(First sent to me back in the beginning of April)
Hi Fay,
How's it going? So you are in the doldrums. It's probably a little bit weather related what with the UK appearing to still be in winter and all. You'll be hankering for some nice Spring weather with lighter evenings and warmer days. I reckon that might buck you up a bit, a least in part. Have you tried staring into 100 watt light bulb while humming the theme tune to Happy Days? No? Then I am all out of ideas. No wait, here's another one. Have you tried going to your nearest play ground,selecting a suitable swing and having a go? Just one swing for the swing averse adult creates nausea but if you stick with it at the very least when you put your feet down to stop swinging you can pretend you are Superman coming in for landing. Sam forces me to go on the swings all the time and I often make excuses like I'm an adult or I'm five times his weight and I'll break it but eventually or there's half a pint of dew on the equipment but I always wipe it clean and have a go and enjoy it. Once the nausea has stopped. Do it! Do it and blog about it! "My time on a swing" I double dare you.
Strangely enough I'm kind of wanting Autumn to get started properly here. After waiting for ages for last winter to finish (when we had no hot water for six weeks too) we had a glorious Summer of dust sucking drought but it's got to the point where it's time to move on. Maybe that's human nature. I've got the wood pile finished, I've got the blankets all stacked away for the beds. I'm prepared to be stripped to the waist shoveling wood into the fire like a stoker on the Titanic, sweating bullets, as it steams it's way to it's own inevitable watery grave. So I'm a little bit looking forward to roaring winter fires and hearing the rain lashing on the windows again. Six months time I'll be all like "Where's Spring?" but right now, I'll take a bit of cold weather.
This week I handed over all the money we made from selling Girl Guide biscuits. As Eva is in the Pippins we're now required to help raise funds via the annual Girl Guide biscuit selling business. You're allowed to choose how many boxes you want to sell (they're stacked up in Guide Hall like the warehouse scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark, I am amazed the forklift trucks fitted through the door) and luckily I plumped for just about the right amount to make it look liked we'd made an effort but not so much that we thought we wanted to found a biscuit empire to rival McVities. We had one box of chocolate biscuits, one box of mini-chocolate biscuits and one box of plain biscuits to sell. That may not sound much but there's anything from about fourteen to eighteen packs per box and the total cost to buy all of them was a hundred and seventy two dollars and fifty cents. That's a lot of money and just a bit too much for us to just purchase all of them in one go and do zero work (which was obviously the first choice because who wants to sell biscuits to strangers). In the end we sold most of them to Juliette's family and only had to buy about half our stock ourselves. I need to convince who ever runs this funding run that they need to change stock to perhaps selling stuff that people need and not just think as a luxury item. MIlk perhaps. Everyone buys milk. I'd buy Girl Guide milk if it meant raising some cash. Or beer. Can you imagine that. Yes, I bought seventeen Girl Guide crates of beers. It's for a good cause and party on! I don't know if the Pippins give badges for number of biscuits sold but I reckon I should get one for packets of biscuits eaten. I should be biscuit arkala or something with the number of Guide Biscuits I've put away this last month. I bought some petrol last week and a mum and her girl had set up stall next to the pay in desk. They were like "Would you like to buy some Girl Guide biscuits?" and I was like laughing in their faces like Arkle the Racehorse.
This week an e-mail has come in to the SCA asking if we'd like to take part in an opening ceremony type thing for a National Archery Competition. Apparently they have Kyoto archery and Mongolian Horse Archery booked so if we stumped up to do a show we'd have to up our game by oooooh, about a thousand percent. Last public show I did was in 2008 under the Major Oak in Sherwood Forest. It was a Robin Hood themed show because apparently that goes down best with the tourists in the area for some puzzling reason. There was one bit where the bloke playing Robin Hood dropped the chest full of "tax money" and it fell open to reveal all the coins rattling around in there were modern 1p and 2p pieces. As they'd spilled our Robin ad libed and grabbed two handful of coins and threw them into the crowd while shouting "Here's some money poor people!". I wouldn't see that many Japanese people clutching their heads again until the earthquake/tsunami of 2011.
So, waiting for the cold weather I'm basically living the tag line of Game of Thrones. Brilliant.
Take care,
Love Mark xxx
Tackle each challenge with strength of purpose and an expectation to succeed
Showing posts with label Email from my Brother. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Email from my Brother. Show all posts
#EmailFromMyBrother - Playing Catch up from 24th of January Bunk Beds and Nerf Guns
This one was sent to me on 24th of January
Hi Fay,
How's it going? I'm into the last week of the summer holidays with Eva going back to school next week. To celebrate everyone's going back to Waihi Beach come Friday for a three day break. Yes, everyone is celebrating Eva going back to school. Not really, it's just me who's celebrating that. But we are going back to Waihi so you're getting this e-mail early...
This week we've had a couple of Eva and Sam's cousins come for sleepovers. This always means I have to pump an air bed up which is really hard work so instead I decided to finally assemble the bunk beds we bought a couple of months ago and let one of them sleep on the bottom bunk. I had made the top bunk with it's in-built guard rail some months ago and we'd been using it as a normal bad for Sam to sleep in our room. All I had to do was assemble the bottom bunk, move Sam's top half of the bunk beds into Eva's room, move Eva's old bed out and into our room to replace the top bunk and then slot the top bunk onto the pegs of the lower bunk with all the pinpoint accuracy of a safe mechanism locking into place. I ended up doing this on my own because Juliette took one for the team and played with the kids to get them the hell out of my way.
How did I drop the top bunk bed onto the bottom bunkbed? Easy, I used my forklift truck. Only joking. I can't get my forklift truck into Eva's room. Plus I don't like to move my forklift out of the barn where I keep it next to my SR-71 jet plane and my 1960s era Batmobile. I'm joking again. I don't keep them in the barn, I keep them in the playroom in a box marked "vehicles". And of course they're not mine, they're Sams and are 1:43 scale toys. No, I lifted up the top bed and placed neatly down on the pillars of the bottom one using my X-men powers of telekinesis. Ha, joking again. I don't have any X-men powers, unless really sweaty feet count. Which they don't because otherwise there'd be a use for sweaty feet. You could put out fires by simply walking through them and dousing them with sweat from your feet or something. Actually my feet don't sweat that bad, it's just I wore my slippers for a couple of nights without any socks and now they smell like cheese. The slippers that is smell like cheese, not my feet. On their own my feet smell like schadenfreude. Anyway ... how to drop a top bunk onto a bottom bunk on your own...
I sat on the lower bunk, lifted the top bunk up and shifted it onto my feet, lent back, swiveled around and lowered it down onto all four pegs at the same time using my legs. It was like something from a circus act. That is if the circus act allowed lots and lots of swearing. The whole bed swap and bunk bed operation only took three and a half hours and I'm now on pain killers for my back but it was totally worth not pumping up that goddam air bed.
We had Eva's cousin Rachael stay over for two days and one night this week because her parents were working and needed a hand. It was kind of tough I have to admit. Juliette may have noticed an extra level of testiness when she came home and failed to empty the crap out of her lunch box after dumping it on the side for me to do, leave two drawers and one cupboard open for me to close and drop a full nappy bag in the kitchen bin rather than the outside bin for me to back up and stop the house from stinking. I found that Eva and Rachael wanted to play their five year olds' games while Sam being two wanted to play their games too. However what Sam wanted to do wasn't always what the girls wanted to do which caused some "problems". Also Sam loves climbing up on the new bunk beds but he can't actually get himself down again so he stops half way down the ladder and cries. Plus he likes to take Eva's breakable objects up there and throw them off which makes Eva cry. Plus he likes to stand up and sway near the edges of the top bunk like Harold Lloyd and generally makes me cry.
There was a minor miracle that did happen this week. I placed an online order for a couple of Nerf Guns for the kids to play with (for me to play with too) because we played with their cousin's Nerf Guns over Christmas and everyone enjoyed them. Nerf Guns are basically air soft guns that shoot little foam darts. The genius thing about them is that they come in all shapes and sizes with gun rails and sights and all sorts of gizmoes that makes me forget Barbie dolls ever the f*ck existed. The miracle was that these two Nerf Guns were ordered on the Tuesday and they were delivered the next day. Usually it takes a week for anything online to turn up so I was kind of blown away. Anyway they arrived at a time when they were needed the most because we all played with them in the garden and I've got to say two five year olds with Nerf Guns just proves that if ever there was a zombie apocalypse you'd want to ditch the little kids rather than arm them.
These toy guns were like full sized, had magazines, you have to cock them to load them and came with detachable sights. Apart from the fact that they're made from primary coloured plastic and were designed by someone who'd watched one too many sci-fi shows they had all the movable bits of real fire arms. Okay so guns and little kids don't mix but I did think that I could teach the kids some range discipline for when we started archery. Yeah, not really, I just want to shot little darts around the garden and pretend I was John McClane from Die Hard. But there were a few things I noticed ...
First things first, five year olds need eight or nine attempts before they can load a magazine with all the ammo the right way around. Secondly five year olds don't know what the cocking handle is for and often forgot to load a round into the "firing" chamber. They were like pulling the trigger and expecting some sort of semi-automatic experience. Come on Eva, you expect daddy to have the cash to spring for semi-automatic? You've got to wait for your birthday for that... Thirdly, five year old arms don't have the muscles to hold the rifle up for long so they wave them around like dousing sticks as they aim. I was like two feet away and could dodge their "bullets" like Neo in the Matrix just by "not moving at all". Fourthly they take the sights off because "they don't need them". When I say "take them off" I mean slide them off the rails and smash them on the ground like eggs because they can't hit anything. Like the sights were the main reason they couldn't hit anything. Fifthly if you can't hit a target with the first shot ,five year olds take a step or two forward. They repeat this until they can touch the target with the end of the rifle. This would be perfectly acceptable if we dressed them up in red coats and pretended we were fighting in the Napoleonic Wars but not when we amped up the action by letting daddy have a gun to shoot back with. Sixthly when five year olds run out of ammo they just keep shooting and walking forward in the hope that maybe a magic round will appear in the barrel. It never does. Seventhly when your cousin has a misfire and starts walking towards the nearest adult for help (me), the other doesn't give a sh*t about the other one and just keep shooting while I shout "stop!" at both and get ignored as per usual. Next week I'm ordering throwing knives online. Juliette's totally cool with that.
Take care,
Love Mark xxx
#EmailFromMyBrother - Catching up, the one that might make you cry a bit
We're getting there, this was sent to me on the 24th of January
Hi Fay,
How's it going? Two things happened this week that's surprised me. They're both to do with feelings and stuff things like that, so don't get too weirded out because that's not what I'm usually into (unless those feelings are my normal ones like puzzlement, annoyance and hungry).
The first thing that happened this week was Eva went back to school on Tuesday. It was kind of odd trying to get back into the old slick school day routine but I had both kids fed, dressed, teeth brushed, hair combed, faces wiped and sun screen applied all by ten past eight. Eva's bags contained all her new books, her swimming stuff (towel and togs - they call swimming costumes togs here), her packed lunch and her water bottle. I even had her sun hat (they can't play outside in summer without a sun hat). We were all a green light for a go, go, go ... so we went. It was kind of quiet when we arrived at the school and my suspicions were confirmed that it wasn't the first day of the new term when the caretaker told me that it wasn't the first day of the new term. It was tomorrow. I told him I'd looked on the school website but it didn't tell me the start date so I guessed at the day straight after the Monday public holiday because that would logical and a lot of other schools went back that day. He kind of looked at me strangely (eyes unfocused with a nodding grin) and that night Juliette pointed out that the website did have the new start date on it's "Welcome" page (in big letters). This explained the odd look from the caretaker. I however countered that it didn't have that information three weeks ago when last I checked. Because it totally didn't. They must have updated that info in the last week or something which makes me both puzzled and annoyed. Why do schools get to pick their own start and finish dates here? Why aren't they synched? It's all mixed up like a tin of alphabetti spaghetti. Mmmm, alphabetti spaghetti. I'm feeling hungry now.
So I felt kind of foolish for the rest of the day but this is a feeling I'm used to, so no problem. Now, the weird feeling thing was I'd been looking forward to getting Eva back to school for six weeks and here she was on the day I was supposed to be getting rid of her now coming back home. The weird thing was I wasn't disappointed, I was kind of glad to have her home for an extra day. I don't know if I was happy because I really love my daughter or that I could kind of dig the fact that if I was in her shoes how many times as a kid did I fantasize about going back to school after the summer holidays only to find that the school was closed and I'd got an extra day off!? I was making a kids fantasy come true! Or we can go with me loving my daughter thing, what ever.
The second thing that happened was Sam had a bad accident. As you know I let him climb into his car seat but this morning he climbed up and decided he wanted to drive the car. So this meant he looked like he was getting into his seat but instead bolted for it and scrambled into the front. We needed to get Eva to school so there was a bit of a time element to his shenanigans so I asked him to get into his car seat by the time I counted to three otherwise I'd have to pick him up and strap him in. One, two, three came and went so I walked around to the drivers side to open the door and pull him out. He on the other hand had decided to clamber into the back to vault back into his car seat ... and that's when he fell out of the car and face planted onto the gravel drive. I knew it was bad when he lifted his head to cry and there was lots and lots of blood down his face. He'd managed to gash an inch long deep cut into his scalp and boy, do those type of cuts bleed. By the time I'd got him into the house we were both covered in blood like we'd been filming a scene from Alien.
So Eva was great because she tried her best to keep her little brother happy while I tried to apply pressure onto his gaping scalp wound. I got the blood to stop, cleaned it enough to put a temporary plaster on, change his and my T-shirts, washed the blood off us both and got Eva to school on time. So I'm coping with this disaster feeling like a super dad for getting Eva to school while carrying Sam through the school grounds with his hair spiked up with dried blood. Yeah, I'm a super dad, look at me .... no, look away from the boy, look at the girl, she's on time godammit!
