn't stop reading until he did.

The Power of One is the kind of story that you just get sucked into, because the main character has so much in life to deal with, being the odd one out for reasons he cannot help, and the friends he makes are so fascinating and have so much wisdom to share. Plus his perspective is so unique and his persistence - his drive to achieve what he has always wanted - so inspiring.

It actually reminded me a bit of Memoirs of a Geisha. It was very different of course, but both books were about people who faced hardships very early in life, and ended up in places they hated, being forced to become a part of "the system" (this representing different concepts in both books) and excel at it in order to free themselves from it.

I thoroughly recommend both The Power of One and Memoirs of a Geisha. And Wuthering Heights (yes, he dies).

From this room where I sit typing, I can overhear bits of the conversation currently taking place on the balcony of our next-door neighbours. I didn't mind this too much at first, but it's been going on for a couple of hours now and these sound like two girls about 20 years old, drinking Breezers and talking shit. In spirit I'm with them, because I know how much fun it can be to get drunk and talk about random crap. However, at present I am NOT getting drunk and talking about random crap with them; I am simply an irritable next-door neighbour who would dearly like to fling upen the window and shout, "Would you PLEASE. Just SHUT. UP!"

I mean, whatever it is is apparently hilarious, but all I'm getting is random snippets like:

(Putting on weird voice) "The honey, the honey! Get the honey!! HAHAHAHAHAHA!"

I think my major quibble is with whichever of the girls is doing most of the laughing. The's got this... cackle. Like she was brought up in the wild by magpies or something.

I guess this is karma from New Year's Eve, when a bunch of us sat out on the balcony until two-thirty in the morning, doing exactly the same thing. OK, I get the point - but after this, Karma, we call it even, you got that?

Daniel should be home soon (he's out being a dork with his brother, playing computer games), so I'm going to go and have my shower.

Ugh, back to work tomorrow.