Janette At Home

We have spent the week recovering from a nasty flu bug - chills, fevers, coughs, the full deal.  The joys of winter in Dunedin.  Actually the weather's been very pleasant since the snow - calm, mild, and sunny - but it's undeniably winter and that's a shock after three years of perpetual summer.  My neighbours have flown off to Rarotonga for two weeks in the sun, leaving me to collect their mail.  I envy them their tropical island.

Hanging out in front of the fire with Petra brings its own satisfactions however.

We're witnessing one of Petra's periodic developmental leaps.  She sings, she dances, she runs around. She sticks stickers on the walls and draws on her feet.  She spends ages quietly absorbed in putting things in other things and taking them out again.  Her language acquisition proceeds at a dazzling pace.  She walks around the room pointing at objects, waiting for us to name them, and repeating the names after us.  She says "look" and "hello" and "up please".  She takes our cellphone and walks round the lounge talking and laughing into the aether.  She's very cuddly.  Leave takings are lengthy affairs because she works her way round the room kissing, and often rekissing, everyone.  She likes to fall asleep at night with her arms wrapped around my neck and her face on mine.  I enjoy that as well - I get to breathe in her baby smell and kiss her soft baby cheeks as she dozes.

She's also revealing her inner egomaniac these days.  Olivia came to stay a couple of weeks ago and Petra was a thug baby with her.  I gave Olivia a drink in a purple cup because Miss O is very very keen on purple and Petra stole the cup, hugged it to her chest and handed Olivia her own, much less desirable green cup.  I had to find another purple cup for Petra to avert a tragedy.  Petra's also discovered that she elicits all sorts of interesting reactions if she pulls Olivia's hair or pokes at her.  I spent a lot of time soothing Olivia's wounded feelings while trying to convince Petra to be gentle.  They did play nicely as well, as long as I hovered nearby to deal with potential trouble.

 

I'm mustering up the courage to attend a nearby playgroup to give Petra a chance to socialize with other kids her own age.  I fear that it will be a nervewracking experience as Petra tests her edges against the other kids.

The South Island was struck by another polar air mass overnight.  Last time we had hail and frost; this time we woke up to snow.

Dunedin shut down for the day.  All the roads out of the city were closed all day.  School was cancelled, businesses opened with minimal staff, and anyone living in the hill suburbs was advised not to drive.  People who tried to take their cars out this morning played bumper cars with other drivers or skittered down icy hills into poles or parked cars or banks.  A jack-knifed truck blocked the motorway, trapping many vehicles including the snow plow and grit truck (and there may only be one of each here - snow all over the city is not a frequent occurrence).

We stayed safely at home in front of the fire, watching the snow falling outside.

Our only outing was to take Petra out onto the street to give her her first snow experience.  She was intrigued, but didn't feel like getting down to play in it, preferring to look from Travis's arms.

I haven't seen snow for years so I enjoyed crunching around and scooping up snowballs.

Test rugby came to Dunedin this week.  The All Blacks are in town to play the French at Carisbrook.  The game was this evening (New Zealand lost - we'll pass quickly over that), but the build-up has been going on for days.

One of the more weird and wonderful pre-match events was a game of nude rugby.  Yes really, nude rugby.  (I dare you to click on the link.  There are a few bare bums, but nothing too graphic to be seen.)  I'm not sure what it is about a certain class of male Otago University students and nudity, but it's a big deal.  Mark Ellis - ex-All Black, ex-Otago University student, and current television personality initiated World Nude Day during his student days.  Walking around the north end of town, where all the student flats are, at the weekend means running the gauntlet of drunk naked guys.  And now we have rugby.

Maybe it's some kind of homosocial bonding thing.

Miss Olivia turned four this week and had her party last Sunday.  A very fine time was had by all.  Olivia and her 4-year-old cronies consumed vast amounts of junk food, played games, and raced around.  Petra ate grapes and veges, played happily with the wee book that was her pass-the-parcel treasure, and wandered along behind the bigger kids watching all the hi jinks.  The girls raided Olivia's wardrobe and emerged wearing her fairy dresses (she has several).  Petra got to wear a ladybird costume that was too small for everyone else.

 

Is it just my little corner of Vox that's gone quiet, or are there fewer people posting regularly on Vox these days?  

I have three half-written posts waiting to be finished and made public, but I've run out of words.  My life is busy, but domestic, full of things that don't seem like they'd be that interesting for anyone else, even though they're absorbing for me.  Things like my troubles getting plumbers and plasterers to turn up when they say they will.  The buggers come, look at what needs done, make soothing upbeat noises, promise to return in a few days, then don't show up.  Funny way to run a business it seems to me.

