Not usually about penguins

Road trip

2011-10-13T13:41:00.001+13:00

Driving along one of Wellington's narrow winding roads with a footpath on one side I saw a child standing on the other side smiling at me. A blond, tousle haired, wee boy who looked about two. There was no one around. I pulled over, thinking an adult would pop out of a car or up from a path any moment. No one except the child on the side of the road standing between the yellow lines and a fence.

I hopped out of the car and started across the road. Huge smile. Still no one else around and I'm thinking that he's probably been told to stand right there while they deal with a baby or something like that. I ask: "Hello, what are you up to?", "Is your mum around?" "Where do you live?" but don't get any answers. After a bit he points down the hill at a house. "Is that your house?". No reply.

The house has toys visible and an open door. It is not obvious how to get there from here. There must be a path but it isn't the closest one. I keep chatting, hoping someone will hear me and appear. We smile at each other a lot. I think he has escaped and is very pleased with himself.

Finally I hear a person in the house below talking as if to a child. I call out "Hello?" and woman appears. "Is this your little one?" Her face is a combination of relief and horror.

Not the figgy pudding

2010-12-25T20:13:00.000+13:00

Christmas has been lovely with delighted small people enjoying presents. My mother gave me Richard Attenborough's Life in Cold Blood for my birthday and right now I feel a strong empathy with snakes.

Merry Christmas all.

Mars on life

2010-06-15T12:15:00.000+12:00

The Martians are trying to communicate with me through Google Reader.

Today thinking with my hands yet led me to Symphony of Science which is fabulous and entertaining, it also has "The Case for Mars". Once upon a time, many moons ago, when I wrote this blog more regularly, I was thinking of posting something about why I think terraforming is a bad idea but then someone told me that first I should read Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy and I haven't got around to it. I don't think there is a case for Mars, not for sending humans there and especially not for colonising it.

But it will probably happen because today my favourite webcomics told me:

Perry Bible Fellowship

xkcd (in rollover text)
"all [JFK's] arguments for going to the moon work equally well as arguments for blowing up the moon, sending cloned dinosaurs into space, or constructing a towering penis-shaped obelisk on Mars."

Further research is needed on the morphology of Martian genitalia.

Married life

2009-09-19T20:30:00.006+12:00

This morning Ladybird and Little Bear got married. It was a grand affair: all the Sylvanians came and Ladybird and Little Bear wore clothes specially made for the occaision.

Tonight I helped them undress and put them to bed. Ladybird with K and Little Bear with H.

They honeymoon period wasn't very long. Perhaps they'll get conjugal visits.

In character

2009-09-17T08:06:00.005+12:00

M - Weary and long suffering Mum.
C - Sensitive and slightly melodramatic young Child.

1:30am a couple of nights ago.

Noises off - creak of door, pad of small feet belonging to Child.

C: Mu-um
M: Hngft
C: I can't sleep.
M: Do you need to go to the toilet?
C: Mmm.
M: Come on then.

C and M exit.

A long time passes.

Voices heard from outside door:

M: Time to go back to your bed.
C: I want to be in your bed.
M: I know, but you need to go back to your bed.
C: I won't be able to sleep in my bed.
M: Why won't you be able to sleep in your bed?
C: Sister is crying.
M: Why is she crying?
C: She says her ear hurts.

M's footsteps rushing upstairs to her other daughter who despite being stoic is whimpering pathetically in pain.

R38

2009-09-14T20:57:00.004+12:00

Suddenly becoming in loco parentis to a 16 year-old is a fascinating experience. Sometimes it is just like parenting 6 year-olds but it is also very enjoyably different: he dresses himself every day without help and without being asked!

Today I took B to the Weta Cave and I started telling him about Peter Jackson's early movies: Bad Taste and Braindead. Suddenly I realised that they might be R18*. I'm pretty fussy about what H & K get to watch (basically G rated DVDs and some PG rated nature/science documentaries we watch with them). But also I know that I watched R18 movies at 16-17 and thought that the restrictions were mostly pretty stupid at that point.

So what do I think is appropriate for B? After some thought I think if I'd enjoy watching a movie with him it is appropriate for him to watch because I don't like movies that are both violent and horrible, and I'd find anything too explicit embarassing. Looking at movie ratings nearly everything rated R18 falls into one of these categories so I don't think I'll be corrupting the young lad soon.

*Actually they are all R16.

The web is burning a hole in my pocket

2009-09-09T16:24:00.005+12:00

The internet is full of tempting things. Currently it is home harvest organic vege gardens, sport kilts and party in my pants pads that appeal to me. I'm trying to talk D around to the first, the second has exorbitant postage to NZ and the third is just rather expensive but maybe...

Seeing red

2009-09-08T10:30:00.000+12:00

One of the many kinds of unpaid work I do at the moment is shelving books in the junior bookroom at H & K's school. There is one in the easiest level called What is Red? and I thought "Wow! I wonder how they explained what red is with such a limited vocab and structure?" Then I looked inside and found out that it meant what things are red.

I was left with the thought - what is the simplest book I could write that explains "What is Red?"

What is Red? (first attempt - you'll have to imagine the pictures)

Sunlight looks white.
Water can split up sunlight.
When sunlight is split up you see a rainbow.

Sunlight is made up of all the colours of the rainbow.
Red is one of the colours of the rainbow.

This white light is made up of all the colours of the rainbow too.
A glass prism can split up white light.
When white light is split up you see a rainbow.

This is a blue light.
A glass prism can't split up blue light.
The blue light is made up of only blue.

This tomato is red.
It looks red when it is in red light.
It reflects the red light.

This is the tomato in blue light.
The tomato looks black.
There is no red part of the blue light for it to reflect.

The tomato looks red in sunlight.
It reflects the red part of the sunlight.
Red is what we see when the red part of sunlight shines on things that reflect red.

True romance

2009-09-07T10:49:00.005+12:00

The three most romantic things D has ever done:

Less than a year after D & I were married I went on a sea kayaking trip without him. On the first day, as I climbed out of the kayak in the surf, I felt my wedding ring slide off my icy finger into churning water. Everyone searched for it for hours but we didn't find it. That night I rang D and he said "I'll get my ring split in half." It was the perfect solution. I lost my original ring forever but I still have a ring from our wedding which I wear every day. Except when kayaking.

Two years ago D & I were getting ready for a wedding. I was getting dressed and he was ironing his favorite shirt. Then I came out of the bedroom and he gazed at me admiringly for so long he burnt his shirt. (I have blogged this story before, here).

A few weeks ago I was feeling self-conscious about my facial hair. I told D that I don't like it because it seems such a masculine thing. He said it isn't masculine, more matriarchal. Matriarchal I can handle.

We only bite the ones we love

2009-09-04T11:43:00.006+12:00

As a child I was a biter. Some kids hit, some pull hair, some pinch, I bit. Chomp. I probably bit my sister more than anyone else: she was there more than anyone else.

For the last several years she and I have been going to the same dentist but he only just discovered we are related. When she asked about family resemblances he said:

I didn't think the bites were similar, no, no, Ruth has a bite like noone else on Earth.

Running with words

2009-09-03T13:00:00.005+12:00

Look I'm posting! I'm not apologising for not posting. I have had a lot of things to put here but they haven't been making it out my fingers.

So what's going on with me?

I've just become host mother to a 16 year-old German AFS student, B. My mental images of this relationship owe rather too much to the Alien movies but I'm not actually expecting him to come bursting out my chest.

Now one of our children is 6'2" I don't think I can keep using "the midgets" as a collective noun for them. Any suggestions?

H is waiting for an operation on her shoulder. The first of many she'll have in the next 10 years. for a congentital condition called MHE. Four months ago they said her operation would be in the next six months. Waiting sucks but I'd prefer universal public healthcare to the alternatives.

My neurological oddity is officially unimportant.

I had the swine flu and 2 months later I finally think I'm totally over it. In June, just before I got sick, I set a goal to go for a 20-30 minute run/walk at least fortnightly from the middle of August. When I set the goal it seemed very, very easy and very, very far away. Today I actaully started and the achievement has made me blog.

'Tis the season

2008-12-23T19:56:00.003+13:00

Today the builder came to do a wee job and told us we needed to empty everything out of our bedroom and the children's bedroom, so we started dealing with that, but then a delivery truck arrived with an enormous, gorgeous outdoor table which was a Christmas surprise for me, so we started dealing with that, but then we realised that our backyard was full of bees.

After a day of moving everything out of the two messiest rooms in our house I got pizza for dinner, but to keep with the theme of chaos they gave me the wrong pizzas.

Now, we have gone back and collected the right pizzas and eaten, H & K's room is back together enough for them to sleep in, our room is still empty and covered in dust, the table is on the deck, the bees are hanging out in swarm like a giant strawberry in the neighbours' tree and I've mislaid my glasses.

Fa la la la la la la la la

Special theory of evolution

2008-12-10T19:53:00.004+13:00

A small figure in a nightie just appeared at the living room door and said pathetically:

"H doesn't believe that a long time ago people looked like gorillas and lived in cages."

