pixietale

Setting up a new life

2011-02-28T18:51:00.003+13:00

Well, maybe not a new life. The same life in a new location perhaps? Whatever it is, there is a lot involved and not something to be undertaken lightly. However, once you find your "village" it doesn't matter if you are in a city of a 100,000 or 7 million or 2 million. You still need somewhere to put your head down at night, a hairdresser, a supermarket, and a job. I suppose many people would prioritise the job before all of the other things, and perhaps source said job before relocating in the first place.
So we left London at the end of September last year and travelled for a few months, seeing the banks of the Nile from a felucca (before the political unrest) and taking a hot air balloon ride over the fairy chimneys of Cappadocia at dawn. I kept a journal of sorts; certainly it needs some stylistic sprucing, which I may just manage to do given the current surplus of time I have in my pockets.
I like it here. I don't like how the 30 plus degree heat and 80 plus percent humidity leaves an oily slick in my T zone but I love how you walk outside at nine o'clock at night without any layers on and the air wraps around your bare skin and seeps in, relaxing you the way a warm bath does. And I like the curious bush turkeys and brightly coloured butterflies and lightning fast geckos that call to each other with noises like the clicking of an electrical wire. I am getting used to complete strangers striking up conversations about anything and everything - even on public transport. And they don't appear to be mentally unhinged! The other day a road-worker came up to me as I waited to look at a flat and asked if I needed water because I looked like I was struggling from the heat.
Of course, there was the flood, a biblical deluge for days and days and finally a slow, sinister rise in the nearby river-banks and storm water systems that might have crept through our front door if it had kept raining. As devastating as this was for many local homes and businesses, it didn't compare to the shock and scale of the earthquake in Christchurch last Tuesday at 12.47pm. My family are all well north, and noone we know has been hurt. But I couldn't leave the news coverage that was almost constant for the first couple of days. At first I had this sense of disbelief that it could happen to kiwis, in our own backyard and then I guess I recognised the arrogance in this and it was replaced with heartache, when you saw the families standing around the crumbled remains of multi-storeyed buildings, their loved ones entombed in the wreckage.
I am inspired by (and a little ashamed) how some of those people can talk openly about their loss, and remain composed and upright and determined to get through, one day at a time. As perverse as it can feel, for those that survived, life will go on.

Home

2010-01-31T15:45:00.003+13:00

It's funny, but even after months of R n R (not rock and roll, the other R n R) I can't quite shake off this constant internal disquiet, and i'm still sitting on the edge of my chair. Too much caffeine? Possibly.

I am exactly where I am meant to be, right now.

Like i'm waiting for something to go wrong. Like it hurts to breathe too deeply.

And I'm here, and it can be sunny and warm with clear azure blue skies and the beach at my fingertips and I'm noticing the trees are pulsating with colour and the sound of cicadas and i'm sleeping for over 8 hours every night........and I still feel like i'm missing out because i'm not at Northumberland having snow ball fights on the beach.

F*ck i'm a twat.

Things one should never have to see

2010-01-27T18:38:00.002+13:00

Apart from how utterly impractical and unhelpful I am in such settings, another thing I don't like about terminal illnesses, is how anti-social they are. I pay a visit with perfectly good intentions, and suddenly I'm confronted with an immodest bed-sheet, and a pair of pippy-long stockings, and he wants to cut a hole in them. "Here, look at this", he's gesturing emphatically. Scissors, he wants scissors. But the scissors don't arrive on time and suddenly the stockings need to come down, in a hurry. With my assistance. And, whoa! If that thing is any way involved in my genetic make-up and existence on this planet - I don't want to see it. I don't want to have to put on my grown up face and pretend like i'm cool with it. But he broke the nurses and one duly complied with his request for an imitation fly. Mercifully, I was sent on another goose-chase errand shortly after.

So, i am now officially on holiday. I have a visa until 2013. And an Australian passport. I had a mole map yesterday and went to the dentist today. And again, my grown up face triumphed. At least, I fool myself that my wobbles weren't too obvious.

I'm drinking too much. And watching too much True Blood. We're eating salads every night and i'm trying to run. But goodness knows how I will survive when I return to a routine that doesn't involve 9am wake-ups and luxurious coffee repasts in the sun followed by lunch in front of the telly......

Current events

2010-01-18T10:55:00.003+13:00

Things I like here:
1. Sleeping in until almost 9 am
2. A plunger of coffee to myself in the morning and in a tiny little espresso coffee so it stays hot even if I drink slowly
3. The clement weather.
4. Riding my bike
5. Not working
6. As a result of 5; having energy to devote to creative pursuits and contemplating "what it all means"
7. Reading whenever I feel like it
8. Lovey dovey phone calls and absence making the heart grow fonder
9. Making things like mini-frittatas because I don't have to worry about J not wanting to kiss me for 5 hours because I ate eggs.
10. Having Jake to hang out with because school doesn't go back until February

Things I don't like:
1. Mice, and the way that I imagine I still hear it scooting around on the kitchen bench even though Frank has put out enough rat poison to flatten a horse
2. Slow internet connections.
3. The pulsey, fluttery effect all the caffeine has on my heart
4. The knots in my back from the foam mattress
5. The way that Poppa's bloated, distended stomach reminds me of mum
6. The earthquake in Haiti and especially the looting and rioting and abhorrent way humans can treat each other
7. Jake being on the playstation all the time
8. Not knowing when my visa will arrive or when I will next be paid.
9. Flies that think they own the place
10. The things that come out of my mouth that aren't either comforting or reassuring to the dying..

Nurse?

2010-01-15T10:20:00.002+13:00

Poppa was not in a good way when I saw him. He mostly slept the whole time and I sat next to him and read a Kate Atkinson novel I borrowed from John's mum and almost completed the quick crossword in the paper. Does anyone know how to do cryptic crosswords?

When I went to leave late in the afternoon I suddenly realised that I hadn't seen him drink anything the whole time I was there and so I held his little plastic cup while he sucked out of a straw. My hands shook but no more than usual. And then he started to choke huge wracking oxygen-depriving coughs until his face was a purplish-red colour. I hovered over him poised to run into the corridor and yell at any of the robustly-built nurses that had been buzzing about his room earlier (of course it was completely deserted when we needed someone) However, the cancer patient diagonally opposite Pop reminded me that there was a buzzer to call for help that I pressed, but while we were waiting for someone with some practical use on this earth to arrive and save him he started to breath again, raspy and rattly breaths but enough to delay "the final round" as he had ceremoniously called it in one of his lucid moments earlier in the visit. When the nurse finally arrived he looked sympathetic and checked something, vital signs I suppose, and then said he was fine and that he would go and get his drugs, steroids and anti-nausea and hopefully some more pain relief. It is the cancer, crushing his organs, making it impossible for him to eat or drink or breathe comfortably. Hopefully the chemo will bring some relief. Otherwise it may just do what it did to mum and finish him off with merciful speed.

New Year's resolutions

2010-01-13T09:52:00.002+13:00

Number 1: keep a journal.

Actually my first resolution was to stop eating potato chips, but although admirable it doesn't seem profound enough to qualify as a resolution. Rather like Jacob resolving to give up cup-caking. A cup cake is farting into your cupped hand and then scooping it under the other person's nose.

It has been almost 18 months since my last entry and just as long since I even looked at this site. Where has all the narcissism gone.

Let's see........since then I have had Hogmanay in Edinburgh, made a snow man in Green Park, had clotted cream and scones in the Cotswolds, eaten cucumber sandwiches at buckingham palace, and won 20 pounds at Ascot. We went to Rome with the bears, to Scotland to meet all of John's 5 aunties for Christmas, and to Mallorca for Easter which was gritty and not much warmer than London. We spent a bank holiday weekend in Berlin and another in a beautiful old converted barn with blocked chimneys in the Brecon beacons in wales. We went to Dubai and stayed in the Atlantis in 45 degree heat and i ripped my togs going backwards on a waterslide. We went to Oktoberfest in September and went on a rollercoaster after drinking three pints but then we finally got a seat in a beer hall and I had a stein and passed out in our tent and woke up the next morning and was sick in a plastic bag. I went to Budapest with Sarah and Tom and rode one of those buggies around St Margaret's Island and ate delicious goulash to stave off the cold. We went to Marseilles with Mike and Kiran and watched the All Blacks slaughter the French team.

That's only half of it. Life in london is frenetic, gruelling and wonderful. I go back to our little flat in Islington at the end of the day and feel warm and safe. We go to the farmers market behind the town hall on a Sunday and the twinkly old man selling flowers points out that I am late today. We have roast chicken for dinner and John will make the carcass into a stew with stock that the Scottish aunties recommend. We endlessly discuss our options given his redundancy, my visa situation, and our mutual bamboozlement at the seductively smothering trappings of domesticity. I cry a lot, from the intensity of our lives and we both feel vulnerable and fearful and then John suggests plans that wrap around me like a down duvet. I think I am mostly happy if I had time to inhale and exhale and realise that this is what happiness feels like. Achingly alive.

Now I am back in New Zealand. It is the end of our five week holiday and I have spent a week up north with Dad and Robyn, a bit longer in Tauranga and then 8 days on the Gold Coast, some time in Christchurch and Wellington and a wedding in Hawkes Bay. Christmas was somewhat thwarted by polyps in poppa's stomach that look likely to finish him. He is 86 and fierce and I don't like seeing the defeat in his eyes but I am going to drive over to Waikato Hospital now.

John is mid-way to London. Meanwhile a little mouse in Tauranga is running rampant on the kitchen bench eating the fresh bread and leaving shit everywhere.

Thank you UTMG for the prompt

2008-04-08T21:14:00.002+12:00

Well, here we are quite some time later. I feel as if I have abandoned a very special part of who I am by neglecting the introspection and reflection that Pixietale has previously provided. Particularly given the last post was so damn final and well, sad. But I am a lot more focussed now on what I want and need than the person who wrote back in August. The fifth anniversary of my mother's death passed without a single tear yesterday, which is an extraordinary milestone for me. I flitted off to the UK over Christmas for a month and discovered the boy and I still have unfinished business and am almost ready to make another massive leap. But although I love him and am quite proud that I have been able to make myself vulnerable again, I am also conscious that whatever happens in that sphere of my life, with him, I mustn't fall that far again. Life is too short. I have far too much to offer and life has too much to offer me.

2007-08-17T14:46:00.000+12:00

It has been such a very long time. For good reason, why would I keep a record of events I would prefer not to recall. Still, there comes a point where you can't shunt the healing process aside any longer. Although I have been learning in recent weeks that grief and healing aren't like travelling through a dark tunnel until you reach daylight at the other end. There is nothing linear about it. I have periods when I congratulate myself on being a survivor and marvel at my ability to remain so open and vulnerable to life and all the suffering and ecstasy it entails. I still giggle and bubble and wonder at the strangers smiling at me as I walk down the street until I realise I was the one smiling first. I have sat across the table from a mystical stranger and cried when she told me that I am not capable of hate, because, despite all of lifes disappointments, I know she's right.

In the last couple of days I've had a temperature over 40 degrees that left me so weak I couldn't get out of bed. I haven't been sick like that since I was a little girl. My hair and pillow were soaking wet. Every part of me ached like I'd been violently beaten. The only person I wanted or needed to bring me flat lemonade with a straw and cool facecloths is never going to be there for me again. The person that I turned to instead is someone I really need to stop turning to.

The most important discovery I have made in the last couple of weeks is that I am exactly where I am meant to be right now. For now, that will have to be enough.

2007-04-29T21:01:00.000+12:00

I am surrounded by punch bowls and little black dresses and thumping music. I'm swirling my mojito and silently cursing myself for the hundredth time that night for forgetting it was a cocktail party. Or rather, cursing myself for failing to make the connection between a cocktail theme and the expectation that one would come suitably cocktail attired. Then I curse my friend for having moments earlier left me and the party. I had been enjoying myself poised next to her in her canary yellow op shop cardigan, the two of us taking effortless swipes at the barbie doll brigade in the corner. Alone, I watch another gaggle of black dresses and sleek bleached heads bubble past. I slink back to the bar to get another mojito. I'm searching for any other female in the room wearing pants. I'm disappointed. After a couple more bad mojitos and increasingly inane conversation with forgettable party goers I start to loosen up. I quit dodging the circling disco lights determined to illuminate my misbehaved dark blonde curls. I jiggle about to the music in my flat shoes. I begin to enjoy the ostentation, I fondle the ice sculpture and gawk at the busty waitresses in corsets and fishnet stockings. I start to think the mojitos taste not half bad.

I am at the point of drunk where inhibition has left me and mischief has made me her friend. Unsteady and slurring have yet to arrive. I have attained that perfectly balanced inebriated state of confidence and wit. I look around the room to select an object to lavish my charm upon. The room spins ever so slightly. I look to my left and down. And there it is.

It's a security card, like the ones we use in my own office to get out in to the stairwell and use the bathroom. It is attached to a lanyard, one of those stretchy ones. Temptation leans over and kisses me passionately on the lips. I reach out and tug the card towards me and then release it with a snap. And then I look up, into a twinkling blue abyss that has already claimed me as its own.

2007-04-26T19:43:00.000+12:00

It's dark and I'm sitting slouched in a dark 4 wheel drive that I know neither of them would expect me to be driving. It is drizzling a bit outside, and the water wraps around the car, cocooning me. The street lights reflect off the dewey windows of the car and I dare to press my face up against the glass, squinting through the window of the bar I'm parked outside of but it is late and they have the lights dimmed low.

I'd tailed him and then parked up and watched him walk inside. Less than 5 minutes later she she arrived, wearing a cute print dress and leather boots up to her arm pits and her dark shoulder length hair all swingey, probably freshly shampooed because she's been out running for twenty kilometres again. Even though I can't actually see them once they are inside, I could visualise her smiling at him as she walks up to greet him, because she has radiated at me like that dozens of times before. That one stumps me. Maybe she has a different smile for him.

I'm still sitting there forty five minutes later and I can't tell if the water is streaming down the glass or across my pupil anymore. This isn't as much fun as the first time I followed him to the park and watched them sit and eat sandwiches together. He doesn't even like sandwiches. I'd offer to make them for him, nice ones with ham and mayonnaise and lettuce and tomato or chicken and avocado. But he just didn't like sandwiches. And yet there he was eating sandwiches with her, both of them wearing dark designer sunglasses, him in his suit, on his lunch break. Her just swanning around in another cute print dress with all the time in the world.

But this time all the fire has gone out of me. There's no noise in the car except a surreal splash each time a car drives past, reminding me that I'm just sitting there waiting for nothing and nobody at all.

2007-04-15T12:37:00.000+12:00

The cellphone made an impotent thud on the carpet. I hadn't even hit anything. I gulped and hiccuped but I was too feral with anger to cry. I threw pillows haphazardly around the room but the desire to do any real damage was fast siphoned out of me by an overwhelming hollowness.

I picked up the offending phone and scowled down at the time. It was still too early to get out of bed. I hated Sunday mornings most. New-born eyes unfurling to see my piano-playing long fingers stretching out across to the other side of the bed and finding....a cold pillow. The pillow is very quickly strangled underneath my armpit, as I attempt to strangle any semblance of comfort from its downy form. I always woke up too quickly, startled, not by anything in particular. Just instantly demanding attention and animation from everything around me. He was sluggish in the mornings and found this morning person lying next to him an anathema.

So who the hell did she think she was?

I got out of bed and walked sullenly past Vinnie, the abominable snowman of a cat that belonged to my flatmate. Vinnie launched into full-scale accusatory meowing, I'm hungry, I want petting! Ugggh, I wanted to get down on my knees and wag my finger at the cat for his demands. I'm tired of all this co-dependence, I would say in cat-speak. Leave me be!

