Junk Free June 2016

I know I haven't mentioned it, but I've been doing Junk Free June again this year - you know, just because I can. Same as I did last year, not trying to get fundraising for it (I don't even know what the money goes towards...) but it's a good thing to do and test to see how well I do. So, basically I successfully avoided typical things I consider junk food; chocolate, lollies and the like. It's actually really easy. I started towards the end of May, so "technically" I've been going well over a month now and haven't had any failures to count, except for one.

We went to the Mystery Creek fieldays in early June, just Mum, Dad and I went for a bit of a day out of town. At one stage I went into the Waikato University tent and tried a random computer quiz on a whole heap of random rubbish, and the guy there told me to feel free to have a chocolate fish, one of those small marshmellow ones - so I did, out of some sort of polite obligation and by the time I'd realised what I had done it was too late!
So that was my only fail, and it wasn't a very nice fail either - apparently my going without that sort of thing for a few weeks had changed my taste bud opinion on it, which is a good thing!

I also went to the young farmers tent and they had a "hang a gate" in the fastest time challenge. It was more aimed toward the younger teenagers, however as one of the young farmers running the stand had had the only go, they told me to give it a shot. It was easy, just pick up a steel gate, carry it over and pop it on the hinges on the post. Put it this way the young farmer guy took about 16 seconds, I had never put a gate on hinges myself and I took 14 seconds. Which is, umm, a little too long - but you know how you're trying to balance the gate over both hinges and you're in a hurry. But I loved that I beat a guy at it - total score. Anyway they gave me a small bag of blue jelly beans, those ones that are a bubblegum flavour and I looked at them and sighed. Popped them in my handbag and left.

Later on in another area, for some unknown reason a girl was handing out little sample packs of lollies that somehow represented their stand, so in my handbag they went with the other lot and that is where they've stayed for about two weeks! I cart them around everywhere I go, during those horrid early morning starts where sometimes you just want a sugar boost and I didn't even touch them. How good am I?

Sometimes I've just had a really rubbish day where I sit on the couch and scowl as somebody eats a square of chocolate. Mum keeps saying, just have a piece, it won't kill you! I'm telling you, she can really be the devil on the shoulder type some days! But I'm like no, I can't and sort of stomped off in another direction. Knowing full well I'm doing so well at looking at something and saying no, end of story, so I give myself a mental pat on the back!

The wedding I went to earlier in the month was nice, the reception was a somewhat winter theme of blue and silver colours everywhere so it looked quite pretty. It was kinda cute because each person had three little Hershey's Kisses in the place settings. This girl I know through the young farmers was sitting beside me, quite literally staring down all the little chocolates that I wasn't eating. In the end she said, "Are you allergic to dairy?"
"No," I replied.
"Do you not like chocolate?" she asked.
That's when I realised she was sitting beside me, almost drooling while she stared at the chocolates that I was ignoring! Oh, right! Ok, yeah sure just go ahead and eat them, I told her. Gosh it was funny, she was stoked. Then she carried on in the same manner with the rest of the people at our table.

Life here is carrying on as per normal. We found out that young Nick had/has, Glandular Fever. The clever little people working in white lab coats somehow discovered that, now three weeks ago, he had had the Flu, which probably meant that Mum and I also had the Flu. We thought it was just a nasty common cold, but apparently we were wrong. But Nick got worse, had a slight case of pneumonia and blood tests eventually proved he had this Glandular fever. When Mum heard that she was like, oh no, he's going to be out for weeks. (I remember Xj having this a few years back and being sick from it forever - actually, come to think of it, didn't your doctor at the time tell you to eat chocolate, Xj?) But somehow Nick has bounced back from it quite well - we're surprised, and seems Ok these days.


However, life for some of our farming clients and friends isn't the most happiest place at the moment. One older guy - I say older and basically mean he looks to be in his 70's but is coming on 100 with all of the stress he's facing with staffing issues. We feel really stink for him and we're trying to do what we can to help him out, but at the same time he can't afford to pay us so doesn't know what to do. Dad's just giving him advice for now, but we're worried about him. His wife says he's so strung out that he can't sleep - which is not a good thing, I don't blame him though. It's a massive 600 cow farm that he owns and he just can't run it himself but can't find the staff to do it either.

While my friend has quit his job this week on the farm where he's just started his third year on(I think). At like 5:15 the next morning he's texting me, asking me what his boss was going to be like that day?  As if I would know! And saying how he'd never, ever quit a job before. Luckily for his sake I was also working that morning, so while I was in a hurry trying to get ready for work and getting myself out the door, I'm also trying to talk some sense into him and hoping like heck that I wouldn't get home in a couple hours to find that he had decided not to go to work at all. He's my next door neighbour, you see.
From what I've since heard, his boss was being extra friendly yesterday so all I can think is that my friend must've lost the plot completely and now his boss is trying to be good about it. I was a little dumbstruck when he told me he had quit, but I think he was even more shocked at what he had done. So it's going to be just brilliant doing relief milking on that farm come October when my friend finally leaves, because then I'll be working with another useless worker (no offense to farm workers, but you do get used to the people you get to work with, and these days all of the good farm candidates are all taken...)

Last night was fun, seeing as Andrew was sitting at good old Auckland airport waiting for his plane to leave for Israel, he was actually in cellphone reception. So I spent a few hours chatting to him and found out that he didn't actually like Finding Nemo, so therefore wasn't too keen on Finding Dory. And he'd never heard of The BFG - I seriously had to consider our friendship after that!

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