Winging It

I've Melted!

2011-07-11T10:38:00.003+12:00

Last night I finally finished John's baby-photo album ... 5 months shy of him becoming a teenager! Now I'm working on Amy's and, quite frankly, I've gone all to mush! Ross was trying to watch TV and kept getting distracted by outbursts of 'Awwwwwww!' or insane giggles. It's funny how much personality was already fully installed when they were just tiny, and remembering how beautiful it was in them then reminds me that they are still beautiful (in between stroppy moments) now. I'm glad that they are still "them", and I hope they always will be (as opposed to their mother, who, at age 16 decided that being known as 'the funny one' was not okay, went insanely serious for years and had to be taught how to arse around all over again. Stay daft, kids!!)

Move over Sportacus!

2011-07-11T10:10:00.005+12:00

It's been an exciting term in our household. For the first time the kids are showing an interest in organised sports! Previously anything they've been involved in has been mostly their parents' idea and they haven't shown terribly much enthusiasm. They both did gymnastics when they were little - John because we figured if he was going to be climbing everything in sight, and randomly hurling his body through empty space, he'd better learn how to do it properly, and Amy because, with her vision problems, we wanted to develop her sense of space and balance as much as possible. And they were both good at it dammit! But John wasn't a fan of having to do what he was told (as opposed to just climbing everything), and Amy wasn't interested in competitive gymnastics (and, frankly, after hearing the way one of coaches talked to the girls, neither was I!) so she stopped after finishing all the Kiwi GymFun badges.

They also both do swimming lessons, and both complain about them, but in a country with a land mass of only 268,021 square km but over 15,000km of coastline, not to mention scores of rivers and lakes, learning to swim is just not negotiable!

One of the teachers at John's school was trying to get him to join the school athletics team earlier this year, but, again, he wasn't interested. His explanation 'I like to run for fun, not because I have to'. To me, this sounds far healthier long-term than training like mad as a kid, draining all the fun out of it and never wanting to exercise again - although, with John, I can't really see that happening! I must confess though, it would be so cool to see what he'd be capable of!

Anyway. Amy decided this year that she wanted to join the school netball team. The season began last term - her first game was against a team containing a cousin and a friend from church, both of whom gave her a lovely greeting after the game, and her team won, which all made for a great start and she's been loving it ever since. So much so that as of last Saturday there is a netball hoop installed in our back yard.

John, meanwhile, has enthusiastically signed up for karate! He had his first lesson two Saturdays ago and decided on the spot that he wanted to continue and could we buy him his own gi (uniform) please?! (I'll post a photo as soon as the order comes in) So Ross and I are taking turns week about, watching each kid in action ... and loving it!

Thud!

2011-01-04T21:15:00.007+13:00

Sigh. Time for post-holiday-itis. Despite the lack of sleep I could have quite happily remained under canvas for another night ... or six! But paid employment beckons ...

Ross and I bought our first tent within a year of getting married, and only managed one holiday in it together before the kids came along!

We've had a few holidays in it as a family since then, and initially it wasn't too bad, but the kids will insist on growing and things were getting a bit ridiculous, so after 13 years we finally upsized. We had a practice run setting it up the night before we went away. My brother, who was celebrating the New Year with us along with my parents, took one look at it and said 'That's a HOUSE. It just happens to be made of fabric!'. It didn't look that big in the shop, alongside an even larger one, but taking up half our back lawn it was rather impressive! So impressive I was seriously wondering whether it would even fit in the tent site at the camp ...

No worries!

We'd never been to Himatangi Beach before. We just wanted to get away somewhere, having not been away from home on holiday since our jaunt to Mt Ruapehu in October '09, and a friend had mentioned hearing good things about Himatangi Beach Holiday Park, so once we knew they had a vacancy we didn't even bother checking out other options!

Himatangi Beach Holiday Park is dog-friendly. This meant eruptions of 'Awww!' from our daughter at roughly 10 metre intervals. Not just at the campground either - the beach was only a very short walk away and there was a steady flow of canines of all shapes and sizes. Possibly because of its proximity to the beach the ground was beautifully soft and the tent pegs could pretty much be pushed all the way in by hand ... but that would have spoiled Amy's fun ...

Within about 5 minutes of arriving John had already decided that this was going to be 'the worst holiday ever'. Then he opened his eyes and discovered the playground next door ...

Spinning!

Swinging!

Motion sickness! ... chundering! ... whoops! :/

Ah well, there were still sand dunes to demolish and rivers to cross/fall into and trees to climb and pinecones to collect and books to read ... Ross and I have noticed a distinct pattern - and not just away on holiday, but at home as well - the incidence of our kids uttering the word "bored" is directly proportional to the amount of time they spend plugged into electronic so-called "entertainment". No TV, no computer, no X-box -> no boredom. The solution seems blindingly obvious doesn't it? Get rid of the gadgets. Not terribly likely, I'm afraid! However I did ask them to leave off automatically turning on the TV and computer the second we got home. We weren't entirely gadget-free though, I will confess. As the camp noise slowly died away each night it was gradually overwhelmed by the steady dull roar of the Tasman Sea (Amy asked if there was a heat pump going!) - my nice relaxing little "Ocean Waves" mp3 sounds decidedly pathetic in comparison!I I had no problem falling asleep with the white noise of the water, however the kids did, and Amy in particular kept waking me up again! (Ross just took out his hearing aids and sailed off into oblivion!) So the "girls" ended up watching Wall-E on the iPod at 11:30pm on night 1, since we were both wide awake, bored silly, and likely to get ourselves into trouble otherwise! :D

Darn that was too short ... Sigh ...

The log cabin in my head

2010-12-16T12:05:00.002+13:00

It's that time of year again - when I start fantasising about abandoning civilisation and running away to a cabin deep in a forest somewhere. This is not a new, rare, or particularly even end-of-year thing, but the urge to essentially hibernate certainly does get stronger toward Christmas.

I have a log cabin in my head, courtesy of a relaxation/visualisation tape that a friend lent me. Every now and then it morphs into a beach house (oh the joyous flexibility of mental real estate!), which is much lighter and brighter, but mostly it's a darkish, comfortable cosy space in which to curl up in a ball by the fire and doze. Yes, I am a winter animal. Either way it's very small, simple and uncluttered and I often wish the whole family could just move there! (Where's The Matrix when you need it?!)

John finishes school at lunch-time today (right about now in fact), Amy tomorrow, then in a week Ross will be on holiday leave for a month and I'll have my little family around me, to do, or not do, whatever. Perhaps we'll find a nice little cabin in the woods somewhere for a few days.

Small Furry Animal Alert!

2010-07-17T17:02:00.001+12:00

Warning: this household now contains one bunny and a desperately happy 9-year-old!

Amy and Muffin

After Toffee died last year ... okay that might require some explaining:

Toffee was put down in April last year. At the time I just did a status update on Facebook, but couldn't face sitting down and writing about it in any detail. Even now I'm just cutting and pasting from an email I sent to a friend rather than rehashing the whole thing too much. Basically she was a big, strong girl who was also awfully anxious and in spite of everything we tried to do to help her she continued to get worse. Her happy space was at home with us, where she was a lovely, playful, affectionate pet (which made the decision to have her put down extremely painful), but she wanted the rest of the world to go away. It was bad enough when she would bark at people when we were out for walks, but then she started biting as well - not biting down hard but grabbing people with her mouth, which was scary enough for the people she went for and got her kicked out of doggy daycare - and we couldn't leave things any longer until she really hurt someone. As it is there's a little girl up the road who is now terrified of all dogs because Toffee jumped our fence and cornered her in her garden one day :( For a long time we had a house I just didn't want to be in because it felt so empty.

Anywho, this is a happy blog entry, honest! Where was I? Right. After Toffee died I told the kids that another pet wouldn't even be up for discussion until the end of that year. No, they did not manage to wait that long! Amy had her heart set on a bunny. So we told her that if she saved up her pocket money she could buy one herself, once she had enough, and we'd take care of organising a rabbit hutch for it. Given that my darling daughter has inherited her mother's childhood compulsive-spending sweet-toothed pocket-money-burning-holes-in-pockets tendencies, we didn't see that happening anytime soon. And it didn't. And Amy got increasingly agitated. Eventually we worked out that she couldn't see the point of saving her pocket money until Daddy built a rabbit hutch, and Daddy couldn't see the point of building a rabbit hutch until Amy started saving her pocket money. This was all rapidly getting us nowhere! I occasionally suspect that our kids don't quite trust us. This was one of those moments. I asked her to concentrate on doing her part and please trust us with taking care of the rest. We actually ended up buying a hutch to save Ross the frustration of trying to build one without a proper work-shop, and to solve the problem of what to build it out of that would be weather-proof but still safe for bunny to nibble on. I'm so very glad we did - the one we've got is a heck of alot easier to clean than anything we would have constructed.

I have to say, we didn't plan to get the fur-ball on the first day of the school holidays, but it worked out that way. Stroke. Of. Genius. Best school holidays in ... ever :)

He's ever-so-slightly obsessive and we've had to block off all the gaps between the furniture because he's hell-bent on getting into the corner behind the television. He is also, however, pretty much terrified of the wooden floor, which means that when he's inside he stays on his little rug or in his cardboard box. He tried to make a run for it across the wood a few times - no traction, much hilarity :D

Well, THAT plan didn't last long!

2010-05-05T17:28:00.002+12:00

Having decided back in December last year to spend as much time volunteering at school as possible rather than looking for additional employment, well ... yeah ... :P

Ross had been going to see a chiropractor for years, as had my parents (and grandparents), and they would all recommend it fairly often. So I started going, and then took the kids as well. But ... it isn't cheap. And it quickly became a case of either increasing our income or discontinuing treatment. I was really rather enjoying not having daily headaches, and was particularly reluctant to pull the plug as far as Amy was concerned - she had been regularly complaining of a sore back for quite some time, which stopped not long after treatment started. Gee Mummy guilt is such fun! I couldn't bring myself to put money ahead of my child not being in pain (funny that!) so the only other option was trying to figure out what kind of work I could do that would fit around the kids - who aren't old enough to be at home unsupervised - and school holidays.

Putting those requirements together with my fondness for teeny-weeny people I decided in March to look into becoming an in-home educator through PORSE - kind of like being a nanny, but at my house rather than theirs. Man, toddler-proofing the house all over again made me realise how much my kids have grown up! It took a while to get things up and running, but I have now officially re-entered the world of negotiating pedestrian crossings and shopping malls with a pram. Watch your shins :D

Happy Twitterversary!

2010-03-17T16:11:00.002+13:00

Having been on Twitter for exactly one year, it's interesting to see the changes in my "following" list. When I first signed up I mostly followed news, politics, health and parenting-related tweeters (twitterers? twits? :P). Now it's populated by friends, and people who make me laugh (often one and the same thing!). The difference is not insignificant. For the same reason that I decided I really should stop reading the "comments" section at the bottom of many news articles, I've stopped taking in quite as much of the news itself. As much as I like to be aware of world events, it's a good deal better for my mental health to settle for being semi-ignorant!

I didn't even realise, when I lamented a few days about Twitter stealing my blog, that it was so close to a year already. It might be interesting to look back at what I've tweeted about in that time and see if anything more bloggish grows out of it ...

Twitter Stole My Blog!!

2010-03-14T05:51:00.004+13:00

Thoughts are often texted to Twitter at the moment of germination rather than left to grow (or fester ... you know me ...) into something more substantial.

I always did have trouble reaching word-limits when writing essays. Struggling to get beyond 140 characters is a new thing however!!

At this rate I'll be reduced to monosyllabic grunts and clubbing things over the head. Oh shoot, that's mornings right there ... she says, just shy of 6am. Actually thanks to a text from Civic Video at 3am - please Ross turn your cellphone off at night! - I've been up for a while, having had just enough sleep to not be able to drop off again! Oh well at least I got some work done and my session outline for mainly music is sorted. *yaaaaaawn*

DENIAL: The Sequel - Stuff Happens Whether You're Ready or Not!!

2009-12-24T01:00:00.005+13:00

It's been a strange last few weeks - that odd mix of happy, sad and plain old nostalgic - seeing out the end of John's primary schooling. Year 6 Activity Week outings, leavers' assembly, Splash Day, and yesterday his eleventh birthday. It just does not seem like 6 years since we nervously sent our first-born off to school! In part the nervousness was because this was a child who, at the age of four, had climbed over the five foot high "child-proof" fence at kindy and hived off down a very busy road ... and school was nothing like as well fenced at that point! At least, it doesn't seem like 6 years until I look at the height of John and his peers (and in some cases I'm looking up) and realise how much they've grown. Vertically anyway. John simply does not grow sideways and still wears the same shorts he wore at age 5, they just reach his knees instead of hovering just above his ankles!

The best advice Ross and I received as we approached our wedding day was "pay attention". Otherwise the whole thing goes by in a blur and all you've got are photo's to remind you of what happened and who was there. Can't for the life of me remember who actually said it to us in the first place! But it strikes me as being rather good advice for life in general. The kids are growing up so fast, but thankfully they are both still very much kids. John will still hurtle up to me in public and give me a big hug. Walking with the other Year 6s between the railway station and the rock-climbing venue he took my hand and held it, just because he wanted to. And a little voice in my heart said "pay attention, this is special".

Maybe he won't grow out of it entirely. Maybe, like Ross, he'll still love giving his mum cuddles long after he's passed her in height. But, just in case, I'd better pay attention.

I've decided not to actively pursue additional employment next year. I only work half a day a week during school term doing "mainly music" at the moment and had been contemplating looking for further nannying or possibly kindy relief work. Goodness knows the extra income would be useful, but Amy only has a couple of years left at primary school and that time will fly past, and most importantly I've got Ross's support for the idea, so my plan is to volunteer as much as I realistically (i.e. while maintaining sanity!) can at school. If God has something else in mind, personal past history tells me He's quite capable of letting me know ...

DENIAL!!!

2009-12-03T19:18:00.004+13:00

IT IS NOT DECEMBER!!

NOT!!

Can't be. I know this ... cos ... December's summer and that weather out there is most definately not so it can't possibly be December and ... oh alright I still haven't posted my overseas Christmas cards! Not that anybody's going to die of shock, since they get posted somewhere around Christmas Eve every year ... :P

I'm not sure why this term has gone so fast, since I spent half of it being sick in some hideous manner or another I'd have thought it would have dragged on a bit more ...

But no, John's last year at primary school is drawing to a close and I'm coming face-to-face with the thought of him cycling to Intermediate next year. I'm already anticipating nervous wreckage on my part. I don't know how my mother did it. Every day she sent me off out the door with the words "Go carefully" ... even after having collected me from A&E a number of times. Other people have close calls - I score direct hits. Brilliant. You can see why I haven't cycled since 1997, right? But then if John takes after his Daddy he won't be much better off ... Ross crashed motorcycles!

*sob*

Pukekos

2009-11-10T15:59:00.002+13:00

Last Thursday I had the sad privilege of attending a celebration of the life of a lovely lady. The Salvationist funerals I've experienced have often been a peculiar mix of sadness and celebration, and this one had a particular sort of stunned sadness to it, because it was so unexpected. This lady was only in her mid-fifties, and although she'd probably had more than her fair share of health troubles, still, no-one expected her to pass away suddenly at home one night. I know she didn't! She had plans, things she was involved in, looking forward to, excited about. I think we all make plans, whether deliberately or not - some of us like them to be more detailed and fixed, others more open to change and opportunity. But sometimes our picture of the future, however detailed or sketchy, disappears on us. And it doesn't have to be in some dramatic or catastrophic way for it to leave you feeling a bit lost.

I grew up in a fairly conservative and traditional family. The guiding star seemed to be what was or wasn't "done". If a discussion provoked the words "it's just not done!" from my mother there was simply nothing more to be said. What was "done" was finishing school then going to university in order to get a good job and save for your own home. This was the path to a secure future and was called "being sensible". Now I didn't see myself as a particularly sensible person, but I wanted to be a good girl, so I set off down that path. I took sciences at school - requiring a herculean effort to be roughly mediocre - then went to university with the aim of coming out the other end with a degree in Zoology. My picture of the future honestly involved measuring pukekos in a swamp somewhere ... happily! I looked forward to it, I could see myself enjoying it, I still think I'd enjoy it. Only then I failed every single first-year biology paper I sat and the pukekos kinda went "poof".

For the next 18 years, for the life of me, I couldn't come up with a picture to replace the one I'd lost. I hit 37 still trying to work out what I wanted to be when I grew up! Not long ago I made a comment to my Mum about how I seem to connect really well with little (3 or 4 and younger) kids and she replied "I could have told you that years ago!". It's sad to realise now that I could have known it myself years ago if I hadn't been focussing so hard on those jolly pukekos.

Friends and family are now facing a future without Ngaire. But they have a future to face. Somehow the loss of pukekos seems a bit trivial in comparison ... :(

Newsflash: We Actually Got Off Our Asses and Did Something!!

2009-10-08T20:54:00.007+13:00

I have just arrived home from what is probably my favourite place on the whole planet. Okay so I haven't actually been to that many places on the planet, but what the heck!

It started with one of those throwaway lines: "I'd like to take the kids to go find some snow". They'd never been in snow, you see. They'd briefly touched it, the couple of times the stuff has fallen from the sky in Johnsonville, but it never stuck around long enough to collect on the ground. Now, normally, a line like that would lead precisely nowhere. We are not great at following through on ideas and actually doing stuff. Which is part of why this one did happen. Ross was asked if he was planning to take any annual leave ... "Well actually ..." and the next thing you know our accommodation is booked and we're nervously watching weather reports about heavy snowfalls and closed roads in the central North Island!

Yesterday morning we were on our way, and after about 4 hours of "Where are we now?" we stopped in Waiouru to play in the snow

Should I feel nervous?!

Then carried on to Whakapapa, where we were told that we couldn't have timed it better - it was the first glorious day they'd had after two weeks of crap. And glorious it most certainly was!

Mt Ruapehu (our destination)

Mt Tongariro & Mt Ngaruahoe (just cos it's so darn pretty!)

Pretty chilly though ... Ross decided against skinny-dipping ...

We just pootled around the mountain, scouting out the neighbourhood, then crashed in our wee cabin at the holiday park for the night.

This morning we were off up the mountain to hit the slopes - hired toboggans and warm stuff to wear then had a couple of hours of sliding, stumbling, whinging and general snowy mayhem ... when not fighting for breath!

John with a rather dangerous-looking icicle ... it turned into morning tea!

Time for one last wander along a little track ...

Then snoozles in the car on the way home (don't ask me what everyone else did, I was the one that fell asleep!). The kids' favourite part of the trip was the snow-fight at Waiouru, mine was the little walks, Ross's was basically the whole thing! :)

No TV, no computer (although we could have if we'd wanted to) and a cellphone that was basically ignored apart from one very happy little Facebook/Twitter update ... heaven! :)

Colour My World

2009-09-11T22:00:00.000+12:00

I went hunting for cereal/soup bowls this week - because accidents do happen and 3 bowls between 4 people doesn't work too well. We'd put together a jolly nice dinner set out of separate pieces purchased from Briscoes several years ago, but at the time had put off getting the bowls. It was pre-breakage, you see, so we didn't really need them. But now we regret that decision because, of course, the design was discontinued. All I want, all I really, really want, is a nice bright cheerful yellow bowl to eat breakfast out of in the morning - swirly pattern (to match the dinner set) optional - well, four of them, at any rate. But it would appear that "neutral" is in vogue. White, off-white, cream, sand, stone, beige, khaki - I never knew there were so many shades of boring! Admittedly there are some slightly more colourful options available, but they all seem to be too muddy, too wishy-washy or too dark. I want YELLOW!!

Sigh.

