insignificant ramblings of a 50-something woman
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Freud
Freud took a turn for the worse last weekend so we took him to the vet on Monday. He has kidney disease in addition to his mitral valve disease. The vet gives him months rather than years to live. I felt a tremendous amount of grief about this this week which is sort of strange…
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Rock star and Kauri trees
Daniel’s school had a “dress-up as a rockstar/popstar” day last week. Daniel dressed up and made an appropriate amount of noise throughout the day. Ben’s Mum has been with us this past week so we thought we’d better do something touristy. Today we took her to the Kauri Glen Reserve which is a large, forested…
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The evolving rug and conversations with Daniel
My rug is growing. It now has some colour and I like it. I almost wish I hadn’t used the cream-coloured sheets at all because I can see it’s not such a practical colour for a rug. Still, I can throw it in the washing machine which is the main thing. So far it consists…
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Crochet rag rug
Elizabeth peed on our living room rug twice this week. In frustration, I removed the rug from the floor and put it in the spare bedroom and began wishing for a machine-washable replacement. Then I remembered seeing crochet rag-rugs online and decided to try making one myself. I began by cutting up some old sheets…
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I want to ride my bike…..
I want to ride my bike with my two-year-old sitting in her seat on the back. She loves it. I love it. I want to ride my bike to save money on petrol. I want to ride my bike to reduce my greenhouse gas emissions. I want to ride my bike to help prevent depression…
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The Art Gallery
Yesterday Ben looked after the children so that I could go with a friend to the Degas to Dali exhibition on at the Auckland Art Gallery. It was wonderful. The Art Gallery itself is a beautiful French Chateau-style building, originally designed by Melbourne-based architects and opened in 1887. It has just recently undergone some extensive…
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Vomits again
Daniel woke up in a pool of vomit this morning. He was at a loss as to how it got there and even tried blaming it on Freud but we just did not believe that Freud could have vomited on Daniel’s pajamas, on his doona and sheets and even in his hair during the night…
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Sums
Daniel loves maths. Perhaps he’ll be a mathematician like his Daddy. Last night, we caught him doing sums. He has his own unique notation (although Ben tells me it’s not that unique and looks similar to Reverse Polish Notation), but the calculations are correct. 3+3=6 4+4=8 5+5=10 100+100=200 9+9=18 and 8+8=16 self-portrait
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“Take my photo”
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School is back
Daniel returned to school this week and is very happy to be back and to see his Korean girlfriends again. His teacher is Australian and yesterday he was suddenly quite excited and began flapping his hands and asked me, “If you’re Australian and Mrs Price is Australian, when you were 5 and she was 5…
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The Chelsea Sugar Refinery
Before Mike left on Monday, we visited the Chelsea Sugar Refinery in Birkenhead. The refinery is a huge pinky-orange building, visible from all over Auckland in an imposing position over-looking the harbour. There’s a sketch of it on all the Chelsea sugar packets so I’ve long wanted to visit it up close. It also lives…
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Map of New Zealand
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Poo and morons at the helm
Elizabeth pooed on the back terrace the other day and she grabbed my arm and took me outside to see it. Then she pointed at her poo and said, “I did a dog-poo”. Ben’s Dad came to visit last weekend and he’s just left this afternoon for Christchurch. He’s off to see Christchurch as an…
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A day of doctors
It has been a day of drama. This morning we took Daniel to Starship Hospital to have his hearing checked which turns out to be absolutely fine. We got a referral for him about a month or so ago and I thought we’d be waiting for ages and ages to get an appointment but someone…
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I need…
Elizabeth has discovered the word “need”, as in “I need an Easter Egg”. Today she reached her hand into the pocket of Ben’s trousers (where he keeps his wallet) and said, “I need wallet”. We weren’t expecting this to happen for at least another twelve years. Be afraid, be very afraid. Ben took Daniel to…
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School holidays
The school holidays have begun and I’m not sure how Daniel will cope without school for two weeks. Last week, when I was planning our trip to the Coromandel, I thought it might be nice to leave a little earlier and discussed with Daniel the possibility of collecting him before 3pm. He was horrified by…
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New Chums beach and more
Our weekend of adventure is now over and we are back at home. Fortunately the mishaps we had at the beginning did not continue and the rest of our weekend was very nice. We stayed in a little place called Whangapoua. The nearest beach was just a short 5 minute walk away: There was another…
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The Coromandel
We are in the Coromandel with Mum! She and Doug arrived at the last minute on Thursday and we all decided it would be nice to go away for the weekend so here we are. The journey here was a little stressful. We left Auckland at 4pm yesterday afternoon. All the tourist info states it…
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Car alarm
We went to the supermarket this morning and spotted the best car alarm I’ve ever seen: There were quite a few shoppers stopping for photos of the car and its passenger and he remained unfazed by all the fuss and paparazzi.
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Muriwai
We took Pee-Nang to see the gannet colony at Muriwai today. It’s on the west coast of Auckland about 30 minutes’ drive by car from our house. I love the west coast for its ruggedness, vegetation and interesting geology. The gannet colony is fascinating with hundreds of birds nesting high on the cliffs. We visited…
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