Tessa

There are a few days, quite often where I just sit at home and get seriously bored out of my mind, to the point where I can stalk through the house, possibly zombie eyed, trying to find something to set my mind to. There are a few things I can do, sure, but they are the sort of things you can only do if you are seriously enthused to do it. So if you aren't enthused, one must go find some job to do that takes no concentration but it needs doing and nothing can be harmed by doing it wrong if your mind isn't set to the task.
That being said, there was one day last week where I was left home alone to watch the dogs and hang out by myself, so I weeded the garden. Quite honestly. I was that bored, I went out there and hacked away at all the deadly nightshade that had taken residence in the potato patch and biffed it all in the compost and also planted some kumara. Some of the sacks of kumara we've bought in the last month or so had started sprouting tubers, so Mum and I thought we'd give it a shot, and put the tubers in some water for a few weeks until I got around to planting them. They're in big pots in the glasshouse now, so at least the cooler weather shouldn't harm them. I'm pretty excited to grow my own kumara, it's like one of the best foods on the planet - just saying.

So now, instead of wandering around bug eyed, looking for something to do, I flick through my new recipe books Mum and Dad gave me at Christmas - 200 chocolate recipes and 200 baking recipes. Sometime last week I made these marbled cupcakes, you know, with real chocolate and a sweet, sweet butter icing. I honestly wasn't too keen on them, but everyone else really enjoyed them. Although I'll skip out on their butter icing recipe (white and chocolate coloured to match the cake) and just do a normal icing next time round. Or perhaps do less icing, something anyway because it was just too sweet./
While yesterday I made a beetroot chocolate cake. Yep, you heard right. I've heard of people doing it before, but scoffed at the idea - eww, beetroot in a chocolate cake, no way. Basically because I hate carrot cakes and that's all I can think of when I imagine vegetables in a cake! But everyone swears by this type of cake, it was in the recipe book, it doesn't need alcohol (why do yummy looking chocolate cakes need alcohol?!?!) so I gave it a shot. I'm impressed.

Apart from looking at the batter with the deep purple colour, and not being game enough to try the batter raw like I would with any other recipe, the cake is perfect. Let me just say that recently I'm not the best at making cakes, the intention is good but no matter how hard I try to get it done quickly without over beating, it always takes far too long to cook and turns out hard on the outside and not quite cooked in the centre. (Our old cake tin died, it makes a difference).
However, this blimmen cake filled with beetroot, so, so good. It is moist, not too sweet, cooked perfectly all the way through, almost 24 hours later it hasn't gone stale and you can't even taste the beets. There is this somewhat after taste in the back of your mouth where you know you've eaten beetroot, but it's not a bad taste. Coming from someone who thinks beetroot is OK but nothing to sing home about, that's a pretty decent result!
So long as we have access to beetroot in the garden, I'll be making it again! And I think I'm going to make it for a few people so they can try it too. I mentioned it to Hamish on the weekend and my neighbour yesterday, but neither of them seemed too convinced. I will convert them! lol


Now you might've noticed above I mentioned the word "dogs". No, I didn't make a typo, we now have two dogs. Puppies, little animals. Whatever you want to call them. Last Wednesday Mum and Dad traveled north to get Dad a puppy, who we'd known about for less than a week. Yes, it might've been an impulse decision, but it certainly wasn't a bad one!
Tessa is a little 10 week old Jack Russell x Foxy, she's gorgeous. If you ever had a "Spot" dog teddy as a kid, she looks almost just like it, with an almost entirely white body with black ears and face, and two large black spots on her back. We all adore her, but she's definitely Dad's dog. The idea is that she will go to work with him to keep him company, such as sit in the spray ute beside him or go fencing with him and Nick. She's gonna need a little hi-viz jacket to look the part, but she's gonna love it. She already happily goes for rides in the vehicles with Dad places and travels really well.

