36 and counting...

Another birthday...

I have had a lovely day...after a rather rough night where Luka vomited seven times so it felt like I was up every half hour. After eventually giving up on sleep and getting up at 7am,  I managed to enjoy some me-time while Seiji took Rai to his absurdly early Saturday morning swimming class (8am - what was I thinking?!). Cup of tea, Vogels with vegemite, national radio, blogs, emails...vacuuming. Such an exciting life!

I did buy some rather nice lingerie thanks to a voucher deal and a present from a friend. Also some false eyelashes.

We went out to Bella Italia for lunch then all came home to pass out for an afternoon siesta. We were all up again by 3pm and went to a garden centre where I used the money from my Japanese mother-in-law to buy some plants. Then to Queensgate to buy new sandals.

Now I am enjoying a beer while writing this, listening to the concert programme (Rai's choice - he just did his take on ballet for me - with more protruding bottom than I think the Royal NZ Ballet would appreciate) and watching Seiji produce some izayaka-like treats (sashimi and tataki amongst them : )).

It has been a good day.

Toast life begins

I attended an indie pop fiesta at San Franscisco Bath House here in Wellington with new gal-pal Irina. The clientele consisted of people in their mid-thirties like us who actually heard the music at the time, and groovy young 20-somethings who think it is all very retro-cool like I did of 80s music at Barneys back in the day.  When I asked a couple who were being SO COOL by yelling the lyrics at each other on the dance floor who the band was for one song, they looked at me very scathingly "The Arctic Monkeys of course!". Ahh...music wankery continues (although, of course, I have been guilty of it myself too). Got home 2am, woken by baby Luka at 5am. I realised I haven't been so hungover in at least 18 months. Twas very good fun though.
I start my new job at the Open Polytechnic tomorrow  - exciting and nervous-making (for want of a better word...) but I am very much looking forward to it. Seiji, my husband and personal chef has gone to Japan for 2.5 weeks with Rai. Now I need to fend for myself, the amount of takeaways and toast I eat will most likely rise.


Today's toast count:
2 (Vogel's with vegemite and butter - yum)
Other foods eaten:
1 orange iceblock
2 cups of tea

The vodka is looking attractive, but, alas, it is still only 11:52am and I still have some breastfeeding to do. Weaning is starting to look good, but I'm not sure if I am willing to cut back on the extra 800 calories I get to consume each day to pass on to Luka.

Living the life of Riley

Breakfast for a queen

I have a lovely lifestyle at the moment. I am able to do a whole lot of enjoyable activities since I am not working - choir with my mother, book club, sign language lessons with Luka, Rai's school assembly every Friday, walks on the hills, play dates for Rai, teaching private students and lots of reading, reading, reading. I just finished re-reading a childhood favourite - the Borrowers (the first one, and ...Afield, ...Afloat and ...Aloft - I need to get the Borrowers Avenged to have the full set). Such a beautiful set of stories.

I'm also enjoying slowing down and relaxing a bit. Having said that, I keep busy with various projects. We were looking into setting up a cafe but changed our minds at the last minute; and I applied for a job this week - haven't found out the result yet.

I'm living the life of Riley, really.



In contrast, I got a message from a friend, Sue, who is working for the Red Cross in East Timor (Timor Leste). She is doing important work training local people so they can manage their own development projects. She had mentioned that her driver died suddenly, leaving his widow and six children without any salary. I offered to give them NZ$100 (probably about 2 weeks' salary) and Sue took it to them for me. Her heart-rending message below:

"I delivered the money to Abilio's widow. It was very sad. Although they live in Dili the road to their house is a rough, rutted dirt one. Their house is a simple concrete block...The floors are bare concrete, the living room had 4 plasic chairs, a sort of desk with a TV and... a couple of photos on the wall.

 

I explained that my friend in NZ had sent this money for her and gave it to her. She cried for a little while. Then she talked a bit - I can't understand Tetun much (although I can speak a bit) but the driver who had taken me there talked with her. It seems there has been a hitch in her receiving severance pay from Cruz Vermelha so now the driver and I can try to get that sorted out. She said to say thank you to you.

 I asked if I could take a photo and she said yes, and suddenly four children appeared. Two have had to drop out of university because they can't afford it now. I'm attaching photos."

 

If I get the job I applied for, I hope to be able to send some regular donations to this family.