Now it's time for a change

2008-11-09T22:04:00.009+13:00

The problem with democracy is that people who don't agree with me get to vote. I hope three years of a National/ACT government will show them the error of their ways.

10 good things about the election

I live in a democracy where I have the right to vote, I can vote without intimidation, voting is easy, accessible and popular*, and I am confident that all votes are fairly counted.
Winston Peters is finally out of parliament \o/
I voted in H & K's classroom surrounded by their, and their classmates, art.
There'll be at least two more Green MPs in parliament.
A fairy queen and a fairy princess came with me to vote.
I am now represented by an openly gay MP.
The way the National party got in was by backing most changes Labour have introduced.
I'm told there is a better quality of political comedy under right wing governments.
MMP continues to encourage diversity in parliment. For the first time there will be a Sikh MP.
I got to use a big fat orange pen.

* 78% turnout of registered voters.

Objects in mirror are closer than they appear

2008-11-06T13:25:00.004+13:00

Last night we huddled around a laptop and watched Obama make political history in America and then went outside and let of fireworks to mark political history in England. It's not that it is so much a small world as that we are at one end of the binoculars and the USA and UK are at the other.

Treating tricks

2008-11-04T15:20:00.004+13:00

A couple of updates:

I have been to the neurological ophthalmologist (because I couldn't get an appointment with a neurologist [backstory here then here]) and he says that my jerky eye tracking is "asymptomatic" and I should only worry if it starts to cause me problems, e.g. nausea. Given that my concern is that it is a symptom of something else this is only partly reassuring. I am trying hard to be reassured as there is no advantage in worrying. He is also going to chat to a neurologist about it and let me know what they say.

My plan for world domination is progressing, this year we lured 99 trick or treaters to our door. Last year we had 70. I think next year I should cater for 130.

Sometimes about penguins

2008-10-25T17:11:00.005+13:00

I thought it was about time to post something about penguins. I tried looking for a weird penguin fact but the ones I found weren't nearly weird enough. This, however, is:

From here.

Capitalism at play

2008-10-24T18:16:00.004+13:00

H waiting for her first visit from the tooth fairy:

Yesterday she lost her second baby tooth. I'm pleased to report this time she just left a flower for the tooth fairy.

Democracy in technicolour

2008-10-22T20:49:00.006+13:00

In a couple of weeks there will be an election. I wrote this three years ago during the build up to the last election and I still haven't changed my mind.

The more I think about it the more I am unable to consider voting anything but Green.

I think they were unbelievably stupid creating contraversy around the Meningococcal B vaccination campaign.

But consider global warming.

Seriously.

I mean just for starters think about the Wahine Storm hitting Wellington every year. What about the effects of the sea level rising on the CBD? What about a changing climate on our agriculturally based economy?

Even social welfare spending is a trivial issue by comparison with global warming.

Now you can argue that global warming is a far bigger issue than the NZ government can sort out and that you should use your vote on something more personal. The problem with this is that global warming will get personal. If you believe it is worth voting at all - that your one vote might make a difference, then it is worth believing that your one country might make a difference too.

So - how do the parties stack up? Well, Forest & Bird did a nice summarised evaluation of the parties policies on this and other environmental issues and I'm afraid I don't have it in front of me and I can't remember it all but what I do remember is that the Greens were the only party with two ticks for global warming, Labour got one and National got none.

I am struck at this point by a profusion of silly slogans - Vote for the weather. Vote for the future. Vote for the continuation of the species.

Posted here 30 August 2005.

My favourite thing about New Zealand elections is that you vote with a fat orange felt pen, a clear sign of a serious democracy at work.

The next blank page

2008-10-22T20:26:00.004+13:00

My referral was faxed through again. Outpatients booking at the hospital sent it to Neurology. Today I found out Neurology assessed it and cancelled it due to "insufficient information". In September. Today my GP found out when I rang and told her. I asked my GP to refer me privately. She is having trouble finding a private neurologist who is available.

There are many things I love about the New Zealand health system. The fact I, or any other New Zealand resident, should be able to see a Neurologist if their GP thinks it is appropriate without paying a cent is one of them. The underfunded administration is not one.

Testing

2008-10-22T11:31:00.003+13:00

I've just set it up so I can post from txt. Neat huh?

Edited to add: it would be neat if it didn't have my phone number as the Title...

A blank page in the diary of my life

2008-09-13T19:56:00.004+12:00

In June my optometrist recommended that I referred to a neurologist because my eye tracking is slightly jerky and has been for at least a year (ataxia). He also asked questions like "Have you ever had a head injury?" - No, and "Do you have a family history of Parkinson's Disease?" - Yes.

I went to the doctor the next day and she wrote a referral letter. 5 weeks later I hadn't heard anything back from the hospital so I followed up. The doctor wrote another referral and got the practice nurse to fax it through.

On Friday I followed up again, 12 weeks after first being referred, a different practice nurse figured out that the fax was sent upside down, i.e. the hospital received a blank piece of paper. I don't know what happened to the first referral perhaps it was not the first time the nurse made this mistake.

Aaargh.

Fortunately it is not something difficult to live with and a delay in investigating the cause is unlikely to make any difference to the outcome as the scenarios I know of are:

the ataxia will never be explained, it is just a mysterious quirk,
when I was born I received brain damage which was so minor that it has not been picked up until now (I was a difficult forceps delivery),
Parkinson's disease,
Multiple Sclerosis.

Unfortunately I have spent 3 months with the last two scenarios lurking in the dark corners of my mind. Parkinson's scares me less than MS. I know too many women who died in their late 40s/early 50s of MS. But, la la la la la, there is no point in worrying, la la la la la, I just need to wait and see, la la la la la, I've probably always been like this, la la la la la, think happy thoughts, la la la la la.

Public service announcement

2008-08-26T20:47:00.004+12:00

If you're in Wellington and have been meaning to go to a first aid course and not getting around to it then join me at the NZ Red Cross comprehensive first aid course on 15 and 16 October. You can book at www.redcross.org.nz or by ringing 499 5827.

Electric sheep

2008-07-22T09:49:00.006+12:00

Last night I hosted a toy library working bee at my house. Early this morning I was part of a futuristic SWAT team with Barack Obama, Sigourney Weaver and some other tall thin famous people. In our shuttle we donned helmets and leather superhero suits as we prepared to take on someone with seriously overdue toys.

The consumption and development of brains

2008-07-20T08:52:00.004+12:00

School holidays has overtaken my life but it is ok:
45%
Yesterday as a 4 year-old chatted to me about playing Halo 2 (which is R16) on the xbox in his bedroom I was struck by the wide variety of options we have as parents. I expect he is better prepared than H & K for surviving a zombie apocalypse.

Winter whining

2008-07-08T15:15:00.004+12:00

Where have I been? What have I been doing? Well mostly I haven't been posting because D has commandeered my lovely little laptop and turned it into a thing that is plugged into a huge screen I can't sit far enough away from which makes a horrible high pitched whining noise. And we all had awful 'flu. And I have new lenses in my glasses and I think they are not quite right.

As we drove back from the library today H listed all the things she thought of in order from most to least liked:

Mummy [:-)]
lego
Pony [Kay's new toy]
star [??]
doing sudoku with Daddy
Big Pig
Fimble [her buddy]
pink
chocolate [to eat]
yellow
purple
indigo
orange
blue
black
grey
brown
clear
ice cream
bananas
mosquitoes
planes
sun [because it makes her too hot]

The Adventures of Pooh

2008-06-11T09:47:00.004+12:00

I am in bed with my computer, taking it easy after a nasty tummy bug, not yet 100% but improving.

H is wanly watching a DVD clutching a container. She threw up last night, I'm not sure if it was the start of the tummy bug or just too much mucous from her cold but she is very pale.

D is looking after our nieces, H' & I, at their house. H' is not at school because she is convalescing after her own tummy bug.

S, H' & I's mum, is at school doing my parent helper duty.

Parenting is all about logistics.

Expecting someone taller

2008-06-10T10:15:00.003+12:00

H & K don't like to compete with each other. They like to be first equal. If we offer a reward they like to receive it simultaneously even if one of them earned it first. This is particularly true of K who likes everything to be fair so long as she's first. I think that I needed a caesarian because K was so upset that H was being born first, if they could have come out simultaneously, or K first, they both would have been fine.

We don't have a height chart, marks on a doorway or whatever. Largely this is because I was too caught up in the present for the first year or more to look to the future and partly it is because having not started one it never seemed like the right time to start. Now I realise that for our family, for H & K, it is the right thing to do. Currently, despite information to the contrary K believes she is taller than H and H believes that she is the same height as K and everyone is happy. Who needs objectivity?

Wrongo, zombie lips!

2008-06-05T16:23:00.005+12:00

For a few years I have been telling people that it is now legal to park on the wrong side of the road here (facing in the opposite direction to the flow of traffic). I thought I'd read something about a law change to this effect in the paper. I was wrong, it is still illegal and you can be ticketed for it.

Now I know that one of my failings as a human being is an overdeveloped attachment to being right, so I hereby give you, my gentle reader, a chance to tell me what I've got wrong and I'll 'fess up or at least try very hard to understand your point of view and agree to differ.

