hi team! i'm in an airport and i have a few minutes free time - 15 to be exact but it took a while to get here. I've been on a conference for DRSs, that's Directors of Religious Studies down here in Christchurch. It's been fun. DRSs are usually really nice people because it's a hard and religious job and you have to be special to even be able to do it LOL! So a lot of really NICE people. And I'm even being serious! Now I'm on my way back to see what chaos has ensued at home and at school.

So I'll catch up with you when I get home! I am BACK!

It's been frantic but it's nearly over now. ( Read more... )

I cleaned the fridge today. I also cleaned the door, where all the magnets are. And I pulled the fridge out of its tight little alcove and dusted behind it. *shudder* I'm trying to find time to paint the kitchen so I need to keep cleaning corners.
Yesterday our guinea pig passed away. I wept. The vet had tissues. I miss him so much already. I was getting a carrot out of the fridge when I remembered he isn't there - the rabbit doesn't like carrots much. sad sad sad. Poor wee Caramello. I hope he finds his old buddy Cocoa!

And it's been a very stressful couple of weeks. I am SO freaking stressed. People nag me for stuff left, right and centre. Even after mass today there was a freaking queue of people asking me for decisions, comments and stuff. But on we go. Can't stop now although I'm desperate for a day off during the week, just so I could get a chance to be ALONE for a short period of time. I need a brief virus. I can hardly wait for when the seniors leave. OMG. Two weeks down, three to go. Then they are GONE. I will lose over one hundred students! Then I might get mysteriously ill. I need a day before the end of term as then my own children are home as well. I just want to be ALONE! ...says she, sitting with kitten on lap.

At school we've been raising money for Samoa, praying the rosary (not a prayer I particularly like but I'm just leading it for October)... it's busy at school just now. I have a lot of stressed out seniors trying to pass their various levels before the final cut off date shortly.

So. Better things to come. In just three weeks.
oh and I have three teenagers in the house now. Thanks, Moth, for Finn's gorgeous ecard! xxxx
He loved it.

Today was a day of mixed emotions, the two-week break drawing to a close and horrific, cold, sleety weather this morning, rain coming in sideways and a cruel southerly. But it got better as the day wore on. Still cold though. SOme interesting things seen today...
*the waves crashing over the breakwater at Lyall Bay like mighty mushroom clouds thirty feet high before thundering and rolling into the curve of the bay.
*a fire engine following me tonight as I went to pick Christy up - I pulled over to let it pass - in the dark it was mightily impressive and I followed it through the Mt Vic tunnel watching its lights swing around on the bricks.
*driving Finn and friends home from a party this evening - Finn observed the many religions in the car - a Jew, a Hindu, a Catholic and... his mother, an RE teacher! (RE = Religious Education). We dropped the Hindu off at the Temple for Diwali celebrations.
*a good jolt of an earthquake this afternoon. Christy and I just paused, felt the roll, then got on with what we were doing.
*watching the kitten and the rabbit playing tag in the rain this morning was just priceless
*two mighty rainbows this evening arcing across the harbour caught in the crossfire between waning rain and the setting sun
I guess all things are blessings if we can see them with a positive attitude, huh!

The earthquake was 4.8 but very close, only 20 km NW away. I guess that's Porirua...

And btw if you were a fan of the Inkheart series, Christy's most beloved books, do NOT, say again, do NOT see the movie. It is the crappiest crap crappest piece of crap, not only for the horrifically WRONG choice of Brendon My Name is Ugly Fraser for Mo, or the baddest bad acting in the world from the daughter, the mother, the aunt, and many other cast members... the impossibly far-from-the-plot-of-the-book plot... it is absolutely Awful. What was Cornelia thinking when she wanted Fraser to act in the movie of her book? He's so not Mo. I loved the book's Mo - he should be a gentle, nerdy, slightly confused, fragile, hurt kind of character, lost without his wife and afraid of his reading power, and Fraser is not right at all! The daughter should be bright, strong, resourceful and capable. This one was just plain blonde... "Dad, you can tell me now, I'm old enough. Where is my mother?"
And every EVERY book character had diagonal typing emblazoned across their faces to show they had come out of books. One or two might have been clever but all of them? Are we meant to be that thick that we need that information? It was so lame.
OMG! Christy groaned, swore, snorted and protested through the whole movie then we took it back to the video store.

Hey there. ( Read more... )

Some pics to share. I'm trying to get my act together.
( Read more... )

A while back I couldn't find the kitten... then we heard a little creak and there he was peeping through the front door!!! And yeah, he'd gone in that way.

