My first-born baby has flown to England to see his girlfriend. He is literally on the other side of the world from me now! He rang last night and all is well – if expensive. He only has four weeks to explore London, Paris and Rome. Then it will be straight back into his varsity work.

Ben’s girlie, Imogen, is working in England for a year between finishing school and going to university. Ben has missed her immensely and so gathered his dosh and flew over in his mid-year break. Madness for only four weeks – but young love is so impetuous.


Oh, by the way, we are now two up in the America’s Cup Race! Go team New Zealand!

Brrrr.

The Mid Winter Ball has been cancelled. I’m pleased! I have a shitty head cold and feel miserable. Snow has hit the South and the road out to the Castle is windy and steep. They have postponed it until next month, so that’s all good.

I couldn’t drive all the way home last night from my night shift on the Bookbus. There was a late freeze and the hill down to my house was covered with black ice and four vehicles that had skidded into weird positions. I ended up abandoning the car, standing and doing road-stopping duties for 30 minutes to stop other cars, and then trudging home through the snow.

We retrieved the car late this afternoon, but I think it will freeze again tonight and we will be walking to church in the morning. Yaah for electric blankets is all I can say.
Jack hitting a tree

Mid Winter Beach Training

Had a great weekend in Timaru. Four hours training on Saturday at the dojo and then three hours the next morning on the beach starting at 8am. We saw the sun rise as we ran along Caroline Bay and although the day started with a heavy frost the sunny day that followed meant we didn’t get too cold. Even the obligatory dip in the water wasn’t too bad. They weren’t hard out training sessions, more a social gathering with a little training thrown in. I was hoping to spar with people from a different dojo, but no luck.

I have a Mid Winter Ball this weekend and the dress I always wear is sleeveless. This is not good as I have massive bruises on both arms (I forget to get out of the way). Seán has suggested that I buy some long evening gloves as otherwise people might think that I am a battered wife :-)

Umm?

Me, me and me...do I ever know what I want, how to get it or what to do? Nope...

Thx to Karl for the quiz link.

Gym gone

It’s goodbye to my gym of five years! My membership has just run out and instead of renewing it I have looked around and am trying a new gym. It’s a little more expensive, but has the advantage of only allowing 12 members to be there at a time and having three personal trainers on the floor all the time.

It specialises in tweaking peoples’ pain problems and promises that if they can’t fix it they will at least make it better. With a guarantee that if after 3 months and no improvement they will refund your fee and pay for you to go to another gym consultation.

The down side is that I will miss the 24-hour access my last gym offered. It was also quite a small gym and at my preferred 6am start time often has only 3-4 people there, but you had to pay heaps extra for personal training.

My justification (to the family budget) is that at this time in my life (old!), and with karate being my main focus, I need to manage my body really well – work out the niggles and get it into tip-top shape.

Apart from that decision, that took far too much energy up in looking at new gyms and trying to compare pricing plans that are all different, I have also signed up for a computing course. I only work three days a week and up until the start of this year I have had library studies (and tennis) to take up my time. I thought I would have this year off after gaining my Library diploma, but instead I found myself wallowing in self pity, eating and generally just wasting all that lovely free time. And so, six months into 2007 I have been re-evaluating what I do and am trying to fill in some of the blanks.

Boot it.

The boots are fantastic and here’s a funny thing. After having to order my right size and waiting a week for them to arrive I raced down before work last night to find that they were too big! Tried on the ones I had tried on last week, a size smaller, and they were perfect!! What are my feet doing to me?

I wore them out of the shop to work for the evening, back on this morning for a spot of shopping/visiting and they are so cozy and comfortable, like slippers, as they should be for $329 (NZ).


They have a nifty green strip on the sole, for what purpose I can’t imagine. All we can come up with is that the wee flash of green will keep people behind diverted from watching my bum?

Next on the shopping list are a couple of winterish skirts to go with my lovely boots :-)

Just no time to do anything!

It’s been one of those months when everyone near me needs things and either: I have no needs, I have forgotten to need them or I am too tired to think about needing them because there is no time or space for them. I don’t want to get pissed about it so I’m subliminally rejecting needy thoughts before they get to the surface…because I am cool, fine, okey-dokey and life (apart from one thing) is pretty damn fine (no, two things…).

Anyway, my dad is finally out of nut ward and back in his own home, looking amazingly normal. Drugs are wonderful things. I am way into the tough love thing with him and have reached the point of saying (not quite to his face, but to anyone else who listens) that if he can’t stand on his own two feet well, I’m not propping him up anymore. No daily call or visit, no grocery run, no endless head nods and murmured sympathies over imaginary ills and woes. Nah! He’s a grown up and he either sorts his shit out or gets himself into a rest home where someone is paid to sort it. NOT MY JOB! Yaah for caring daughters, not.

My daughter has not stopped coughing for six weeks. And this isn’t a wee cough or a tickle or even a bark every now and then. It is a constant every breath cough. To the point the last few days that she has been getting pins and needles up her arms and over her face as a result of a lack of/excess (?) of oxygen. She is currently using a local anesthetic via a nebuliser every 4 hours. This numbs her mouth and throat and gives her 90 minutes relief from coughing. All she has done for the past three weeks is cough and sleep. She is exhausted and nothing else has worked. No cough mix, no inhaler and the chest x-ray is clear. But is just goes on, and on, and on.

She is in the middle of school exams and has to sit in a room alone to do them, as she is too distracting for the other girls. This morning she sat in the sick room numbing her throat (which also means no food or drink for 3 hours as she can’t swallow in case it goes into her lungs!) so that she could deliver her English speech! Madness. The doctor is stumped and I think we will be off to a respiratory specialist early next week.

The only bright spot for me this week is that I am going to buy a pair of boots tonight on my way to work (ugh, yes I work on a Friday night!). I have what is politely called a pair of ‘well developed calves’ (WDC) or just plain fat legs really! Darling husband says they are athlete’s legs and this is true. I have run many a mile to get them in this shape, but that is no consolation when sitting in a shoe shop red-faced with embarrassment and exhaustion from trying on multiple pairs of knee high boots that just will not bloody do up! So I have ordered in some specially made for ladies with ‘WDC’ and hope to pick them up in about 30 minutes. Just black I fear, and flat heeled, but I want to wear them everyday to work. They look vaguely like biker boots as they have buckles on the side where the gusset is that allows me to fit the damn things. I hope they are as comfortable as the ones I tried on before ordering them in…