Wednesday 18 November 2015

Be Au Ti - ful

It rained yesterday, so, jolly, much! 33 whole millimetres of rain! It wasn't just drizzling, the rain came over the whole day, seemed to rain for most of the daylight hours, nice and constantly heavy. It was fantastic. I got home from milking that night, said, "I'm off for a shower..." was then told, well, enjoy your shower, take as long as you like, perhaps give us a gold coin donation for the use of the gas (perhaps have a cold shower even?) whatever you do, use the water! The tank was just about to overflow. Ridiculous!
We have filled the tank, well not completely but we've had two truckloads of water in about 3 weeks, now the tank was close to overflowing and washing itself down the drain. You just wanna like, I dunno? Scream? So I stood in the shower for as long as I could tolerate, when you get bored and have to resort to (not singing!) but reading the backs of the shampoo and conditioner bottles, you've been in there too long...lol But I do have to owe it to studying chemistry, which taught me the language of seriously overextended chemical names for ingredients in shampoo and conditioners....Where would I be without that knowledge? I wouldn't like to hazard a guess.
Anyway, so I said the rain must be filled with Beryllium, gold and titanium - see the title ;)

So yeah, we've been busy and not busy, but busy all the same. As I quite often talk about. I'm relief milking 7 days a week now, twice a day. This week I'm covering 5 different farms, but I'm not complaining and neither is my bank balance. Let me just say, being considered a "full timer" for a change at this time of year - more than 30 hours of work a week, is brilliant. To think that last week I did 35 hours of just pure milking, is pretty jolly good! Keep it coming I say, usually I'd expect no more than 20 hours.
But, in saying that I am covering for Dad and Nick. They don't really have time for milking anymore, save for the odd milking here and there that Nick will do. Why? Because this is our silly season for spraying gorse for lifestylers and building fences, it'll be like this all summer long - well into about March at least. So it's mainly just our other relief milker and myself doing all the milkings, again, not that I'm complaining.
However we still have that issue of needing extra helpers - do you know how difficult it is to find someone who fits this description: Drug free. Fit and able. Team Player. Committed to the job. Enthusiastic. Does what they're told. 
Quite literally, there is no-one who fits that description, even after Mum called WINZ to see who we could give a job to, even offering if they lived in the area and had no transport that we would cart them to and fro. But, nothing. All they need to do is help with fencing, pulling wires, holding battens, doing basic work that needs little to no experience for. In saying that, Mum and Dad are on their way back from Auckland airport, having since picked up my cousin George. He's after work, so he'll stay with us for the next month or so, help us out by finishing the jobs faster and getting paid more money than he would with more hours than anything offered in Wellington. A win-win situation. :)

Monday last week we did something spontaneous, jumped in Nick's ute and went fishing on the beach after I got home from work. It was stinking hot, and our beaches are amazing, they're everywhere around here (great thing about living in the sort of area of Twin Coast Discovery!) basically we can go in any direction and find a beach. Everyone local knows about most of them, typically you need to drive down hard metal roads through bushland to get to them. This time was a new place to us, the only place around here you can drive right onto the beach. So that we did, drove out onto the sand (mum and I a little stressed about sinking in the sand lol), backed the ute up to the ocean and set the lines.
Two proper surf-casting lines (they're longer, seriously longer - 10 foot?), a basic shorter fishing rod and Nick's reel and kite set up (similar to a Contiki, except you use the wind to blow the kite out, thus pulling out the line and hooks). Sadly, there wasn't too much wind so we mostly just used the rods.