I re-wound, played again, increased the volume, re-wound. The slight slur in his voice, the flurry with which he announced where he was, the feminine giggling and merriment in the background. And before I had had the opportunity to say much more than an awkward hello knowing that she was listening to everything he said, the line went dead. And the phone flew vehemently out of my hand.

I finished eating my soggy vegemite toast, completely devoid of any flavour, mindless chewing, resenting the alienness of it in my mouth. I needed to move. I began to get dressed, and reaching for my underwear drawer I got a glimpse of something silken, the colours of cocoa, honey and cinnamon, it was twitching on the apple green pack of sanitary pads sitting to the right of the drawer. It's antennae making little circular motions. I fished the cockroach out with a tissue and transported it outside, feeling some perverse vindication that something so insidious could be found amongst my very own panties.

I want to shake my booty

2007-04-14T20:18:00.000+12:00

I've decided i love to dance. And i want to take classes. But not Ceroc, or whatever it is that the ex-boyfriend is doing with all those divorcees.....ick. But i love music, and i love my gym class that is dance moves....i want to move it, move it. You like to move it move it. He like to move it move it. You like to.......MOVE IT!

I also need to do something spiritually rewarding. I signed up to greenpeace recently. Felt sorry for the spanish boy who asked me why nobody in my crappy old conservative town would talk to him. Also empathised as I had recently been collecting for the red cross, and had similarly got disheartened about how invisible i was until i pulled out the big guns and fastened my dorky red cap to complement my dorky red pinnie. So now I'm a greenie. But maybe i need to do something more hands on. Will mobilize myself, and report soon.

Peace, love and moonbeams.

My first memory

2007-04-13T20:36:00.000+12:00

I was about three and a half when my parents brought my little sister and I back to New Zealand. I was actually born in Adelaide, Australia. I have no memories of Australia itself. But I do remember the flight over. I guess it must have been a momentous thing, being on a big 747. I remember the moss velvet green curtain that separated one section of the plane from another. I don't know what it was, maybe first and second class. But I remember that curtain. It was heavy and shimmery and slightly pleated. And I remember being in the car park in Auckland after we had landed. I remembera bunch of adults standing around, suitcases being slung around. It is all water coloured and static. Perhaps a memory of a memory.

I remember having a big proper birthday party when I turned 5. I remember we had pin the tail on the donkey.

I remember crying for my mother my first day at school. And then later being adopted by some older girls who took me out in to the field and taught me how to make daisy chains. Oh, true independence.

I remember stumbling upon a still-born calf in the paddocks bordering the lifestyle block I grew up on. I remember crying (pattern developing) as I stumbled away from it, my pudgey little thighs pushing through the dense, tall grass as I shook and gulped. I wasn't sad for the little slimey dark shape, all legs. I didn't like dead things.

I remember building forts with the prunings from the kiwifruit vines as my mother worked and fantails dashed in and out of the canopy. I remember peddling our little three wheeler bikes around and around inside our massive home - the kitchen, dining room, lounge and family room of our house were relatively open plan and made a perfect circular track.

It is all light years ago. Another person. Oblivious. The Christmas school break of six weeks or so were an absolute eternity. Years have now become months and days have become minutes. I didn't have to shower at night to wash the day off of me. I didn't slip out of the sleep canal, my first waking thought identifying an error I had made the previous day at work. I dreamt of getting married, of having children, of being just like my mother. In fact, I don't even think I dwelt so much on goals or dreams or expectations. I was too busy running everywhere, or waiting, impatiently, at the large tyre swing at the giant lawson tree for my gum-booted dad to swing me to oblivion.

2007-04-08T22:30:00.000+12:00

When life is getting you down, there is always comfort and solace to be found in a gorgeous, completely impractical and unnecessary pair of new shoes.

I have had a lovely day to day. Took a ferry ride, took in some jazz, had a seafood salad for lunch (very fresh scallops and prawns) and bought those shoes.

Just finished watching Borat. Horrendous.

And am off to bed, because I am covering the cells in the morning for all the over night arrests. How cool is that!

2007-04-07T15:09:00.000+12:00

Four years can pass........like one of those sketch comic books where you flick all the pages to get the picture to move. And if you hold the picture still, if you have to listen to your own thoughts for too long, it seems disappointingly two dimensional. I'm sure I have come along way since that first year where I was treading dark syrupy water and buried myself under my duvet, but I'm back in the place where I last saw her, and I feel desperately cut off from everyone who I could possibly gain any comfort from. And I'm angry. There's some huge music festival on in town, and I couldn't even get a park near the office so I could go in and drown out my thoughts with the mounds of work I have in there waiting for me. No purpose. I even contemplated just going and sitting up at her tree but I always get there and find that it doesn't bring me any closer to her. It's just another place where she isn't.

And it's all in my head anyway right? I mean what is the significance of a date. And is that even what's really bugging me, or am I just feeling miserable because the boy has been even more distant than the thousands of kilometres he usually is of late. Everyones just busy dealing with their own shit, and there's nothing significant at all in the fact that I need to deal with mine.

Read all about it

2007-04-05T22:13:00.000+12:00

I was in our local paper this week. A big article too. Quoting me saying semi-noblet things, and associating me with a woman who's pet mastiff snapped this little terrier's spine in two places, but nonetheless describing me as a defence lawyer. I really like my name in print. And suddenly I have so much work...I'm not flying under my bosses wings as much. It's exhausting and terrifying and fun.

I was at this meeting last night, something i do to compensate for the lack of social life i have up here, i work, go to the gym, read a lot and belong to nerdy clubs. Anyway, i was with my club visiting another club, and there was this old fulla there doing the time keeping, and i honestly looked at him all hunched over and shrivelled, and thought, what, are you like a hundred or something. But I was suitably chastised later in the night when he was presented with a birthday card for his upcoming 92nd birthday! There was a standing ovation, which he met by standing, beady eyes twinkling in his glazed head, little sweater vest hanging off his bony frame, barely reaching up to my knee caps, and he announced:

Aren't you all a little premature? My birthday isn't until Friday. What makes you so sure I'm going to last until then.

I fell in love with him on the spot.

The Adams Family

2007-03-25T19:44:00.000+12:00

The other night I dreamt I had bought a big old beautiful obviously haunted mansion in a swamp land filled with hump back whales. The place had been sold to me for a dime because of ghostly intervention, the former owners, now deceased, wanted me to own it so they could convene with me from the dead. And before you know I was chatting to Morticia from the Adams family beyond the grave, through a mirror. And then, in that gel-like quality where your dreams start to run rampant on you, suddenly i was Morticia (quite unusual seeing as i'm usually blonde). It started to get a bit spooky after a while and i woke up. But not before i had thrown a damn good haunted party in that big old house.

I've decided my life has been a bit dull lately and my subconcious is trying to ham it up.

250 posts!!!

2007-03-22T20:05:00.000+12:00

Yes! Pixietale has been up and running since about November 2004 i think. Back about when I broke the pinky finger in the ultimate test of toughness. Anyway, i just noticed, 250 posts. And, having consumed a fish bowl of red wine after a rather strenuous day, I decided to celebrate. With another fishbowl of wine.

Anyway, I did have a point somewhere there.......

I hate cats. I hate their fleas. I hate their furballs. I hate their gross jelly food. And my flatmate is away for a couple of nights so it's up to me to ensure the damn thing doesn't cark it.

I'm commuting to Hamilton for a couple of days doing a workshop on how to be a criminal lawyer. Whenever i've done something like this I always sit in the room crowded full of my colleagues and think, god, what a bunch of wankers and idiots. And the worst part is that they are a bunch of wankers and idiots that talk incessantly thereby demonstrating to the world their wankeriness and idioticism. Yes, there is a lot of word making up going on here. But remember, i'm celebrating!

Yes, I will post some photos soon - of both me and my little neighbourhood. I don't think I have updated my profile to reflect the fact I no longer reside in the buzzing capital of Aotearoa.

The current situation

2007-03-18T13:36:00.000+12:00

The boy has been in Merrie ole England for a month today. Daylights savings has ended amidst gusty southwesterlies and a sharp snap that is making it less comfortable to drive bare foot in the mornings. Social outings are relatively rare, and in any case met as an intrusion on my increasing introversion.

But life is actually pretty good. My job is great. Low paid, but lots of glory, and my bosses love me. I flit from manic trial mode to days where I do self-directed research at my leisure. I am unleashed upon the unwitting public, and flying solo as I meet clients in areas ranging from defamation law to a threatening to kill charge to domestic abuse crises. And I'm finally starting to feel like I have some sense of what in the interminable raging-pits of hell is going on. Not to say I have ceased to feel like a shiny Christmas ornament when standing amongst the gray old boys brigade up in the criminal court. But I have am learning to accept that a large part of my job is swallowing one of the most sacred things of my persona - my pride.

I have a very cute flat that I am currently sharing with a beauty technician. As the boy says, she means well and i must go with the flow. And she can be very thoughtful and actually quite funny. But I think she wants a best friend rather than a flat mate. And she cannot fathom my present disdain for any sort of co-dependency. She looks at me like I've a loose screw when I declare I'm off to the beach for a swim on my own. Then she douses me in sunscreen. She appears genuinely hurt when I announce I'm off to bed to read my book rather than staying up for a movie marathon with her. She does a whole lot of baking in the weekend for lunches during the week (I'm actually quite jealous of her domestic prowess). She sleeps with her bedroom door open which I find strange, but it's apparently because the big albino feline duster who spends 95% of his time napping in the most inconvenient spots (in the middle of the hallway, right at the base of the sink when I'm about to start washing dishes) will scratch the bejeezus out of her door if he's shut out. That's another sore point in the relationship between flattie and I. She adores this big useless sedentary snowpuff that just about eats better than I do. And I like big dogs that don't crap inside or leave sausage-like furballs on the living room floor for me to step in bare-footed.

But it's more homely than where I was living with the 2 batchelors. I can snuggle down and hibernate for the winter. And cook lavishly for one in the huge tiled kitchen. And pamper myself in our big bath tub when she is working late nights.

It's very nice for now.

Hello pixietale!

2007-03-13T22:13:00.000+13:00

After much suffering and anguish I think I may be back in the land of broadband. I have a cute little R2D2 reminiscent webcam sitting on my monitor winking at me, I have managed to uninstall the old virus protection, download a new one, which deleted 12 threats, and now I am going to download Skype! I am such a nerd.

Anyway, feeling better about Winter, and prolonged absences, now that I have my dinosaur of a computer set up in my new spacious homely room.......

ps people i owe emails beware.......

The detour

2007-02-24T14:30:00.000+13:00

Well, I've lapsed again. In my defence, life has been pretty hectic. The boy has gone. We now function in completely opposite time zones. It has been...hard. By all accounts I am accustomed to lack of physical proximity for weeks at a time. But I was used to having constant verbal communication and that is what I am missing most at the moment. He had become my confidante, and the person I would look to for encouragement when I was nervous, or calming when I was upset, or just to yabber on about whatever had gone on in Court that day. I'm a bit lost without that.

Case example. His mother, older brother and myself farewelled him at just past 9:30pm Sunday night (NZ time). I kept it together right until I was sitting in my car by myself afterwards. I could have stayed with my sister, but we were in the middle of that murder trial and I had to be in Rotorua the next morning. So I started the 2 and a half hour drive home, confident I knew the road well enough that I could just take my time and turn the music up if I got tired.

But there was a detour at the Manukau on-ramp and I was lost within half an hour. And I reached down to my phone and called him. He was just about to board and my voice was pitifully unsteady as I said I would be alright. After getting directions and snailing my way on to the motorway behind a huge backlog of traffic, I was okay. Until 40 minutes or so later down the road the highway I needed to take was closed for two hours for an accident. It was after 11 at night at this stage. I didn't know the alternative route. It was dark, I was already feeling miserable and I rang up my sister almost beside myself. She was really really good, notwithstanding the fact I had woken her, and she called me back two times after that to make sure I was okay. And I was. I was in a constant state of disorientation, but I had a map. I got hellishly tired, but the frequency of small bunny rabbits darting out on the roads in front of me kept me alert, until I got one third time lucky. I got home at 2 in the morning and melted in to my bed, and I can't help but think that it was some sort of test.

Of course I was going to pass.

Half full or half full with a fly in it

2007-01-30T19:07:00.000+13:00

Further to last nights entry, I was just now tapping away at the keyboard, and took a sip of my drink. With the water still swilling around my mouth, I looked down into the glass and a fly was on its back legs treading the air. Needless to say, i found the nearest receptacle to spit.....

I got a whole lot of photos printed out the other day, and I'm going to regularly get ones of my trip done. At the moment I'm concentrating on printing off as many of me looking as hot as possible to put in the boy's pocket before he leaves......so he doesn't forget me.

I didn't fall in love with Prague. I was walking down one of the main streets, site of the memorial to Jan Palach, the student who burnt himself to death in Wencelas Square in protest against Communism. And I might have innocently paused and said something to Sally. It couldn't have been anything more aggravating than that. And some big beefy guy, with thick glasses and vacant eyes, he boxed me in the shoulder and kept on walking. It was hard. And I was stunned, and then hopping mad. I contemplated chasing him down the road while screaming freedom at the top of my lungs with a thick scottish brogue. However, I think Sally convinced me that wasn't the most sensible course of action. Later, I would recall reading a fellow blogger's entry about thumb wrestling an unhinged individual into submission when the nutter punched him to the head while he was riding the tube. And that cheered me up considerably....
That wasn't the only reason I didn't love Prague. I found the city cold and grim-faced and haunted.

Shoo fly

2007-01-29T21:36:00.000+13:00

I am wilting a little under the summer sun. Actually, there is sun, and then there is a downpour. Today I stood out in the rain in my pjs. It is still so warm.....and tonight i turned off my light and had a bath under the moon. But i am tired of the flies. There are flies swarming around my head when I am trying to eat my dinner. And in the bathroom when I am brushing my teeth. They are smart flies. They wait outside the door and swoop in when you go outside. And they have got stronger. They laugh at you when you spray them with fly spray. They swoop in to get a good big taste of it, slowly building up their resistance and becoming.........flies on steroids.

Like watching out the window from inside a speeding train

2007-01-28T21:57:00.000+13:00

On Monday, I went back to that flat to see if I was allergic to the fluffy, snowy cat Vinnie that lives there. I decided that my puffed up eye from the afternoon before must have been a one off, and agreed to move in. There is a huge back lawn. I want to mow lawns and make a garden.

On Tuesday I drove 5 hours and went to prison and shook hands with a convicted paedophile. I'm so small and fresh and sweet looking I didn't even get checked by security. Had my boss cracking up when I called her from inside the visiting cell on my cellphone.

On Friday we won another sex-offence related case. The content has already become distressingly familiar. The juries all look the same. I correctly guessed the verdict by their demeanour when they came into court. They sought out our client across the room, perhaps asking themselves if they had come to the right conclusion? I am adopting a belief system, that I believe at some stage will prove incongruent with honour and integrity and compassion. But I know damn sure what I'll give up on first.

On Saturday I floated on a lilo in a heated mineral pool under a cloudless sky and pretended I knew what it felt like to be at peace. I felt my lungs inflate to full capacity and appreciated the treat. I let unfamiliar hands knead my knotted muscles and wished that I could give myself over to it completely.

Today I watched a film about a 23 year old with daughters aged six and four who lives in a trailer with her husband who is the only boy she has ever kissed. She finds out she has a tumour, a couple of months to live, and writes a list of everything she wants, must, do in that time. She finds a new wife for her husband, makes taped messages for her girls' birthdays until they turn 18, and makes a strange man fall in love with her. At the end of it, I wanted my own mother.

