Happiness is ...

a tall chai latte ...
a good pen ...
a blank notebook ...
an old green armchair ...
an open fire ...

... and two uninterrupted hours at Starbucks to enjoy the ambience and just write !!!

Playing with the Queen of Hearts ...

... knowing it ain't really smart
The Joker is the only fool
Who'll do anything for you ..."

(Nope ... no idea who the song's by ... just one of those ones that won't go away)

Went out and had a grown-up evening out for the first time since we arrived in Dunedin. Headed for the casino where I had a spectacularly non-eventful few hours.

We always set ourselves a limit ... took me three hours to lose my $40 playing blackjack. The MOTH managed to double his money though ... so we left at the end of the night $2.50 richer than when we walked in (last of the big spenders we are !!!)

The flatmate was disgusted when we showed up back home and it wasn't even midnight. We would have stayed out later, but there was nowhere in town open to get a coffee ... with the exception of McDonalds and quite frankly, home in bed with the MOTH was a far more attractive option !!!

PS : Note to self ... croupiers get real tetchy when you correct their maths skills ...

This one's for Sue ...

I've been writing.

Not here ... real, on a page, with a pen, hand-written, compost-type writing.

One of the very few books I brought with me when we moved was "Writing Down the Bones" ... and contained therein is a note that says "... because I believe in you"

So I figure it's about time I start believing in me again too ...

Further, further note to self ...

(notice I seem to be learning a lot this week ??)

File sharing sites are bad ... very very very very bad !!!

I'm posting this from work as, at last reckoning, my computer was a $2,000 paperweight with a black screen and a virus-addled hard drive.

The flatmate says it's repairable and has started de-whatever-ing it ... but I'm thinking it would have been a lot easier and cheaper to have just gone out and bought the Black Eyed Peas CD !!!

Further note to self ...

Learn how to programme VCR.

It is not good for one's health to stay awake until 12.45am watching TV on a work night ... no matter how cute Spike is ...

Note to self ...

Do not eat pasta with napolitana sauce for lunch whilst wearing a white shirt !!!

Lunch on days such as these should entirely consist of lemonade popsicles and vanilla milkshakes ...

All growed up ...

K arrived home from his Gran and Pop's this afternoon. All by himself. On a bus.

I'm not entirely sure why it is, but I had absolutely no qualms about putting him on a ferry and sending him off unaccompanied to stay with his cousin for a week over the summer holidays.

So why is it that I was so unsure about allowing my folks to put him on a bus in Oamaru that was not stopping until it arrived in Dunedin ? It's not like he was going to fall off and drown or anything ...

Bizarrely ... K sounds a lot younger and more immature on the phone than he does in real life (and yes, I am aware he is only seven) ...

S is just the opposite ... she sounds so composed and sure of herself on the phone and is such a ditz in person ... so much so that my parents now no longer refer to temporary lapses of intelligence and common sense as "blonde moments" (in honour of my mother) ... but as "having a pink day" (in honour of the junior rugrat) ...

PS ...

And no ... the fire was not started by a Dunedin-ite trying to keep warm ... although you have to find the irony in the fact that a cafe called "Toast" was ... well ... toasted.

Burn baby burn ...

Although this made the front page of the national papers, and was the main item on the TV news last night, I do appreciate that there may be some of you outside the country who may have missed the spectacle ...

Very little work was done in our office yesterday afternoon. We had if not ringside seats, very definitely first row of the balcony views of the worst fire in downtown Dunedin in a gazillion years. Traffic through the centre of town was detoured out past our offices ... meaning that we alternated between looking out one set of windows at the fire, and those on the other side of the building at the steadily increasing traffic ...

Oh yeah, and for those of you who were complaining about the traffic on the way home last night ... in the words of my good friend V ... take a hard pill and go try living in Auckland for a coupla months !!!

Why I'm a TradeMe addict ...

http://www.trademe.co.nz/Business-industry/Office/Stationery-writing/auction-31231669.htm

Says it all really .. it's a great place to go to get away from it all ...

What a letdown ...

The MOTH's going away again tomorrow. Only for four days this time and there's just the one rugrat at home (we drove up to Oamaru on Sunday and "swapped" them over at their grandparents).