The thing was we were due to go to his granny's for the day and when we got there and got the cut properly cleaned up it was apparent it needed stitching. So a call to the doctors and an hour later I was hugging Sam while he had a stitch put in without anesthetic. I was totally ready to high five his Rambo attitude but he was more interested in the lollipop he got out of it at the end from the nurse. I stayed with him and his granny until after lunch to make sure he didn't rip his bandage off/drop into a coma/head butt a wall and then I set off home alone as planned. Here's the feeling thing. When I came home (alone) I couldn't help but wonder what would have happened if I was coming home alone because something much worse had happened to Sam. I then had to clean up the blood in the entrance way to the house which just heightened that feeling of loss.
Of course I cheered up mightily that afternoon when I picked Eva up from school. Firstly, it occurs to me that if you were to clad all the parents waiting for their kids to come out of a primary school in orange jump suits the general scene (bar the mix of genders) would resemble a prison exercise yard from a movie. People in little groups having nervous chats, people stood alone scoping out the other people and that little corner of people with neo-nazi tattoos pumping iron. Secondly, for a fraction of a second after Eva asked where Sam was, I did contemplate telling her he'd had to have his face amputated because of the fall and when he comes home he's going to have a different face. He's going to have the face of a rabbit because we couldn't afford a human face. I didn't do that of course because I suspect that would've got her hopes up.
Love Mark xxx
#EmailFromMyBrother - Playing Catch up 19th of January
This was sent to me on the 19th of January
Hi Fay,
How's it going? I read that you're embarking on a weight loss programme involving diet and exercise for a new slimmer 2013 you. I too must lose some weight as now I'm riding the lawnmower instead of pushing it around I'm finding myself silhouetting like Laurel and Hardy. That is I used to have the shadow of Stan Laurel but am beginning to have the shadow of Oliver Hardy. What am I going to do about it? Have another beer and think it over, that's what.
Last weekend we all went to Auckland. That is Juliette, Eva, Sam, me and the in-laws all went to Auckland on Sunday lunchtime, stayed the night and came back on the Monday afternoon. The reason was Juliette had an eye appointment at quarter to nine on the Monday morning in Auckland and what started as a planned day trip ended up as a mini-break for all of us. It's a long way to Auckland so what was the eye appointment about? Well basically Juliette has a medical condition called "being blind as a bat" so she's going one step beyond corrective laser surgery and instead is going to have her eyes sliced open and lenses inserted right into the jelly in the hopes that they correct her vision. She's a bit wary about the procedure for some weird reason especially as the kick off for the while whole dice-and-slice operation is to correct another problem that the little plastic lenses cause. Apparently in a healthy non-plastic lense modified eye when there's a slight pressure build up eyeball fluid can seep out of the front and be wiped away by blinking and/or vigorous buffing with a strip of chamois leather. However if you slot a plastic lense in there this stops this process and the pressure builds up behind the lense until the eyeball eventually pops like a microwaved grape. So to keep the flow you have to create another way for the gunk to come out and science's solution is to go right on ahead and jab permanent drain holes in the sides of each eyeball so that the fluid can leak out when it needs to. It's supposed to hurt like a son-of-a-bitch when they drill it too but I don't know what the problem is. Who among us can possibly have a problem with someone holding your eyelids open and cutting a permanent gutter hole in your eye like it was a finger hole in a bowling ball? Not me.
Anyway Juliette has in her quest to find out if she wants to have the procedure done gone to two extreme sources. The first source is the "for" source. It's the actual doctors website who wants the business where Youtube clip after Youtube clip of happy, successful, care free, glasses free people emote on the benefits of the surgery saying positive things like they can see further than the Hubble Telescope and after the surgery angels sang hallelujah every time they blinked. The other source is the "against" source. It's a website called OhMyGodI'mNowF*ckingBlind.com where the message board is full of people saying they had their eyes drilled and the doctor who did it used a sharpened ice lolly stick and goddamit if it wasn't a Magnum Gold ice lolly stick when every fool knows you've got to use a Magnum Classic for that type of procedure. What do I think? Well I think I'll have another beer and think it over, that's what. Not my eyes is it.
During the mini-break we went to two attractions in Auckland. The first was Kelly Tarlton's Aquarium. Don't pick Kelly Tarlton's Antartic Adventure on the satnav option like I did, this takes you to a suburban address in Auckland which probably was some address registered purely for tax reasons only. This could have been a great practical joke on Eva (yes, no.12 has the penguins, no.14 is home to the sharks, but let's not dilly dally, time to head to the hotel) but unfortunately grandparents don't go in for that kind of sh*t and we had to go to the real aquarium.
The real aquarium was okay, but they seem to have expanded the gift shop since the last time we went back on our Honeymoon five years ago (It was seven years ago, eight in April - Juliette). I remarked in a loud and obnoxious voice while perusing the tat on offer in the gift shop that if ever there was a zombie apocalypse you do not want to be caught in a gift shop. Pens, pencil sharpeners, paper weights, stuffed toys, themed plastic grabbers, T-shirts, jigsaw puzzles ... nothing would be useful if a wall of zombies crashed through the door. The thing is, if there wasn't a zombie apocalypse I still wouldn't want the crap that was stocked on a gift shop shelf. (And if there was a Zombie Apocalypse attraction the gift shop would still stock the same generic crap that would be of no use during an actual zombie apocalypse because that is the nature of gift shops. Full of crap.)
The second place we went to was Butterfly Creek. This was a butterfly greenhouse on an industrial estate next to Auckland airport which kind of made me think there was a bit of false advertising with the name. Butterfly? Yes. Creek? No. Butterfly Trading Unit 12c more like. The one thing that stuck in my memory was the fact that the place had crocodiles too because butterflies and crocodiles go hand in hand obviously and the guy who fed the crocodiles while doing a talk to the audience also drove the Butterfly Creek kiddies train for us and was later seen cleaning the Butterfly Creek toilets. Earlier I'd seen pictures of the same guy in display pictures of Kenya or where ever he'd swiped the crocodiles from actually dart gunning crocs, strapping them up to the skids of a helicopter and thumbs upping to the camera as he took off. I reckon if that dude took a day off than Butterfly Creek did not open. I did not see him working in the gift shop though which was good, because after you've seen a man feed a chicken to a massive rearing crocodile you'd lose all respect if you later saw him shilling butterfly shaped plastic paper weights in a gift shop that did not stock one useful thing if ever there was a Crocodile Apocalypse.
We're away next week so I'll have to miss your weekly e-mail again. We're off to the beach again - enjoy your snow...
Take care,
Love Mark xxx
#EmailFromMyBrother - Playing Catch up from 11th January
Part of my five point plan was to start posting 'emails from my brother' again. He's still been sending them to me, I'd just gotten out of the habit (probably due to apathy and maybe the doldrums) of publishing them. So I'll be doing two or three a week until we catch up.
This one is from January 11th
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This one is from January 11th
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Hi Fay,
How's it going? This week I'm writing to you on a New Zealand Friday night instead of a New Zealand Thursday night because Juliette has changed jobs and now has Mondays off instead of Fridays. This means that I used to stay up later on a Thursday night to write to you because Thursdays used to be my Friday where as now Friday is my Friday just like all you other muggles. Make sense? Good.
Juliette actually started her job last Tuesday (which is now like her Monday) which meant she was a little bit nervous and didn't get much sleep on the Monday night. I know this because she woke me up at 1.30am to tell me she hadn't slept a wink. "Mark, wake up, I haven't slept at all since coming to bed!" I suggested drinking some warm milk. I have no idea if warm milk actually works but my honest response "Do I look like a fifteenth level f*cking wizard? I don't have a Sleeping Spell in the breast pocket of my jimjams y'know. Shut the f*ck up and let me go back to sleep crazy woman!" would not have gone down well. I was awake enough to realise that the quickest way for letting me actually get back to sleep was to sympathise rather than launch into sarcasm. You have a problem, I suggest a solution, my work here is done, now let me get back to sleep because it's 1.30am and I was sleeping because of the tiredness and the 1.30am-eness of the situation. Ironically that night Sam had the best night's sleep ever and didn't come into our bed until about twenty to six so if she had slept we would have had the best unbroken night's sleep for months. For months!
This week I'm into the second half of the summer school holidays and I've got Eva and Sam to look after on my own for the next three weeks. Mum says that when your kids are little you should treasure this time because they are quickly gone forever. It does not seem like the time is quickly going for ever. It feels like someone's hit the slow button on the playback remote. I think I'm at 1/8 playback speed. There's a certain point in the day, usually after Sam has taken his fifth My Little Pony off Eva or after the sixth time Eva has launched a Thermonuclear Strike at Sam for threatening to dare to look at her My Little Ponies that I find myself raising my voice a little. Once that point has been reached there's no quality alone space where I can go to get my sh*t together because little kids just love to find new ways to hurt themselves, each other, expensive electrical equipment, pets etc and so I stick with them and just remain in the bad mood for the rest of the day. Juliette comes home and makes one innocent comment about the bin bags smelling of used nappies or something and it's like finally someone I can vent this frustrated pent up annoying anger at.
Speaking of which we had a blown fuse in the Honda this week too so I was down in there trying to find the problem with Sam and Eva "helping" out because when you really, really want to do something productive then a couple of little kids is what you need. I've got a car kit I use (plastic bag full of crap) and they'd pulled out the pump bottle of soapy water I use to squirt on tires to find air leaks. I just let them play with that for a while while I pulled out fuses to inspect because the car is a Japanese import so the fuse diagrams are in Japanese and I didn't know what was what. If the car had been French you could give is a go - it'd be "le radio" and "le conditioning avec air" and "le brakes de le power" and such like. Guessable. This looked like an ants nest had tap danced over some carbon paper. My subconscious told me that the kids had been a bit too quiet for a bit too long. So I get up and go and find them with the Guinea Pigs where Eva and Sam were about to "wash" Bubbles the Guinea Pig with the pump bottle. You can't do that I say, but how does Bubbles get himself clean asks Eva. I lie and say he licks himself clean because I don't know sh*t about Guinea Pig bathing habits. Seriously, Bubbles is eight inches long, has such long hair that he looks like an animated toupée big enough to give Humpty Dumpty's head and Emo fringe and his tongue is the size of a Tic-Tac. No way does he lick his fur clean especially after Bubbles had a claggy bum a couple of weeks ago and Juliette had to take the scissors to him and cut the fur off around his arse. Eva however bought the story. I said that if she'd squirted him then Bubbles would have got sick because he would've swallowed the soap when he licked himself. Okay she says, we'd best find Tom now because we "cleaned" him first.
This week Eva showed me her new jewelry box in which she keeps her most treasured possessions. I know this because she showed me. I put it up on the mantelpiece by the fire for Juliette to check out . Juliette reads these letters too so when she does she'll be able stand up and have a peak. Oh the excitement! You obviously can't see so I'll tell you now. but let's wait for Juliette to have a look first .... did you hear that? Yep, she's looked. So now I can tell you. Eva's most treasured possessions is ... drum roll ... I'll tell you next week.
Lots of love,
Mark xxx
P.S. I'm not that cruel. Eva's most treasured possession is ... Bubbles' cut off claggy fur. She picked it up off the floor when we weren't looking. Nice one Eva.
I'm in the doldrums....
I'm sure I'm not the only one, but sometimes life is just so hard.
I'm moving slower, struggle to get out of bed and can't find the enthusiasm to do the stuff I enjoy, let alone the chores. I've always been able to find the time and energy to crochet or sew, but I've several projects languishing in the bottom of the bag, looking back at me saying 'just a couple of hours and I'll be finished' I. Can. Not. Be. Arsed!
Slimming World has gone out of the window and I'm not even really enjoying eating chocolate. I know, it's THAT serious.
I've even been neglecting my blog, I'm posting infrequently and have stopped sharing my Brothers wonderful mails.What is wrong with me?
Not sure what's happened to me to over the last few weeks. I feel like the colour has faded out of my life and I'm seeing things in shades of grey. Energy has leeched out too, I feel like my battery warning light is constantly on less than 10 percent and I can't even be bothered to find the cable to charge it. (come on, we've all been there)
Not sure what's happened to me to over the last few weeks. I feel like the colour has faded out of my life and I'm seeing things in shades of grey. Energy has leeched out too, I feel like my battery warning light is constantly on less than 10 percent and I can't even be bothered to find the cable to charge it. (come on, we've all been there)
I'm not ill as such, just tired of feeling sick. I've been on the drugs trial 9 months now and think the novelty has well and truly worn off. The dose was put back up to the full amount at the beginning of March and I know that'll be affecting how I feel. When I first started on the drug trial, I wasn't working and was able to rest more and just take things easier. That's not an option this time round.
I've been mulling around in my head what I can do it about as I'm sick and tired of feeling sick and tired. I've come up with a five point plan, what do you think?
Point 1
Eating crap is making me feel crap, I'm putting weight back on. So I'm joining a group. I'm actually making a commitment to go to a proper meeting and have ditched Online Slimming World. It had a purpose and worked for me then (I've lost four stone) but I need a boost now, and think a real Slimming World group will help.
Point 2
This means I'm actually going out and 'socialising' albeit at a weigh-in. Socialising, get me! Haven't done that for a while. In fact the last 4 weekends I've not left the house once. I've come home at 6pm on Friday and my feet haven't touched the front doorstep until 8am on Monday, you must admit, that's not a healthy way to live your life.
Point 3
I'm going to count my blessings; I'm better off than most in my position and will commit to joining in with Michelle's Mummy from the Heart weekly Reasons to be Cheerful linky. It'll help me celebrates the good things, which will outshine the crapiness. It'll make me appreciate what I do have and what I can do.