I also found my child-hood diary today. Well, extracts that had survived several vettings to weed out the most tortured. I found letters I wrote to my mother and father, and for my future husband and children. I was 12 or 13 at the time of writing. My achingly naive and idealistic 12 year old self wrote that the letters probably wouldn't be read until at least 2003. I was surprised to see how I apparently had very little in the way of career aspirations at that tender age. I thought I would grow up to be like my mum, who was pregnant with me when she was 21. As cheesy as they were, I was moved to tears. I believe they were written during the dismantling of my family unit as I knew it, and as an attempt to reconstruct some certainty, some security for myself.

I am reading about soul mates at the moment.

Time to move on

2007-01-16T22:11:00.000+13:00

I'm considering leaving the 2 batchelors and going and living in the first random flat of my existence. It's reasonably priced, close to work and the girl who is looking for a flatmate works in a beauty salon, which I find quite promising considering the women who I have trusted my bikini line to in the past have always managed to make the experience pleasant.

I was planning on hanging around here a bit longer.....Still, it can't hurt to go and have a look at it.

Bugger.

2007-01-15T19:37:00.000+13:00

Going back to work after 3 and a half weeks on holiday is a bugger. Your new car (who is rare as horse rocking shit and runs like a dream and who got raced up and down the country covering over 3,000 kms in our road trip) burning 2 and a half litres in that time, well, that's a bugger. Getting back to work and hearing that half our client's had got themselves locked up over Christmas, actually, i didn't really give a shit about that. The boy finally making good his threats and booking his one way ticket to London for just over a month away, that is, well, it''s shit.

I think 2007 is going to be a lot quieter than 2006. A rediscovering me time. Micro-objectives. I am looking forward to being a junior in my first murder trial next month. I have lots to do and look forward to and be challenged by at work.

Damn, how do you get the balance, the whole package.

The power of youth

2006-12-19T20:21:00.000+13:00

I think I have lost some insight in to what I was like 8 years ago. Late teens. Monstrously selfish, a microscopic, insular appreciation of the world. My world. Complacent about how great I had it. My mother. Paltry, petty things had such a catastrophic impact on my self-conception. Hormones. Petrified of change. The struggle to claim identity. So much to look forward to.......

My little sister's good friend died in the weekend. She just didn't wake up on Saturday morning. Her father went in to wake her when she didn't get up. He attempted to revive her when he discovered her unresponsive. She was 19.

My sister is taking it hard. Her group of friends were very tight. For me, there is something powerful in the inexplicable, peaceful way she died. The autopsy is inconclusive. Nothing suspicious about her death. She just wasn't meant to wake up that morning. And as a result, Kelly says it breaks her heart, she sobs in my arms, recounting how her friend's father treads emptily around the house struggling to find something to do.

In my job, I am conscious of my slight frame, my innocent visage. I am a not unattractive woman in my mid twenties sitting at a bench of rotund, homogenous men who have silver streaks in their hair that often falsely proclaims their experience and wisdom. At the same time that I try not to choke on my pacifier, I feel as if I am perched, clasping a beautiful golden chalice. I swirl in my mouth an amber-coloured elixir that will see me, if I was to so choose, standing in that courtroom long after those wispy-haired badgers fail to remember their own names or manage to wipe their own backsides.

I feel fragile and vulnerable right now. I have been manic in the gym, unhealthily interested in the firmness in the mirror, unduly concerned by an imperceptible reduction in the elasticity around my eyes. I seek solace in this transient husk that is my body, that in a celestial second will be dessicated, an indistinguishable part of the earth. My children will remember me, their children less so.

I am going to stop watching the news, because every time I read or hear something about those little kiddies crushed under that landslide with their parents looking on.....or think about Kelly's friend's dad, his spirit just as crushed at not being able to protect his little girl even in her own bed..... It makes you scared to love, and terrified to not love enough in the very brief time we have in this life.

Pix can't party

2006-11-26T19:35:00.000+13:00

One of the necessities of moving to a new town, admittedly a new old town, is to make an effort to establish new social networks. Actually, new networks in general. And one of the consequences of that, for me at least in recent times, is the common hangover. Actually, I have had two in the last 3 weeks that were in no way common. I would say acute. I would say debilitating. As in down on your hands and knees, eyes streaming, puking blood. And the worst part is after i did it 3 weekends ago, after a night with my new ICU nurse friend drinking monstrous concoctions of paint stripper and cream, I swore that I was too old for it and I was done with alcohol. Curled tightly in the foetal position unable to move my mini sister brought the phone in to me, it was the nurse, wanting to know if i wanted to go for a walk along the beach. And I realised I had to admit defeat, my slight physique had bested me, I could no longer claim the title of Boozey that I had defended so admirably (with copious quantities of tequila) in my younger years...

But then this Friday, I realised the three week trial has taken its toll. The trial is a beast that seesaws between mind numbingly, head noddingly dull to intensely complex and emotionally and mentally challenging. And my boss told me and our secretary to go home early on Friday. And the secretary offered to bring me back into town after I had dropped off the car. And so I'd had 2 pints by 6 o'clock. Soon after that we were up at the local police station at their Christmas function, and the drinks were ridiculously cheap. And the rounds started.....

I danced and drunk and evaded the advances of a paunchy, balding prosecutor and danced some more with some guy that might have been Pio from Pete and Pio. And then i reached the point, some 9 hours after we first got to town, that I needed to go home. And I woke up naked. Which is basically an alarm bell, translating to

oh god, I must have got hammered last night.

And I put on a brave face. I rang the boy and chatted away merrily. I ate a muesli bar. I watched tv in bed. I pretended everything was fine. And then it hit me..........

It's not the drinking. It's how we're drinking.

My first car

2006-11-19T19:53:00.000+13:00

At the grand ole age of 26 I have bought my first all to myself car, and I'm feeling quite chuffed. at the moment it is up with its grandad who is a mechanic and changing it's timing belt or something. Giving it a good workover anyhow. It is bright red, a "96 toyota corolla hatchback, a manual. It has done lots of kms, but it's grandad assures me that it runs like a dream and will keep going and going. Apparently, they're so good, they're as rare as rocking horse shit to buy. And the best bit is, my mum bought it for me, and she's been dead for almost 4 years! What a great mum.

Had a delicious weekend with the boy down in Taupo. We had prawns and fillet steak and bubbles and our own spa (I was ashamed of our self-indulgence....I really was). And it was just really really nice.

Work is tough but still great. Three week fraud and forgery trial. Basically just a despicable waste of public resources even prosecuting the matter...

One of my bestest people in the whole world brought to my attention the possibility that my current lack of interest in this blog may be a reflection of my happiness. I think she may be on to something.

Did I mention that the club stalker guy is bi-polar.......found out at the last meeting when he turned up on his bike cause his dad, also bi-polar, had taken to his son's car with an axe.......

2006-11-09T21:02:00.000+13:00

That foamy beer in the foreground is my genuine Duvel beer in Brussels.

Shot down

2006-11-09T20:52:00.000+13:00

Recently Frank and I had a run in because Jacob wanted me to stand near the bathroom while he had a shower cause he had seen a scary movie, Assasins, and apparently there's some big cat face that comes right up to the screen and that's in his head or something. Anyway i overstepped the boundaries apparently.

And with so little gratitude.

Tonight i managed to convince jacob that brushing his teeth was in his best interest and i have as an adult, left the dentist in tears. I stood there and watched him with big sister adoration. And he glanced nonchalantly up at me, and said,

Why are you just standing there?

I thought you might like some company.

Not really <<<>>>

You used to like having company.

Yeah, well times change.

Anyway i may start writing on this again. Or i may need to kill myself on account of being junior counsel in the most boring 3 week fraud related trial of all time. Or i may in fact be murdered by one of the looney toons in the club i belong to who, obviously distraught that i wouldn't give him my cell number, or text him when he gave me his number, decided to get hold of my landline number, and then hung up on me when i asked him what i could do for him. Looney toon.

phew

2006-10-12T22:04:00.000+13:00

So achingly tired. It's been a helluva week. I have been over to the High Court (an hour or so from my little provincial town) three times this week. Today and yesterday i was junior on my first defended jury trial. And my boss won the case today! The jury only deliberated for about 20 minutes or so, so they were obviously clearly convinced. But otherwise the man could have gone to jail, he would have had his first conviction ever as a 50 something year old man. His whole family were crying with relief afterwards. He was so grateful......I feel like i have taken some drug. I am completely high on the ritual, the drama, how thick and heady with dealing with the reality of other peoples fears and emotions. I think i love it.

I drove the hour home and went straight to the gym. I have an exam in auckland tomorrow, 2 and a half hours drive, then a session from one until six in the evening. Then i am staying at my sister's place, she is making roast chicken, and then i am in the district court all the following saturday for the second practical part of my exam. I haven't had time to do any study tonight. I thought i needed to sweat and breathe more. But i think i will be okay.

I walked in the door tonight and there was a big bunch of flowers addressed to me sitting on the table. It was from my bosses, telling me good luck. They really like me, and i really like them. It is so great. I am quite lucky.

And i'm in love. And i hate that he is so far away. But i don't regret the decision to take this job. I try not to regret anything if i can help it.

Frank is away tonight for work. I am going to have a shower, and then climb in next to little brother, after pushing his super robot monkey team hyper force go guy out the way, cause he's in the big bed and i can't face his cyclone jacob room tonight. Bad feng shui.

phew.

2006-10-08T18:20:00.000+13:00

I live with 2 bachelors. One of them is 43 years old and one of them is 8. They are like those 2 old grumpy men on the muppets. I can't remember their names, but you know the ones that were always together.

Anyhow, tonight i was going to work wonders with leftover bbq steak, make a satay and plonk it in a toasted pita with some salad and guacomole. I ran through my plan to the boys, as if a waiter in a fine dining establishment might announce the specials that evening. I spoke as if i was creating a piece of art, as opposed to a quick sunday night meal.

Bachelor number one doesn't eat a whole lot. Bachelor number two has a voracious appetite, but a limited palate. Bachelor number one replied: I'm not that hungry, i'm just going to heat up some crap in the fridge.

So again, i repeated what was on offer to bachelor number 2. I even had to explain what satay sauce was. And his response:

"I'm gonna eat some crap heated up too".

Ingrates.

Progress

2006-10-01T18:50:00.000+13:00

Basically all we are is our relationships. That's what i think. I stood at the airport this afternoon and waved at the plane that was going to ferry the boy back to Wellington, and i saw all the people around me waving blindly as well, and heard little children whimpering about departing parents, and I thought, the boy and i aren't the only ones that have walked away from each other with our hands still touching today. Everyone is deeply soulfully invested in other people, much the same way i am. They love and feel protective over and feel angry at people, people i don't know, people that i watch as they stand forlornly or sullenly in the dock. Recrimating words from a judge, and they are torn from their loved ones for months, sometimes years at a time. And i won't even remember their names a week later. Other people may think of them daily, at every ceremonious occasion that they are absent, every time they see a beautiful sunset or make a delicious meal they will think - he's missing this. I wish he was here. But the same people mean nothing more than a fleeting glance of sympathy to me.

I wake up and think about what i'm going to wear. I go to sleep and wish only that i could kiss the boy goodnight. And, in the same inhalation, other people lost a loved one to cancer after months and months of a debilitating illness. Or a sudden car accident and a mother and father are numbly thinking about funeral arrangements for their teenage son. And all the while i am laughing at some mindless television programme.

For we all have our own exclusive web of existence. For although I believe we possess an infinite capacity to love others, there is only so much shared pain and pride and fears one soul can tolerate. My web expands as I get older. It stretches many many thousands of kilometres. Some of my more precious bonds are so physically remote at present that it has me weakened. But I continue to be delighted by the potential to extend and deepen existing bonds, and to create potential additional ever-lasting arterial growths, or even just transient threads that bring temporary comfort but will probably wither easily with distance or lack of nurturing.

A weekend of laughing and talking and kissing has left me revitalised. I must admit to feeling much more settled and secure compared to a month back. I feel excitement about the future again, not dread at another age of loneliness. I feel less lonely, knowing that everyone out there is loving and dreaming and lonely. Just like me.

Miss Pix of the High Court

2006-09-19T21:30:00.000+12:00

Well just to put to rest those vicious circles circulating about me having an attitoood, I had my first solo appearance in Court today (my practising certificate arrived in my hot little hands and my bosses eyes just gleamed) and my stomach is still uneasy from how nervous i was. Of course i wouldn't tell off a judge! I'm only little.

But it was good to get it over with.

Then i went and saw my own lawyer about the evil auntie to little effect. Stupid lawyers.

Thank you for all your kindness about my inadequate handling of solitoood. The boy has booked plane tickets for a week and a half away and we are talking beautifully every night at the moment. So that's nice. And at some stage i need to hunt down L-Boogie and the Boston Bear.

I'm so lonesome...

2006-09-17T21:11:00.000+12:00

You see i have decided this weekend i actually need people. I need to talk. I need to entertain. I need to laugh, god i need to laugh. And when there is a dearth of people around, especially my 'kind' of people, i wilt a bit. And i get quite pitifully unmotivated. I spend a large part of my waking day alone and mute these days. At work, in an office by myself. At home, the boys are often out. I woke up yesterday morning and felt wiped out. And then i spent most of the day in my room, organising, going through the physical testimony of my time on earth, listening to evanescence and Eminem. And i felt continued to feel a bit dizzy and sluggish. There was something despairingly familiar about my surroundings. I have cried long and hard in this shower before. And the boy texted, and rang, and i couldn't even answer the phone. I had the first really good cry i've had since i was lost in rome with no passport and no money. And then i went out for a walk. Except i drove. I hit the gate backing out. And my vision was a bit blurry driving. And i just drove. And I ended up down at the water. And the Spring equinox was swallowed me with her furious breath. And i ran. I have new sneakers. And then i was in the Reserve where my mother's family grew up, named after her. And i breathed. And looked out at the water and watched a formation of sea birds carry me away, speared by a straight arrowhead across the surface of the water. More birds were perched in this skeleton branch gasping for breath from out of the swell. And i'm gasping too. To keep perspective. To find peace in the moment. Because that is all we have.

There are skeletons here too. I could get strangled in the past. I could wallow in my solitude (that is what i am inclined to do). but i am aware of it. I am conciously watching it play out in me as it happens and i know it is unhealthy. I made myself go out Saturday night with a bunch of married people and strangers and one good friend. I had a good time. This morning i went to the gym from hell, almost had a fight with the woman signing me up when she demanded i put my occupation and employer down on the contract (but why do you need this information - well because it's a contract - yes but why do you need that for this contract) and then sweated and kicked and punched and got rid of some of that bad energy that inevitably plays itself out in an allover tremble in my physical self. I watched a girl get carried off the mat with an excruciating injury, there was another woman on the floor with a cast on (coming back for more huh). And I should be feeling better now. But i'm losing weight. I'm dreaming poorly. I'm brusque if not downright rude to people (the gym woman for example).

I love the work that i'm doing. But I'm lonely. The question is: what am i going to do about it.

Just an update

2006-09-12T20:47:00.000+12:00

Sometimes i'm such a bore. Which is why i haven't been writing of late. I'm in a post round the world trip, embarking on a new career but over the initial terror of it slump. Actually, that's not entirely accurate. I am too still terrified...

I have joined a new geeky club. I might even make some friends my own age. Which is good because i can't spend all my free time with a 40 something year old man and an 8 year old boy. I have been doing Pilates and bought some space-aged technology sneakers today for my mental well-being. I try and refrain from drinking alone as much as possible (but Frank doesn't drink and the J-man has a low tolerance due to aforementioned 8-ness). The boy came and visited me the weekend before last and it was bliss, and enough to keep my romantically starved 26 year old soul afloat for another few weeks.

