Wednesday was going great. Dad and Nick had gone in separate directions to spray gorse while I did a morning milking. I came home and got a heck of a lot done at home with Mum. Went to town, registered the dogs, did some groceries. Came home, ate hot cross buns for lunch (yum...lol) did some work around home, precooked a lasagne for dinner, among other things.
Then I decided to make a brownie, some for us and surprise our neighbour - who seems to like it a fair bit - with some too. However I was gutted to discover we had run out of coconut (so, so annoying after just having bought a few grocery items that morning...) so back to town I went - just a short trip this time, to buy some. I guess you could say that when I want to do something, I'm pretty determined to do it!
Life is great, I got home after listening to some funny story by the radio presenter, feeling amused, I opened the front door with a grin on my face - then I saw the look on Mum's face and mine dropped. She was in the lounge, looking horrified, pacing the room with her cellphone up to one ear and the landline at the other. Within a split second you know something has gone wrong - is it Dad, or Nick?
She's saying things like, "how far away is the ambulance?" and then to me, "It's Dad," then I suddenly realise and feel my hands starting to shake a bit. He's been stung by wasps. He's seriously allergic - called being anaphylactic - and it could kill him, very fast.
Mum is on the phone to 111 and to the person Dad has gone to for help. A lady is driving him as fast as possible to meet an ambulance half way to save time, and Dad later told us he thought he might die from a car accident instead - because the lady was so stressed out!
By now Nick has also found out, so he had to simply abandon his spray gear and get home asap to drive us to the hospital - there was no way Mum would be in any state to drive, let alone the motorway in peak hour traffic.
As time goes on we slowly peace together the information, Dad was happily spraying gorse - as you do, quite a way out of our normal district, but he decided to take the job anyway. There was no cellphone reception, so we hadn't heard from him all day. That morning a neighbour to the property he was working on asked if he could come over sometime to have a look at some work there too - the people seemed friendly enough so he figured he'd have a quick look then, before starting work.
Sometime in the late afternoon he suddenly came across wasps, one flew into the sleeve of his shirt and stung him multiple times before he managed to get it out. Then others came and stung him on the head.
He said he couldn't do anything but stand there and take it - thinking, oh crap. The more you move around the more likely they will attack even worse. Once he'd gotten away from them (I can't believe this) he grabbed a couple antihistamines to slow the reaction down, packed up his spray gear onto his ute (in quite a state of panic now), jumped into the ute and hightailed it to the people he had spoken with earlier. Where he asked them to call an ambulance, call Mum and help him. They called Mum, and she called the ambulance for them, by now they're in the car and on the road at very high speed, where they eventually met an ambulance at an intersection that was waiting for them.
They had helped him with some adrenaline medication, opening the vial (he doesn't use an epipen) and drawing it up so that he could administer it. Looking at the needle and syringe, the poor people were ghostly white and couldn't watch him stab it into his leg. Except that he took too much, he thought you needed 1ml of it, but you're only meant to have half of that - so his heart rate skyrocketed and his whole body got the shakes.
It was about 6pm by the time we got to the hospital in Auckland, you're constantly not knowing what's going on and hoping like heck that he doesn't drop back into a secondary reaction - like he did last time, a few years back. Nick and I dropped Mum off at the emergency entrance, then tried to figure out how and where we could park, it is seriously confusing in there.
But when we arrived Dad was, thankfully, sitting up and happy, although he was in the bed right outside the nurses station in ED. I guess you could say, happy as you could be after you've been stung 6 or more times, overdosed on adrenaline, getting one scary car ride and then a ride in an ambo, then getting to sit in a bed wearing a beautiful hospital gown...that has "Hospital Property" stamped all over it, just in case someone wanted to steal it.
He had to stay put for observation, with a drip and blood pressure monitors and everything attached, and eventually we were moved into the "Observation" ward, where we were promptly forgotten about - although they all deny that. He needed to stay put until six hours were up - that's the time frame you can relapse in, so we all sat and waited for 10:30pm to roll around, so we could soon go home. As I said, they forgot about us. What seemed like the main charge-nurse was an absolute horror and they all claimed they are understaffed. We kept trying to get some attention - Dad's drip is empty and still hooked up, is that a problem? Can we see someone? Is anyone coming any time soon?
Each person we saw looked at us, averted eye contact and said that they couldn't help us but they would be 'right back', or 'would send someone who knew' or, 'some other lame excuse', before quickly leaving in the other direction.
They failed by putting us in a thoroughfare, because we always saw them. I guess to them we looked like dogs in a pound - looking up with those little puppy eyes, but the people adopting can't adopt every one of them and is looking for someone in particular, so they don't stay in the vicinity for very long so as not to gain any unwanted attention. You know how it goes, if you're not currently on death's door, they don't want to know.
It was after 11pm when Mum started stamping her feet, Dad's in pain, we're all dead on our feet, Nick and I needed to be at work in a few hours and they all kept promising someone would come, who never did. They said 10:30 was the cut off time, it was over an hour past that, what was going on?
So miss grumpy scary charge-nurse eventually came, as did the earlier doctor he saw. They muttered a few things, she yanked out the lure in his arm, and almost threw us out the door. Nick and I had lost where we had parked the ute, (underground but not really underground carparks are confusing). We were finally home by 1am, eyeballs falling out.
Nick had to be up again at 4:30 and me at 6, so Thursday was a really long, hard day for us all. But everyone was still very much alive - thank goodness. That's the important part.
What was interesting was the things that had happened throughout the day. Like, when Mum and I were out and about I had to quickly call *555 on my cellphone while Mum was driving because there was someone driving through the main road of our town in a very dangerous manner. I later said that I wouldn't often call anyone off my phone, so to quickly try and dial a number I sort of froze - not quite knowing where to go to do it.
Put in the password, click the phone icon, click contacts, no - that's not right, eventually I found the keypad and eventually got into the system, but it took so long. I realised after that that you can just tap "emergency" rather than putting in your password, and it instantly goes to the keypad while also bringing up the option to look at your medical ID. An iPhone gimmick that Mum didn't know about, and not many people do so that in an emergency someone can get your name, medical and next of kin information if they can't get into the phone. So that night we mentioned it to Dad and he and Mum filled theirs in, as they never knew about it.
We also saw through Facebook on a town page that fire engines and ambos were heading, lights and siren, along the road that Nick was working on - he also hadn't been in contact all day, but we soon found that he was fine anyway after we called him.