Point 4
I'll also start to share the wonderfulness which are the emails from my Brother. I've a few to post on back catalogue! They'll make you laugh, I'll enjoy rereading and sharing them with you. A little bit of sunshine from the other side of the world. Click here if you want to catch up
Point 5
I will post a little more about things which interest me, get back into My Glass Half Full blog. It's never failed me yet, can't see why it won't help this time too.
What do you think? Will you keep an eye on me? Got anymore suggestions to add?
Challenges are what make life interesting; overcoming them is what makes life meaningful
Joshua J. Marine
And if you were wondering where the saying 'In the doldrums' comes from, take a look here, says it all really.
Email from my brother
Hi Fay,
How's it going? Good New Years Eve I hope, lots of partying and staying up to see in 2013? We celebrated the New Year by camping in the garden. It was a sort of dry run for when/if we decide to go camping in far off places. We've got a six man tent which if you know anything about tents means the manufacturers supply those plan diagrams showing something like it's the 18th century British Slave Ship Brookes with the six people sleeping head to foot and no other room for anything. So in reality this means that we had enough room to fit one double air mattress and one single air mattress in it with the idea that I'd sleep on the single and Juliette and the kids would sleep on the double. All good so far. All set for a great night's camping. All tickety boo.
Now the sticking point in the plan was always going to be Sam because Sam needs total darkness to go to sleep and one thing tents aren't very good at is keeping the light out when the sun's up. No one ever goes into a tent when it's daylight and says "I can't see a thing it's so dark in here!". So we all "pretend" to settle in for the night at quarter to seven in the hopes that Sam would get all sleepy and then we could all squeeze out again when he's off in the land of nod. Alas come seven o'clock Sam is running around bouncing off the insides of the tent like psyched up WWF wrestler bouncing off the ropes in a wrestling ring. Me, Juliette and Eva were on the air beds in the middle just watching him go back and forth, up and down, back and forth. The tipping moment came however when he stopped running around, crouched in the corner of the tent and silently crapped in his nappy. We're like "Sam are you doing poo poos?" and he's wide eyed, his shoulders hunched up around his ears, red faced, you could hear the straining in his voice as he say "Er, no?". That's when we decided to abandon all of us camping and get Sam back into the familiar routine of sleeping in his own bed. Changing a poo-ey nappy is risky at the best of times but when everywhere poo could go is your bed then it's time to relocate. Eva was so disappointed that I said that she should go to sleep in her bed for now and then when I went to bed I'd carry her out to the tent and she and I would camp instead. So that's what we did.
So I'm not staying up till midnight because we've got little kids and they don't give a sh*t about sleep ins as you know. Ten O'clock rolls around and I go and get the sleeping bag to wrap Eva up in. I wake her up; she's sleepy but excited and I take her single duvet cover for me to sleep in. I get us out to the tent where summer now appeared to have left us as the temperature is now in the nippy region. It may because it's been up in the 28/29 degree area for the past week but that night the temperature had dropped down to 8/9 degrees so it felt colder - a lot colder than that temperature had any right being. I wrap Eva up in the sleeping bag and tuck myself in with the single duvet next to her on the double air mattress. Snug as a bug in rug. But Eva doesn't go to sleep because she's too hot in the sleeping bag so I unzip it and let her sleep on top. Five minutes later she's too cold. Repeat. So to cut a long story short we end up sharing the single duvet with the associated problem that someone is not going to get some covers. That someone is obviously me because I'm the dad and if Eva is cold she's going to be waking me up anyway. Why didn't I use the sleeping bag? Because the air mattress was cold too and the sleeping bag was now keeping the warmth from being leeched into the cold rubber. So we settle in for a good nights sleep ...
Tom the cat is an excellent rat catcher as I've mentioned before which is curious because he's very loud when he's moving around at night. I mean it's not long until he starts meowing and stalking us in the tent. Proper yowling meowing. It's like cat talk for "Hey! I'm coming to getcha!", pause, louder meow, "I'm get really close now dude!", pause, louder still, "I'm right behind you! Wooo!". I don't know how he knew which way we were sleeping or that we were in there in the first place but in the end it resulted in Tom dabbing my head through the lycra like tent wall. Dab, dab, dab. You've got to be kidding me. So because I'm laying down I moved my fist past my pillow like Superman doing his flying pose and punched him. Problem solved.
Another issue was the Waikato Hunt Kennels or rather the Hound of the Baskervilles, Cujo, Cerberus and co. that live at the Waikato Hunt Kennels over the hill. We usually hear them howling at feeding time around 4pm. It's a little bit disconcerting if you don't know that someone hasn't actually opened up a gateway to hell what with all the noise that sounds like the screaming souls of the dead but once you know what it is everything is good. I think it was because it was New Years and the dogs were spooked but they started howling like it was a new moon or something. They didn't really let up until the last of the far off fireworks and the popping of champagne corks finished sometime after midnight. So I didn't plan to be awake at midnight but I was. Happy New Year!
An hour or two later ... dab, dab, dab, f*ck off Tom, Superman punch.
Eva woke up at half five in the morning and pretty much wanted to spring out of bed like she'd had the best night's sleep ever. I crawled out with her and she managed to watch all of the film of "Despicable Me" (runtime 95 minutes) before Juliette and Sam stumbled into the living room at half seven or so. I went back to bed of course for an hour because I'd done my parental duty. Dad of the Year 2013 - back of the net! I'm thinking of slacking off for the rest of the year because I reckon I've peaked too early. Right, I'm off to find out where Tom's sleeping and dab his head until he tries to Superman punch me.
Take care,
Love Mark xxx
How's it going? Good New Years Eve I hope, lots of partying and staying up to see in 2013? We celebrated the New Year by camping in the garden. It was a sort of dry run for when/if we decide to go camping in far off places. We've got a six man tent which if you know anything about tents means the manufacturers supply those plan diagrams showing something like it's the 18th century British Slave Ship Brookes with the six people sleeping head to foot and no other room for anything. So in reality this means that we had enough room to fit one double air mattress and one single air mattress in it with the idea that I'd sleep on the single and Juliette and the kids would sleep on the double. All good so far. All set for a great night's camping. All tickety boo.
Now the sticking point in the plan was always going to be Sam because Sam needs total darkness to go to sleep and one thing tents aren't very good at is keeping the light out when the sun's up. No one ever goes into a tent when it's daylight and says "I can't see a thing it's so dark in here!". So we all "pretend" to settle in for the night at quarter to seven in the hopes that Sam would get all sleepy and then we could all squeeze out again when he's off in the land of nod. Alas come seven o'clock Sam is running around bouncing off the insides of the tent like psyched up WWF wrestler bouncing off the ropes in a wrestling ring. Me, Juliette and Eva were on the air beds in the middle just watching him go back and forth, up and down, back and forth. The tipping moment came however when he stopped running around, crouched in the corner of the tent and silently crapped in his nappy. We're like "Sam are you doing poo poos?" and he's wide eyed, his shoulders hunched up around his ears, red faced, you could hear the straining in his voice as he say "Er, no?". That's when we decided to abandon all of us camping and get Sam back into the familiar routine of sleeping in his own bed. Changing a poo-ey nappy is risky at the best of times but when everywhere poo could go is your bed then it's time to relocate. Eva was so disappointed that I said that she should go to sleep in her bed for now and then when I went to bed I'd carry her out to the tent and she and I would camp instead. So that's what we did.
So I'm not staying up till midnight because we've got little kids and they don't give a sh*t about sleep ins as you know. Ten O'clock rolls around and I go and get the sleeping bag to wrap Eva up in. I wake her up; she's sleepy but excited and I take her single duvet cover for me to sleep in. I get us out to the tent where summer now appeared to have left us as the temperature is now in the nippy region. It may because it's been up in the 28/29 degree area for the past week but that night the temperature had dropped down to 8/9 degrees so it felt colder - a lot colder than that temperature had any right being. I wrap Eva up in the sleeping bag and tuck myself in with the single duvet next to her on the double air mattress. Snug as a bug in rug. But Eva doesn't go to sleep because she's too hot in the sleeping bag so I unzip it and let her sleep on top. Five minutes later she's too cold. Repeat. So to cut a long story short we end up sharing the single duvet with the associated problem that someone is not going to get some covers. That someone is obviously me because I'm the dad and if Eva is cold she's going to be waking me up anyway. Why didn't I use the sleeping bag? Because the air mattress was cold too and the sleeping bag was now keeping the warmth from being leeched into the cold rubber. So we settle in for a good nights sleep ...
Tom the cat is an excellent rat catcher as I've mentioned before which is curious because he's very loud when he's moving around at night. I mean it's not long until he starts meowing and stalking us in the tent. Proper yowling meowing. It's like cat talk for "Hey! I'm coming to getcha!", pause, louder meow, "I'm get really close now dude!", pause, louder still, "I'm right behind you! Wooo!". I don't know how he knew which way we were sleeping or that we were in there in the first place but in the end it resulted in Tom dabbing my head through the lycra like tent wall. Dab, dab, dab. You've got to be kidding me. So because I'm laying down I moved my fist past my pillow like Superman doing his flying pose and punched him. Problem solved.
Another issue was the Waikato Hunt Kennels or rather the Hound of the Baskervilles, Cujo, Cerberus and co. that live at the Waikato Hunt Kennels over the hill. We usually hear them howling at feeding time around 4pm. It's a little bit disconcerting if you don't know that someone hasn't actually opened up a gateway to hell what with all the noise that sounds like the screaming souls of the dead but once you know what it is everything is good. I think it was because it was New Years and the dogs were spooked but they started howling like it was a new moon or something. They didn't really let up until the last of the far off fireworks and the popping of champagne corks finished sometime after midnight. So I didn't plan to be awake at midnight but I was. Happy New Year!
An hour or two later ... dab, dab, dab, f*ck off Tom, Superman punch.
Eva woke up at half five in the morning and pretty much wanted to spring out of bed like she'd had the best night's sleep ever. I crawled out with her and she managed to watch all of the film of "Despicable Me" (runtime 95 minutes) before Juliette and Sam stumbled into the living room at half seven or so. I went back to bed of course for an hour because I'd done my parental duty. Dad of the Year 2013 - back of the net! I'm thinking of slacking off for the rest of the year because I reckon I've peaked too early. Right, I'm off to find out where Tom's sleeping and dab his head until he tries to Superman punch me.
Take care,
Love Mark xxx
Email From My Brother: six month all clear and a hot hot Christmas
Hi Fay,
Congratulations on six months of being all clear. (Single fist pump, double bull horns with hands while spinning around, high fives, firm handshake).
This week I have been mostly listening to Christmas songs on the radio and thinking "it's not Christmas". This is mainly due to stores having Christmas decorations up here since the 1st of November so Christmas-is-coming has kind of blended into the normal. Then there's the fact that Sam's baby monitor currently says it's 29 degrees C in the bedroom. Seriously it's so wrong having Christmas when it's hot. You've got radio stations playing the sh*t out of every conceivable cover song of "Walking In A Winter Wonderland" and Bing Crosby dreaming of a white sodding Christmas and all these images of snowy Victorian London streets with big fat jolly Santas in them ho-ho-ho-ing at the snow and my subconscious is just saying "it's not Christmas, it's hot, it's still Summer". My subconscious is kind of a killjoy at the moment. I'm thinking of having it drowned in a keg of beer. I'm going to have to set a reminder on my phone for Christmas Eve otherwise I might miss Christmas all together.
Of course I'm joking but actually I'd love to be able to forget about it and really set a reminder on my phone because we've got so many Christmas presents to wrap for the kids that I'm going to be looking forward to Christmas Day like a marathon runner looks forward to the finishing line. I hate wrapping presents. It's miles and miles of crappy tissue thin commercial wrapping paper (ooh, twenty sheets for tuppence, bargain!) and great big industrial sized rolls of sellotape. Nothing says I'm wrapping serious stuff here than a roll of sellotape you can fit your your clenched fist through the hole. You have to find the end of the tape too, get a strip going, cut and then repeat, littering all the backs of chairs, tables and sideboards with as many pre-cut bits that you can possibly do without losing the will to live. You might need them all you might not, but it's really crappy if you get half way through a wrap and run out of pre-cut sellotape. And there's always one strip that says "I'm temporarily stuck to this chair am I? No half measures." and electromagnetically sucks itself onto the furniture leaving you to pick it off with your nail. The varnish always comes off with that strip too.
Then out comes the first present and I'm resentfully chopping the paper with the scissors so that the cut line isn't smooth and straight but jagged and ugly an industrial city skyline. I put the present on the paper and stick the first bit on and roll and stick and turn and complicated end fold and stick and turn and complicated end fold and finish. Hurrah! Now, what did I just wrap and was it for Sam or Eva? Sh*t. Repeat a thousand million billion times.
I'm just a bit worked up at the moment. First world problems I think they call them. You ever go to empty a dishwasher, open the drawer and find a glass has managed to work itself facing up so now it's full to the brim with brown dirty dishwasher water and you've got to empty it, swill it out and make a judgement call on whether to put it back in for the next go or give it a wipe down with the tea towel and put it away? When I find one of those I drop to my knees and shout "Noooooooo!" while raising both fists to the heavens.