Anyway, life is grand. It's not perfect, I'm alone a lot, I have to have a showdown with the evil Auntie sooner rather than later, and professionally, I'm at the bottom of the foodchain. But I'm inspired, I'm scared, I'm alive!

In other matters, the boy did one of those Myers Briggs tests on me. I'm publishing it, because i was pleased with the results. Except for the point about being slightly unmarrieable.

You are an ENFJ - Extraverted iNtuitive Feeling Judging (Extraverted Feeling with Introverted Intuition).

Popular and sensitive, with outstanding people skills. Externally focused, with real concern for how others think and feel. Usually dislike being alone. They see everything from the human angle, and dislike impersonal analysis. Very effective at managing people issues, and leading group discussions. Interested in serving others, and probably place the needs of others over their own needs.

You make up 4.3% of the population which is a small group
40% of you get married
You are in the 5th highest earner group

No problem

2006-08-27T19:01:00.000+12:00

So apparently there's plenty of love. The household has been wiped out with a stomach bug. I've been feeling seedy, but the boys have been wringing their guts out. Last night I was woken up by a small shadowy figure towering over me in my sleep. He had had a bad dream. He climbed into bed with me, and proceeded to pull all the blankets over on to his side. I woke up, freezing, and tried to straighten the covers. Jake moaned, complaining I had stolen his warm spot. Then, in the morning, with very little fanfare, I found him over the toilet bowl, very calmly losing his pepperoni pizza (and apparently some caramel corn) from the previous night. Although my own stomach was churning, I stood there and rubbed his little back until he had finished. I remember mum being incredibly attentive and knowing just what was needed when us girls were ill when we were little. So long as there's always someone there for him to make sure there is a straw in his lemonade and to cuddle him when he's upset, I think that's okay.

2006-08-26T21:44:00.000+12:00

I have to wonder about people who's parents have been happily married for 30 odd years and are in good health, and everyone gets together in the one place for Christmas, perhaps even some aunties and uncles and cousins. Can you ever really appreciate something unless you have lost it. Or, would you be so terrified about losing it that you wouldn't appreciate it. I love my little brother so much. He is one of my favourite people, he inspires me, warms me from the core. But this week, while his dad has been away, while i have found myself back in that role that reminds me constantly of what him and i have lost, i can't help but wish that I could love him even more. That he deserves so very much more.

This is why i was afraid to come back.

I'm not good when i am alone too much. I get too introspective. But there's something different now. Even now, while I am writing this I know I am not the person who left him 2 and a half years ago. I have a fire (and a chicken iskender) in my belly, a purpose, the bigger picture. And I'm not afraid.

2006-08-25T22:15:00.000+12:00

I didn't get up to much trouble while I was away. Other than having the ole passport and plane tickets nicked in Rome, a couple of last minute sprints to airport gates, our plane to JFK crashed in to a glass wall coming in off the runway....but very little actual mischief. By the time I got to Florence, I think the boy was concerned about my lack of antics, and encouraged me to meet up with his cousin, sitting on my lap in the photo. Usually a Sydney resident, Miss charlotte was in Florence for a month learning Italian. As you do. So we met earlier in the evening, I was excited. A link to him. Some new company. And as it turned out.....a whole lot of mischief. We had a nice dinner and a few drinks in this piazza near to where i was staying. Not far from the river Arno, on the other side from the duomo. We were drinking these deceptive wee drinks, a mix of bubbly and strawberry or peach liquer. Then i pulled out this lovely chianti that i had got the previous day on a bike tour on the outskirts of Florence. Well it was a wine tasting tour, soaking up the Tuscan countryside and hanging out in an 11th century castle, all in the company of a Scotsman, a naughty Italian, and some Americans. So I pulled out this bottle of wine, and this very dark man, 'a man made of chocolate' Jacob would have said at one time, he leaned over to me, his white white teeth belying the accusation, 'excuse me, you can't drink that here'. I can't remember what my defence was, but i had had enough to drink that i had a fiesty, but of course charming defence. And next minute he was seated at the table with us. He had only spoken up because his friend was the premise's security, but he didn't speak English well enough to tell me off. Charlotte seemed very pleased to have the male company. I was happy to let the security guard take over opening my bottle of wine. And before you knew it us girls had finished the bottle and made some new friends. The one who spoke almost perfect English was an ex professional football player. I think he used to play for Berlin. Or Germany. But in any event he now owned a cafe in Berlin. By the time I had finished my wine, which was horribly wasted on getting boozed on, it should have been savoured over some candlelit table, I realised it was after midnight and i didn't have a key to get in to our room. Or a phone to text Sally. I vaguely realised in my foggy state that I was in trouble. But i walked back to the room, rung the buzzer, and then took off again guiltily before anyone could answer. Very effective. Once I got back to the crowd, the band was packing up, and my new friends were talking about going to a discotech. Dancing! But this place was like nothing I had ever experienced at home. It made the bars and clubs at home look like daytime children's television. There were mirrorball tiles floor, wall to wall and ceiling. And people writhing against each other in the flickering light. But there didn't appear to be a whole lot of women.....the music was unfamiliar to me, sort of hip hop, hip grinding booty shaking sounds. And I'm in my little sundress feeling incredibly blonde and pale and suddenly sober. We dance in a respectably distanced circle until some guy catches Charlotte's tonsils and I get served up on a platter to the Senegalese/German ex-footballer who dances closer and closer until he's breathing in my hair....and biting my freakin ear! I remind him, real friendly like, that I'm out with my boyfriend's cousin! And he grins that cheshire luminescent grin and says he'll come to Venice with me if i ask. I don't. The night progressively spins out of control......but i'm losing patience with this story. Tomorrow perhaps.

Cherries in Venice

2006-08-24T21:27:00.000+12:00

The fruit over in Italy and France and Spain tasted better than the fruit I eat here. Sally disagreed, but i think she might be closer to the right end of the chain of production. It tasted like it had just been picked and was ready to eat, that there wouldn't be a better time to eat it than right at that moment that it was sitting on your tongue.

I have spent the entire last two days in a 'fug' of de ja vu. It is making me feel slightly motion sick. It is a feeling of having dreamt all this before and, of a coming together, in haphazard shards of reality. Perhaps it is my fears and my well, self-satisfaction, at being in this job. Finally feeling some self-worth, and yet still wondering, how long am i going to be able to bluff my way through this. I am traipsing around the courthouse in my suit like the newbie that i am, sticking out like a sore thumb amongst all the middle aged white men. That's the lawyers of course, not the clientele. God, even writing this, i feel as if i have done it all before. It is honestly the most vivid, tangible de ja vu of my life. what does it mean?

itchy feet

2006-08-16T20:34:00.000+12:00

It isnt that i want to go back overseas. It is just that now i am very very still. And quiet. I read a lot at my new job. Court is interesting but i dont do anything yet.

It is just me and jake at the moment, frank is away for work. J told me tonight that he loves me more than his x-box. Whoa!

I have just had a teary bath cause the boy told me tonight he has booked tickets for the UK. I'm tired of his restlessness, at least if he goes i can stop worrying about what will happen if he does go...

I wanted to take him to the ball my boss says is mandatory.

Bon jour

2006-07-21T04:36:00.000+12:00

Oh the inspired titles: internet is expensive; i have little time for creativity;

I am in bordeaux even more baked and crispy after 3 delightful days in San Sebastian: it is hot hot hot: Now we are in Bordeaux which is very lovely and tomorrow we travel to the city of love: I am just starting to appreciate the wonder of this trip in the realisation it is drawing to a close and simultaneously getting excited about coming home:

Another thing: I have a new found fear of pigeons: They have absolutely no fear over here due i am sure to their sheer supremacy of numbers: in venice one took me on; i shoo shooed and it looked me straight in the eyes with disdain; whatever bitch; those eyes said: And then it flew straight at ,e and tangled itself in my hair: Now i am much more deferential:

This keyboard is crazed: gotta go

Hola

2006-07-16T06:01:00.000+12:00

I just adore Barcelona. I think it has been my best city yet. Italia would be, and shall remain, my best country. But Barcelona is, well i have been here for two days and I feel at home. It is big. And crazy. And I had two separate groups of men accosting me today while i was sucking on an iceblock ¿you can imagine? but i just love all the architecture and the food ¿we went to the most unbelievable restaurant last night, it is going to get its whole own separate entry at some stage? and the Sangria and the trees and parks and the weird sculpture things every where you look and the Zooª Today i went to the zoo. I was tired of museums and art and yes, even Gaudi, and i went to the zoo while Sally went to look at Picasso. And i was teary eyed for quite a large part of the experience because it was just a thousand times better than anything we have at home. Some of the enclosures were quite cosy, sort of like our little cubble hole dorm room right in the heart of the city, but the animals were animated, and healthy looking, and they all had mates. And there were lots of babies. One of my standout highlights of this entire trip will be the hour or so i spent watching the dolphins. They did one of those shows, and i felt five years old i was so excited by it all. I dont think i have ever seen a live dolphin close up before. I am just ecstatic.

unfortunately, our stay has been cut short due to the fact that unless we leave tonight we cant get a train until thursday. So we are taking another night one to San Sebastian. But i am coming back here. I would like to live here. I want to take my kids to that zoo....

Why does a 'c' make a 'th' sound?

2006-07-14T03:30:00.000+12:00

So I have been pondering the matter of language recently, having in the last six weeks been spoilt with material. Examples served up in my ponderings like some lavish international linguistic buffet.

On the metro to Ruzyne airport in Prague this morning, I was staring over a girl's shoulder, which doesn't sound as rude as it might in peak commuting periods, you don't get much choice. Over the shoulder, up under the armpit....

She was reading a novel, and it was all in Czech. Which just looks nothing like English. Is it the romantic languages, like Italian and Spanish? And German, I don't think that's romantic, it doesn't sound it when spoken. But, those languages all look familiar, even if they don't sound it when spoken by a native. This book did not look like anything i have read. And it just confounded me, sent me spiralling out on a weird out of body thought pattern about how she was doing something so utterly natural. Those foreign jumbled up symbols were being translated for her as she read, into, I don't know, it could have been some tacky Sweet Valley High equivalent.

I have learnt to walk around with a permanent apologetic or full beam smile on my face. Hmmm, actually I have probably learnt, harder, that sometimes five foot three and a bit, 50 odd kilos, and blonde hair needs to be counter balanced with a penetrating, suspicious glare. But when communicating normally the smile usually trumps. And "thank you" is obvious in any language. "Hey baby, wanna come for a ride" in Italian was also fairly self explanatory. "You are not listening to me" in rather vehement Italian, has also been dished up on my plate. A nice young Moravian boy I befriended on the train from Vienna to Prague taught me hello and goodbye in Czech, but in five hours I was spellbound by his life, how much he has seen and travelled, his gentle perspective on humanity and by the time we bashfully shook hands and parted ways, him to his mother's dumplings and me to a veritable banquet for a fraction of what we had been paying up to Prague, well, i had forgotten how to say those two words. And felt utterly rewarded for overcoming any language difficulties we had encountered.

The thing that I love the most, is that look, reflected on both parties, when you manage to communicate in two different languages, you in yours, them in theirs, and still come to some happy conclusion. Like the Czech man who gave me directions to the departures terminal at the airport when I made a swooping upwards gesture with my hand. That look. A little bit of pride, a little bit of phew, and a lot of, See. We aren't all that different really.

Prague

2006-07-10T19:02:00.000+12:00

Well, probablÿ time i updated, although the czech keyboard is driving me nuts. The y and z have altered positions. it upsets my touch typing considerably.

As you can see i am procrastinating. Sally has rushed off to ring mum and joe as she has realised her cellphone isnt going to work here and is no doubt feeling as remote to the outside world as i have for the entirety of this trip. It is hard, especially when you are expecting an email and one doesnt arrive. Yes, i am sulking a little. No doubt he¨s broken a limb skiing over the weekend, but not like i have any way of finding out....

Our place in prague is beautiful, except it is right underneath a motorwaÿ overpass, but we are used to noise by now. We havent actually ventured into town yet, we had dinner and watched the italy, france final at a cool place just up the road. Had the most delicious mojito for pudding¨, and litres of beer of course, for very cheap. I am so gutted now that i didnt get little bro an italian shirt while in the victors territory. I will have to find one on the rest of my travels.....

So the procastinating, a result of the fact that i must venture miles out of town today to the airport to find british airways and ask that they reissue my plane tickets. But once that is done i am sorted again, clean slate if ÿou will. Guess i should get a wriggle on.

Internet, as is everything, is much much cheaper here, so i will try and update briefly each day. Much safer than a paper written copy.

peace.

I'm melting.......melting

2006-06-26T01:10:00.000+12:00

Yes, it has been awhile, but i have been busy swimming my way around the adriatic. now, i am in rome, and it is sweltering. And some man is currently amusing himself with my dirty underwear as i type. i just paid one million dollars to get some washing done. Sally doesn't blink an eyelid at what ever anything costs, but she is a rich lawyer. Sigh. Maybe one day i will be a rich lawyer, and not be such a penny pincher.

But rome seems cool. i got my favourite photo of me on this whole trip taken today. We just arrived in via train from ancona, we got a bit stuck there last night when we got off the ferry and there was just no transport anywhere, so we hiked 2kms or so with our packs to our grungy hostel. i suppose that's not that far. but i hadn't had dinner, and you know what i'm like. Well maybe you don't. i need FOOD.

So, anyway, we've just got in rome. And the photo. i found this giant watermelon under the station, roma termini. There's a supermarket under it. And this watermelon would be, ummm, the size of, three of my heads. I struggled to left it. So i got sal to take a photo of me right there in the midst of all those pushy people. Mi scusi. You are in my bubble.

I'm so hot i'm lightheaded. A bit, whoa, floaty, sweeeeeeeeeet bro. But the placed we are staying in here is nice, i am learning some italian, and tomorrow we are going to pompeii.

my free internet is about to run out. Aroha nui.

p

ps this site is all in italiano, but i've become so proficient with t he language it ain't holding me back none.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JIMMY

2006-06-15T08:12:00.000+12:00

I hope you had a great one, and you dorking boys got my postcard. Sorry this is a little late nz time, but i was thinking of you and i hope you had a great time in the sounds.

i will write an update tomorrow in heathrow hopefully, at the moment i am on one million dollar a minute internet. bloody pounds to nz dollar conversion......

okay, hope being 26 is totally awesome and makes you even more of a double hard bastard.

love b

Where is my castle???

2006-06-10T07:03:00.000+12:00

Well, it appears that my clan may not be quite so important as i thought it was. We have coasters, scarves, fridge magnets and key rings, but not a book. All the important clans seem to get books, and wall crests. I did read a bit about the boy/Mac's clan and it appears he is from one of the important clans. Many hundreds of years ago the big chief from his clan came to the region where my ancestors were from and married my big chief's daughter....it doesn't make me feel dirty. Not even the slightest. I know people from the Naki who have done "it" with family from the same generation after all...

Ummm, yes, so we're in Edinburgh. Got a train from Glasgow this morning. Ireland was fantastically hot and treated us very well. Glasgow was very pleasant and sunny as well, our hostel was really nice. Edinburgh, i've pulled out both jerseys and my jacket today. And tomorrow we're heading north and into the hills for a day tour round to find that monster. If i get a photo of her i will eventually post it. Probably i will be riding it.

Feeling a bit perkier this afternoon, i think maybe because i bought a nice dress to wear in croatia and italy and eastern europe where we will be places for three or 4 nights at a time rather than living this eternal bedouin existence. Also, its a damn nice dress. But its a bit cold to wear it here. I'm a little frightened about the financial situation, it is very hard to keep the spending down with the difference between the pound and nz dollar, as they seem to be almost equivalent. or i am a dopey tourist whos getting ripped off. But who really gives a shit, i'm not likely to be back here again and on holiday for 2 and a half months again for awhile. And mostly i've been buying presents for other people....

