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Showing posts from November, 2012

Sunday beautiful Sunday

A perfect weekend.  I started in the garden about 6.30am, which is quite the best time to start if I fancy a serene experience.  I weeded, pruned laterals and re-tied the tomatoes to their stakes, and planted spring onions. I made cheese and pesto scones for morning tea. I made 11 litres of laundry liquid.  I tightened up my facebook settings.  Mine are quite tight anyway, but I'm often amazed at how many people blithely include their full date of birth on their public display settings, as the most obvious example of sharing more with the entire world than seems entirely wise. I attempted to clean Brighid's bedroom.  Some progress, and many bags removed already, but it is probably still the equivalent of the warm up at the base of Mt Everest.  I'm planning the full scale of the mountain while she is at school. It's possible that I won't win a prize for the fastest and most complete conversion to a life of sobriety and lower calorie intake.  Perhaps the tor

Theatre Royal Hotel, Kumara

We had a great time at the community fun day to celebrate the refurbishment and re-opening of the Theatre Royal Hotel in Kumara today.  I forgot to take the camera, but there is a youtube video of the opening here .  The weather was great, the stalls were good, the kids loved the sack races and the tug of war and then we retired to the playground (I retired to sitting with the newspaper; the children were rather more vigorous) for a while.  Back home, we had our first barbecue of the year where it was warm enough to eat outside.  The kids got out the hose, the water gun and the little paddling pool.  Since Favourite Handyman had kindly mowed the lawn while we were out gallivanting in Kumara, the kids got to fill the pool with water AND grass clippings and other ingredients for a magic witch's potion. A great day, all the better for sharing it with our lovely friends.  And the total joy at attending an opening of a business in our part of New Zealand, in such contrast to most of

Size

Of all the things which I have considered boring for others to read (but gone ahead and posted about anyway), weight loss ranks as the most boring in my book. But I'm not going to post about work. But there's not much point dwelling on my sadness about so many of my friends leaving our small wet town. But I'm not getting much done in the garden. But there is no crafting going on currently. But genealogy is at a minor standstill and isn't easy to write about in a discreet way. But I have no new and coherent thoughts of a political nature to share right now. But kitchen creativity is a concept which is practically sepia toned, it was so long ago. Last weekend a good friend rang me from afar.  In a world of facebook updates, likes and the occasional message, an actual phone call has become a rare treat, something I usually forget is at my disposal. I'd heard my friend had lost weight and she was kind enough to answer my questions.  Truthfully, I grilled her

For the love of Mawhera

Was yesterday special?  Kind of.  We observed a minute's silence for the second anniversary of the 29 men dead at Pike River.  But I think of those men most days.  I never knew any of them personally, but I know members of their families, and no narrative of West Coast early 21st century struggle makes sense without acknowledging these men. That is why when I mourn the loss of the last butchery on the West Coast (closing this Christmas), of the Smelting House Cafe in Greymouth (great coffee I'm told, superb lunch food I know from experience), buildings evacuated overnight due to earthquake risk and the latest is AMI moving out of our small wet town, it is sad but people are all alive. The old timers on the Coast give me the greatest sense of looking forward.  'It's happened before', they tell me.  'The Coast will recover.'  'That's the nature of a mining town, boom and bust,' another tells me. So we stay.  We farewell our friends and wi

wine swilling genealogist

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 On Thursday just gone, it was the West Coast Schools' kapa haka festival.  I rearranged my work hours, took my girl out of school, and we headed south for the day to watch Fionn perform.  It was totally fantastic.  Fionn's school group put on a top notch performance which we were all very proud of. Afterwards, while the students had their hangi lunch and played special games and the judges deliberated, Brighid and I had lunch together in the metropolis and walked along the beach, pictured above and below. Beautiful huh? Today was the Anglican Church Fair.  It's an important event on our calendar.  Six years ago, when we'd just moved into our first home and there was no lounge furniture and no money to buy anything flash, we went to our this fair.  We still have the couch and chairs from that fair, at a combined cost of less than $50.  These days, we buy some sausages, a couple of bowls, sometimes some books or clothes.  Today I bought my first whitebait sandwi

Zebra gardening

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This weekend we helped a friend move, Fionn went on his first ever cub camp for two nights, I made a skirt for a third birthday party present and I got to garden. I'm quite pleased with the gingham circle skirt.  I didn't make it to save money.  Frankly, in recent times I've pulled my wallet out for convenience far more often than I've taken the longer but cheaper route, especially in the kitchen.  I made it because I wanted a personally handmade gift for a special little girl, whose family is very dear to me.  Brighid had a lovely time at the party, and so did we for the part we attended. Fionn the cub camp graduate.  After the asthma incident which followed a one night indoors camp last week, I was nervous about Fionn sleeping in the tent for two nights. He had a FABULOUS time.  Fell asleep before 4pm this afternoon, but he is breathing properly, so we are all happy. This afternoon after partying and camp collection, I buried bokashi, weeded the old chook run

Economic collapse and school fundraising

In a devastating turn of events, The Spring Fling 80s night fundraiser has been cancelled because not enough people bought tickets.  Lots of people claimed to be planning to go, but they didn't front up with cold hard cash in time to give the incredibly hard working volunteers faith that it was worth their blood, sweat and sausage rolls. There are a few things against me offering my home so we can all desperately seek Susan, get into the groove and implore our papas not to preach this Saturday night.  One is a desire to stay married to Favourite Handyman.  He isn't sharing my enthusiasm at all.  The second is that Fionn comes home from another camp, this time cubs, that day.  I'm pretty nerdy about my kids getting sufficient sleep after they stay up all night yakking in tents (they do yak endlessly; it's in their genes.).  The third is the state of the house.  It's currently marginal to get inside a room without standing on something.  The state of the surfaces is

Desperately Seeking Susan

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I have a new project.  All in the name of supporting local education (Hekia Parata sure ain't, so someone has to), I'm off to an 80s night next weekend.  I wasn't so sure on reliving memories I had of dropwaist dresses and cerise and jade tube skirts.  But tonight inspiration hit.  It's 1985.  I'm 13.  Madonna has a hotter body than me, a theme which will never change.  She is the perfect teen pinup, with her crucifixes, lace hair ties and beads, fairly accessible garb for a cash-strapped young girl.  I never dared wear my rosary out though.  God may not have smote me down, but my mother would have. I've just ordered some lace gloves.  I'm about to have a rifle through my drawers, wardrobe and sewing box to see what lace concoctions and other accesories I have.  And find my rosary.  Even now, don't tell Mum.

breaking the hiatus

Time to get back in the blogging saddle. I had the three chalazia (plural of chalazion = chalazia?) removed surgically on Tuesday.  My eyes are healing well and I've gotten over the strange frightening feeling of having my eyelid clamped back and pieces of it pulled out. Both the nurse and the ophthalmologist were wonderful.  As she did the initial examination with the aid of a slit lamp, I admired Rebecca the ophthalmologist's knowledge and skill in such a specialist area.  I think I found it most interesting because she was a young woman.  There is a part of me which staunchly values the work of running a home and a family and another part of me wants to see so much more of highly skilled professional women.  Living in a small town, the range of specialised skills is not so high as for cities.  When I was 17, I longed to leave my small town (not the one I currently live in) and seek knowledge and adventure.  I was most unimpressed with my aunts who were always talking a