Some Form of Permanently Exhausted Pigeon!

I saw a meme on Facebook the other day, it was funny - as most are. Anyhow this one said, "I'm not an early bird or a night owl - I'm some form of permanently exhausted pigeon!" I can seriously relate this week!

I'll make 50 hours this week - I've milked every day and helped with fencing for five. Why? Because apparently people don't like working for us - especially when the week prior to them randomly not coming back, we give them a pay rise. Maybe he got sick of us giving him eggs and veges from our garden that were surplus to our requirements. Who knows? It's even more degrading when they throw your tools into a swamp area of the paddock before leaving early on the afternoon when they're needed to work on their own for a while. It's just, I dunno. You really do have to wonder some days. All I know is that I'm sick of my family being walked all over and treated like door mats when we do absolutely nothing wrong, it's ridiculous.

Nonetheless, I've been working all week and I'm so tired - hence the title. I start my day to my alarm going off at 4:20am, work starts at 5am. I open the door to the chilly blast of cold, winter air; most mornings as of late it has averaged 5 degrees. It's not warm - thank goodness for heated seats in my car! And when I get to milking I almost freeze to death, okay so that is a figure of speech but it's close to legitimate. Just over four hours later I get home, scoff something down for breakfast and then Mum and I leave to go fencing, we're only there for a few hours before needing to get home again in time for my afternoon milking, but we still get some things done. For me, dragging out wires down quite a steep hill, and stapling on my way back up - it takes a little while.

Milking starts again at 2:30 so I'm driving out the gate at 2:10pm. It's almost 6pm when I get home. It's been a long week, even longer when you add in the cold mornings and some cows that just aren't all that interested in being milked. Seriously, if they were my cows, two of them would have a one way ticket off the farm by now. They're driving me insane with their behaviour, where consoling them or yelling at them does nothing. Honestly, if we could just get them fully milked out then they might not be so uncomfortable for the next milking. But we can't keep the cups on, they're never fully milked out, you almost lose the plot at them and the cycle continues; twice a day. I get tomorrow off, I can't wait.

Our netball games have now started for the season, we're playing right up until September sometime. The first game was Friday just gone, it was an eye opener. Warmup started at 5:30pm, thankfully I finished milking early that night and managed to arrive at the courts just on 5:30. I then hand to hunt down my team to get my uniform, as I hadn't made it to training last week to get said uniform, so even though I arrived there on time, I still missed the bulk of the warm up session. Not great.

Mum said I managed to somehow get the right team, with the dark green uniform colours. We've got a dress to play in, a t-shirt to wear overtop for warmups and then a jacket to wear too. There are also hoodies, but they haven't arrived yet. So guess who didn't take something warm to wear, because she thought she would get her hoodie? Hmm...

 The games are 20 minutes long, with two halves. My team had enough players with me as a sub, so I didn't play the first half. I was put in as WD in the second half, and I felt like I had been thrown to the wolves with no idea how to play! I was just like, hold on, what am I meant to do? Where am I meant to be?! Panic attack alert, lol. I got there though, figured it out rather fast, found my WA from the other team and did my best to stick to her for most of it, trying to stop her catching or passing on the ball. I got a whistle blow for one obstruction - I got too close. Which, as Mum said, is good because it means I'm doing my job.
The ten minutes pass rather quickly on court, we won the game 22:11. It's odd playing on the outside courts - it's smaller than where we've been training so it doesn't take much to get the ball from one end to the other. It's also concrete, so suddenly I was feeling my landings harder than normal, my ankles and knees are going to have to toughen up. The cold didn't help either - concrete is hard but cold concrete is worse.