Jackson is absolutely smitten, they have massive play fights where they're both chasing eachother around the house, inside and out. Although she does have that killer instinct already that we're going to need to keep in check. She grabs hold of poor Jackson's floppy ears and does the whole, death shake thing, or latches onto his legs until he yelps in pain. Of course they're just playing, but her jaws are already very strong. With that in mind she respects the cats so now I'm not worried about her harming them, she and Pippa play and chase each other as if they've been mates since birth. Quite seriously, Pippa, Tessa and Jackson all run around outside playing like the crazy animals they are, Pippa with her large psyched eyes filled with unmistakable joy.
Originally we thought that Jackson thought he must be a cat, now we're more inclined to think that Pippa thinks she's a dog, and it's great that after more than a year of her being here she has two best buddies when as a kitten she was constantly traumatised from the other cats beating her up.

I think perhaps the biggest joke is how soft we've gotten. Or, Dad's gotten. Two dogs, in the house, when years ago a dog couldn't step one paw in the house without getting a blasting. The dogs each have their own little pet bed to sleep in, and I got one for Pippa recently too from one of those clearance stores where everything is excessively cheap. Although we think that Tessa snuggles with Jackson at night to keep warm. So at about 9:30 every night, unless I'm already asleep, we all take our little friend to the porch and pop them into their little beds. Kiss them goodnight and they all snuggle down to sleep, it's so cute. The other night Pippa was being so cuddly, she gets like that when she's really tired and it is simply the sweetest thing.
When I was younger the cats were put out at night, no matter what the weather was like, and they were left to their own devices to find somewhere warm and dry to sleep. No matter how much I cried when I was little during those really stormy nights, knowing my poor cat was out there somewhere, Mum and Dad held their ground hard. But nowadays....ha ha! Tessa even sits on Dad's lap at night and watches the TV. Ridiculous.


You have to admit though, she's pretty darned cute.

Self Defense

Life is great when you have some cool people to spend it with :)

I've been busy, lots to do but also not a lot at the same time, and a fair bit to update on here. OK.

I've been doing women's self defense courses/sessions/things, whatever you wanna call it. It's where I basically drive over to the next town, catch up with Chantelle and we buddy up and get taught how to beat each other up - for our own protection. Lol, sounds a little off, right? Nah, there are some Kempo instructors who have decided to run a quick, one hour long session once a week for four weeks so that some women can learn a little bit of self defense if they were to need it any time in the future. It's cheap - $10 a week, and we get taught some helpful things.
Such as blocking a punch, getting out of bad situations like grabs from behind and the like you'd expect from not very nice people. Apparently I have a very good punch - I would expect nothing less after growing up with Nick! (I joke) and sometimes all I want to do is actually try it out.

See these little sessions are great, but for obvious reasons we can't have contact with the friend you're doing it with, so when you want to elbow someone under the jaw you put a lot of "oomph" into it so you know you're doing it correctly - but you certainly can't actually do it! Which is kind of frustrating. I wish there was some type of robotic thing that you could practice on that resembled those sorts of attacks from a person, and you could do it properly without fear of injuring somebody...Anyway, there was one occasion in our second week where Chantelle did actually get me in the face - it kinda hurt, but we were all laughing too much to really care.
The instructor reckons that if you put a palm heel into the attackers face, top lip/nose sort of area, if you hit it hard enough you could actually induce vomiting - which is how you know you've done a good job. It's a pressure point filled with nerves, and yeah that's where Chantelle hit me, thankfully not hard enough!
It's fun though, we've got just one more session to do this Wednesday night coming, and twice we've gone down to the pub for dinner afterwards for a debrief and catch up on how our week has been. It's nice to be spending more time with her, even if only for a few hours. When we were younger we'd do three or four day weekends hanging out, now we hardly get time, so it makes a nice change :)