It's been hard to get a moment to get here, and I'm using the dud laptop Christy uses with the line down the screen! I had an awful week last week but things are much better and less busy. We had end of assessments and senior reports to write, and I teach a lot of senior students, just over a hundred. So it's a lot of reports. Still, done now, and a lot of my marking is done too. I'm hoping to have a quieter end of year but of course there are a lot of things to do yet. We're looking at integrating our Year 9 English, Social Studies and Religious Education programmes next year so I'm going to a meeting about that on Thursday. Should be interesting, if we can get all of us three heads of department to ...co-operate... We'll have the librarian and the guidance counsellor there too so that might help. It'll be fun to be part of setting up something new and challenging.

I wrote some of the third part of my swimming 'trilogy' in my head on the way home from work yesterday. That's the first real writing I've even thought about for weeks. I'd pretty much stopped for a while. But I knew I couldn't leave it forever. It was such a relief to feel a story brimming.
It's just such a busy life at the moment. Every moment seems to be full of action or work or not getting what I wanted done or trying to get some sleep or providing food, or getting the laundry done, or getting the children to help and not get annoyed with one another!! Three teenagers in the house is absolute madness. And I mean madness.

There's a hint of spring. I took some pics of the garden on Saturday. If I find some time I'll share them with you. Right now I'd better get the boys off to bed, since my husband is away up north this week (as opposed to down South last week)...

TO MICROJOTZ HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY FOR THE DAY, DEAR PHIL!
SORRY< AM UNDER SOME STRESS BUT I WILL MAKE YOU A CARD SOON XXXXXX

I'm on catch up mode again. I just can't get a moment to myself to do the things I yearn to do. I've even started to WANT to do some writing, but can't afford a minute at the moment. Some time between now (nearly midnight Sunday night) and Wednesday I have to write about 95 senior reports! OMG... I think it will be a late night tomorrow night.

Yesterday was amazing. I woke up slowly, feeling tired after a hell of a week, and decided it was a lovely day, I wouldn't even bother listening to the cancellations on the radio. I don't know why, because I ALWAYS check that. I hadn't even turned on the computer yet as Finn's game was due at 10.45. Then at five to eight the phone rang. I was still in my pjs. It was one of the mums from Finn's soccer team telling me the game had been transferred to NINE o'CLOCK! That was in an hour, in Khandallah, quite a drive away from here! OMG! I had to phone everyone in the team, get them up and out of the house, pick up three other kids apart from taking Finn (who had been asleep) and amazingly, we all got to the game on time! AND we won! And for the bbq in the afternoon, it was brilliant, sunny, warm and we sat outside with wine and sausages saying, how can this be winter!

Tonight it is a howling storm, and I really mean rain rain rain. I just drove my bro-in-law home and could hardly see the road... driving rain? Yes and NO!

All I do at the moment is run from one activity to another. I may implode shortly. Watch this space...

Oh and I've been reading 'The Jane Austen Book Club'. It's not my cup of tea but I did get one good bit out of it... but anyway, I was reading it this morning before I got up, and it just ended, bam, like that, with a whole heap of pages left! Turns out there are literary notes, references etc. What a let down LOL! So now I'm going to read Freedom Writers. I've seen the DVD a zillion times so I'll finally read the actual book/diaries of students that sparked the movie.

And tonight I held a baby, just a few days old, our best friends' son's baby. I got each of my children to have a hold and the boys were just 'wow'! It's a really cute baby, half Edinburgh, half Orlando-Floridian, made in NZ! I've never been particularly good at baby stuff but I can state that for sure he's a beautiful baby. I'll never hold Liz's baby but at least I know what it feels like to be holding another newbie! Just miraculous.

Still frantically busy but there should be a brief hiatus this coming week as Senior Exams continue and my work is all internally assessed and I've NEARLY got everything marked that they have done this term. It's been a mission. I've just had SO much to do, all day every day.

I loved seeing eliper's really cute baby - how did I miss that post? I'm so glad she pointed it out to me. And there was Nick with the baby. OMG, that just made me fizz with long-buried fannishness. I immediately wanted to start writing again but I'm going to keep suppressing that for a while longer. *sigh* I so want to write... I wish Nick's books were big here, so he'd come here. I guess he'd have to stop knocking Kiwis in his books first... yeah. Oh well.

Having a tough time at school with a couple of things, but you don't need to hear about that here. I have some amazing students and work with some great teachers, and I just have to embrace that and move along. I've spent a lot of time out of the staffroom this week at school and that's been good. Swings and roundabouts, huh. We spent three lunch hours sorting clothes for three needy families.