P.S. Does anyone know where the quote "Wrongo, zombie lips!" is from? Trusty Google is letting me down.

If you don't eat your meat

2008-06-02T20:56:00.008+12:00

We've decided to eat vegetarian at least one day a week. I was inspired by a snippet in New Scientist which said:

How to eat green

If you are serious about reducing your carbon footprint, going vegetarian for one day a week will make a big difference, says Christopher Weber of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who has audited the greenhouse gas emissions of our meals. "The differences between eating habits are very, very striking," he says.

Writing this I've done some more research. There is an article on New Scientist Environment which references Environmental Science and Technology (DOI: 10.1021/es702969f). The research is American and the detail would be slightly different here because we don't keep our cows in barns and transport grain to them but that doesn't stop them farting a staggering amount of methane.

If that is all too sane for you try this leaflet which was delivered to our "No Junk Mail" snail-mailbox just the other day. My favourite part is the second question on the second page:

QUESTION: Yes. Thank you, Master.

I am very happy to take questions like that.

Topical treatment

2008-05-27T21:38:00.008+12:00

Vasu Iyengar has been in the news recently for failing to diagnose a complication after surgery in time to stop it killing Moina Simcock. Vasu is busy hitting back, she is quoted on www.stuff.co.nz from a letter to the Health and Disability Commissioner: "I apologised to the Simcock family several times and did my very best to pay retribution ... It was not enough for any of you". Then as more complaints come to light Vasu is quoted saying to the Dominion Post: "patients will say these things to get publicity in the wake of what I have endured."

I find it offensive that she appears to think that apologies and a payment might be "enough" and that she is undermining all her patients' credibility. (Although I do realise that these quotes may have been deliberately selected to make her look bad.)

Vasu Iyengar was my gynaecologist until she:

a) diagnosed an incurable condition missing that I actually had eczema (optional gynaecological detail),
b) referred me to the person who specialises in that condition in Wellington without telling me that the person's role was as a counsellor,
c) wanted to treat my PCOS following a recipe that ignored my particular symptoms.

Thanks to Vasu I endured months of unnecessary discomfort. I would not recommend her to anyone.

Do not try this at home

2008-05-23T21:20:00.007+12:00

Warning: the following post may put you off your food.

Every morning this week I have taken dried apricots out of the container and put them in H & K's lunch boxes. Some mornings I've eaten some too. This morning I put in three apricots, picked up the fourth "ready to eat" "moist & juicy" apricot and noticed it had a brown think on it. "Stalk," I thought. Then I looked closer... and closer... and said to D, remarkably calmly as I took the first three apricots, out of the school lunches "Can you come and look at this and see if you think it is what I think it is?"

There, nestled in the fourth apricot, was a moist and juicy rat poo. I used to have rats so I know a rat poo when I see one.

Fortunately I had a holiday job once as telephonist/receptionist for the Wellington Health Development Unit which at that time dealt with such complaints so I knew what to do. I put the apricot with poo in a clear plastic bag, found the packet the apricots came in and rang the Public Health Service. They came and collected the evidence this afternoon.

The apricots were imported ones packed in New Zealand. Is it strange to be hoping that it was a New Zealand rat poo? Somehow it seems slightly less disgusting than an overseas one importing who knows what foreign diseases.

I am thankful to my morbid sense of humour which is helping me enjoy the sheer awfulness of finding a ready to eat poo.

You can't make me talk

2008-05-20T13:00:00.000+12:00

New Scientist published an interview with, Darius Rejali, a researcher who studies torture which got me thinking. The preview of the interview is on the New Scientist site, the full article is on a blog over here.

The bits which particularly grabbed me were:

Where do [methods for clean torture] come from?

The techniques migrate. Every time Americans have been involved in a war where there has been torture, those techniques have come back to local or private policing, since that is where military policemen get jobs. There is migration the other way too: techniques used by US military policemen in Iraq had been recorded in immigration and naturalisation prisons in Miami in the 1990s. Most often, torture techniques originate not in some deep vault in the CIA but in dark parts of our society where they are tolerated. They live in barracks and fraternities and university pranks and movies. Hence most torture is not sophisticated: electricity is about as sophisticated as it gets.
...
How often do interrogators obtain useful information or truthful confessions using torture?

The few statistical studies on this suggest the return is incredibly poor. There are several reasons. How do you know you have the right person? And even if you do, how do you know they're telling the truth? Third, torture can damage the brain, and anything that affects the brain's capacity to withhold information also affects its capacity to retrieve it.

If it doesn't work, why does it persist?

Myths and rumours. There is a perception that democracy makes us weak and only "real men" know how to do this stuff. People think torture worked for the Gestapo, for example. It didn't. What made the Gestapo so scarily efficient was its dependence on public cooperation. Informers betrayed the resistance repeatedly in Europe, and everyone knew this, but it was more convenient to say the Gestapo got the truth by beating it out of us. Public cooperation is the best way to gather information. After the failed bomb attacks in London in 2005, the British police found every one of the gang within a week. One was caught after his parents turned him in. They would not have done that if they'd thought he'd be tortured.

This left me thinking about how torture is portrayed and propagated by the movies and TV shows that I watch. 24, for example, actively propagates the myth that torture works. What can I do about that? Not much. I don't write movies, books or TV shows that propagate the myth that torture works but I do roleplay and I've been thinking what the implications of the article are for that. Maybe I should campaign for an effective torture free Kapcon. What do you think?

The read red red dog

2008-04-19T20:22:00.004+12:00

H wrote a book today. It says:

H___.
The reb reD dog.

WAz A phtim Tem was A dog iT WoT And WoT one dAY The dog goT BLid iT one dAY goT reD.
ZBLZZ
Went THe dog evre BDee LAft And LAft The dog waz ree zAd BcZ TAy Woz LAFT.

And again with a translation

H___.
H___.

The reb reD dog.
The red, red dog.

WAz A phtim Tem Te was A dog
Once upon a time there was a dog.

iT WoT And WoT
It walked and walked.

one dAY The dog goT BLid
One day the dog got blind.

iT one dAY goT reD.
It, one day, got red.

ZBLZZ
SPLOSH

Went THe dog
went the dog.

evre BDee LAft And LAft
Everybody laughed and laughed.

The dog waz ree zAd BcZ TAy Woz LAFT.
The dog was very sad because they [were] laughing.

My budding Beverley Randell.

We're all going on a ^ autumn holiday

2008-04-19T20:08:00.004+12:00

We're off on the ferry tomorrow am, staying tomorrow night in Kaikoura, then down to Christchurch 'til Friday and back again. We're staying in Christchurch with lovely friends who have two older children who like entertaining H & K. The last time we went away for a week I remember it as the holiday of being vomited on. Hopefully this one will be better.

Who knows, while we are away I might even put finger to keyboard and release the blog entries milling about in my head. One is "Depilated/dilapidated" and the other is about dressing like a colour-blind old feminist.

Playhouse bunnies

2008-04-15T20:15:00.003+12:00

Shhhhh... don't tell anyone (especially not H & K) but we have started talking about getting rabbits.

K loves rabbits. Whenever we have seen the local magician who does rabbit tricks she spends ages captivated by the rabbit in its cage afterwards. When we visit my parents she organises us to go and feed the rabbits that live next door. At school H & K are studying pets and so they've been finding out that some of the kids in their class have rabbits. K has started to dream of having a rabbit of her own.

If we do get a rabbit I think we'll get two. Preferably of a large breed to face down Andy. I'm thinking they'll mostly live in a hutch that we move around the front lawn but also hop around inside the house for exercise. Not sure if we'll go for baby bunnies or adults from the SPCA.

Deux billets doux

2008-04-11T09:05:00.006+12:00

K talked me into buying her a fairy stationery set. The first thing she did with it was write a letter to the boy who lives three doors up the road. It said: "R__ I love you K__". She also enclosed a picture she drew and many of her most special stickers. I aided and abetted her posting it.

D was worried R's older siblings would give him grief about receiving a love letter. Actually someone, I think his sister and mother, helped him write a lovely reply.

When they were at crèche together R was the person H & K complained about most often. Now they are in school they don't hang out or play together, in fact they seem to have very little in common. It isn't a one off thing though, K wrote a letter a week or two ago which said "I love [cousin] xoxoxoxox I love [another cousin] xoxoxoxox I love mum xoxoxoxox I love dad xoxoxoxox I love R__ xoxoxoxox".

It was a dark and stormy day

2008-04-10T20:00:00.004+12:00

On the 10th of April 1968 there was a storm in Wellington which killed 54 people. A passenger ferry, the Wahine, sank killing 51 people. Two more passengers died as a result of their injuries after returning home, and one little girl died in bed at home when a sheet of corrugated iron blew through her window. The Wahine storm happened before I was born but I have grown up with the stories and here, for the fortieth anniversary, are three of those stories.