I'm back working at my favourite cowshed again, you know that one I just won't shut up about? Automated system, so much fun, Cameron and Hamish, etc., etc., etc.? Yeah, that one. I'm on my second weekend there and today I'm helping feed calves too, which I'll help out with after milking for the next few weekends as they need the help - until the busy period of autumn calving is finished. They're calving 250 cows, and officially started a week or so ago - it's a short stint of calving, so they're pretty busy beavers at the moment. It's great to be back, I had a good catch up with Hamish last weekend, and now Cam. I think they're just glad to see a new face in the cowshed again - it must get kinda boring without me to chat to every so often, and I'm stoked to be back. Well I was, until I found out my favourite friendly heifer died over the summer when I was away, to think that I was so looking forward to seeing her again, but hey.
But last night Jo - Cam's wife - invited me to join them all for dinner. It was their family, Cam's parents, Hamish and his family and my neighbour, Sam - who's Jo's brother. I've known Jo and Sam's family for years - since I was about 7 or 8, so it wasn't too big a deal to join them. Jo said it was just a farm dinner thing, but it was nice to be invited and it was good to go to dinner without it being too dramasome.
It's funny actually, usually if we were invited to dinner there is a clear separation of "adults" and "kids" and I would always be sent off with the kids. Yeah I guess we aren't often going to family friend's for dinner and vice versa, it's been quite a few years! But last night it was the same, except I hung out with all the "adults", just chatting and listening - and watching the kids all going crazy outside as kids do.
So it was quite pleasant being able to just go, especially on my own without any of my family or whatnot being there too - it was like any big family and friend dinner should be - everyone talking with everyone. Much more preferable over young farmer meet ups, where you sit and if someone speaks to you you don't know where to be happy about it or not - depending on who the person is...

It's also good to be considered good enough company to be invited around for dinner, not just the "relief milker", although I won't say it wasn't a coincidence or  there wasn't an underlying reason why I was invited - I'm pretty sure there is something going on in the background that involves me. And I'm pretty positive I know exactly what it is, but unfortunately for you guys - I'm going to leave you hanging ;) for the meantime anyway, sorry! When there is updated, public information, I'll let you know. Don't try and guess!


Oh, and it looks like we have ourselves a new full timer starting in June! It's my friend Nikolai, I've known him through youth group for these last few years and, ironically, he used to work for Jo and Cam - but he moved to the Waikato for a farm job there and left me to pick up the slack with Cam and Hamish. Anyway, he's heading back this way, needs a job and we have one for him. He came around this morning for another catch up and confirmed he definitely wanted the job, which is great for me as now I can definitely RSVP to go to a wedding in June, oh and we can also start taking more bookings now too.
Fingers crossed it will all work out well.


In other news, the weather has certainly changed direction as most days now are quite cold and icy with the wind, work is continuous - although I have a few days off and get bored out of my mind sitting around at home. Jackson and Pippa are still BFF's. Oh, and Nick has a girlfriend - although he still hasn't updated his relationship status on FB yet - I'll keep you posted! hehehe

~Holiday~ Part 2: "A car...with unicorns on it!"

Please, don't mind the title - I'll get to that in a minute!

As you all know, my friend Jess, her mum and her baby sister Briea came to Rotorua to pick me up for the next stage of my adventure. First things first, meeting the new baby sister who is almost a year old. I'm no kid person simply because I'm not usually around little people, but I have to admit she was pretty cute!
After a good catch up with my Nana, off we went in search of some tourist attraction in Rotorua, tourist town and all that, surely one wouldn't be too hard to find? lol, I guess it depends on how much money you want to spend! Put it this way, I wouldn't spend almost $100 (per person) to wander around a big Geothermal experience thing...Anyway, we eventually found one that was more towards our price range but still quite expensive when you think about it. Another geothermic place called Hell's Gate (ridiculous name hey?) where we can wander around all the sulfur lakes.
In all honesty, it was surely too hot to be walking through there. I mean, the heat and smell of the sulfur and the general temperature being around 30 degrees...but, it was interesting. I definitely wouldn't be too keen on falling into one of them, what with the extreme heat and the extreme acidity! There was one somewhat volcano, that apparently erupts every six weeks and sends lava like substance in a five metre general range. We were understandably pretty glad that the six week mark wasn't the same day we were visiting haha

That night Jess and I got a few movies out, one of them being Super Fast & Super Furious. It was a re-enactment of The Fast and Furious being made fun of. So one of the lines basically went-
'what are you driving?'

