Thursday 5 January 2012

A to do list

Some things just look wrong, and that wee redirecting post sitting up here was one of them.

We've been to New Zealand and returned and all was fantastic and someday I'll finish updating the trip story which might well be during our next holiday when I have the time, which itself might well be in 10 or 15 years when we've finished paying for this one, but I will, at some stage.

I would say it seemed somewhat cruel to bring the child back to the more confined and restricted spaces of Holland, when she had the run of some of the most wonderful open spaces you could imagine, but considering that she also spent many hours strapped into a car seat, confined to a campervan, or in a flying germ capsule that would be a tad rich.

Christmas and New Year has come and gone in just the manner the doctor ordered - delightfully quiet, although we have realised that the wonder that is Santa Claus won't play half the role in the child's life that Sinterklaas does. The blackface slave owning, naughty child kidnapping, boat faring poet Spaniard, 3 week early Dutch version of Father Christmas is obviously what all her little friends get excited about, and in order to be fair, we'll have to play along.

It's all food for thought now that she is a far more independent madam than just a few months ago, her surroundings, how she speaks, and the traditions she will want to respect will be significantly different to if we lived back 'home' or somewhere else.  Her emergence from babyhood has unwittingly brought up questions to be asked and decisions to be made that require great thought and have wide impact.

Great thought indeed, just not today.

Regardless, that redirection post has now been shunted down the page and I can consider my day one high in achievement, if somewhat low in standards.

Wednesday 28 September 2011

God only knows why

But if the universe allows, by conspiring to have time, inclination, and technology collide I may just keep this http://theoctoberkiwis.blogspot.com/ updated with 'whatever' over the coming month.

Maybe. Perhaps. Probably.

Monday 19 September 2011

They're coming to take me away - ha ha!

I'm not quite right in the head.

Well, I can't be really, can I?

I mean, the cracks must have already been showing in my mental well-being if I thought it was a good idea to fly to - quite literally - the other side of the planet with a toddler, just so we can all eat, sleep, and travel around the countryside in a camper van. But I do think I've stretched the bands of sanity by disrupting the week and half before our departure, that any normal person would spend preparing for said trip, by having some builders come in and basically wreck our house.

As I type this my darling daughter is snoring her little head off while power cables and water connections are flapping wildly in the late September breeze around me. Stepping outside our back door would result in the lesser agile among us plummeting to their certain death into a hole that I can only hope serves some greater purpose than being the cause of my premature demise.

But hey, kids run around construction sites all the time. Breeze blocks and gas mains make great toys, and don't let anyone tell you that sawdust is bad for a child's digestion.

If I'm to take any consolation from the current state of my home, other than being able to pull off great 1980s Beirut theme parties, it's that the guy running the show seems to know what he's doing. Not that either of us understand a word of what the other is saying, pigeons would be insulted at being associated with our language skills. Nevertheless, he seems entirely confident that we need that trench right there, and that securing that power cable would be an act of folly.

So, with our minds firmly at rest, euthanised most likely, we are going to leave our crumbling home in his capable hands, and head to the wilds of New Zealand for a month. My original worry about being burgled in our absence has been replaced by fretting about the far more likely possibility of being sued by the family of whatever poor misfortunate thief ends up starving to death at the bottom of one of the canyons our trusty builder has provided for us.

If you'll excuse me, I must go lie down.