I don't know if it's some sort of post-winter thing, but I'm just craving colour at the moment. Particularly whenever I set out to separate the laundry into "dark stuff" and "light stuff" and realise how much black my family wears! I told one of the mums at "mainly music" the other day that she's a bright spot in my week because she wears so much colour - and it's true! There's a heck of alot of the old "basic black" around (not just in winter either, but probably more so than the other seasons) and colour really does stand out. I've set about filling my little world with colour - turquoise sneakers, a fuschia t-shirt, orange nail varnish ... not all at once though! :P

My favourite colour changes from day to day, depending on what mood I'm in. On a good day it's purple - on a bad day purple just seems too depressing and traffic-cone orange is the colour du jour instead. I craved the colour orange for much of my pregnancy with Amy, and through post-natal depression for months afterwards. I'm rather liking fuschia just now though ... so I'd better avoid Farmers like the plague because they have rather alot of it in stock at the moment!

The Dilemma

2009-09-01T22:41:00.001+12:00

It's been pretty much an entire season since I last wrote. The last entry was about the joys of winter, and now here we are on the first day of spring! Eek! Again. Sigh.

You see, I'm torn. I could ramble on about goodness only knows what - pick a topic, any topic, but really ... who cares? I don't like wasting peoples' time. I sit down and write a blog entry then decide it's not worth bothering anyone with and delete the whole damn thing.

But if I write about something that really matters to me ... well ... I risk having to defend myself (or at least try to) against people who disagree. And I have not been in a headspace to deal with that for a long while. So the blog remains empty. Which I hate as well.

Lose. Lose. Lose.

Bugger.

Stuff I Love About Winter

2009-06-05T14:35:00.002+12:00

Enjoying the sunshine without the high UV risk.
Hot porridge on cold mornings.
Warm, thick, fluffy flannelette sheets.
The clean, crisp air left behind after a stiff southerly's blasted through.
The restful quietness that comes over the garden.
Lying in bed listening to the rain ... while snuggling :)
The look of bliss on Amy's face when I put down my hot Milo mug and hold her face instead.
Polar fleece!
Warm clothes straight off the hot water cylinder.
Did I mention snuggling? ... :)

Yeah, okay, I'm having a good day today! :)

Food Fright!

2009-05-17T23:28:00.000+12:00

I had a bit of a culinary crisis this afternoon. Having been feeding my family in what I like to think of as a reasonably competent sort of fashion for the last 12 or so years, I am presently a bit ... flummoxed.

Amy has, unfortunately, inherited her daddy's nose. Lovely nose, but, most of the time, practically useless for actually breathing through. Both of them, when focussed intensely on something, have a tendency to start breathing rather loudly - and being asked (more than once) by her classmates to stop breathing was upsetting the munchkin. :(

Several years ago Ross's chiropractor noticed that he sounded quite blocked up and suggested that he try eliminating dairy products from his diet. Which he did, and it worked wonders ... but then he missed cheese too much and backslid. So when Amy was in tears again the other night I suggested that we try it for her to see if it would help. Goodbye cheese, and milk, and yoghurt, and ... what the hell am I going to feed this kid?! And not just the kid either, because we're taking sort of an "all for one and one diet for all" approach. Amy's not impressed with soy milk, or the thought of not eating cheese again, but after just a couple of days she and Ross are both feeling clearer already, so it's worth persevering with.

But it gets even more complicated. Because I was diagnosed with arthritis in my fingers about a month ago and apparently some people find it helpful to eliminate the nightshade family (i.e. tomatoes and potatoes, a.k.a. the centre of our dietary universe!) from their diets. It probably all sounds a bit dramatic, and not really worth the hassle of undertaking, to anyone in reasonable health - but breathing is a useful pastime and having pain-free use of my fingers again would be nice too. So. No dairy, no tomatoes, no potatoes. Eeeek! I'm on rather a steep learning curve here and grocery shopping this afternoon was nowhere near as automatic as usual!

Rejoice with me!

2009-03-28T17:36:00.001+13:00

I have a bathroom with walls! For the last week the view from our bathroom has been rather more extensive than usual. If someone forgot to shut the laundry door it extended all the way to the neighbour's house.

As a homeowner, the possibilities for destruction in the name of "improvement" are fairly impressive. Or terrifying. I used to get nervous whenever Ross would come out with his latest idea for improving our dwelling ... then I realised that, the vast majority of the time, he never actually did anything about these ideas, and stopped worrying.

Only now he's on a bit of a roll. It started when the chimney cleaner told us that our woodburner only had a year or two left in it. We decided to replace it with a heat pump. Which meant if we were ever going to install insulation in the wall it was going on, that really had to happen first. And, my goodness me, isn't ripping the front of a wall to bits just so much fun?! I have to say, though, I'm rather impressed by how much wood is in that wall. That is not a wall that is going anywhere in a hurry. One hopes.

So now he's onto the bathroom. And, to be fair, it has been some time since the Great Shower Explosion of 2007. It was annoying Ross more than anyone else in the family - the bath still worked, so the kids were fine, and I use the shower at the gym - and he finally got to "something has to happen here" point late last year. And so began the search for a plumber. Which is quite a saga, but a really boring one so I won't go there ...

Right now the contents of the bathroom and laundry are still strewn from one end of the house to the other. I'm doing my best to ignore it. Which is rather hard to do when the dryer is sitting right next to the computer desk and preventing me from moving my left arm properly! But there's not alot that can be done about it at this point. At least I have walls again now. And I am truly thankful. I just hope he can get the light working again ...

Espionage

2009-03-16T14:13:00.004+13:00

I'm spying on the dog. You've heard of "nanny-cam"? Well we have "doggy-corder".

Having been told a couple of months ago about Toffee barking 'constantly' when we're out I had become somewhat ... ahhh ... paranoid about leaving her on her own. Just one of many Toffee-related issues that dragged me down to the point of us deciding, as a family, just over a week ago that we could no longer keep her. Cue spasms of agony and floods of tears all round and we realised how much the little booger had wormed her way into our hearts over the last 14 months - and changed our minds in the space of about 30 hours! So I did what I should have done in the first place and focussed on solutions instead of seemingly overwhelming problems. On this particular issue technology has come to the rescue.

I have a pretty basic mp3 player that I mostly use at the gym to prevent brain death while chugging along on a treadmill. It also functions as a recorder and flash drive. And we have a neat little program on our computer called Windows Movie Maker which just so happens to also work with audio files.

So now whenever we're all out and Toffee is left on her own, I park my mp3 player in a ziplock bag (because weather has a way of happening when you least expect it around here) on the roof of her dog run and set it recording. Then when I get back, I import the recording into Movie Maker and it gives me a nice little graph showing how much noise has been happening while I've been gone. Which is extremely cool because it means I don't have to listen to the whole darn recording. I can think of better things to do with my life. Anyway. I can just jump to those points to investigate what exactly the noise was. Over the last week we have had a whole lot of construction noise, lawnmowers, planes going over (quite impressed by the pick-up on the recorder!) and occasionally ... very, very, very occasionally ... Toffee. So if anyone's barking 'constantly' it ain't her! Did her behaviour suddenly improve? Was it someone else's dog being noisy all along? I don't know. And at this point it just doesn't matter.

Saved. By a cheap little DSE mp3 player. I love it.

Marching on ...

2009-03-06T22:05:00.001+13:00

It got rather difficult to find something to write about for a while there. Not that there wasn't anything happening in our lives - just nothing that seemed worthy of being sent out into the blogosphere for anyone to expend any energy over.

I actually started feeling sorry for entertainment writers (don't worry, back to normal now). You see, these days so much of that kind of writing is parked on the internet with one of those lovely little "comment" boxes down the bottom for people to leave the sort of opinion they can quite happily hammer out on an anonymous keyboard. And the commenters were getting really grumpy. It was bad enough when there was just generalised recession-anxiety in the air, but add the Victoria bushfires to that, with so much dreadfulness in the news each night, and tolerance for the trivial sank to somewhere south of zilch. But, because that's what they're paid to do, the writers had to continue churning out stuff about things that never did matter really but now seemed practically offensive in their non-matteringness. I, on the other hand, have the benefit of being entirely unpaid for my ramblings and so felt free to shut up and go away for a bit.

Superficiality and materialism seem to be taking a bit of hammering just now. Which is no bad thing. I can't quite put my finger on it - certainly couldn't explain to anyone who asked - but somehow a pressure has lifted. One that I didn't even realise I felt. Goodness knows there are still piles of ads on TV designed to get you to spend your money, but when people are in danger of losing their jobs, their homes, or have already lost everything, it seems to be more widely accepted that maybe not everyone needs or wants more "stuff".

I hope to have something rather more light-hearted to write about in a few days. It's Cubs camp weekend. Ross never did write about last year's, so I guess it'll fall to me to report the shenanigans this time. Especially since he's deleted his MySpace account - said he never used it so didn't see the point of keeping it ... something about never getting near the computer ... :P

Oh. My. Dog!

2009-02-03T20:19:00.003+13:00

Well, here goes.

When I wrote about Toffee learning to jump the side gate, it seemed like a frustrating but funny development. Easily sorted, we thought. Ross doubled the height of the gate. Then in the space of a fortnight, around the New Year, she escaped twice while we were out - the second time only a day after Ross had added a couple of feet to the height of the fence we thought she'd got out over the time before. Both times she had growled at neighbourhood kids - one of them only two years old, and the other was cornered in her own property. This was no longer even remotely amusing. Tears and anguish ensued, and we came awfully close to sending her back to the SPCA. We were told when we adopted her that if, for whatever reason, we were no longer able to keep her, Toffee had to be returned to them. Really the only thing that stopped us was the knowledge that for a full-grown dog like her the odds of finding a new home would not be good and she'd likely end up euthanased - and that we hadn't really done all we could, in terms of regular exercise, to improve her behaviour. It kept coming back to the fact that we chose her. We made the decision to have a dog as part of our family. And there was just no way I could send her back if I knew we'd barely even tried. So we gave ourselves a month, minimum, to get our backsides into gear and see what progress we could make.

She has to be tied up when we're out, and is stuck inside when we're home, unless someone's out in the garden with her. But, so long as she's been walked, that isn't too much of a problem because she then naps for the rest of the day anyway. If only I could know whether or not she barks while we're out - because only one neighbour will actually tell us if she is, and she's not home all the time either. Ross's next construction project is a decent-sized dog run so that I can at least stop worrying about either the rope or collar breaking (both of which have happened) while I'm out. And Toffee goes to daycare. Yep. Managed to avoid it with the kids, but the dog goes to daycare! Five hours every Tuesday. The theory was that if she got some doggy socialising into her life somewhere she might stop pulling and howling whenever she sees another dog out on a walk. We're still waiting! The staff are also doing some training with her to try to address her anxiety around strangers. And it gives me a bit of headspace - time when I can go to work, or do whatever else, without fretting about the dog and whether she's contained and quiet. Because it honestly was doing my head in.

We have made some progress. Being forced to walk behind me simply because the track was too jolly narrow to do anything else seemed to flick a switch in her doggy brain and literally put her in her place. But there's a long way to go. We had thought we'd made a huge leap forward, but then realised that those "perfect" walks have simply not had any encounters with cats, dogs or humans to spoil them.

We'll keep at it. Frankly I don't know how we'll know when to decide one way or the other, but I do know it's not time for that call yet.

Consequences ... and shooting yourself in the foot.

2009-02-02T12:09:00.002+13:00

Ross and I were chatting last night, as we occasionally do, about our kids. We periodically wonder how much our parenting style (which tends towards the sergeant-major-control-freak end of the spectrum) has to do with how our kids are turning out and how much of it is just personality and would have happened anyway.

The subject of teaching them the consequences of their actions came up - like not hand-delivering lunches to school that have been left on kitchen benches. They're not about to starve because of one missed lunch. But then Ross comes out with "So how come when I leave my lunch at home all I have to do is text you ... ?"

Does that sound like a terribly bright thing to point out?!

Throx?!!

2009-01-28T15:33:00.004+13:00

They sound like something out of Dr Seuss. Quite what I'm not sure, but pox would be involved somewhere along the line. They look like it too. It's the stripes. And the three legs.

It was bound to happen - the "invention" of the sock triplet - although I'm not sure when it did happen, I just went Googling yesterday to see if it had. You could be forgiven for thinking I don't have enough to occupy my mind at present! Well the alternative is writing about the dog - who has, until this week, been pretty much on death row. So you'll forgive me if I procrastinate on that one ...

The miserable inevitability of sock loss runs through the advertising blurb. It's a case of when, not if, you lose one. But what then? You're just left with an ordinary pair again, which will just as quickly be reduced to a mono-sock. FACE IT! WE'RE DOOMED!! Unless you're like my kids, who abandon socks (and shoes) at every opportunity. But perhaps this need not be ... perhaps there could be a higher purpose for that third sock ... perhaps it could serve as a sacrificial offering to the sock gods in a bid to get to keep the other two. That surely couldn't be any less effective than merely owning extra socks could it? Because some of us, whatever our sock-purchasing strategy, are simply beyond aid. I personally owned three pairs of knee-length black socks. Yes, six identical socks! In the hopes that even if every single one of them went through a separate load of washing I'd still have one intact pair somewhere.

Nice try.

I now own one black knee-length sock. Yes, five socks went missing, disappeared completely, hunted for high and low and yet not seen for weeks, and I am once again in the accursed state of mono-sockedness. And since the "black shoes with white ankle-socks" look doesn't really do it for me, I've resigned myself to yet another round of sock shopping. Whaddaya reckon ... ten pairs this time?!

NaNoWriMo

2009-01-13T15:29:00.003+13:00

It happened. It did. I have not simply neglected to write about it due to not having reached the 50000-word goal. No. Nothing like that at all. :P

Actually the whole novel-writing effort was pretty cool - of course if it had happened at a slightly less demented time of year it would have been even better - and it resulted in a few discoveries:

Nothing has changed since university ... okay, nothing writing-related has changed!: I still struggle to reach word limits (due, in part, to a tendency to use big words instead of lots of little ones), and my best creative time of day is still 11pm-2am. Flipping brilliant.
Quantity of output is inversely proportional to typing speed. I actually got more written when I deliberately slowed my typing waaaay down.
I really like writing. I mean I really REALLY like writing! I only stopped because I got stuck and even though November is last year already I still want to finish the novel because my heroine is still half-way up Mt Taranaki and it's annoying me!

Let's see if I can get it finished by next November ... in time to start the sequel ... :)

Somebody's nicked another year!

2009-01-13T14:59:00.002+13:00

Just for a change. Not only that, we're almost 2 weeks into the new one already so it looks like nothing's about to slow down this year either!

Normally at the end of each year we put together a little newsletter to send off with the Christmas cards. A brief(ish) summary of the highlights and developments of that year. Only by the end of 2008 there was insufficient brain activity going on to get one together - even with my blog to refer back to. Heck, the Christmas cards only managed to get posted somewhere around the 23rd of December, which is dire even by our normally appalling standards! The end of 2008 had a distinct feeling of "hanging in there" about it, checking off, bit-by-bit, all the end-of-year "stuff" - a list that was slightly longer than usual because I'd kept agreeing to do things even when I quite possibly should have stopped! It doesn't seem so bad in hindsight after a couple of weeks rest.

I've found myself wondering - occasionally out loud - whether the northern hemisphere might possibly have a better arrangement of events than the south. We in the south get to deal with Christmas shopping, family get-togethers and large quantities of inappropriate food at exactly the same time of year that we're all as knackered as humanly possible and desperate for our long summer holiday. Does that sound better or worse than dealing with Christmas shopping etc at the same time as snow, ice and Seasonal Affective Disorder? :P (Although I've a sneaking suspicion that a fair chunk of the north manages to have a warmer Christmas Day than us anyway ... !)

Another flaming gymnast in the family

2008-12-15T11:20:00.001+13:00

Good grief! Nearly a whole month since the last entry! Life has been busy. Just about everyone I know is wandering about looking zombificated to some degree. Or maybe it's just that people with any energy are simply moving too fast to be visible to someone in my state ...

Anyway. The gymnast ... is the dog. A week ago Toffee discovered that she could jump the (admittedly not terribly high) side gate. Of course once she made this discovery there was no stopping her and half the street has had at least one turn at delivering her home again. We tried tying her up - which we have to do when we go out if there's washing on the line because we have a laundricidal canine on our hands - but the knot came undone. So. I head for the basement to look for something to bridge the gap. Toffee comes with me and proceeds to make a jump for the gate as I'm standing right there! I yell. She stops. On top of the gate! 25kg (still ... hmmm ... maybe she has stopped growing!) of long-legged doggy is parked on top of a couple of inches of wood. She looks at me, turns around, and jumps back down!

How the heck did we manage to choose a dog that's just as mad, energetic and acrobatic as our kids?! Honestly. I half expect to find her up a tree next.

Thanks to Ross's efforts over the weekend we now have a much taller side gate. Lets see how long that stops her!

Happy Birthday Toffee!!

2008-11-17T20:40:00.003+13:00

Our little girl turned one year old today. Well ... I say "little" ... she's actually heavier than Amy but the latter gets indignant if she's called the "little girl"!

So of course we had a birthday cake.

Of sorts

Ready ...

Steady ...
Sniff ...
CHOMP!!

Clearing the Backlog

2008-10-01T13:47:00.004+13:00

So. All that stuff that was bugging me when I wrote about Blogstipation? Here it is.

There are times when I really don't like my memory very much.

I'm not entirely in control of it.

Certain things, like drama scripts, I don't generally have a problem with. Chemistry, biology and physics however ... how many times did I sit down in end-of-year exams, find myself with an empty brain and think "What have I been doing all year?!"?

People talk about remembering things as though they only happened yesterday. Some things I remember as though they were happening right now. And the problem is, when things that happened 20 years ago feel so immediate, and you then realise how much time has passed, it turns into the realisation that it what will seem like 10 minutes you'll be at the end of your life, looking back on the whole thing and thinking "Well, where that hell did that go?!!" The last time I actually had a plan for my future was when I was 18 years old. I was going to university to study zoology, and get a BSc degree. My vision for my future genuinely did involve measuring pukekos in a swamp somewhere! Then I failed every biology paper I sat, and have been flying by the seat of my pants ever since. That was 18 years ago. Half my life thus far! I want to have a plan, a dream, a goal - but I'm so used to looking back at the past that I have to somehow turn myself around first. I feel like I'm walking through life facing backwards.

Have you ever had a "back-seat driver" experience?

My Mum really isn't that bad, but we've had a couple of interesting moments. She actually grabbed the handbrake once - she thought a car was going to come straight through an intersection instead of following the curve of the main stretch (even though we'd have had right of way, but never mind!) - thankfully it was a useless handbrake! Then there was the time when we went kindy-hunting. John was only 2 (what was I saying about time flying?!!), and Mum was keeping him company in the back seat, so she could only see the red light for the straight-through traffic, not the green arrow that meant I could go. I went. She yelled. I braked. Why did I brake? I could see the arrow. I knew I could go. But I braked because ... ?

Well. I have my very own back-seat driver in my head. Lucky me. :P

A while ago, Ross and I were discussing possible options for when my nannying job ended. He raised the subject of study. You see there are all sorts of subjects I'm really interested in - nutrition, desk-top publishing, website editing, and the movie industry, among others (nothing like a little diversity!) - and he knows that, because I seem to forever be coming out with little bits and pieces that I've read somewhere. But as soon as he suggested formal study, it happened. The instant voice in my head:

"What if I fail?"
"It's too expensive."
"What subject could I even do anything with?"

It was the same thing when a couple of people suggested in passing that maybe I should be a writer:

"Who do you think you are?"
"Who cares what you think?!"
"Who'd want to know your story?"

I started arguing with it. When I'm reading an article on any given subject, I'm drawn to any individual cases mentioned - the relevant experiences of real people give alot more meaning to what I'm reading. "Surely I'm not the only one", I said. Then realised that I was arguing with myself and felt rather silly!

Even when I'm sure I want to try something. Even when I'm pretty sure I could do something. I second-guess and doubt and procrastinate until it's too late to do anything or I've talked myself out of it.