My father had recently returned to New Zealand bringing my mother with him. They were staying at my grandma's house in Eastbourne, just across the harbour from the centre of Wellington. My mother had been warned about Wellington southerlies. My grandma had even said that the front fence was getting pretty rickety and it would probably blow down in the next decent southerly and so, when it did, she was not particularly alarmed. It was only when she went for a walk on the beach and saw the lifeboats that she realised that there was something unusual going on.

My stepfather-in-law, DB, was working as a builder on a house in Seatoun, a part of Wellington which is very exposed. When it became clear that the wind was making working dangerous the foreman sent the crew home. The noise of the wind as he went home is something DB will never forget. So many sheets of roofing iron were flying past high in the air that there was no let up in their ghostly howling.

I know a lovely, vivacious woman and she has a friendly, capable daughter who is a bit older than me. They were on the Wahine when it hit the rocks. The woman I know, the everyday woman, stood on the heaving, rolling, sloped deck of a sinking ship and threw her baby to a stranger in a lifeboat.

Matariki stars

2008-04-06T20:09:00.009+12:00

This weekend I played in an Ultimate tournament in a team originally called Meatloaf made up of Wellington women who failed to attend the women's practices and women from elsewhere who needed a team to join. At my suggestion the team was renamed Matariki.

Matariki is the Maori name of the star cluster also known as the Pleiades in Greek, Subaru in Japanese, or the Seven Sisters. "Matariki literally means the 'eyes of god' (mata ariki) or 'little eyes' (mata riki). Some say that when Ranginui, the sky father, and Papatūānuku, the earth mother were separated by their offspring, the god of the winds, Tāwhirimātea, became angry, tearing out his eyes and hurling them into the heavens. Others say Matariki is the mother surrounded by her six daughters, Tupu-ā-nuku, Tupu-ā-rangi, Waitī, Waitā, Waipuna-ā-rangi and Ururangi. One account explains that Matariki and her daughters appear to assist the sun, Te Rā, whose winter journey from the north has left him weakened." (Quote from Te Ara). I liked the parallel between a star cluster with seven visible stars and a team of twelve which would field seven players at any one time. Also, as Ultimate is a sport where wind plays a very important role naming the team after the wind god's eyes appealed.

On Saturday there was drizzle, frequent showers interspersed with drizzle, and then pouring rain which was gruelling. In the morning I sent my txt supporters "Wet. Wet. Wet. And lots of alien sporty women. Who have been fairly nice to me. Ok but I feel a bit lost." In the afternoon, which was wetter I sent "People friendly and much less intimidating now they are wet."

Today the weather was much nicer, just intermittent light drizzle and it was fun. We also started to gel as a team and we played the other two bottom ranked teams which was cheering.

I think our scores for the tournament were Saturday: 0-13, 1-13, 1-13, 2-13, Sunday: 4-13, 9-12 (the games stopped at 13 points or with scoring after a time limit). We came bottom of the women's pool. I didn't mind, we celebrated each point we scored with such enthusiasm that scoring at all felt like a win.

Thanks to everyone who organised it, talked me into going or provided childcare, practical assistance or moral support by txt or in person. Most of all thanks to all the other stars on the Matariki team.

Fretwork

2008-04-02T13:13:00.004+13:00

D's work has gone into receivership. I was pretty unhappy with the way it was so in many ways I'm pleased. However, it does mean there is a huge amount of uncertainty in our lives. I seem to be focussing my sense of insecurity and formless worries into the Ultimate tournament. This is good in that I have more control over it than D's work and bad in that I'd like to be looking forward to the tournament. Yesterday my angst was physical: I had the start of a cold, a sore right foot and left knee. Today at least my body is fine.

Key performance indicators

2008-03-29T18:12:00.005+13:00

On Thursday we went to H & K's first parent-teacher interview and got their first school reports. They are doing so well at school. I am so proud. The report grades them A: almost always, S: sometimes or N: not yet, for a variety of things. For example for Reading they are graded on "Enjoys books", "Shows an understanding of the story" and "Interested in reading activities". They both got As for everything!

At the interview their teacher said she'd asked a few of the children in the class who they like to play with and many had included H and K in their answers. I am very pleased that not only are my children doing very well academically but they are also socially successful. The first is something I found easy and the second is not.

I feel this reflects what entirely splendid people I have the privilege of nurturing and how well we have muddled through.

Wig out

2008-03-26T10:20:00.000+13:00

The wonders of the internet - I began with a plan to pay my entry fee for the 2007-8 NZU WaM Nationals and ended up researching merkins.

NZU = New Zealand Ultimate (frisbee)
WaM = Women's and Men's
merkin = pubic wig

The tournament is scarey. I am in a team thrown together from people who want to play but aren't on any other team. So far I am the oldest in the team by 10 years. I fear I will be the slowest by 10 zippinesses too.

Merkins are less scarey if more bizarre and this site is kinda interesting.

Some mothers do 'ave 'em

2008-03-21T21:10:00.004+13:00

The other day I offered H & K grated chocolate on their cereal if they got dressed efficiently (for some very responsible parental reason I'm sure). K asked for not just grated chocolate but also two lumps. I said I'd give her some grated and two lumps but it would still be the same total amount of chocolate as H so it would be fair. At which point H piped up "I don't mind if K has more chocolate than me."

How can someone five be so mature?

So I gave K a tiny bit more chocolate than H including two wee lumps and wondered off. Next thing I hear is H very politely thanking K who has spontaneously given her one of the lumps.

Repeat after me: Awwwww.

Aren't they amazing?

While I'm blogged about them I'll also fill you in on the rest of the answers H & K gave to the question "What do you want to learn at school this year?"

H: How to do all kinds of flips.
K: How to swim.

Then prompted for social responses:

H: How to make games that everybody agrees with.
K: How to make friends that will be kind.

Then prompted for academic responses:

H: How to read books.

Holy Monday

2008-03-20T09:42:00.004+13:00

On Monday I got a call from school - H had banged her head and could I come up and see her. I arrived to find a rather reduced H in the sick room with a bloody hat. It is always impressive how much head wounds bleed. She spent the rest of the school day colouring at D's work so as not to interfere with my busy schedule as an at-home mum.

H says she banged her head falling off a ladder in the play area. K says H fell of a handrail onto a concrete path (outside the play area). I'm slightly worried that the discrepancy might be caused by H blacking out but I think it much more likely that she was on the handrail and she knows that that is slightly naughty. My children tend to be over cautious so I try not to make a big fuss when they are brave enough to have accidents.

K was upset when I took H home. Being at school alone is hard when you're a twin. Then to further unsettle her her first baby tooth came out. It is a sign of maternal insanity that I am proud that my children are dentally precocious. First baby teeth at 5 months, first adult teeth at 5 years. D and I tooth fairied together.

Oh me! Oh my!

2008-03-14T10:06:00.000+13:00

I ran.

I went for a run.

I chose to go somewhere for the sole purpose of running.

I wasn't trying to get from A to B.

I wasn't in a hurry.

It was just for fun.

Me.

Really.

I'm expecting further signs of the apocalypse shortly.

---

I went to the Crofton Downs entrance to Otari/Wilton's Bush and jogged and walked along the river. It was pleasantly cool and shady and the bush was beautiful. I saw a kingfisher, several tuis and was pooed on by a wood pigeon.

Before I do it again I want to make some modifications to my clothing. I wore my green sports fabric t-shirt which says "RUN" on the front (when I bought it it was the only choice that fitted and was a pretty colour). I'm planning to add a "T" before and "DLE" after so I do not feel intimidated by my shirt and cannot be accused of false advertising. My shorts kept falling down so it'll be some new elastic for them. Also my bra kept falling off my shoulders, at frisbee I wear a bra that gives less support and a skins compression top which gives lots but part of my plan with running is to wear clothes that aren't my frisbee clothes.

---

Here are some who like to run. They run for fun in the hot, hot sun. Oh me! Oh my! Oh me! Oh my! What a lot of funny things go by.

Dr. Seuss

How do their brains work?

2008-03-13T11:34:00.006+13:00

I asked K what she wanted to learn at school this year and she said "How to die." Leaving me groping forlornly for a response. Then she continued blithely "I mean how to swim."

Domestic Human

2008-03-12T14:30:00.004+13:00

H & K have started school and I'm enjoying the luxury of not being on duty for kids or paid work during the school day. Instead I am busy catching up on a million things around the house. Last week I did mumble years of tax, this week I've been changing around H & K's room and wear their clothes are stored. I have weeks of house maintenance organisation, mending, sorting things out and emergency preparedness ahead. I'm enjoying having the house to ourselves after years of sharing it with a nanny.

Mother and housewife does not sit comfortably with me. I feel the need to justify myself, get D's approval and stress that it is only temporary. But it is fun!

Fairy wishes

2008-02-25T22:23:00.004+13:00

K no longer thinks she is a fairy. She does very much want to be a fairy. When she makes a wish it is to turn into a fairy. Today she got her first wiggly tooth, sadly it will be me that this turns into a tooth fairy.

P.S. School is great.

Tenuous links

2008-02-09T12:17:00.000+13:00

I have been re-reading My Year of Meat by Ruth L. Ozeki. It is a good and interesting book although not recommended for anaemic, carnivorous Americans. It is both a good novel and an exposé of dangerous farming practices. Sometimes it becomes too much of a diatribe and its Japanese characters tend towards caricature.

