Here I am again

Left Wellington about half twelve today and met Frank and Jake in Cambridge just before 7 with Lauren carrying on to Hamilton. His little face lit up when he saw me through the window and he clapped his hands and I imagine I reflected this delight. It has been two and a half months since I saw him. When I got inside he was all excited about a surprise for me in the car, which turned out to be a chocolate bar he had bought with his own money. I had a Madagascar book and cookies for him. Then I had to sit in the back seat with him on the trip to Tauranga and we had an earplug each as he tried to find anything 'with a guy singing and guitar and drums' (he's seven!). Tomorrow I have him all to myself as it's the last day of the school holidays and Frank will be at work. Not sure what we'll do yet, hopefully something outside if the weather is kind.

Made it to Frank's place by 8. Quite a long trip, but I'm feeling surprisingly mellow. It was snowing on the desert road, i stuck my hand out the window and these little flurries evaporated on my skin and left it feeling really dry. I don't think I have been in falling snow before. I guess I should have got out and rolled around in it. Better make sure I do that before I die.

Speaking of dying, driving round Lake Taupo with the sun setting in, I had this odd sensation that I would like to die at dusk, it seems an appropriate time of day to die. No morbidity intended, just the sunset made me feel calm and accepting. Although I have no explanation, I felt it would be an okay thing to die right then, nothing to be scared of, whereas before the thought of being snuffed out before my time has always made me feel sad about not having had kids. Must be my impending quarter century accentuating my mortality.

I also decided if i were a tree i would be a willow tree. Not particularly ornamental or purposeful. Although the willows used as a shelter-belt on the kiwifruit orchard i grew up on were pretty hardy, you could cut them right back and pretty soon they'd have some little shoots on. I just liked how dreamy and whimisical they looked draping into the lake tonight all guilded in twilight. Yeah. I like that. A willow tree.

Road trips are surreal things. You start in one world, and eight hours later you are back in another one you have consciously left behind. I associate road trips with junk food and toilet stops in dodgy small towns with no soap or loo paper a lot of the time, and lots of winding roads and green. The small towns are (surprisingly) populated with smalltownspeople that make me feel over-dressed and detached from reality and alien because they are so comparatively comfortable in their respective smalltowns, a part of the landscape. I am transient and forgotten immediately after I have purchased my whopper burger and back in the car. I wonder if I appear to "belong" to outsiders walking around Cuba street? I'm not sure if I do, although it would be nice to find somewhere that owned you like that. Anyway - queuing up outside one such dodgy toilet in Taihape this afternoon I heard the cutest conversation between a local who kept emphasising her words with "ooosh" and a Wellingtonian, two strangers. The girl from Taihape, on learning that her cubicle neighbour was from Wellington (after saying ooosh) kept asking if she knew a debbie, or a kelly, or a someone else that Ms Taihape knew from Wellington. The Wellingtonian did not know Debbie or Kelly, but the humour, for me, was that the Wellingtonian had to keep asking for clarification. Debbie who, kelly who? I suppose wellington isn't that big.......