One more soccer game to go. Asher had his basketball final last night, soccer final next week. Finn's team just has one game left. They haven't won much.
We have confirmation in the parish in September and I'm getting the little children ready for that again. That's been fun so far, they are great kids. I got them to say their names and something from church that started with the same letter as their name, and we got things like, My name is Louie and my word is Liturgy, Andrew kept his own name, and the last one in the circle said in a tiny little voice, My name is Grace and my word is God. It was ...nice!

Our kitten caught his first big blackbird this morning, but there was a huge struggle and the mighty blackboard broke free, sitting in a huff on the fence looking ruffled. He's always come to our deck table to steal guinea pig food and it must have been a rude awakening to have the kitten leap upon him. There are feathers everywhere. The rabbit seems a little traumatised, too.

Still haven't secured Nick's book, I guess my brother forgot I asked him to pick it up. He lives in Brisbane, too. Still, he's not given me much thought over the past thirty years so what could I expect? I'll have to get a bookshop to order it for me, or go on the net, I guess. That might be the answer...

We have to go to a birthday lunch now. It's a GLORIOUS sunny, calm, perfect day, for Winter! Amazing Wellington. And I need to clean the house... see you later.

It's been so long since I could concentrate on something other than all the other things I have to concentrate on for even five minutes and sit here and post. The last couple of weeks have been a whirlwind of frenetic activity where I haven't been to bed before midnight or later, where I've been up every morning at six, where the family has been demanding and there's just been so much to do. I even took the plunge and tried to ask for an extension to an assignment I had and in the end just wrote the damn thing because the rules for asking for an extension took even more effort than to do the essay!

So I've gotten through the Catholic Education Convention, Combined Mass (a thousand teenagers and five minutes before it started the other guy's laptop didn't work with the projector and I had to get mine going and change things and blah blah - it went well though!). I have had this essay to write on the Synoptic Gospels, I've had assessments by the zillion to mark and moderate, I've had a bioethics inservice course to attend, Finn had a parent interview night, we've had soccer and basketball games to attend, I've been to the PacWell Polynesian festival which took all night last Wednesday - rolled Finn into bed at 11.30 pm - overall it just hasn't stopped for a fortnight. Still, I'm fine. Just not able to do the things I'd like, like LJ!

It was a beautiful night last night. I picked Christy and friends up from a party and the sea was calm, the yellow street lights along Cobham Drive like a line of flaming torches reflected in the sea. After a beautiful sunny day, no wind, it felt like summer was just around the corner. And technically we're still in winter here but it's a pretty temperate climate.

I have to bike over to school this afternoon, get some work done. Someone from my music group wants me to come up to hear some music later and friends want to play Trivial Pursuit later after dinner! Should be a fun evening. But there is also housework to do and I have a book on the Gospel of Judas that is shouting for me to read!!

My laptop is terminal - the LCD is smashed to buggery but we were able to retrieve everything off it, thank goodness, thank you to Moth and Viv who offered backup and helpful hints! I have put it all on the external hard drive now so no fears of any more serious losses. And in a way, it's good to learn to let go of stuff too. I sometimes struggle with that! But the Takahe laptop is no more. I have to decide how and when to replace it now. *sniff* is in mourning all the same.

The kitten is amazing. He roams all the neighbouring gardens for hours, climbs tall trees, hikes up the cabbage trees like a Fijian up a coconut tree! I am sure he'll find a way onto the roof soon. He chases the rabbit round the garden, then the rabbit chases him. He sleeps curled up in our arms like a baby, or sleeps on our heads in the middle of the night. He's a very curious cat. Plays with water in the basin, drinks soapy water in the sink, and queues up for his turn in the warm tiled shower box where he slurps up the excess water and leans on the warm tiles! He's a joyful, fun loving kitten and we are blessed to have him.

I'd better go do some work at school. Take care, guys, I'm thinking of you all. I have many friends on Facebook, the number grows every week, but you are people who can really communicate. I think that's important. Twitter and Facebook are so ...now. Temporary. Brief. Just snatches in passing. And from you I got TWO postcards this week *g*

And OMG Wilby Wonderful was on tv the other night!!! Such a beautiful movie.

Fell over cord, laptop crashed to floor. Laptop broken. Deep sorrow but had to keep it inside. All my stories, all my writing, all in there.

Geeks on Wheels tomorrow.

*is in mourning of the Takahe laptop* may sentence the death knell of writing... then again, a friend returned today from a massive gay swimming gathering in Copenhagen and said my last two short stories, about the swim meet, were just about spot on in every way *blush*!

