A Year Ago: Reflections and whatnot

Well, I've been blogging for a good long time now on Blogspot.  On the 31st of December 2013 I decided to start blogging on here, so what, that's a year ago today? One thing Mum said to me, "Don't put your whole life on there." Of course not Mum, I'm intending on filling it with my favourite philosophical posts about the world. He He, well that didn't work out too well!!! I'm pretty positive I've managed to keep my anonymity quite well, however my main readers know who I am anyways, but one day maybe I may have a bit of a crowd reading my blog! Let me tell you a secret, I speak much more on here than I probably ever do in person - hope you're feeling lucky and special lol.

So a year has gone by, I've written 55 posts, this is #56. I've had 2360 views (as of now) and general views from all over the globe. The highest portion are from New Zealand, of course, however I've also got quite a few people either passing through, or reading, from the US. China, France, Germany, Poland, Austria, Romania, Canada, Venezuela, Indonesia, and Denmark.Quite interesting :)

And wow, what a year it's been! Certainly bumpy with some very sudden twists and turns, but nothing that we haven't gotten through. But along with that there have been good things to add to the mix of life. I've seen friends that I haven't seen in years, finally met friends that I've known for years and been able to rekindle old friendships too. Sure there are the people I may have spoken to heaps in the past, but this year we've drifted on our separate merry ways, but hey.

I joined the Young Farmers, met some new people. Had some fun times, and some not too fun times and made new acquaintances out of it. I finished High School. I turned 19.
I also realised that pre unconfirmed thoughts of people aren't as they appear, and have been secretly surprised with the turn out. Almost everywhere I've worked this year has been in a happy workplace environment and I learned new things from it, which completely strengthened my confidence and abilities too!

You know, there's all that rubbish that circulates on FB about life and whatnot basically saying, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and makes you a better person overall" Normally I'm just like, yep, seen that before. But yeah, it's true in some aspects. I don't like to fill my life with mushy statements like that, however some of them are good!


Regarding Christmas, ours was pretty quiet. Mum, my sister and I went to the Christmas Eve carols/service. I caught up with Sam there too, which was nice to do it together. Mum and I reckon it's gonna be our new tradition! Dad and I milked Christmas morning, then came home for pancakes for breakfast. Opened some neat presents, watched the movie Lucy and had a nice simple lunch of homemade chicken kebabs and salads. I milked that afternoon and everyone went to the west coast to have a try at fishing. Normally we go to the east coast, but the tides and whether weren't right. Boxing Day came around, we spent it sleeping! (I still slept super well that night too).
     The 27th was my birthday, 19 years young (eek). It was pretty simple. I don't actually know what I did? Watched my favourite recorded TV show, David Attenborough - Galapagos. Sam came over that afternoon, then that night we went out for dinner with Nick and some young farmers at our local Tavern. Jamie McDell and Jason Kerrison (from OpShop) were there, singing. So it was neat to hear them and finally meet Jamie - even got a highfive and a picture for proof! haha

Now we're just about at the end of 2014 - I honestly won't be sad to see it go! No plans for New Years, we never celebrate, just work for me! I'm on day 2 of 7 straight milkings at one farm. The afternoons are getting hot o.O and I'm beginning to feel concerned that in about 2 weeks, the exam results will be in. Every time I think about it, I swear I feel more sick :(

*raises a glass and hopes for the best*

2015, come at me! I'm prepared for the best year ever! Hopefully some big new changes, new people, new beginnings. Some cool new things happening for me next year will be sweet, Thank you!

The Final Christmas Rush!

'Twas the day before Christmas Eve, and all through the house....not a creature was stirring...umm, nope, it certainly isn't quiet and peaceful here! So much is going on! Mum and I have stopped for a short break in between doing the typical Christmas preparations. What's on the agenda for today? We're cooking the second ham (the first we're giving to the lady who's currently milking for us), it smells divine with the red wine and plum sauce combination.
     This year, for a change, we're having a fruit salad - not the most cheapest dish to make (my gosh, the price of fruit!) but sometimes it's nice to do something different. And with a couple of basically everything (apart from Kiwifruit, which is gutting), it should be delicious!
     We've also been doing some chocolate making, and we decided that chocolate dipped marshmellows would be yum, and a nice addition to a selection of chocolates I'm giving two of my friends for Christmas. Homemade chocolates are cool, but you really need the patience of a saint to spend hours doing it, colouring the white chocolate and carefully putting it in the moulds etc etc, it gets frustrating and kinda boring after a while - no wonder we don't do it often!!