And Mum, with her scary intuition, had had a song playing in her head recently - a "Farewell" song she said they sung at school - and she knew something was going to happen so she had been keeping a really close eye on what was happening. It just so happened that we hadn't been able to contact Dad, and she admitted she would've only been concerned at about 8 o'clock that night - he could've possibly been lying on the ground for hours and no-one knew where he was or how to find him. It's scary to think about and scary to think about how much we've come to rely on technology to tell us that everyone is OK.
Saturday, 2 April 2016
Tuesday, 29 March 2016
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.
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.
Saturday, 19 March 2016
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
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
Monday, 7 March 2016
One Three Frow
We've got this, I dunno, concrete patio I guess you could call it. It's out the back of our house, probably 8 by 10 metres - or, something like that. But it's great, we've got a retaining wall and a nice lawn about a metre and a half above it. The lawn slopes down on one side of the concrete, as does the retaining with some 6 by 2 boards on top, therefore making a brilliant little spot for me to sit on!
I don't like sitting on the outside chairs, as they've got a bad habit of providing a bed and breakfast arrangement for spiders, so finding me sitting on one of them would be a seriously uncommon occurrence.
Anyway, this is where I'm sitting now, convenient having a laptop, I just go into the office, finally manage to hook up to the wifi, load this page and then come out here and type. I don't usually bring said laptop out here as I'm hardly using it these days. But this little posse is perfect when Jackson is running around outside, chasing or being chased by Pippa. Except for the problem is that Pippa will launch herself off the retaining and Jackson often nearly follows - this is fine, except if he were to jump he would just as quickly break his little legs. It's a bit of a game we all play now, he thinks it's jolly great, I on the other hand, do not.
It's funny, with the change over from February to March, the weather has suddenly done a 180. It's like, 7:45 ish, at the moment and by 8:30 it'll be pitch black, it's chilly too. I used to sit out here until about 10pm some nights, mostly just to get some time by myself but also to cool down a bit from the humidity. Summer this year was blimmen weird!
But now, I'm thinking my fingers better hurry up and get this written because I'm starting to get cold. Winter will be icy this year, me thinks :)
I've two more milkings tomorrow, then finally I'm getting three days off from Wednesday. I've been going straight for two weeks or so now, which is OK, but I'm getting bored of leaving the house prior to 5am, all I want is to sleep past 6! lol. That was my dream last Tuesday morning when I woke up, knowing I would have last Wednesday and Thursday to myself, thinking that all I wanted to do was get a slightly longer sleep. AND then, that night, the eve of my "weekend off", the phone rang. My neighbour is sick, so could I cover for him on the farm he works on? It's not a bad shed, it's quite pleasant milking there actually and I don't often get the pleasure of going there, so I was fine with it. The joke, 6am cups on, hallelujah I can sleep past 5!! Haha
They called again on Wednesday night so I covered for him Thursday morning too, bye-bye sleep in for another week, but he's my neighbour and the farmers are nice people, I don't mind helping them all out a bit.
Fingers crossed, there is no repeat though, I really, really am getting tired. And the issue is that my body clock will wake me nice and early on Wednesday morning. It's a shame, really...
Thursday was the start of the Northland Fieldays, held annually in Dargaville. It's a decent drive for us, but we try to go most years. I didn't even look around this year, I just walked my way through the "streets" and found the northern young farmers site and helped out there for two or three hours. The weather was pretty blimmen perfect, you couldn't have asked for a better day to be quite honest. And it had rained a few days prior, so there wasn't as much dust as usual - thankfully.
The young farmers, that was a fun time. One of our more engineer based members, built a dunk-tank, just for the occasion. I'll add some pictures once I get some internet soon. Basically, it's an old calf milk vat, with a seat for someone to sit on. People throw balls at the target on a massive board (it's really hard to hit it, believe me, I tried!), and when they do hit said target - to say it lightly, the seat tips forward and the victim (hehe) falls in and gets drenched.
Punters think it's awesome when one of our members fall in, and the crowds it was pulling in was phenomenal! Suddenly there were massive groups of people watching in awe as balls fly through the air, I dunno it was just a massive attraction that the fieldays has never seen before. When I was a kid, the most exciting thing I could do was run around with Nick getting freebies. There was nothing majorly exciting like that! And these days there are no freebies.
A couple of us would shout out "One Free Throw", but we were getting seriously tongue-tied and said one three frow most of the time, I don't think anyone noticed. Some people sorta stopped and stared, but they weren't keen on having a try, but as more and more punters go into it, these onlookers suddenly got the urge to try it too. Then they would want another go, and we would disappoint them and state that they had to now pay - $2 for one more throw or $5 for five more throws. On the first day, we made about $250 from the dunk tank.
However there were a couple mishaps, especially when there was a slight language barrier between an Asian guy and I. He was older, and a little excited. I said, "Throw it at the target". "Where?!?! At her?" (pointing at Meredith who was on the tank at the time) At the target! "huh?" The flying pig on the board! Suddenly he threw the ball, at Meredith. I was gobsmacked, she ducked thankfully and looked horrified, looking at me like, what the HECK just happened?!? He just did the typical "oh, oh, oh, no english" sort of stutter and off he went giggling away, he knew exactly what he had done. There were also a couple little kids who were out of control. We would let them stand about a metre away from the board to have a go - adults were about three metres away -, but one kid grabbed the ball off me and just let loose aye. I have not a clue what to do when that happens lol, he ran up to the board and forced the ball against the target and released poor Will who was up there at the time. He might've been about 4? 5? Little tyke had an evil grin on his face and his mother was mortified, as was Will but he just sorta laughed it off, as you do.
It worked out, over the entire three days of fieldays we pulled in about $1000 more or less and now YF Head Office have asked to hire the dunk tank for the National Fieldays this year. We could make so much money off it, totally make all the other regions jealous of our brilliant creation, make a whole heap of victim members freeze to death in the middle of winter, and provide a heck load of entertainment for the punters. If the want to see people get wet in summer, they'll definitely want people to get wet in winter. Humans are evil creatures, haha.
The funny thing was that good old Winston Peters was walking the streets with another politcal person, of sorts. We managed to pull him over, make him throw the ball and then got a picture of him with us too. I don't believe that he really was that interested, but I guess he realised he didn't have much of a choice since he is part of the Government and all that, he has to give people time from his day if they ask. So that was pretty funny. I never ended up asking him what flag he was going to vote for though, bit of a bummer, that.