Sam has become more and more increasingly willful about getting into his car seat. It's a good job we rarely have to go anywhere in the car. Oh, my mistake, we actually have to make three or four car trips a day. This means getting Sam in his car seat six to eight times in a day and it used to go like this; carry Sam to car, open door, pop him in seat, buckle up, go. Now it goes like this; convince Sam to get near car, lift Sam into car, Sam throw paddy about getting into the car himself, Sam gets into car seat, Sam gets into car seat, Sam gets into car seat (I'm not repeating myself, it just takes ages), Sam in car seat, buckle up and go. But he's taken to pretending to get into his car seat. How is this jolly jape achieved? He climbs up to the seats and then hunkers down in between his and Eva's car seats like a garden gnome. He'll then sit really, really still and narrow his eyes in the hope that I'll be fooled. Unfortunately I can't actually allow this and so we're back to reasoning with a two year old on the merits of car safety versus traffic laws every f*cking trip. It's hot and I just spend half the day sticking my head in the back seat of a car. You'd think he'd get it after the first dozen times. Exhausting.
Anyway, the news says it's the end of the world next week so I shouldn't complain. Maybe I'll put off the wrapping until after the 21st December in case we do all die? I think this is a reasonable way to go. I'll maybe put off emptying the dishwasher until then too.
Take care,
Love Mark xxx
Congratulations on six months of being all clear. (Single fist pump, double bull horns with hands while spinning around, high fives, firm handshake).
This week I have been mostly listening to Christmas songs on the radio and thinking "it's not Christmas". This is mainly due to stores having Christmas decorations up here since the 1st of November so Christmas-is-coming has kind of blended into the normal. Then there's the fact that Sam's baby monitor currently says it's 29 degrees C in the bedroom. Seriously it's so wrong having Christmas when it's hot. You've got radio stations playing the sh*t out of every conceivable cover song of "Walking In A Winter Wonderland" and Bing Crosby dreaming of a white sodding Christmas and all these images of snowy Victorian London streets with big fat jolly Santas in them ho-ho-ho-ing at the snow and my subconscious is just saying "it's not Christmas, it's hot, it's still Summer". My subconscious is kind of a killjoy at the moment. I'm thinking of having it drowned in a keg of beer. I'm going to have to set a reminder on my phone for Christmas Eve otherwise I might miss Christmas all together.
Of course I'm joking but actually I'd love to be able to forget about it and really set a reminder on my phone because we've got so many Christmas presents to wrap for the kids that I'm going to be looking forward to Christmas Day like a marathon runner looks forward to the finishing line. I hate wrapping presents. It's miles and miles of crappy tissue thin commercial wrapping paper (ooh, twenty sheets for tuppence, bargain!) and great big industrial sized rolls of sellotape. Nothing says I'm wrapping serious stuff here than a roll of sellotape you can fit your your clenched fist through the hole. You have to find the end of the tape too, get a strip going, cut and then repeat, littering all the backs of chairs, tables and sideboards with as many pre-cut bits that you can possibly do without losing the will to live. You might need them all you might not, but it's really crappy if you get half way through a wrap and run out of pre-cut sellotape. And there's always one strip that says "I'm temporarily stuck to this chair am I? No half measures." and electromagnetically sucks itself onto the furniture leaving you to pick it off with your nail. The varnish always comes off with that strip too.
Then out comes the first present and I'm resentfully chopping the paper with the scissors so that the cut line isn't smooth and straight but jagged and ugly an industrial city skyline. I put the present on the paper and stick the first bit on and roll and stick and turn and complicated end fold and stick and turn and complicated end fold and finish. Hurrah! Now, what did I just wrap and was it for Sam or Eva? Sh*t. Repeat a thousand million billion times.
I'm just a bit worked up at the moment. First world problems I think they call them. You ever go to empty a dishwasher, open the drawer and find a glass has managed to work itself facing up so now it's full to the brim with brown dirty dishwasher water and you've got to empty it, swill it out and make a judgement call on whether to put it back in for the next go or give it a wipe down with the tea towel and put it away? When I find one of those I drop to my knees and shout "Noooooooo!" while raising both fists to the heavens.
Sam has become more and more increasingly willful about getting into his car seat. It's a good job we rarely have to go anywhere in the car. Oh, my mistake, we actually have to make three or four car trips a day. This means getting Sam in his car seat six to eight times in a day and it used to go like this; carry Sam to car, open door, pop him in seat, buckle up, go. Now it goes like this; convince Sam to get near car, lift Sam into car, Sam throw paddy about getting into the car himself, Sam gets into car seat, Sam gets into car seat, Sam gets into car seat (I'm not repeating myself, it just takes ages), Sam in car seat, buckle up and go. But he's taken to pretending to get into his car seat. How is this jolly jape achieved? He climbs up to the seats and then hunkers down in between his and Eva's car seats like a garden gnome. He'll then sit really, really still and narrow his eyes in the hope that I'll be fooled. Unfortunately I can't actually allow this and so we're back to reasoning with a two year old on the merits of car safety versus traffic laws every f*cking trip. It's hot and I just spend half the day sticking my head in the back seat of a car. You'd think he'd get it after the first dozen times. Exhausting.
Anyway, the news says it's the end of the world next week so I shouldn't complain. Maybe I'll put off the wrapping until after the 21st December in case we do all die? I think this is a reasonable way to go. I'll maybe put off emptying the dishwasher until then too.
Take care,
Love Mark xxx
Email From My Brother : fighting kids and other things
Hi Fay,
How's it going? I hope your holiday from the drug trial is going well. I've got to say I don't know if I could hold up as well as you. Today I'm having a really bad day just being a stay-at-home dad. Both kids today were fighting over a plastic waste paper basket. Sam wanted to wear the basket on his head while Eva wanted to put a load of cut pieces of paper in it. She was clutching the balls of paper and screaming that Sam had to put the bin down while I asked her to put the paper in the main bin as it was being scattered all over the house. She of course refused, Sam refused to give the bin back and in the end I confiscated everything and pushed the wadded up balls of waste paper into my ears to block out the stereo crying.
Every morning at the moment is a lesson in hearing the word "no" from the kids. Getting dressed, brushing teeth, brushing hair, putting shoes on it's like every request I'm asking them to come over and let me poke them in the eye with peeled onions. All that I ask is for complete unwavering obedience, is that too much to ask? Juliette's M.O. is to make things "fun" and "distracting" so that brushing your teeth is game where by you're puppies being groomed for the big dog show or something. Can you imagine doing that every day of the week? Can you imagine coming up with some new roleplaying scenario just so the kids put their shoes on? It's Tuesday, you've got to come up with a new game tomorrow, that's exhausting as f*ck. I've decided they've got their soft as sh*te parent with their mum, so I'm going to be the parent that's harder than granite shot through the cold vacuum of space. My commands run like a computer programme; you will do A by the time B happens otherwise expect consequence C. Bam, bam, bam. I'm going to be the dad that when the kids are grown up they'll say "you always knew where you were with dad" and they'll respect that... or they'll cut me out their lives altogether and I'll never see my future grandchildren. At the moment it's a price worth paying just to get them to put their shoes on. Hell, if the Devil is listening I've got a soul I could let go pretty cheap some mornings.
Also I'm firmly not a believer in smacking. I never have smacked and I never will. It's also against the law to smack to child in New Zealand so there's that too. However I can see the attraction in smacking. On the one hand you've got to sit down and try to reason with a small child who's developing the ability to reason in the first place and although you've put forward a logical argument as to why they must or must not do something the child is exploring their boundaries and can illogically dig their heals in. So then there's giving them a quick smack and "that'll learn you". It's the real life police officer who has to take witness statements, fill out paperwork and follow procedure versus the Hollywood version who just ramps cars, shoots suspects and has a shouting match with his black police captain. Am I alone in being a parent who never would smack a child but thinks "You are being a little sh*t so this would be soooo much easier right here, right now if I just punched you in the knee"? I think it's the same for murder. I wouldn't murder someone I'm totally against murder but f*ck me lady, you had ample time in the checkout queue to get your purse out why are you only know with everything bagged and the pleading gaze of the checkout operator looking in your handbag? Wouldn't it be easier if I just murdered you with this here bag of frozen peas and I can purchase my shopping with some degree of reasonable expediency?
Okay, so changing the subject somewhat because I put some time in on Google and don't want to waste the research. One thing I learnt from The King of Torts by John Grisham (may not have been that book, it could have been something by Michael Crichton ... don't judge me) is that drug companies come up with names and trademark them before they have a drug. So I did some research on Sorenifeb. Did you know that Søren is a Danish and Norwegian given name originating from Latin Severinus, derived from severus which means "severe, strict, serious". So you may be taking a break from strictifeb or seriousifeb or severeifeb? Doesn't everything make sense now?
It's getting late here so I had written a bit about if you're into Harry Potter and dig the Latin link to Severinus think of it as having a break from Severus Snape from kicking you in the verjayjay. I know some people might be really into having Alan Rickman in a black wig and teachers cape kicking them in the crotch but luckily I deleted that from the e-mail because to reference that is frankly just plain weird and unnecessary.
Take care of yourself,
Love Mark xxx
How's it going? I hope your holiday from the drug trial is going well. I've got to say I don't know if I could hold up as well as you. Today I'm having a really bad day just being a stay-at-home dad. Both kids today were fighting over a plastic waste paper basket. Sam wanted to wear the basket on his head while Eva wanted to put a load of cut pieces of paper in it. She was clutching the balls of paper and screaming that Sam had to put the bin down while I asked her to put the paper in the main bin as it was being scattered all over the house. She of course refused, Sam refused to give the bin back and in the end I confiscated everything and pushed the wadded up balls of waste paper into my ears to block out the stereo crying.
Every morning at the moment is a lesson in hearing the word "no" from the kids. Getting dressed, brushing teeth, brushing hair, putting shoes on it's like every request I'm asking them to come over and let me poke them in the eye with peeled onions. All that I ask is for complete unwavering obedience, is that too much to ask? Juliette's M.O. is to make things "fun" and "distracting" so that brushing your teeth is game where by you're puppies being groomed for the big dog show or something. Can you imagine doing that every day of the week? Can you imagine coming up with some new roleplaying scenario just so the kids put their shoes on? It's Tuesday, you've got to come up with a new game tomorrow, that's exhausting as f*ck. I've decided they've got their soft as sh*te parent with their mum, so I'm going to be the parent that's harder than granite shot through the cold vacuum of space. My commands run like a computer programme; you will do A by the time B happens otherwise expect consequence C. Bam, bam, bam. I'm going to be the dad that when the kids are grown up they'll say "you always knew where you were with dad" and they'll respect that... or they'll cut me out their lives altogether and I'll never see my future grandchildren. At the moment it's a price worth paying just to get them to put their shoes on. Hell, if the Devil is listening I've got a soul I could let go pretty cheap some mornings.
Also I'm firmly not a believer in smacking. I never have smacked and I never will. It's also against the law to smack to child in New Zealand so there's that too. However I can see the attraction in smacking. On the one hand you've got to sit down and try to reason with a small child who's developing the ability to reason in the first place and although you've put forward a logical argument as to why they must or must not do something the child is exploring their boundaries and can illogically dig their heals in. So then there's giving them a quick smack and "that'll learn you". It's the real life police officer who has to take witness statements, fill out paperwork and follow procedure versus the Hollywood version who just ramps cars, shoots suspects and has a shouting match with his black police captain. Am I alone in being a parent who never would smack a child but thinks "You are being a little sh*t so this would be soooo much easier right here, right now if I just punched you in the knee"? I think it's the same for murder. I wouldn't murder someone I'm totally against murder but f*ck me lady, you had ample time in the checkout queue to get your purse out why are you only know with everything bagged and the pleading gaze of the checkout operator looking in your handbag? Wouldn't it be easier if I just murdered you with this here bag of frozen peas and I can purchase my shopping with some degree of reasonable expediency?
Okay, so changing the subject somewhat because I put some time in on Google and don't want to waste the research. One thing I learnt from The King of Torts by John Grisham (may not have been that book, it could have been something by Michael Crichton ... don't judge me) is that drug companies come up with names and trademark them before they have a drug. So I did some research on Sorenifeb. Did you know that Søren is a Danish and Norwegian given name originating from Latin Severinus, derived from severus which means "severe, strict, serious". So you may be taking a break from strictifeb or seriousifeb or severeifeb? Doesn't everything make sense now?
It's getting late here so I had written a bit about if you're into Harry Potter and dig the Latin link to Severinus think of it as having a break from Severus Snape from kicking you in the verjayjay. I know some people might be really into having Alan Rickman in a black wig and teachers cape kicking them in the crotch but luckily I deleted that from the e-mail because to reference that is frankly just plain weird and unnecessary.
Take care of yourself,
Love Mark xxx
Email from my brother: What's pooping in his cereal bowl?
Hi Fay,
How's it going? I hope you've got over the blip with having to come off your trial drug and are feeling happier. It's a funny thing happiness I reckon. Here I am in New Zealand and it's still technically spring however the days are hotter, the grass has been cut in the fields around us and turned into hay which is lovely, bumblebees the size of two penny pieces are drifting around, the baby chicks are getting bigger and fatter, Juliette got a new job she wanted, Eva is looking forward to Christmas with their six week summer holiday and Sam's just Sam the Toddler, ever ready for random hugs and kisses. But what am I preoccupied with? What is it that's taking a poop in my breakfast bowl? Well I'm glad you asked, it's dyeing a cloak the colour green.
I wanted to make a medieval cloak so that I can wrap it around myself on cold evening in front of the camp fire at SCA events. I found some woollen blankets at the local charity shop, sewed them together, lined them, put buttons on and button holes and then had to dye the finished cloak green. I did it in the old bathtub and the results are a bit lighter than what was expected. If I wear the cloak to an event I'm going to requests to lie down on the floor so folks can have a game of Subbuteo on me. It's was like the least medieval green ever. I could wear this cloak as a high visibility jacket. So we gave the kids a bath tonight and Juliette's like "Mark, what's all this brown stuff around the bath?" and I'm like "er, it's some coffee ...", and she's like "what the hell is coffee doing in the bath?" and I'm like, "er... me and Sam were dying some, er, cloth brown." In reality I was baristaring the f*ck up in that bathtub with litres of instant coffee to stain the cloak darker. I'll find out if it's worked tomorrow. It's a real worry for me I can tell you. So erm, how's your cancer going?
