Early to Bed, Early to Rise and the Wonders of Science!.....

It seems that, contrary to public and scientific opinion, the most vital and refreshing hours of sleep are the ones immediately prior to the alarm going off. I base this hypothesis on the fact that 20 days into my exercise regime (not that I'm counting!) I am absolutely knackered! For the last 3 weeks my alarm clock has disturbed my slumbers at 5am - when it is still dark, when the stars are still bright in the sky and when the house is still undisturbed and uncluttered by whirlwind children. Generally at 5am, having washed my face, dressed in very attractive cotton Lycra and rinsed my aching eyes in Optrex, I tiptoe hesitantly along the dark landing on my way out. (Rarely do I escape unscathed in this venture - last week I tripped over the builders ghetto blaster and this morning I collided, loudly, with a large metal step ladder) On reaching the living room, I tentatively pat the table where I left my keys, towel and water and progress, still blinded by the dark, towards the hallway, cracking my left shin on the coffee table and narrowly avoiding stepping on an invisible Puss Puss miaowing at my feet. Once outside things become easier and it is at this point that I start to quite enjoy being awake and upright at the crack of dawn. This self righteous pleasure lasts until approximately 10.47 a.m. at which point I seem to lose focus and instead of pressing my nose to the grindstone I find my self counting how many more sleeps it is till we leave for England!! (220 btw!) I spend the remainder of the day drinking water and tea trying to drown my brain into some kind of activity. Miraculously I am still managing my job as well as normal - just with a little less energy! And a few more typos! The obvious answer is to go to bed earlier, but for the last 2-3 months I have been incredibly virtuous and have been in bed by 10.30 almost every night - which for me is an early night.

So, my confusion with the scientists is this.... Before Mark and I started 'co-habiting' I rarely saw the underside of my duvet till well after 11.30 - and very often not until 1.00 or 2.00am - And yet, on 4 - 5 hours sleep I was bright as a button and fresh as a daisy. Now, on 6.5 hours I am less so! Anyone who can solve my problem, let me know - otherwise I will just take out shares in Optrex and start a nationwide search of pharmacies to see if Pro-Plus is still in production!!

Also, tiredness has a tendency to make me burble!

So far, 4kg are no longer clinging to my hips - I wonder where it goes! If you burn it all off on a treadmill do you think it is just absorbed into the atmosphere??

Girls saw John over the weekend and went back to school yesterday. Lou has first netball practice this afternoon and I haven't yet quite worked out how I will be in two places at once on a Thursday. Thursdays have actually suddenly descended into complete chaos! I have my course until 7.30, in the city - generally home by 8.15. Last term I didn't even have to think about the family logistics because a friend and I trade children one day a week and then Mark would pick the girls up from my friend's house, feed and water them at home and get Becca to and from Brownies - positively restful for me.

Now, however, Rebecca has netball practice from 3 - 4, Booie has netball match sometime between 4 and 7.30 and Becca still has to be at Brownies by 6. Meantime, I'm still at my course until 7.30!
The change is rather a fab one actually - Mark has a new job! Working in finance over in the city and not likely to be home till after 5 or 6ish. Same place he was working at three years ago - but in the wake of his wife leaving he packed his job in, painted his house, took a trip to England and started labouring. Now it's almost 3 years later and his old boss has asked him back with a promotion, a pay rise and a parking space!! Mark rather chuffed - and I rather like the fact that they obviously thought highly enough of him to come and find him.
Thursdays still a pig though!

Becca has Brownie camp next month too. Apparently they are doing some kind of version of the Amazing Race - so that should wear her out nicely! Meantime, Lou is thinking about whether she wants to go to the Guide Jamboree in Christchurch next January. Starts just after we get back from the UK, so she'll have a rather busy Summer holiday!!

It is now Thursday. The rest was Tuesday!

Mark has now started his new job. Very exciting!! Where previously he left for work resplendent in his faded work shorts and polo shirt, carrying a huge cool box full of energy sustaining snacks and lumbered up the drive in a very battered company van, this morning he left the house with his lunch in one hand and the keys to his very shiny Holden in the other! And for only the second time in two years he was wearing a tie - very yummy! Can't wait to get home and find out how he got on!!