But alas, they're trapped in there too...

RIP

Okay team, I'm behind pretty severely here. I shall get to your LJs asap...
But here, let's catch up. ( Read more... )

While Christy has her memory chip in the PC I'll show you a couple of her pics from our journey last week ( Read more... )

I love the tui. Their liquid call is amazing. I spoke about it recently on InsipirationalTV. Only by killing off many possums have we started to see the return of the tui in our neighbourhoods.


Kaitiakitanga ...To maintain their mana (power, status, balance of what is respected and healthy), people of the land have to do everything they can to preserve the mauri or spirit of their land, and they have to repair the land if it's used wrongly. The concept of kaitiakitanga was valid to Maori people long before any Europeans arrived and started interfering in their way of life. Phil Gulley writes about the environment, where someone heard him mention it and complained about this 'new emphasis' on the environment. Phil pointed out that it is mentioned in the first book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible so it's hardly new. And the Maori here practised it, environmental protection, 'guardianship', long before any colonisation by foreigners from Europe.

Don't drop your litter. Recycle. Protect bird life. Practise using wisdom when you choose products, look for those that avoid exploiting our fragile environment.

Have you heard of Kiribati or Tokelau? We have girls from both those places at school. They are tiny islands, atolls, in the Pacific. Their islands are slowly disappearing under encroaching sea levels that are rising - global warming or just a response to the Ice Age? I dunno. But I worry for those people. Where will the people go? Sea water is already getting into their fresh water lagoons. NZ takes 97 Kiribati a year, apparently. But that won't be enough. Will their tiny nations vanish under the power of the sea one day? Imagine coming from a nation that no longer exists. Like Yugoslavia. But at least it's still there, in one way... I guess not in many others.
And if you want to see me talking about the tui, in full colour and not at all prepared for each of my friend's video visits in the middle of exhausting school days, look at this
http://www.inspirationaltv.net/living/
or click on the 'Easter' link to the right for another one of me LOL! Kim will just show up and say, 'talk for five minutes about... [insert topic]'!
OMG it's hard to face up to the real me but hey, I'm actually really a nice person - with many bad hair days. People who don't like me can... go jump in the lake.

So we drove north last Monday. I couldn't do computer stuff up there, the computer was poked.

The centre of the island had snow and the main road, State Highway 1, was closed for part of the journey. So we veered west at Waiouru and headed for Ohakune. What a neat little snow town - there is a giant chocolate eclair shop where you get these roughly hewn, fresh cream chocolate eclairs bigger than your outstretched hand, for just over a dollar! We had one each and kept driving north, through National Park and on up the west side of Lake Taupo to my old route years ago via Putaruru, White's Line East and over the Kaimais. Hardly a single car on that route but longer overall now that we don't speed anymore :-P The snow on the mountains was magnificent. Snow always looks so pristine and glowing and fresh.

Had a few days at my mother's house. Survived. I did all the cooking and shopping. Saw some fantastic sunsets up there and we had some calm days. One day the entire estuary was like glass. Christy took photos while I drove so I shall have to upload some of her pics.

Driving back was pretty smooth today. The snow had disappeared from Route 1, just a few hardy blobs of dirty white to show there had been anything there! We saw one spectacular accident at Ohingaiti which was sobering. A police car had sped past us at the bottom of the Mangawekas so we knew something was going to be ahead of us. Sure enough, by the time an ambulance sped past, we'd reached the former township of Ohingaiti and a car had rolled off the side of the road, windscreen gone, fire engine there so hopefully they had rescued the occupants. I had a look at crash websites and it looks like there was another crash there just on Wednesday. It's a weird place, with a nasty rail crossing. Used to be plenty of houses there but they're almost all gone now. Same with Rata. It's odd, the little towns we used to drive through year after year as I was growing up are all disappearing, just empty sections, the occasional outhouse and broken fences. Maybe a pub or a garage or perhaps a converted craft shop surviving on its last legs. People have moved to towns and cities, which is really sad. Only the farms remain. It's like the land is taking ownership again, but the cities are not the great 'other option', eating up land with suburban sprawl. I'd love to bring back the small towns. Mangaweka, Hunterville, Rata, Ohingaiti, Utiku... they had character and community.

I actually spoke to my brother in Brisbane last night. He's going to purchase Nick's book for me!! Yay. I will finally get to have it in my hands...

And so I'll update more when I have photos to share. Hope you are well. It's rather nice to be back. Nice? Actually, it's brilliant. We have a Bar Mitzvah to go to in the morning. A friend of Finn's. Mazel tov, Sam... there's always a Sam, huh.