'A car...with unicorns on it!'

And quite seriously, this car had unicorns painted all over it. The whole movie was pretty ridiculous, but funny all the same. I wouldn't watch it again, but it's one of those movies where I can now say, been there done that, got the t-shirt sort of thing. The fact that Jessica fell asleep and was snoring her head off all the way through it meant nothing...hehe

On Tuesday we all went for a (expense free) trip to the Hamilton Gardens, a beautiful place but also another place I probably wouldn't feel the need to visit again in this lifetime. There were some gorgeous designs in there though, you surely have to think - wow, it's pretty incredible how they can keep it looking so awesome.

This is covered in grapes which look pretty neat winding around the poles :)

It doesn't look it, but these are extremely tall. The flowers themselves are potentially the size of the average person's head - or bigger, and my height (5 foot 2ish) would go up to the leaf on the right below the flower...

And this one is a major award winning design apparently, or something. But plants are hanging upside down and there's a shower of water with a pond underneath.

We then went for a wander around the shops at The Base before heading home to try and escape the heat. I think we can all agree, that humidity was intense!

On Wednesday Jess and I went off on our own to the Hamilton zoo, somewhere else I'd never been before. It was cool, but at the same time it felt weird being around the tiger enclosure - since it hasn't really been that long since the keeper was killed in there...

I actually quite like Giraffe's, they seem like such gentle giants. Although, they probably aren't but it's a nice thought!

Pretty little Zebra, no?

The Chimp's were mostly all chilling out inside. Sleeping. Pretty lazy.

After the zoo Jess shouted me lunch at the local pub/restaurant in Te Awamutu, we wandered around a few shops, yet again trying to free ourselves from the heat by going into the air conditioned shops! Every night we were sort of sitting up watching a movie until about 10 ish, but then we're still sweltering with a fan going and all the windows opened. It got to the point where I was still wide awake well after 11pm, not wanting to keep my bedroom windows open while I slept as I didn't trust anyone what with being in town and all that, so it was like sleeping in a sauna. Problem is that it's a different sort of heat as well, with it being a different climate.

One thing that surprised me was that not once while I was in Gizzy did I suffer from the typical hayfever. So not only did I not find it too hot being there, but I also didn't sneeze my head off - very strange. There must be different trees and grasses down there or something to what I'm used to. Actually, while I'm thinking about it - are there many pine trees around there? I think there were a few. Hmmm...


Thursday eventually came around and I caught the bus out of TA just prior to 11am, it didn't take us too long to get to Auckland, Sky City. The bus terminal is directly underneath Sky City and the Sky Tower, it's not the most safest place to be in my opinion. Although I'm not the biggest fan of Auckland city streets as it is, this place just seemed very unnerving. I wouldn't want to arrive there later at night, that's for sure. Anyway, it was a good terminal in the way that they do have an actual office where you can lock your bags up in lockers if need be, and there's bathrooms right there so you don't need to go hunting.
However the transfer for the next bus is an extreme amount of time. I arrived at 1:20 and left at 4pm, so it was a decent amount wait. Anyhow, the bathrooms I soon discovered are pretty dodgy, not somewhere you should go alone and with a few bags. These two women came in, one of them dropping smoke butts everywhere - scrambling to pick them all up as if she was gonna reuse them or flush them down the sink. I think she might've been stoned, or something. I've never met a druggy face to face so I wouldn't know.
But yeah, she got between me and my suitcase and wouldn't let me past. Started speaking, and I thought she said "you should never trust me" and I'm just wide eyed, thinking, no crap sherlock. But then it turned out she was saying "You should never trust men", she kept going on and on and on, "don't ever be alone" "Never trust any of them" etc etc etc for a good minute or so. All crazy eyed and such. I'm just standing there, shaking, nodding for fear of disagreeing with her at any cost. Then once I got a chance I grabbed my suitcase and got out of there as fast as I could, quite freaked out. Conscious of the fact that it was a closed in space with no cameras or other people around.

