What would you do?

It sounds like the first line of a joke, but it wasn’t very funny at the time.

My moodle was attacked by a giant poodle yesterday.

Giant poodles look really silly and harmless, but this one went nuts when Bilbo – my moxie – started barking at him.

Bilbo is terrified of big dogs and has decided the best tactic in such situations is to have a go at them. I wonder about Bilbo’s intelligience sometimes.

Anyways, the owner grabbed the giant poodle by the harness to hold him/her back, but the giant poodle escaped the harness and tried to eat my tiny moodle for breakfast.

I was screaming, Charlie was cowering, the other owner was taking far too long to get her beast under control … hysterical seconds passed … and the dog was finally hauled away …

The owner apologised, but in a Leunig-style sorry-not-sorry way – she suggested it was my fault because my dogs had riled up her dog.

Not up on the Leunig kerfuffle? Click here to read a pretty awesome retort to his pity party by Jan Fran.  

I decided I wasn’t up for World War 3 at 7.30am on a Monday morning, so I let it go. There didn’t seem to be any blood loss and Charlie’s tail started wagging again, so I figured I’d avoided a terrible fate and went on my way.

Then the youngest turned up from her dad’s place and said she’d changed her mind about the AMAZING apartment we looked at on Saturday and wasn’t keen to move there after all because it was too far away.

I was a bit crushed because I’d become quite excited about how nice it would be to live like a princess instead of a pauper. The apartment is on the top floor of the block with a massive terrace, two fancy bathrooms, spacious butler’s pantry, air conditioning and numerous other mod cons that my current scruffy accomodation does not include.

Not to mention being much cheaper than my place.

Admittedly it is also on the Pacific Highway in the middle of NOWHERE … but inside it’s bloody fabulous.

I suppose it’s about priorities. Do I want to live like a pauper close to the city and my friends or like a princess 35 minutes out of the city by train and about the same in traffic from my friends? Oh, and with a really disgruntled 13 year old in tow who adamantly doesn’t want to move there.

She’s right that it will be a hassle with skipping pick up and will limit my ability to go to work functions – normally I can get other mums to drop her off.

There will be no help with drop offs at the new place.

But if I stay where I am I will keep going backwards financially.

I just don’t know.

If I don’t go for this place there will probably be other stuff next year. Currently there’s bugger all – my place is about as cheap as my neck of the woods gets. Sydney property prices are INSANE.

Fret. Fret. Fret.

You’re probably muttering “first world problem” under your breath right now.

But I really don’t know what to do.

Song of the day: Crowded House “I walk away”