It made the job of coming up with church auditorium "looks" an absolute nightmare. Every idea came with at least one reason why it couldn't possibly work and I'd spin myself in circles further and further into a corner, all the while aware that the deadline was closing in. It was only after insomnia, misery and a fit of sheer desperation to do something that anything would get produced at all.

I'm in the process, with Charlotte's help, of reprogramming my inner back-seat driver. Not getting rid of it, but first learning to stop it in it's tracks, and then changing it into a more positive and encouraging voice.

One of the first opportunities came after that blog entry. Having been challenged to enter NaNoWriMo the internal conversation went something like:

"What if you can't write 50000 words?!
"So what if I can't? Nobody's gonna hunt me down and sue me or anything! Just do it!"

Then did it.

Don't worry. I'm not about to become completely uninhibited and impulsive. That just wouldn't be me at all! Although the idea of putting a tiny little Nike swoosh tattoo somewhere has a certain appeal ... :P

So much for THAT idea!

2008-09-30T00:40:00.004+13:00

After being so pleased to have a number of free activities lined up over the holidays, we've ended up blowing a couple of months entertainment/activities budget in the space of 3 days!! Amy emerged from her classroom on Friday with a free ticket to Sunday's Phoenix/Sydney football game, then John got one too because there were quite a few left over - he initially didn't get one because he somehow managed to miss the whole thing in class, and got his nose out of joint because Amy had one and he didn't. I guess getting John to focus in the classroom is still our on-going mission!

I'm afraid my initial reaction was "oh crap, now what?" Because more often than not we just don't get around to getting off our bums and doing stuff like this - especially when it costs money - and I was anticipating disappointment for the Amy-dot. Because while the kids had free tickets (as a result of a competition the school was entered in), we'd need to buy at least one adult one in order to take them. But it turned out that Ross had wanted to see a live Phoenix game for ages, and I wasn't about to pack the three of them off and stay home with the dog, so we bought two more tickets and trundled off to the Cake Tin on the train.

The stadium was opened in January 2000. I've finally been to something in it! The Harbour Capital 10K/etc starts outside on the concourse, but this was the first time I'd seen right inside. It was about 20 minutes into the game before I managed to keep my attention on the goings-on surrounding a little white ball in the middle! Which was also about the time we abandonned our allocated seating block and moved somewhere sunnier. And more populated. And louder. :)

Our seats: Before (circled in red)

After

It's so much easier to be demented when you're surrounded by lunatics! Ross needed a lozenge by the time we were heading home again. John was buzzing too. Amy wasn't quite so into it - her main observation of the actual game (as opposed to its length, the sun in her face or needing another trip to the loo) was "They fall over alot don't they?" :)

Amy was also invited to a friend's house for a sleepover. Excitement! New jammies! No sleep! So in order for John not to feel left out I arranged for his mate Jack to spend the night here. And, given that the weather - after such a stunning day on Sunday - went to custard again, rented an X-Box and a couple of games to keep them busy.

We're still as determined as ever not to buy one ... I think! In spite of pleas from John after just about every visit to someone else's house. But it's hard to feel like we're the neighbourhood "boring house" because "play" here means spending hours up a tree down the garden and/or kicking a football around in the street. Which is exactly how we want it to be and precisely why we don't have all the gizmos and gadgets, but still ...

Well, the lights are off, the boys are jammied and horizontal (in a tent erected in the living room), so they might actually get some sleep ... in an hour or so!

G'nite!

Bring On the Holidays!!!

2008-09-19T16:43:00.002+12:00

Whilst I am most definately not keen on the year flying past any faster than it already is, thanks to the Wellington City Council I am rather looking forward to the school holidays that start at the end of next week.

The local library has a stand which contains a selection of frequently updated wee booklets featuring activities and events going on around the place. I do pick them up and have a look, but very little usually appeals. Until this little gem appeared:

To quote the Council website:

FREE and low cost outdoor recreation activities for Wellington!

For the first year ever Wellington City Council is co-ordinating an outdoor festival which includes heaps of outdoor recreation events and activities. These events are provided by clubs and organisations in the community as well as the Push Play team.

See that first line? Good start, eh?!

So our adventures over the next few weeks shall include (among other things): Regional Tree Climbing Championship and Kids' 'Have a Go' Day; Dog Fun Day; a Children's Botanic Booty Hunt; and possibly a bit of rock-climbing.

Now if only the weather will cooperate ...

Blogstipation

2008-09-17T11:45:00.003+12:00

I've had all these topics - the internal back-seat-driver, memory, the feeling of walking through life facing backwards - flitting in and out of my head ... backing up, even. Unable to get out. I suppose in politer circles it would be called "writer's block" but I live in a household where toilet-humour reigns. Sigh. This too shall pass. Or not - given that one of the main culprits is the husband!! :P

Part (in fact probably most) of the problem is my overactive inner editor. I have difficulty writing anything in draft form. I'm working on the art of the brain-dump - just getting the thoughts out onto the screen, then edit later. It doesn't have to be perfect. I'm haunted by "perfect". Utterly frustrated by the number of things I've never done because I was afraid that they wouldn't turn out "right".

And that's a good thing. Because recently the frustration boiled over. Finally got me to the point of saying "Sod perfection - let's just do stuff and see what happens". Including writing.

I am a yellow rubber duck

2008-08-30T14:27:00.003+12:00

There's a poster-holder on the wall at the gym that I walk past on the way to and from the changing room. Normally I only notice it when the contents change. Well, yesterday (after a two-week sickie) it stopped me in my tracks ... and made me giggle. I went home after my workout and Googled all over the place to see if I could find a copy online. No joy. So my camera and I surreptitiously (not really, I just like to sound sneaky) went back today. Okay, so I did a workout as well. I did not just walk into the gym, take a photo of the wall and walk out again. That would be a little weird, even for me.

So, here it is - if you click on it you get a larger version. One you can ... you know ... read.

Now, for reasons previously stated, I am not about to start running marathons. But the philosophy appealed. Mostly because it's really silly!! I've learned to take special note of the things that make me smile. And if they provoke a giggle, so much the better. The word that springs to mind - well, the first intelligent word anyway (after "quack" and "boing") - is "resilience". And I think of people I know. People who take the knocks and keep on going, with grace, humour and a fair dose of insanity. You know who you are. :)

So if you should catch me muttering "I am a yellow rubber duck", don't worry. I'm no madder than usual. :P

Homework

2008-08-19T21:08:00.003+12:00

It's been a wee while since I've had that to contend with! Well. Of my own, anyway. But I started having NLP sessions last month, and at the end of each one I get a spot of homework. The last lot was to begin each day by - before getting out of bed - writing down three things I was looking forward to that day. Then at bedtime to write down three things I'd achieved that day. This was three weeks ago.

Week 1 - Total disaster by virtue of it not being a habit so I completely forgot to do it. Quite apart from which my brain doesn't start working until about an hour after I hit the vertical anyway.

Week 2 - Better. Sort of. OK I tried. I did. And realised how very little I actually have in each day that I can honestly say I'm looking forward to. Right. Time to get proactive and plan some stuff in there. A run here, a DVD there, Home Group, music ... things were looking better in no time. Until Amy got sick. :(

Week 3 - Initially stuck at home with sick child. Now at home with sick self. A page of "achievements" made up of dishes and laundry just looks saaaaaad!!

One thing I'd really like to do is try to write a little every day. Not necessarily to blog, but just to make a little creative output part of my daily life. And I will. Once my head doesn't hurt quite so much ...

God is in the Tub

2008-08-09T22:26:00.004+12:00

My ruminating the other day - on the subject of purpose - reminded me of something.

A few years ago, when I was still a fan of "Survivor" (and that stopped during the Pearl Islands season in ... 2003...ish?) I used to spend a fair amount of time over at Television Without Pity, reading recaps and enjoying - and occasionally participating in - the rampaging snarkasm on the forums (or is that "fora"? Does anybody use that? 20 years since I last took Latin and it still pops up to annoy me). Aaaaaaaanyway ... there was a phrase, coined originally by one of the recappers, Miss Alli, that became so popular I'm fairly sure it ended up on a t-shirt. Or a coffee mug:

God is in the tub.

I can't for the life of me find the original, but did find an explanation here, and it looks about right:

'The reference, as Miss Alli explained it, was aimed at reality show contestants who constantly invoked God’s name - the people who talked about God being on their side, wanting them to win, helping them in the game. Miss Alli decided that, in these cases, God was like your mother, when she took a rare bath when you were a child. If your mother was in the tub, you stayed far away. You could knock on the door if you were bleeding, or dying, or if something was on fire, but otherwise, Mom was in the tub, she didn’t care that your sister took your teddy bear, you figured your problems out for yourself. She figured that God considered reality show contestants in the same way. He wasn’t going to help you win a television game show, so calling on him in order to win a few hundred thousand dollars was just going to irritate him and everyone listening to you.'

It was nice to having something amusing spring to mind, so I thought I'd share :)

I'm Torn

2008-08-08T15:23:00.003+12:00

New Zealand gets (free-to-air anyway) television coverage of gymnastics competition pretty much exactly once every four years. When the Olympics happen. Track and field, swimming and cycling fare somewhat better thanks to the Commonwealth Games. Apart from then, forget it. :(

I watched Joan Benoit win the first womens' Olympic marathon in 1984 - as a 12-year-old, in the school library. That inspired umpteen attempts to become a runner over subsequent years - mostly futile, until I joined the school cross-country team at 17 and discovered how helpful it was to have other people to run with. Each successive Games brought a fresh burst of inspiration. Not that I ever kidded myself that I could be in any way competitive.

So anyway - sports-wise, at least, I live for Summer Olympics. Not winter (despite ongoing gentle teasing for skipping out of one "mainly music" team meeting the second it finished to make sure the mens figure-skating got recorded ... for my mother ... honest.) Yes, I am a proud Kiwi ... just one who really doesn't give a toss about who wins the rugby, or netball, or cricket ...

So I'm torn. This is The Year. The gymnastics quarter-finals are screening on Sunday afternoon. And I still can't decide whether to watch or not. I'm far too aware of not only China's past human rights record, but what has gone on in the name of these Games alone.

It'd be way too easy to conclude that it won't make any difference whether I watch it or not. But it's bugging me.

Does everything have a purpose?

2008-08-07T10:58:00.003+12:00

It's something I've blogged about before - albeit from a much unhappier headspace - the way people look for meaning in the things that happen in life. Whether it's God's will, the alignment of planets, or someplace else, we seem to be hardwired to look for "why". How many irritating superstitions started that way - with the confusion of coincidence with causality? Something bad happened to someone, they wanted something to pin it on and picked the nearest event. Bingo! No more walking under ladders, breaking mirrors, opening umbrellas indoors, etc, etc. Ross's parents had one that drove us nuts - if someone gives you a gift that has a sharp point or edge you're supposed to give them a silver coin, otherwise it's bad luck. We told them to stop giving us sharp flipping objects then!!

One favourite bible verse that gets trotted out is Romans 8:28 - 'And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose'. Does this really mean that absolutely everything that happens is part of something good? (And yes, I do realise that "good" does not necessarily equal "pleasant" or "easy". Right? Right. :P) What about the crap that happens because people choose to act in opposition to God's will? Maybe some stuff just happens. Maybe there are some things that aren't part of some big meaningful Thing and that God's overall plan happens in spite of, rather than including, them. Maybe there are things that aren't consequences to or catalysts for something else. Because looking for meaning can turn into a strange sort of blame game - God let this happen to teach you more ... patience, love, whatever, or to teach someone else. Instead of just loving and supporting and trying to comfort someone who's going through something awful, instead of just sitting with them and saying "This sucks, doesn't it?!" people try, with the best of intentions, to explain it.

I've tried to find meaning in my own struggles. I firmly believe that God can heal. And if “can’t” is taken out of the equation, all that is left is “won’t”. But why? Either God had some kind of purpose for this, or He just didn’t care. I know that He does (there's a whole other story to that). And so, I thought, I’m left with pretty much just one option – that God has a plan and a purpose. Or does He? Or is it kinda self-centred to believe that? To believe that whatever is going on in my life must be significant in the grand scheme of things?

I have a problem with people emerging from some disaster saying "God saved me". Because that means that God chose not to save whoever else didn't make it out of there. And if you look too hard for "why" you can come to the conclusion that God cares more about some people than others or that some people matter more so He wanted them to stick around, or that somebody prayed harder or believed more than somebody else.

This is a personal issue. It's something I'm trying to stop doing. Given the number of really deep holes I've dug my way into by obsessing over why I feel bad (or that I have no "right" to feel bad because I can't find a reason) and beating myself up over it. Sometimes bad things happen for no reason, or because someone made a bad decision, sometimes I feel bad for no reason. And maybe we need to just sit with one another, or with ourselves, and be. Just be comfort and love and an arm around the shoulder without looking for "why".

Save Me!

2008-08-06T23:33:00.002+12:00

I've gone all domestic! I've done home-baking three days in a row!

Monday - banana cake

Tuesday - cupcakes (purportedly for school, but they only got half of what we made!)

Wednesday - chocolate mud muffins (with cherry sauce - mmmmmmnumnumnum)

Waistlines are going to suffer if this carries on ...

Things are good though. Three-and-a-half weeks after becoming rather less employed than before, I am not going out of my tree (it only took 2 weeks last time)! Housework is being done, real food is being prepared ... the dog is still not getting walked ... it's a work in progress!!

The Objectivity of Cute ...

2008-08-02T12:10:00.004+12:00

... or lack thereof.

At the risk of sounding like I have too much time on my hands ... I'm sitting here, staring at the dog, trying to work out whether she's still cute or not.

When we went to the SPCA in January to choose a puppy, the kids (especially Amy) fell head-over-heels in love with the littlest, cutest one in the playpen.

We were warned that she was smaller by virtue of being about a month younger than everypuppy else there, and that she would most likely grow up into a "dog". The puppy-training class we took Toffee to when she was little was run by a woman who also does alot of work with pups while they're at the SPCA. We were informed in the second week that when she told them that Toffee (along with her brother Eddie) was in her latest class the response was "Is she ugly yet?"

Toffee?!

Ugly?!

Noooooo!!!! ... ????

You see ... I'm not sure I can actually tell.

It's a cunning ploy. Shovel on the cute in those early months and by the time you find your way out from under it, they're full-grown and you don't care what they look like. I can't ask my parents either. It'd be like asking them if one of their grandchildren was ugly. (They're dog people too.)

The bull terrier side of her has largely overwhelmed the boxer side. She still has her "Amy Winehouse eyeliner" thing going on. And that forehead-wrinkle that makes her look so worried. She still wants to be a lap-dog. At 23kg (50lb)! That sounds a mite too large for "cute", doesn't it? We might have to go with "adorable". :)

Moving

2008-07-28T00:04:00.002+12:00

My blog has a new home. Frequent log-in problems, "unexpected technical errors" and other irritating quirks on MySpace got a bit much. I spend more time on Facebook now anyway. I'm not about to delete my MySpace account - I still want to be able to pop in when my friends post stuff, and don't want to lose all the blog comments people have left either. And you never know - I might get back to the groups one of these days too ... beyond regurgitating The Hobbit word-for-word! :P

I've copied almost all of my past entries over, which, on dial-up, took a few days - although it got a heckuvalot faster once I found out that using Firefox allowed me to copy text, formatting and images all in one hit - whereas Explorer only copied the basic text. It looks a bit weird - two years of blog entries with no comments whatsoever (major reason for not deleting the MySpace end of things)! Extra bonus though - people don't have to log in to post comments, so Facebook friends who don't have MySpace accounts will be able to leave comments too.

Feedback on how the new blog looks would be appreciated. I'm still tinkering with the format and figuring out how to make the entry background more opaque in case people have trouble reading due to the background image.

Shameless Plug!!

2008-07-20T23:35:00.002+12:00

Some time ago I came to the profound conclusion that my family (myself included) is seriously boring. Being homebodies is one thing. Staying home every flipping weekend is something else. (This realisation occurred prior to mashed-potato "snowmen" and various outdoorsy excursions. Just so you know!) Very often the cost of stuff is a factor, whether it's the activity itself, the distance (and hence petrol used) to get there, or car-parking.

Anyway. We had seen an item on the news a wee while back about the Weta Cave. Apparently Weta has had so many people dropping in, hoping (unsuccessfully) to sneak a peek at what they do, that they decided to set up a small museum-ish thingy to open up to the public. Rings Geek Heaven! Wannagowannagowannago! Well, Ross was on leave last week (for the second week of the school holidays), so we checked the website to find out how much it costs to get in ... IT'S FREE!!! Something cool is actually free!! And, being in Miramar, parking is free too.

It's not just Lord of the Rings stuff either - there's a range of items/props/models from the likes of The Frighteners, Hercules, Jane and the Dragon ... and a 20-minute DVD-tour screening repeatedly in a wee theatrette that covers the beginnings of Weta Workshop, the stuff they've been involved in since, and their different departments.

YAY WETA!!

And cameras are allowed too (except in the theatrette)!

Don't let the receptionist put you off.

Or the bouncer ...

He's a big softy

Nanny No More

2008-07-19T22:25:00.000+12:00

Well. That's that door shut. No more naps, no more nappies ... no more squidgey-little-person cuddles :(

Olivia's off to England with her family in a few days (to return in one year's time sounding like a little Pom-Pom, no doubt). And I still have no idea where to from here. The idea of returning to study has been shelved for the moment - it's just too expensive to start a course purely out of interest. As I found at university (where I started a BSc in Zoology and came out the other end with a BA in English Literature!), interest is no indication of aptitude.

Amy's suggestion was that I could be a "house-mummy". I have a sneaking suspicion that she just wants me to be available to help on any and every school trip! :D The house would probably end up in better shape than it has been for a while ... not so sure about the mummy though!

But the annual 24/7 Prayer week kicks off at church this Sunday ... and somehow that feels like rather good timing ... :)

Random Stuff. With pictures, even!

2008-06-28T20:35:00.001+12:00

Amy and Ross made dinner tonight. The plotting and scheming began on Thursday night. Amy was upset at bedtime (school social angst) and after I'd done my thing with cuddles and soothing noises, Ross did his thing ... waltzing in and cheering her up by completely changing the subject! Only sketchy details emerged - this was to be a surprise, I was told - but the details that did emerge involved carrot, broccoli and ... chocolate buttons ... on the same plate!

We all went grocery shopping this afternoon and the intrigue grew along with the strange selection of food - jellybeans? dried apricots? mushrooms? together?! Then we got home and the concocting began. Dinner preparations took a while, but eventually John and I were summoned to the table ...

Balanced nutrition kinda went out the window but dang it looked cute! (We couldn't find chocolate buttons, so Jaffas were substituted)

There was even dessert - courtesy of an exercise at school yesterday that Amy decided she wanted to replicate for us at home. Muesli, strawberry yoghurt and boysenberries. Breakfast for pudding!

You may notice that Amy's fringe is slightly ... short. She came through for dinner one night with her hair back in a hairband. Not too unusual. But then I noticed some very short pieces sticking out from under it. Cue sinking feeling! Hairband removal revealed two wonky chunks cut out of her fringe. She confessed, she had cut it herself because it was getting in her eyes. Why oh why couldn't she just have asked?!! All I could do was trim the lot to the length of the shortest bit and hope that it would grow fast. Normally she seems to need a fringe trim every five minutes, but now of course it's growing at snails pace. Watched hair never grows?

Anyway, back to the events of today. I was amazed that the pair of them had the energy to construct a meal at all - although, once they got started, I guess having fun kinda does that. Prior to grocery shopping we had spent four hours trekking around the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary. They had a "gold coin entry day" today, which we decided to make the most of since their entry fees are usually a good deal more than 1 or 2 dollars each! The last time we had gone as a family was about 4 years ago. We didn't see or hear terribly much at all and wrote it off as an expensive wasted trip (as the kids were definately not into bush-walking just for the heck of it at that point). Then John's class went there last term as part of the senior urban camp, and I went along as a helper. What a difference! They have a 500-year plan in mind but the place has come a long way in just a few years. You actually get to see birds now! And even if you don't see too many you still get to hear plenty. I actually signed up as a member after that trip. I knew I wanted to go back. Repeatedly. And I have - usually with Olivia in tow. She's not particularly fond of beaches, which are my usual decompression destinations - not good, I thought. But she has a jolly sturdy little pair of legs on her and is quite happy to use them for a couple of hours at a stretch, along with playing "spot the birdie", so we've made trips to the Sanctuary a few times now.