That reminds me, here's a puzzler about coffee. Am I the only one that if I buy a latte from a coffee shop or what ever and add loads of sugar from those little paper tube packets and stir it all to hell it's only the last mouthful at the end that is actually sweet? It is just me isn't it. I don't have much luck with coffee. At the indoor play area where I take the kids I always get a coffee in one of those lidded paper cups and it always drips onto my jeans. I try to clean the coffee spot up with a wet wipe and end up clearing a clean patch on my jeans around the brown stain. So then it looks like I've got some sort of dirty fried egg on my leg.
Last weekend we rented a bach and went to Waihi Beach. Just for a moment I'd like you to say how you think Waihi is pronounced. If you pronounced it "why-hi" go back and try again. If you pronounced it "why-he" you'd were spot on, well done. If you're wondering that the heck a bach is it's a New Zealand term that originally meant a small beach hut. If you're wondering why my jeans are so dirty that I can clean a patch with a wet wipe you have to go back in the e-mails about six months. However things with baches have moved on and we rented a two storey three bedroom full on house for about eighty quid per night that was still termed a bach and was better than the hut we live in for the rest of the year. One theory is that bach comes from bacheolor pad and I'd love to have lived in that house as a bacheolor. Five minutes walk over some sand dunes to miles of white beach on the shores of the Pacific Ocean (yes, I did pretend to be C3PO on Tatooine while walking over the dunes - "Don't get technical with me" I said to Eva at one point just for giggles). There can't have been more than twenty or thirty people on that beach all day and we had miles of the stuff to spread out on.
We shared the holiday with Juliette's sister, brother-in-law and kids and the rest of Juliette's family popped up for a sort of day trip too. One of the the highlight of the trip was when a pod of Orca whales swam by us off shore and you could see the wave crests created by their dorsal fins and tails. Of course another name for Orca whales is "killer whales" but "Hey kids, look, Orca Whales!" induces fewer nightmares than "Hey kids, look, Killer Whales!".
Juliette's dad brought up some cheap (less than $3) plastic kites and the son-in-laws had a go at trying to fly them in lieu of the kids not giving a f*ck about them. They only had one string and tended to spiral around and hit the sand unless you got them high enough. I can say with some pride that once I got mine high enough I managed to unravel all of the light weight twine and got my kite to fly what looked like about a gazzilion miles up. Felix Baumgartner would have said it was high up. It was aces and skill. The only thing that bothered me was the design on the kite which showed the sun wearing sun glasses. I couldn't help but wonder as I unwound the Atlantic spanning length of string why the sun would wear sunglasses. To protect it's eyes from itself? It dawned on me that the only reason why the sun would wear sunglasses would be to protect itself from the nearest star to our solar system way off in Alpha Centauri. I mean that's like a tiny pin prick of light. So then it dawned on me that the kite was taking the piss out of the sun. The kite was designed to taunt the sun. I was going to get the kite to fly as close to the sun as possible like some sort of kite flying 21st century Icarus. Game on! Then Sam shat his swimming trunks for the second time that day and Juliette made me reel the kite back in and put it away. So that didn't happen in the end.
Actually I've got to tell you that before I tried to taunt the sun I had offered everyone a chance to fly the kite (as in "look how awesomely high I've flown this $3 kite, want a go?") and Juliette's mum said she had never flown a kite ever. I passed her the plastic handle, she asked if she had to do anything, I said no and then we waited about five seconds and she passed the plastic handle back to me with a curt nod. Awesome.
After the holiday on the way back we men dropped the wives and kids off at the Goldfields Railway. This is a restored charitable railway which runs between Waihi and Waikino along the Ohinemuri River. We had to drop them off and pick them up at the other because we had the two cars and it was a one way journey. So we dropped them off at the Waihi station then in the car park we debated long and hard about doing a runner but eventually drove round to the Waikino station and picked them up at the other end. The kids loved it as this was the first time they had been on a railway train. I joked that at the other end I was then going to then show other old time stuff like a a vinyl record player, a VHS recorder, a cathode ray tube television set, a rotary dial telephone and corporal punishment. The looks I got seem to suggest I had suddenly morphed into Phil Harding from Time Team and had suggested we all do some flint knapping. Up in the Maungakawa Reserve by us is an old outbuilding that's had people graffiting it for the last hundred odd years. Some of it says stuff like "Dave and Sue, Sep 1994", but some is from 1947 and the like so you kind of respect it. My favourite quote on it is "Nothing is as old as yesterday." Think about that one for a moment... nothing is as old as yesterday. That is deep. I'm going up there later to add "except the day before yesterday obviously. Mark 2012".
It also occurs to me that nowadays you post something now on an internet forum or what ever and chances are there's some sort of ratings system for it. So every now and again you can't but help pop back and check out if anyone thought what you said was any good. Usually it's "Likes" or green thumbs up or red thumbs down but there's nothing like that for graffiti at all. From now on I'm going to go into public toilets and mark each statement with random green thumbs up and red thumbs down. So you'd see "I have climbed highest mountains, I have run through the fields, Only to be with you, Only to be with you. I have run, I have crawled, I have scaled these city walls, These city walls, Only to be with you. But I still haven't found what I'm looking for, but I still haven't found what I'm looking for." (add six green thumbs up, four red thumbs down.) And then underneath someone could have written: "Have you tried taking your sunglasses off before you look Bono?" (add five green thumbs up, one red thumb down).
I think I'm in bit of a funny mood because my hands are still dyed green from the cloak (gives self two green thumbs up) so I'll say cheery bye for now. Speak to you next week.
Love Mark xxx
How's it going? I hope you've got over the blip with having to come off your trial drug and are feeling happier. It's a funny thing happiness I reckon. Here I am in New Zealand and it's still technically spring however the days are hotter, the grass has been cut in the fields around us and turned into hay which is lovely, bumblebees the size of two penny pieces are drifting around, the baby chicks are getting bigger and fatter, Juliette got a new job she wanted, Eva is looking forward to Christmas with their six week summer holiday and Sam's just Sam the Toddler, ever ready for random hugs and kisses. But what am I preoccupied with? What is it that's taking a poop in my breakfast bowl? Well I'm glad you asked, it's dyeing a cloak the colour green.
I wanted to make a medieval cloak so that I can wrap it around myself on cold evening in front of the camp fire at SCA events. I found some woollen blankets at the local charity shop, sewed them together, lined them, put buttons on and button holes and then had to dye the finished cloak green. I did it in the old bathtub and the results are a bit lighter than what was expected. If I wear the cloak to an event I'm going to requests to lie down on the floor so folks can have a game of Subbuteo on me. It's was like the least medieval green ever. I could wear this cloak as a high visibility jacket. So we gave the kids a bath tonight and Juliette's like "Mark, what's all this brown stuff around the bath?" and I'm like "er, it's some coffee ...", and she's like "what the hell is coffee doing in the bath?" and I'm like, "er... me and Sam were dying some, er, cloth brown." In reality I was baristaring the f*ck up in that bathtub with litres of instant coffee to stain the cloak darker. I'll find out if it's worked tomorrow. It's a real worry for me I can tell you. So erm, how's your cancer going?
That reminds me, here's a puzzler about coffee. Am I the only one that if I buy a latte from a coffee shop or what ever and add loads of sugar from those little paper tube packets and stir it all to hell it's only the last mouthful at the end that is actually sweet? It is just me isn't it. I don't have much luck with coffee. At the indoor play area where I take the kids I always get a coffee in one of those lidded paper cups and it always drips onto my jeans. I try to clean the coffee spot up with a wet wipe and end up clearing a clean patch on my jeans around the brown stain. So then it looks like I've got some sort of dirty fried egg on my leg.
Last weekend we rented a bach and went to Waihi Beach. Just for a moment I'd like you to say how you think Waihi is pronounced. If you pronounced it "why-hi" go back and try again. If you pronounced it "why-he" you'd were spot on, well done. If you're wondering that the heck a bach is it's a New Zealand term that originally meant a small beach hut. If you're wondering why my jeans are so dirty that I can clean a patch with a wet wipe you have to go back in the e-mails about six months. However things with baches have moved on and we rented a two storey three bedroom full on house for about eighty quid per night that was still termed a bach and was better than the hut we live in for the rest of the year. One theory is that bach comes from bacheolor pad and I'd love to have lived in that house as a bacheolor. Five minutes walk over some sand dunes to miles of white beach on the shores of the Pacific Ocean (yes, I did pretend to be C3PO on Tatooine while walking over the dunes - "Don't get technical with me" I said to Eva at one point just for giggles). There can't have been more than twenty or thirty people on that beach all day and we had miles of the stuff to spread out on.
We shared the holiday with Juliette's sister, brother-in-law and kids and the rest of Juliette's family popped up for a sort of day trip too. One of the the highlight of the trip was when a pod of Orca whales swam by us off shore and you could see the wave crests created by their dorsal fins and tails. Of course another name for Orca whales is "killer whales" but "Hey kids, look, Orca Whales!" induces fewer nightmares than "Hey kids, look, Killer Whales!".
Juliette's dad brought up some cheap (less than $3) plastic kites and the son-in-laws had a go at trying to fly them in lieu of the kids not giving a f*ck about them. They only had one string and tended to spiral around and hit the sand unless you got them high enough. I can say with some pride that once I got mine high enough I managed to unravel all of the light weight twine and got my kite to fly what looked like about a gazzilion miles up. Felix Baumgartner would have said it was high up. It was aces and skill. The only thing that bothered me was the design on the kite which showed the sun wearing sun glasses. I couldn't help but wonder as I unwound the Atlantic spanning length of string why the sun would wear sunglasses. To protect it's eyes from itself? It dawned on me that the only reason why the sun would wear sunglasses would be to protect itself from the nearest star to our solar system way off in Alpha Centauri. I mean that's like a tiny pin prick of light. So then it dawned on me that the kite was taking the piss out of the sun. The kite was designed to taunt the sun. I was going to get the kite to fly as close to the sun as possible like some sort of kite flying 21st century Icarus. Game on! Then Sam shat his swimming trunks for the second time that day and Juliette made me reel the kite back in and put it away. So that didn't happen in the end.
Actually I've got to tell you that before I tried to taunt the sun I had offered everyone a chance to fly the kite (as in "look how awesomely high I've flown this $3 kite, want a go?") and Juliette's mum said she had never flown a kite ever. I passed her the plastic handle, she asked if she had to do anything, I said no and then we waited about five seconds and she passed the plastic handle back to me with a curt nod. Awesome.
After the holiday on the way back we men dropped the wives and kids off at the Goldfields Railway. This is a restored charitable railway which runs between Waihi and Waikino along the Ohinemuri River. We had to drop them off and pick them up at the other because we had the two cars and it was a one way journey. So we dropped them off at the Waihi station then in the car park we debated long and hard about doing a runner but eventually drove round to the Waikino station and picked them up at the other end. The kids loved it as this was the first time they had been on a railway train. I joked that at the other end I was then going to then show other old time stuff like a a vinyl record player, a VHS recorder, a cathode ray tube television set, a rotary dial telephone and corporal punishment. The looks I got seem to suggest I had suddenly morphed into Phil Harding from Time Team and had suggested we all do some flint knapping. Up in the Maungakawa Reserve by us is an old outbuilding that's had people graffiting it for the last hundred odd years. Some of it says stuff like "Dave and Sue, Sep 1994", but some is from 1947 and the like so you kind of respect it. My favourite quote on it is "Nothing is as old as yesterday." Think about that one for a moment... nothing is as old as yesterday. That is deep. I'm going up there later to add "except the day before yesterday obviously. Mark 2012".
It also occurs to me that nowadays you post something now on an internet forum or what ever and chances are there's some sort of ratings system for it. So every now and again you can't but help pop back and check out if anyone thought what you said was any good. Usually it's "Likes" or green thumbs up or red thumbs down but there's nothing like that for graffiti at all. From now on I'm going to go into public toilets and mark each statement with random green thumbs up and red thumbs down. So you'd see "I have climbed highest mountains, I have run through the fields, Only to be with you, Only to be with you. I have run, I have crawled, I have scaled these city walls, These city walls, Only to be with you. But I still haven't found what I'm looking for, but I still haven't found what I'm looking for." (add six green thumbs up, four red thumbs down.) And then underneath someone could have written: "Have you tried taking your sunglasses off before you look Bono?" (add five green thumbs up, one red thumb down).
I think I'm in bit of a funny mood because my hands are still dyed green from the cloak (gives self two green thumbs up) so I'll say cheery bye for now. Speak to you next week.
Love Mark xxx
E-mail from my brother: Chickens and other dead things
Hi Fay,
How's it going?
This week I've been mostly thinking about our chickens. We've got new arrivals in the form of four new little chicks two white ones and two speckled grey ones- everyone say "awwwww". We didn't really want four new little chicks but with the ability for the chickens to go and hide anywhere when they go broody we've got to keep an eye out and obviously this time we failed. Those chicks should have been a decent omelette or two egg fried sandwiches, but no, Mother Nature has to thwart our culinary plans and deliver up four little cute chicks. You make me sick Mother Nature. So to cut a long story short we had a broody chicken that we needed to find out where she was and this explains why I went under the house.