We have almost been mistaken for australians twice today. unfortunately, the americans mistaking us for british doesn't work over here.

Lauren has left us to be an auntie. The nice hostel boy managed to switch mel so she was in our room so i gave him a cream egg.

Pretty soon we're going out to brave the cold. We're seeing the castle and a bit more of edinburgh (with the bus tour we took today as our basis on sunday). Hope this is mildly coherent. Hope you all have a nice weekend.

x
pix

Ireland

2006-06-07T22:47:00.000+12:00

Sorry, i have 11 minutes of internet left, and i'm not going to try and be clever and creative. Pounds are very expensive. We are in Northern Ireland now, after a few days in Eire, which i really really liked. We have hired a car, and drove from Dublin (after a pint at the guiness factory) to Kilkenny and this amazing monstrous castle. I will i was clever enough to post the photos, but we honestly had to walk back the length of a football field to contain it all in a photo. And the inside had been painstakingly restored so the fabrics and patterns on the wallpaper and furnishings matched how it had been decked out when it was a 19 century home to the Butler family, who were quite definitive in Irish history, and their were a few familiar names from tudor steward history, the charles' and james' etc.
We went and looked at the tip of northern ireland yesterday, after a very unceremonious crossing of the border. But people do seem different here, slightly more guarded, less bonny. We had a look around the giants causeway, which is supposed to be about 6 million years old, a bunch of rock formations on the coast which smelt like red rocks with those dirty seals, and as Sally said, maybe not as impressive as the pinnacles at the south of the north island in new zealand. (They were after all the setting for the paths of the dead in the lord of the rings)
Today we are doing a tour of belfast, hopefully getting a good dose of that history that i learnt way back in 5th form. Actually it looks like the bus is getting ready to leave.
Thank you so much for your emails. i'm a little ashamed of those stabs of homesickness i get every now and again, especially when i'm trying to get hold of people on the phone and my timing sux....but the emails help significantly!
I haven't been drunk in ireland yet but there's still time. If i wasn't so bloody tired.....
Oh and i talked to jacob the other day, night, morning whenever the hell it was and he was so cute. Everything i told him, about the time difference, the castle, was "hoooooly". Usually it's quite difficult to get him animated on the telephone.
i feel like perhaps we've done more than this, but it's a quick glimpse at our whirlwind tour of ireland. We fly out early in the morning to glasgow. i'm quite excited about that, as both sides of my family are scottish.....although my family had been in nz since the 1860s.
I'm just trying to take it all easy, and just be in a place, rather than rushing around like a mad woman like in the US. i think that's the way to go.
xxx
b

Sally lost on the sub...

2006-06-02T10:09:00.000+12:00

So we've moved to a backpackers that is a million times better than our hotel. And we've got a great afternoon planned for our last one in the big apple. Sally and I are off to the Metropolitan museum of art.. Well, first we were going to check our emails here at apple land. And on the sub she starts telling me this amusing story about the time Joe hit her in the eye. Well, it was accidentally of course.
Sally: I think this might be our stop (in her measured, she'll be right kind of way)
Me: oh shit!

What happens next is in retrospect, not as funny as i found it at the time. I leapt off my seat and out on to the platform. I turned around to see a sad faced sally waving at me through the window as she was whisked off to the next stop. I'm giggling. It's comical. And i finally feel as if i'm starting to fit in to this crazy land as the people around me stare at me quizzically while i laugh to myself. And then i sit. And wait. And wait some more. And she doesn't come back.

So if you weren't me, and you were sensible, you'd have jumped on the next sub to catch up to her right. And that's what i'm sure she was thinking. Unfortunately, my first instinct was to wait for her to turn around and come back to the right stop. By the time i figured out i was probably meant to be the one doing the moving, and then moved, it had all gone horribly wrong. I couldn't see her lanky frame anywhere. And she wasn't here at the apple shop where we planned to go next. And so I went to the Met alone thinking we'd catch each other up.

It was amazing. Probably a day or two's worth to see rather than an afternoon. 15 minutes before closing i sat out at what i hope was the sole entrance and waited to see her emerge. I waited half an hour. And still no Sally. She probably got carted out to Queens where she was mugged and left without her memory and now i will have to go to the crazy little precinct in times square and say i lost my friend.

Okay, i'll try our hostel. I need a wine.

Sesame street porn

2006-06-01T10:38:00.000+12:00

I forgot to say that the broadway show was cool and funny, but not orthodox i think. There were muppets in it, that sang, and two of them got it on in a very pornographic sort of way. But the muppets interacted with the real people. Not in a pornographic way. That would be crossing a line.

After the show, the theatre next to us had a limo parked outside, and out rocked julia roberts. I saw her. Well, I saw the top of her head....

Bird flu

2006-06-01T10:30:00.000+12:00

I am in NY with a nasty cold and a slight fever. We stayed in bed until midday, which seems like a bit of a waste, but I have been dragging my ass round central park and the guggenheim as it is. Poor Sally, i must be such a drag. Bit fevery, very runny nose. And i don't know where the hell my appetite has gone! Oh well, the park was really nice. The modern art was mostly not my thing.

A mouse got into Sally's backpacks and ate her pineapple lumps. We told them this morning and they are going to change our room. I was relieved at how shocked they were. Afterall, this is probably the most we are paying for any accommodation the entire trip. It's a bit rough being rodent invaded.

I saw a million squirrells. they scramble up the tree trunks like lizards.

It isn't so hot today. That is a relief.

Got an american hotdog out of one of those wagons. Will probably get a bout of food poisoning now to accompany my cold.

Tomorrow I want to go to the Met museum, which is back in the park. And to the public library, which is meant to be amazing. And i want to buy a handbag. And Lou an I love NY tshirt. And maybe do one of those tours around on the buses. Then the next afternoon we are flying to Dublin.

Thanks for emailing me. I am the teensiest bit missing home. It was nice being around some trees today.

I'm in New York

2006-05-31T08:07:00.000+12:00

We've had around 7 hours of delays, and a crash on the runway....but we're here. It is incredibly hot, and smoggy, and loud and flashy. I feel like its hard to breath and i'm completely adrift from everything i've ever known. But i think its just going to take a couple of days to find my feet, get some decent sleep rythyms, and figure out this blasted tipping system.

The ferry out round the statue of liberty and under the brooklyn bridge was cool. Ground zero was nothing but this construction site with some plaques around it. Maybe we missed the important stuff...

I am about to navigate the subway system myself. Hee hee hee...

tonight we're going to see a broadway show. thus far i have not been mugged or got horribly lost. Actually, we're doing all right. It was nice to see Lauren in the hotel lobby this morning, but they are off to philadelphia in the morning. Sally is home at the moment making the most of our very cosy double bed.

Okay, i might try and come back here tomorrow if we go to central park. And if i don't end up in queens on the subway.

xxx
pix

Maybe God went to Harvard

2006-05-11T22:05:00.000+12:00

Mr Bear has got a scholarship to go to Harvard. So they are not going to Toronto yet. Last night Bear came in to the kitchen with tears and said,
"we're going before you get back now"
and we sniffed at each other for awhile until we realised she had the dates wrong. Tonight we had flat breaking up antipasto dinner. I tease Mr Bear that he has a very wide conception of antipasto. But that was last months funny. Tonights one was at my expense. I suppose they often are. But Mr Bear wanted to drink his and Bear's nice bottle of french champagne they got for a wedding gift out of mugs rather than bother washing the wine glasses. While I was snorting at him, I sucked some caramelised onion up from my gullet that I'd eaten while I was barbecuing in the dark with my head torch on and scalded my oesophagus. I have contact with doctors on a daily basis, if you want to challenge the biological soundness of what I just said you can f off. Anyway, it hurt. And Bear and I decided it was karma, punishment, because Mr bear has joined the world of the prestigious elite, protected by God Almighty Himself.
I wish God Almighty Himself could peer one eye over in my direction. With a bit of champers in aforementioned gullet, I merrily tore open my mole map report that came in the mail today to find a nudey photo of myself and a recommendation that I get a mole mildly suspicious of melanoma excised to remove doubt. It's not really on my ass.......more my hip. Bloody hell. I've got 2 weeks left in the frikkin country. And I'm still to sign my new employment contract. The boy, of whom I've tired of calling the boy and will take to calling Mac now, told me I had better read the great big doorstop of a thing properly in case there is a 'test' clause in there that says you will come to work wearing pink fluffy slippers twice a week, and if i miss it they won't offer me the job anymore. To which i'd say, i didn't miss it, I just happen to like pink fluffy slippers, I already have a pair at home.

So I'm quite hyped up at the moment. I have regular panic attacks where my chest gets tight and I am overwhelmed by nausea. I see my Wellington life swimming in and out of focus and then disappear from under my feet like the outgoing tide. I think I will need to work on my relaxation techniques.

I think I will also get Bear to guest appearance on this blog from now on. There were cobwebs when I came in tonight.

xxx
Pix

Don't cry over spilt quiche

2006-04-17T18:02:00.000+12:00

The interview went very well, very very well. And when I come back from overseas I have less than a week before I start my new job. I will make much less money than I do now. But I will be working for two people who I think will inspire me. I will be challenged. I will probably be scared quite a bit. I will have a lot of diversity in my work, and an exponential learning curve. I don't even have a computer, instead I will dictophone. I won't die wondering what if....

It does mean leaving Wellington. Last time that didn't go so well for me. but I feel my reasons for moving this time are a lot more sound.

The boy and I are together again. Some things just can't be solved with sense. And considering I am only here for six more weeks, it may just run it's course in any event.....

So, this should all be classified as good exciting news. But I think it's taking its toll, I'm feeling pretty raw right now and went bush for a few hours today. Well as bush as you can get in the city, at the wildlife sanctuary. I hiked all the way to the wind turbine with just fat-breasted little robins as my company. Anyway, The bears saw the worst of my rawness the other night, when I had a kitchen disaster that had me flexing my tonsils and expletive vocab quite violently, with the two of them scuttering round the kitchen trying to fix things before I threw the dish through the window. Mrs Bear: Don't just stand there, help her! Mr Bear: What do you want me to do? Give her a massage? Afterwards I felt ashamed. But I also wondered what is up with me?

Still, I have been building up to all of this change for quite some time. And as much as human beings are habitual creatures adverse to change, I don't want to get stagnant. That's the best way to get miserable. And I still have so much to learn.....

Mum

2006-04-06T22:06:00.000+12:00

My mother died three years ago tomorrow. It seems as if I have lived a whole lifetime since that day. I feel almost a new person, like I have been laundered. Or I am like my palm that got too wet one winter, and rotted away completely, but then grew back good as new. I dread tomorrow a little less than I did last year, and a whole lot less than I did the year before. I miss her, sometimes with a physical lurch of pain or nausea, but I always recover pretty quickly. It is like she is sitting up there, watching me, and whenever I get a bit self-indulgent or melodramatic she gives me a sharp prod in the ribs, sort of like the way things were when she was alive. Or as if her memory, everything good that she instilled in me, settles over me like a nice warm blanket.

I have a job interview tomorrow, I've decided I'm going to be a lawyer, after being undecided through 5 years at uni, the million-dollar practical component that led to admission, and the last couple of years I've spent faffing around in a non-descript but yet identity shaping role, I've finally decided I want to give it a go. So i dug around and pulled out my notes from Profs, not to study them, just to have them sitting where I can see them so I can soak up the vibe for tomorrow. And I stumbled across a whole galaxy of sentiment, photos, cards, enough memorabilia of her that i could open a museum. And I feel sadness. I feel her presence as tangibly as I hit this keyboard. And it takes my breath away that she isn't here, that person that was the most defining figure in my life until the day I touched her and she was warm, but without breath. And I feel relief, that now she is safe, and with me always. For I worried about her. I'd forgotten, but I could see it there in those physical memories. I suppose I continue to worry to some extent. About her estate and her evasive sister that manages it. About her babies, especially the boy, so even now I hear her words to me under the washing line. "He needs a mother, just until he is ten". I worry that to only live until you're 44, well that leaves me with 18 increasingly rapid years. But I no longer worry about her. I think about her, and I feel an earth-core peace, and the corners of my lips involuntarily turn upwards.

Before it becomes fuzzy with time

2006-03-25T10:52:00.000+12:00

I am not sure if I will ever get married. Until the 4 March 2006 I rather thought I wouldn't mind if I didn't. I have often thought about one day procuring a beautiful white dress, some dark-haired abstract of a man (that had a relatively minor role in the fairytale considering), and running around some small rustic earthen-coloured village in Southern Italy where I knew absolutely noone other than my betrothed. I would dance amongst the vineyards. I would have a bouquet of wildflowers. I would be ferried around in an old wooden horse-drawn cart. I would curtsey to the locals. I would be married by the local drunken priest, and it wouldn't matter if the marriage was a sham as a result. Because it was of such little import to me.

Well, I am going to southern italy in a few months. I don't expect I will be marrying anyone anytime soon. But I feel a lot warmer to the idea of an actual wedding after attending the Bear's recently; If you had the right kind of person to marry, one that lifted you above all the bizarre ceremony and expectations of others and with that one day, carried you many years down a path that was always the one you intended to walk. But now the walking is in concert with someone that you want to open your eyes to every morning, who's name will fall off peoples lips in conjunct with yours like the two words are one. Your day will be complete having that person at its cessation, to unload all of life's oddities and peculiarities that have permeated your clothing, to hold you if you need sadness wrung out of you, to reflect the fire in your eyes when you have claimed a day for your own.

I rather hate chronology for moments like this. Where to begin in a manner that is not so tiresomely at the beginning. But I suppose the day began for me, in seeing Bear in bed with her sister. Her eyes were scrunched up with lack of sleep and her unkempt red hair splayed about her. There is a nervous anticipation amongst us even now, a fiery humour injected in the conversation to keep panic at bay, a light in everyones eyes that belies the calm exteriors. The bride has not slept well for days, perhaps longer. Her sister Kate and I walk to the supermarket. It is a sleepy little town, the kind that stays in its bedclothes all day, but there is a statehighway running through it giving lifeblood. The sky is a newly washed blue, and the sun is warm and full of promise the way only a sun can be when the morning air is hushed with the taint of ensuing Winter. I like her sister. She is vivacious and her conversation warms me up. The walk past primly kept gardens and sedate cottage-style homes does us good. Then we get back, the house is now pulsing with purpose, pancakes are made, and eaten with a sense of what must be acheived today. Bear stirs her food, then her and Kate and their mother are swept off to the hairdressers where they will be held captive for a good part of the morning. There are lists. There are bags to be packed. There are freshly picked flowers and candles and decorators to be delivered to the reception hall. There are people swirling around in such a way that these things will be done. I feel slightly impotent and yet pressed. I arrive at the hairdressers and watch Bear submit to the machinations of the hairdresser and the make up lady and then listen to her fret about it afterwards. The woman has painted her in a way that isn't her. At home we all gaggle in the bathroom with potions and wares and colours spread across the basin, and this is the point of despair. There is a subtling down of eye makeup. And then we dress and there is an instant transformation. The dress is exquisite. It was tailored specifically for this delicate soul and in it she unfolds. Bear's mum struggles with the bridesmaid's dress and bra straps. There is some concern over curls unravelling and dresses creasing. The photographer arrives and with his foreign presence snapping away we ascend yet another octave. I revel in the knowing glances I get from her mum. I practice my reading with her little brother, and his freckles flush red under my gaze, "Stop looking at me". I laugh and listen to him with my eyes diverted. I feel so utterly welcome and comfortable with these people, and so completely blessed to be sharing this day with them, and drunk and heady on vicarious titillation.