I don't like sitting on the outside chairs, as they've got a bad habit of providing a bed and breakfast arrangement for spiders, so finding me sitting on one of them would be a seriously uncommon occurrence.
Anyway, this is where I'm sitting now, convenient having a laptop, I just go into the office, finally manage to hook up to the wifi, load this page and then come out here and type. I don't usually bring said laptop out here as I'm hardly using it these days. But this little posse is perfect when Jackson is running around outside, chasing or being chased by Pippa. Except for the problem is that Pippa will launch herself off the retaining and Jackson often nearly follows - this is fine, except if he were to jump he would just as quickly break his little legs. It's a bit of a game we all play now, he thinks it's jolly great, I on the other hand, do not.
It's funny, with the change over from February to March, the weather has suddenly done a 180. It's like, 7:45 ish, at the moment and by 8:30 it'll be pitch black, it's chilly too. I used to sit out here until about 10pm some nights, mostly just to get some time by myself but also to cool down a bit from the humidity. Summer this year was blimmen weird!
But now, I'm thinking my fingers better hurry up and get this written because I'm starting to get cold. Winter will be icy this year, me thinks :)
I've two more milkings tomorrow, then finally I'm getting three days off from Wednesday. I've been going straight for two weeks or so now, which is OK, but I'm getting bored of leaving the house prior to 5am, all I want is to sleep past 6! lol. That was my dream last Tuesday morning when I woke up, knowing I would have last Wednesday and Thursday to myself, thinking that all I wanted to do was get a slightly longer sleep. AND then, that night, the eve of my "weekend off", the phone rang. My neighbour is sick, so could I cover for him on the farm he works on? It's not a bad shed, it's quite pleasant milking there actually and I don't often get the pleasure of going there, so I was fine with it. The joke, 6am cups on, hallelujah I can sleep past 5!! Haha
They called again on Wednesday night so I covered for him Thursday morning too, bye-bye sleep in for another week, but he's my neighbour and the farmers are nice people, I don't mind helping them all out a bit.
Fingers crossed, there is no repeat though, I really, really am getting tired. And the issue is that my body clock will wake me nice and early on Wednesday morning. It's a shame, really...
Thursday was the start of the Northland Fieldays, held annually in Dargaville. It's a decent drive for us, but we try to go most years. I didn't even look around this year, I just walked my way through the "streets" and found the northern young farmers site and helped out there for two or three hours. The weather was pretty blimmen perfect, you couldn't have asked for a better day to be quite honest. And it had rained a few days prior, so there wasn't as much dust as usual - thankfully.
The young farmers, that was a fun time. One of our more engineer based members, built a dunk-tank, just for the occasion. I'll add some pictures once I get some internet soon. Basically, it's an old calf milk vat, with a seat for someone to sit on. People throw balls at the target on a massive board (it's really hard to hit it, believe me, I tried!), and when they do hit said target - to say it lightly, the seat tips forward and the victim (hehe) falls in and gets drenched.
Punters think it's awesome when one of our members fall in, and the crowds it was pulling in was phenomenal! Suddenly there were massive groups of people watching in awe as balls fly through the air, I dunno it was just a massive attraction that the fieldays has never seen before. When I was a kid, the most exciting thing I could do was run around with Nick getting freebies. There was nothing majorly exciting like that! And these days there are no freebies.
A couple of us would shout out "One Free Throw", but we were getting seriously tongue-tied and said one three frow most of the time, I don't think anyone noticed. Some people sorta stopped and stared, but they weren't keen on having a try, but as more and more punters go into it, these onlookers suddenly got the urge to try it too. Then they would want another go, and we would disappoint them and state that they had to now pay - $2 for one more throw or $5 for five more throws. On the first day, we made about $250 from the dunk tank.
However there were a couple mishaps, especially when there was a slight language barrier between an Asian guy and I. He was older, and a little excited. I said, "Throw it at the target". "Where?!?! At her?" (pointing at Meredith who was on the tank at the time) At the target! "huh?" The flying pig on the board! Suddenly he threw the ball, at Meredith. I was gobsmacked, she ducked thankfully and looked horrified, looking at me like, what the HECK just happened?!? He just did the typical "oh, oh, oh, no english" sort of stutter and off he went giggling away, he knew exactly what he had done. There were also a couple little kids who were out of control. We would let them stand about a metre away from the board to have a go - adults were about three metres away -, but one kid grabbed the ball off me and just let loose aye. I have not a clue what to do when that happens lol, he ran up to the board and forced the ball against the target and released poor Will who was up there at the time. He might've been about 4? 5? Little tyke had an evil grin on his face and his mother was mortified, as was Will but he just sorta laughed it off, as you do.
It worked out, over the entire three days of fieldays we pulled in about $1000 more or less and now YF Head Office have asked to hire the dunk tank for the National Fieldays this year. We could make so much money off it, totally make all the other regions jealous of our brilliant creation, make a whole heap of victim members freeze to death in the middle of winter, and provide a heck load of entertainment for the punters. If the want to see people get wet in summer, they'll definitely want people to get wet in winter. Humans are evil creatures, haha.
The funny thing was that good old Winston Peters was walking the streets with another politcal person, of sorts. We managed to pull him over, make him throw the ball and then got a picture of him with us too. I don't believe that he really was that interested, but I guess he realised he didn't have much of a choice since he is part of the Government and all that, he has to give people time from his day if they ask. So that was pretty funny. I never ended up asking him what flag he was going to vote for though, bit of a bummer, that.
Thursday, 25 February 2016
Course: Completed. Next level unlocked!
What can I say? I'm finished my course! Yippee, level 4 Dairy/Ag all done and dusted, finally after this year long course it's nice to see myself getting a break for the next couple months. Yep, I probably could've gotten it finished sooner, but procrastination is my best friend - or frienemy? And leads by a bad example. Anyway. It sure was nice to put the last two assignments in the post box today, yep there might be a chance they might not quite pass, they were probably the most confusing assignments I've done but if they need modifying in a couple weeks when they come back, they do. I'm not too worried.
In the meantime, this is like recess! I'm giving myself a couple months of "me" time, no study just anything. My plans? Well Bee got me this really neat CakePop maker thing for my birthday that I've seriously been meaning to try out, but just haven't had any spare time, so next week sometime that is going to be on the list of "to do's"! That and those recipe books Mum and Dad got me for Christmas, all on baking and chocolate - Mum and I need to rally together and get into some baking and try out some new recipes. Should be fun :)
Mum's recently been down to Rotorua, Dad and I did the trip down there on the 15th, basically got down there at about 9:30pm and turned around and went back home again straight away after dropping Mum at Nana's. The idea was for her to be down there for Grandad's anniversary. So she was down there a few days until Dad picked her up again on Thursday.