Or like the weather and my last power bill, which was so huge that I thought there'd been a misprint.  I love my heat pump/air conditioning unit but it would seem that it's a power hog. 

Or like my new pilates venture.  I'm having one on one sessions with a dauntingly perky and wonderfully encouraging pilates instructor/physiotherapy lecturer/physical coach.  So far it consists of small movements that make me surprisingly stiff and tired.  I feel taller and straighter already.  Last time I was there, I sat down beside the client Cindy was seeing after me.  He was an overwieght guy who looked very nervous because it was his first time.  He told me that he'd been at the pool and Cindy had come over to him and said that he looked like he could use some help.  "So here I am."  I found that an oddly touching story.  Because Cindy had been bold and kind enough to reach out to him even though that has the potential to go horribly wrong (what if he'd been offended?).  And because he'd trusted her enough to put himself in a new and scary situation on the basis of a chance encounter.  

Here are a few things that have appeared everywhere we've lived.  While the continuity is reassuring, there are some things I would have been happy to leave in the northern hemisphere. 

• The Late Show with David Letterman
• Fisher Price toy phones.  This was one item I was glad to find again because Petra loves her phone.  We're on our second one already.  The first one was no match for baby drool.
• French Jam
• Corona Beer with a slice of lime.  Also a good thing.
  
• Nickelback.  You can run but you can't hide from the behemoth that is Nickelback.  They're all over the radio in Costa Rica, Canada, and New Zealand (and everywhere else as well no doubt - Travis heard a girl asking for their new CD in a mall in Pretoria).  Their latest song is rather icky.  It's the one with the chorus that features the line - "Cause you look so much cuter with something in your mouth..." What is that about?  

Petra had a busy day today.  She missed her nap time because we were getting our hair cut.  She was so tired that she just sat on the chair all by herself and went into a trance while the hairdresser snipped away at her fringe.  When it was my turn for the chair, Petra hung out with Carla and Olivia who'd kindly come down to look after her for me.  She didn't take much wrangling though. curling up on Carla's lap until it was time to go home.  I thought she'd go to sleep in the car but she didn't.  In fact she perked up enough to help Travis get firewood in from the garage.  She climbs the steps all by herself and proudly carries in the little pieces of wood Travis gives her to hold.  At the moment she loves to help us and to show off her rapidly increasing skills.  Once she's dropped her wood onto the pile, she holds her hands out to be wiped.  She didn't used to mind a bit of grime, but these days she doesn't like to have dirty hands.

We went down to the local Starbucks for tea and coffee (it's a nice reminder of life in Vancouver) and Petra walked along the street between me and Travis.  We hold her hands and let her set the pace - she stops to stare at loud boys and buses and veers across the footpath to look in shop windows.  When we reached the Starbucks she dropped our hands and rushed up to the door to try to open it, then walked confidently up to the counter.  We've been there enough recently that she knows the drill.

She was a very tired wee lass by the time we got home and was in her high chair eating tea well before 5pm.  She didn't make it through her food despite the early start.  She ate pasta, flicked tomato sauce all over my nice pale walls, then passed out in her seat.  We had to bath her to get her to wake up enough to last until bedtime.  (If we let her go to sleep too early, she thinks she's just napping and wakes up after an hour or so, then we have a terrible time trying to get her back to bed.)

I've been collecting phrases and New Zealandisms since we've been home.  Here are a few of the things I've spotted while driving around the town.

There's a big petrol-head (or bogan) thing here and the slogans you see on some cars show it off in all its crass glory.

• Seen on a car license plate today: "ur momma's a matr1s"  complete with correct punctuation.
  
• Spotted scrawled in the dirt on the back window of a very grubby SUV: "I wish my girlfriend was this dirty"
• And my favourite - seen many years ago on a banner in the back window of a car full of guys who had obviously come up to the big smoke for the weekend: "Dip me in honey and throw me to the lesbians"  Seems they were a bit hazy about what a lesbian actually is.
  

And a couple of good ads.

• On the sign of a drive-thru carwash: "You'll be dirty if you don't."  Dirty means angry or annoyed in NZ as well as not clean.
• On the back window of a bus: "Bugger off for bugger all."  Bugger is just the best all-purpose word.  In this case "bugger off" means "go away (on holiday)" and "bugger all" means "not much (money)".

Winter has arrived with a flourish, bringing snow and ice to the higher areas of the country.

We're too close to the sea for such dramatic weather, but we woke up on Wednesday to flurries of hail which settled briefly in our yard.