Tomorrow I'm back milking for another three days straight over this Christmas period (money! :D) and so much more needs to be done tomorrow. Can't really cook the desserts until Christmas eve, so the pav, chiffon (secret family recipe) and trifle will get done. My sister and her fiance are with us this year, so she's boning out the chickens to make our own kebabs (we tried some last night - omg! Yum!) Just a general tidy up needs doing too. It may not seem like a lot, but after a while it seems like a mountain load of things to do!

There are Christmas carols at the Causeway tomorrow night, so I'm meeting Sam and Chantelle there; 12 years in the area and I've never been! :O And I'm meeting them tonight to give them their gifts, and will probably go and see some more christmas lights at the same time. On Friday we finally caught up - after many months, and since it wasn't raining we bought some hot dogs and chips and went to the beach, time passed so fast but it was nice to see them. On the way home we stopped in at a house who had gold coin donations (sponsoring the local school) to look at their light display, it felt kinda weird waltzing onto somebody else's property, after 9 o'clock to look at decorations! It wasn't as good as the one on the main highway, but was still pretty neat :)

And Christmas came early for the local tyre shop today. Yesterday my car failed it's warrant due to needing two new front tyres!? :( It definitely wasn't what I needed to be hearing, this car has cost me the Earth in repair bills this year - I know cars cost money, but gosh! So today I went and bought some cheap new tyres, it's only a little car and I only drive locally. Doesn't need anything special, but the guy was good and cut $20 off each one for me. However when I came to pick it up, he had had to do a wheel alignment, as it was dangerously out of whack. Another $70 into the kitty, but hey. Gotta be safe, aye? Now I've just gotta get used to it driving differently to what I'm used to...


I can't believe that in a few days time I'll be 19 - the year has passed by so jolly fast. I've used my ID once and I feel really old and weathered in a way - especially after the year we've had. But I also look at myself in the mirror, and think. You're not 18! I see people my age all the time, and they actually look their age. I feel like I got to 15 and haven't appeared any older since!
     But at least I can go to work and have people realise straight away that I'm nice and old, mature and know what I'm doing. It's good to get respected everywhere I go. One farm I've worked at since October, actually prefers me over everyone else, and it's a real pain if I can't make it to them and have to swap with someone else. And it's odd to think they prefer me, with about a decade of experience milking cows, over someone like Dad...but it just so happens to be my favourite shed, so everything works out! Dad was also told the other day that I milked "like a machine". I've never thought of myself as a good, fast and consistent milker - sometimes I wonder whether I'm milking too slow, and holding people up! But apparently not, but hey - at least I do a good job :)

My birthday should be good, I get two days off and haven't really got anything planned - it's better that way. But there is a Jamie McDell concert at one of the local Taverns that night, so Nick and I are going, and hopefully a bunch of the Young Farmers will come along too - some of them reckoned they would. Hopefully it's good!
    Oh and also, we had a YF TenPin Bowling and Lazer tag the other night. I fully failed with the bowling, but Lazer....hehehehe she's The Man (actually that was my gun name ;) ) and I completely won. Was so stoked to have beaten everybody - shooting people with lazers is fun!

Aaaaannnnnd One more thing before I go - I will be meeting my friend XJ around New Years, when her family comes up this way for Christmas. I've known her for four years through correspondence, and finally we're meeting 'in person". Quite exciting :)

Hope all my readers have a lovely Christmas!

Christmas Countdown ?

We're nine days until Christmas and my gosh it's hard to get into the spirit, Currently, we're all hibernating inside for as long as we possibly can, and avoiding the horrible wind and dreadful rain! Over the weekend it was pouring down and it's getting super boring! How can one feel happy and bouncy and excited for Christmas, when it feels like winter and all you want to do is snuggle up and sleep?? We should be getting over 20 degree weather these days and we're sticking at around 12, it's certainly not fun at all. Nine days til Christmas, there isn't long for this weather to sort itself out!