The trip back was, interesting. Dad was super tired but obviously I couldn't drive - after not having driven a 6 speed manual before, let alone that ute, I wasn't too keen on taking over - not that he was going to let me, or ever will! But, we got lost in Auckland! At midnight! There was a detour as they'd shut the motorway, which was all well and good. They'd put out detour signs and saying what direction you wanted to go in for north, south, or west - until the signs just, stopped. Gee, thanks guys for assuming everyone passing through will know inner city Auckland like the back of their hand. -_-. So, around we went and somehow managed to get ourselves on the southern motorway again. Simply looking at google maps wasn't helpful, so Dad called up Siri - the iPhone assistant. "Take me home, Siri!" She's figured out our address, who knows how, I'd hate to think?! :/ and can direct you when you're lost, so that's helpful. Except that she doesn't factor in roadworks or detour signs. SHE was the one who got us onto the southern motorway.
Once we got back onto the detour, dearest Siri sounded pretty sarcastic with her directions as if she thought it was a marvelous joke, the detour signs had ended probably because there was writing in certain lanes, directing you to specific motorways. What's wrong with overhead signage or something?! Anyway, it took us a good half an hour to get back onto the motorway at the right place, and we must've gotten home about 1:30, quarter to two. Thank goodness I wasn't milking the next morning....
But things have been busy, work is coming out of our eyeballs, which is good. But it is a slightly uncomfortable situation, you know, posts have a bad habit of splintering and having them go through one's eyeballs isn't pleasant...Dad has recently redone/built/upstyled one of our trailers which took a good week worth of work between him and Nick. I have to say, it looks blimmen awesome! Much more useful than the previous one and much more user friendly too. To think, that originally my parents got an Auckland trailer building crowd to build this 4.5m trailer for them - but it was basically made of nothing, I've no clue how it has hauled as much as it has over these last 8 years or so...Only problem is, the first day using the upgraded one, Dad almost broke his leg!
The sides are framed up and half the height has ply, but the top half is open - a perfect size for a leg even. He and Nick were unloading posts, while Dad stood on some strainers that were also on the trailer, something happened, Nick dropped the post, Dad tried to catch it, the strainers rolled and then suddenly his leg was hanging out the side of the trailer. Oops, ouch, couple pulled muscles but thankfully nothing broken... o.O Better not be doing that again, I think he's gonna make a few amendments...
I'm getting plenty of milkings to keep me happy, all this week coming in fact, are only once a day milkings as many farmers have gone once a day, regrettably but I don't mind not having to milk in the heat and I'm sure the cows aren't too concerned either! Although that is good in itself now that I've finished my study I'll be back into helping with fencing, tomorrow I'm battening with Dad. Yay! Hopefully I'll be able to help speed them up a bit, even slightly. We've got so much fencing work it's not funny and get more phone calls every day...I think we're booked until mid April. Fun stuff!
In other news, I've decided to join the group of Young Farmers from our region and head on down to the Grand Final Young Farmer of the Year competition. This year it'll be in Timaru about mid July for three full on days, so I'm booking five days off to allow for the traveling down. From what I've heard of Grand Final, for the spectators it's pretty cool. There's lots of additional things, not just the typical competing of the competitors, there's a few other competitions too, like a photography competition that I'm entering a few photos in, and a tug of war competition, fencing competition, claybird competition etc etc etc, even Agri Kids and Teen Ags are competing too, the best teams from each region just like the Young Farmers. There's all sorts of stuff to do, Mystery bus trips, big black tie dinners, all sorts of cool stuff that you just need to go to if you wanna be a full on Young Farmer member. That, and they're also planning some major changes, so I want to experience the original experience before missing the boat...much like the flag debate. Hmm.
In the meantime, this is like recess! I'm giving myself a couple months of "me" time, no study just anything. My plans? Well Bee got me this really neat CakePop maker thing for my birthday that I've seriously been meaning to try out, but just haven't had any spare time, so next week sometime that is going to be on the list of "to do's"! That and those recipe books Mum and Dad got me for Christmas, all on baking and chocolate - Mum and I need to rally together and get into some baking and try out some new recipes. Should be fun :)
Mum's recently been down to Rotorua, Dad and I did the trip down there on the 15th, basically got down there at about 9:30pm and turned around and went back home again straight away after dropping Mum at Nana's. The idea was for her to be down there for Grandad's anniversary. So she was down there a few days until Dad picked her up again on Thursday.
The trip back was, interesting. Dad was super tired but obviously I couldn't drive - after not having driven a 6 speed manual before, let alone that ute, I wasn't too keen on taking over - not that he was going to let me, or ever will! But, we got lost in Auckland! At midnight! There was a detour as they'd shut the motorway, which was all well and good. They'd put out detour signs and saying what direction you wanted to go in for north, south, or west - until the signs just, stopped. Gee, thanks guys for assuming everyone passing through will know inner city Auckland like the back of their hand. -_-. So, around we went and somehow managed to get ourselves on the southern motorway again. Simply looking at google maps wasn't helpful, so Dad called up Siri - the iPhone assistant. "Take me home, Siri!" She's figured out our address, who knows how, I'd hate to think?! :/ and can direct you when you're lost, so that's helpful. Except that she doesn't factor in roadworks or detour signs. SHE was the one who got us onto the southern motorway.
Once we got back onto the detour, dearest Siri sounded pretty sarcastic with her directions as if she thought it was a marvelous joke, the detour signs had ended probably because there was writing in certain lanes, directing you to specific motorways. What's wrong with overhead signage or something?! Anyway, it took us a good half an hour to get back onto the motorway at the right place, and we must've gotten home about 1:30, quarter to two. Thank goodness I wasn't milking the next morning....
But things have been busy, work is coming out of our eyeballs, which is good. But it is a slightly uncomfortable situation, you know, posts have a bad habit of splintering and having them go through one's eyeballs isn't pleasant...Dad has recently redone/built/upstyled one of our trailers which took a good week worth of work between him and Nick. I have to say, it looks blimmen awesome! Much more useful than the previous one and much more user friendly too. To think, that originally my parents got an Auckland trailer building crowd to build this 4.5m trailer for them - but it was basically made of nothing, I've no clue how it has hauled as much as it has over these last 8 years or so...Only problem is, the first day using the upgraded one, Dad almost broke his leg!