Now our house is a hundred and two years old and made of wood. The method of construction was to simply put in load of pad stones down and then put posts on them to which the rest of the house could be nailed onto. You can (and some people do) move their houses by disconnecting the water and electricity, jacking the house up and moving it onto a giant flatbed truck leaving the pad stones in the ground. But what this also means is that you have to have a good skirting board around the bottom of your building to stop chickens, children, dogs, killer clowns and other miscreants from getting under there and laying eggs, getting stuck, pooping dog poop, jumping out to murder us in our sleep and other undesirable things. Our skirting boards are a bit patchy around the back (i.e. missing) and it's here where I believed the chicken had got in. I deduced this by watching the other chickens skipping in and out of the gap like they were a bunch of scallies and the hole was the entrance to an Iceland on the last shopping day before Christmas.
So I put on my overalls, got a torch and slide in under there like a Vietnam Tunnel Rat hunting Charlie. It's dark under there obviously, it's got cobwebs and it's got spiders, so it's not great to begin with. It's kind of like sliding under a bed in search of something you've dropped; it's claustrophobic, difficult to move and breathe and has the added psychological horror of being underneath a whole house rather than just a piece of furniture that if you get stuck under you're semi-confident you can shift it off yourself. So I'm under there for bit when I find the corpse of Sparkles, the speckled cockerel (father of the two grey chicks I'm sad to say). I have to admit I wasn't expecting that and may have uttered a naughty word. Normally I like my chicken coated in KFC batter but this one was rather inconsiderately coated in a thin film of chicken death and nightmare fuel. He was lopped over on his side, his two eyes milky white zombie style and staring at me, some bugs crawling over his feathers, basically pretty horrible. First thing I thought was could I leave him to decompose under there? Sure he'd start to stink but the smell would go after a month or so. Second thing I thought was that I was a man goddamit and I had to deal with this like a man. So I did. I crawled out, got some gardening gloves on, respirator, hard hat, goggles, sprayed on some Lynx and then got a metal rake just close enough to hook the corpse out without me being closer than four feet to ol' chicken-zombie-death . Once out I heaved the body over into a paddock and buried it where it fell. Well it happily fell into the ditch, so I didn't have to bury it at all. Result! It's almost as if I planned it that way.
I'm thinking the ditch might be the best place to dispose of all our animals. Get some sort of air compressor and plastic pipe to shoot the guinea pig corpses into it when they die. Maybe I'll set fire to them as they leave the muzzle for some added wow-factor. Maybe I'll rig up some sort of collapsing ramp for the alpacas. Hell, I'd even get dumped in there, I don't mind. Actually I've given a lot of thought to how I want to go. Basically have you ever seen a sci-fi film where some team of explorers find a derilict space ship and when they get to the bridge they find a skeleton of the pilot still clad in his spacesuit, grinning into the void? See when I'm very very old (100 at least) and Juliette has (a) left me or (b) left me for dead, I'll have the house to myself. I'll set up some direct debits, dress the living room up to look like the bridge of a space ship, put on a space suit complete with helmet and then just sit in the captains chair and watch Deep Space Nine re-runs. Then two years later when someone comes round to ask if I want the grass cut as it's getting a bit long, they'll call out the police who'll break down the door, come into the living room and find my skeleton in the space suit grinning into the void. And they'll be like "What the f*ck!!?!?"
Maybe I can dress the rest of the house up too while I'm at it. Hang some WWII gas masks in the hallway instead of pictures, put some pickled eyeballs in jars and stack them in the bathroom, hang hundreds of baby boots up from the ceiling using 8mm film roll showing 50s holiday camp footage, build a little shrine to Tony Hart under the kitchen sink, you know, regular weird stuff. The new owners will thank me because then, and only then, will going under the house seem not quite so scary when old Foghorn Leghorn checks out under there.
Take care,
Love Mark xxx
How's it going?
This week I've been mostly thinking about our chickens. We've got new arrivals in the form of four new little chicks two white ones and two speckled grey ones- everyone say "awwwww". We didn't really want four new little chicks but with the ability for the chickens to go and hide anywhere when they go broody we've got to keep an eye out and obviously this time we failed. Those chicks should have been a decent omelette or two egg fried sandwiches, but no, Mother Nature has to thwart our culinary plans and deliver up four little cute chicks. You make me sick Mother Nature. So to cut a long story short we had a broody chicken that we needed to find out where she was and this explains why I went under the house.
Now our house is a hundred and two years old and made of wood. The method of construction was to simply put in load of pad stones down and then put posts on them to which the rest of the house could be nailed onto. You can (and some people do) move their houses by disconnecting the water and electricity, jacking the house up and moving it onto a giant flatbed truck leaving the pad stones in the ground. But what this also means is that you have to have a good skirting board around the bottom of your building to stop chickens, children, dogs, killer clowns and other miscreants from getting under there and laying eggs, getting stuck, pooping dog poop, jumping out to murder us in our sleep and other undesirable things. Our skirting boards are a bit patchy around the back (i.e. missing) and it's here where I believed the chicken had got in. I deduced this by watching the other chickens skipping in and out of the gap like they were a bunch of scallies and the hole was the entrance to an Iceland on the last shopping day before Christmas.
So I put on my overalls, got a torch and slide in under there like a Vietnam Tunnel Rat hunting Charlie. It's dark under there obviously, it's got cobwebs and it's got spiders, so it's not great to begin with. It's kind of like sliding under a bed in search of something you've dropped; it's claustrophobic, difficult to move and breathe and has the added psychological horror of being underneath a whole house rather than just a piece of furniture that if you get stuck under you're semi-confident you can shift it off yourself. So I'm under there for bit when I find the corpse of Sparkles, the speckled cockerel (father of the two grey chicks I'm sad to say). I have to admit I wasn't expecting that and may have uttered a naughty word. Normally I like my chicken coated in KFC batter but this one was rather inconsiderately coated in a thin film of chicken death and nightmare fuel. He was lopped over on his side, his two eyes milky white zombie style and staring at me, some bugs crawling over his feathers, basically pretty horrible. First thing I thought was could I leave him to decompose under there? Sure he'd start to stink but the smell would go after a month or so. Second thing I thought was that I was a man goddamit and I had to deal with this like a man. So I did. I crawled out, got some gardening gloves on, respirator, hard hat, goggles, sprayed on some Lynx and then got a metal rake just close enough to hook the corpse out without me being closer than four feet to ol' chicken-zombie-death . Once out I heaved the body over into a paddock and buried it where it fell. Well it happily fell into the ditch, so I didn't have to bury it at all. Result! It's almost as if I planned it that way.
I'm thinking the ditch might be the best place to dispose of all our animals. Get some sort of air compressor and plastic pipe to shoot the guinea pig corpses into it when they die. Maybe I'll set fire to them as they leave the muzzle for some added wow-factor. Maybe I'll rig up some sort of collapsing ramp for the alpacas. Hell, I'd even get dumped in there, I don't mind. Actually I've given a lot of thought to how I want to go. Basically have you ever seen a sci-fi film where some team of explorers find a derilict space ship and when they get to the bridge they find a skeleton of the pilot still clad in his spacesuit, grinning into the void? See when I'm very very old (100 at least) and Juliette has (a) left me or (b) left me for dead, I'll have the house to myself. I'll set up some direct debits, dress the living room up to look like the bridge of a space ship, put on a space suit complete with helmet and then just sit in the captains chair and watch Deep Space Nine re-runs. Then two years later when someone comes round to ask if I want the grass cut as it's getting a bit long, they'll call out the police who'll break down the door, come into the living room and find my skeleton in the space suit grinning into the void. And they'll be like "What the f*ck!!?!?"
Maybe I can dress the rest of the house up too while I'm at it. Hang some WWII gas masks in the hallway instead of pictures, put some pickled eyeballs in jars and stack them in the bathroom, hang hundreds of baby boots up from the ceiling using 8mm film roll showing 50s holiday camp footage, build a little shrine to Tony Hart under the kitchen sink, you know, regular weird stuff. The new owners will thank me because then, and only then, will going under the house seem not quite so scary when old Foghorn Leghorn checks out under there.
Take care,
Love Mark xxx
E-mail from my brother: Teddy bear hat and possible career change edition
Hi Fay,
How's it going? I very much liked the picture of you wearing a teddy bear hat. I reckon you should make a teddy bear balaclava so that your face looks like it's inside the teddy bear's open mouth. If you stitch some angry eyebrows onto the teddy bear's face you can make it look like it's swallowed you in an angry teddy bear wrathful way. Or you can make a balaclava that looks like a Batman mask. Or a Spider-man mask. I think that would be awesome. From the neck down, normal, from the neck up, Spider-man and/or Batman. Ironman balaclava could be a big hit too, or you could do a complete balaclava face mask that makes you look like Barack Obama, Jamie Oliver, Adolf Hitler or maybe something even more fun like Peggy Ollerenshaw from Hi-de-Hi. If I could knit I'd make one for you, but I can't. Sorry. It'd be in the post otherwise.
This week we had Sam's 2nd birthday and "naming ceremony". We felt sort of duty bound to do a naming ceremony because we did one for Eva. However everything in New Zealand is so less formal that getting dressed up and doing something like we did for Eva didn't fit right. So instead we ate vegetarian food and said a few words while we planted some trees. I insisted we shoot fire arrows into a bonfire to de-hippify the event a little. I think the event went well. Even when the father-in-law miss shot his fire arrow and nearly set alight his terylene action slacks. Oh how we laughed.
Last week we had the alpacas rounded up and taken away to have their winter fleeces cut off. It's been so long since we've had them in their harness' that it took me nearly an hour of them spitting and kicking before we got them ready to be taken away. The lady who sold them to us arranged the shearing and she popped by afterwards to see how things were. I told her about the problems with the kicking and spitting and to my surprise she said I should spit and kick back. Really? Apparently if they kick, you have to round house one of their legs from out beneath them. Brilliant! Someone walking over the hill gets to see me going all Chuck Norris with the alpacas in the paddock AND I get to spit in their faces on their way down too. I thought having alpacas would be boring but it's totally not true.
I did the Ohaupo Fireworks display last Saturday night. Basically it's a chance for our group to dress up in our medieval gear, demonstrate medieval fighting and shooting and charge the public for some have-a-go archery. The weather on the Saturday was pretty bad so the turn out was slow to begin with. This meant we could do some demonstration archery which is way more fun than trying to teach a six year old how to shoot. Seriously it's hard work sometimes. You have to start off by finding out whether the kid is left handed or right handed. I do this by asking the simple question "Which had do you draw with?". This is in case the child in question can't write yet and doesn't know if they're left or right handed. The number of blank stares I get like I've just asked them to name all of the seven dwarves in their ascending height order. Then I get kids who hold up their left hand and I say "okay, you're left handed" and they say, "oh no, I draw with this hand," and they hold up their right hand instead like they've just remembered that Christmas falls on a Tuesday this year and not a Sunday which is what they first thought. Or some say "I write with my right hand but I'm left handed." What the f....? My patience is pretty much all used up on my own kids so when it comes to other people's off spring I'm biting my lip and having violent Walter Mitty fantasies when dealing with them.
Get them with a bow in their hands, arrow nocked, bow drawn and ready to fly and you get kids that let go of the bow rather than the bow string (try to imagine that for a moment). Sometimes we get kids that let go of the string by letting it down so painfully slowly that the arrow drops at their feet (you've just got to pick it up and offer them another go). Then you get kids that just completely fail to let go of the string like they've got super glue on their fingers. They're at full draw, their arms are wobbling under the strain and they just can't let go. The advice of "Let go of the string!" soon wants to become a Gordon Ramseyesque "For the love of God, pull back on the string and then let the f*cker go! What's your f*cking problem? Let go of the f*cking string, it's not hard to f*cking do you arsehat! Let the f*cker go! Let it go! Stop f*cking clown dancing and let the f*cker go! Pretend it's red hot and let the string go!". Spit would be flying into their tiny face by now. "F*cksake you tiny mothef*cker I'm dying of old age! Are you f*cking with me? Are you f*cking with me? Get off the range, get off the f*cking range you useless sh*t. Go practice letting go of things. Try a rock first, pick one up and then drop it. Work yourself up to an apple or maybe an orange, progress to a tennis ball and then come back when you can drop a bag of shopping. Now f*ck off out of it YOU USELESS, USELESS, TW*T!"
But I'm not allowed to rant at them. Not after the last time anyway. Juliette has suggested I work as a classroom assistant but I've always said "no".
Actually the hardest part was during a demo shoot after we started shooting two or more arrows at the same time off the same string. You'd explain that archers did this to make it appear that there were double the number of archers on the field. After a while this kid came up to the barrier and caught my attention. You see I'd just shot two arrows at once and although they'd hit the target they weren't great shots. They never are because with two arrows you're splitting the energy from the bow and ... no, no, no come back, I'll stop being all "technical". So anyway this kid stares me straight in the eye, pauses and says "Better to succeed with one arrow than fail with two". I could totally see his point, I was of course new to this archery business what with having done it longer than he'd been alive, but on the other hand I just really wanted to say, and I mean this sincerely from the bottom of my heart, I really wanted to say "F*ck off, Yoda." But instead I smiled politely, tussled his hair and said "oh, you" in a fond way and then spun kicked his legs out from under him and spat on him like an alpaca. I didn't really of course. Not after the last time.
I'm not a nasty horrible person really, as I said sometimes you want to say or do something when you know you shouldn't. Anyway got to go, those alpaca goolies won't kick themselves black and blue on their own. Take care and speak to you next week. Hey, how about an alpaca balaclava? Awesome.