Our two are far more able to enjoy excursions like these now too. Last time they kept asking when we were going to see the birds. This time they spent the vast majority of the time puttering along side-by-side chatting away happily about who-knows-what ...

Somebody's energy didn't quite last the whole way round.

although she got a second wind on the way back down into the valley again.

Oh, yeah, I did my 10K race last Sunday - somehow contriving to do it even slower than last time. 1:05:25 instead of 1:02:57. It's quite a skill really. Not many people can run as slowly as I can without accidentally breaking into a walk. The weather was pretty much crap - wind, rain ... thunder (which may actually have been beneficial, as it gave a few of us a pre-race shot of adrenalin when we heard it!). I don't feel particularly entitled to whinge about the weather though - not when I do 100% of my "training" on a treadmill in a nice dry gym! I had really really really wanted to run it in under an hour. But at least I ran the whole way. So. Yay ... ish.

Change is a’coming

2008-06-16T20:01:00.001+12:00

It's official. I am no longer suffering from depression.

Yay.

That's as enthusiastic as I'm prepared to get at this point. Given what happened last year.

The underlying condition that caused it (i.e. anxiety) is still there, and will continue to need addressing, but so long as it is kept under something resembling control I should be okay (because living with uncontrolled obsessive agitation has been know to cause depression. Funny that.)

We pretty much reached this conclusion when I saw my doctor a couple of months ago. I basically shared a small part of my testimony with her. I was due to share it at church the following Sunday, so it was firmly stuck in my head and more or less came out of it's own accord. Anyway, she concluded (and I agreed) that the long-term issue was anxiety. And apparently the medication I'm on is really good for depression, but not great for anxiety. Which was the answer to something that had been bugging me for a while. Why the heck did one capsule work beautifully when I first started taking it, but now I couldn't cope on less than four? Because when I first started taking it we were treating depression. Now we're not.

So why didn't we change meds on the spot? Well, that has something to to do with counselling. Or rather, the alternative to it. You see, counselling last year was not a rip-roaring success. In spite of requesting a cognitive behaviour approach we ended up bogged down in psychoanalysis - dredging up all manner of crud and then having no idea what to do with it. Even when I asked. Sorry - not paying someone fifty bucks for them to ask me what I think I should do with it, then sitting in awkward silence when I had no idea!!! This was proving to be somewhat counter-productive and, as a result, I never went back after the Christmas/New Year break. If I need someone to make sympathetic noises while I feel dreadful, I have family and friends who love me enough to do it without getting paid.
So, having discussed this with the doc, she suggested that NLP may be more appropriate and constructive. We just didn't expect it to be quite as long before I got an appointment (I phoned in May. My appointment is mid-July!) so the idea, I think, was that the NLP might be so jolly helpful that I would no longer be looking at changing meds, but rather coming off them altogether. This is apparently still my doctor's goal. Which made me a little nervous - again, given what happened last year.

The wait was getting a bit much though. And the doc had told me to come back and see her if I felt I needed to change before our next scheduled appointment. So this morning, I did.

This could be fun. With a 10K race to run on Sunday, I have no idea what the physical effects of the changeover will be! Maybe I'll have heaps of energy and finish 15 minutes faster than last time ... or I'll be found curled up asleep under a park bench along Oriental Parade ... or I'll just chug along, dead slow as usual. Just a little less wound up. Maybe. We'll see.

The other change that's coming is in forty days or so - Olivia's going with her family to England for a year. There goes my job. This is not some big sudden shock - that particular deadline was in place right from the start - but it's still cause for the odd bout of "What the heck do I do now?!".

I'm considering a possible return to studentdom.
Maybe.
We'll see.

Sanity Break

2008-06-08T22:06:00.000+12:00

It was all coming a bit unstuck really. Me. Him. Us. The kids. We are homebodies, but even we can get a bit unhinged if we don't get out and about for a while. It didn't help that Toffee decided to jump the fence and go visit the neighbours chooks this morning. No harm done, thankfully.

We needed to get out. Sod the gym, we needed to get out! The 10K race (in 2 weeks time) that I entered in order to have a goal - something to look forward to - has ended up being more of a pain-in-the-ass that I'll be glad to see the back of because training for it is eating alot of my spare time. Mind you I've been in a hole in general over the last couple of weeks and it can be hard to know which came as a result of what.

We were going to head for a walkway I'd spotted on the way to the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary a while ago. It goes up to the Brooklyn wind turbine. The main thing that had caught my eye was the "dogs allowed" factor. Although that doesn't necessarily mean alot. When we did the Colonial Knob walk back in January we didn't have Toffee yet, but were firmly ensconced in the adoption process so doggy-related things were on my radar. The sign at the entrance had stated that, due to possum-poisoning, dogs had to be on a leash. Fine. No problem. What it didn't say was that at the very point where you started to get a bit of a view for your efforts, you crossed into farmland, and got welcomed by a sign announcing that dogs would be SHOT!!!

We never got to Karori. Toffee has occasional issues with the car. She threw up a few times when she was littler, and seemed to decide that the car wasn't somewhere she wanted to be. I Googled dog car-sickness and found out that a fair proportion of the time it's anxiety rather than motion sickness. The last couple of trips were fine though, and we figured she was settling down, but today she was drooling like mad before we hit Ngaio. So John and I took her out of the car and went for a bit of a jog. She pulls like mad when I try to walk her, but she's a jolly good running buddy - John flaked out before she did! Back in the car, we decided to go to Otari-Wilton Bush Reserve instead, which was a wee bit closer to home.

We walked for 2 hours (some of which involved back-tracking after we overshot the track to the 800-year-old Rimu that we wanted to see ... some of it also involved getting plain old lost!), got back to the car just as it was starting to rain, and all felt a great deal more settled for the outing.

A few pics ...
Lying down in the mud at the foot of the darn thing, and this is as much as I could get of that 800-year-old Rimu!

Nice nasal shot there Honey :D

That's better!

Having a rest (check out John in the tree!!)

That can't be comfy!

aaaaand clunk!

If there’s ever a SAJ guys night at the movies ...

2008-05-18T21:18:00.000+12:00

... can I tag along?!

There was a "Ladies Movie and Dessert Evening" at church on Friday night. The subject came up at Home Group a couple of Wednesdays ago, and even though we didn't even know what the movie was going to be yet it was already pretty much a foregone conclusion that I wouldn't be interested. Would you believe that actually bothered me?! Honestly! The molehills I can make mountains out of! Ross told me once that I'd worry if I had nothing to worry about ... guess life must be going alright just now then! :D I wasn't sure whether I was more annoyed at other peoples' assumption that I wouldn't be interested - or the fact that they were right! I even managed to get irritated at the entire genre. No ... "genre" is far too literary a word for the "chick flick"! Don't worry - I let it goooooooooooo ... :P

Besides, being a fan of action/sci-fi made dates at the movies so much simpler (and continue to make evening DVD-viewing a compromise-free-zone). And I know I'm not the only chickie out there who likes a spot of mayhem in a movie.

Anyway - if anyone who reads this happens to be a fan of the aforementioned "chick flick", can you get back to me with a brief summary of what you enjoy about them? Seriously. I'm nosey. I like to do little impromptu survey thingies like this. Apparently about 80 ladies showed up on Friday night to enjoy dessert and company, if not 107 minutes of vacuous fluff ... I do have issues, don't I?! They were there - that's the main thing!!

It's just one of those things that's a matter of preference: some people like candyfloss, others prefer ... what's the culinary equivalent of Arnie? Beer and pizza?

So to those of my dear girlfriends who find Flixster declaring me a "Terrible match" - we'll just have to catch up over something other than a movie ... Cake?

Nothing like a little peer pressure

2008-05-15T09:36:00.000+12:00

When Amy was a pre-schooler, we didn't imagine that peer pressure was ever going to have much impact on her. Amy knew what Amy liked, did not like, wanted to do, did not want to do, and was quite willing to make her views known if anyone tried to push it! So we were rather shocked when she started school and suddenly had definate views on "girls clothes" and "boys clothes", and hand-me-downs from John were a thing of the past (ah well, they wear the same size these days anyway!). Don't think for one second that her concept of "girls clothes" included dresses or skirts of any description, but a general theme of pink, purple and butterflies did emerge. So anyway, we realised that peer pressure might become more of a factor than we had initially thought.

Well. Every year the kids' school does something like "Pajama Day" or "Wacky Hair Day". This year they had both on the same day - yesterday - to raise funds for the Autism Intervention Trust. In his first year at school, John liked the idea of Wacky Hair Day, but the second his hair started looking anything other than "normal" he abandoned all enthusiasm for the concept. I just kinda figured he didn't like change, or messiness, or ... something ... and decided it probably wasn't something to make to big a deal of. He is now in Year 5 and has still not participated in any of the wackiness, in spite of seeing how many of his friends do. And for her first two years at school, Amy hadn't either.

The school runs the occasional disco too, and last year Amy wanted to go, and seemed to really be looking forward to it ... until John told her he wasn't going and then she didn't want to either ... Sigh. I remained determined not to make a fuss - to let them know that they were just fine, whether they took part in these things or not - but I have found myself wishing that my kids would enter in the spirit of things a bit more. :( They did both go to the disco last term - because so many of their friends were going.

Then Amy said she wanted to wear her PJs for Pajama Day. I attempted to sound nonchalantly enthusiastic (!) while desperately trying not to get my hopes up in case she changed her mind. And she did. Having got up, had breakfast and changed into clean PJs for school, Amy decided she wanted to wear normal clothes after all. I suggested she take her PJs in her backpack in case she changed her mind again. She said no ... but obviously did anyway, because she came bouncing out the classroom door at the end of the day wearing her purple puppy jammies! Having seen how many of her classmates were jammie-clad, she didn't want to be left out. I dunno quite how I feel about the whole thing at the moment. I suspect I'd better not think about it too hard and just be really happy that she took part after all!

Something Changed

2008-05-13T22:50:00.001+12:00

When I started running again, towards the end of 2005, it was partly because of pride - I wasn't ready for John to be faster than me just yet (hey, he was only six!!) - and partly so that I could run if I needed to. Having completed one 10k race in '06 I really didn't have any further goals. The "natural" progression would have been towards a half-marathon, but my knee doesn't like distances much over 10k these days, and ... well ... running for 21k is just so boring! So I've just kind of puttered along, doing 20 minutes here, 10k there, but aimlessly. Now, having signed up for another 10k race next month, there have been a few more long runs than usual - 3 a week! - slowly getting faster (for lack of a better word!) each time. But even with a purpose they felt like a bit of a slog ...

Then something changed last week. I read my friend Michelle's blog. She had reposted "The Spoon Theory" - Christine Miserandino's personal story and analogy of what it is like to live with sickness or disability. You can also find it at ButYouDon'tLookSick.com, but it's in PDF form there. Even if you don't know anyone with fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, lupus, chronic pain or any one of a number of other "invisible" diseases - but especially if you do - it is well worth reading.

Those runs suddenly don't seem so hard, or so tedious.
Suddenly I'm aware of how easily my body can move.
I hope I never take it for granted again.
I don't want to run so that I can.
I want to run because I can.

Another Mad Mothers Day

2008-05-11T20:21:00.000+12:00

John whipped this out of the fridge and presented it to me after dinner tonight.

Apparently Amy had found it in her cornflakes a couple of days ago and had been saving it for me for Mothers Day ... :D

Goodness me, how the day has improved! It all started sweetly enough, with excited scampers down the hallway and whispers - you know, the ones that carry for miles - about Mothers Day and breakfast in bed. Which would have been lovely if they hadn't proceeded to bellow at each other over who was going to do what ... :(

But then John brought through his present for me - a soap carving he made at Cubs last Monday night. It's a boat. Because I like boats so much. :D

My very first parental soap-on-a-rope! Revenge for all the ones I inflicted on my Dad?!

And Amy made a card wishing me a Puppy Mothers Day (one track mind, that girl!)

I came through to the lounge to find a message for me on the floor, spelled out in Magnetix (Toffee was shut outside!)

Later, Ross helped the kids make pancakes for lunch. Including a bunny-shaped one, and another one like a donut, and one that looked like ... well, I'm not sure what, but it definately wasn't traditional-pancake-shaped anyway!

And then this evening I got my cornflake.

They are batty.
And I love them.

Well. There goes the height advantage.

2008-03-15T17:39:00.001+13:00

I don’t think the reason I love working with small children is that they make me feel tall. But I’ve recently had cause to wonder!

If you’d asked me a couple of weeks ago, I’d have said that I love small kids because so much of the world is still new and exciting to them, they don’t yet think that they know more than you do, and they don’t care if you make a complete dick of yourself ... in fact they love it! But there may well be some authority component in there too. Because, as I discovered while helping on John’s school "Urban camp", it’s pretty hard to effectively loom over a smartass ten-year-old when they’re damn near the same height as you!

It’s another of those inevitable milestones: John will run faster than me (check), our children will need braces (I can already see it coming), and I will end up being the shortest in the family (apart from the dog). John still fits under my chin - although I have to lift it somewhat - but he’s growing like a weed (as is the dog, for that matter!).

So. What’s an "urban camp"? It’s what happens when there are so many health and safety hoops to jump through in order to take kids away on a real camp that schools give up and go for a safer option - basically four days of day-trips. There was one overnight in there, sleeping in tents on the lawn at Huntleigh. It’s a Girl Guides place up in Crofton Downs - I actually stayed there once on a weekend camp as a Girl Guide a ... ummm ... errr ... while ago! :D

The itinerary for John’s class was:
Tuesday: Walk up Mt Kaukau (stay overnight at Huntleigh)
Wednesday: Walk round Thorndon (in the city) finding out about various historic places.
Thursday: Walk around the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary
Friday: Rock-climbing, abseiling and water activities at Titahi Bay. The water bit didn’t happen due to the weather.

As is usually the way, the whole thing required a certain number of parent-helpers for any given activity to happen at all, so I signed up to help out on Wednesday (with Olivia in tow) and Thursday. Wednesday was fine, but by Thursday afternoon one of my lot had done all the walking she was prepared to tolerate in silence and became somewhat ... objectionable. I’m afraid she didn’t get alot of sympathy. Sigh ... I remember John’s first school trip. He’d barely even started school and we went off on a rocky shore expedition - leaping around the rocks with a bunch of five-year-old boys ... sigh ... Pardon my nostalgia trip. It just doesn’t feel like it was that long ago.

Anyway. You would think John would be worn out after all that, wouldn’t you? Nope! And it’s just as well, because he had Cubs camp starting the same Friday night as the abseiling and rock-climbing (i.e. last weekend). Barely time for a bath (in retrospect a fairly pointless exercise) and he was off again (along with Daddy) for a real camp! I’m still hoping that Ross will blog about it (hint, hint, HINT!!) - since he was the one who was there after all - because I’ve never heard the phrase "in his element" used so many times in such a short space as when we picked them up after lunch on Sunday and Ross was telling me all about their weekend!

Somebody had rather alot of fun

and so did his Daddy.

Amy (and Toffee) and I enjoyed a girls-only weekend - watching a movie, shopping (only for groceries but Amy got to shoot everything with the Pak’n’Save scanner thingy so she was thrilled), too many takeaways ... :P John did have the decency to appear worn-out on Monday and had the day off school - quietly designing a dozen or so different varieties of dragons - although he took off to play at his best mate’s house at 3:30!

It’s nice when you get the feeling that you’ve made the right decision as a parent. Signing John up for Cubs was definately the right decision.

As was banning weekday afternoon TV and non-educational computer use. I was watching my childrens’ imagination dying. And the word "bored" was popping up all too frequently. And I just got completely fed up with our afternoon activities being ruled by flipping boxes!! They no longer wanted to stay and play in the playground after school, or go down the garden and climb a tree. I really didn’t need yet another study telling me that too much TV is bad for kids to figure it out. And, thankfully, once I told them what was what - that I would record one programme each day, put them (minus ads) on a DVD and hand it over on Saturday morning - it didn’t take too long for the afternoon auto-pilot to switch off and out came the board games, the card games, the books, the toys, the drawing paper, the bike. I feel like a bit Gestapo-ish but heck ... it worked!! Now I just have to stick with it this time!

My own imagination has come back to life after having been chemically neutered for some time. It took me a while to realise that it had happened. I just started feeling uncomfortably over-medicated - permanently tired and in need of afternoon naps as well as early nights, hadn’t been in a drama for almost a year and really didn’t care, and had nothing whatsoever to contribute to any of the silliness in the groups on MySpace. Part of me had gone AWOL. An important part. But I was a month away from being due for a medication review and frankly it’s too flipping expensive to go and consult the doctor more often. Besides, she has given me permission to fiddle with the dosage - within reason. So I dropped from 5 capsules to 4. Then after a few days dropped to 3. Whoops! Felt absolutely fine - fantastic even, bursting with energy ... right through to 3am! This happened during Cubs camp, so there was no Ross at home to chase me off to bed - had a nice wee chat on Facebook with my fellow insomniac Michelle though, and the house was lovely and clean ... Back up to 4! Not as much energy, but at least sleeping again, and feeling rather more like myself too - just wish I could have all three at the same time.

SAJ Womens Weekend Away 2008

2008-03-04T19:23:00.000+13:00

I've been trying to blog about the Womens Weekend Away for the last week. And every time I've tried, I've ended up in a hole. It wasn't a complete write-off, but it certainly wasn't the best experience of my life either.

But let's start with the fun stuff ...

The Highlights:

The Horse Trek: riding for three-and-a-half hours, then watching people trying to walk straight afterwards. :D

The Chasm Walk: well worth wading through waist-deep water for - even if hiking boots with hot pink board shorts did look a little odd!

The Lowlights:

GolfCross: it doesn't matter what shape the ball is - I still hate golf.

The Ropes Course: unlike the guys who went last year we only got to try 3 things. So chickening out on just one activity meant missing one-third of the experience.
- Double wire - check
- Beam - shaking like a leaf, but ... check
- Big Swing ... well, I climbed the pole ...

I'm okay with heights. I cannot stand falling. The jump off a 3-metre ledge into water on last year's WWA was bad enough. Jumping off a platform 14 metres up, swinging to within a couple of metres of the ground, then back up ... and again ... and again ... nope. :(

At the end of the day, unless your fear gets in their way, I don't think other people really mind whether you conquer it or not. Not that they are uncaring or unsupportive - people were just as supportive after I climbed back down that pole as they were before I went up it - it just doesn't ... matter. If I was going to jump off that platform it had to be for me, not to impress anyone else. In my head I know I made the right call. I watched enough people make the jump to know that I would have been absolutely desperate to get off that thing well before it was possible to do so. It would have reinforced the fear of falling rather than overcome it - because it's a fear of what will happen rather than what might happen. But whenever I tell myself that, it seems far too much like an attempt at justification. So I need to stop trying to figure out how I feel about it - because that's when I end up in a hole ...

I'm glad I finally got around to writing about the weekend though - because it's reminded me how much I did enjoy that walk, and that was worth the trip in itself :)

A hole has been filled.

2008-02-07T13:37:00.000+13:00

I didn't really even realise there was one, to be honest. I certainly never would have looked at my husband and children and thought "Nope, not quite enough ...". In fact I've been well aware that our family is in the one configuration that prompts people to keep their opinions themselves - no only child, no middle child (Mum freely admitted that if there had been a 3rd she'd have been nagging for a 4th!), not too many children, and one of each sex which shuts down the "Are you going to try for a ... ?" line nicely as well. But there was a hole ... a longing - and I know that this may provoke an epidemic of eye-rolling - for a dog. I can't help it. I'm just a dog person. Have been for as long as I can recall.