He was told he was going to Queenstown for a week. Adventure capital of New Zealand ... skiing and snowboarding, bungy jumping, jet-boating, para-sailing, home of many fine restaurants and pubs etc etc ... I was feeling quite disappointed that I had a job actually, in light of the fact that his boss suggested that the rugrats and I go with him.

Imagine his disappointment when he found out tonight he's going to Cromwell (population about three hundred, located in the middle of nowhere, no nightlife) ...

Just quickly ...

Desperate Housewives rocks !!!

Oh yeah ... and I gotta get me a yard guy.

Harry Potter

No, I do not own the latest Harry Potter book. And I certainly was not one of the hundreds of people queuing for hours to get their grubby little paws on one of the first copies who promptly went home and read it from cover to cover, even though it meant staying up until 3.30 in the morning.

I had the misfortune to be at The Warehouse (big K-mart / Walmart type store for those non-Kiwis amongst you) five minutes before the release this morning. There were hundreds of people mobbing the poor woman in charge of the first box of books. They counted down the last ten seconds ... there was a huge roar ... people got their books ... yippee. People actually seemed proud they had stood in line for three hours to get their copy (they made the front page of the local paper ... was there really nothing else newsworthy happening ???)

When I left the store half an hour later there were no queues ... and still shelves full of books. Now personally I'd rather wait until the crowd was gone ...

I'm not quite sure how to tell you this .... but it's a book people !!! And I can't help thinking that there must be something awfully important missing from a lot of people's lives if the release of a new book is the highlight of their year.

More of the same ...

Nothing much is happening ... it's cold, it's winter ... life carries on as normal ...

Oh yeah, and I've been reading a lot of other blogs lately and have come to the conclusion I'm not doing this "right". Now, the rational side of my brain knows there is no right way to do a blog ... but as always I'm left feeling I could be doing something better ... or funnier ... or smarter ...

I might have to think about this for a coupla days and get back to you ...

For mongooser ...

If I knew how to do the really cool linky-type-thing with this blog, where I typed in "This is a really cool site" and you clicked on the "This", then I would.

But I can't :(

So this one's for you mongooser ... thought it might appeal.

http://thecasualfriday.blogspot.com

The MOTH's car is out to get me ...

It knows I don't like it ... and it's getting its own back.

My car failed a warrant last weekend ... something technical sounding to do with the steering thingy. It was so sweet the way the man who failed me tried to explain exactly what was wrong with it as though I would understand ... I let him talk for about three minutes and then said "is this all written down ?"

Anyway, in the interim I have the pleasure of driving the MOTH's vehicle. For reasons known only to the MOTH, he is extraordinarily attached to his ageing, rusty 4WD. He harbours dreams of roaming unfettered down a sandy beach and catching very large fish ...

We had a heavy duty frost last night, and so I left the house fully prepared this morning with a large bucket of water for unfreezing windows. I even allowed an extra ten minutes so I would have time to properly unfreeze the rotten thing (note to self ... gotta find out where to obtain one of those scrapey things the man across the road cleaned his windows with). Unfortunately it has rather a lot of windows, and I ran out of water halfway through. Back into the house to refill the bucket, grabbed the keys off the counter, back down to the road ...

Whoops. All I am holding is a set of keys for under the house and the sleepout ... not a house key or car key in sight. And my phone is sitting snugly inside the house nestled warmly in its charger beside the bed.

So thank you to the neighbour who let me borrow his phone to call the MOTH to come and rescue me ... and thank you to the MOTH for dropping everything and answering the call of his damsel in distress.

And personally, I think that it's all part of a plan on the MOTH's car's part to make me dislike driving it even more intensely. It's in cahoots with my front door ... I'm sure of it.



(Amended later to add that I really didn't mean to reverse it into a pillar in the carpark at work this evening ... really, truly I didn't)

Dear Cat ...

I appreciate that you have had a rough year.
I appreciate that you have been living rough for the past two months.
I appreciate that you are glad to be home.
I appreciate that you have made the MOTH a very very happy man.
I appreciate that Dunedin is vastly different from Whangarei and you may be having a little trouble adjusting.

I do not appreciate being woken at 4.30 in the morning because you are lonely.
I do not appreciate you using K's bedroom as a toilet because it is too cold to go outside (you're wearing a fur coat you wussy animal !!)
I do not appreciate the filthy look you give me when I try to go anywhere near the MOTH.
I do not appreciate you lying right down the centre of the bed.
I do not appreciate you acting like you are doing us a favour by deigning to live with us.