Love Mark xxx
How's it going? I very much liked the picture of you wearing a teddy bear hat. I reckon you should make a teddy bear balaclava so that your face looks like it's inside the teddy bear's open mouth. If you stitch some angry eyebrows onto the teddy bear's face you can make it look like it's swallowed you in an angry teddy bear wrathful way. Or you can make a balaclava that looks like a Batman mask. Or a Spider-man mask. I think that would be awesome. From the neck down, normal, from the neck up, Spider-man and/or Batman. Ironman balaclava could be a big hit too, or you could do a complete balaclava face mask that makes you look like Barack Obama, Jamie Oliver, Adolf Hitler or maybe something even more fun like Peggy Ollerenshaw from Hi-de-Hi. If I could knit I'd make one for you, but I can't. Sorry. It'd be in the post otherwise.
This week we had Sam's 2nd birthday and "naming ceremony". We felt sort of duty bound to do a naming ceremony because we did one for Eva. However everything in New Zealand is so less formal that getting dressed up and doing something like we did for Eva didn't fit right. So instead we ate vegetarian food and said a few words while we planted some trees. I insisted we shoot fire arrows into a bonfire to de-hippify the event a little. I think the event went well. Even when the father-in-law miss shot his fire arrow and nearly set alight his terylene action slacks. Oh how we laughed.
Last week we had the alpacas rounded up and taken away to have their winter fleeces cut off. It's been so long since we've had them in their harness' that it took me nearly an hour of them spitting and kicking before we got them ready to be taken away. The lady who sold them to us arranged the shearing and she popped by afterwards to see how things were. I told her about the problems with the kicking and spitting and to my surprise she said I should spit and kick back. Really? Apparently if they kick, you have to round house one of their legs from out beneath them. Brilliant! Someone walking over the hill gets to see me going all Chuck Norris with the alpacas in the paddock AND I get to spit in their faces on their way down too. I thought having alpacas would be boring but it's totally not true.
I did the Ohaupo Fireworks display last Saturday night. Basically it's a chance for our group to dress up in our medieval gear, demonstrate medieval fighting and shooting and charge the public for some have-a-go archery. The weather on the Saturday was pretty bad so the turn out was slow to begin with. This meant we could do some demonstration archery which is way more fun than trying to teach a six year old how to shoot. Seriously it's hard work sometimes. You have to start off by finding out whether the kid is left handed or right handed. I do this by asking the simple question "Which had do you draw with?". This is in case the child in question can't write yet and doesn't know if they're left or right handed. The number of blank stares I get like I've just asked them to name all of the seven dwarves in their ascending height order. Then I get kids who hold up their left hand and I say "okay, you're left handed" and they say, "oh no, I draw with this hand," and they hold up their right hand instead like they've just remembered that Christmas falls on a Tuesday this year and not a Sunday which is what they first thought. Or some say "I write with my right hand but I'm left handed." What the f....? My patience is pretty much all used up on my own kids so when it comes to other people's off spring I'm biting my lip and having violent Walter Mitty fantasies when dealing with them.
Get them with a bow in their hands, arrow nocked, bow drawn and ready to fly and you get kids that let go of the bow rather than the bow string (try to imagine that for a moment). Sometimes we get kids that let go of the string by letting it down so painfully slowly that the arrow drops at their feet (you've just got to pick it up and offer them another go). Then you get kids that just completely fail to let go of the string like they've got super glue on their fingers. They're at full draw, their arms are wobbling under the strain and they just can't let go. The advice of "Let go of the string!" soon wants to become a Gordon Ramseyesque "For the love of God, pull back on the string and then let the f*cker go! What's your f*cking problem? Let go of the f*cking string, it's not hard to f*cking do you arsehat! Let the f*cker go! Let it go! Stop f*cking clown dancing and let the f*cker go! Pretend it's red hot and let the string go!". Spit would be flying into their tiny face by now. "F*cksake you tiny mothef*cker I'm dying of old age! Are you f*cking with me? Are you f*cking with me? Get off the range, get off the f*cking range you useless sh*t. Go practice letting go of things. Try a rock first, pick one up and then drop it. Work yourself up to an apple or maybe an orange, progress to a tennis ball and then come back when you can drop a bag of shopping. Now f*ck off out of it YOU USELESS, USELESS, TW*T!"
But I'm not allowed to rant at them. Not after the last time anyway. Juliette has suggested I work as a classroom assistant but I've always said "no".
Actually the hardest part was during a demo shoot after we started shooting two or more arrows at the same time off the same string. You'd explain that archers did this to make it appear that there were double the number of archers on the field. After a while this kid came up to the barrier and caught my attention. You see I'd just shot two arrows at once and although they'd hit the target they weren't great shots. They never are because with two arrows you're splitting the energy from the bow and ... no, no, no come back, I'll stop being all "technical". So anyway this kid stares me straight in the eye, pauses and says "Better to succeed with one arrow than fail with two". I could totally see his point, I was of course new to this archery business what with having done it longer than he'd been alive, but on the other hand I just really wanted to say, and I mean this sincerely from the bottom of my heart, I really wanted to say "F*ck off, Yoda." But instead I smiled politely, tussled his hair and said "oh, you" in a fond way and then spun kicked his legs out from under him and spat on him like an alpaca. I didn't really of course. Not after the last time.
I'm not a nasty horrible person really, as I said sometimes you want to say or do something when you know you shouldn't. Anyway got to go, those alpaca goolies won't kick themselves black and blue on their own. Take care and speak to you next week. Hey, how about an alpaca balaclava? Awesome.
Love Mark xxx
Email from my brother: toddler wigs (don't ask, just read)
Hi Fay,
How is it going? I'm typing this while smelling a bit of sick. Not my sick, Sam's sick. I took the kids to an indoor play area after picking Eva up from school today and gave them both an apple in the car as a snack. That's an apple each of course, I couldn't ask them to share the same apple in the car any more than you could ask Ronald McDonald and Colonel Saunders to share a Burger King Quarter Pound Double Cheeseburger, at a Pizza Hut.
Anyway Sam has a tendency to get over excited after running around a lot and puke up and that's what he did on one of the indoor play area's bouncy castle/Krypton Factor assault course combos that seem popular these days. Of course normally I'd clean the puke up with one of the wet wipes from his change bag but for some reason Juliette transferred the contents of old unisex change bag into one of her old handbags. As a result I tend to leave the thing in the car as not even I have such a low level of self awareness that walking around carrying a handbag is something I'm comfortable with. So instead of being able to use a wet wipe I downed the last of my latte (one sugar please), popped open the lid on the cup, scooped up the apple chunks into the paper cup, threw it in the bin, wiped up the remaining mess clean with my sleeve and then rolled both my sleeves up. Tadaa! Juliette asked me why I didn't just ask management for a cloth but where's anecdote in that? Anyway I've still got my sleeves rolled up and I still smell of puke. It's appley with a faint hint of vomit.
I thought Sam might be extra tired tonight too what with all that running around but it took ages for Juliette to get him to sleep. I gave him no more that forty minutes for his day time nap as well so he was nice and knackered. When I woke him up at midday I tried to get him to stay awake by taking him to check the post (always a favourite). I popped him on my shoulders and he slumped over my head and fell asleep because he was still too tired. I thought I must have looked like a sidecurled Orthodox Jew but instead of ringlets hanging down over my ears I had toddler arms.
They've both woken up with nightmares lately so maybe it's something they've watched? Peppa Pig doesn't pull her punches when she's tackling those hard to stomach nitty gritty subjects I can tell you. "Mr Dinosaur is Lost", "Daddy Loses his Glasses", "Windy Autumn Day", "Traffic Jam", "George Catches a Cold", it's got more edgy story lines than Eastenders sometimes. Come to think of it maybe it was that time we watched Jaws.
This week I'm nearly close to finishing the modifications to my medieval gambeson. If you don't know what that is it's a padded jacket used as basic under protection for chainmail. I bought one ages ago and had to go for the XL size due to the room I need around my shoulders to draw my longbow. As a result the rest of the gambeson (i.e. the sleeves) were in proportion to the XL size which meant the sleeves were so long you couldn't see my hands and when I raised my arms up it lifted the shoulders up too and my head disappeared. Brilliant.
I took the sleeves off, tailored them to the correct size, put in spiral lace ups under the arms so that I can put my arms in and tighten them up and put lacing points inside the main garment so that I can remove the sleeves if need be in hot weather. Thing is it's all padded and quilted and has a gazillion bits that needed sewing but I can't run it through a sewing machine because it's too thick. So it's been painfully stitched by hand. Juliette's been looking at me doing this work and has casually wondered where that peg bag I promised to make her is. Her lips said "Where's my f*cking peg bag?" while her eyes said "Read my f*cking lips". That's an old joke, she didn't swear at me at all, it was just implied.
To be fair now it's been over a year that I promised to make her the peg bag and I actually did. However I ripped it adding some fancy stuff like a shoulder strap and a gizmo for keeping the bag open while taking pegs in and out and I couldn't be bothered to repair it. It's in the garage under a pile of rat sh*t. Still Christmas is coming up, so, peg bag ahoy ... It's the thought that counts I always believe.
Anyway, take care of yourself, I haven't included any mickey taking about being bald this letter for change as I thought you could do with a break.
Love,
Mark xxx
P.S. You can of course borrow Sam any time he's feeling sleepy.
How is it going? I'm typing this while smelling a bit of sick. Not my sick, Sam's sick. I took the kids to an indoor play area after picking Eva up from school today and gave them both an apple in the car as a snack. That's an apple each of course, I couldn't ask them to share the same apple in the car any more than you could ask Ronald McDonald and Colonel Saunders to share a Burger King Quarter Pound Double Cheeseburger, at a Pizza Hut.
Anyway Sam has a tendency to get over excited after running around a lot and puke up and that's what he did on one of the indoor play area's bouncy castle/Krypton Factor assault course combos that seem popular these days. Of course normally I'd clean the puke up with one of the wet wipes from his change bag but for some reason Juliette transferred the contents of old unisex change bag into one of her old handbags. As a result I tend to leave the thing in the car as not even I have such a low level of self awareness that walking around carrying a handbag is something I'm comfortable with. So instead of being able to use a wet wipe I downed the last of my latte (one sugar please), popped open the lid on the cup, scooped up the apple chunks into the paper cup, threw it in the bin, wiped up the remaining mess clean with my sleeve and then rolled both my sleeves up. Tadaa! Juliette asked me why I didn't just ask management for a cloth but where's anecdote in that? Anyway I've still got my sleeves rolled up and I still smell of puke. It's appley with a faint hint of vomit.
I thought Sam might be extra tired tonight too what with all that running around but it took ages for Juliette to get him to sleep. I gave him no more that forty minutes for his day time nap as well so he was nice and knackered. When I woke him up at midday I tried to get him to stay awake by taking him to check the post (always a favourite). I popped him on my shoulders and he slumped over my head and fell asleep because he was still too tired. I thought I must have looked like a sidecurled Orthodox Jew but instead of ringlets hanging down over my ears I had toddler arms.
They've both woken up with nightmares lately so maybe it's something they've watched? Peppa Pig doesn't pull her punches when she's tackling those hard to stomach nitty gritty subjects I can tell you. "Mr Dinosaur is Lost", "Daddy Loses his Glasses", "Windy Autumn Day", "Traffic Jam", "George Catches a Cold", it's got more edgy story lines than Eastenders sometimes. Come to think of it maybe it was that time we watched Jaws.
This week I'm nearly close to finishing the modifications to my medieval gambeson. If you don't know what that is it's a padded jacket used as basic under protection for chainmail. I bought one ages ago and had to go for the XL size due to the room I need around my shoulders to draw my longbow. As a result the rest of the gambeson (i.e. the sleeves) were in proportion to the XL size which meant the sleeves were so long you couldn't see my hands and when I raised my arms up it lifted the shoulders up too and my head disappeared. Brilliant.
I took the sleeves off, tailored them to the correct size, put in spiral lace ups under the arms so that I can put my arms in and tighten them up and put lacing points inside the main garment so that I can remove the sleeves if need be in hot weather. Thing is it's all padded and quilted and has a gazillion bits that needed sewing but I can't run it through a sewing machine because it's too thick. So it's been painfully stitched by hand. Juliette's been looking at me doing this work and has casually wondered where that peg bag I promised to make her is. Her lips said "Where's my f*cking peg bag?" while her eyes said "Read my f*cking lips". That's an old joke, she didn't swear at me at all, it was just implied.
To be fair now it's been over a year that I promised to make her the peg bag and I actually did. However I ripped it adding some fancy stuff like a shoulder strap and a gizmo for keeping the bag open while taking pegs in and out and I couldn't be bothered to repair it. It's in the garage under a pile of rat sh*t. Still Christmas is coming up, so, peg bag ahoy ... It's the thought that counts I always believe.
Anyway, take care of yourself, I haven't included any mickey taking about being bald this letter for change as I thought you could do with a break.
Love,
Mark xxx
P.S. You can of course borrow Sam any time he's feeling sleepy.
Email from my brother: pirates, nether regions and lovely grapefruit
Hi Fay,
How is it going? I read that you've got a crease mark across your forehead from your scarf. Have you tried looking at some pirate websites? I mean actual pirates, not the ones that download illegal films and stuff? Because pirates wear a lot of bandanas so must have the same problem. Jack Sparrow for example never takes his head scarf off at all so he must have one hell of a crease. Just saying.
I started writing this e-mail in some discomfort. Due to the wet weather and lack of drying opportunities I'm down to my last pair of boxer shorts and those are the ones I received from Eva last Father's Day. They're gold with little rosettes and silver cups all over them. Inside each rosette is the legend "No.1!". Anyway the boxers are also about two sizes too small for me and so my nethers feel like they've been shrink wrapped. I've been wearing them all day, in some pain as I bent over and repeatedly stuffed all the washing into the tumble dryer so that I don't have to wear them again anytime soon. The boxers are so tight I feel like I've been flossing my bottom and all the rosettes on the back now say "No.2!".
