Chilling Out

It was only 7 degrees this morning when I arrived at work just prior to 6am; it was freezing! Okay maybe it wasn't freezing, but it was blimmen cold! I had goosebumps on my arms all milking, by the time I left at 8am it was sitting around 14 degrees. Mum and I are home with the heat pump going, and I'm wearing socks and sweatshirt - a very uncommon sight.

This morning I've made hot chocolate muffins, so although it is cold life is still good!

A week or so ago I toddled off to the dentist with serious toothache that I'd put up with for a week before it was getting to be too much. It was odd and seemed to happen overnight, with pain you'd expect if a filling simply fell out. I know there is a filling up there somewhere in the same area, so I didn't rule it out. Typical for me, the dentist couldn't find anything wrong, he couldn't even tell which tooth it was until they used the tool that blows air along my teeth...until I basically jumped through the roof.
He decided to polish down the tip of that tooth (with no numbing!) and then put some filler on top, saying that it should help. Well it hasn't. I can't eat or drink on that side. If anything cold hits it I'm almost doubled over in pain, and I've resorted to no hot drinks either which is rather unfortunate in this chilly weather.

We got to try on our uniforms for netball on Wednesday, they're all green - quite a nice green if I must say. They consist of a dress, that is quite on the short side. As was the discussion, it's netball, where you stretch upwards and jump. What happens to a short dress in that situation?! So I know I'm off to find some shorts of some sort to wear too. Then we also have a t-shirt to wear overtop during warmup, and we've also got a jacket. They say we're not allowed to wear the hoodie's we've bought as extras on game nights because it doesn't have the uniform sponsorship on it. We could wear them, so long as the jacket is over it, however the hoodies are quite thick and the jackets are small, there's no chance you could wear the hoodie underneath!

It's hard to believe the games start in two weeks, May 5th. With only two training nights before then, we still don't have all of the team members showing up and there are only nine people in my team. Our club has two teams and we're never able to practice a full game with 14 players because there are always people missing! The training last week we used two bystanders to fill the court, they both know how to play, one I think is possibly going to be a coach or an umpire. Oh yeah, we have no coach - brilliant, huh?
However the other lady fell and rolled her ankle, so we had to drop the wing defenses on both teams. I had been WD on my actual team prior to the lady getting hurt. Then I swapped to wing attack on the other team.
WD is probably not the best position to play as I hardly get a chance to touch the ball, I'm simply running around trying to stop the opposing WA from getting it. However she is tall and very good at the game so I may as well not be on the court at all! Once I moved over to WA there was no WD trying to stop me, so although I was able to play and catch the ball, it wasn't experiencing the position properly which is quite frustrating.

Also because players aren't always showing up to training we aren't able to train as a proper team so we can't get to know each other properly. How can you work in a team situation if you've never played as a team? It's ridiculous, I know I can't really talk because I've missed two training nights - once I was too sick to leave the house and the other excuse was a flooded road during the cyclone...

I still don't know what position I'm most likely to play, our main Centre player has come back now and I see what they were talking about - she's good, very good. I don't see me ever getting to try C again unless she has to sub out, which is unlikely. Thankfully they don't put me in the goal circle anymore - I'm too short to defend the goal and I'm no good at getting the ball in the net either, so I'll always be WA or WD, unless I'm a permanent sub so I could get any position really.

Wednesday morning I had an argument with a can lid and ended up with a slashed thumb, so during netball I had a big thick plaster on it to prevent any further damage - but it made catching the ball difficult - I feel so small when they throw the ball, anticipating me to catch it. And I drop it. Plasters provide no grip apparently, so the entire game or warmup routine has to stop until I manage to get the ball in the air again...I think I'm doing pretty good, sticking around and staying in the team, even though I'll probably be the one they rely on to pass the ball in a major game. I'll be the one who almost literally hands it to the other team in time for them to win. It takes a lot of trying to stay on the team and keep learning as best I can, without holding my team back too much with my being there either.

Work is going OK, nothing has really changed. Working with Cam and Hamish is taking less time now as I no longer need to help with any calves - calving is almost finished there. However, my other farm is taking longer and longer. Yesterday morning almost took four hours to milk! We're only milking about 430 cows there (12 rows), but there's still another 120 or so left to calve, calving has slowed right down and they'll still be plodding along well into May! Milking 550 cows is going to take a fair while through June when they're all milking at peak production...

We've had a heck of a lot of rain, my boss Cam who's a few minutes down the road recorded 570mm from the 9th March - 16 April. That's almost half a year's worth of rain in 6 weeks...

Maggie's new jersey :)

Puppy snuggles :D

A friendly Monarch butterfly :)

Maggie and Rose, collage as they got older

I got flowers for Easter!

Tay's kitten, Charlie - grease kitty (not monkey lol)

More of Rosie because when she's clean she's so gorgeous!

