Very late blog I know – just checked the date and it seems that NZ failed to have July this year! In actual fact we did have July (just in case you were concerned!) but it was so wet and rainy that I spent most of the month getting clothes dry and swearing about the hole in my laundry roof! (Laundry = Utility room.)
Bringing us neatly to House stuff!! - you can skip if you’re bored with it! Yes we have leak / leaks in the laundry roof – Arghh! Not sure if there is a broken tile or if it is an overflowing ‘valley’ – either way, what started as one drip, is now a series of drips – we’re not sure whether this is because the timber / roof / ceiling is now so wet that it’s just got a wider drip base or whether the whole section of roof is buggered! Obviously the previous owners knew about the problem as they actually moved the light fitting rather than fix the roof!! – still slightly disconcerting when you see water dripping from an unused light socket though!! So the roof may be a slightly expensive problem – but not planning on thinking about it till after UK trip though….
105 sleeps btw!
Only other house stuff is that our en suite is nearly done. Has tiles, loo, vanity and shower – only problem being that the shower will not produce water! The pipes did before the gib was done – but they won’t now! Not sure what exactly this means and am hoping that the shower and wall don’t have to be taken out and done over! Especially as tomorrow I was planning on painting my new shiny bathroom! Is very swanky! Actually, thinking about it, not that swanky, just new and in my bedroom!
Once shower conundrum is solved and half tea is slapped on all available bathroom walls, there’s just a lot of finishing to do. Mark needs to do a load of sanding and scotias and I need to paint! A lot! Am toying with the idea of inviting several friends over with a promise of wine and wine after!
Rather annoyingly this home straight is probably going to be somewhat delayed as Mark’s thumb op is in 10 days time. After that he’s going to be in cast for 6 weeks and doing quite a lot of physio. Obviously this means that DIY stuff will be on the back burner for a few weeks too.
On the bright side, am figuring that if Mark can’t do DIY and the sanding and scotias aren’t done, then I can legitimately stop painting for a while. So far the girls have pencilled in a trip to the zoo and to Waiwera hot pools for this down time – don’t think they have yet worked out that Mark won’t be able to go in the hot pools with a plaster cast on though!
So that is the house update – moving on….!
Top of Becca’s mind at the moment is the school production of Troy Story. The kids are all extremely excited – mothers, on the other hand can’t wait for the thing to be over for another 2 years!! Becca has the role of a belly dancer and has been wiggling her hips at every available opportunity. They’ve been studying the ancients all year so that Gods / Goddesses / Paris and Troy are all very much in keeping with this years’ theme. Once the production is done she is going to be working on a project to do with ancient buildings of Greece – suspect we may need to Google, as I only know the Parthenon!
Boo, meantime, is still very Annie’d, as well as being in Room 11 Idol! She has chosen to sing “It’s Not Unusual” which, personally, I thought was quite unusual for a child of 11! That said, confess to being quite proud of her choice and the fact that she is going to have a fairly broad musical taste, like her mother’s! I may have to dig out the old briefcase style record player that I bought from Dunc for £5 so that she can terrorise her halls of residence if she ….. mid sentence – just remembered that this is a fairly pointless thought being as LPs and singles no longer exist, of course!!
Actually, have been thinking recently how Ipod has taken away some of the value of music. Do you remember how as kids we used to sit poised over a radio / tape deck between 5 and 7 on a Sunday evening to hear the Top 40? You had your forefinger and middle finger resting expectantly on the play and record button waiting for each song to start. And as you heard the first note of your favourite song you hoofed down with the buttons willing the bloody DJ to stop rambling over the top of it! If you actually succeeded in getting a half way decent “Now That’s What I Call Music” type compilation (we’re on 24 here – what’s the UK on now?!) you could guarantee that a couple of weeks down the line either the tape would get mangled or someone else would record a personal version of Mr Blue Sky (Dunc!) right over the top of it!
My point is that your favourite songs were almost unattainable – unless you bought them when they first came out. No chance at all to get hold of something from last year! And if you ever caught one of your favourites accidentally on the radio, the volume went up and you closed your eyes and absorbed every last note, singing each one badly and with great passion! Obviously the eye closing thing was not a good idea if you happened to be driving at the time!
Everyone my age probably remembers their first single and their first LP (Seasons in the Sun / Kisses for Me (!) and David Cassidy – Dreams are Nothing More than Wishes), even now I treasure my old LPs and singles regardless of the fact that I have nothing to play them on – the briefcase record player is long gone!
Nowadays, I sit at my computer and download any track I fancy – all the oldies remembered from college discos like Me and Mrs Jones and Midnight at the Oasis and all the new stuff like Mika and Colleen Bailey Ray – and I can hear them whenever I want. A few years back if I’d heard the end bit of Layla on the radio it would have made my whole day – now, I quite often find I am doing crunches or lunges to it – and sometimes I even skip past it! Sad eh!?
OK, that was Lisa’s theory no 426 – The Over availability and Overuse of Fave Songs – Ipoditis! I expounded this theory to Mark last night – he says I’m getting old!!
No idea how we got to that! Anyway, yes. Netball season nearly over. Louisa’s team are in the final of their division in a week’s time. Becca’s team are currently placed joint first in their division. Both are still really enjoying it, and Lou is doing brilliantly with her reffing and it’s doing great things for her confidence. She’s been asked by the Saturday organisers if she wants to take on some additional games as they are short of pool refs. She gets paid for the privilege so think she might do a few extra games now and again.