But suddenly the game is over and we're finished. Shaking hands with the other team, saying "good game" and off we go. We're told not to leave, I'm not sure why. As it turns out, you don't just play one game of netball, you play two or three. I am seriously lacking in my netball information - why has nobody told me this yet?
There are three, maybe even four "rounds". We played in round 1. Then later on in round 3, once all of the score cards had been tallied and the teams were allocated the right sort of team to play against. There are also rankings, I'm not too sure on the specifics, other than knowing we are ranked a "B" team which is quite low. A "Prem" team is higher up, so we won't be playing against them for quite a while from what I've gathered.
In round 3, because our first game score was so high it meant we were playing against a team with a slightly higher ranking than us. I'm not surprised, they were good. I stood out again for the first half, then they thought it was best I didn't play at all - simply because that team were very good and we needed to get a good score in the game. Basically, my being in there probably wouldn't have been a very good idea, and watching from the sidelines I knew I wouldn't stand a chance in - so I wasn't too worried. I was just freezing, because when you don't play you get pretty cold in a light dress! It is a little awkward though, being the only sub.


The game was going well, there was lots of fighting for the ball at one end of the court, with almost all of the players at that end. The ball was getting thrown back and forth, when something happened. Ebony who I think was playing a goal shoot or goal defense (I can't really remember) jumped up and then fell, landing harshly on the concrete. It happened rather quickly, and she's curled up on the ground crying in pain and everyone is trying to help somehow. I thought it was her shoulder that she'd injured because that's what she had seemed to land on. As it turns out, it was her ankle. She jumped, fell, twisted badly on her ankle, carried on falling hitting her shoulder then her head on the ground.
A few of the volunteer firefighters were hanging around the courts, so they came over and carried her off. I had to jump back into WD and we quickly finished the game - there was all of about 15 seconds left to play once we all got back into position. We lost 5:8.


Poor Ebony was a mess and an ambulance was called, it was awful standing and watching everyone trying to help her. She's vomiting from pain or shock or maybe even concussion - I'm not sure, no one was allowed near her ankle though apart from keeping the ice pack on it. I hung around and waited because we're a team and you'd think that when something like that happens, the team sticks together. But I was surprised when three of them just said "cya" and left...It was a while before the ambulance turned up, and then a second one came after that. She was given some sort of thing to breath through while they took her shoes off and played around with her foot - I think it had some sort of liquid pain relief in it, but I've never seen it used before. Then eventually she was wheeled off on the gurney and we got to go home. Someone else must've gotten injured in another game that we hadn't noticed, because the first ambo went back with a stretcher to another girl down there.
Ebony didn't have a broken ankle, but she instead tore a ligament - and she's out for the rest of the season, it's something you can't come back from very easily. I know, because Mum tore two at the same time (there are only three), her ankle has never been the same. Poor Ebony! First game of the season and she's injured, she's a good player too so it's a big loss for us. Thankfully we found another player last week so we've still got one sub at least. Fingers crossed for no more injuries, I'm actually quite terrified of injuring myself - especially after seeing Eb in so much pain. That, and I can't afford to get injured and not be able to work. Netball is a dangerous game!

I worked out that I was there for three and a half hours and I only played for 10 minutes. It's painful when you think about it, especially as I came straight from work which is a physical enough job as it is. I got home about 9:15pm for dinner, then was back at work, zombie eyed at five the next morning. Phew. It's going to be a long season.

Feijoa

It's been a funny week, one filled with so many feijoa's that it's difficult to get my head around them. I made five, yes five feijoa cakes in two days. The first day I made one, simply for something to do in between my milkings. A bit of an experiment, if that's the best description for it. Just to see what would happen, and yeah, with the intention of killing off a couple of those green fruit! Ok, so maybe just three feijoa's were needed in the making of that cake, but it was so yum!
I went to work telling Cam that I'd spent a part of my day making this cake and he replied, jokingly - "did you leave it in your car?" AKA, he kinda wanted some, now that I'd mentioned it. Honestly, lol.