The sides are framed up and half the height has ply, but the top half is open - a perfect size for a leg even. He and Nick were unloading posts, while Dad stood on some strainers that were also on the trailer, something happened, Nick dropped the post, Dad tried to catch it, the strainers rolled and then suddenly his leg was hanging out the side of the trailer. Oops, ouch, couple pulled muscles but thankfully nothing broken... o.O Better not be doing that again, I think he's gonna make a few amendments...
I'm getting plenty of milkings to keep me happy, all this week coming in fact, are only once a day milkings as many farmers have gone once a day, regrettably but I don't mind not having to milk in the heat and I'm sure the cows aren't too concerned either! Although that is good in itself now that I've finished my study I'll be back into helping with fencing, tomorrow I'm battening with Dad. Yay! Hopefully I'll be able to help speed them up a bit, even slightly. We've got so much fencing work it's not funny and get more phone calls every day...I think we're booked until mid April. Fun stuff!
In other news, I've decided to join the group of Young Farmers from our region and head on down to the Grand Final Young Farmer of the Year competition. This year it'll be in Timaru about mid July for three full on days, so I'm booking five days off to allow for the traveling down. From what I've heard of Grand Final, for the spectators it's pretty cool. There's lots of additional things, not just the typical competing of the competitors, there's a few other competitions too, like a photography competition that I'm entering a few photos in, and a tug of war competition, fencing competition, claybird competition etc etc etc, even Agri Kids and Teen Ags are competing too, the best teams from each region just like the Young Farmers. There's all sorts of stuff to do, Mystery bus trips, big black tie dinners, all sorts of cool stuff that you just need to go to if you wanna be a full on Young Farmer member. That, and they're also planning some major changes, so I want to experience the original experience before missing the boat...much like the flag debate. Hmm.
Saturday, 13 February 2016
2016: Zooming On Past
It's been a whole year since my Pippa arrived! So, I sorta celebrated her birthday today, actually well yes and no. I didn't wrap her up in a birthday suit, but I gave her a little more attention than normal.
Actually I wandered out to the compost bin today, via the garden and discovered a good handful of beautifully red strawberries - honestly I would say they're the best looking ones we've had all season. Then turned around and realised how many tomatoes were ready, I kid you not, the tomato plants basically died and we pretty much gave up on them. Now we're inundated with these massive tomatoes of a few different varieties, so much so that without my neighbour Sam, knowing, I dropped some off at his house on my way to work the other week - then texted him to say they were there. So I kinda didn't give him the opportunity to say no, lol, the tomatoes needed a home!!
It's funny really, tomatoes are the one thing in our garden that I eat and always have eaten, without a second thought. So long as they're red, I'll chuck 'em on anything. Everything else I'm concerned about bugs and slugs being inside them somewhere....lol. Yeah I'm kinda living off tomatoes at the moment, there are worse things to be eating!
Anyway, we've also got a whole heap of buttercup pumpkins growing, another lot of seedlings that we left in their pots and never got around to planting them out properly, until one day I kinda went a little mental and said it's ridiculous growing things if we're not gonna actually give them a fighting chance. (It was more the fact that the garden was already overburdened and we didn't really know where to put them!) So into a garden they went, and I had the brilliant idea of putting the lawn clippings around them to keep them moist, well, now they're going ballistic and are known as "Kayger's buttercups" haha. I keep pulling off the unnecessary flowers but today I realised how many massive bumble bees were in there, so I grabbed my phone and took heaps of photos. The Young Farmer Grand Final contest includes a photography section in the awards, among other things where you can put your club and region out there a bit more in front of the nation, so I'm gonna enter a few categories and see what happens. Zooming in on bumble bees inside massive yellow flowers is pretty fun!
But Pippa was helping me so I got some of her too....and then she and her buddy Jackson chilled out under the barbeque.
Life is, pretty basic these days. They say we'll get hit with a cyclone...maybe. They say the humidity will pass, lol that's a Tui ad! I got nicely tanned up again yesterday while I helped Dad and Nick with some fencing, I'm very lucky (touch wood) to have not gotten overly burnt this year - just a nice, crisp brown. The weather is painfully hot at midday, which is typically when you want to be out of the sun, but that's when we're working in it. Lovely. And milking in this heat certainly isn't pleasant either, what with the heat, humidity and a few hundred massive cows crammed into a concreted area with concrete walls surrounding you, plenty of sun gets through (especially with that skylight plastic roofing) but hardly any air-flow, yep, it's great.
But I'm not complaining, the work is good. It's taken me a bit to get back into the swing of it, but these days it's easy to get up just after 4am, as once I'm up I'm generally awake. If I have the odd sleep in here and there I wake up at the same time anyway, go back to sleep and wake up after 7 feeling worse. Fantastic! No, work is good.
Trying to get my assignments done is more of a problem, as these days I'm filling myself up on antihistamines to stop the sneezing, which then makes me sleepy, which then makes reading particularly difficult. I really shouldn't do this to myself, leave most of my study to the last month and a half, but it's painfully boring!!
What's worse is that this is my last lot of the course, thus needing to be finalised by end of February. One assignment completed and sent away, one lot of reading material almost finished and one assignment half completed which is now at a standstill as they missed out a heap of information in the reading material (quite literally, half a sentence and then a blank page) which is needed in the assessment and I've absolutely no clue how to do it. Waiting for them to get back to me. Ha!
I've also recently discovered that the next course I plan to do - Agribusiness Management Level 5, is in fact just another "certificate" qualification, not the Diploma I thought it was, and it's basically a lead in teaching on being self employed. Which, I dunno. I kinda feel the need to keep on studying while I'm young, but then I also don't want to spend $700 on another year long course (I admit, it's cheap really) if it's not what I want to learn and will I get anything out of it anyway? Argh, decisions. I don't want to look like one of those people who spends a lot of time and money doing things that might come in handy, when really on a C.V. it just shows that I'm one of those people who has no clue what to do and has the potential to be yet another 'career changer'. Meh, no clue, whatsoever.