It quotes from Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book, a blog-like diary written by a court lady in 10th century Japan. A fascinating glimpse of the past. In trying to find a good piece to quote I found this nice blog entry about it.

Which brings me to an unfinished list in the style of Sei Shonagon:

Things one should not put in the washing machine

A treasured watch inherited from ones grandmother.

Let them eat cake

2008-02-06T14:44:00.001+13:00

On Saturday H & K had their birthday party. 22 members of their extended family came as well as 9 little friends (with 5 accompanying parents) and 9 big friends.

Last year they had an excellent party at the pool and I really like having party entertainment that comes with the venue and not having to cleaning up before or after. So this year I asked them where they wanted their party and we agreed on the zoo. We had it in the old elephant house where the flying foxes and assorted reptiles now live. We also had a 'contact visit' from Billy, the blue tongued skink, and Toby, the leopard tortoise. They were much admired and gently stroked.

A lot of the party food was different kinds of fresh fruit and vegetables: e.g. pineapple, watermelon, cherries, grapes, blueberries, cherry tomatoes and carrot sticks. So after the party we donated the leftovers to the zoo to feed their other animals.

Overall it was a great success although I was too busy anxiously fluffing around to enjoy it as much as I might have.

School is ruthless

2008-02-05T17:00:00.000+13:00

H & K start school on Thursday. The last couple of days we've been practising getting up and walking to school on time. I am looking forward to them starting school but also apprehensive. I remember the social battlefield of the playground all to vividly. School taught me that I was uncool, unpopular and too smart. These are not the lessons I want my children to learn.

I do want them to learn the joy of academic success, make friends, develop independence and participate in our culture. Here's hoping.

The midget's right hand

2008-01-27T21:28:00.000+13:00

Impact of time out:

"This is my gun," said H. "If I shoot you with it you have to stop and think about what you did."

Worldview

2008-01-25T23:24:00.000+13:00

Some photos taken by H & K on my phone, captions in quotation marks are what they said at the time they took the photos:

"mummy's back"

"purple flowers"

"pretty flower"

"beautiful picture"

"my pushchair"

"Shirley"

"Andy, smile!"

under the painting easel

"washing"

cow teapot

I'm a little teapot

2008-01-24T19:47:00.000+13:00

A friend just posted about being thinner and it has finally driven me to blog after a long hiatus caused by sunshine, too much TV and not enough cafenet.

I am fat. I have a BMI of about 40 which puts me on the borderline between "clinically obese" and "morbidly obese". I am fat because:

I have PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome). PCOS has metabolic effects. These effects mean that I gain weight very easily and retain it when someone with a normal metabolism would lose it.
For a many years I was taking drugs for PCOS which had weight gain as a side effect. Although I have been off the drugs for over a year it is hard to lose the weight I gained (see above).
I like food. In particular I eat takeaways a couple of times a week, too much chocolate and slightly too large portions particularly of carbohydrate rich foods.

When I started playing Ultimate I was hopeful that I'd lose some weight. Since August I have been doing strenuous physical exercise for a hour a couple of times a week as well as less strenuous exercise a couple of times a week. I have got noticeably fitter and developed muscles I didn't have before but not any lighter.

I try and tell myself that fitness is more important than fatness. Certainly from a health point of view being overweight and fit is better for you than being unfit with a 'normal' BMI. I also remind myself that my blood pressure is excellent, I have no signs of insulin resistance and no other weight related health issues. But fatness is what you can see and our society is not kind to fat people.

Fat is the stigma I wear.

Me, my elf and I

2007-12-29T21:18:00.000+13:00

Today K found an envelope in the Christmas tree with a letter made with letters cut out from a newspaper. The letter said:

To the H Family
A naughty christmas elf hid some of your presents in the laundry cupboard
Signed: A good christmas elf

So, we checked out the cupboards and found three presents. When we unwrapped them there were lollies for H, lollies for K and a lovely beautiful bright green frisbee for me. Now the letter didn't explain who the presents were from but I have my suspicions, the writing and the absence of a fourth present all point to the incriminatingly smug D. I have to agree with him when he says "What a clever way to sneak in late Christmas presents."

Mellow and hollow but crisp

2007-12-26T20:20:00.000+13:00

OK, I'm not blogging very often at the moment and as I have only 1hr 28 mins of battery for the next two days I'm not going to write anything much now.

I'm intending to write an entry about schema in sports, maybe one on the concept of marital insurance, post some pictures H & K have taken on my phone and update you on my life in general.

Meanwhile I hope that you're having a happy Xmas and are planning a merry new year.

We are the champions

2007-12-12T09:52:00.000+13:00

Last week my Ultimate Frisbee team Happy Creature played Jason V's Team and they beat us by nearly 20 points. This week when I found out we were playing them again I felt demoralised. But we had a fabulous game. Everyone put in an astonishing effort. Our captain, SK, seemed to have an extra couple of feet of reach to call on. The final score was Jason V's Team 11, Happy Creature 7. Reducing the margin to 4 points feels like a great victory and if that wasn't enough their team named me female MVP.

I may have a BMI close to 40, run like a penguin with a face a beetroot would be proud of but today I am a sports star. I am expecting to be asked for celebrity endorsements any moment.

Weighing up reality

2007-12-11T13:49:00.000+13:00

Wandering around the library today it occurred to me to divide the world into subjects on which there are more fictional instances than real and vice versa. Dragons, fairies, serial killers and princesses fall in the first category. Toilet breaks, sexual encounters, computers and even, I think, first love fall in the second (there are 6 billion people on the planet).

Which leaves me wondering - what occurs in fiction close to the same amount that it occurs in real life?

Driving the light fantastic

2007-12-09T20:05:00.000+13:00

A long time ago, before either of us could drive, I had a conversation with my sister about good drivers in which she said that people who drive like they are part of an overall flow are nice to drive with. I have only been driving about a year and during that time I've thought of this from time to time. I've tried to use the metaphor of a river but it hasn't clicked for me.

The metaphor that does work for me is one of dancing, city driving is like boogieing in a crowd. Both driving and dancing involve physical movement which has elements of both constraint and freedom, both are better when done smoothly and, in both, crashing into others is a bad thing. The main constraint in driving is the road, the main constraint in dancing is the music, both are easier if the constraints are familiar.

My niece, I, likes to drive back from gym a particular way because she likes the shape of it. The sweep of the curves her way is a graceful dance.

Proof that geeks have inherited the earth

2007-12-09T19:36:00.000+13:00

Monty Python is everywhere: I turn on the TV and Michael Palin appears, I turn on my PC and the Wikipedia article on the programming language Python is open (to assuage the curiosity aroused by this xkcd). Although should confess I haven't been able to look at Michael Palin the same way since he told Rove he'd turn gay for David Attenborough - docu-RPS haunts my imagination.

Wordlessly

2007-12-03T21:06:00.000+13:00

www.freerice.com

Moseying

2007-11-27T13:39:00.000+13:00

I have many friends participating in Movember and I thought in honour of them and my own facial hair I'd share the gist of a great Cathy Wilcox cartoon:

Two guys drinking beer.
Guy 1 : So, is your new girlfriend attractive?
Guy 2 : Well, she has a moustache
Guy 1 : So, is it a nice moustache?

Independence begins at home

2007-11-26T22:02:00.000+13:00

Yesterday I filled in the forms for H & K to go to school next year. There were enrolment forms, contact forms, dental clinic forms, public health forms, new entrant forms and even ICT user agreements for them to sign themselves. Today my babies are so grown up they went to the postbox without me.

2622 bees' knees

2007-11-24T21:09:00.000+13:00

Last Sunday it began with a buzzing. It built up to talking to a local beekeeper for advice and it ended with 261 dead bees in our laundry. Since then 94 more bees joined them on Monday, 52 on Tuesday, 6 on Wednesday, 3 on Thursday, 3 on Friday and, just when I thought they were tapering off, 18 today.

Of the 437 bees 8 were substantially larger. From reading about swarming bees in Wikipedia I think this was an afterswarm and the 8 larger bees were virgin queens. I am sad to have killed them, particularly as feral honey bees are having a hard time here with varroa mites. Last summer we coexisted very happily with a hive of bumble bees in the eaves but I am not prepared to share the laundry.

10 lies about terrorism in NZ

2007-11-22T17:16:00.000+13:00

I have been stuck on this entry for a long time. I'm still not completely happy with it but I'm posting it so I can move on.

I have done a lot of research to make sure that this list reflects a well informed opinion.
I am confident the arrest of 17 people on terrorism charges will discourage activists from carrying out violent acts.
I am disappointed that the Solicitor General ruled against charging them under the terrorism act.
The recorded conversations which mention assassination and acts of violence should be taken at face value. Activists don't say that kind of thing unless they mean to act on it. I never joke with my friends about anything I wouldn't actually do.
The competence of the police in this case is unquestionable and I find it reassuring. The way the situation was handled has been positive for race relations.
I believe that Maori activists pose a real threat to the safety of all New Zealanders.
I can see how a sensible person would decide it was worthwhile to assassinate a New Zealand politician.
I think that extremist groups are made up entirely of sensible people. I always support Tama Iti and understand his point of view.
I think that the police are all sensible people. They certainly had a good reason to remove two avocados and return them later.
I have no lingering sense of disquiet about what happened.