I'd done a whole seven day stretch on this farm for a change, and finished up on Thursday. So that afternoon I took along a feijoa cake for Cam and Hamish to enjoy before I came back today, Saturday. I had spent quite a decent part of my day making four of these cakes, freezing two of them for winter (we've been freezing quite a few sponge cakes as well, just to use up the eggs we're getting), leaving one for us and taking one to work. But I sliced them in half and filled them with cream and sliced feijoa this time round - apparently it was really good, so that's some good feedback. Actually, they ate the whole thing in one day, so. lol

*Edit, fast forward to Sunday :)

Yesterday I made a good effort and did some feijoa preserving, only seven bottles as we didn't have enough seals. Today I got in another 12 bottles. however now I look at those evil little green things (or not so little, in some cases) and squirm. Almost 20 bottles later and I'm sick of the idea of them! There's still a fair few on the tree and on the ground, but I reckon they can just stay there and go back into the cycle of nature, or something!

I'll tell you what though, I'm sick of this cold weather, and it isn't even winter yet! We're getting the southerly winds now so it's pretty icy. One minute the sun is out - take Friday for instance, we were scorching in the heat building some stock yards for a client. Now, the wind and rain comes with random bursts of enthusiasm, and the likelihood that it will suddenly start raining when you decide to pop outside (when previously it was quite sunny), is very high. It's annoying. Autumn has been quite chilly this year, but I'm still in the summer clothing - save for wearing a jersey every now and again. I'm kinda thinking that pulling out the old trackies for future use might just be the way to go in the next couple days!
Tessa the Terrier is always feeling the cold, constantly in her little doggy jumper or snuggled up on our lap, trying to soak in some extra heat. I'm telling you, these dogs of ours are fire and ice, one can't handle cold weather (my gosh, if she lived in the south island!) and one can't handle the heat. They freaked out with their first thunderstorm on Friday night, so winter/spring with the little rascals is definitely going to be interesting.

Last Monday was fun, I took the afternoon off work and went to Rainbow's End with Chantelle, Sam and Bee. A real girls day out for Chantelle's 21st birthday. It was fun! The last time I went there, I was only a little kid, probably in the region of about 3 or 4 years old. I can hardly remember it, but this time was really cool.
Chantelle, Bee and I all went on the "Fear Fall", which isn't actually that high, but in saying that I won't be going on it again. That moment of - holey moley we're falling, was a little too, yeah. See if I jumped off something - say skydiving or bungee jumping, at least I would know when I would start trying to defy gravity. But just sitting there, up in the air, looking around and omgosh we're falling! For about a second. Then you're back on the ground again. It wasn't exciting, wasn't terrifying, was just one of those things I probably wouldn't bother with again!

But it was super fun over all, I had two favourite rides, Invader and the Stratosfear. The latter of which is like a pendulum, that swings 360 degrees, so you're hanging upside down for a little while which is pretty awesome. I just couldn't stop laughing on that one, you expect people to be screaming - a few did, but I'm hanging upside down in hysterics because it's so blimmen stupidly weird. It was funny.
The Bumper Boats were cool, apart from getting soaked. They sure are a ride for the more warmer months. We went out for dinner afterwards to Nando's then trekked our ways home again, leaving poor Bee in Auckland (I really couldn't live there!) and Sam drove Chantelle and I home back to a more northern part of the country. Sam got her Visa to go to California that morning, so it won't be long until she leaves us in September for her big study trip to the USA. It's gonna be sad to see her go.

But alas it is almost milking time again. I get to go out for an hour and a half and annoy Hamish with my sarcastic comments and jokes. I'm getting really fast in my aging youth, that I quite often spit out a funny remark without even really thinking about it. It's pretty funny. Then I've got days off again on Monday and Tuesday - a trip to town is in order on Tuesday with Mum, to get some things done and get my car repairs done at the same time.
Thinking forward, I've got Kurtis' 21st birthday party to go to in two weeks, then the wedding I'm going to a week after that on the 11th. As I'm sitting here with a shivering puppy on my knee, I'm getting more and more conscious of the fact that winter weddings aren't too clever. It's okay for guys, they'll all be wearing their suits or nice jeans and jackets. Girls with our nice dresses and shoes are going to freeze our toes off - I will hazard a guess that I'll come home with blimmen frostbitten toes. Ok, hehe, maybe not that bad, but it's gonna be cold!