In saying that, I'm going to apply for an exchange trip to Scotland for June/July in 2017. The Young Farmers organise the exchange for one accepted Young Farmer member, and (so far) provide $500 towards the costs and farming host families in Scotland cover your accommodation expenses. Well I don't know all that much about it, other than the fact it's a 6 week exchange trip where you meet with heaps of other young farmers in that general area, you get hosted on farms and you get to learn about their ways, and such forth. Scotland is somewhere I've always wanted to go, so I'm determined to apply and hopefully meet the criteria as best I can - with the intention of getting over there before I'm 25 (if I don't get accepted in the first couple years of applying). I looked at one of the previous years' applications of the guy who was accepted and he seemed to be a real industry 'big-wig', I guess is the best way to describe him (out of admiration, rather than being judgmental).
He had worked his way up in his farming career, heaps of qualifications and within the Young Farmers club and region he was involved in, he'd had a lot of roles in the executive committee, and such. So I figured, okay, looks like you have to be pretty awesome to be given the opportunity, thus I started planning.
We had our young farmers regional AGM on Tuesday night, where all the new executive committee members are elected for our region, I had previously been put up for Secretary but unfortunately didn't get enough votes. I thought, if I can go up in the roles each year and prove myself as a willing, hard working, fully involved member then it will increase my chances. But I did get my Publicity Officer role back again partly I think, because it's one of those roles where nobody else wants to do it, and partly because I showed last year that I was more than capable of getting things done well in a timely fashion. So, yeah ok, kinda bummed that I was beaten to the post of secretary again, but hey - sitting typing minutes and not really being part of a meeting is kinda lame anyway!
However, Duncan, a guy from the national Head Office was there on the night, he mentioned the exchange trip (mostly because a Scottish lass or lad will be coming over here and will need to bunnyhop between member's farms across the country for 6 weeks), so I asked him about it later on. Apparently, so it seems, in a good year only three (yes, 3) people apply for the trip. THREE?! WHAT?! So my chances of getting in are exceptionally high, not only but also, the criteria is simply to be a good member of young farmers - heard straight from the horses' mouth. Like, huh? Duncan basically said to just get in and apply, definitely. But perhaps give it a couple years as he was working on the young farmer big wigs to provide more money, such as to cover the airfares at least.
I mean, wow OK. Here I was thinking I needed to push, push, push, get good work references and look good in the club and all that. Now here is something to definitely look forward to!
Actually I wandered out to the compost bin today, via the garden and discovered a good handful of beautifully red strawberries - honestly I would say they're the best looking ones we've had all season. Then turned around and realised how many tomatoes were ready, I kid you not, the tomato plants basically died and we pretty much gave up on them. Now we're inundated with these massive tomatoes of a few different varieties, so much so that without my neighbour Sam, knowing, I dropped some off at his house on my way to work the other week - then texted him to say they were there. So I kinda didn't give him the opportunity to say no, lol, the tomatoes needed a home!!
It's funny really, tomatoes are the one thing in our garden that I eat and always have eaten, without a second thought. So long as they're red, I'll chuck 'em on anything. Everything else I'm concerned about bugs and slugs being inside them somewhere....lol. Yeah I'm kinda living off tomatoes at the moment, there are worse things to be eating!
Anyway, we've also got a whole heap of buttercup pumpkins growing, another lot of seedlings that we left in their pots and never got around to planting them out properly, until one day I kinda went a little mental and said it's ridiculous growing things if we're not gonna actually give them a fighting chance. (It was more the fact that the garden was already overburdened and we didn't really know where to put them!) So into a garden they went, and I had the brilliant idea of putting the lawn clippings around them to keep them moist, well, now they're going ballistic and are known as "Kayger's buttercups" haha. I keep pulling off the unnecessary flowers but today I realised how many massive bumble bees were in there, so I grabbed my phone and took heaps of photos. The Young Farmer Grand Final contest includes a photography section in the awards, among other things where you can put your club and region out there a bit more in front of the nation, so I'm gonna enter a few categories and see what happens. Zooming in on bumble bees inside massive yellow flowers is pretty fun!
But Pippa was helping me so I got some of her too....and then she and her buddy Jackson chilled out under the barbeque.
Life is, pretty basic these days. They say we'll get hit with a cyclone...maybe. They say the humidity will pass, lol that's a Tui ad! I got nicely tanned up again yesterday while I helped Dad and Nick with some fencing, I'm very lucky (touch wood) to have not gotten overly burnt this year - just a nice, crisp brown. The weather is painfully hot at midday, which is typically when you want to be out of the sun, but that's when we're working in it. Lovely. And milking in this heat certainly isn't pleasant either, what with the heat, humidity and a few hundred massive cows crammed into a concreted area with concrete walls surrounding you, plenty of sun gets through (especially with that skylight plastic roofing) but hardly any air-flow, yep, it's great.
But I'm not complaining, the work is good. It's taken me a bit to get back into the swing of it, but these days it's easy to get up just after 4am, as once I'm up I'm generally awake. If I have the odd sleep in here and there I wake up at the same time anyway, go back to sleep and wake up after 7 feeling worse. Fantastic! No, work is good.
Trying to get my assignments done is more of a problem, as these days I'm filling myself up on antihistamines to stop the sneezing, which then makes me sleepy, which then makes reading particularly difficult. I really shouldn't do this to myself, leave most of my study to the last month and a half, but it's painfully boring!!
What's worse is that this is my last lot of the course, thus needing to be finalised by end of February. One assignment completed and sent away, one lot of reading material almost finished and one assignment half completed which is now at a standstill as they missed out a heap of information in the reading material (quite literally, half a sentence and then a blank page) which is needed in the assessment and I've absolutely no clue how to do it. Waiting for them to get back to me. Ha!
I've also recently discovered that the next course I plan to do - Agribusiness Management Level 5, is in fact just another "certificate" qualification, not the Diploma I thought it was, and it's basically a lead in teaching on being self employed. Which, I dunno. I kinda feel the need to keep on studying while I'm young, but then I also don't want to spend $700 on another year long course (I admit, it's cheap really) if it's not what I want to learn and will I get anything out of it anyway? Argh, decisions. I don't want to look like one of those people who spends a lot of time and money doing things that might come in handy, when really on a C.V. it just shows that I'm one of those people who has no clue what to do and has the potential to be yet another 'career changer'. Meh, no clue, whatsoever.