Flying ferrets

2007-11-04T14:45:00.000+13:00

xkcd is my favourite webcomic. It describes itself as "a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math and language". It is usually funny, always geeky, sometimes poignant and very rarely irritating. The panels/strips usually stand alone which makes it easy to pick up.

Yesterday I read the early strips for the first time. This was my favourite.

I hang out with people who quote the latest xkcd in conversation before I've read it. But, the other day I found out that JK, multiply manifest internet goddess, hadn't heard of xkcd and so I thought I'd better make sure that you, my gentle reader, had.

The naked logophile

2007-11-04T10:47:00.000+13:00

The best thing about facebook is Scrabulous which lets me play scrabble with friends on the other side of the world. We each play a move every day or so and the game slowly unfolds.

But I'm sick and I'm waiting for the other player(s) to move in all my games so I checked out "Join Table". I forgot the internet is for porn. I forgot Rule 34 of the internet: if you can imagine it there is porn of it.

So when I found:

Hara is requesting a Regular game using the English TWL dictionary.
Note: **LADIES ONLY** HAVE A WEBCAM? LET ME SEE YOUR BODY while we play scrabble, I have pictures of my thick hard [...] to share. Send a message when you accept so I know you read this.

I ended up in a giggling, coughing, wheezing, gasping, snorting fit.

Glue ear

2007-11-03T07:29:00.000+13:00

One particularly chatty little trick or treater said to me:

I've seen you in my street. My mother said you must have gone to a party and forgotten that your hair was green.

Cultural contamination and begging

2007-11-02T15:51:00.000+13:00

H & K love Halloween so for the last few years I have been perfecting the art of attracting trick or treaters to our house. This year we got about 70 which is astounding in a country that doesn't go in for it much. It helps we have easy access and live in a street with lots of families. My technique is:

Decorate so people can tell you know it is Halloween. We stuck pictures of ghosts and jack o'lanterns which H & K coloured in in the front windows and tied some balloons outside.
Be generous so kids will tell each other it is worth visiting. Three wrapped lollies each is considered generous around here.
Look harmless. Two pre-schoolers jumping up and down on the garage roof in their pyjamas does the trick.

Wednesday evening from 6 'til 7:30 H & K alternated between jumping up and down on the garage roof in their pyjamas and woolly hats, and rushing downstairs to answer the door.

2007-10-23T14:54:00.000+13:00

K: "Why did you say 'munch munch munch munch munch'?"
me: "Because it is more fun to eat you than listen to you whine."

Sometimes my parenting surprises me.

Angst in her pants

2007-10-20T21:27:00.000+13:00

H is very good at putting two and two together. Sometimes she goes a little to far though and makes five. Our student nanny is from Melbourne, yesterday, when I went to Kelburn with H, I realised she had renamed Kelburn to Melbourne in her mind. This kind of thing generates wonderful malapropisms. She had a conversation with Damon about the "Terrible Arks" it took him a while to figure out she meant the "Wearable Arts".

One day I was on my own putting H & K to bed. They had just got settled and were sweetly snuggled down in their beds and I was just about to give them each a kiss, close the door and give a sigh of relief, when H leapt up and started wildly scratching her bottom. My heart sank. I thought I'd finished my motherly duties for the day and now there was a problem. I even knew the cause of the problem - overenthusiastic wiping. And as I pulled myself back into mummy mode I said:

"Do you have bottom angst?" I thought it was a rhetorical question. I thought it was a way to take it lightly, remind myself that some problems are unsolvable and lighten my mood.

"Yes." H replied with absolute conviction. "I have bottom ants."

Creature feature

2007-10-17T16:57:00.000+13:00

Yesterday I bravely played Ultimate in the league a for the first time. I am on the Happy Creatures team.

10 reasons why I'm a happy Happy Creature

I played.
I caught the disc sometimes. Once, I believe, when the other team threw it which is extra good.
I threw the disc and someone else caught it at least once.
The person I was marking usually found it hard to make the throw they wanted.
I felt like I was in a sensible place quite a lot of the time and usually, when I wasn't, I knew what a sensible place would be (but wasn't fast enough to get there).
The other Happy Creatures were welcoming.
eloieli was a beam of positive support on the side lines.
I am the proud owner of a golden yellow t-shirt with a smiling Cthulu head/octopus on it.
H & K were given golden yellow t-shirts with smiling Cthulu heads/octopi on them.
Only my left shoulder is slightly sore today.

Cough, cough, cough, cough, cough

2007-10-17T16:07:00.000+13:00

I've had a cold/bronchitis/asthma since 1o September and I AM SICK OF IT. I got a nasty cold my last week at work, took the drugs to suppress the symptoms and just kept going. Maybe this was a mistake or possibly I would have had this kind of post-redundancy, sickness catching up with me anyway.

I've been to the doctor who annoys me twice (who I will call Dr WAM), the after-hours doctor once (A-H Dr) and finally today my favourite doctor (my Dr).

First Dr WAM told me that I had asthma with my cold and to take Ventolin. I had childhood asthma so this didn't come as too much of a surprise. Then when Ventolin stopped helping I went to the A-H Dr who told me I didn't have asthma anymore I had bronchitis (probably viral). Then when I still wasn't better two weeks later Dr WAM told me I had asthma, put me on a preventative (steroid) inhaler and basically told me I'd be taking it for the rest of my life. I found this depressing and frustrating. I have enough chronic health conditions already. I do not need another.

I finally got to see my Dr today. She has given me a referral for a chest x-ray to get done if my chest isn't feeling better in 2 weeks, given me a peak flow meter to use at home to monitor my lung capacity, changed the dose of the preventative and given me more information about it including a plan to come of it again. My Dr is lovely but she only works two days a week and not on school holidays.

I'm better than I was, which is better than I was before that, but I'm just not well DAMMIT.

At the age of thirty-six years eleven months and twenty-nine days

2007-10-08T20:18:00.000+13:00

Tomorrow is my birthday. I will be listening to Marianne Faithfull singing The Ballad of Lucy Jordon with the volume turned up loud:

At the age of thirty-seven she realised she'd never
Ride through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in her hair.
So she let the phone keep ringing and she sat there softly singing
Little nursery rhymes she'd memorised in her daddy's easy chair.

You, meanwhile, will be leaving a comment on this blog to wish me happy birthday. If you want a theme for your comment you can tell me something that you're glad you have done before the age of thirty-seven.

Please.

2007-10-07T10:50:00.001+13:00

The world is not as it should be.

France beat the All Blacks 20-18 in the Rugby World Cup quarter finals.

A moments silence please.

Baby I miss you

2007-10-06T20:13:00.000+13:00

I am helping out a friend who is a sole-parent with a 2.5 year old , J, and a 3 month old, T. She lives 90 miles from Wellington. I drove up Monday and I am staying for 10 days. It has been lovely spending time with J and T. T is a very good natured, easy going baby. The kind that the baby books promise but only a freak of nature delivers. J is a bright, determined and mostly very sensible wee person. He takes being a terrible two seriously and drives his mother to distraction as often as one would expect.

I am homesick for my children. The last few days when T gives me smiley gurgles or, to J's delight, my well placed suggestions enable him to conquer the tall ladder at the playground, I ache for my children. J and T are lovely and loveable but they do not fill the gap in my heart.

This physical longing for children of my own is deeply familiar. It is the feeling I had when I was facing infertility and trying to conceive. Now the ache is for specific children, H and K, but it is the same sensation. My friend told me to go home if it is too hard. Too hard? I put up with two years of this not knowing if it would ever go away, how hard can it be for a few days that I can end whenever I choose?

An ambivalent review

2007-09-29T11:00:00.000+12:00

I read The Facts behind the Helsinki Roccamatios by Yann Martel. I bought it because I gave my mother The Life of Pi by Yann Martel for her birthday and she enjoyed it.

The Facts behind the Helsinki Roccamatios is a selection of three short stories and a novella. They are emotive, interesting and interestingly told. I almost entirely recommend them.

There is one word that makes my recommendation hesitant. One word that sticks in my mind and caused me to rant at the book. In a story told in the first person Yann Martel writes:

"But Paul wasn't gay. He had never told me so outright, but I knew him well enough and I had never sensed the least ambivalence."

Ambivalence! I felt outraged. Ambivalence implies that the person is unable to make a choice or is torn between two conflicting desires. What makes this fictional young man think that gay people are any more ambivalent than anyone else?

The incredible woman

2007-09-28T16:27:00.000+12:00

Where am I you may ask? Well I have a terrible cold. H has a terrible cold. K has a terrible cold. My nanny doesn't have a terrible cold but she does have terrible food poisoning so I've kind of been busy.

And doing needlework. Which uses up my evening typing fingers.