We are in a violet-indigo coloured V8 Chevvy impala. The steering column is on the wrong side of the car, both front and back are bench seats and there are no seat belts in the back. There is a white streamer in a v formation across the hood and a strange little doll boring her eyes into our backs. The engine seeths in a way that makes our voices vibrate.
"You are terminated".
We are all giggles and ecstasy and wide eyed in the backseat. The music has to be changed to save the eye makeup. Kate and I hungrily eye the bubbly at our feet. We stop so Bear can get back in her dress that had been shed to avoid creasing. Her Nana beckons and I run back around the car and help her and her train back in. It is like being on a voyage with royalty.

We hum through the curvaceous Athenree gorge and the noise of the engine ricochets off the cliff face to our left. To our right is a sprightly stream light-dappled from the abundant trees lining its banks. And then we are at the gate and Bear's mum and dad leap in to the car for the final leg, there are festive anomalies in the green, there are heads turning, there is a final adjustment to the bride's dress, there is music. I am amongst my friends, but with the stupid handycam that i will never in all my days operate again. And through it's unsteady lens I see a beaming Kate in deep pink. She is followed by Sarah, her parents on either side of her, she is a glorious contrast to the country green surroundings in vintage-cream silk and Titian-haired. I am overcome when they exchange vows. With his articulate intensity, and her soaking it in with upturned eyes, and then reciprocating, the depth of emotion in her words a further contrast to her ethereal and romantic form. This is no longer a surreal game. It is as real as the Autumn-ripe grass beneath our feet. With the harbour at their backs, and those who loved them cupped around them like the calyx of a flower, they were married. Mr Bear's brother Jeremy crooned an up-beat song about the sea-side as they signed the Register, and then I spoke, the words taped into A Tale of Two Cities with a sticky plaster, but I knew them, and either with nerves or emotion I quavered the words out. And I touched Bear's arm on my way past, and her eyes were wet. And the two of them standing there looked so small, so young, and yet so perfect.

I rather think the lot of them, the Bears and their parents danced away back down the aisle and then came back to lots of hugging and photos. And I went up and hugged Mr Bear, who I hadn't seen all day, rather shyly for me I thought. And Bear I only talked to fleetingly for the rest of the night too, for sort of the same shy reason. I got to say everything I really wanted to say in my speech later. But it was as if banal words fail you in moments like that.

I do think it is the most beautiful wedding I have ever been to, and had the honour of contributing to. I can only hope, should I get married, that it is as personal and heartfelt as was theirs.

This is beautiful wedding bear - and this is the poem i read

2006-03-19T16:58:00.000+12:00

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Today I have had my fill

2006-03-16T21:49:00.000+13:00

of doctors. Tomorrow I am going to tell work I am leaving. And I have no job lined up to go to, but a trip that will exhaust all my savings....but I have applied for a job with a criminal law firm in Tauranga that pays nearly a million dollars less than what I get paid now....what the hell.

What might have been

2006-03-14T21:05:00.000+13:00

It is interesting to note those moments in your life that have a watercolour effect across your soul. When outwardly you are you, but you are undertaking some metamorphic transformation and you simultaneously step outside the chrysalis to watch the struggle for release from a shaded branch above. And you watch your priorities subside, a grainy cascade between spreadeagled fingers, and you are left staring at an empty, hopeful palm. Pain is pumped devoutly through your bloodstream and the effect is a sky that's infinitely bluer, a city pulsatingly more vibrant. Life itself is more pungent. It's like the nauseating whiff of a sickly sweet lily.

An awareness. A stillness that is reflection and a huge poignant swallow from a bitter cup. A lower lip that is heavier, eyes become deep set dishes, even the usually vociferous palate misplaces its zest. And there is desire. An indigo flamed desire to move and keep moving.

I have been to a few funerals. I have been to my mother's funeral and enjoyed it. I have been to a funeral of a school friend who committed suicide, and I watched the boys from the 1st XV cry like babies. But the saddest was the funeral of a stillborn baby, my mum had watched her futile entry into the world. At the funeral I watched her mother, who was the same age as me, stand with incredible courage and explain that this was so much harder than losing her mother to cancer. Because (in so many words) she was mourning not the person that she loved and lost, with memories to assuage the pain. Instead she mourned the person she would never knew.

How to mourn that amorphous what might have been?

In breaking news

2006-03-06T22:57:00.000+13:00

The Bears are married, at the most beautiful ceremony, it was a tear jerker.

And the boy has broken up with me. Which is also a bit of a tear jerker.

I expect I will write more on both these items in the near future.

2006-02-23T19:58:00.000+13:00

I fervently believe that there is meaning in everything. I also believe that we alone control how we respond to any event or person in our lives. I believe people come into our lives for a reason. And that, although it may seem senseless when they leave us, they leave us their essence that is purer and more potent than any earthly presence. I believe we are here for such a short time, that we have to love and live with everything that we are. I believe that the saddest things that have happened to me in my life, are also in a way, some of the most beautiful, because with them I have learnt who I love, what is important to me , who I am. And that piercing pain, that spears you to your core, leaves a chasm through which sunlight will eventually pour in. I believe I am a good person, but I can always be better. I believe as I get older, I am stronger, and yet more frightened. I believe that this exact moment is perfect, that it is a wonder just to be flesh and water and substance, to have a receptacle for this soul, to look at others and wonder what it is like to be them, and know that they are so infinitely different to me.

A street name flashes up on the computer screen at work and it hurts. A particular model of car drives past me on the street, and that hurts. And I want to wash my mushrooms instead of rubbing them, and I can't, and I could weep. And I laugh and I've stolen that laugh. And it hurts, oh god it hurts. But that's okay, I want to feel all of it. I want to cry myself to sleep. And wake up, with the dawn spraying my pyjama clad body in hope.

Walking home in bare feet helps

2006-02-21T19:46:00.000+13:00

So does being really busy, so does having a sister living in Wellington now, so does having friends that come and check on me when i'm on my own for too long, so does being able to laugh at myself, even my apparent incompatibility with the opposite sex, so does feeling strong enough to accept that there are some things that are such an innate part of you, you recognise that you won't compromise them, no matter how much you'd like to....

Maybe I am tough.

2006-02-20T21:43:00.000+13:00

I am standing at an intersection, waiting for the lights to signal red to the traffic so I can cross. And a leaf, crunchy and furled, is tossed by the wind in to the centre of the two lane road. And I am nudging it with my eyes, willing another gust of wind to whisk it up out of harms way, to take it out of my sight, to blow it to the back of my mind. But it is sitting there shivering, vulnerable as a small child, it's sienna shell a stark contrast to the shark-grey bitumen, and the cars are bearing down upon it, and it leaps from left to right to escape the rubber, but the revolutions are merciless, I watch transfixed, as little shards break away emitting painful shredding sounds, whimpers. And then the traffic light pulses the green signal and my heels chatter irreverantly over where the leaf had fallen. I forget it's shattered corpse before I reach the footpath on the other side.

Did I do that?

2006-02-16T22:18:00.000+13:00

I have done something, so shocking I can't even write about it. I hope you understand.

Chilean sister moves to Wellie this weekend. I'm quite excited about having the whanau in the capital.

I had a valentines dinner, although i don't really want to celebrate valentines, i had a really nice night. Still no card though. Maybe i'm not the kind of girl that guys give cards?

Right gotta wipe this green muck off my face and get some shuteye. I really have to start taking over the world tomorrow if i'm going to make any progress before my holiday.

My mum wore jandals

2006-02-13T22:23:00.000+13:00

I guess she wore other shoes too,
but mostly I remember her in jandals,
I can hear the sound of them slapping the cobblestones outside my bedroom window,
at a habitual pace,
soothing,
And I can see her spryly moving about in the backyard in those jandals,
under the washing line,
pushing the lawn mower,
Or I can see one jandal crossed over the other,
as she sits pensively on the patio,
puffing away on a cigarette, her little pinky curled daintily
like she is taking high tea
One jandal will drum the air delicately,
as we talk,
I can see her walk away from me, with my little brother in tow
the jandals setting a pace fit for a four year old
as they stroll off down the street hand in hand
I can see the jandals propped up on the footrest of the wheelchair
sendentary, of ornamental value now
and then they sit forlorn, forsaken at the doorstep
for a time,
I wear them, but
I'm not sure what became of them.

The Return of the Jimmy

2006-02-05T22:15:00.000+13:00

Back by popular demand, I caught up with the double hard bastard himself last night. And I think he has got even tougher, not surprisingly living with Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum the evil twins. We had a very nice bbq dinner, with Tweedle Dee bbqing with characteristic regimental precision, all the sausages lined up in a row standing to attention, and the eggplant cordoned off in it's own corner of the hot plate lying perfectly flat as if it is afraid to look disorganised (which I'm sure would be a court martial offence in that house). But it is a nice place, not what you'd envisage your run of the mill bachelor pad to be like, with expansive views of the city and harbour, a very yang feature wall, and storage space that makes me drool. Meanwhile I look at my own unvacuumed floor......perhaps I need a house husband.

Around the world in slightly less than 80 days

2006-02-02T21:55:00.000+13:00

Let me introduce you to a new character to Pixietale. Her name is Sally. She is my travel buddy. Well, there will be 4 of us for the first couple of weeks. But tonight Sal and I met and did some planning. This looks like the direction of our voyage thus far:

Auckland, LA, NY, Philadelphia, NY, London, Ireland, Edinburgh, London, France, Spain, France, Italy, Croatia, Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, London, Tokyo, Bangkok, Sydney, Home.

Does that sound pretty good?

I will come back potentially jobless and penniless. And be a real dirty hippy. I said to Sally tonight, after a couple of wines, that perhaps we'd go away girls and come back women. She could tell I was being a dick, but she's totally up for it. She came back with, yeah, it's a pity we weren't in Thailand for longer, we could go away women and come back men.

I'm looking forward to travelling with her.

A dragonfly only lives for 24 hours

2006-02-01T22:12:00.000+13:00

Or maybe less. I dressed up at one of our parties, Halloween themed, but only Bear and I really dressed up. Oh, and the now expectant parents. Who weren't expecting back then. Who now think they could be having twins. But anyway, I dressed up as a gypsy fortune teller, it was when I first chopped off my hair, but I liked it that time, and I'd just bought my bbq, Lauren was turning 24. I wore the bottom half of that dress that i bought that was kind of chinesey, but knit at the top, and puffy and silky at the bottom. Except not silk. I dunno maybe polyester.

So I was a fortune teller, so first I needed a tent. Some fabric draped from the ceiling over the back of our couch. And some dim lighting. And some tarot cards. A sultry mysterious voice. Rather than using the book accompanying the cards (I didn't want to look like a novice) I just made stuff up. And I abused the intimate knowledge I had of my friends and their lives to tell them what I really thought in a mystical and guiding way.

My crazy old flatmate was still in NZ that night instead of in Columbia where she's been for awhile, and I told her some shit about the dragonfly only being on earth for a very short time and making the most of life. Which was kind of mean, when I think about it, as you could interpret that as meaning pretty soon you're going to die. But i just meant it to be motivating. She got really psyched about it, thought that I could see the future (hey, I'm pretty convincing when i want to be) and then got quite mad when she realised I was a phoney.

I think I had a point though.

Mr Bear has got a scholarship to a Canadian College. So he will be whisking Bear off with him towards Spring (September). And my little flat will be broken up. And I will go overseas for eleven weeks, and come back and they might have gone. And who will live in the little room down the hall then?

I alluded to the dragonfly, because it seems to me that things are speeding up, that a six week summer holiday when I was a child is now just a morning at work. I'm 25 going on 30 going on 40 going on 50. My mum didn't even make it past 44.

It makes you think. (sorry for the crappy Victoria University reference. The photo is where I went to school. It's not all this pretty.

And because i hate to sermonize

2006-01-31T21:45:00.000+13:00

Here is another photo of Jacob. You can see what he did not get for Christmas.

The smacking thing is also interesting me, because of the very small parenting practice I have had with him. And although I haven't smacked him lots, he's much too old now anyway even if i wasn't changing my views on it, i did once, we were at the beach, and he ran full tilt into the water fully clothed, maybe even a nappy on, and i chased him and gave him a sharp whack on his little arm. And he stopped in shock. And I looked at him in horror. I was mad. I was frustrated. I lashed out. But was that necessarily the best way to alter his future behavioural patterns. And does my acting in that way encourage him to respect me anymore.

He brought it up, months later, in his funny little old soul way. And it just devastated me that he remembered it the way that he did. Not in a "i was naughty and so i got a smack" way. but in a "Bridie you totally lost your cool that day" way. And he was so tiny. But they know.

to smack or not to smack?

2006-01-31T21:21:00.000+13:00

I'm being a lot more structured in my approach to life at the moment, and I feel it's really helping me to achieve little mini-goals and I get to the end of the day and go "yes". Although i'm buggered. And i still need to read some short articles again tonight for the community meeting i'm going to tomorrow about repealing legislation that justifies parents in using reasonable force to discipline your kids. If you're thinking, well why would you want to repeal that, parents should be able to use smacking as a form of discipline, it gets a lot more involved than that. I'm still getting my head around it, cause my sisters and I were all smacked. Hell, I'd even say we deserved smacking, we fought like cats and dogs a lot of the time. But that's why it's so hard to get past, because we've seen it used by our parents (who love us) as a way of correcting our behaviour and therefore we accept it, and have the potential to adopt it with our own kids.
There's lots of reasons against it. Because in a lot of families, it goes past what i'd classify as reasonable, but it's subjective, and it appears that juries, made up of new Zealand parents are seeing real violence as reasonable discipline. I think I'll probably write more on it because it's my little project at the moment. but my biggest qualm currently is the stuff i've read from the kids perspective, how it makes them feel, how it makes them perceive their parents, perceive themselves, perceive the society we live in. It's sad.

What's not sad is i rang the accommodation service today and it appears Kelly may not be coming to live on my couch until July after all. And the boy is back from Europe in 5 sleeps after this one.

Now I have a difficult meeting at 9 and a monstrous paper to write tomorrow. As well as the meeting on the smacking. So I must sleep. As my pyjamas say: I need my beauty sleep.

A very productive day

2006-01-30T21:56:00.000+13:00

The luminescent bride
and, our very comfortable
sleeping abode the evening
of the wedding.

I'm feeling awfully pleased with myself today. Dropped my passport in to internal affairs. Got a call from the boy in the English countryside freezing his nuts off so he could get reception to talk to me. Booked accommodation for the Bears wedding. Made more progress with one of my new years resolutions. And managed to get some work done. I'm awesome. Better go sleep so i can be equally awesome tomorrow.

Get me to the church on time

2006-01-29T21:31:00.000+13:00

Shattered. Snuck away from work at 4 on Friday to drive with the Bears and Slee to Napier to stay at the bride's parents' home. Got up early Saturday morning after a sleep out in the lounge to continue north to Waipiro Bay, 100kms or so north of Gisborne and the bride's whanaus marae. Cute (steaming hot) little church nearby as the venue for the ceremony, standing room only in the back for us young ones. The reception meant lots of speeches, lots of singing, lots of food, lots of people, but it wound down rather early. Or maybe, exhausted from the journey there (and some of us suffering from minimal sleep from the previous night), we wound down rather early. I was disappointed about not having a dance. Got teary over the haka (rather inexplicably). Delighted when the beautiful bride serenaded us by candlelight (and at the opportunity to use my head torch) when the power went out for half an hour or so at the end of almost all the ceremony at the reception. Too chicken shit (and sober) to get up and do the karaoke. Had a good sleep in the marae up the road that night having drunk very little. The red fireman snored only briefly. Spent all of today journeying the whole way back to Wellington. Arrived home with a pink paper wide brimmed hat and a monstrous sunflower.