In saying that, I'm going to apply for an exchange trip to Scotland for June/July in 2017. The Young Farmers organise the exchange for one accepted Young Farmer member, and (so far) provide $500 towards the costs and farming host families in Scotland cover your accommodation expenses. Well I don't know all that much about it, other than the fact it's a 6 week exchange trip where you meet with heaps of other young farmers in that general area, you get hosted on farms and you get to learn about their ways, and such forth. Scotland is somewhere I've always wanted to go, so I'm determined to apply and hopefully meet the criteria as best I can - with the intention of getting over there before I'm 25 (if I don't get accepted in the first couple years of applying). I looked at one of the previous years' applications of the guy who was accepted and he seemed to be a real industry 'big-wig', I guess is the best way to describe him (out of admiration, rather than being judgmental).
He had worked his way up in his farming career, heaps of qualifications and within the Young Farmers club and region he was involved in, he'd had a lot of roles in the executive committee, and such. So I figured, okay, looks like you have to be pretty awesome to be given the opportunity, thus I started planning.
We had our young farmers regional AGM on Tuesday night, where all the new executive committee members are elected for our region, I had previously been put up for Secretary but unfortunately didn't get enough votes. I thought, if I can go up in the roles each year and prove myself as a willing, hard working, fully involved member then it will increase my chances. But I did get my Publicity Officer role back again partly I think, because it's one of those roles where nobody else wants to do it, and partly because I showed last year that I was more than capable of getting things done well in a timely fashion. So, yeah ok, kinda bummed that I was beaten to the post of secretary again, but hey - sitting typing minutes and not really being part of a meeting is kinda lame anyway!
However, Duncan, a guy from the national Head Office was there on the night, he mentioned the exchange trip (mostly because a Scottish lass or lad will be coming over here and will need to bunnyhop between member's farms across the country for 6 weeks), so I asked him about it later on. Apparently, so it seems, in a good year only three (yes, 3) people apply for the trip. THREE?! WHAT?! So my chances of getting in are exceptionally high, not only but also, the criteria is simply to be a good member of young farmers - heard straight from the horses' mouth. Like, huh? Duncan basically said to just get in and apply, definitely. But perhaps give it a couple years as he was working on the young farmer big wigs to provide more money, such as to cover the airfares at least.
I mean, wow OK. Here I was thinking I needed to push, push, push, get good work references and look good in the club and all that. Now here is something to definitely look forward to!
Saturday, 6 February 2016
Happily Ever After
Last night I was slowly, gently drifting off to sleep. You know, in that sort of realm between the worlds I guess you could say! When suddenly, I had a thought. Do you realise how annoying it is to have a thought come to mind, knowing full well that if you don't write it all down then it'll be gone by the morning, never to be rediscovered? So I was pretty peeved, but I pulled out my notebook and pen and started writing, it was just after 9pm. By the time I finished it was 11pm, or thereabouts, as it takes a little while to transpose the meaningless thoughts into words and phrases. Eventually I got there, potentially finishing it on a different note to what I was meaning when I first started, and I might've gotten a little lost in the middle, but I thought it was a possibly interesting. Which is why I'm retyping it here...word for word.
Welcome to the crazy world called my mind, where silly ideas come from late at night when one should be asleep.
Everyone would be kidding themselves if they couldn't admit that they wished their life was like a movie, like a book with a sweet ending, like a fairy tale with a "happily ever after". Everyone wishes, at some stage of their life that it would happen at some point of time.
Of course, we all know full well that that sort of thing is written for children to read about while they are still young. To help them to grow and to preserve their innocence for as long as possible, teaching them about the good things that could come from the world if they wanted it badly enough and are willing to fight for it.
Before finally releasing them into the unknown, where only some remember the whole story they were told, while others remember only small parts. Of course, the latter are the typical people that live today - dreaming of that "happily ever after" but not quite knowing the story of their childhood well enough to realise what stages have to happen, what they must suffer through first, to get to that "happily ever after" they dream of.
Confused? Ok, I'm getting there slowly.
Think of typical movies of today; fiction, based on a true story, based on the novel, sci-fi, etc., etc., etc. Almost all of them have a "happily ever after" moment, somewhere. Take, My Sister's Keeper for example. One of the sisters dies but the rest of the family live on happily.
The last 'chick-flick' that you watched? I'd fathom a bet that the perfect girl living in the perfect town, got the perfect guy eventually. Heck, even an action based movie of sorts, they kill off the bad guys and the world is now a better place. The credits roll and everyone watching, smiles and they move on with their lives knowing the characters will forever be happy.
Just like you spend time feeling the emotions of a character in a book, get so wrapped up in the plot that you walk around reality in a daze until you've read the final page, until you read the last word. There is the end of the book but we all know know the main character will be OK. We imagine their "perfect" life they've got and we're happy - but forever dreaming about when will we get to that stage?
(You've made it this far, the main point is coming up!)
We all take the roll of the child who remembers only small parts of the fairy tales. We know what happens at the end but we forget the main points that happen earlier on. We forget that Cinderella used to be mocked and laughed at by those ugly stepsisters, we forget the life she suffered before the whole glass slipper scene and when she actually does get the prince. All we think about is the future "happily ever after" that we are destined to receive, so much so that we forget the here and now and what we have to do in the present to achieve the gift of the future.
Just like we have to go through a whole other year before we can celebrate our birthday again, so we must go through the stages before we can even glimpse the light at the end of the tunnel.
My point is that we go through life accepting the boundaries that society expects. We don't often push them, ignore them or do something excessively extreme. We accept what society expects of us and thus we expect society to give us what we see in return. We see the normal expectation displayed profoundly and distinctly in books and films, so therefore we must surely expect the same?
We must expect to jump through a few hoops and then we will be presented with our "happily ever after" we so dream of. Expecting a perfect life with the perfect partner, house, career, family etc., etc., etc., - because everything works out just fine in the books, why not in reality??
What we don't consider is that in actual fact, if the book carried on until the end of the character's life, we would soon realise that happy phase doesn't last in appearances. The happy couple who finally hooked up at the end of the book? Who knows what happened? Real life that comes into play, that destroys happiness, it comes when you least expect it to. Diseases, cancer, other illnesses, world issues, freak storms, death. You know, it all happens which is why the author chooses to end the book where he does - to give us hope that there is a happily ever after, after all.
The problem being is that we see the end goal and we want it straight away. We often don't realise, and aren't prepared, or willing to work for it. We also aren't willing to accept that life is going to be all fine and dandy once we reach that happily ever after stage.
This has turned out different to what I hoped, don't get me wrong, I'm trying to convey a good message here.