The first doggy encounter that I can remember didn't start off too well though - aged about 6 or 7, I think, on holiday with my family up at Ngawha Springs. A 1-year-old German Shepherd is a full-sized dog with a puppy brain - and I was not a large child - so this bounding, wagging, wuffing pile of fur had me screaming in panic. Mum and Dad came hurtling out of the house, thinking that I'd fallen in a ditch and broken a leg or something. Saw what was actually happening and ... laughed. Harrumph. But then they "introduced" us and explained his puppiness. Somewhere along the way they found out where his owner lived, learned that his name was "Ring", and we were pretty much constant companions for the rest of that holiday.

Then there was Morag and Heather - the Bolshie and the Brainless!

Sigh ...

A dog can be such a comforting , and silent, companion. They don't require you to have great social skills. They don't demand brilliant conversation in order to be overjoyed at your company. And they don't even have to be doing anything much at all in order to create a particular presence in a home (no, Ross, I am not referring to the smell!). Toffee spends a good deal of her time sleeping, as puppies do - often on "her" couch, the one piece of furniture she can climb up on any time she likes without having to ask. But even when she's asleep she wants to be near people. Even if you're doing nothing in particular, she wants to be with you while you do it (she's curled up on my lap as I type this - in serious danger of falling off the edges!) And if you go away for a while, you're left in no doubt at all when you return that you are the centre of her universe.

She has found her home.

We have a new addition to our family.

2008-01-25T19:05:00.000+13:00

A beautiful 9-week-old little girl named ...

It's very appropriate. She's light brown, very sweet ... and chewy! :D

She's an SPCA mutt - we're guessing part Boxer, part goodness-only-knows - adopted into our family just yesterday. Ross took the afternoon off work so that we could all go in together to complete the adoption process. And, wouldn't you know it, she fell in love with him! With the rest of us she's in full-on "play" mode, but with Ross she's peaceful and contented. It's so sweet - and ironic, because he was the one the rest of us had to wait for to be ready for a dog!!

Three hours of romping, bouncing, scampering and chewing later ...

We basically have a toddler in the house again. It's been a while! :)

Next time I’ll just GO to the darn gym!

2008-01-20T20:27:00.000+13:00

My feet don't like me very much.

I'd been considering going to the gym. But, this being Ross's last weekend (although it is a long one) before he goes back to work on Tuesday, I didn't really want to take off for what amounts to a whole afternoon, leaving him at home with the kids. Besides which, we didn't get to bed until 1:30 this morning (short version: "Darkman"=dreadful movie, switched off after about an hour ... then watched "The Matrix" as well :P) so I was kinda lacking in the energy department.

But it seemed a shame to not do anything with such a nice afternoon, so ... we ended up hauling our backsides (occasionally on our backsides) up and around Colonial Knob (don't laugh, I did not make that name up!). For three hours. Okay 2 hours and 50 minutes, but close enough. Ross had spotted the start of the track while dropping off a dead DVD player at the recycling centre, and wanted to go exploring ... with absolutely no idea how long time or distance-wise it was going to be. This is the second time this has happened! Last time (having also felt too tired to go to the gym) I ended up piggy-backing 20-odd kilos of tired 6-year-old up a 45-degree incline! I guess at least all those barbell squats proved useful - it was actually reasonably easy ... just don't tell Amy I said that!

I might have felt differently - although I suspect my feet would feel much the same - if we'd gone anti-clockwise instead of clockwise. As it was we hit the steepest section on the way up. It took about one-third of the total distance (7.5km) to get to the top (468 metres), and the other two-thirds to mosey back down again at a vastly saner angle. But oh my goodness me, the views!! If I'd had my camera with me I'd at least have tried to get some shots, even though I doubt our little digital would do that view justice. Kapiti Island, Mana Island ... the South Island (and more of it than we'd usually see, thanks to the elevation), the Tasman Sea looking for all the world like a millpond (possibly also to do with the elevation!). But, since I didn't have my camera I found these instead which at least gives you some idea. The first is looking north up the coast and over Porirua and the second is the view towards the South Island:

Unfortunately I had to shrink the first one because it was so wide, but you can see the originals here and here.

It definately helped that there was very little wind, I wouldn't want to be up there, as we were, with no jackets or even sweatshirts, if there was a decent breeze blowing. The kids did well - they wanted to turn around and head back about halfway through the climb up, and I can't say I blame them (up, up, up the stairs we go ... :P), but once that was over they were fine. Amy told me near the end that the only part she hadn't enjoyed was when she fell and twisted her ankle (while running, after having been told umpteen flipping times not to for that very reason!) ... and all those times she slipped on gravel and landed on her bum ... but she liked the rest of it, which is really neat. Our first ever family hike was up Mount Kaukau in 2006 when, granted, she was only 5, and complained pretty much the whole way. John had been bribed with the promise of a Bionicle or something if he didn't complain - so instead he continually pointed out how he wasn't whining! This didn't seem like a terribly promising start to our dream of being an adventurous outdoorsy family! We've come a weeeee way since then.

So ... no ... I probably won't just go to the darn gym next time ... my feet will just wish I had! :D

Holiday Photo’s

2008-01-11T12:45:00.000+13:00

I've loaded a bunch of photos from our recent holiday on our family page at Flickr (here) if you want a better look at any of the ones I put in my last blog - or want to see more of them ... I mean ... who doesn't loooove looking through other peoples holiday photos?! :P

I have my own personal page too, although that tends to be less "people" and more "scenic" (and occasionally "strange"), here

We have walked the Road to the Dimholt.

2008-01-09T15:26:00.000+13:00

A hint, if you need one:

(a.k.a. Putangirua Pinnacles)

Ross's parents live over in the Wairarapa, and every 6 weeks or so we make a trip over there for a day to visit them. Each time we pass a number of places that have caught our attention, but we've never stopped at any of them because that would have cut into our time with the in-laws. Our last 3 family holidays have been anywhere from 600 to 1300km round-trips (with the obligatory "Are we there yet?" starting about ... ooh ... 100km into it!), so this year we decided to stick a little closer to home, and go see all those places we'd wondered about.

So over three-and-a-bit days we visited:
Waiohine Gorge
Puzzlewood
Sylkenwood
Putangirua Pinnacles
Mt Bruce Wildlife Centre
and Masterton Swimming Pool

Of a couple of them the best that can be said is at least we won't wonder as we drive past any more ... we know they pretty much suck - but others made the trip well worthwhile. The swimming pool was, I think, the highlight of the whole weekend from the kids point of view! For Ross and I, though, it was definately the Pinnacles. Even in 27(80F) degrees with bugger-all shade. There were three possible options: a 3-4 hour loop track taking in more than just the Pinnacles, a 1-2 hour loop walk through bush to a lookout and back down to the streambed again, and a 1.5 hour walk up the streambed that takes you in amongst the Pinnacles themselves (so you have to watch your head, as bits intermittently fall off them!). We did the latter two - thankfully the streambed first, because I suspect if we'd done the (steep) bush option first we wouldn't have bothered with the streambed and would have missed quite an experience.

The going gets gradually steeper, tighter and looser under-foot the further in you go, and - this being us we're talking about here - of course we went in as far as we possibly could. Namely right to the top. Getting down again was a bit hairy, but the view ...

Thanks to one particular roadside fruit and vege stall that sold divine strawberries, blackberries, nectarines, peaches, tomatoes, pears ... I didn't cook once the whole time! "Washing up" after our first dinner over there meant rinsing fingers in the river we'd just eaten beside. :D

The year we forgot it was Christmas. Part II.

2008-01-08T21:16:00.000+13:00

At the time of the last installment I was ... not looking forward to Christmas. Only one, fairly small part of it - as opposed to the whole "family get-together" thing - that being the pressie exchange.

Oh where do I begin?

We started giving the kids pocket money last year. They had (John particularly) reached an age where we thought they were ready to start learning about saving, spending, prioritising purchases, immediate vs delayed gratification, etc, etc. Instead we seemed to have ended up with one money-obsessed and materialistic nine-year-old.

I was dreading Christmas. Expecting ... ingratitude ... ungraciousness. And that was what brought back the memory of that Christmas 9 years ago - the one where presents and the getting of stuff was the last thing on our minds.

Needn't have worried really. Christmas Day was ... sweet and lovely. Because John was obsessed with his 92-year-old (and very frail) Great-Grandma all day instead - making sure she was comfy, telling us to be quiet because she was asleep (like we couldn't tell from the snoring! :D), moving stuff out of her way so she and her walking frame could get through. And at the end of the day, when we told him how lovely he'd been and how proud of him we were ... he had no idea what he'd done that was so special. He was just being himself. I'd forgotten that part of him ... sigh ...

The year we forgot it was Christmas. Part I.

2007-12-23T20:21:00.000+13:00

25 December 1998. We meant to have Christmas. My folks were the hosts that year. Mum did all the usual cooking (i.e. far too much). Family gathered. I'm sure we must have exchanged presents at some stage, I just can't for the life of me remember when. Our minds were elsewhere ...

Our attention was stolen away by a two-day-old baby boy. I'll never forget the sight of my Dad and brother kneeling in front of the armchair on which John was sleeping - gazing down on this tiny, helpless, beautiful new little person. Everything was about him. How he slept. How he ate. How he constantly fell asleep while eating (yes Mother, I know ... "exactly like you did, Dear"). Whole stretches of just sitting and staring at him. And somehow the whole day passed, mealtimes and all, and we were saying goodbye in the driveway when we suddenly remembered to say "Merry Christmas", and realised we'd forgotten all day. And yet it was the sweetest, most joyful, most Christmassy Christmas I've ever experienced.

There's more ... such as, "what brought all that up nine years down the track?" ... but I think I'll leave it right there just now. It seems a shame to shatter the image ...

End-of-year-itis? Not quite.

2007-12-16T11:18:00.000+13:00

Anyone looking at my life just now could be forgiven for thinking that it doesn't look much like God doing something good. It doesn't feel much like it either. It's hard to believe that part of the whole process of being healed could involve feeling more and more and more broken. I have to trust. That He sees more than I do. That He knows what lies ahead. That He knows how long each stage of the journey ahead will be. And that He's with me along that journey whether I sense His presence or not.

Part of the difficulty is the feeling that I have no right to lament the baggage I carry. Because others have been through much worse. Because on a scale from "perfect life" to "living hell" my life just hasn't been bad enough to earn that. Only problem with that is ... it's pretty much irrelevant. Whether I like it or not - and whether or not I, or anyone else, may think I should just get over it and get on with it - I can't even pretend to be okay at this point. Which means I pretty much have to deal with the crap that normally remains hidden. Great.

I see tired, grumpy, ready-for-a-break people all around me. I wish I could help, but ... :(

May I rant? Just a little?

2007-12-06T18:09:00.000+13:00

A few days ago the news on TV1 mentioned a website set up by unhappy migrants to New Zealand. People who had generally done their homework before moving here. Some had been here for holidays but did not realise how things that seemed like minor annoyances could become major factors in their misery. Some felt that they had been mislead - lured here by false promises from the government. The goal of the site is to offer a place for others in the same situation to discuss the downside of living here, to help each other cope, and to make other potential migrants aware of factors that they may not consider no matter how carefully they research their move.

There was, unfortunately (but, frankly, predictably because you'll find over-reactive people pretty much anywhere) quite a negative knee-jerk reaction from "proud Kiwis" - along the lines of "go home then", "why'd you come here in the first place?" "is it so perfect in your country?". Yeah ... way to reinforce the negative impression. It's kinda like the sibling thing - you'll bitch and moan to your hearts content about a brother or sister, but if anyone outside the family tries it ... watch out! And some people just can't stand criticism, whether it's valid or not (Helen Clark and Michael Cullen spring to mind ... ).

I was slightly amused by the number of times the complaint about New Zealanders being "insular" came up though. 3rd-form Latin I think that was ... insula=island - yes, I know, not the same word, but the same root nonetheless. Gee, why would a bunch of people on a few islands stranded in the middle of a honking great expanse of ocean be insular? Not saying it's a good thing or that it can't/won't/shouldn't change, but dear me please don't be surprised!!

Gah.

I think I'd better go watch something amusing ...

Summertime Summertime Sumsumsummertime ...

2007-12-01T14:20:00.001+13:00

Yaaaaaaay - the first day of Summer ... in theory anyway ... at least I think it is. If I'm wrong keep it to yourself, I'd rather remain deluded on this one.

It's sunnyyyyyyyy! Yay!

Christmas Parade today! Yay!

Ross shaved off his Mo last night! ...

YAY!!!

The ~~bastards~~ people he works with had a text-based competition, the "winner" of which was to keep their Mo until the work Christmas party ... in mid-December. Yeah, you guessed it, Ross "won" ... I promptly "vetoed" (did I ask whether I actually had a veto or not? No, I did not!). He also won the title of "Monster Mo". He even got a sash ... which he left at work - oh such a lost photo opportunity!!

We did get one more shot for the album anyway ...

Errr ... make that two ...

It's funny ... I now watch LotR and feel strangely sorry for Liv Tyler whenever Arwen kisses Aragorn (I can hear Alia now ... "she's kissing Viggo, what's to feel sorry for?!" :P)

One Mo’ Week

2007-11-23T18:07:00.000+13:00

One more week to go

One more week til the end of Movember and the removal of what has lovingly come to be known as the "face ferret" ... and yes, Gavin, it is coming off!!!

My dear sweet lovely husband has morphed into a ... trucker? ... redneck? (Merv Hughes? ... shudder) Really. All that's missing is the pickup truck and the gun.

Before

After
Scary stuff. And we're supposed to be celebrating our 11th wedding anniversary today. Well, okay, we are celebrating our 11th wedding anniversary today ... there's just not alot of kissing involved. I'm getting grumpy here!

One more week.

PS: I couldn't think of any way of working it in there with any subtlety whatsoever, so - because that's just the sort of thing he signed up for 11 years ago today - whaddaya think of this one?

Eek!

2007-11-20T13:55:00.000+13:00

Well I've gone and done it. Signed up for the next SAJ Womens Weekend Away. Paid my deposit. Doomed. I am doomed.

The guys blazed the trail before us a few weeks ago. Only they didn't know what they were in for - destination and activities were kept a secret (which, gotta say, made it hard to invite a friend. "Where you going?", "Dunno", "Whatcha doing?", "Dunno", "Errrr ... ?!"). All we girls knew was that whatever they did was what we were going to do on our next trip. Then Ross comes back positively buzzing with enthusiasm - bubbling over with stories about horse-riding (cool!), hiking (neat!), throwing himself at a trapeze from the top of a 15-metre pole ...

I have no issue with heights. Falling off them however ...

Okay so I don't have to go. I could, in theory, just sit this one out ... and kick myself for the next year. Yeah, do let's! So I paid my deposit yesterday, knowing that I'd be less likely to chicken out having done that much, and that if I thought about it for too long I'd end up talking myself out of it. Because I really really really don't want to miss out on the horses or gorge walk. Being terrified before one of these weekends is quite normal for me - this is just the first time it's the activity I'm scared of! And the darn thing doesn't happen until 22 February next year (just before my birthday - that'll be one to celebrate ... if I live that long :P) so I have 3 whole months of dread to get through yet.

I want my mummy!

Mummy Moment!

2007-11-15T17:48:00.000+13:00

The older half of the kids' school had an atletics competition a couple of weeks ago. This year was the first that John had taken part. His view was, and I quote, "I hope I don't do too well 'cos I don't want to go to Northern Zone." Excuse me? Mr Obsessively-Competitive? Well apparently that innate competitiveness won out over any fear of inter-school athletics, because he qualified for a spot on the Year 4 boys relay team. The Northern Zone athletics competition was held last week. I went to watch. I had to. I wanted him to know ... just that I was there. That he was most definately worth going out of my way for.

The most special moment wasn't even when he ran (although, of course, that was extremely cool). It was seeing him sitting with his team-mates in the in-field waiting to run. In his little uniform. And the light that went on in his eyes when he spotted me on the sidelines and surreptitiously waved. Is that selfish? To love seeing that little light go on? The same little light that shone when he saw me in the audience at his first school assembly item at the age of 5. It doesn't appear so often these days - I have a feeling it's not exactly the done thing among eight-year-old boys to look too enthusiastic at the sight of your mother - but now and then it's lovely to see that little "you're here for me!" look cross his face.

It was such a Mummy moment. I even went all teary ... but don't tell John ... I suspect it wouldn't be cool. :D

Isn't he cute?

What am I trying to prove?

2007-11-09T16:25:00.000+13:00

The most important thing for you, me, anyone to do is be who God made you to be. Do what you're good at, not what you wish you were good at because of the value placed on it by other people. If you're looking to do Gods will - to fulfil His purpose for your life - what better way could there be than to use the abilities He gave you, to be in a position for that to happen?

I have spent an awful lot of this week feeling angry. For having spent so much time and energy trying to earn the respect of people instead of learning who I was. Why did approval from imperfect people seem so much more important than approval from God? Perhaps because they were more "in your face"? But why did I try so hard to prove myself to people who had treated me with such contempt? Because I wanted to show them that I deserved better? Any kid deserved better than that. And angry for having continued to care far too much about what others might think of anything I am/say/do.

This counselling thing is most definately not fun. I don't want to write much here yet. Most of what's going on just now is being written in my journal. I need to figure out what the hell I think before I put it here. But I did want to get that first bit out there.

The Next Step Forward begins with Looking Back

2007-10-30T19:15:00.000+13:00

I knew it would, to be honest. It made sense that a counsellor would need to know where I've been in order to best work with where I am. It's just such a draining exercise. I wish I could recall past events without re-feeling them as well ... :(
Although I can't imagine the passage of any amount of time making it an easy thing to explain what it felt like to contemplate suicide on pretty much a daily basis, let alone the specifics of how ... even though that was over five years ago now, remembering meant tears.

It was okay. I'm okay. Just very very tired.

The Next Step Forward

2007-10-29T16:39:00.000+13:00

I have my first counselling session tomorrow afternoon. I am ... nervously optimistic. Nervous because I'm not really sure what to expect, but optimistic because I at least have a fair idea of who I'll be dealing with. That's one of the benefits of having worked in the office at church - I already know that the lady I'll be talking to is sensible, practical and professional, so I don't have the "total stranger" factor to get past.

Part of the nervousness is also because of the navel-gazing that's likely to be required. It's something I've been trying to avoid. Again. As much as I grind my teeth in response to people who assert that the whole solution to depression is to stop thinking about yourself and focus on God/others ... it does help, to a degree - it just not the whole answer by any stretch.

I do want to be open to whatever ideas/exercises/reading are suggested though. I need to believe that a fundamental change in thinking is possible. Because going through life in combat mode is just too damn draining - and not only on me, but the rest of the family as well.

There is hope. We had one of our "Guess Who's Coming to Lunch?" thingies a few weeks ago, and I started getting myself all wound up into a tidy little ball of pre-emptive social anxiety ... but then managed to talk myself out of it again. I actually managed to get control of my thoughts enough to realise that, while in general I'm not comfortable at social events, if I looked at that specific subset of events (of which we've been to several now) at the very worst they have been ... perfectly okay. And that felt ... just slightly ... very nice indeed. So, on the verge of beginning to learn all about this "reprogramming your self-talk" business, I may just have managed to do a spot of it myself. There is hope. :)

I love Thursdays

2007-10-18T11:51:00.000+13:00

It's my "day off". Of course I'd love them even more if they coincided with nice weather a bit more often! As it is I'm stuck at home, trying to keep warm, wasting time playing computer games and reading silly surveys ... speaking of which:

1. What's the weirdest thing you are going to do tomorrow?
Who knows?! It's the unplanned weirdness that's the most fun! :)

2. What's your favorite Halloween candy?
Not really into candy - Halloween or otherwise.

3. What is on your coffee table?
An electronic keyboard

4. Where is the weirdest place you have ever woken up?
The floor of a bus

5. Last alcoholic beverages you drank?
A glass of wine my Grandma made me try one Christmas when I was about ... 12?

6. Weirdest class you've taken in college?
Modern Theatre - not so much weird in and of itself but there were some damn weird people taking it!