Was feeling just the teensiest bit wistful about the groom's apparent unadulterated adoration of his bride. Feeling slightly anxious about the Bears impending nuptials, and living up to the occasion with a speech. Thinking I probably wouldn't cope that well in a lavish ceremony of my own.....

The Dalai Lama told me

2006-01-25T22:14:00.000+13:00

2006-01-24T22:18:00.000+13:00

Life's a bitch sometimes. That's the best I can do. No attributable reason. Not even sure if that's a word.

a. i'm back at work
b. i finally got my passport photos, and I look bad. I knew I looked bad, but then both Bear and Laurie demanded that I go and get new photos. So I know I look real bad.
c. it is the most depressing day of the year. A scientist said so.
d. i hate how much of a quivering wreck I am in the most ludicrous situations. And the thought of not doing as much with your time on earth just cause you're scared. I actually think I'm a head case. And sometimes I wish I could just grow a pair, I truly do.

Here's a nice cheery photo of kiwigringa at the airport. We were all there before 6am.

Home to my sweet broadband

2006-01-22T20:58:00.000+13:00

Stepped off the plane and nearly got blown over. "We're home".

Long weekend here for anniversary weekend. Thank god. One day of reprieve before the return to work.....

Photo may appear too dark to see the maniacally grinning gringa behind the wheel. Or to truly depict the sheer horror painted across the passenger's face. (Explanation below)

Still slightly dialled up, but no longer in the whops

2006-01-21T22:00:00.000+13:00

Today I have travelled around 400 kilometres in a 1961 plasticine/blue-tak blue Morris Minor. It has a zippy motor. I think my dad, who's a diesel mechanic when he's not saving the world by producing top class progeny of the female variety, may have put a different engine in it at some stage. It apparently reaches a maximum speed of 150kmph. Not that you'd ever know, cause on the open road the needle on the speedometer swings recklessly between 45 and 70 miles per hour. The car also comes equipped with air-con, the old-fashioned kind. And due to aforementioned excessive ventilation, it's loud. It's been a while, maybe 10 years or so, since I flew in this little four person airplane from Whitianga in the Coromandel to Great Barrier Island, but I think the Morrie produces a comparable level of noise for the comfort of its passengers. As in, you have to yell at the person sitting next to you to be heard. I had an hour or so of spanish lessons in this way. The only music we had available was the tape my stepmum had left in the player, Opera. That's as clear a picture of the music I can paint in my ignorance. Some lady and some guy with wasps in their vocal cords. Sometimes I like that kind of music, in a bubblebath with some candles and a glass of wine. But it was postively absurd listening to it compete with the drone coming from the Morrie as we buzzed along the southern motorway.

We managed to stay on the right side of the road, as in the left, with Kelly driving all but a few hundred metres of the voyage. I had a quick drive approaching Auckland sista's apartment complex and decided the Morrie was no fleecey seated Terrano that basically drives itself. I haven't driven the Morrie since it was newly bought and had no brakes. And it's been awhile since I've been acquainted with a gear stick. So I left my baby sister, seven years my junior, to struggle with the tiny metal accelator biting into her jandal the entire way. With characteristic lack of communication from my extremely blokey dad (he's walking around loading up his Caldina stationwagon this morning to trek south with us, with a flap swinging out of the ass of his stubbies flashing red undies), we were forced to do some pretty dodgy manouevring in Auckland traffic. Auckland is fairly multi-ethnic, whaddya call that, cosmopolitan maybe. And you tend to hear a lot of complaints about certain ethnicities lack of proficiency behind the wheel, usually not in very polite terms. At one point, when my sister and I, two little blonde-haired blue-eyed whities, were hanging out in a lane with a green light to go straight, waiting for the arrow for the right turning lane to go green so we could squeeze in, I looked back at the vehicle we would need to cut in front of that was being driven by a Pacific Island man, and said to Kelly, I bet you that guy is thinking, bloody honkey drivers.........She laughed.

2006-01-20T22:23:00.000+13:00

I have had the most wonderful holiday up North at my father and stepma's house. I have swum everyday, the last two in the rain. And I have so much I want to write, but I can't bear how slow the internet connection is here. I'm back down to Tauranga tomorrow travelling in a 1961 Morris Minor, should be a very slow, very noisy voyage. And considering Chile sister will no doubt insist on driving most if not all of the way, and she took off from Waipu Cove this evening (where we had been twisting for Pipis) cruising merrily up the right hand lane, this may be my last entry.

Just in case it is, I wanted to post the photo of me at the pioneering party when I'm about to have a crack at the clay pigeons with McCleod's daughters man cradling me in his arms.

But, after 10 minutes i've got tired of waiting for the upload........

Cuentas De Adas

2006-01-17T21:22:00.000+13:00

Okay really short update - would love to post some pics. Little sister has been back with us since 6 or so this morning, she's not so much changed after 10 and a half months. But she is more her, more clearly defined, less of a girl. Yeah, all that corny stuff, helped along by some stiff spirit specific to the country of Chile which just seems like 50%strong whiskey if you ask me. My family is great though. It really is. 8 year old brother jumps from the dinner table proclaiming we needed some speeches. After putting all us women in tears I had a go at something much less prosaic and inspiring. He's amazing.

Had a beautiful beautiful swim in the ocean today. Feeling quite sun kissed at the moment.

Oh photos, paint a thousand words.

Gotta go bond. But I love you all. And will be back soon with a Chilean special I feel..........

2006-01-14T22:30:00.000+13:00

I've got the truck and Frank's disco ball safely back to Tauranga, completely under my captaincy for the entire voyage, with Mrs Bear as navigator. I'm quite pleased with myself. We left at 7, stopped at Lake Taupo and had a swim, which was just devine. Warm enough to stay in for a good spell, with nothing but silken sand beneath your feet and no murkiness or slimey sea weed. One of us got nekkie in the water. The other experienced technical difficulties with her snorkel. Stopped somewhere else along the way and fed some horses, Bear took a fancy to one with a mohawk. Swung into Tauranga around 4.

I'm having morning tea with the former psuedo-mother-n-law tomorrow. Then me and the boys are trucking North again to stay with Auckland sister. Three more sleeps till Kel is home from Chile.

I'm tired now. Tried to upload a photo.......dial up will be the death of me.

I know it looks like i'm posing for these, but i wasn't, i was a bit scared of the undertow

2006-01-13T20:19:00.000+13:00

I am on leave again now for ten days. Baby sister is back in four sleeps. They are having a party in Chile for her tonight (well, her tonight, which will be tomorrow morning, I'm going to try and call you Kel, but I won't be able to persist if you're tied up, gotta get on the road by about 6:30am i reckon).

Things to pack:
present for dad, stepmum and baby sister, as have not seen any of them since Christmas;
snorkel;
disco ball;
passport application which I still haven't got photos for.....
togs;
ipod for loooooooong road trip;
CD full of cool photos of me and the boy on holiday to show whanau;
something to read;
camera for beautiful summery shots of the peaceful seasidey town i'll be staying at;
a sense of humour, for the potent dose of family i'll be getting in the next week.

I had lunch with my very sweet friend who I met in Weir House, the student hostel I lived in for my first year at Uni. She now lives in the Hague, and studies the violin in Rotterdam. I like her, and I told her this today, because her eyes are always sparkling, she is effervescent and appears to be thoroughly enjoying life. She is bouncy, like Tigger. She has a friend over in the Hague who owns a violin that is worth 100,000 dollars. It is from the 1600s. My friend wants to get a job with the NZSO but apparently they are too cool for school now because our legislation concerning royalties means they have been able to do some recording that other people can't, and they have consequently got a name for themselves. So she might stay over there for awhile and get even more awesome. She likes it there. But it was good to see her after nearly three years, and I'm going to stay with her in the Netherlands this year! I'll get a photo of her. You'd like her a lot.

Birdlings Flat

2006-01-12T23:04:00.000+13:00

This photo was taken the weekend we were in Christchurch. We're on our way to Akaroa at this point, and I'm wearing my favourite dress because we're going to the French farm for lunch. I got it for mum's funeral, but that's okay because I've worn it heaps of times since then, and gotten horrendously boozed in it, so it's not really a funeral dress anymore.

The beach was covered in pebbles of all different sizes, deliciously sun-baked, some of them beautiful jewelled shades when wet, jades and ambers and ivory. But it's sad once you take them away from the water, they dry up, and lose their beauty.

it's been a while since i have posted a photo

2006-01-11T22:40:00.000+13:00

He was such a good sport about it. And i've been showing everyone. Even emailed it to his friend at work, who immediately printed it in colour and posted it up in his office.

He's gone to Europe now.

I went to listen to Holly smith at the botanical gardens tonight. I think that's her name. It was tempestously windy, spinning the coloured lights and bubbles around in a surreal acid-induced fashion. but it was a nice night. and rose is here from london, and Keren is here from the Hague.

A potential new reader

2006-01-09T22:20:00.000+13:00

I like how the Gelatto shop was open late tonight. And how sleepy and warm Oriental Bay was. And how big and black and shiny Frank's truck was. I am developing a bad habit of thinking everytime I have to make some driving decision "I'm in a truck". They'll get out of my way, I can just drive over the curb, I can touch park. That's not true, the last one. I like the bloody pools of pohutakawa at the bottom of our steps. I like that when I cook I make enough for a family of six. Except I don't like that it's just me to eat it. I like picnics in the middle of a working day with plump cherries and muffins in the shape of teddy bears. I like being pulled across the bed at night and falling asleep in his arms. I like that I can have girlie chats with my brother's dad. I love that my little sister is home in a week. And that I will swim in tepid water at a beautiful little beach way up North. I love the freckle under his left eye. And the puff of my little brothers chest when he's playing in the sea. I love that my Auckland sister rings me at work just for a chat, and I hate that I never talk for long because I feel bad that people can hear me not working. I like it when people are crazy about something, anything that they need it, that they hunger for it, that it soothes their soul.

Oops, it's late.

Whoop

2006-01-08T22:15:00.000+13:00

Guess who's booked flights to LA, New York, London and then out of Rome to Tokyo, Bangkok, Sydney then home. We'll do all the internal Europe stuff ourselves, but we're hoping for Scotland, Ireland, Berlin, Paris, Prague, the Netherlands and a Croatian cruise. Feel free to suggest others...... I was about to crap myself with excitement when I walked out of STA travel yesterday. I still could.......

Also applied for a different job, and might start doing it bit more just for the practice.

Plus I am officially not shit scared of driving around Wellington now.

Not too bad thus far for 2006.

In news that isn't mine, but is nonetheless sincerely worthy of mention, B & J of Pencarrow biking adventure fame (see July 12 2005) are going to be a mum and dad. And I am ecstatically happy for them. B was my very first friend in Wellington, and is probably one of the sweetest people I know. She'll be a Supermum.

Out with the old.......

2006-01-05T21:42:00.000+13:00

I've commandeered Frank's Terrano for a couple of weeks. Not that i'm really making good use of it, i'm a bit terrified about driving round Wellington. Which is ridiculous, as I'm fine in strange cities and on the open road. It's just that i've never done it here, never needed to. But as I was heading north again so soon for the long awaited return of Chile sis, it's here, parked up at the bottom of my steps.

Stopped in at the cemetery on the way back south on the 30th December to look at Mum's Kauri tree. I don't go up every time I'm back, I don't feel particularly close to her there and I'm not crazy about the bling plaque thing they gave her with a million dollar photo of her embossed on the stonework. But it would have been her 47th birthday so I popped in briefly, made sure the tree hadn't died, felt stink I hadn't brought flowers, and then ate King Prawns in her memory at the farm near Huka Falls. They were her favourite.

I'm thinking temperance and self-direction for 2006. My goal setting workshop for New Years didn't go so well, instead I ended up 4 metres from the ocean at the southern most tip of the North Island with a bottle of bubbly and an extravagant array of food. But i will be sitting down at some stage.

The Bears are newly arrived back. Mrs Bear has had her wedding dress fitting. She is nervous about our trip North because she is even more nervous about driving than me, so i will be driving 700+ kms with her for company, and because I nearly had a crash at Waihi Beach at a round about when her, her sister and Jacob were in the car. I was eating an icecream. Jake said, lucky you didn't put a dent in dads car.

Poppa

2005-12-26T09:53:00.000+13:00

In a couple of years my maternal grandfather lost both his youngest daughter and his wife of over fifty years. Not in the careless sense, but in the sense that they both died. He is one of the sharpest people I know, with a puritanical work ethic and the same exacting standards expected of all those around him. At the age of 82, he has just bought 55 acres on the outskirts of Tauranga with ocean views, and he means to develop the property with passionfruit and kiwifruit and triple his 1.3 million dollar investment in a few years time. He also drinks to excess every night, he refers to the ale as his 'medicine'.

I wonder if he's lonely now. We went up to see him last night, to take him some more pork which he devoured when he came down from the hills yesterday to sit and have Christmas lunch with us, which surprised both Frank and I. He was in his dressing gown and slippers, looking for all the world like an intoxicated elf. He idolises my little brother, and I think he is proud of me, though it is obvious he wants me to stop pissing around and practise by the fact he offers to go into business with me everytime I see him, and regails me with tales of his own (frequent) run ins with the law. So I saw the farm for the first time last night and it is beautiful. With a swiftly flowing weeping-willow lined stream at one of the boundaries just begging to be swum in, and hawks and rabbits and a herd of goats and calf-length green grass and caramel coloured young bullocks with their drippy saucers of brown eyes across the stream. I got hayfever, but i want to go back in the week with the boy and swim.

Jacob is here, cuddly and wanting to participate:

Oops, the pressure of having to come up with his own material to write was too much........

Merry Christmas

2005-12-25T17:19:00.000+13:00

How strange. I have been so sedentary, so sleepy, so gluttonous, and now, I want to curl up with A Tale of Two Cities and snooze. We will hop in the car soon when everyone's gone, and go and see Poppa, who is probably up on his own right now with 55 acres and some ham and some kiwifruit plants. And I am listening to Jake's X-box hammering away, and thinking about mum a little, and how when I spoke to kel this morning 1000s of kms away she sounded a bit flat, and Lou who has followed the boyfriend to Taupo, she would follow him to the ends of the earth i think, and Dad and Robyn who are on their own today. I would like a snow globe, to bestow me with the power of premonition, to see my Christmas in 5 years or ten. I would like to make pumpkin pie, and kiss Santa under the mistletoe and watch small faces completely enchanted by the magic of Christmas. Christmas is a funny thing, stockings can be completely brimming, and yet suddenly it is the intangible that I yearn for.

Change

2005-12-19T21:42:00.000+13:00

Scene: A relatively low-budget byo pasta restaurant in central Wellington. I haven't washed my hair since the gym this morning (did it yesterday), I changed in to jeans after work and i'm wearing a top with no sleeves and there's a couple of days growth down there. I have minimal makeup on. In all honesty, this is me on a normal day, but there is a deluge of kitten heels and soprano style greetings and soon the table I am at is swimming with what I like to call standard issue girls. Long, dead straight foiled to perfection blonde hair, air brushed bronze skin, not an eyebrow out of place and lip gloss touched up the minute they sit down. And dressed in black. They're all in black looking completely unscathed by the humidity. They travel in packs these girls, it is part of their mesmeric charm. As a solitary force they are attractive, perhaps even head-turning. As a cluster their silky starlit blonde heads illuminate the room and their incessant banter becomes hypnotic to nearby hapless male diners. They fill their flutes to flowing while I pinch my eyebrows and explain good naturedly that it's my sixth christmas function in eight days. I'm all Ho Ho Hoed out. I sit there, springy short curls and freckles and denim, wishing I was more directly in the path of the fan. I pepper my way through with courtesies and niceties. After the strain I'm ravenous and it seems like a good idea to order a buttery rich fettucine, but the heat and the chatter and the cream don't sit well. I make my excuses and slip out in to the summer drizzle and remove my shoes and let the sound of rubber through puddles wash away the repressive vice on my psyche. It is so strange, to covet something and simultaneously despise it.