Some reading

Well, I haven't posted recently and one person (thanks Karen!) has noticed. While I haven't been too busy to blog, the creative urge waxes and wanes. Today, I will just post links to what I have been reading over the past 24 hours. You can see how the Internet has taken over my life and yesterday I was considering having a holiday from my iPad. Anyway, I read an inspiring blog about a women who went from being over 90 kilos to running the London Marathon. Quite good timing as I am thinking of doing a 10k run in December, in Wanganui no less, and now I realise it is entirely doable. [Insert segue here - OK - you think about a connection between running and feminism]. I have been going through a phase recently of reading a bit more about feminism (thanks somewhat to a student I am helping who is doing a sociology course at Victoria University). There are many, many interesting blogs out there, but this  one looks to be very good, and I love the name The Stroppery. On the other side of the spectrum, I also enjoy reading the blog of Dilbert creator Scott Adams. He sure does get himself into trouble though, as you will see from his latest post. I am an economics geek from the past, but have never come across this essay written from the point of view of a pencil, to explain the concept of the invisible hand. This post from Kiwiblog relates, though is probably not interesting enough for you to go and see, since it just talks about the price of milk in New Zealand ; ) I like reading Kiwiblog, but would like to read a few other political blogs (preferably with David Farrar's relative openmindedness to various points of view, but with a better quality of commenter), so recommendations please. Also economic, I enjoy reading Freakonomics, this post about cheap and simple solutions, for example (thoroughly geeky and not humourous at all, I'm afraid). For humour, I enjoy Laughing Squid, which writes about various things cultural. With this post on gender reveal parties, I am concerned about the evolution of society and whether I want to be part of it, but that is just the old fogey in me, which I must suppress in order to remain hip and cool. However, I will NEVER EVER have a gender reveal party (unless Rai or Luka want to tell me something in the future, and then, it would be kinda fun).  Laughing Squid do link to useful posts though, for example, how to make bacon roses, which I should surprise Seiji with sometime (Father's Day 2011 perhaps?). I came across this interesting post by Ricky Gervais on why he is a good Christian (although athiest). On a lighter note, (since Ricky was actually a bit heavy in that post), tumblrs are an awesome new (well, new to me anyway) internet invention. Powerful for their subtlety. Or not. You decide. Chicks with Steve Buschemi eyes. You might ask "Why?". I ask "Why not?". Ditto for Ridiculous Pictures of Celine Dion. If it makes you think or happy for just a minute, it is art. I have just realised that I am only "creative" when procrastinating. Actually, I am supposed to be writing model essays for some of my IELTS students. Fortunately, though, I have found just the website that has already done that for me. Yay for the interweb.

60K Run

Seiji is doing his 60k Ultra Marathon as I write. He is probably just over halfway now.

I am very excited for him and can't wait to go down to see him cross the finish line. I have been Googling 6ok runs to see how long he will take (he thinks 8 - 9 hours - but what if he comes in earlier and I miss him?! Hence, the Googling).

Turns out a pretty good runner will do it in 8 hours. At least this guy did. Wearing these insane shoes I have never heard of called Vibram Five Fingers (see picture above). Wow.

Turns out, human beings are very good at running long distances, and used to do it to catch prey (they chased the prey until the animal dropped down dead from exhaustion / heat stroke). Wow again!

Seiji is just wearing the shoes the Shoe Clinic recommended for him.

Speaking of running forever, do Sea Monkeys ever stop swimming?

Arty day

Seiji started work today at the New Zealand stock exchange; two things should make him very happy.

1. They had work drinks to welcome him, so they obviously like a tipple now and then.

2. There are two showers available so he can easily go running at lunch times. He is going through a mad running phase at the moment and is due to do a 60k Ultra Marathon in two weeks!

Because I was on my own today with Rai and Luka, we had to do a few activities and outings to keep us all sane (except poor Luka, who became a bit insane about 7pm from lack of sleep).



First, Rai and I donned our Masterchef hats and cooked up some pikelets served with mixed berry coulis and cream. I think I have picked up a few things from watching so many cooking shows recently (Masterchef and Jamie Oliver's Food Escapes being current favourites), because I self-critiqued my coulis and found it to be "sour, dull-coloured and under-strained", though it still tasted pretty good overall. My inner chef is starting to emerge! I also realised how great it is to have a bottle of cream in the house (we have some leftover from Christmas, otherwise it is something we never have). I think I may start to follow my grandmother's lead - she always has bacon and cream in the fridge. It seems these two ingredients are enough to inspire or add to dozens of dishes.

After our Masterclass, we visited Riverstone in Upper Hutt to pick up a cute "Welcome" sign (see above) I bought off Trade Me. I have never been to Riverstone, a newish suburb, and had brief fantasies of buying a huge house there with a big garden. However, the suburban neurosis would soon get to me, and  I love Korokoro, so we won't be moving there quite yet.

Later, Rai was inspired by the Welcome sign to make a fake cake tea party - his own styling.

Since we were in Upper Hutt, I decided to go to the Expressions Art Gallery, which my friend Penny had told me about. It was surprisingly good. There was an excellent exhibition by John McLean which Rai and I enjoyed a lot, especially since we had the whole gallery to ourselves. McLean has done a series called "The Farmer" - reminiscent of Nigel Brown, quite familiar. Not something I'd want to buy (nor could afford to!), but glorious to see the whole series of huge paintings hung together.

I do have a couple more NY resolutions already - buy some more art and purchase a good digital camera. Anyone have opinions about Canon's 450D? Also, what do you think of Rai's latest art piece?

Resolutions from The Age

This article has some resolutions I could definitely keep - not sure about eating banana skin though!