And apparently unbeknownst to New Zealand, or at least to me, scientists have, however discovered the elixir of eternal youth. I base this assumption on the fact that Topol is still playing Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof! As a child, quite a young child, my parents had a vinyl LP of Fiddler on the Roof, which even then was old and dogeared - so let's be generous and assume that this was recorded the year I was born, 1964. Assuming that Topol was then, let's say 30 (in the movie he looked like he was 60 even then, but being generous here!) it is now 42 years later so surely he has to be in his 70s?? And he's still playing the same role!! Anyway, I am doing some research on this youthful phenomena and Sophie and I will be taking along Lou and Becs to see Topol in Fiddler on the Roof, 2 weeks tomorrow - I shall report back on my findings!!

Speaking of which (going to the theatre, rather than Topol!) I don' t think I ever told you about my evening at the ballet with Lou and Becca back in October last year. I'm not sure that I can magic it up to order, but we did have a lovely evening. The girls and I were all dressed in our twinkliest, velvetiest best, Mark dropped us off and we found our way to the theatre on a lovely spring evening. It was in one of Auckland's older theatres which is very traditional and wonderfully ornate with velvet seats, boxes and a dress circle. Even before we got to our seats the girls eyes were popping out of their heads with the staircases and the lights and the twisty gilt balustrades. Once we got to our seats they were even more gobsmacked by the fact that at the Civic, if you put your head back and look at the ceiling it is lit midnight blue with hundreds of twinkling stars! Absolute magic!

The ballet itself was beautiful. I have never quite got over the joy of an orchestra filling an auditorium with music - so that you don't just hear the music, it's not even that you feel the music, more that you are actually IN the music. There was a point in the ballet where the music and the choreography were so perfect that it was seemed as if the dancers themselves were making the music. It was at this point that I looked at my daughters rapt faces, inhaled the music and found that I had tears rolling down my cheeks, a smile on my face and this feeling of total contentment and complete blissful joy! Best of all, the girls are still talking about it - so think it was pretty cool all round.

I seem to have deviated from pretty much every track!

Update on house - Two of the new bathrooms are now plumbed in - one has polished wood floors, the other very nice textured tiles that I helped grout! Wardrobe now has proper walls. Mark's friend the gib stopper is coming for lunch on Sunday, so hopefully all the walls will be done in the next week or so and I'll be able to paint and finish those two bathrooms - before ripping out the third one and starting on that!

Yesterday was ANZAC Day - which is the Kiwi equivalent of Remembrance Sunday. It's always observed on 25th April, which is the anniversary of the ANZAC forces landing at Gallipoli in 1915 - or as Becs called it this morning, Gallopoli! If ANZAC day falls mid week, we all get a Stat day! As usual the girls put on their Brownie / Guide uniform and did the march to the war memorial, and as usual I was amazed by the number of people that turn out for ANZAC memorials here. Birkenhead is this little suburb and yet there was a big parade of veterans and huge numbers of the public that attended the service - and it seems to get bigger every year. Apparently the Kiwi's lost more men per capita of the population than any other nation in both the First and Second World Wars - maybe that's why so many people here make the effort to remember.

In past years the service has been somewhat dry, and hasn't been helped by the fact that the PA system has been fairly ineffectual. This year the PA actually allowed us to hear most of the service. The local MP did the address - and not being a great fan of politicians in general I was pleasantly surprised when this guy, who I generally think of as being rather up himself, did this incredibly moving address.

Instead of doing the usual thing of reminding everyone that ANZAC day is not about celebrating war, but about remembering the true cost blah, blah, he had taken the name of one of the soldiers on the war memorial and told his story. He told us about a man called William Greenslade, age 35, a commercial traveller who lived down Verrans Road with his wife Margaret and 6 year old son. He told us when he joined up, where he trained and about how, not long after he landed at Gallipoli in late May 1915 he had been one of 15 Kiwis who were sent forward with two cannons. He read us the Affidavit from one of his comrades which told how he was killed the same day and he told us how the Turks had retaken the land less than one day later.

Not quite sure how to move gently on from this point, but have to say it was probably the most moving Remembrance or ANZAC Day address that I have ever heard and by the end of it I don't think I was the only one who was more than a little damp round the eyes. What was perhaps even more remarkable was the fact that Louisa and Rebecca told me how interesting the service had been! Not bad for an MP I thought!

This seems to have been an unusually long and waffly Blog! All is good. Girls are lovely. Life is busy - will try to be more focused next time!

xx