Lou’s also doing Dancesport at school. From what I can gather this is cross between ballroom and funky! They have learnt the Salsa, Foxtrot, Cha cha and Jive. This evening we are going to buy gold (!) high heeled, strappy dance shoes! Oo my stars! Apparently I will be $100 poorer by the time we have accomplished that! She’s entering the North Shore competition and has a partner called James. Like Becca’s belly dancing, Boo seems to be in dance mode most of the time, whether she’s emptying the dish washer or heading for the shower – if you catch her when she doesn’t know you’re watching, she’ll suddenly throw one arm skyward and flick her hip to the side and her pointed toe in the other direction! Very cute actually!
My big girls actually started to really grow up. She’s been walking to school all term and what with the dancing, netball and reffing she seems to have leaned out a bit.
She nearly has proper boobs and I fear spots are only a short jaunt around the corner! Think she might have grown a couple of cm too but will have that confirmed, or not, at the consultants next week. She may finally crack the 5ft barrier and after that pretty much every cm is a bonus. Bearing in mind puberty is still being blocked, we should, eventually, get at least another 5 or 6 cm – which would be around 5’ 2” – which isn’t abnormally short - although one would hope that she was not blessed with her mother’s boobs at that height!!
They had a Mufti day at school today so that she poddled off (3 bags hanging off her! – no idea why they can’t have lockers, but hey!) in her silver ferns fitted t-shirt, her camo pants with her baseball cap and floppy bunches – she’s got all fresh faced and lovely. Oh and she has a boyfriend called Alex! It seems that at 11 having a boyfriend equals talking at morning tea, sending a text now and again and the odd peck on the cheek – personally I think that it should stay like this till my girls are at least 23!
Harry Potter has been seen (in 3D) and read by both daughter and Mother. Harry is now all grown up and J K Rowling is going to live out her life comfortably on the back of Hogwarts et al! So will now need to find Lou some equally challenging and entertaining reading – which may be a big ask!
Have decided that ‘fessing’ up is in order. Gym is still going well. Food is still not. Am resigned to still being a bit of a bloater when we come back!! That said, am not as jowly, am looking very fresh faced and well and joints are in cracking nick! Will carry on at gym just in case this laisser faire attitude has the unlikely effect of causing me to stop eating and to start on my downward descent again!
Other than that, am book clubbing again. There’s about 7 of us and we’ve been doing a combination of reading books at the same time and pooling books that we’ve enjoyed. Just read Perfume – which was bizarre but enjoyable and Mr Pip which didn’t do it for me regardless of the fact that it got lots of awards. Anyone wants it, shout! I’ll bring it with me! Meeting tonight so should pick up another good book or two!
Coming to the end of the football season here – although Mark is finishing a tad prematurely because of his thumb. This means that I get back my Saturdays for the summer, but lose my Friday nights once the summer season starts! I gather that the English football season has started again – so I will lose sleep on the odd Saturday / Sunday night / Morning too – only if Chelsea are playing on SKY though!
Other than that Mark’s good. He’s been busy doing house stuff. Busy at work and busy playing on Trade Me (kiwi version of E-bay) too. Whole house is now kitted out in Trade Me purchases, including towel rails, blinds and tumble driers! Come to think of it quite a lot of the house has disappeared – but it’s me that tends to be the seller!!
Got an early birthday pressie this week when Mark got his divorce papers through! Was quite odd being divorced but living with someone who was still married to someone else. Did try very hard not to nag, but gather that I may have made my feelings known once or twice! Anyway, m’ boy is unmarried as of 11 September! Still have no plans to marry. Think we’re both kind of figuring that it’s all working very well right now, so why mess with it! Reckoning that we’ll still be thinking the same in 30 or 40 years time! God, I’ll be 82 by then!! Might have paid the mortgage off by then too!!
Itinerary for the trip coming along nicely! I've decided to abandon Mark for most of the first two weeks so that he can do some boy time with his brothers, playing Backgammon and Cribbage. Meantime, I am going to fly at breakneck speed round the country seeing everyone briefly and doing all the girly catching up stuff. That leaves us with about 3 weeks (including Christmas week) to actually do everyone in a more leisurely fashion and to have some holiday.
Lou has decided she wants to do London on her birthday. So we are expecting to get one of the open top (yes I know it’s cold!) London bus tours stopping off particularly at Westminster Abbey and the London Eye – might also pop into St Martin in the Fields where the girls can do brass rubbing and me and Mark can do coffee!
Also planning on doing The Nutcracker at the ROH – although not sure when yet – whenever it is, going to be the cheapest tickets (think they are £4!) May try and do a matinee as the girls quite fancy doing outdoor ice skating and I believe there is a rink at Somerset House again? Suspect Mark may bail on the ballet though! Maybe the girls and I can go on the day that Dad and Mark are watching the Arsenal v Chelsea matches!
Other than that, we are having a day doing the lights and Santa in town, we are doing Windsor Panto and we are definitely going to Bluewater – particularly M&S!
Think much of the rest is visiting. And probably some eating, drinking and being merry! May have to learn the words to the Kiwi Twelve Days of Christmas – only bit I really know is …and a Pukeko in a Ponga tree! Anyone who has visited will know that a Pukeko is a fab blue wading bird with long red legs – they look great in enamel! Will need to get one for my garden at some point – an enamel one, that is, not a real one! The Ponga tree is, I believe, another name for the Silver Fern…..
Think I may have waffled enough today.
Spot ya
xx
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