Behave, or I may be forced to get a dog ...

Round One to the "big" people ...

Rang S to say goodnight ...

"So what did you do today ?"

"I had a sleep cos I was grumpy and the dog was picking on me"

Did I mention that the dog is a ten week old miniature fox terrier ?

Selflessness ...

Just when you think you've failed miserably as a parent, and can't take one more fight and think you'll never teach your kids anything that's truly important ...

K went to the Cadbury Chocolate Factory with the holiday programme today.

The one tonne chocolate waterfall is only surpassed by the free samples as the highlight of the tour.

And what did my boy do ? He brought home a Moro for the MOTH, the Perky Nana for me, a Crunchie for the new arrival ... and only ate one small plain chocolate himself ... cos he wanted us all to enjoy it too.

Four plus one minus one still equals four ...

Being the first weekend of the school holidays, we have managed to luck out and the rugrats are going to take it in turns to spend a week with their grandparents on their "f.." (they call it a farm, the MOTH states it is too small to be a farm and it can only realistically be called a "f..")

The rugrats played "rock, paper, scissors" to see who was going to go first. S won and we drove her to Oamaru and dropped her off this morning. A mild twinge was felt as she insisted on packing her own bag before we left home, and wheeling it down to the car "all on her own self".

As we drove away and she ran along the ridge beside the road waving and yelling, I thought that she looked so tall, and yet, too small to be left "alone". Whenever she has gone anywhere without the MOTH and I, it has always been in the company of her big brother. This is her first real adventure by herself.

Of course she'll be OK ... I mean, the folks raised me, and I turned out fine ...

The cat came back ...

OK ... a chocolate fish to the person who can tell me the name and singer of the song with the following lyrics (and no, this is not a trick question ... I just can't remember) ...

"... but the cat came back
the very next day
the cat came back
we thought he was a goner
but the cat came back
he just couldn't stay away ..."

Yep. The MOTH's cat is home. He was delivered with profuse apologies right to our door this morning. I have to admit that for a while there I was not exactly firmly convinced it was actually our cat ... I mean, black cats all tend to look the same, right ?

But the filthy look he gave me when I got into bed was sufficient to remove all doubt.

Today is a GREAT day !!!

Multiple awesome things happened today ... some bigger than others ...

1. I got my refund cheque from the tax man

2. I went out after work and recieved a totally free buff and polish of my new nails (which are now a very attractive shade of jade green) ... after all, it's not often you receive something for nothing now is it ?

3. Checked my email when I finally got home tonight ... and there were photos from the pet mover people who lost our cat while we were moving. They caught a black cat in a trap in the local area ... I'd totally forgotten he had a little nick out of his ear and as soon as the MOTH saw it he knew it was him. WE'RE GETTING OUR CAT BACK !!!!

Fetch !

The rugrats rang my father after dinner to say Happy Birthday.

S is still not too sure of herself on the phone (she still has a tendency to nod whenever asked a question) and requires prompting.

After receiving gentle instructions to speak clearly and politely and say "Hello Pop, Happy Birthday" ... what are the first words out of the child's mouth ?

"Hi Spot !"

Mmmmm ... bed ....

We are now the proud owners of furniture :) Real life bedroom furniture. No longer do I have to put my clean laundry "away" in a suitcase. Or move everything off my "bedside-cardboard-box" whenever I need anything.

The MOTH had yesterday off work and went shopping. When I arrived home from work he made me close my eyes ... and I thought maybe he might have made the bed or tidied the bedroom. But when I opened my eyes there was furniture there instead !!!

And we have a new bed too. A nice big one that is sufficiently large enough to accommodate a rather large man who is now free to roll over without elbowing me in the eye.

PS : Note to self, do not let colour-blind man go shopping for sheets ... unless you actually want one taupe sheet and one thyme (green) sheet.

Oh the disappointment ...

(continuation of an earlier post) ...

Watching Rove Live on TV tonight and who should he be interviewing but James Masters and Anthony Stewart Head. The actors obviously ... not the BTVS characters ... so I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to see whether it's the accent that does it ... or the looks ?

'fraid to say ... it's the accent. JM minus the accent is a vast disappointment. Although the MOTH reckons it might just have been the leather pants ...