Friday Mum and I (stupidly) went into the city town to do some groceries and christmas shopping. I've got all of mine done now, except for Mum and thankfully there were so many specials that I probably spent half as much as I could've! Great for saving :) Annoyingly, it was pouring down in there, so whenever we went somewhere, we got soaked. We struggled our way around Pak'n'Save, which is still under redecorating and since they've moved everything and because we haven't been there for such a long time, it was a "where is....?" situation. And we also didn't think about the fact it was FRIday, so of course it'd be busy! *rolls eyes*
Sunday morning I went to milking and didn't bother taking any wet weather gear, regretted it. The guy, Tom that I milk with sometimes, told me I'd be a drowned rat by the end of milking, and yep. I definitely was! Since there is no backing gate, you've gotta go into the yard to push the cows in. Usually when it's not raining it isn't so bad, but it was exceptionally painful and wet. Didn't help that the cows didn't want to go up! So as I left I didn't realise how wet I actually was - wearing good old shorts and singlet underneath overalls so I didn't get too hot (lol), then realised I was literally soaked through. Lovely! Tom suggested to go home and put myself through the drier - I probably could of too!


Yet again, dinner at the beach plans THIS Monday were cancelled because of the weather. Although I love going to the beach after stormy weather to see what's come in, I wouldn't want to stick around very long with this hammering wind...So, fingers crossed, Friday may be better suited. But this time we've got a back up plan of getting dinner at the restaurant in case of the rain.

Mum and I are slowly getting Christmas things sorted. Today Mum made two sponges to freeze for the Trifle, yesterday we processed all the biscuits and fruit puffs so it's easy enough to slap the Chiffon and Lolly Cake together. We also cleaned out the second fridge today, sounds weird having a second fridge aye? It's too expensive to run continuously so we turn it on at Christmas so we've got spare places to store all the extra food. We've mostly good sorted and figured what we're eating over Christmas. Basically just got to cook up the last of our ham a couple days prior and cook the chicken on the day. Mum even managed to get the barbeque trays cleaned - not that we've used the BBQ yet, with this weather and all.... -_- I put up the Christmas tree the other day - it looked great! Now, it kinda looks pretty depressed and droopy. It's a fake tree, and Frodo has climbed all through it. No, she doesn't have the excuse of it being her first Christmas. But there's nothing more heartwarming than seeing those normal cat eyes go huge and dark, filled with wonder and excitement. Love cats at Christmas. Don't love the damage they do though!

I've also tried and tried to get into reading, but I really am struggling quite a lot. It's mad! I've been trying to get through Death Comes to Pemberley since my last blog post, but I'm only half way through it, more than a week later. Every time I go to read it, I get distracted after a few minutes, or I have to force my eyes to stay open. Then when I do start to get into it, it's kinda boring? I won't write up the review Bianca. It probably IS a good book, it's just difficult to get myself back into reading, after so many months of not doing it. It's also difficult to read a book, based on Jane Austen, knowing that she didn't write it and having to read through all the reminders of what happened. It's just a very different author style, but I'm sure I'll get into it - eventually. We actually found the DVD for it, so I bought it - hoping if I could watch it, then it might make reading it more interesting. That's a whole other story!

There's been a big change with our "home theatre" system -_-  a while ago Dad bought a blueray player, and a new TV when ours died. I never really understood it, because I can live without watching TV. Anywho. So ever since then we hadn't actually watched any movies. Chuck this one in, sweet as! Umm, where's the volume?? Hehe. In the end it was realised that the picture was transferring through, just no sound. Dad did heaps of testing and playing around for a few hours, does the disc actually have sound?? Yep, apparently.  Ok, try this. No, try that. Yes!, wait. It eventually got all figured out, and by now I had to go back to work, so we couldn't watch it. This was Sunday night, Mum and Dad went to the movies to see The Hobbit and Nick and I went a young farmers get together. Didn't turn it all back on until yesterday, hmm, no signal and no sound! Mum and I gave in, and turned it all off again. (We aren't very technically minded and it's better if we not touch anything in case we accidentally do something!) Last night, turned it on. Hmm, Dad yet again spends an hour or so on it with Nick, unplugging everything and resetting all the stuff. And then, we have sound!! Woohoo. Turn it off, sound's gone. Sort it out again. Mum and Dad watched Breakfast this morning, yet again. No sound. So it seems that every time we turn it all off, the sound goes. Absolutely no idory why, but LOL!
I'm finding it a tad amusing.