Wake Me Up When September Ends

That's a really old song, Green Day I believe. It was that song that was on the radio all the time when I was about...10? Yeah I'll repeat. That's a really old song. Although it is convenient as a title, so I'm not complaining!
So yet again we're at the end of the month and I duly apologise for my lack of communication during the past month - it's been crazy! But not in a bad way, except perhaps for this past week where I've been brutalised by some hideous form of stomach bug that is putting up a very good fight. It's been hanging around since Monday where it was just a really sharp pain in my side every so often, then on Tuesday the nausea and sinus headaches made their grand entrance and here I am on Friday still not 100%.
I spent most of Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday asleep on the couch, keeping myself dosed up on the Nurofen. This, perhaps wasn't the most smartest moves I've ever made as I haven't eaten much at all since Tuesday morning - and that pain relief possibly shouldn't be taken on an empty stomach...hence why I'm still not 100% now. Oops. Although I'm kinda hungry, and I've got a headache because I'm hungry, but I've gotta be careful not to eat too much too fast. See, this is why I don't get sick very often, because I know full well that I simply can't put up with it. It's so frustrating! Not only that, but I haven't really worked since Monday - as you can imagine, I am driving myself insane! I'm milking this afternoon, so I think it's going to be hard to get the energy level back up to normal...

So yes, my apologies for the late update. I was planning on writing this earlier in the week! But don't stop reading, because I've got a bucketful of things to say.

First things first: The boyfriend. Lol. Please don't laugh at me, over the past four to six weeks I have not somehow morphed into an easily swayed, soft and squishy sort of person! I am still very much my normal seriously sarcastic, and somewhat cynical self. Believe you me.

Anyway for those of you who don't know too much information yet. His name's Taylor, is 20 and works and lives on one of the local farms - about a 10 minute drive from my place. It's the farm where Mum and I do the calf rearing so, conveniently, I see him almost every day. Honestly, he's lovely, seems to get on with my family really well and Dad approves of him too (yay!). He's cooked for me a few times at his place, he's been here a couple times and I met his Mum on Sunday night when we went to her place for tea. It's good fun, for sure. Oh yeah, and he's bought me flowers....twice :D

Now don't panic, because he was also one of the crazy homeschooled kids like us (was sort of part of my homeschooling group as a kid). He is quite normal, to say the least. If there is such a thing. And if you're into hunting or 4WDing then you guys will be good buddies if you were to meet at any stage.

A few weeks back Mum and I caught a plane and flew down to Rotorua (flying was so much easier than driving all that way) for my Nana's 65th birthday. We stayed there from the Friday morning and left again on Sunday morning. It's good having a Nana who is so young still, well in comparison to a lot of my friends' grandparents. We get to have so much time with her and she can do absolutely anything really, if she wanted to. But she definitely deserves her retirement years now, and is now spending more time doing her voluntary work running an op shop. Doing what she does best :)

Last Thursday I did something that was rather impulsive...I bought myself a puppy. A Foxy I might add. I hope she's a full foxy, as her nose is a little shorter than you'd expect, however the lady I got her off (who had rescued the pups off the mother who wasn't feeding them) seemed to think that both parents were foxy's. It was a case of one neighbours' dog went wandering over to the other neighbour, definitely not a planned thing, that's for sure. And so this lady took them on and reared them. She's a nippy little thing, about 7 weeks old and absolute trouble. She gets on amazingly with Tessa and Jackson though, thank goodness. To the point where Tessa seems to think it's her own puppy - she runs to her every beckon and call!

I've called her Maggie, which I instantly changed to Maggles and Dad refers to her as Magpie. So. She's a little diva and is so small that she can squeeze through the extension on the baby gate that is meant to keep them confined in the kitchen area. No particularly helpful, that.



However, the other day Mum and Dad bought home another Shih Tzu puppy, a little girl this time. As Mum wants to have a pair for breeding, they've finally found a cute little girl. Do you know how much chaos it is, having two less than a year old dogs and two barely weaned puppies running around in our kitchen? Yeah, I need not say more. It is mental! Although Rose (Rosie) is kinda cute, and it's funny having a big Foxy and a baby Foxy and a big Shih Tzu and a baby Shih Tzu - especially when they look so similar! The good thing is that Maggie and Rosie can grow up and be little friends together, and we only go through the "puppy stage" once, this time round. They all seem to get along, although Jack and Tess are a little confused about Rose...I might also add, Mum didn't intentionally set out to have puppies called Jack (Jackson) and Rose, like on the Titanic. I had to mention it to her afterwards, hehe

 

Our calves are almost finished now. There are only three left to calve, I'm sure in the next week or so they (the farmers) might think about weaning some and then will send Mum and I on our way. Some pictures from a few weeks ago...