Once I got back on the street I was thinking, Ok, need to get into a busy public space somewhere, while also need to find somewhere to eat. But everywhere seems to be dodgy Asian or Indian places that I didn't trust. I thought I'd walk to Britomart which has an endless supply of friendly people and food places, Westfield and all that, but turns out that was a few blocks away. I was feeling quite paranoid about all the random guys walking back and forth on the streets, so in the end I dived into a little cafe and grabbed the last sandwich, then made my way back to the main street. In actual fact there's a cafe diagonally across the road from the terminal (and a small cafe at the terminal but it didn't look too flash), so I made my way over there.
I kicked myself thinking I should've gone over there to begin with, it's full of friendly staff and lots of people in there, so I grabbed a milkshake so I could have an excuse to use their seating, then spent my time people watching, inhaling all the disgusting exhaust fumes and writing in my journal. Yep, I keep an extra thing to a blog these days, it's quite handy and keeps my handwriting in check!

Once the bus to northland arrived at the terminal I skedaddled over there for fear that it might change its mind and leave early. It seems many other people had the same thought so I just joined the crowd of people sitting on suitcases waiting for 4pm to come around. Yet again, people watching and writing. One old guy asked if I was from England, because I was writing in a diary, nope just a local I replied. He said he had one once, but lost his bag on the trip so three weeks worth of memories were gone. I felt his pain, it would be awful to lose mine!

Finally though, I made it home. Mum was waiting for me with Jackson in the ute, he was so excited to see me, jumping all over me and licking my face - pretty gross dog! haha It was nice to finally be home again. Pippa was, pretty meh about the fact I was home. She sorta wound herself around my feet, I gave her a cuddle but she was more interested in food. So later on she suddenly looked at me wide eyed, as if she suddenly realised it was me. Pfft, I expected more of a reaction! Although this morning she was pretty excited to see me, as if she thought she'd just been dreaming. Mum and Dad have been letting her get away with blue murder though, Dad was leaning against the bench and she's just chilling out beside him and he wasn't even saying anything...

Speaking of Dad, I think he missed me. I think everyone missed me. I think they all missed me from the minute I walked out the door! But I'd been hanging out with Mum for a while when Dad got home. He was just like - "Dude", with the raised eyebrows. So I'm just like, "Ette" (dudette kinda). It's our thing. Then he came over for a hug, I was cracking up saying, gee Mum hasn't even given me a hug yet! But it's so good to be home, sleeping in my own bed in my own home. You don't realise how much you like it until you get to go home after a decent stint away. Then I disappointed them and went off to our young farmer meeting with Nick, wished I'd just stayed home as it wasn't too exciting and I just sat there falling asleep at the table. Sheesh, even Nick missed me. He drove my car to work the other afternoon and actually complimented me on my good car, he reckons it handles better on the gravel than he expected which is slightly amusing...apart from the fact he drove it in his gumboots...


Anyway, I go back to milking from tomorrow, I've got a busy week catching up with everything. Got lots of milking to do and fencing next week so it should be nice to get back into my schedule. I have to admit though, it's been a pretty awesome holiday. Couldn't have asked for a better one! :)

The Gorge - excuse the blurry photo

View from the top of the farm, looking out towards the east coast. The sea blurs into the sky so it's hard to see in a picture

The Falls

Cute little walking track that used to be used for horse and carriage - back in the day

This one is for Andrew, lol, I found out that Twinkies aren't actually chocolate like I thought, but actually little cake things haha. They sell them in some funny shops around the place that sells overseas junk food :P You're welcome!

Boxing Day

Christmas Day has been and gone - you wouldn't even have thought we'd just celebrated it, as all the decorations and the tree have been removed and the lounge is back to the way it was again. Apart from the fact that both fridges are still full (yes, we have two fridges!) of food and drink, and there is so much stuff lying around - chocolates and biscuits that we've either bought or been given, that nobody is interested in eating. We're going to be eating this stuff for weeks!

On Tuesday I caught up with Sam and Chantelle, for our yearly tradition of going to the beach and seeing the Christmas lights prior to the big day - typically our last catch up for the year. That was nice, we had ourselves some dinner then bundled into my car and drove to the beach for a wander around. Then went up to one of the local towns to see the light display at a particular house...

