Hold me tight

We have cable broadband. Right now I'm on hold on the phone logging a fault with the provider. The problem is that over the last few months the cable from the pole to our house has been mysteriously getting longer and longer. At first it just swayed in the wind, then it slapped against the telephone line and now it is getting tangled in the tree. It can't be good for it.

Possible explanations (to fill the time on hold):

• there is a very heavy possum in the neighbourhood
• a invisible spider spins some more each night
• they made the cable out of knicker elastic by accident
• the cable wants to be a swing
• the call centre staff have been swinging on it hoping for my call

[and then a human being spoke to me again.]

test by blogger.com

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Updated by the real RUTH to add:
Look, look. Down below. Now you can see the labels for each post. I'm so excited.

Movie Review - The Filth and the Fury

Channel surfing for something to watch while I ate my dinner alone I found The Filth and the Fury on C4 (a free to air mostly music channel), a feature length documentary about the Sex Pistols. To my surprise I found it gripping and to my even greater surprise touching.

It had a particularly strange relationship with the ads. The movie itself cuts to live performances, videos and bizarre excerpts of old British TV so when the movie cut to Bic Runga sweetly singing or an ad for some album it took me a moment to realise it wasn't part of it.

The most poignant image for me was a grown up Johnny Rotten crying as he talked about the death of his friend Sid and saying "If only I was smarter."

Christmas starts earlier every year

I used to like leaving all my Xmas shopping 'til Christmas Eve. In the couple of weeks before Xmas town is full of people and half of them are dithering. On Christmas Eve town everyone is focussed.

This year I have done the unthinkable. I have done more than half our Xmas shopping already. I did it on Friday. This is easier than it sounds because I think the world is divided into two kinds of people: people who love books and will appreciate getting more, and people who do not have enough books and need more.

Xmas shopping this early is OK too because most normal people are not Xmas shopping yet.

My excuses for indulging in this abnormal behaviour are a) D is away for most of December and I didn't want to worry about it while he was away, b) while I was away sick for a month my annual leave accumulated to the point where HR began hassling me to spend it so I took a day off for Xmas shopping (and a million other things some of which also got done) and c) the dog ate it.

Looking for love

We have had three wonderful nannies. When the first wonderful nanny left us to train as a midwife I dreaded her going and thought we'd never find someone good enough again. Since then I've learnt that each great nanny brings different strengths and helps H & K grow in different ways.

Finding a good nanny is still hard. It is such an important job. I want someone who loves our children and is loved by them, is proactive, positive, patient and playful and is interested in, and knowledgeable about, child development. I want someone who shares our values and will help our children to be intelligent, confident and caring.

I have interviewed people for lots of jobs at work. It is not the same. Choosing a nanny is a leap of faith. It is entrusting the most important people in my life to a stranger. It gives me great sympathy for parents arranging marriages.

When I employed our current nanny I knew she was going to university next year. Uni starts in March. I assumed she'd be with us until mid-February. She handed in her resignation last week. She is leaving us at the end of December. So now I am looking for a new nanny.

This is my fourth nanny search and so I have a lot of it sorted: I can copy most of the email I sent the nanny agencies last time, I just have to print out the interview and phone pre-interview questions, I know more or less what I am looking for. What I don't know is whether the right person is out there this time, whether I will recognise the wrong ones.

Wish me luck.

Great things are afoot

Last Friday H fell and hurt her foot. She walked on it a little straight afterwards but then wouldn't. We gave her an ice pack and much sympathy. K decided her foot hurt too. Fortunately H still thinks crawling is an acceptable form of locamotion. Unfortunately K thought having a "hurt foot" meant she had to be carried.

Then H woke in the night yelling in staccato bursts, a sound she has never made before. I sleepily put a crepe bandage on her ankle, which seemed to help. On Saturday morning when she still wouldn't walk I took her to the after-hours doctor. He checked it out, told us it wasn't a sprain and that she should walk on it to help it get better.

H, who is stoic, obedient and has a high opinion of doctors, limped valiantly. Meanwhile K showed a remarkable memory, consistency and persistance by remembering to limp too. I didn't have the heart to tell K that walking with your legs as far apart as possible, although difficult, is not limping.

I took H to the doctor so quickly partly out of guilt. H last hurt her foot when she was one. She had been walking unsupported for only a week when she fell and landed badly. She went back to only walking clutching a hand or piece of furniture. The first week I wasn't worried. K had started walking a month earlier and she had started, stopped for a week for no apparent reason, and then got started again. By the second week I was worried but I was also totally distracted by organising us all to accompany D who was going to be in hospital in Auckland for the third week. We got home, H started walking again, D recovered much faster than expected and next time H had problems walking I got her to the doctor in less than 24 hours.

Baby, baby

Everyone is pregnant. Actually I know three people at the just telling people stage, three at the stopping work stage and two in the middle. I haven't known so many people pregnant at once since I was too. Happily my gut reaction to all these pregnant people when I can never be pregnant again is pleased. I was prepared for semi-irrational jealously, avoidance and/or sadness. I'm never sure whether preparing for the worst case scenario is a good habit resulting in my expectations often being exceeded or excessively negative and paranoid.

Update: the next day - one baby out, one more pregnancy learnt of.

Parenting advice

On the cable car (which is actually a funicular railway) I overheard two young guys talking. One told the other how he'd bumped into a girl he used to go to school with and now she had a kid, and not only that, she is now a pole dancer and his friend said "Well, when you've had a kid what can you do?"

I must say pole dancing never crossed my mind.

In the little bumpy car

My ideal car for our current requirements is:

1. automatic
2. second hand
3. a people-mover (comfortably seats 6 with room for baggage)
4. environmentally friendly (e.g. a hybrid)
5. painted metallic purple, colour-shifting purple/green or with a mural

Unfortunately environmentally friendly doesn't currently go with either second hand or a people-mover.

At the moment we have a Honda Odyssey people-mover and even though we mostly don't need the extra capacity sometimes it is wonderful. Someone on our street has got a Toyota Prius and I'd like to be as green as the Jones's.

Commit me

One of the concerns I had before my operation was that I'd get lazy afterwards and not get back into my exercise regime. This week I have been getting back into it fine but just to make sure I thought I'd put it in writing, post it in public and tattoo it on my forehead.

I will:

• walk to work every weekday it isn't raining
• aquajog most Tuesday mornings
• go to Pilates at the gym on Thursdays (and do circuits if I miss the class)
• go to Tai Chi on Mondays

Good thing I have a fringe.