You can really tell I've become a lady of leisure (sickness as above excepted): first I went into a toy shop and came out with a needlepoint kit and nothing for H or K, and I've had an odd moment sitting in a cafe sipping hot chocolate and doing it.

The kit is The Incredible Woman designed by Jennifer Pudney. This is a wee picture of what it would look like if I did it according to the instructions:

But I'm planning to add another baby, and make the cat and woman look more like Andy and me. I'm not sure whether to have two babies and a wee man or take the wee man out. I don't feel that D is one of my burdens which makes me think I could take him out but he is important and Andy isn't a burden either...

Let me know what you think.

Artistic license

2007-09-22T20:51:00.000+12:00

K has been drawing a lot of fairies recently. She also draws people she knows: H, K, our nanny, me. These people are often depicted with wings.

A week or two ago D overheard H lecturing K: "Remember if you're drawing Daddy don't give him any hair."

Then on Father's Day K bounced up to D with a picture and said "Here you go Daddy, here's a picture of you, but I can't draw boys so I drew you wearing a dress."

At which H piped up "I like drawing fairies."

I think D is beginning to develop a complex.

Book stick

2007-09-21T16:16:00.000+12:00

I stole this stick from clarityburntime.

1. You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451. Which book do you want to be?
One that is loved enough to be memorised. (I haven't actually read Fahrenheit 451 but...)

2. Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
Often while reading and in the afterglow of a good book.

3. The last book you bought is:
I bought The Tiger Who Came to Tea by Judith Kerr for a third birthday present and before that My Heart Goes Swimming: New Zealand Love Poems, and Dear To Me: 100 New Zealanders Write About Their Favourite Poems which inspired my leaving work poetry appeal.

4. The last book you finished is:
Ten in the Bed by Penny Dale (the board book version). I haven't been finishing adult books recently, just starting them. I think the last I finished was The Other Wind by Ursula Le Guin, the sixth in the Earthsea Series. Despite them being highly recommended to me for as long as my reading age has been up to it I only started the series this year, they lived up to my high expectations.

5. What are you currently reading?
D is reading The Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson aloud to me before we go to sleep. I love being read to and I feel very lucky every time it happens.

On my bedside table I have bookmarks in: Dear To Me, Life of Pi by Yann Martel, Small Holes In The Silence by Patricia Grace, The Rough Guide to Climate Change by Robert Henson, The Fountain of Tears by Stephanie de Montalk, Are Angels OK?: The Parallel Universes of New Zealand Writers and Scientists and The Halstead Treasury of Ancient Science Fiction. Fortunately most of these are short pieces or non-fiction which can cope well with a long break in the middle. Life of Pi is the exception.

I am also reading The Complete Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne to H and K, and the very beautiful Fairy Tales by Berlie Doherty and Jane Ray which is K's current favourite. It is wonderful reading Winnie-the-Pooh to people who have never met the jokes before and find them hilarious.

6. Five books you would take to a desert island.
Is this the kind of desert island where I need the book with the biggest covers I can think of for shade, the bulkiest book drenched in water to quench my thirst, the most nutritious book to eat, a book of matches to light a fire and a fishing book with a two free hooks?

Assuming the desert island has a luxurious resort which caters for all my other needs including entertainment for H & K, I'll take a bunch of books I haven't read but want to: the Life of Pi to finish, My Heart Goes Swimming for romance, Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson because I've heard it's good and I'm interested in the politics of terraforming, Captain Nemo by K.J. Anderson which D wants to return, and Of course I love you... NOW GO TO YOUR ROOM! by Diane Levy which I have been meaning to read for ages.

And then I remember that one is generally assumed to be stranded for a very long time on fictional desert islands not just on holiday and, after putting aside worrying about either being separated from or having to educate H and K, I think maybe I should bring some more sustaining things: an encyclopaedia to feed my love of trivia, The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis because they will survive much re-reading, Dear To Me for some great poems, an omnibus edition of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy to keep the wolf from the door, and a guide to the local flora and fauna to answer my curiosity.

7.Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?
JK and i because they both love to read and sometimes do memes and I'll leave the last invite temptingly open to anyone who wants it.

Please livejournal me

2007-09-20T09:25:00.000+12:00

Some of my dear readers have expressed a desire to read this humble blog on livejournal. This requires syndication and syndication requires a paid or permanent livejournal account. If you have such a thing and you'd be prepared to take not usually about penguins there please let me know.

Thanks! This is on livejournal here.

Tidy in her mind

2007-09-19T06:08:00.000+12:00

Once upon a time K had a buddy called Bear, who was a bear, and H had a buddy called Fimble, who was a fimble. Unbeknownst to them their devious parents had a secret stash which contained doppelgängers, Backup Bear, Fimble's Friend and Fimble's Other Friend. This deception was carefully maintained for fear that a rift in the space time continuum would occur if Bear and Backup Bear, or Fimble and Fimble's Friend were to simultaneously appear.

Of course it was inevitable that this would happen. One day when we had searched high and low for Fimble, given up in despair and substituted Fimble's Friend H found Fimble. Our nanny handled the situation with aplomb and H & K were absolutely delighted. Magic! Now K has a fimble too. To avoid confusion both fimbles are called Fimble and only K can pick which is whose.

K is feeling in need of additional security at the moment. One of the ways this manifests is that every night when she goes to sleep she needs a vast collection of objects. Her fimble and bear, pink baby, cookie monster, Shirley, Bear's dad, wee pink bear, my leaving work gorilla, the toy shopping basket, Pooh, some pictures of fairies I drew for her, and the list goes on. Most nights the collection grows and it all has to be arranged just so. I fear that one day it will undergo gravitational collapse, become a black hole and suck not just toys but all our material possessions in.

[This post was inspired by this post about transitional objects.]

What's on tonight

2007-09-18T10:40:00.000+12:00

I don't know about you but when I go to the movies I normally don't have a specific film in mind. An opportunity comes my way and suddenly I want to know what's on tonight. I want to go to a website and see all my options on one page. Sometimes I want to print that page and take it with me so I can discuss which movie to go to over dinner.

Here are some quick reviews of the sites I've found that meet that need in Wellington:

www.noremote.co.nz
+ good, comprehensive and reliable info
+ links to www.imdb.com (the movie database on the web)
= sessions by cinema
- I haven't found a way to print the information sensibly

www.feelinggreat.co.nz/movies
+ sessions by film across all cinemas (a very nifty feature)
+ good information
+ prints OK and you can cut, paste and reformat it
- sometimes incomplete and not obvious when it is
- link changes name from time to time, if it doesn't work go to the feelinggreat site and search for movies

www.tonight.co.nz
- only covers arty cinemas
= sessions by time
+ prints OK

There are a couple of sites which cover all of NZ which have all the information but do not present it on one page. www.flicks.co.nz is very glossy, www.nzcinema.co.nz has info for only some cinemas but I've included it because I like the design.

Actually tonight I'm going to the Northland Toy Library committee meeting but conceptually I might be going to the movies and if I was I'd be using these sites.

50 ways to leave

2007-09-14T04:12:00.000+12:00

You just slip out the back, Jack
Make a new plan, Stan
You don't need to be coy, Roy
Just get yourself free
Hop on the bus, Gus
You don't need to discuss much
Just drop off the key, Lee
And get yourself free

- Paul Simon 50 ways to leave your lover

Today is my last day at work. Yesterday it finally hit me as I was throwing out half the stuff in my filing cabinet that this is it. 40 hours a week for 13 years comes to so little. I cried on my way home.

Now it is 4am and I can't sleep. Today I have to pull together my last gasp attempt to finish what I said I would before I go, do something sensible with a few hundred emails, pass on my last words of wisdom and have a few drinks with my workmates (and probably more than a few more).

K asked me a while ago "Do your friends at work love you?" Today I hold them very dear.

Ham

2007-09-07T12:15:00.000+12:00

I'm leaving work in a week and so I'm clearing out my email. Here are three snippets I thought I'd share:

While sitting down, lift your right foot off the floor and make clockwise circles.
Now, while doing this, draw the number "6" in the air with your right hand.
Check which way your foot is circling.
Try to do this without your foot changing direction.

This is a wee snatch of a song that I started inventing:

Beauty's in the eye of the beholder [intro...
There's a woman of size
with massive thunder thighs
And a woman so thin
who thinks eating's a sin
If you think that they're not beautiful [chorus...
you've got ugly eyes.
There's a man in lace
with a brithmark on his face
...

From: me
To: D

Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. 'Pooh!' he whispered.
'Yes, Piglet?'
'Nothing,' said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw. I just wanted to be sure of you.'

Hell fire

2007-09-03T20:11:00.000+12:00

Last night we were happily eating pizza when we turned around to see flames a foot and a half tall in the kitchen. It seems the problem with buying pizzas from Hell is their desire for immolation.

It was all very dramatic but we managed to put the fire out without anything else catching and we even rescued the damp and slightly charred token from the pizza box. The only lasting impact is that one of the knobs on the stove is slightly melted.

It made me realise I cope better with emergencies when there are other people present I can boss around.