7. Weirdest thing you have had to do for a class?
I can't think of anything. And I am disappointed. I feel like I've missed something ... sigh

8. Do you talk in your sleep?
So I have been told.

9. What was your first screen name?
Psychotubby

10. What's the last thing someone bought for you?
Flowers

11. Nicest thing anyone has ever done for you?
Selena threw a surprise party/morning tea for my 30th birthday - I'd never had a surprise party before ...

12. Do you stalk people on myspace or facebook?
MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! How's that for not answering the question?! :D

13. How do you feel about blood?
Handy stuff. Wouldn't want to be without it. Such a pretty colour too.

14. Describe your breakfast of choice?
Pancakes with butter and maple syrup - preferably cooked by someone else :)

15. What Halloween costume do you hate to see other people wear?
Pretty much all of them.

16. What the most annoying thing to you about Christmas?
Christmas decorations on sale in frickin October

17. What's something weird you have seen your grandma do?
That thing with her false teeth that she'd do without even thinking. It looked like something out of Alien.

18. What drives you nuts about girls?
The ones that squeal and/or cry at anything and everything.

19. What would you name a goldfish?
Doomed (both of ours died)

20. What shampoo scent do you prefer?
Little green apples in the summertime ...

21. What friend have you known the longest?
Ross :)

22. What soft drink do you hate?
Diet Mountain Dew

23. What is your least favorite food?
Gropers throats in a white sauce (that's another Grandma story ...).

24. What is your favorite brand of jeans and why?
Levi's red tab 511. They miraculously make me look like I actually have legs!

25. Who would you like to spend the rest of your life with?
Ross. Which is good. Since we're ... uh ... married and all!! :D

26. What frustrates you at this time?
Nothing. Which is very lovely.

27. Why are you doing this survey instead of something else?
I am, in fact, doing this survey as well as something else! Yes, I am also downloading a game that I'm going to play just as soon as I finish this. And chatting with Wolfie on Y!IM - goodness, I can multitask after all!

28. Are you naive?
Probably. You'd sort of think not at my age but ... I have had a fairly sheltered, comfortable sort of an existence by and large, so ... probably.

29. Has your house ever been broken into?
Once when I was about 5 or 6 and the best policeman ever came to fingerprint the place and made it seem so cool and interesting that I completely forgot to freak out that they'd broken in through my bedroom window ... (eek!)

30. Were you startled by anything today?
No. Why do I suddenly feel nervous?

31. Describe the weirdest part of your body?
... uh ... I'm actually remarkably unweird

32. What are you listening to right now:
The sound of the heater straining to warm the place up.

33. Last movie you bought:
Got 3 on Monday: Matrix Reloaded, Matrix Revolutions and Lara Croft Tomb Raider ... yay The Warehouse!

34. Which Wizard of OZ character are you:
Oh probably a Munchkin!

35. What color is your couch:
Light grey ... a stunningly impractical colour for such a grubby family!

36. What color are your sheets and do you like them?
Sort of a dark burgundy. Uh ... they're sheets - how enthusiastic can you get about sheets?

37. What's on your night stand?
A lamp, a bowl of beach-glass and sea-shells, a dish of prayer stones, a framed thingy of Isaiah 40:27-31, my "mainly music" name badge, a wee bottle of lavender massage oil and ... a battery recharger (sorta spoils the whole look doesn't it?!).

38. What color is your toothbrush:
Pink and white

39. What is your favorite soap:
Pears transparent - it's the only one that doesn't make me itch.

40. What did you do today?
Took the kids to school and then ... not alot else!

41. What was the nerdiest thing about you?
Uh ... glasses?

42. What's the longest your hair has ever gotten?
Barely past my shoulders.

43. Ever had the cops called on you?
Nope

44. Laptop or Desktop?
What are we talking about here? :D Oh alright - I'd like to get a laptop at some point but desktop will do nicely for now.

45. Are you one of those annoying people who text with abbreviations?
Not if I can possibly help it.

My lil Cubby

2007-10-18T00:07:00.001+13:00

Ever heard of "hyperparenting"? Parents who fill their childrens' every waking moment with sports, music lessons, extra educational "stuff"? All with the best of intentions, wanting to help their kids achieve their full potential, but in the process robbing them of the chance to just be kids. A few years ago it seemed to be everywhere - on TV, in magazines, books - along with the "cotton-wool generation" and "helicopter parents" (who comes up with this stuff?!). And, as silly as it may sound - because, after all, the whole point was that it's not a good thing - I'd feel guilty. Because it was a problem we were nowhere even close to having. What would the opposite be? Hypoparenting? (Okay now Ross is on about hippos ...) Not that our kids were neglected - and we did want them to learn how to keep themselves entertained after all - they just didn't really have very much scheduled at all. It's the same deal watching the Mums at school who seem to be involved in just about everything as well as taking their kids to this, that and every other activity. The nagging feeling that this is what I'm somehow supposed to be doing.

The only thing outside of school that we'd ever had John signed up for was gymnastics for a couple of years, until he was 6. He was really good at it too - and if nothing else it's great for teaching kids to listen to instructions - just not so keen on only being allowed to do what the teacher said. He wanted to go climb on whatever took his fancy, not be stuck doing the same thing as everyone else. So he stopped. But it wasn't replaced by anything. Amy started gymnastics at about the same time as John stopped, and from that point on every week he'd get hauled along to Amy's class after school - which is a good opportunity to get his homework done, but ... he still didn't have anything of his own.

He got really enthusiastic about soccer last year. His group of friends at school were all into it, and he was keen as mustard to sign up when the local club handed out flyers at the Christmas Parade. But registration wasn't until the end of February. So by the time we'd had the summer holidays, when he didn't see his friends much, followed by a new class at school and a different bunch of mates who weren't into soccer ... sigh.

Then came an issue of Time magazine that caught my eye.

This one

Is it wrong that a half-naked kid splattered with mud caught my attention? ... Don't answer that! :D

I know that there are, unfortunately, still people who believe that the sooner boys just darn well learn to behave like girls the better it will be for everyone (someone actually wrote that in response to the article) - but so far John has had a succession of teachers who do realise that boys and girls are different, and that being a boy is not a behavioural disorder. The general gist of the cover article was that in spite of all the intellectual angsting that goes on over the general state of boys, this aint such a bad time to be one. So what was the end result of all this reading about changing attitudes to boyishness, the celebration of old-fashioned male shenanigans that is "The Dangerous Book for Boys" (which we had already bought and hidden away in the cupboard for John this Christmas), and the hair-raising joy to be found at a boys camp in North Carolina? Cubs. We asked John if he wanted to start going to Cubs. He said yes, went along for the first time last week and came home absolutely buzzing. He came home happy this week too - kite in tow. Here's hoping that lasts.

I realise that there are many makes and models of men and boys, and not all of them are mud-loving outdoorsy fellas - but the ones in this particular family are. (As are the "girls" to be perfectly honest!) Very much. We went for a couple of bush-walks recently as a family - on 2 very different tracks and with 2 very different results. The first was in the Rimutaka Forest Park, a clear, well-formed easy-walking path that had the kids whinging about being bored within about 10 minutes. There was just no adventure in it. They weren't happy until we stopped to play at a stream and climb a tree. The second, last weekend, was completely unplanned. It was a beautiful sunny day so we decided to make the most of it and get out ... somewhere ... anywhere. The kids and I had spotted a big green stretch of grass beside the Hutt River on the way back from visiting Michelle a couple of weeks ago, but we'd only been able to stop for 10 minutes at the time. So that's where we headed. Skimming stones, chucking rocks, throwing sticks - all good fun. But then on the way back we spotted Percy's Reserve. Ross had never been there so we stopped for a look around and found a track up the back with a warning sign "not suitable for small children or all-terrain prams" (not flipping all-terrain then are they?!). Of course we went exploring! In total contrast to the Rimutaka track, this one involved clambering over tree roots, balancing on rocks (or trying to) crossing streams, at times only being able to figure out where the heck the track was because of the occasional bright orange plastic label fastened to a tree. And they loved it. They had to be talked into turning around and heading back again - by Mother, who was wearing sneakers instead of hiking boots (and proceeded to slip on a rock and collapse her knee. Ow.) and would like to come back again some time when she could actually enjoy the outing. You may guess from the fact that I'm referring to myself in the third person there that I felt like a fun-sucking party-pooper. Yes. I did. We are blessed though. We really are - with so many cool "playgrounds" practically in our backyard.

Well. That was long! :D

G'nite. Ooh. Morning. Oops!

What’s in a name?

2007-10-14T22:09:00.000+13:00

My family was never big on nicknames. Whatever your given name was, that was what you were called. Apart from those amusing moments of parental agitation when you got called by your siblings name instead (yeah, my turn to do that now!) ... and then got yelled at for laughing. Or Grandma who persisted in calling my brother Andrew for years. His name is David - the same as Grandad, you'd think she'd remember wouldn't you?! These days I call him Possum. Or Petal. Because that's the sort of deliberately aggravating thing little sisters do. :D I'm sure he doesn't mind really. He hasn't threatened death and/or dismemberment (lately), so it must be okay. He answered the phone one day when we were teenagers, and very nearly told one of my friends that they had the wrong number because they asked for "Chris". These days if Ross ever calls me "Christine" I immediately wonder if I've done something wrong - there's just something of an air of being told off.

I'm not sure where I get the urge to ... bend names slightly. Ross is looking over my shoulder as I'm writing this - pointing out that 99.9% of the time I only call our daughter Amy when she's in trouble! The rest of the time she's Mimi. She only realised this year that for her whole life I've called her something that doesn't match (although vaguely resembles) what everyone else uses. John is Johnster (actually Ross must get the ~~blame~~ credit for creating that one). Olivia is Livvy. Ross occasionally wishes for a nickname, but ... there's not alot you can do with "Ross" really.

Of course once a kid hits kindy and school, parents have to get used to being identified only in connection with said kid. I had two years of being "John's Mum" before Amy started kindy and I had to learn to answer to "Amy's Mum" too. "Chris" is, thankfully, all that has ever really stuck. Until now. I have a new name. "Keena". Courtesy of Olivia (young children do seem to have issues with all the consonants). I can live with that. :D

The Mummy

2007-10-02T13:22:00.000+13:00

For several years it felt like every stage of parenthood that we went through was the hardest yet. Starting with scratching our heads over the logistics of folding a cloth nappy as our naked 2-day-old son lay on the changing mat in front of us. Learning that naked baby boys can suddenly wee fairly impressive distances. Figuring out routines. Figuring out changes in routine. Getting the kid to sleep without being cuddled all flipping night. And on it goes. Then add another one. I'm not sure that each step was necessarily harder so much as being something new and different to figure out. Except for Amy's surgeries. They were hard.

We had a bit of a break from the perpetual learning curve about a year ago. The kids seemed to hit something of a simultaneous developmental plateau and things stayed nice and steady for a while there. But then it was back into it again as they began to push boundaries - and each other. And I'm appreciating my time with Olivia all the more for it. One little person. One little person who can still be picked up and deposited in her pram or car seat whether she darn well wants to be or not! Someone whose vocabulary is still at the level of "doggy", "bikkie", "cow say moooooo" and doesn't include that infernal word "bored" yet.

I miss Livvy. :(

It's the second week of the school holidays. So I'm mother-of-two all day instead of nanny-of-one. The weather has not been brilliant. However I have been a little more onto-it than usual and the kids actually had a number of play-dates arranged in advance for the first week. As well as a two-night sleepover at my parents' house. :D And they have been playing happily together up a tree somewhere in our jungle/garden for a few hours now, so I'll pause to be thankful for that - it's the only reason I can sit down to write this blog after all!

I wonder what sort of reaction I'll get from Olivia when we see each other again next week. Hopefully there won't be another long drawn-out "I want my Mummy" stint. Hopefully the weather will be better by then (just in time for the kids going back to school!) and we can get out for a few more walks.

It's a wonderful way to force yourself to slow down - take a walk with a toddler (okay, make that a happy toddler!). Without a stroller. I did that with Olivia a couple of weeks ago. She went into shock to start with. Seriously. The poor kid was practically having a panic attack. Normally, walking out the door is immediately followed by being strapped into either car seat or pram. Now here I was expecting her to ... move? Without wheels? That just didn't compute and the poor wee sausage started to cry. So I cuddled her and carried her down the hill, and tried again on the flat. Just puttering along. Holding hands. Watching her discover the joys of running her fingers along the fences as we passed, stopping to pick the grass out of the hole in a manhole cover, or trying to pick the tiny flowers off a conifer bush. Just her. And me. And the sunshine. :)

Stunned.

2007-09-29T17:43:00.000+12:00

I got an email a few days ago. From someone who was my pen-pal. 20+ years ago. In form 2 (year 8? 12 years old, anyway) my class at school got in touch with a class at an Australian school and those of us who were interested in being pen-friends got matched up. Kind of a "broaden your horizons" exercise I guess.

Vicki and I wrote to each other for a couple of years, exchanged photo's, sent little Christmas presents (I still have the tiny little double-heart gold pendant she sent me). Then she moved. And I promptly lost the envelope she sent her last letter in ... with her new return address :(. I knew she'd think I just wasn't writing, and I couldn't find her to let her know that I really wanted to. I felt sick. Every time I'd look through my old photo's and see hers I'd feel a twinge, and wonder how she was doing.

Then last year I found the Australian White Pages online - looked up her name, on the off-chance that she was still in South Australia, or even still had the same name. And there she was ... at the same address I'd always written to her at! So I wrote a letter - I can't remember quite what I wrote, it was a while ago. Sent it. And waited. Nothing. And nothing. And nothing ... and I pretty much forgot all about it.

Until the other day, when this email lands in my inbox. And now I don't know quite what to say. Go figure!

Genetic Mutant Freaks!

2007-09-26T10:22:00.001+12:00

Sorry about the heading, it was honestly all I could come up with! Well. The only one that had anything even vaguely to do with the subject matter anyway. On with the show ...

I occasionally wonder where the heck Amy gets her genes from. Whereas John is a fairly straightforward combination of Ross and I, about all Amy seems to get from either of us is her eye colour (Ross's) and asthma (both) ... oh alright, and a stubborn independent streak (no comment!). To add insult to injury ... she tans ... in September!! (early Spring, for my northern hemisphere friends). It makes me sick. Ross is my English rose :P. And I have more Scots in me than could possibly be good for anyone. So melanin production is not high on our genetic priority list if you know what I mean. I know we're all supposed to have wised up to the ozone hole and the dangers of sun exposure, but when there's a little golden person running around it makes it kinda hard to love the "pale and interesting" look. Given that it tends to be seen more as "pale and unwell".

I guess I shouldn't be that surprised at her ... ummm ... uniqueness, given that Ross and I are both throw-backs. Ross managed 5'7" in spite of a 5'2" Dad and a 4'11" Mum, because of a 6-foot uncle lurking in the wings somewhere. And my Grandma just loved wondering out loud why I was so much bigger than my parents. Not taller ... bigger ... size is relative ... and my relatives are tiny. Promise me something? Never use the word "hefty" around a teenage girl. Ever. Even if she is (and I wasn't dammit). Please? :(

Moving right along ... It's going to be interesting watching how things shape up as they get older. John seems pretty much on track to be about the same height and build as Ross (maaaaaaybe just a wee bit taller). Amy, on the other hand ... is anyone's guess. If she carries on the way she has been she'll end up taller than any of us - John included. And wouldn't that go down well?! :D Or she could be like my Mum (though goodness knows why she would be, she isn't in any other sense!) and stop growing at 13. It's one aspect of parenting that I never even considered prior to actually having kids - the ongoing quasi-scientific observation that follows throwing a couple of people together and watching what crawls out of the gene pool. It's all rather intriguing ... quite apart from the fact that they're adorable and I'll love them to bits no matter what they turn out looking like, but, you know, the observation continues!

Spot the glow-worm amidst the pink people!

24/7

2007-09-25T15:44:00.000+12:00

I'm taking the opportunity to blog now because (a) the kids are playing quietly (but not that "what are you up to?" ominous silence) and (b) I'm awake. Having increased meds, I don't often get past about 9pm without struggling to keep my eyes open let alone blog anything coherent. Sooooooo sad! I've even managed to doze off during some of the loudest bits of LotR lately. I slept through Helm's Deep for goodness sake!! I've never been a morning person. That, unfortunately, is still the case. So I'm bleary-eyed and incoherent at both ends of the day! Night owl tendencies became most prominent at university, when the hours between midnight and 2am were favourites for working on assignments. That settled down a bit after graduation, but until recently I'd quite often only realise how late it was when I'd look at my watch and discover that it was tomorrow already. Ross is much the same. He used to call me Pumpkin when we were dating because I hardly ever got home before midnight. :D

Anyway ... We finished a week of 24/7 prayer at church last weekend. Basically it is what it sounds like. A room is set aside, with a booking sheet for people to put their name down for an hour (or two ... or three) to pray there - with the goal of having at least one person in that room praying every hour of every day for a whole week. I've done late-night slots before, but given my recent bedtimes I got in quick to book a couple of hours mid-morning this year! It is, I think, about the third year we've done it(?). And I know quite a number of us found in that first year that one hour goes way faster than you might think. Something very special happens to a room that is set aside - dedicated, consecrated, whatever the right word is - in that way. Every year I wish there was a space like that available all year round. Without the distractions of home, and with that sense of ... holiness. It's no hardship to spend time in a place like that. Imagine sitting with the person you love most in the whole world. How easy it is to just sit. How fast time seems to pass when you're with someone you just love being with. It's like that ... but not just a warm fuzzy feeling. Somehow there's communication going on even in the silence. I walk in the door with no idea what to pray, and after a while find myself praying along lines that I never anticipated.

We went as a family this year too, for an hour on Friday. Friday night is "Family Night". We usually go to the library, then have fish and chips for dinner before doing ... something. Sometimes it's a rented movie, sometimes it's a walk on the beach - just some activity together as a family at the end of the week. Well last Friday it was the prayer room - before library/dinner, it was only slot left available, but it was still our Family Night thing. There were activities there for kids, and, as often happens, there was a round of "I don't know what to do" "I can't decide" ... etc etc. I'm not about to pretend that it was a profoundly spiritual experience for them, but it was an opportunity to sneak a peek into their hearts. John told us off for interrupting him while he was praying for one of his school-friends! And made a plane to stick on the prayer wall with his dream for his future written on it.

Very cool stuff. I'm already looking forward to next time. As well as wondering how to create a space like that in our home. Not easy in a little house, but ... it feels like an important thing to do. :)

The Nanny, Part II

2007-09-11T17:13:00.000+12:00

I've been deemed acceptable. It wasn't looking good there for a week or so. Even Olivia's favourite TV programmes stopped being much of a diversion. My entrance came to be greeted by a facial implosion and wails of "MummyMummyMummyMummy!!" as she proceeded to wrap herself around Nicola's leg. Then she wanted to go to bed ... the child who hardly ever goes down in her cot for her mother during the day. Hey, I can relate. Bed is where I retreat to when I want the whole world to go away and leave me alone too. And all that directly preceded the doctor ordering me to quit. :(

Then we turned the corner (or is that "went round the bend"?!). Now I get a smile as I walk in the door. Requests for "tum tum" (a tickly rhyme) at nappy time. And "go soon" means "where are we off to today?" instead of "go away and send my Mummy back". Although, she wasn't too impressed by BuggyFit. I'd watched umpteen pram-pushing parents heading into the aerobics room at the gym on numerous occasions from my usual perch on the treadmill. I'm not usually one for aerobics classes (they confuse me - lunge left and step right and forward and backward and swap feet and ... what?!!), but since I haven't been getting to the gym at all in recent weeks it seemed better than nothing. First time we went, last Wednesday, she just looked stunned the whole time. Then on Monday she realised where we were and started to scowl ... uh-oh! But I guess she just decided the whole thing was beneath her and promptly went to sleep - pounding music and all :). Hopefully, so long as she gets to go to the mall and the park and the beach and the library and StoryPlace at Te Papa, she might just allow me a couple of workouts a week too!