DID YOU KNOW that when something is biting on your line, you're not actually supposed to pull it in? Did you think we were there to fish? Gosh no, try feeding the fish, poor little beggars they might've died from starvation you know..... -_-
So anyway, I'm holding a rod and I can feel it tugging. Give it a few quick, sharp yanks on the line. Wait a minute, yep I can feel something on there. Start reeling it in, the odd big pull of the whole rod every so often. Nick comes over,  "what are you doing? Stop pulling it in!" "There's something on it!" *Nick grabs hold* "oh, there's something on it!" *Quickly reels it in* Meanwhile, I'm just standing there dumbstruck, what the heck just happened? He stole my line, that's MY FISH! Don't you dare try taking the credit.
It wasn't too exciting, here was me thinking it was something massive, it was just a baitfish quite a decent size but not edible for us. I unhooked it, it looked at bn me, mouthing "save me!" Nick grabbed it, cut the head off and forever those eyes stared at me in the bait bucket..."I trusted you..." The shame. I murdered a flippen fish, man I felt guilty.
Apart from a few bait fish eventually caught on the kite line, and a few crabs caught on the rods, the fish weren't biting. I was mortified though, pulled something in, saw a small body waving around in the sand, I absolutely freaked and thought I'd pulled in a baby turtle (do we even have turtles in the water around here? I dunno), ran up to it expecting to grab hold and put it back in the water. Then realised it was a MASSIVE crab, on it's back, pincers flying around snap snappity snap. There's a possibility I squealed, and ran in the opposite direction. Crabs are flippen evil, scary things. Eeek.

Yesterday I donated blood again, very well behaved little Miss O Negative. I'm quite excited to know that the rescue helicopters are now carrying O- on board, so it keeps inspiring me to keep on donating as often as I can (Every 3 months). I've done 5 donations now, in about two and half years? Got a gift yesterday for it being my 5th donation, a NZ Blood water bottle. It's actually my second water bottle,  as I randomly got given one as it was only a couple days after my birthday when I donated (lol). At 25 donations, you get an umbrella.
Although I get a really good buzz out of donating for a blimmen good cause, I feel really gutted because I looked around yesterday, among all the people there to donate, I was the only one in my generation. Everyone else was, I dunno, 30's and older. It's such a shame, it's not as if you really lose anything out of it, just 20 minutes of your day, blood is replenished anyway. Yeah I just really wish more people I knew could just give it a go, at least once.

But, who am I to talk? I was happy, my hemoglobin levels were pretty much perfect, meaning I'm obviously eating enough red meat to have good iron levels. What I was curious about though, is that none of them wear gloves - seems a bit odd, wouldn't you think? They're all like, what medication have you taken recently? What are the chances of you having this disease or that disease? Have you been to the doctors lately, why? Any chance of having HIV or anything like that? No? Good (lots of detailed questions about that, by the way...). But I'm just like, what if people lie? What if people don't realise? You're pricking their fingers, then you're touching me. Sure, they are careful to not touch any blood and all that, but I'm just like, seriously? You're putting so many lives at risk here, when we are here to help others. I dunno...

Anyway, it only took 4 minutes to fill a blood bag, what 500mls? 750mls? The fastest it's ever been for me, first time took almost 10 minutes. Mum made a valid comment, "don't slit your wrist accidentally..." AKA, I'll bleed out pretty jolly quick. As she said that, I went to pick up Pippa....who grabbed me around the wrist with both front paws and her teeth and bit down hard. Evil kitty.


6 comments:

  1. Hmmm... I should come up some time, I could handle some free work at the moment... Not like its a huge amount different to my life round here, but a change of scenery atleast...

    And Nick cut the head off didn't he? In which case, you didn't actually murder it, technically... Anyway, wouldn't believe how much I just learnt about fishing in those two paragraphs... Obviously I haven't done enough of it... :P

    The HIV, you're supposed to wear gloves, which is kinda funny, but the chances of contracting it are pretty slim... Even if you get a contaminated needle and stab yourself with it, 200 stabs is what it would take for it to become "likely" that you'd contract it... But even still, it is a bit of a surprise... Quite a surprise. You're scaring me out of donating blood now... :P

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    1. Flippen heck Andrew just jolly well come!! You're always welcome here. We'll take you fishing, sounds like you need the experience :)

      Yeah I know, a little cliche me complaining no-one goes, then saying all this bad hygiene stuff aye?

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  2. Pippa is just trying to show her undying love and support for you. :)

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    1. Mmhmm, sure she is. She utterly adores me and I her! ;)

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  3. Ah, good old chemistry. ;) haha

    Lol, I need a job but I think you're probs a bit far to travel to regularly :P

    Good on you for donating blood, too bad I'm terrified of needles...lol

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    1. Lol yeah probably just a little too far away... :P

      Haha I've never actually been worried about needles and stuff aye

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