Productively using time on earth

2005-12-18T11:53:00.000+13:00

I am treating this blog the way i treat my plants at the moment, watering them when they show such marked signs of neglect that they can no longer be ignored. But it is Christmas, I am in the process of attending 6 Christmas functions in about 8 days. I spent all of last Friday and Saturday dedicated to the boys one, a lavish affair that had me kitted out in a Victorian ensemble and firing a semi-automatic shotgun. I hit 4 clay pigeons out of 10. After a day spent rushing around, eating little and a couple of glasses of pinot. He hit one.

I would like to promise more photos of that event, but this week promises to be just as frantic as the last. I don't finish work until Friday midday, and then Saturday is Christmas eve and i'll be en route to Auckland where my charming sister will ferry me from the airport to Tauranga, arriving at about 10 that night. Christmas day will be a relatively quiet affair i imagine, spent with little brother and stepdads whanau. The boy is coming up on the 27th for a few days, getting off pretty lightly with meeting the parents. Dad and stepmum will be up north, I probably won't see them until Kel gets back from Chile. But it will be nice to hang out with him and Frank and Jake and bbq and go to the beach and so forth.

I am more excited about New Years than Christmas. I am formulating very fixed ideas about what I would like to achieve next year. Most incongruent with the slap dash spontaneous approach to living I have adopted the last couple of years. So while the night itself may be a very low key affair spent on some remote coastline in the back of a 4x4, I expect a lot of the year to come and what the 1/1/06 will represent. Moreover, I expect a lot of myself.

This love thing is a rather frightening distraction. Although he is away in Europe for a month from the middle of January, and I expect to be away for at least a couple of months around the middle of the year, time is so easily frittered away in his presence. I am loathed to make any sacrifices for anyone at this stage in my life even as I watch some of my closest friends make life long vows of commitment and embark upon familyhood. I'm not saying love and personal development are necessarily mutually exclusive. I am just conscious of my tendency to become all-consumed by affairs of the heart, and that I really need to put my head down and bum up this year coming.

Reflection, it's a potent drop.

I hate the pill

2005-12-08T22:29:00.000+13:00

What a lot of hormone induced drivel..........fucking girl.

I am loud

2005-12-08T21:58:00.000+13:00

I am confrontational. I am a vexation to the spirit - mine and those of others. I think I am a good person but I lack a lot of self-discipline, and insight, and wisdom. I feel too much, and think far too little. I was always "the noise maker" in my family, in my own defence, in the defence of others, just generally because the world was such a cruel and unjust place. And I have mellowed with age, okay maybe not mellowed. Perhaps acquired the slightest ability to reign it in or walk away, or at least the resources to avoid a catalytic environment. Perhaps I have separated myself from anyone to the degree where i am not threatened, perhaps i am just as incompatible with outspokenness, fire and control as I am with docility, earth and soft-spokenness. Perhaps I fall desperately hard with reckless abandon and then cower on the cold hard ground terrified of the consequences. Perhaps I seek that which is unobtainable for one of my disposition, or for anyone for that matter. That elation, that high, to be sustainable, enduring. Perhaps I just don't possess the patience required to sustain anything, and I will drift freely, selfish and unmanageable, without sacrifice, without possession, without true understanding.

Where is my sister?

2005-12-06T22:04:00.000+13:00

I'm trying to plan the Christmas/New Year period. We finish work on the 23 Dec and are due back on the 4 January. I'm not taking any leave until the Chile sis gets back around the 17 Jan, and then i'll prob only take a week. I can't decide what mode of transport to use to get back down from tauranga after Xmas, up to auckland for the homecoming, and then back down from tauranga to wellington again. It's quite a lot of travel in a short space of time, and quite expensive. Plus there is this to consider.....

I've had it for quite some time now, it has attended a number of parties, and needs to be returned to its rightful owner. Frank. But the logistics of getting it on a plane..........

Anyway Kel, what's the story? Are you back on the 17?

I'm vaguely excited about tomorrow. My monster paper doc is appearing at the meeting, and I have spent a small part of today post-it marking and dog-earing the 12 copies of 300 odd page bound submissions to make it appear as if they have in fact been painstakingly poured over by each of the members instead of just by little ole me......unethical you say? Why yes, i do believe you're right.

Lights camera action

2005-12-05T21:11:00.000+13:00

At the moment some phd psych students are filming a research video in my flat about memory. I had a part, my name was Candy. I stuffed it up. But i wore pink and have a small hickey on my neck, which i think was appropriately candi-ish.

The romantic weekend was...........exhausting. I'm not being dirty. I don't even think the hickey was imparted as an act of passion, more's the pity. I got pmsey, and he got tired; we drove 1000km in 2 days, the last leg of the journey done in a panic with us disoriented and unsure how late we were going to be for the ferry. We did everything on the itinerary, we visited some incredibly beautiful places, we ate at exquisite wineries and strolled through gardens in full bloom. There were some very very nice funny intimate moments. I was just........tired by last night.

So i'll focus on the best parts. How he was affectionately grumbly (and apparently not the least bit surprised) when he arrived thursday night to take us to the airport and i wasn't packed. How i spilt my water all over my lap at the airport cause i had the shakes i was so excited, and he got me something to eat cause he knows about the low blood sugar thing now. The sunset as we were flying out of Wellington. The rotund wine-inspired belly on the lovely Urologist who picked us up. The walk from the square and that beautiful cathedral (I know, I know, it's not a patch on the ones in Europe but I like it) through the botanic gardens to the university. The lady with a huge brood of dogs, including those odd little Men in Black sidekicks that look unnatural they're so........human. The fireplace at the restaurant in Sumner. Being so tired that the ebullient birds didn't wake us up at the crack of dawn the second morning in the huge hundred year old wooden house we were staying in. Lolling in the sun-baked pebbles on Birdlings Flat beach, the pebbles turned all manner of precious colours when wet. Realising after the drive to Akaroa that we actually loved that little bright orange Suzuki sewing machine we'd rented. A kilo of cherries from the little blonde girl with the evil parents for 6 bucks. The fact i didn't kill us and Swifty when i failed to merge appropriately with a huge truck on the way back into Christchurch. His suit jacket being on the coat rack when we had to turn back 15 minutes towards Hanmer Springs because i'd left something behind. Our cute little motel room with the warm cottagey decor (even the felt pink and purple seats). My bikini staying attached to my body at the springs. Leaving Hanmer at 10 in the morning and arriving in Wellington via Mapua (west of Nelson) at 9 at night and still managing a kiss goodbye at the end of the night.

Inclement relations aside, it was an amazing weekend. Just needed to throw in a few hours for some reading, reflection and lavishing of attention.

Okay okay

2005-11-30T21:35:00.000+13:00

I was actually planning on writing something tonight anyhow. I've lost my mojo though. No inner burning fire to write. I wonder if it's on account of pumping hormones in to my body for the first time since mum got sick, flattening me out. The timing would correspond........

Anyway, I hate to pack. I hate to unpack. But I am packing with gusto this evening. I have packed all my most impractical underwear, (I surprised myself with the quantity I own after the inventory this evening. I thank Auckland sis for that) I also have a nice dress and tomorrow I am going to buy a new bikini. Which i'm a bit terrified about, because it is only held up by a knot, and I may actually be held criminally responsible for blinding people...probably would qualify as assault I'm so honkey-assed white.

Oh, so where am I going? Christchurch, Akaroa and then Hamner Springs. Maybe Nelson. I'm leaving tomorrow night on a plane and ferrying back late Sunday night. And i'm so excited I could go stand in front of my mirror and dance to Barry White....or pee. Probably wouldn't need to pee to Barry White....

What else has been happening?

I pretended for a brief period that my work inspired me by writing the beastly paper to beat all papers. 300 plus submissions condensed down into five. Then it was finished and I went on to cruise control again.

Ate a chickens foot yesterday. After my boss spilt chicken feet juices (steaming hot) in my lap.

Had Antipasto (a very all-encompassing genre according to monsieur bear) with the Bears and Laurie on Saturday night, got a bit boozey and crooned to 80s singstar. Which is soooooo much better than ordinary singstar. And i've decided singstar is like pool. I improve with intoxication.......

Went to a wedding invitation working bee on Sunday. Was quite labour intensive, but very fun, in an oestrogen-brimming way.

Have gotten used to the haircut. Still no photos on record.

Hope you all have wonderful weekends. I will try very hard to do justice to my own on my return.

xx

Today I got told I looked like a little boy

2005-11-22T21:31:00.000+13:00

and I laughed. Genuinely. So that's good I suppose. But stop asking me for photos. Not going to happen.

Conversation in our kitchen tonight

(Mr Bear is sucking on a tea bag)
Miss Pix: that is the grossest thing i've ever seen, ever.
Miss L: It reminds me of Samantha off Sex and the City
Mr Bear and Miss Pix are grimacing with distaste at this point, Miss L has been lowering the tone of our lofty Kelburn home as of late.
Mr Bear: I still don't know what tea-bagging is (feigning innocence).
Miss Pix: Uggghhh (knowing what's about to come)
Miss L: I think it means sucking balls (she says with relish)
Miss Pix: (Giggling hysterically, she would never say anything so inappropriate)
Mr Bear: (looking at Miss Pix with a decided air of superiority about him as he departs the kitchen) Well see, that just implies that sucking tea bags is something people do all the time

So last time my hair was short, it wasn't soooooooo short, but it was pretty short. And when i did that Abel Tasman walk, I know I wrote about this, but I don't know if I got to the part in the tale where I hadn't showered for five days, and had done quite a bit of walking and sweating, and was in a long pair of shorts with my black army cap on, and on the bus trip back to Picton, a little four year old girl befriended my friend Corinne, and spent ages talking to her, learning all our names, and telling Corinne about her and her little brother (who was so fucking cute).You can see where this is headed.

Anyway at some stage in the voyage Delwyn and I switched seats because the bus had emptied of people somewhat, I think it was in Blenheim, and we were sitting right behind the little girl. And she spun around in the seat and started talking to us....i hope i haven't already told this story. And I, loving children as i do, responded warmly to her question, and she exclaimed in a very innocent, genuinely surprised way:

You're a girl!

Ha ha ha, all round.

So then we were on the ferry across the Cook Strait with the same little girl and her mum and brother, and the ocean was viciously rough, and people were spewing all about us, and little cups of ice were being handed out for people to suck on, but when it had calmed down a bit the little girl found us again, and began to cement her newfound friendships.

Little girl to me: I know what your name is
Me, feeling a benevolent surge of forgiveness for questioning my femininity: Do you?
Little girl to me: Yes, it's Brian.

Ha ha ha ha ha, all round, again.

That kind of stuck. And i haven't even seen any of the girls from the tramp yet. Oh no, wait, I saw Delwyn at Toast Martinborough, and she was kind....

To Martinborough

2005-11-21T22:05:00.000+13:00

Saturday night was spent with some of my favourite people in honour of Becky's 25th birthday (of the Pencarrow lighthouse bike trip fame). Her and fireman hubbie have moved to Johnsonville, and we got to see their new love nest for the first time. In her (self-acclaimed) Martha Stewart style she had cooked up a storm (yes, it was her birthday, but we had been under the impression it was a pot luck tea, not a banquet of medieval monarchic proportions). According to the fireman my pizza was more suited for prehistoric caveman consumption. Then we played cranium. I have to admit after six hours at work that day reading 300 pages of submissions from a doctor for the next meeting my brain wasn't gagging for the stimulation, but my abs appreciated the workout from the unrelenting hilarity. I'm quite stoked with the fact that I have bought Jacob the kiddies version for Christmas....

Afterwards the anticipation kicked in, as I waited for the boy to arrive at my place having been in town with some workmates watching a play. I'd been losing sleep over him seeing the mopchop for the first time. And he hated it. And with all fairness to him, he didn't try to hide it and say something lame like what i've been enduring recently - it'll be good for summer. Or trying to turn it back on me - do you like it? But after I got all stroppy and we'd both had a bit of a sulk it was okay, and I realised he wasn't as shallow as I'd sold him out to be. I started feeling really good about the whole thing. like maybe it was a test..... Once it gets a little bit longer and I get some of the curl back i might even like it. Because who wants to be conventional and boring....

I went to Toast Martinborough yesterday. The bus trip was hilarious - both there and back. And i really liked the group of people we were with, who weren't the usual gang. And we bumped in to heaps of people we knew. I didn't even get that boozed, enough to get up and have a boogie with the oldies at one of the wineries, but by midafternoon the mid 20 degree heat was sizzling my bare bald little head, and I had had enough. But it was a fun day.........laughing at all the trashed people - and there was a huge cross section of trashed society. The upper echelons, middle aged men overweight and wearing over-sized hats, and their women too thin and too tanned with short highlighted hair and white capris and too much gold jewellery, blending in surprisingly fluidly with all the young tarted up things who could have been transported straight from one of the bars on Courtenay Place on a Saturday night.

My favourite wines were the 2004 Te Muna Road Vineyard Pinot Noir and the Claddagh vineyards 2003 Merlot.

2005-11-17T21:59:00.000+13:00

I have spent an exorbitant amount of money tonight to look like a boy. Or a nana. Or a dyke. Or a barbie doll belonging to a sadistic five year old girl. Or the victim of some horrific lawn mower accident. I hate it. I will have to spend more money to invest in hats. And I will have to spend all day tomorrow at work fending off well meant compliments that will make me grimace and shuffle uncomfortably. I never tell people their hair cut looks good when it's shite. I wish people could do me the same courtesy. I wish people would stop using the word cute. Dammit!

I may also have earnt myself a constructive dismissal.......I wish I wasn't such a stubborn little fuck.

2005-11-15T20:44:00.000+13:00

I'm not in an introspective phase. That is why this is not coming easily. In fact it's hard. But it's still light late now. The build up to Christmas inevitably means there is more going on. And i'm just not psyched about anything enough to write. I'm content. In tune. Just humming along.

I got an email back today from the director of CPAG. I had emailed her with my condolensces over her husband's unexpected death (as if death can ever really be unexpected.....) and she wrote back this lovely email. And i felt ashamed at some of her questions because i'm not doing anything love love with my life. Her daughter, another lawyer who didn't want to be a lawyer, who I worked on the monograph with, is currently doing work for the International Court of Justice at the Hague. Which makes me think maybe I shouldn't just be pissing my time away when i travel. Or teaching english just so i can pay off the wretched student loan. I want to sell my soul to a cause. I'm so goddamn putrifyingly idealistic, and if i have nothing else to offer i feel that that must be something. Fuck it all.

I was in the bathroom at work this morning, not for any huge amount of time, I don't think, but I came back upstairs and my team had completely cleared out. It was like a morgue. I checked my calendar and there was nothing scheduled. I walked from little green cubicle to little green cubicle poking my head in at desolate desks. I even ventured a wavery little 'hello'. Silence. I sat back down at my desk all jittery and jumped when the PA blared, calling me to the boardroom. I scooted down the hall and saw my Manager downstairs looking panicked. She locked eyes with me and this huge wave of relief washed across her face. The new CEO had asked for a pop meeting with my team. While I was sitting on the loo. And so i skulked in to the boardroom feeling very sheepish with all eyes on me, thinking, great first impression. Sigh.

Disclaimer to previous post. I do not love the boy. I do fall in 'love' quite easily, but it is presently a glowing coal sensation, a toasty form of potential, a bit more than the butterflies and vertigo of the very beginning. I feel a connection and excitement with him personality wise that i don't think i ever had with the ex. Maybe that's just the benefit of hindsight. But it's not safe yet. Love is big, right? Huge.