All in all though, Christmas was good. Nana drove up from Rotorua on Christmas Eve, then that night Mum, Nana and I went down to the Church service/Carols. Not quite as good as last year, I thought. Christmas Day came around, I was up again nice and early - 4:45am, a slight sleep in! Milking was good that morning, and I wore my merry christmas hat that has antlers and popped it on a couple cows! Introducing; Manuka!

 My sister and brother-in-law arrived that morning, we had pancakes for breakfast thanks to Nick then opened some pressies. I actually really liked Christmas this year, it was basic and easy and the presents this year that everyone got and gave were pretty neat! For once there was no gizmos or gadgets, the gifts were quite practical and what the person needed or would definitely have a use for, which was nice for a change :) I was given a fair bit of house related items, for when I move out one day. I've got a nice collection of towels building up now, a lovely cutlery set among other things and two gorgeous cook books. I'm talking, 200 chocolate recipes and 200 baking recipes - what more could a girl want?!
Alesha and Chris have finally printed out a heap of their wedding photos from February - we've been wondering when they would get that done, so we got a few of them as gifts too. A beautiful canvas and some photos that have been framed. Finally, we've got some nice family photos up on the walls! And I know that my rule for blogging is to not post any pictures of myself, the last two I posted didn't matter because it was that long ago, but I figured it couldn't hurt to break the rule, if only once. So, here's what I got from them. I really love this picture of me, it's amazing what some makeup, correct lighting and a professional photographer can catch on a lens. If you knew me now, not even a year later I look nothing the same, I'm sure!

Later on we decided we needed to give the dog a bath - wait! You guys don't know! We now have a puppy, an inside puppy. A ShihTzu called Jackson, he's the cutest little ratbag I've ever seen, but man he's naughty. He arrived on a plane from Christchurch on Tuesday night, along with a little toy lion. Bought for Mum's birthday back in November...He's got a bit of a habit of sleeping on his back and he gets really hot, really easily. But behind the adorable-ness is a little puppy who misses his litter. Every night since Tuesday he cries and cries and cries. REALLY LOUD! Tuesday I think I got about 2-3 hours sleep with an early start, Mum ended up sitting up with him to keep him company.

Wednesday night he was eventually put on the outside porch in his play pen, and at about midnight Mum wondered downstairs to tell him to be quiet - didn't work. Then I went down, sat outside in the chilly air and managed to coax him into falling asleep, I felt so stink for him, gave him lots of cuddles and a pep-talk until he fell asleep. Ten minutes later he was bawling again. Another early start for me.
Then on Christmas eve he didn't make a sound, but when I went to work on Christmas morning I found Mum asleep on the couch with him on the floor beside her -  happy as larry!

Then last night, Dad had a word to him and he was quiet all night, we're not quite sure what he said to him but it worked! Either that or we were all so tired that we didn't hear him!
So yeah, he needed a bath, he hated that but it was hilarious! Him in a kids paddling pool, in the shower looking like a drowned rat. Then we dried him with a hair drier on low heat, hehe

 

He's a definite trouble maker, he's learned that chasing the cats is a glorious exercise to take part in. He never used to move very far with his tiny little legs, but when it comes to chasing the cats, man he can move. The great thing is that he can't climb the step into the kitchen so it keeps him somewhat confined! Now he's stealing the cats toys and Pippa has stolen his lion. He eats the cat biscuits whenever he gets the chance and Frodo eats his food. Soon we'll have a meowing dog and a barking cat. Sheesh!

But today has been cruisey, I'm having my first "weekend" off since the start of the season, we've watched a movie - Flowers In the Attic, based on a novel series I read when I was younger. Dad and Nick have been doing some fence work around our place - lots of changes are happening here! Now I've just got to figure what we're doing tomorrow, apparently when one turns 20 you need to have plan in place for how you are to celebrate it! Me, well, I'm just sitting here kinda sad knowing that I'm getting so blimmen old! Hmm..

Hope everyone else had a lovely Christmas!