6 books, who's gonna be lucky #1?!

I would say that summer is panning out to be absolutely beautiful - but today I wake up to rain and a text from a friend saying our dinner plans on the beach may just have to be postponed. But oh well, that is life!

And this rain is blimmen brilliant actually - a bit of rain every couple weeks throughout summer may just keep us from drought this year, as it is, summer has started late up here - which is a good thing! With the payout dropping and continuing to drop, we are noticing that we're losing some big typical summer time jobs. It's not great, definitely not great, but so long as this dry factor stays clear this year, things may not get as bad as they could. Fingers crossed anyway - it's been a crappy year farm wise. However these things just come with the territory, you soon learn to expect them.

Well it's almost 10 am, I'm still in PJ's, haven't had breakfast and I'm already writing my blog - lol. Makes for a nice change! Usually by now, over the past week I would have been recently home from milking, pulling out dried up pieces of cow poo from my hair and wondering how long it'll be until it's actually worthwhile washing it - as I had to milk every day, all week. Running low on water and gas, doesn't make for a nice combination - oh the joys of summer! But hey, today is the first day of no work for me, since Monday, it's been good money wise - but not so great sleep wise. Gosh, the driving just takes it out of me! It's nice not to be up at 5am for a change - but my alarm clock just loves resetting itself back to that time, even though I changed it for 8. *rolls eyes*

I spoke to my chem teacher last week about the last of this work that I've been finishing up. He finally passed the redox, after I had to edit Zinc from Zi to the proper Zn (who does that?! Even spell check on here knows what's right and wrong lol) and he gave me an excellence! Even though I told him I didn't care for the grade - just the credits being in on time. But oh well. He gave me more suggestions for the 1080 report, so yesterday I fixed that up some more and sent it back, saying that's the last of the editing I'm ever going to do, so just mark it. So he's marking it officially today. I get the feeling he's just been pushing me on that one, to get me a higher grade on that too. I didn't do all that he suggested, but most of it. Term ends for the correspondence school tomorrow, so he's no choice but to just get it over with. So once that's been put through, I just need proof of credits so come January if they're not "officially" on NZQA, I should be able to get UE by showing them this proof that they're in, just not "in".
Now I can clean up my office - it's a pig sty - literally. Actually it's probably not that bad - it just needs to be sorted properly, pack up all my school work and file it away in a deep dark room - like the attic.

But that won't be getting done today. Why, you ask? Well there's just the small factor of having books to read! Yes, it's true, I've plenty of time to read now, and I can't wait to get into them. I've had a couple books on my Kobo waiting for me, and still had money on my account that I put into Kobo months ago. So the other day I went wild, and bought three more books! hehe So now the books I've got to read are "The Book Thief", "Death At Pemberley" which is a new release spin off of Pride and Prejudice by P.D. James - apparently he's been studying Jane Austen for years - so that should be really good!
There's "Reconstructing Amelia" by an author I've never read before, but it looks good - I'll get back to you on that one though. "Little Miracles" by Giselle Green, "The Prodigal Sister" by Laura Elliot - two more new authors. and "Secret Lives" by Diane Chamberlain - one of my more favourite writers.

Last Christmas when Mum and Dad got me the E-Reader I wasn't keen - but it is convenient, I'll give you that, and yes, books are much cheaper this way. There are still those really special series that I'll get them all as real books - cover to cover. But I've accustomed myself to this way too. And the great thing with Kobo is that it gets to know what you like, and gives you ideas that it recommends for you. Which is how I get onto these new authors, cos they're similar to what I already like. I do think that I'll be rereading the Mortal Instrument books though. Instead of having to wait for them to become available, I've got all nine books at my fingertips. So I think I'll be going back to starving myself all day, most days, as I'm too engrossed in these beautiful books. It'll be a happy time - until anyone hauls me away from them. So word of warning, I've been waiting months for this, I've finished my schoolwork forever, I deserve this, so stay clear...unless you've got chocolate! :D

So right now I'm thinking of hunting down that chocolate sundae I didn't eat after maccas last night, grabbing my Kobo and getting into it....the questions remains though...What do I read, FIRST?!??!! o.O