So. Yay. Again. Still.

Waking up

2007-09-06T20:39:00.000+12:00

That's what this week has felt like. Waking up. Logic has returned (just in time to install a new DVD player!), along with the ability to just be silly, and it is so nice to have them back. To be out of the fog.

I used to half-joke about it being better to be a pessimist because you're pleasantly surprised when things turn out okay, whereas optimists must be disappointed alot. I guess I still believe that to some degree. But when pessimism has me not wanting to celebrate current goodness because of the assumption that it must be transient ... it's really not a good thing. It robs me of "now"- of the ability to simply enjoy what is good in this moment right now. Because I'm afraid of looking stupid when it all falls to custard (that should really have been "if" there, shouldn't it?). I feel silly now for having celebrated coming off medication earlier this year - even though at the time I was genuinely overjoyed - because it felt like such a defeat having to go back on it again.

I don't know where I got such a ... combative approach to life. Whether it's an inherited personality thing, or something I've picked up along the way. Because if it's a learned thing I guess I have more hope that it can be unlearned again. Not that I'd want to be rid of it completely, because goodness knows there are things in the world today that are worth getting bolshie over. But too often if something is "wrong", whether internally or externally I just ... declare war I guess. And the trouble is I'm in a battle I can't win, trying to change something I can't fix, and admitting that depression is something I have to manage on an ongoing basis rather than being something I can work towards ending is ... too much like admitting defeat.

The doctor compared it to asthma - knowing the things that trigger it and taking preventative steps beforehand. Asthma was oddly easy to accept though - I don't think I've ever felt the urge to try and "beat" it, I just use my inhaler before I exercise because I know what the consequences will be if I don't. It's much better to prevent an attack than try and reverse one that's underway. Which is how the doctor wants things to work with the depression too. Most of me knows that it's the same deal, just a different organ - brain instead of lungs. But somehow it is different.

I just hate those days when I am, frankly, stupid. When I just can't think straight enough to even string a decent sentence together. When I misunderstand things that on a good day are blindingly obvious. When I hate catching my reflection in the bathroom mirror and realising that the way I feel is showing on my face.

Saw the doctor last Thursday. Not a happy occasion. She thinks I'm underestimating how long it took things to come right the first time round. Frankly I can't remember how long it did take, so she's probably right! Medication dosage has been increased for now and I have to go back and see her again in a few weeks. She also told me - practically ordered me - to quit nannying. Too demanding. Too draining. Her theory is that if I need to work at all it needs to be something mundane and undemanding. Which I know damn fine would really send me round the twist. That was confirmed by the two people who know me best (Ross and my Mum). Besides. I can't facing quitting - failing again - so soon after having to resign at SAJ. How many other jobs will I try only to find I can't handle those either? I do not like feeling incompetent, incapable. Quitting would do more damage right now than persevering. She also wants me to try counselling - to try and reprogram the ol' "self-talk", to work on my pessimistic tendencies - that one I will go along with.

Right now I am in a good space. Life is good. And regardless of how I felt last week, or how I may (or may not) feel next week, I want to celebrate that.

Oh, yeah. Modem card. Installed.

Silence

2007-08-28T16:07:00.000+12:00

We have a ... not new, but newer, computer. The old one is now on John's desk. Trouble is the newer one doesn't have a modem, so until we get our act together and get either an external modem or a modem card, the only computer in the house with internet access is sitting in John's room. And I tend to blog in the evenings ... when he is (supposed to be) asleep. So things will be a tad quiet. To be honest, they would be anyway. I'm too angry, bitter and fed up to write anything worth reading just now. And writing has only served to dig a deeper hole the last few days anyway. So ... best avoided.

A little late-night rambling

2007-08-21T23:50:00.000+12:00

The flu is finally (almost) gone - thanks largely to an entire weekend of bed-rest. Yay for hands-on Daddies. See? He does do sympathy! :D

So, anyway, here I am at damn near midnight blogging. Why? Because I've spent the evening contemplating the monthly income-tax paperwork requirements of my latest ... ahem ... "career move" and am seriously in need of a little light distraction. Even NCIS couldn't help. Much.

Ever worn something so long it just feels wrong to be without it? My wedding ring is currently tucked safely away in a box in a drawer. Because, between weight-loss and winter finger-shrinkage, it was falling off several times a day and it was only a matter of time before it got lost. Resizing isn't an option. My hands tend to swell in summer, and I'm not resizing the darn thing twice a year. Ross suggested doing a Frodo and wearing it on a chain round my neck, but a naked ring-finger just doesn't look right. So in the meantime I'm wearing another, smaller and somewhat more decorative, gold ring in it's place. But that looks wrong too. It's a ring ... it's not the right ring. Sigh ... :(. Ross is, thankfully, gloriously unsentimental (and unsuperstitious), so at least I'm the only one here having wedding-ring issues.

Moving on. When I last wrote I was still anticipating munchkin meltdown. Ross was ... frustrated, shall we say, at my apparent inability to just appreciate the Happy. Telling him that Nicola was anticipating exactly the same thing didn't help my cause any. (Mothers! What do we know?! ... Hmmm) He just informed me that we're as bad as each other. Which is true. We celebrate the differences we manage to find between ourselves, because otherwise the degree of similarity is just flat-out terrifying. But anyway - it happened. The Meltdown. We suspect that Olivia humoured us last week based on an assumption that this was just a temporary measure - then Mummy goes and heads off to work this week as well. Cue irate toddler. Of course a bad night's sleep hadn't helped either ...

We survived. Yay for long naps and distracting walks. I even got a smile towards the end there. But if I'm gonna survive tomorrow as well I better get some sleep.

sniffle, hack, parp

2007-08-16T18:24:00.000+12:00

The flu has such a way of sucking the fun out of life.

I wanted to tell you how wonderfully gorgeously sweet Olivia is - and how the anticipated separation-anxiety-implosion didn't happen. But it's strangely difficult to focus on the Happy when your lungs hurt.

So I'll just crawl back into bed and bond with my electric blanket. Happy will be blogged about once Healthy is back on the scene. Which kinda makes you wonder what this entry is in aid of .... I guess I just wanted the world to know that there's Happy waiting to be shared.

G'nite!

The Nanny

2007-08-10T15:20:00.000+12:00

Nope, not that one ...

... or that one! ...

I am now officially nanny (3 days a week) to one small 20-month-old bundle of gorgeousness named Olivia, whose mummy, Nicola (one of my closest friends), is taking her turn at heading back into the paid workforce after an eight-year child-induced hiatus!

I'm also officially responsible for calculating my own income tax etc, and sending forms to Inland Revenue each month, but let's stick with the fun stuff. Not that it's rocket science or anything, I'm just really good at losing pieces of paper ... Thank goodness for downloadable PDFs.

Had a little visit on Wednesday and spent the day with Olivia and Nicola, getting to know where everything is and roughly when everything happens (routine? :D). Nicola went out for half an hour. Olivia cried for 10 minutes - during which time she put her wee shoes on and tried to go out the front door, and pootled around looking for Mummy in wardrobes(!). Then somewhere along the way she discovered that every time she pressed the button on a musical toy and set the tune going, the loopy lady she'd been abandonned with would do a silly dance ... Hey. It's what I do :). Nicola came home to find the pair of us cheerfully reading books together. Mummy=happy=Yay!

Monday will be the first day with just the two of us. We'll see how that goes, eh?

Yay (Part 2)

2007-08-03T11:01:00.000+12:00

Okay, so Ross has hearing aids - not the kind of thing one goes around advertising on someone else's behalf until they're ready to announce it themselves. I didn't know if it was something he'd ever blog about, frankly - but I'm glad he has.

It was something that had been coming for a while - audiologists had been consulted previously, but things weren't bad enough (yet) for aids to be much help. So we watched DVDs with subtitles, or videotapes that we knew by heart anyway, and I had to pay attention to anything else we watched in case I had to repeat something he didn't quite catch. We hate actors who mumble ... or talk too fast ... and we LOVE Tony Veitch.

Anyway. That lovely set of "noisemakers", as he calls them, that Ross tried out in the audiologists office a while back - we were told they would cost about $8000 (eek!). Thankfully there is a subsidy available for people whose work is affected by their hearing loss - which was approved and knocked off most of it. Yay. But we were still left with $1800 to find ourselves.

Then I got a letter from Inland Revenue.

They owed us.

Just over $1300 ... :)

No, it's not one of those stories where someone in need prayed and suddenly received the exact amount they needed in the mail. Yes, it probably would have happened, hearing aids or not. But the concurrence of the two events has us feeling very ... blessed, grateful, and wanting to share our little "Yay" moment with the world because of all the whinging it normally has to put up with from my direction. And because it's important to say Thank-you.

After a couple of weeks, things seem to be settling down. Ross is talking at normal volume again, after a couple of days of conspiratorial whispering because of his own voice booming around in his head. The TV volume has found a reasonably happy medium (I was the one having trouble hearing it for a few days). He can also now hear the more-or-less constant noise-stream emitted by our children, and has developed some understanding of why I periodically lose it because I just want them to shut up for 5 minutes. But instead of being asked to repeat myself or speak up I'm now fielding requests to lower my volume please. And I can't hug him because he gets feedback. We'll get there! :)

Yay (Part 1)

2007-08-02T10:15:00.001+12:00

Given how many of my blog entries seem to be somewhat ... errr ... grumpy, it seemed kinda important to take the opportunity to celebrate something good. And now that Ross has finally got round to blogging his part of the story (here), I can share the happy ... well, I can once you've read his anyway, cos if I do my bit now it'll completely ruin his punch-line. So ... Go. Read. I'll be back later.

Well. That took all of ... what? ... 5 days?

2007-07-31T00:14:00.000+12:00

Thank-you to those who prayed.

Spent Thursday afternoon at the beach with my study bible (yay sunshine!) - praying, reading every reference under the heading "Guidance" in the index, and writing out the study notes for all of them (until I ran out of time and had to head home to pick the kids up from school, anyway). Because, if I'm honest, I knew well enough where that "lamp for my feet" line came from - what it was exactly that is that lamp. And therein lay my problem. I have bible issues. The very first doctrine of the Salvation Army says "We believe that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments were given by inspiration of God and that they only constitute the Divine rule of Christian faith and practice" Nineteen years ago (yikes!) I signed those "Articles of War", and that first one has been a struggle ever since. Inspired by God? No problem. But an awful lot of people have been involved since, and ... humans are human and have a way of screwing up, and ... yeah, I guess I have "cynic" issues too.

When I was a teenager "doing your devotions" was a phrase that was frequently used - I don't know if it's gone out of vogue, or if I'm just too old to hang around those who might be using it now! - it was generally acknowledged as something it was really important to do, but nobody ever seemed to feel they did enough. Unfortunately all the "devotional" books and youth bible studies on offer at the time seemed to assume that "teenager" automatically meant "brand new baby Christian". I'm so glad I went to those youth bible studies though - where we all worked our way through question after blindingly obvious question, blinking awkwardly across the room at each other in the silences that followed each one, wondering if we'd missed something - because I knew I wasn't the only one who felt like we were being treated like morons. Read passage (a), answer question (b), think thought (c), pray prayer (d) and you're done. Anyone else feeling like there must be something ... deeper? I know that I don't know enough to figure it all out on my own. But who does know? How do you find the right people to ask? Because somewhere along the way, I twigged. Just because somebody wrote a book doesn't mean they know what they're talking about (the Internet has made that even worse - you get people like me airing the contents of their heads all over the place). And I started looking at the people who wrote these things and thinking "Well who the heck are you anyway?". And it's something I keep falling over. How do you know who the right people to listen to are? Unfortunately I have something of a "baby and the bathwater" approach to things - as Ross so sweetly reminded me the other day :P. If somebody comes out with something that I know (or think I know - more on that in a minute) is factually incorrect I have a really hard time accepting everything else they've said. It sucks. Particularly when it comes to listening to someone speak - that error, whether real or supposed, clangs around in my head for the duration and I don't hear anything else from then on. At least with a book you can put it down, go do some research ... somewhere ... and come back to it. Not to mention that reading is the main way I pick up information anyway - do not, repeat do not, attempt to give me sequential verbal instructions ... blank looks will ensue.

Trouble is, if someone says, or writes, something untrue, but sounds eloquent, bold and knowledgeable (or just-plain-appealing) enough, that untruth goes out there and gets repeated, even if only as a nagging thought in the back of someone's mind, as fact. And it then undermines the teaching of someone else who may not be as confident or eloquent but speaks the truth.

Anyway - I got a book out of the church library on Sunday. All about exegesis and hermeneutics (mmmm ... big words ... yummy!). Someone told me it was rather heavy going. Slow, maybe - because I keep stopping to look up bible references in multiple versions - but I'm loving it!

So - after all that - I think I've found, or am in the process of finding, my lamp. It turns out that I'm a very small part of God's answer to someone else's prayer just now. And when that someone is one of your best friends, that's pretty darn coooool. :)

So where IS the frickin LAMP??!!!

2007-07-26T08:55:00.000+12:00

Why is it that whenever I look for reading material that might be helpful in my current situation, all I find is more stuff to beat myself over the head with?

God isn't going to let you see the distant scene either. So you might as well quit looking for it. He promises a lamp unto our feet, not a crystal ball into the future. (That's Max Lucado, if you wondered).

But I'm not looking for a crystal ball ... I'm missing the damn lamp (no Anchorman jokes either ... please ...)

I'm going off-line, AWOL, "missing" for a while - internet-wise anyway. Any spare prayers you may have available would really be appreciated.

Here I am to ... Worship?

2007-07-20T12:41:00.000+12:00

We started a new bible study series at Home Group on Wednesday. All about worship. Kicking off this week with what it is exactly.

So, aside from why I love Chris Tomlin ...

There was a quote from a guy name Louie Giglio (apparently founder of Choice Ministries and Passion Conferences, neither of which I've ever heard of, but anyway ...):

"How do you know what you worship? It's easy, you simply follow the trail of your time, your affection, your money and your allegiance. At the end of the trail you will find a throne. And whoever or whatever is on that throne is what's of highest value to you. On that throne is what you worship" That was immediately followed by the question: "Other than God, what would be the most important thing in your life right now, i.e. Where do you spend your time, money, affection and allegiance?"

This was a surprisingly and disturbingly easy one to answer. My mental health. Trying to control it, sort it, get a damn grip. It's why I handed in my resignation, it's why I've been to the gym three times this week already, it's why I wash the dishes, vacuum the house, keep the place tidy - not that they aren't mostly things I'd do anyway, it's just that the motivation for them is kinda ... selfish. I do them more because running is a good stress release than because it's good for your general health to get some exercise, and more because I get agitated when I'm surrounded by clutter than because it's just a good thing to have a clean, tidy house. The other side effects happen - along with a generally happier family because Mum's not wound up to the point of snapping - but they are side effects rather than the primary motivation.

Then we went piling into Genesis 22 - the story of Abraham nearly sacrificing Isaac on an altar. Oh goody. Can I be honest? I hate that story. I really do. The thought that God would ask someone to do something so abhorrent ... Okay, so God never intended for Isaac to die - the point of the exercise was to find out whether Abraham loved God more than he loved Isaac, but ... how the heck are you supposed to know? How could Abraham know that? How could Isaac know? They couldn't - as far as they were both concerned Abraham was about to kill his son because God told him to. We have names for people who do crap like that. Not very nice ones. I feel sorry enough for Abraham, but what about the poor kid?! I mean, he's not dumb - he's already figured out that they've got everything they need except the sacrificial lamb. But it doesn't mention what he says when Dad ties him up, plonks him on the altar and gets out a knife. I somehow can't imagine it being either nothing or "Oh, right, I'm it huh? Okey dokey then".

Sigh ... Next up: "Going back to the question where you were asked to identify the most important thing in your life right now besides God. What would you do if God asked you to take it and offer it to him as a sacrifice? Would you do it? How would it make you feel? Do you think God would ask you to do this?"

After the last month or so I can't help feeling that He did, and that I said "no". I felt, or thought that I felt, God saying to me that I was where He wanted me to be. That I was there for His purpose. But when things began to impact too significantly on my mental health - and my family as a result - I turned away from that purpose, putting my mental health first and refusing to let it be sacrificed. People have told me that God wouldn't ask me to sacrifice my mental wellbeing, but I can't shake the feeling that He did and I refused.

Then again, maybe He'd just like to be to spend a little less time reading about exercise, nutrition, breathing exercises, relaxation and stress management and crack open the ol' bible now and then. Yeah. There's a thought.

Why I write what I do

2007-07-06T15:05:00.000+12:00

This is kind of expanding on a conversation that I've had with a couple of people lately.
I'm not great at conversation ... no, rephrase that ... I suck at small talk. Badly. That's part of why I love doing dramas - the words are already made up for you! There are some people that I find it easy to chat to but mostly because they're good at chatting! So opportunities to share my ... (trying avoid jargon here) story? testimony? (and failing!) in the course of conversation hardly ever come my way. I find it much easier to express myself in writing. So, it all gets posted here - the good, the bad, the just-plain-silly, as well as the stuff I only talk about with my best mate/husband - for all the Net to see. How's that for irony?! It's certainly not what I imagined I'd end up doing when I fell over MySpace a year or so ago.

I have wondered at times whether I wear my heart on my sleeve a little too much. But at the end of the day, it's all part of one story. And if this is my testimony, it needs to be whole. I had someone admit to me once, years ago, that he embellished his testimony to make it sound like he used to be worse than he was. He didn't think it was interesting enough as it was, and he believed that others did the same thing, because we want to make God sound good, don't we? Like God could be glorified by a lie. As if having grown up in a stable, loving home is now somehow a bad thing.

In the same way, it does nothing positive to pretend that all struggles are in the past and life is now all fluffy clouds and pretty flowers. All that does is perpetuate the myth that coming to Christ will make all your problems disappear - and then you get people, like my brother, who "tried Christianity but it didn't work" - and I don't want to be a part of that lie either.

On a personal level, it's just a continuation of the journal-writing that started when I was about 11, I think. Sometimes I look back and realise that I've forgotten alot of stuff that I went through. Stuff I'd never have thought I would forget. It's good to look back from time to time inasmuch as I find out that I haven't just been standing still, not getting anywhere. And the keyboard doesn't give me writer cramp.

Well, it's happened.

2007-07-04T12:20:00.000+12:00

It was always going to. It was just a matter of time. Yep, I've finally had to admit it ... John's faster than me. I can no longer beat my eight-year-old son in a sprint.

Okay so Ross says that's been the case for a while, it's the admission that's taken it's time ... (but I'm only posting that because if I don't he'll park it in the comments. Hell, he probably will anyway!)

Sigh ... at least it took eight (and a half!) years to happen - given that it was clear from very early on that he's more or less a clone of his Daddy. I bet I could beat him over 10k though ... :D

Halfway there.

2007-07-02T12:48:00.001+12:00

It's been an interesting couple of weeks. I'm halfway through the four-week notice period required before finishing my current job. Ross noticed a fairly dramatic improvement in my general "state of being" within a couple of days. Perhaps because there's an end-date to work towards, and my cranial rotation has slowed sufficiently to enable me to see at least some of why the job was doing my head in.

Which is not to say that I now want to stay in it, having identified those things. Because too many of them are not about to change. What I am hoping is that I'll be able to walk out the door at the end with something constructive to say about the job. And something learned about myself.

Because, granted, a few of those "things" are my own ... tendencies. I'm not going to call them issues - although some of them might be, and they'll continue to be worked at along the way. But I am, for whatever reason, made the way I am - as we all are - and do better in some situations than others - like anyone else. Some people thrive on deadlines. Others don't. I'm somewhere in the middle there. I do like having something definate to work on, with a specific date to have it done by. There's something very satisfying about getting the project completed and being able to sit back and enjoy what you've achieved. But one long more-or-less-continuous string of deadlines is not my happy space. Not when there's little time for any "sitting back and enjoying" before ploughing on again.