The most probable cause of the fire is that when D put the empty pizza box down on the stove top it was heavy enough to trigger the gas self-lighting mechanism and a spark caught but we haven't ruled out spontaneous combustion.

Sweet dreams

2007-09-02T19:34:00.000+12:00

Putting K to bed tonight I said "Dream of nice things: fairies and princesses, purple and pink, fimbles and chocolate, ice-cream and lollies."

And K added "Mustard and horseradish sauce."

Chocolatey goodness

2007-09-01T20:37:00.000+12:00

My top ten:

1. Schoc - Lapsang Souchong - individual chocolates infused with smoked tea
2. Whitakers - Dark Orange block
3. dark chocolate covered crystallised ginger
4. de Spa Chocolatier - lime individual chocolates
5. the dark chocolate covered dried apricots you can buy individually from Kirks
6= Cadbury - Energy Chocolate block
6= Whitakers - Bittersweet Dark block
6= Cadbury - Old Gold block
9. chocolate covered hokey pokey
10. jaffas

The poetry of leaving

2007-08-31T17:00:00.000+12:00

I just sent out an email to everyone in the company where I work. It said:

Subj: Ruth __'s Leaving Poetry Appeal

After 13 years I am leaving [this company] on 14 September. Instead of collecting money for a gift, I have been inspired by the Amnesty International book Dear To Me (which has 100 famous New Zealanders' favourite poems and the reasons they like them) to gather together your favourite poems, which I will turn into a single edition book. This will be a reminder not just of my time at [this company] but the people who make [this company] special.

To take part, please email me your favourite poem or a link to it, and a short note explaining why you like it or why it's significant to you. All donations will be gratefully accepted, even from those of you I don't know and have never had the pleasure of working with.

I enjoy good poetry and I am looking forward to the results but here I will confess that one of the reasons I did it is that I enjoy playing with engineers' minds.

Ultimately very green

2007-08-27T17:07:00.000+12:00

On Saturday I left my comfort zone outside the Northland Community Centre and went to Ultimate Frisbee practice. Really - me - a team sport, for fun. Let me know of any other signs of the apocalypse.

The people were lovely and I was much better at it than I expected. (My expectations were very, very, very low.) I plan to go to practice for the next few weeks and see how it goes.

There is scope for bringing H & K and letting them run wild with their cousins.

One of the things that I realised after Ultimate, is that if I'm learning a new skill I think I am capable of, I direct the person teaching me towards what I think will help me most. I'll tell them when to skip ahead and when to repeat. When I have no confidence that I can learn the skill I don't help the person teach me - I assume that not only do they know what they are teaching but also the best way to get it into my brain. This assumption makes it more likely that I find it hard to learn.

On Saturday was one of the first times I have had enough confidence in my ability to learn a physical skill. I told the person helping me:

"Brain full. Do not give me any more instructions, just repeat the instructions you've already given me."

It really helped.

Finally for those who have asked - my hair colour is Affinage, Colour Dynamics, Green Envy (and check out the Dutch goth site I have a completely logical reason to link to).

They run for fun in the hot hot sun

2007-08-26T18:04:00.000+12:00

Our school reports graded us on effort and achievement. I have been thinking that we should have been graded on enjoyment too. My idea began with PE.

In my view one of the things that school PE should focus on is creating a love of active play. As an adult being good at sport makes very little difference to most people's lives. Enjoying it does. Enjoying it almost certainly makes people fitter and fitter people are healthier.

Focussing on enjoyment would help people in other areas too. Imagine if kids left school with 10% less achievement English and 10% more enjoyment of reading, or 10% less skill at maths but 10% more enjoyment of using the skills they have. Do you think they'd be worse off?

[The blitle is a Dr Seuss quote.]

Something burnt and something blue

2007-08-23T16:05:00.000+12:00

On Saturday we went to a wedding. Beforehand I was in our bedroom getting dressed and D was in the kitchen ironing his favourite shirt. I came out of the bedroom with green hair, I's magical green, purple and blue dress and a purple cape. D said "You look good. You look really good." And just stood there gazing at me admiringly. Until he realised he'd burnt his shirt.

I think I will tell this story for a long time as one of our most romantic moments.

At the wedding I was dancing to some unfamiliar song with a friend who is maybe 10 years younger than me when he said "I suppose you remember this from when it came out?" I didn't but that was fine. Then he said "My dad was hippy, were you a hippy?" Suddenly I felt a hundred.

When I told this story to another friend who is maybe 10 years younger than me, he said "Well if you are 100 then you look really good for your age."

Sorry for the lack of posts lately - my laptop is sick and I'm suffering from work angst.

Playing with my colleagues' minds

2007-08-14T10:12:00.000+12:00

I just posted this on the bulletin board on the intranet at work:

Topic: Survey - Breastfeeding in Public

The latest survey on the Intranet home page is:

Should breastfeeding be allowed in public?

And the answers at the time of writing are:

Yes, always 42.6%
Yes if done discretely 49.5%
Not in eating establishments 4.5%
No, never 3%
Unsure 0.5%

202 votes cast.

As a fairly recent breast feeder I would like to say - how do 100 good [company] people think it is possible to attach a wailing infant to one's bosom in public discreetly?

For those of you who have never breastfed I would like you to imagine the following scenario:

You are on call and so have to carry a cellphone with you everywhere you go. Unfortunately the cellphone has been glued to a large siamese cat. Fortunately the cat sleeps a lot. Unfortunately if the cellphone rings the only way to stop it is to press it (with cat attached) against a part of your anatomy usually covered by underwear for 10-30 minutes. In the unlikely event you can achieve this in a position in which the cat is sufficiently comfortable the cat will go back to sleep.

Hopefully this mental exercise will give you sympathy for indiscreet breast feeders and admiration for those who manage it discreetly.

Finally I had twins so those of you who are very brave can imagine that you are on call for two jobs with two cellphones stuck to two cats.

Greener than I'm cabbage looking

2007-08-11T19:29:00.000+12:00

Today I got my hair dyed green. A vibrant kelly green. I'm very pleased with it.

Why green?

It is an strange personal joke about 'natural' hair colours.
It will stop me applying for other jobs before I know what is happening at my work.
It's one of my favourite colours and purple is too trad.
I'm feeling rebellious.
It will help me do some other things that are outside my comfort zone.
I've been meaning to do it for years.
My sister's hair hasn't been green.
Our corporate colour wasn't radical enough.
I thought it would make my complexion look less florid.
It is a transition stage from white back to brown.

Feeling quizical

2007-08-10T15:34:00.000+12:00

I am Ireland.

Mystical and rain-soaked, you remain mysterious to many people, and this makes you intriguing. You also like a good night at the pub, though many are just as worried that you will blow up the pub as drink your beverage of choice. You're good with words, remarkably lucky, and know and enjoy at least fifteen ways of eating a potato. You really don't like snakes.
Take the Country Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid

And in case you doubt the wisdom of the internet: baked, mashed, roast, hot chips, chippies,
stuffed, croquettes, scalloped, in salad, hash browns, home fries, french fries, leek and potato soup, boiled, gnocchi.

I am Watership Down!
by Richard Adams

Though many think of you as a bit young, even childish, you're actually incredibly deep and complex. You show people the need to rethink their assumptions, and confront them on everything from how they think to where they build their houses. You might be one of the greatest people of all time. You'd be recognized as such if you weren't always talking about talking rabbits.
Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

After Pinter

2007-08-08T19:33:00.001+12:00

The sound of a cellphone with an annoyingly persistent ring is heard from the other side of the office. It rings for a long time.
Me: Someone who doesn't answer their phone has stolen my ring tone.
Workmate: Are you sure it's not your phone and you've left it in the kitchen.
Me:
I look at my desk. I look for my folio which has my phone in it. I look sheepish. I get up and come back carrying my phone.
We both laugh a lot.

Public nudity

2007-07-27T17:21:00.000+12:00

H & K have extremely cute pyjamas. They are polarfleece suits with feet in and they make them look like the cuddliest little people in the world.

Yesterday I bundled H & K into the car in their pyjamas so we could meet D at the airport at 8am. They got heaps of smiles from the morning commuters, especially when they were jumping up and down and calling "Daddy, Daddy" at the arrivals gate.

I don't know if we got heaps of smiles at baggage claim. I was too busy trying to get H dressed again.

The mother of all telepathy

2007-07-23T17:18:00.000+12:00

I used to be amazed with how incompetent other people were at knowing what H & K wanted. Now I am amazed at how much easier it is for me to guess than anyone else.

I read an article about some research where they got 30 men to guess emotions from photos of eyes before and after researchers sprayed oxytocin up their noses, 20 of them performed significantly better after.

Breastfeeding produces lots of oxytocin. Maybe this is where some of the maternal telepathy comes from.

Happy blogiversary to me

2007-07-22T16:58:00.000+12:00

Here I am one year, 172 posts and a few new friends since the beginning.

I've invented a meme, posted about H & K, being a mum, medical madness and occasionally penguins.

Thanks to everyone who has commented - sometimes you make my day.

When stereotypes backfire

2007-07-17T16:32:00.000+12:00

I got spam which said:

You can be as big as an American