I'm basically trying to say that no matter what is on a constant display in society, you shouldn't always strive for it or believe it. We think that this "happily ever after" is a place we need to get to - say, after getting married, moving to a new place or starting a new career that you love. No. Happily ever after is always going to be where you already are. People assume that it is this futuristic land you can only dream about, but it was always right there to begin with!
You need to MAKE your "happily ever after" in the here and now. You can only live in the present, think about the past and dream about the future. You can only live in the here and now, not in the future. That would be just as effective as living in a house that you've never stepped foot in - absolutely not possible!
If this "happily ever after" place was like it is in the books and movies, our lives would freeze once we got to it and I don't know about you, but that doesn't sound awfully happy! Life is what you make it, I've said it before and I'll continue to say it - you make your own bed. If you choose to live life looking at the negatives without developing them, then your life is going to be dark and depressing. But if you go through your life shining your light you will only spread the happiness. You will be able to look back on your life knowing full well it isn't perfect and never will be, but the main thing is that you are getting through it with a smile on your dial and that is the important thing.
In all this, what I'm getting at is that you are already living in the happily ever after! Once you get into your shoes and mentally walk into it, that is where you will be and that is where you will stay so long as you continue to BE there. There are problems, issues and sadness in there, people think that to be in a happy place you need to be continuously happy. But this "happily ever after" is not so much about a happy life, rather an acceptance of the genuine facts of life. It is happy and sad, it continues and grows. It is your happily ever after and if will never, ever be frozen in place because your book never truly ends.
Welcome to the crazy world called my mind, where silly ideas come from late at night when one should be asleep.
Everyone would be kidding themselves if they couldn't admit that they wished their life was like a movie, like a book with a sweet ending, like a fairy tale with a "happily ever after". Everyone wishes, at some stage of their life that it would happen at some point of time.
Of course, we all know full well that that sort of thing is written for children to read about while they are still young. To help them to grow and to preserve their innocence for as long as possible, teaching them about the good things that could come from the world if they wanted it badly enough and are willing to fight for it.
Before finally releasing them into the unknown, where only some remember the whole story they were told, while others remember only small parts. Of course, the latter are the typical people that live today - dreaming of that "happily ever after" but not quite knowing the story of their childhood well enough to realise what stages have to happen, what they must suffer through first, to get to that "happily ever after" they dream of.
Confused? Ok, I'm getting there slowly.
Think of typical movies of today; fiction, based on a true story, based on the novel, sci-fi, etc., etc., etc. Almost all of them have a "happily ever after" moment, somewhere. Take, My Sister's Keeper for example. One of the sisters dies but the rest of the family live on happily.
The last 'chick-flick' that you watched? I'd fathom a bet that the perfect girl living in the perfect town, got the perfect guy eventually. Heck, even an action based movie of sorts, they kill off the bad guys and the world is now a better place. The credits roll and everyone watching, smiles and they move on with their lives knowing the characters will forever be happy.
Just like you spend time feeling the emotions of a character in a book, get so wrapped up in the plot that you walk around reality in a daze until you've read the final page, until you read the last word. There is the end of the book but we all know know the main character will be OK. We imagine their "perfect" life they've got and we're happy - but forever dreaming about when will we get to that stage?
(You've made it this far, the main point is coming up!)
We all take the roll of the child who remembers only small parts of the fairy tales. We know what happens at the end but we forget the main points that happen earlier on. We forget that Cinderella used to be mocked and laughed at by those ugly stepsisters, we forget the life she suffered before the whole glass slipper scene and when she actually does get the prince. All we think about is the future "happily ever after" that we are destined to receive, so much so that we forget the here and now and what we have to do in the present to achieve the gift of the future.
Just like we have to go through a whole other year before we can celebrate our birthday again, so we must go through the stages before we can even glimpse the light at the end of the tunnel.
My point is that we go through life accepting the boundaries that society expects. We don't often push them, ignore them or do something excessively extreme. We accept what society expects of us and thus we expect society to give us what we see in return. We see the normal expectation displayed profoundly and distinctly in books and films, so therefore we must surely expect the same?
We must expect to jump through a few hoops and then we will be presented with our "happily ever after" we so dream of. Expecting a perfect life with the perfect partner, house, career, family etc., etc., etc., - because everything works out just fine in the books, why not in reality??
What we don't consider is that in actual fact, if the book carried on until the end of the character's life, we would soon realise that happy phase doesn't last in appearances. The happy couple who finally hooked up at the end of the book? Who knows what happened? Real life that comes into play, that destroys happiness, it comes when you least expect it to. Diseases, cancer, other illnesses, world issues, freak storms, death. You know, it all happens which is why the author chooses to end the book where he does - to give us hope that there is a happily ever after, after all.
The problem being is that we see the end goal and we want it straight away. We often don't realise, and aren't prepared, or willing to work for it. We also aren't willing to accept that life is going to be all fine and dandy once we reach that happily ever after stage.
This has turned out different to what I hoped, don't get me wrong, I'm trying to convey a good message here.
I'm basically trying to say that no matter what is on a constant display in society, you shouldn't always strive for it or believe it. We think that this "happily ever after" is a place we need to get to - say, after getting married, moving to a new place or starting a new career that you love. No. Happily ever after is always going to be where you already are. People assume that it is this futuristic land you can only dream about, but it was always right there to begin with!
You need to MAKE your "happily ever after" in the here and now. You can only live in the present, think about the past and dream about the future. You can only live in the here and now, not in the future. That would be just as effective as living in a house that you've never stepped foot in - absolutely not possible!
If this "happily ever after" place was like it is in the books and movies, our lives would freeze once we got to it and I don't know about you, but that doesn't sound awfully happy! Life is what you make it, I've said it before and I'll continue to say it - you make your own bed. If you choose to live life looking at the negatives without developing them, then your life is going to be dark and depressing. But if you go through your life shining your light you will only spread the happiness. You will be able to look back on your life knowing full well it isn't perfect and never will be, but the main thing is that you are getting through it with a smile on your dial and that is the important thing.
In all this, what I'm getting at is that you are already living in the happily ever after! Once you get into your shoes and mentally walk into it, that is where you will be and that is where you will stay so long as you continue to BE there. There are problems, issues and sadness in there, people think that to be in a happy place you need to be continuously happy. But this "happily ever after" is not so much about a happy life, rather an acceptance of the genuine facts of life. It is happy and sad, it continues and grows. It is your happily ever after and if will never, ever be frozen in place because your book never truly ends.
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