There's other stuff too, but ... not here.

There just has to be a space out there somewhere that a stubborn emotional introverted systematic creative over-thinking perfectionist fits into. Happily. Could it be happily please? Sigh.

I am feeling better though. I know I am. Cuz I'm singing again.

One door closes...

2007-06-19T16:45:00.000+12:00

Sunday - handed in resignation (with four weeks notice).

Tuesday - still feeling like I did the right thing.

I have the skill-set required to do the job - and do it well ... I'm proud of the stuff I've achieved in my time there. But that in itself doesn't make me the right person for the job. And not being the right person in that particular role doesn't mean that I'm incapable/incompetent either.

Also had it pointed out to me that God probably doesn't want me to have a mental meltdown ... at least, you'd hope not wouldn't you?!

So maybe soon I'll have, not just the time but the headspace, the mental energy to catch up on my friends' insane adventures in Middle Earth (entirely imaginary, but enormous fun nonetheless!) ... or finally finish one of about three books I'm supposed to be reading ... or do all that winter "stuff" that the garden needs ...

Or maybe not, cos a good friend has a job interview coming up, and if she gets it she'll need a nanny 12 hours a week ... we'll see.

And besides, I've been having too much fun over on Facebook (thanks Chantel!) throwing food at people and being hit by flying sheep (Rew!) to spend much time here anyway. Although ... half my friends over there are also my friends over here so, at least you guys won't miss me. That sheep was definately a direct hit.

I am so burbling ... must be feeling better, eh? :D

not enough

2007-06-15T16:45:00.002+12:00

I'd love to say that the (comparative) silence of the last few weeks has been because my brain remained in the blissfully snoozy state in which I last wrote anything particularly meaningful. But I can't.

The silence has been because I'm afraid of being thought a whiner. How many times are people willing to tune into my life only to hear ... yep - still in a hole. I don't want to become one of those people that doesn't get asked how they are because they're always struggling with something and nobody really wants to hear it. Granted, I only know one person like that, but it bugs me that I avoid her - even if I'm not the only one that does, it's not exactly the loving, supportive, Christian thing to do, is it?

Once upon a time I was extremely independent - those who know me will probably laugh at the "once upon a time" ... but now the difference is that I want to be, I try to be, but I'm just not up to it any more. The underlying fear always was, and still is, being thought incompetent, incapable ... not enough. And now I've slammed head-on into the wall of "not enough". I'm not enough. That's what keeps going round and round in my head.

It's made harder by the fact that I am certain that this is where God wants me to be. For what purpose, I still don't know - but I feel trapped. Because there is no out. To quit would be deliberate disobedience. But that knowledge is engaged in full-on warfare with the growing feeling that I am not the right person for this job. That they need someone who won't have panic attacks every time a major deadline rolls around. Someone who won't get bogged down in three feet of pissed-offness because people aren't, for whatever reason, replying to emails. Someone who can just bowl on up and ask for what they need from others in order to do the job.

Some time ago I wondered out loud in a blog, what does it mean to do things in God's strength? What do people mean when they say that God helped them do something they couldn't have done on their own? I'm still looking for that answer. Because I need the other "How" - not just how do you know that's what happened, but how do you plug into that strength in the first place? When you know what God wants you to do, but also that you don't have what it takes to do it, how do you connect with His strength? Praying every morning, handing each day over to Him, does help. But it's not enough. Knowing that it's His purpose, not mine, is not enough. Not enough.

I used to look down on people who seemed to always be 'going through a hard time'. That's the nicest way I can think of putting it - "look down on" - all the other words that come to mind: despise, contempt, disdain, sound so ... nasty. Because they are. I guess I'm learning that I haven't always been the nicest, most compassionate person out there. And I'm sorry.

Big Kid Survey

2007-06-15T00:32:00.000+12:00

Wolfie posted this as a bulletin, and I could use a little light-hearted stupidity about now, so here goes!

Grown Up Survey

(Meant to be completed by those out of high school)

Sorry to my younger friends.

Tired of all of those surveys made up by high school kids?

'Have you ever kissed someone?'

'Missed someone?'

'Told someone you loved them?'

'Drank alcohol?'

Here are 50 questions for the people who are a little more relatable...

1. What bill do you hate paying the most?

Doctors

2. Where was the last place you had a romantic dinner?

My brother shouted us dinner out at his favourite restaurant (Maria Pia's) for our 10th anniversary last year.

3. Last time you puked from drinking?

Never

4. When is the last time you got drunk and danced on a bar?

You have to be drunk to dance on a bar?

5. Name of your first grade teacher

Ooooh ... crumbs ... hang on (checks photo album) ... nope no help there - can't remember.

6. What do you really want to be doing right now?

Unconsciousness would be good.

7. What did you want to be when you were growing up?

A zookeeper or a park ranger

8. How many colleges did you attend?

One

9. Why did you choose the shirt that you have on right now?

Because it's warm, comfortable, suitable for the office and, above all ... clean!

10. What do you think about the current gas prices?

Let's just say I'm very glad to have a small economical car, and hasn't the weather been lovely for walking lately?

11. If you could move anywhere and take someone with you - where and who would you take?

Somewhere (in New Zealand) with native bush (and birds), a river (or lake), a mountain (or mountain range) and a cosy little cottage. And I'd take ... my family of course! (I don't care if it says someone, I ain't leaving any of 'em behind!)

12. First thought when the alarm went off this morning?

..... whaaaa?

13. Last thought before going to sleep last night?

Please don't let the church get burgled.

14. Favourite style of underwear?

High-cut brief (does that seem like an over-share to anyone else?)

15. Favourite style of underwear for the opposite sex?

Ross hates them, but I think boxers are cute.

16. What errand/chore do you despise?

Cleaning the toilet.

17. If you didn't have to work, would you volunteer?

Yep

18. Get up early or sleep in?

Sleeeeeeep!!

19. What is your favourite cartoon character(s)?

Pocoyo - he's completely demented and utterly adorable.

20. Favourite thing to do at night with a guy?

Snuggle. Really. Sorry. :P

21. Have you found real love yet?

I do believe I have.

22. When did you first start feeling old?

Haven't got there yet. Well - physically anyway. I guess I realise how old I am when people talk about stuff that happened 20 years ago and I remember it ... clearly.

23. Favorite 80's movie?

Aliens

24. Your favorite lunch meat?

N/A - and I don't do tofu either.

25. What do you get every time you go into Sam's Club?

Who? What?

26. Beach or lake?

A lake with a beach? :P

If I had to choose, I'd say beach.

27. Do you Think marriage is an outdated ritual?

Nope

28. Favourite guilty pleasure?

Mountain Dew (once in a blue moon, honest!)

30. Favourite movie you wouldn't want anyone to find out about?The only ones I wouldn't want anyone to find out about were the ones that were so bad I'm too embarrassed to admit having seen them - so they'd hardly rate as favourites, would they?!

32. Cowboys or Indians?

Indians

33. Cops or Robbers?

Mmmm ... uniforms! :D

34. Who from high school would you like to run into?

Michelle Holden - I'd like to hug that girl.

35. What radio station is your car radio tuned to right now?

Dunno - I listen to tapes

36. Norm or Cliff?

Huh?

37. The Cosby Show or the Simpsons?

Cosby

38. Worst relationship mistake that you wish you could take back?

Getting back together after the first break-up (first boyfriend this is)

39. Do you like the person who sits directly across from you at work?

I don't really sit across from anyone now ... I MISS SELENA!!!!!

40. If you could get away with it, who would you kill?

... nope, not going there.

41. What famous person(s) would you like to have dinner with?

Ronald McDonald? Ooh, I know - David Bowie, he's a nutter.

42. What famous person would you like to sleep with?

... nope, not going there either.

43. Have you ever had to use a fire extinguisher for its intended purpose?

Yep

44. Last book you read for real?

Probably The Hobbit - I haven't actually finished anything in ages.

45. Do you have a teddy bear?

I did until Amy stole it last week.

46. Strangest place you have ever brushed your teeth?

Not really strange - but probably by a river in the middle of nowhere

47. Somewhere in California you've never been and would like to go?

Wherever Alia is! Either that or Yosemite National Park.

48. Do you go to church?

Yep

49. At this point in your life would you rather start a new career or a new relationship?

Gee, let me think ... career!! I'd have to be severely brain-damaged to take the other option.

50. Just how OLD are you?

Chronologically - 35. Stopped feeling any older at about ... 17.

Drugs are great

2007-05-22T21:05:00.000+12:00

Okay, maybe that didn't come out quite right, but frankly I'm 2 mellow 2 care (oh shoot, I'm abbreviating ... bad sign!)

Just don't expect anything particularly deep from me for a while ... my brain is a small furry critter curled up having a nap in my cranium. And I'm not about to poke it.

Just to clarify ... yes, it's antidepressants again - don't worry, I'm not tripping on anything else. Although, I did discover at the weekend that paracetamol and ibuprofen together turn me into quite the little space cadet ... (end-of-stress-bunny-week-migraine warning signs threatened to annihilate my much-looked-forward-to overnighter).

Byeeeeeeeee :)

Fighting Hagar

2007-05-15T16:44:00.001+12:00

"I'm having a Hagar moment" That's all we need to say, Ross or I, and the other understands. It's shorthand for "I'm finding things really hard, I'm overwhelmed, and I just want to run away and hide". We both suffer from them. Which is good for empathetic purposes, but not so great when what you really need is a boot up the bum.

Somebody kick me. (Nope, second thoughts, better not - mood I'm in ... violence could ensue)

I feel like I did back in college, being bullied. And just the same as then I need to stand firm, hold fast, outlast the tormentor. Only this time the bully is in my own head. Typical isn't it? Just as I recommit everything I do to God, trusting that I'm where I am for His purpose, I get pounded. Frickin typical. :(

Random crap

2007-05-12T21:41:00.001+12:00

Sunday. Told God I needed to hear from Him one way or the other by the end of the day. Yes, I stamped my little foot and threw a tantrum. At God. Which sounds faintly amusing looking back on it. But I did. Hear from Him, that is. And the funny thing is - He told me the opposite of what I wanted to hear ... and yet there's peace in it. How does that work?!

Wednesday. Turned off the shower and ... the sound of water continued. Gushing. Behind the bathroom wall! Cue one mad dash to turn the water off at the toby (yes, with a stop to throw something on along the way ... you don't need the alternative mental picture now do you?!). We now have holes in our bathroom wall, and no shower. Thankfully the bath is still usable, but ... it's one more thing. There's always one more thing. Just as we think we might finally be able to start building up some savings, along comes something else ... :(

The DVD player isn't working any more either. We're rediscovering our VHS collection, but that isn't going to stay fun for very long. Al Gore and his Inconvenient Truth (along with every other DVD out there that I want to see) is just going to have to wait. But then, I have about three different books I should be reading at the moment, so maybe it's not such a bad thing. :)

Why have I spent so much time this week thinking about Paris Hilton? Not that I've spent that much time thinking about her, it's just that any at all seems like a waste. A very small part of me feels sorry for her, because of a sneaking suspicion that she's been raised to believe that "The Rules" do not apply to Hiltons. But I hit that part of me over the head and locked it in the cupboard because the rest of me is laughing my ass off. But then, I'm being nasty this week ... isn't that right Paul?! :D

This week is gonna be busy busy busy ... but once it's done I get to go away overnight with a bunch of friends who masquerade as workmates. We're going to a conference - but it's a "mainly music" conference, and we're all a tad demented, so fun shall be had.

Getting to know ...

2007-05-02T23:40:00.000+12:00

How do you live under the same roof as someone for 23 years and not know? How do I only learn last week that my big brother can't read people?

It was his birthday. So I rang him to find out if I was doing the usual hideously predictable gift voucher or if there was something specific he wanted. It was an excuse really - I'd wanted to talk to him for a few weeks, just to check in and ... know he was okay. And I think we had the best conversation we've had in ... ever. A couple of things happen, a door opens, and I start to get to know my own brother.

Last year he was diagnosed with Aspergers syndrome. When he told me ... I don't think I've ever been more relieved. Partly because I knew what it was, but mostly because of what it wasn't. Because he had gone to the doctor with significant holes in his short/mid-term memory, and we were all quietly thinking early-onset Alzheimers or brain tumour or something equally ghastly. And also because it's something he's always ... had? been? how do you phrase that? It just turns out that until last year he'd been learning and working in environments that suited him well. (And social awkwardness is pretty much bog standard in our family, so, no red flags there!) Last week was the first time he'd really talked (to me anyway) about the things he struggled with at college and university - without the "sod the world, I don't care" façade he'd always tried to wear (but that, frankly, we all saw straight through anyway.)

On a personal level it's been helpful. Because the things I resented about him as a kid are inextricably snarled up in the things that have made other parts of his life so much of a struggle. So how do I begrudge him his academic success knowing that?

Drove up to his place to drop off his "present" (yeah, book voucher ... again!) and talked some more ... texted him Tuesday, he rang back, talked some more. Hold that door open ... I have a brother I'm just getting to know here.

PS: Doc visit went fine - thanks for all the hugs and thoughts.

The perils of navel-gazing.

2007-04-30T20:58:00.000+12:00

I generally try to make a habit of avoiding "self-help" books.

At one point, when Amy was a baby and I was stuck at home alot, I had a reasonably steady diet of Oprah and Dr Phil. While they may have had a degree of wisdom to share, I found I was a heck of alot happier when I stopped.

Looking back from where I am now, I know post-natal depression was a significant issue (had no idea at the time) - but, as is my usual way, I was trying to "fix" things myself. So any book that appeared to offer suggestions on how to do just that would have me scouring the library shelves for that title. The trouble is, when I'm already in a hole, taking a long hard look at my life tends to just make the hole deeper. There's a fairly well worn cliché along the lines of "too much analysis leads to paralysis". Nice rhyme ... but unfortunately the reality can be much worse. While these books do usually get around to helping you figure out what you can do to change things, all the initial self-examination can lead to despair, hopelessness and desperation long before you get that far. And that can lead in destructive directions.

I'm not an "out there" person whose absence leaves a big void - I can drop off the face of the earth fairly easily. But I have been blessed with good friends - friends who have, in the past, come looking for me. And while they may not have been able to pull me out of that hole, at least they cared enough to find out that I was in one. (Married one of 'em. How cool is that?! :D)

There is absolutely a place for stopping and examining what you're doing and whether or not it is working. How else do you figure out if things are working or not - and why? So long as you get moving again afterwards! Like most things, I guess it's a question of balance. And probably being in the right head-space when you start such an exercise. And that's the big difference this time around.

I still lurk around library shelves (my mother's a retired librarian, what can I say?!). Every Friday night we make a family outing to the library - Ross sits and reads current affairs magazines, the kids hunt for DVDs and whatever topic is jammed in Johns head at the time, and I can usually be found in the health and fitness section.

One week, a few months ago, a book caught my eye. One that dealt with anxiety and depression as coexisting conditions - the first I had seen to do so. And now here I am ... once again examining what I do and why I do it and why I should or shouldn't look at changing it. And as usual I want to skip to the end ... where the "answers" are! I'm almost reluctant to go through the exercises because of the effect such "self-help" stuff has had in the past. But I'm not in the past. And at this point I need to be actively doing something to manage my mental health. Particularly since I'm apprehensive about an upcoming appointment with the doctor. We'll be discussing how I've been getting on since coming off medication 3 months ago. Last time I spoke to her she referred me to a medical hypnotist. I did at least go and talk to the guy, and heard what he had to say - didn't feel comfortable, never went back. On the other hand, she's against herbal remedies ... and I'm taking St John's Wort. Can we agree to disagree? We'll see on Thursday, I guess. Maybe I wouldn't feel like this if everything was chipper and chirpy - I'm holding pretty steady overall, it's just that my natural altitude seems to be a little on the low side.

That's enough navel-gazing for one night - I'm off to catch up on Stargate. See ya!

What language does your family speak?

2007-04-22T14:18:00.000+12:00

Are there little things - words or phrases - that are part of your family vocabulary that would have a visitor thinking "What the heck?!"

If you were a fly on the wall at our house you might hear Ross ask the kids if they want to play chicken, or ask me if I want a giraffe (although you'll never hear him ask if I want a Spew any more!), or Neebut in my snawidge.

Spew = Mountain Dew
Giraffe = Jarrah (a very chocolatey drink)
Chicken = a game where Ross stands on the back porch, the kids stand on the lawn below, and he throws broken-up bread-crusts at them. Technically they're supposed to try and avoid being hit, but John has just invented a new rule whereby he gets to eat any bits he catches. He's eating like a horse at the moment. Mum was blown away by how much he ate for breakfast when the kids had their sleepover - 5 Weetbix + cornflakes + toast + banana. He then demolished a substantial lunch and dinner as well. He's just in one of those phases - he only weighs 23kg (50lb), but he's very active, and has his Daddy's metabolism (well, the metabolism his Daddy used to have anyway! )
Neebut = short for Neebut Putter ... what?!

I know it's not just us that comes out with this sort of weirdness ... come on, share!

Celebrating what?

2007-04-19T20:26:00.000+12:00

Something has been bugging me. I've been feeling the need to expand on something I prayed about at church last Sunday morning. Because I'm afraid it must have seemed like a spur-of-the-moment blurt - when, in fact, it was something that had been on my mind for days but I just couldn't get a handle on how to put it into words.

I've been seeing the word "celebrity" attached to an assortment of mighty strange people lately. A former newsreader (who wasn't even a very good newsreader), a weatherman, politicians, an actress who hasn't acted in anything (to my knowledge) since 1996, and a woman whose sole claim to "fame" is having allegedly slept with a high-profile married footballer.

I couldn't get my mind off the similarity between the words 'celebrity' and 'celebrate' - and my dictionary tied one to the other pretty inextricably. Perhaps the people who feature in weekly gossip mags aren't strictly 'celebrated' but they are certainly given an awful lot of attention. So many of them haven't done anything particularly admirable - some downright un-admirable - and really are just as unremarkable as anyone picking up the magazine to read about them. What room does that leave to acknowledge those who have done things that are actually worth celebrating? What label can you put on people who have done good things, great things, to raise them above the level of "celebrity" - a title which really, because of who and what we choose to give our attention to in this country, means pretty much nothing at all?

Looking for Why

2007-04-19T05:03:00.000+12:00

Who wouldn't want to know that their life has a purpose? That's not something I can imagine. We look for meaning, for purpose, in the things that happen around us. It seems to be human nature to try and find "Why". And when something happens that appears completely senseless, it's distressing. It's times like those that the question "Where is God?" - or even "Is God?" - comes up.

When I look back through my life I can see times when God's purpose for whatever was happening is clear - sometimes it was something He was doing in my own life, other times it was part of what He was doing in someone else's life. But very rarely did I know that purpose, or even that there was a purpose, at the time. Life feels like an ongoing situation of only knowing my purpose retrospectively, if at all (because, goodness knows, there are still plenty of times for which that isn't yet apparent). Which is frustrating. It feels like being employed in a job where you only get to see the job description after you've left - only knowing then whether you've met the requirements or not.

I wonder why I'm doing what I am. Is it:

- because it's a fairly good fit for my particular combination of creativity and anal-retentiveness?

- to be an active part of something God is doing in the place that might not necessarily be pleasant or easy?

- a combination of both?

Or am I just taking up a space because God doesn't have anything in particular for me to do just now?

I don't particularly want to see into the future - I'd just like to see clearly in the present. It doesn't have to be about me - I'm happy to be used in a wider context - I'd just like to know what that purpose is so that I can know if I'm fulfilling it or not.

Although ... I'd hate to think that I'm supposed to be lying awake in the wee small hours in tears of frustration once every week or so. That would ... suck. Which seems kind of petty when I think about what people are dealing with, and trying to find meaning in, in Virginia right now - but we all inhabit our own lives and so that's where we come back to looking for meaning I guess.