This week Eva went back to school. Turns out they have four terms here instead of three so they have another ten more weeks before the big six week Summer/Christmas holiday. I'm trying to get back into the swing of making her packed lunches but to be honest I can't be bothered most of the time. I keep reading articles about super keen parents who make their kid's lunches up to look like characters from Seseame Street or Looney Tune characters. My solution is to make up a normal lunch and pop in a picture of Big Bird or something on top. You get the same effect right? Open lunchbox and see Road Runner, surprise! Eat lunch. She's five so will probably be just as happy. Tell me I'm wrong.
Sam got upset because his plastic grabber toy was found broken in the car. When he's strapped into his seat he likes to use it to grap the handle over the door but he can't grab anything now that one of the pincers has snapped off. I tried to explain that although he can't grab anything one pincer still works so he can still beckon things to come to him with it. He's just not happy with the concept for some reason while I'm astounded at the Zen'ness of the grabber vs broken grabber concept. There's a metaphor or something right there because the grabber is only a foot long where as your useful beckoning range is line of sight. I'm thinking I need more sleep. (Uses broken grabber in general direction of bed).
While I'm on the subject of Sam his new favourite word is "no". Or rather "nah". He babbles away and suddenly there's a clear as day "nah" like he's a bored teenager. "Do you want to read Postman Pat, Sam?", "Nah.", "Do you want to read Peppa Pig, Sam?", "Nah.", "Do you want to eat large amounts of unhealthy chocolate, Sam?", "Na....uh-hu.", "Well Sam ... NAH!". I don't know if it's the broken promise of chocolate that makes him cry or my doing a victory dance and chanting "Su-cker!" to the tune of The A-Team theme. When he learns to talk some more he can tell me.
We're back on the 5:2 diet where two days a week we limit our food intake to 600 calories. It's supposed to be healthier but the only thing that's healthy is my appetite. There's no weight loss either. The only thing I've lost is my will to live. We bought a book on the diet but it's been sat on the side unread for nearly two weeks now. It's like neither of us wants to read the book because if we do that we're going to find out we've been doing it wrong. Six hundred calories!? No, it should be five hundred. One calorie over and you might as well eat pies for all the good it'll do you. Six weeks of it now, brilliant.
I'm also currently brewing some grapefruit wine. It's going to be horrible, I know it, Sam knows it. He helped me pick the grapefruit from our grapefruit tree. No one likes grapefruit and yet it's the biggest fruit tree on the property. It must have a couple of hundred grapefruit alread hanging off it's unwanted branches. Anyway the grapefruit wine is going to be horrible because Sam helped pick them. He's a short lad so he thought it might be easier to throw some in that he found on the floor. Some rotten ones got in, I know it, Sam knows it. I'll send you a bottle when it's ready, it'll take your mind off your forehead crease problem. Everyone's problems go away when you're sh*tting through the eye of needle. Also the grapefruit wine is going to be horrible because it's made from f*cking grapefruit. QED.
Take care,
Love,
Mark xxx
How is it going? I read that you've got a crease mark across your forehead from your scarf. Have you tried looking at some pirate websites? I mean actual pirates, not the ones that download illegal films and stuff? Because pirates wear a lot of bandanas so must have the same problem. Jack Sparrow for example never takes his head scarf off at all so he must have one hell of a crease. Just saying.
I started writing this e-mail in some discomfort. Due to the wet weather and lack of drying opportunities I'm down to my last pair of boxer shorts and those are the ones I received from Eva last Father's Day. They're gold with little rosettes and silver cups all over them. Inside each rosette is the legend "No.1!". Anyway the boxers are also about two sizes too small for me and so my nethers feel like they've been shrink wrapped. I've been wearing them all day, in some pain as I bent over and repeatedly stuffed all the washing into the tumble dryer so that I don't have to wear them again anytime soon. The boxers are so tight I feel like I've been flossing my bottom and all the rosettes on the back now say "No.2!".
This week Eva went back to school. Turns out they have four terms here instead of three so they have another ten more weeks before the big six week Summer/Christmas holiday. I'm trying to get back into the swing of making her packed lunches but to be honest I can't be bothered most of the time. I keep reading articles about super keen parents who make their kid's lunches up to look like characters from Seseame Street or Looney Tune characters. My solution is to make up a normal lunch and pop in a picture of Big Bird or something on top. You get the same effect right? Open lunchbox and see Road Runner, surprise! Eat lunch. She's five so will probably be just as happy. Tell me I'm wrong.
Sam got upset because his plastic grabber toy was found broken in the car. When he's strapped into his seat he likes to use it to grap the handle over the door but he can't grab anything now that one of the pincers has snapped off. I tried to explain that although he can't grab anything one pincer still works so he can still beckon things to come to him with it. He's just not happy with the concept for some reason while I'm astounded at the Zen'ness of the grabber vs broken grabber concept. There's a metaphor or something right there because the grabber is only a foot long where as your useful beckoning range is line of sight. I'm thinking I need more sleep. (Uses broken grabber in general direction of bed).
While I'm on the subject of Sam his new favourite word is "no". Or rather "nah". He babbles away and suddenly there's a clear as day "nah" like he's a bored teenager. "Do you want to read Postman Pat, Sam?", "Nah.", "Do you want to read Peppa Pig, Sam?", "Nah.", "Do you want to eat large amounts of unhealthy chocolate, Sam?", "Na....uh-hu.", "Well Sam ... NAH!". I don't know if it's the broken promise of chocolate that makes him cry or my doing a victory dance and chanting "Su-cker!" to the tune of The A-Team theme. When he learns to talk some more he can tell me.
We're back on the 5:2 diet where two days a week we limit our food intake to 600 calories. It's supposed to be healthier but the only thing that's healthy is my appetite. There's no weight loss either. The only thing I've lost is my will to live. We bought a book on the diet but it's been sat on the side unread for nearly two weeks now. It's like neither of us wants to read the book because if we do that we're going to find out we've been doing it wrong. Six hundred calories!? No, it should be five hundred. One calorie over and you might as well eat pies for all the good it'll do you. Six weeks of it now, brilliant.
I'm also currently brewing some grapefruit wine. It's going to be horrible, I know it, Sam knows it. He helped me pick the grapefruit from our grapefruit tree. No one likes grapefruit and yet it's the biggest fruit tree on the property. It must have a couple of hundred grapefruit alread hanging off it's unwanted branches. Anyway the grapefruit wine is going to be horrible because Sam helped pick them. He's a short lad so he thought it might be easier to throw some in that he found on the floor. Some rotten ones got in, I know it, Sam knows it. I'll send you a bottle when it's ready, it'll take your mind off your forehead crease problem. Everyone's problems go away when you're sh*tting through the eye of needle. Also the grapefruit wine is going to be horrible because it's made from f*cking grapefruit. QED.
Take care,
Love,
Mark xxx
Email from my brother
I'm a bit behind with posting these, but I can't deprive you of them any longer. Here is number one of four.
----------------
Hi Fay,
How's it going? I checked your blog before writing this but don't know if anything extra is happening with you or that now you're back at work it means you're busy. Or that I've skimmed over your blog and missed something important. At this point I'm going with the first option.
I couldn't speak to mum and dad last week either because I was away on an SCA weekend (Society of Creative Anachronisms) at Pirongia and they let me know what's going on with the family. I managed to rope Paul (my nephew on Juliette's side) into coming along for the day on the Saturday at Pirongia. He's eight now so is enjoying things quite a bit. He managed to come second in his first ever contest for the junior archery and won a leather bracer (a leather arm protector that stops the string of the bow from hitting your arm). Only last month prior I signed him up as my fletchers apprentice on a Contract of Indenture where by I get first dibs on "anee wynnings from archeree tournaments, hastiludes and chance bets at the butts". I can actually spell but the contract was written in olde English and stained with tea to make it look really authentic. I believe my marriage certificate uses the same modus operandi.
The upshot is that I've always wanted another leather bracer and contracts are contracts, so... His contract lasts for "seven yers and one day" so I should be able to skim off his winnings until 2019 at least. Result!
I came joint second in the adult archery contest and managed to talk my way out of a shoot out for the first place. You see the core archers all practice on the third Sunday of the month and we belong to the (fictional) household of Geoffrey Wulf who is under the employ of the (fictional) constable of the Tower, Sir Alan de Boxhill. Sir Alan de Boxhill actually existed back in the 1370s but doesn't "exist" now so to speak. He's like a figurehead boss, the Colonel Saunders to our archery KFC.
So any win by a household archer is a feather in the cap for household, right? So after three separate rounds of speed shooting, distance shooting and animal target shooting the marshal in charge had three archers on equal points because we all won our rounds. However the first round was one by a household archer, the second round by a non-household archer and the last round was won by me the oldest household archer in town.
Because it was near lunch I said that rather than do a shoot out to decide the winner perhaps the winner should be the archer who among us scored highest in the rounds they did not win. I did this because I knew that the other household archer would definitely win this way because he shot really well in the second round. Following this? Don't worry, I didn't either and I'm seriously not kidding. I knew that if we did a last shoot out where winner takes all there was a possibility that the non-household archer could snatch victory from a lucky shot, so I angled it to make sure the household gained all the glory. Not me, the household. Understand? It was not about me.
Ha! Who am I kidding? What actually happened was that I thought we were shooting to decide the final third round placing because I thought I was out of the competition as a whole. It was only after lunch that I realised I had a chance at shooting for first place for the whole shooting match (if you pardon the pun) and talked the marshal out of it. However later on I did managed to pick up the prize "Resplendent Peacock award for best Light Combat (archer) or heraldic appearance" because of my kit. I take solace in this because if you're going to be a f*ckwit might as well look fabulous while doing it.
It's the last week of the school holidays here before they launch into term something or other. I have no idea how school terms work. I was told they got two weeks off for "half term" but two weeks sounds a bit much. I was also told that they have four terms rather than three. All I know is that next week things will get a whole lot easier with just Sam to look after. Don't get me wrong, Eva is lovely on her own and Sam is lovely on his own but put them together is like water and potassium, it's like the Incredible Hulk and Jack McGee, it's like Baileys and Lime Cordial. Those two do not get on and they can not get on for hours without a break. I don't know where they get it from. All I know is that without Tom and Jerry cartoons where I can sit them down for ten minutes, in silence I'd be ... hang on a minute.
Take care,
Love,
Mark xxx
----------------
Hi Fay,
How's it going? I checked your blog before writing this but don't know if anything extra is happening with you or that now you're back at work it means you're busy. Or that I've skimmed over your blog and missed something important. At this point I'm going with the first option.
I couldn't speak to mum and dad last week either because I was away on an SCA weekend (Society of Creative Anachronisms) at Pirongia and they let me know what's going on with the family. I managed to rope Paul (my nephew on Juliette's side) into coming along for the day on the Saturday at Pirongia. He's eight now so is enjoying things quite a bit. He managed to come second in his first ever contest for the junior archery and won a leather bracer (a leather arm protector that stops the string of the bow from hitting your arm). Only last month prior I signed him up as my fletchers apprentice on a Contract of Indenture where by I get first dibs on "anee wynnings from archeree tournaments, hastiludes and chance bets at the butts". I can actually spell but the contract was written in olde English and stained with tea to make it look really authentic. I believe my marriage certificate uses the same modus operandi.
The upshot is that I've always wanted another leather bracer and contracts are contracts, so... His contract lasts for "seven yers and one day" so I should be able to skim off his winnings until 2019 at least. Result!
I came joint second in the adult archery contest and managed to talk my way out of a shoot out for the first place. You see the core archers all practice on the third Sunday of the month and we belong to the (fictional) household of Geoffrey Wulf who is under the employ of the (fictional) constable of the Tower, Sir Alan de Boxhill. Sir Alan de Boxhill actually existed back in the 1370s but doesn't "exist" now so to speak. He's like a figurehead boss, the Colonel Saunders to our archery KFC.
So any win by a household archer is a feather in the cap for household, right? So after three separate rounds of speed shooting, distance shooting and animal target shooting the marshal in charge had three archers on equal points because we all won our rounds. However the first round was one by a household archer, the second round by a non-household archer and the last round was won by me the oldest household archer in town.
Because it was near lunch I said that rather than do a shoot out to decide the winner perhaps the winner should be the archer who among us scored highest in the rounds they did not win. I did this because I knew that the other household archer would definitely win this way because he shot really well in the second round. Following this? Don't worry, I didn't either and I'm seriously not kidding. I knew that if we did a last shoot out where winner takes all there was a possibility that the non-household archer could snatch victory from a lucky shot, so I angled it to make sure the household gained all the glory. Not me, the household. Understand? It was not about me.
Ha! Who am I kidding? What actually happened was that I thought we were shooting to decide the final third round placing because I thought I was out of the competition as a whole. It was only after lunch that I realised I had a chance at shooting for first place for the whole shooting match (if you pardon the pun) and talked the marshal out of it. However later on I did managed to pick up the prize "Resplendent Peacock award for best Light Combat (archer) or heraldic appearance" because of my kit. I take solace in this because if you're going to be a f*ckwit might as well look fabulous while doing it.
It's the last week of the school holidays here before they launch into term something or other. I have no idea how school terms work. I was told they got two weeks off for "half term" but two weeks sounds a bit much. I was also told that they have four terms rather than three. All I know is that next week things will get a whole lot easier with just Sam to look after. Don't get me wrong, Eva is lovely on her own and Sam is lovely on his own but put them together is like water and potassium, it's like the Incredible Hulk and Jack McGee, it's like Baileys and Lime Cordial. Those two do not get on and they can not get on for hours without a break. I don't know where they get it from. All I know is that without Tom and Jerry cartoons where I can sit them down for ten minutes, in silence I'd be ... hang on a minute.
Take care,
Love,
Mark xxx
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