Thoughts of the last 72hrs

I like turbulence, it reminds me of roller coasters when I was a kid. The thought that I might die never seems to occur to me. Wellington is colder than I expected. I should have expected it to be cold. Wow that tunnel is really narrow, what happens if someone else wants to come through in the opposite direction? Nobody here looks happy. Theres a supermarket right across the road. A two person room all to myself? How kind of you. So thats where the politicians go to work. This place is huge, I could spend a week here. Free old school tv and ads here? Look at that, my white ancestors fought against my brown ancestors in the maori wars. and got medals for it. I am half caste New Zealand. Save Manners mall on facebook? Why do they want to save the mall? whos destroying it? Swonderful, what a cool name for a store, reminds me of that old musical... i forget the name of it. Damn it that car nearly hit me. i hate one way grid streets, how are you supposed to know which direction cars are coming from? Hey isn't that the building where they had the Lord of the Rings premiere? Wasn't Gollum or someone hanging over it? I like sushi. Salmon & avocado mmm. No pens, only pencils, don't destroy the archives. Hey my great great grandma's will is in french, that is cool. Burial locator, was he or was he not related to me? Ooh look that is James Jordan's dad, well I finally linked up a whole family. Should I go on the Te Papa ride or shouldn't I? It looks good. But then it might give me a headache. How am I supposed to cram 6 floors of viewing into 4 hrs? Oh well give it a shot. i don't like the photography section. But the cloud artwork NZ words painted all over the wall is quite impressive. The tunnel again. Hey there are alcoves in it, just like Chad said. I wonder if you could hide in there while a bus was going through. I bet people do do that, just for dares & giggles. They're serving alcohol on this flight? good grief. and home. sleep. sweet oblivion. WORK!!!! is it that time already? dumb. glad its only 4hrs today. I think its time to revisit my blog. Yes, lets do that. "We?" since when am I "plural?"... and we will stop there.

Clothes Shopping

This morning I went opshopping. One of my workmates let me know a few months ago about a place she'd been to and I finally decided to check it out. I dragged one of my other workmates along with me. Shopping is always a good female bonding experience. I hate shopping, especially clothes shopping and most especially shoe shopping (I won't go into the many traumatic experiences I've had), but the socialising usually makes up for it.

I tried on about 20 different items, most of which were completely unsuitable for my size and shape. To start with, I'm not a good judge of what will fit me and what won't, and knowing what will look good is another story entirely. I usually only take one of two people shopping, but they both now live in another city and can't help me.

Womans clothes: masses of frills, lace and drapery, overdone 90% of the time, non-functional 70% of the time, occasionally pretty, other times hideous, not fitting in one way or another 97% of the time. Tops, cardigans, jerseys, pullovers, singlets, dresses, skirts, tights, pants, jeans, halter-necks, retro-tops, caftans, lavalava's, shorts...

Guys clothes seem much easier to work with. Pants, a top, a sweatshirt.

I finally chose a dark pink jacket that I really really like and a pair of plain black shoes for work. 4 hours and only two things to show for it. Its time to go home for a nap I think

Goals

I was just looking at some goals I wrote about a year ago, pasted on my notice board, and forgot about. Thats what happens when you move so much and stuff gets dumped in storage.

One of them that I had written gave me a fright. It said, "I want a job where I can travel and have time to do the things that I want." This was written before I had even thought of applying for the job at AirNZ. And look at that. A part time job that gives me discounted flights to every continent in the world, bar antarctica.

I remember when I first saw the french speaking job on seek.co.nz for airnz. I had a strong impression that I should apply for it, but I didn't want to, mainly on the grounds that I would have to move to Auckland. But I guess it worked out in the end, I got the job I wanted, and its a good place for me to be.

Back in high school the same thing happened. I wrote down a bunch of goals at New Years, forgot about them, and was startled to find the list at the end of seventh form that I had completed nearly everything I set out to do. Especially Dux. That was the best one.

Divorce

Family with 4 children living in Rotorua. Husband tells wife he has a job in Gisborne, and suggests she go stay with family in Auckland while he gets settled and finds a place for them all to stay, at which point he will call them down to Gisborne. Wife therefore takes 4 children and heads up to stay with her aunty. She does not hear from her husband. She writes to him in Gisborne. He doesn't answer. She wonders whats gone wrong and tells the police her husband is missing. A few weeks later they find him in Taranaki and bring him up to Auckland for a court hearing.

He is ordered to start paying maintenance towards the children. Several months later, he hasn't contributed anything. So he goes to court for a few months. The wife gets a minimal paying job, most of her salary going towards board for herself and one of her sons. The other children have been put into an orphanage/childrens home. He still doesn't contribute anything for the children. 3yrs after they moved to auckland, the wife files for divorce on the grounds of desertion.

3 yrs later the wife is remarried. She gets up and leaves her husband. He writes her a begging letter asking her to come back. She does not respond. He eventually files for divorce.

True story of my great great uncles daughter in the 1930's. Seeing the two divorce files today at the NZ archives office. It definately brought it all to life. I wonder if the breakup of her first marriage caused such a strong fear of abandonment in her, that she left her second husband before he could leave her. I wonder what happened to her and the children afterwards. Maybe one of them is still alive.

Attempt to Honour Mums

Even though Mothers day is meant to be about looking after mum's, they still have to do all the work. That might be a sad commentary on my family, but I have observed it amongst other families also. We decided to have a big extended family get together pot luck dinner at my aunty's house. There was way too much food and all the females opted to "start our next diet tomorrow". But it was still mostly prepared by the mothers. So much for it being their day. All the menfolk were off somewhere, the office or the lounge, I'm not sure which.

As the only adult female not a mother, I attempted to do my part. Namely dessert. It was delicious too, chocolate apple crumble. Of course loaded on top of potato bake, roast meat, roast veges, salad and some kind of dubious curry, my eyes quickly became too big for my stomache. I love food. But there was way too much for one person to manage preparation and cleanup all by themselves, and it wasn't my kitchen.

You have to be careful when you're a female in someone elses kitchen. There's liable to be a lot of rules that you don't know about in advance. You have to be careful not to step on any toes. That being said, its a great communal place, the kitchen. Its generally the heart of the home, and in group situations its a place to catch up and feel good about working towards a comon goal, namely getting dinner out on time, but only when theres more than one person there. So in that case, helping my mum, aunty and sister was not so much honouring the mothers in my family as participating with them, and turned out to be a really enjoyable experience.

Why I write

Its been a while since i last posted, and I miss my blog. I usually write for therapeutic reasons, it helps my thinking to be able to see things on paper/in cyberspace. I notice different things than what I noticed in my own mind. It also helps to have a third opinion on my own views, I always learn alot more that way than I would have otherwise.

This week has been ok, slightly chaotic but emotionally flat. I usually write when I'm really happy or really upset about something, but this week has been quite blah. Never mind the Zeal staff strike right outside the airport on thursday, the gunman holding little Napier under siege or my bosses refusal to give me the leave that I asked for, none of it seemed to touch my emotions. It was like there was a wall around me, blocking it all out and holding everything at arms length. I don't quite know why, possibly i'm in denial about something. I was sick last week so my view of things became quite distorted, and in such a hazy mental fog I found myself unable to do all or even half of the things I had planned to do. Ordinary mundane things like, my washing, or cleaning up my room, or vacuuming for that matter.

Back to the topic. Why I write. It feels better when I write. Like i've accomplished something small and simple in my own little world, even if it is only something of value to myself. Writing helps me understand the things around me better, and touches on a small creative chord within myself that brings me joy. When I'm down, it brings me up to almost neutral, and when im neutral, writing lifts me up, not quite to elation, but at least something very near to it.

A+

Not really sure what a funeral has to do with sudden bingeing on fast food, but after a week of super healthy eating, finding out my stepdad had died suddenly brought on a need for burger king, mcdonalds and the like. Haven't been to BK since I moved cities, so I was surprised to discover that my favourite burger BK chicken has not only noticeably shrunk (with new packaging to disguise the fraud) but at the same time as it jumped up in price. I was disgusted enough to feel the need to text several people to alert them to my new discovery.

After several weeks of urging from my father, i finally consented to read his book, the one I got him for fathers day a couple of years ago (what was I thinking!) Eat right for your blood type. According to Peter D'Adamo the food that is best for your body is in line with whatever genetic inheritance you have, therefore if you respect what your body wants you will naturally be healthy. As an A type, I should be vegetarian. I should live on tofu and vegetables, cut out meat especially red meat (fish allowed), no wheat, no dairy, no potatoes, kumara, tomatoes, oranges, as these all react badly in my system. When I think about it, it explains why I lost 4kgs on my meat free, dairy free, bread free detox.

Living this diet would of course be a lot more difficult than just reading about it. But I bought some tofu at the markets this morning, just to try it out.