Another Sunday morning but far too early for Mr Laidlaw. Woke early and went to the loo, only to find we had no water. Being on a bore the answer is always a disconnected pipe, which means that the water pump is running continuously as pressure is not reached, or the pump has broken. Eric, being Eric, had to get up and go and sort the problem now, rather than when it got light. Luckily, it was a disconnected pipe close to the house so he didn’t have to walk all the pipelines to suss where the problem was. By which time we were both awake so he went fishing. I tried to phone Sharron, my sister, for the second time this weekend. I sometimes wonder why she pays a mortgage on a house. She is never in it! I reckon I speak to her once for every 10 calls I make to her. Had a chat with my niece Devon though.
Fathers Day here so Mom and Daddy are coming over for lunch. I must check what time I said to come, it might have been for supper! The girls have bought Eric a dartboard. They were sick of buying him fishing stuff. We thought it might be a good thing to have in the workshop. It may even help with Harriette’s lack of hand eye co-ordination, a trait I must claim to have been too generous in passing down in the genes.
I have had one of those frantic weeks. Monday I was teaching in Te Kuiti in the evening, about 1hr 15 mins drive away. It could have been a huge disaster. I checked I had everything before I left. Even opened the boot to make sure I had the dataprojector, even though I knew it was in there. Got to the venue and was horrified to find I’d left my laptop on my desk! That was just the start of it. I arranged to borrow a laptop from a nearly medical centre and phoned Harriette to have her email them the powerpoint presentation I was doing only to find the medical centre have no key to the padlock holding the laptop to the wall. Eventually, only 4 turned up so I presented verbally and handed round my notes for them to look at any significant graphs etc. Got home around 10pm.
Tuesday I flew to Christchurch on the South Island to help the new regional advisor down there with some training. Linda is lovely and on Tuesday I had tea at her place with her husband and 2 young children whom I spent a chunk of the evening reading to. (The children not Noel!) (sidenote 6.30am and it’s light – spring is well on it’s way). Wednesday I woke at 5.15am, which meant I had time to go for a run. I got a bit lost so my 24 mins I usually do run to over 30mins. I found myself round by the cathedral on the way back. We taught from 8.30am to 9pm as we had an Update to do on the evening of the first day. An Update is a 4 hour course established vaccinators do as opposed to the 2 day VTC we were running for new vaccinators. Thursday it was back at 8.30am but I left at 1pm to fly home. My flight back was via Wellington but the CC-Wellington leg was cancelled. I departed 5 mins later than planned but on a direct flight through to Hamilton. I have no idea why I couldn’t get on that to start with. Back in Hamilton I went straight through into the city as there was a band practice that night. I had missed the previous week because of the symposium in Auckland and next Thursday I will be teaching in Tauranga so felt I had to put in an appearance. Got home at 9pm. Friday I was back I Hamilton early as I was teaching all morning and chairing the DHB Immunisation Stakeholders forum in the afternoon. I asked one paediatrician at the meeting how he was. He replied “Crawling to the weekend” I so know what he meant!
Friday evening Harriette needed taking to a friends out near Okororie Tavern for a birthday sleepover. We went together to drop her off and decided to call into the pub for supper. Alice has joined Youth Band (and is still with Schools band) and was in Hamilton. I have found someone to share the travelling with and this was Cathy’s week for the run.
Saturday it was back in to Hamilton for a meeting with the 2 conductors leading the Young Musicians Workshop planned for October. I have foolishly said I will organise this and on Monday, as I sent out 493 emails (which took me hours!), I was thinking I had bitten off far more than I could chew. I am determined we will have 100 participants (there were 70 last year) and today plan to send correspondence and fliers by snail mail to schools. It was 3pm by the time we got home yesterday and I managed to do a bit of gardening. More of that today I hope.
On the girls. Alice has been desperate to join Youth band and is so pleased to be finally there. The group is older, and being 14 going on 25, she fits in well with them. She now has a fringe, and with the glasses, she is so often not recognised. It is quite funny. In the library (a place she has visited almost weekly for 7 years) she was asked her name recently. Alison did a double take when Alice told her.
Harriette is not going to Youth Band yet. She does not like one of the conductors and I think finds it too competitive. Not to mention she hates moving outside her comfort zone. She is about to start NCEA level 1 exams (GCSE equivalents) so is in study mode at the moment. I am not sure how much of it is genuine study and how much is looking ‘far too busy studying to do housework etc’! Don’t get me wrong, she is studying but….. At the sleepover the other night it was most odd to see several of the girls arriving in their cars. ie they drove themselves! The parents went our to friends for dinner to give the girls, 15 and 16 year olds, a bit of space. Apparently the power went off for several hours, after dark, and the cat bought a mouse in. You can imagine the hysteria this created! Harriette joined WW’s several weeks ago and is finding it much harder than she thought. She absolutely refuses to exercise and I cannot see how you can succeed without it. She had a good loss last week though so it a bit more buoyed up at the moment. I have missed a week and the previous week I was weighed in Auckland. I haven’t been very good but am just about keeping on track I think. When I was in Christchurch Linda told me her sister, Jan, was the NZ WW of the year this year. Get this. She lost 63 kg in exactly 1 year. That’s 10 stone!!!!! It’s taken me 18 months to loose half that. Still, although I’m impressed by Jan’s loss, I’m still pleased with mine. I just hope I can keep Harriette on track. Please click ‘Comments’ if you want to post words of encouragement and I’ll see she gets them. (This could backfire. From the lack of comments this last year I am wondering if any one reads this and I’m talking to myself. No I know that’s not true as people tell me they’ve read it!! Still if Harriette reads it, no comments will make her feel no-one cares. But then I don’t need to worry, she doesn’t read it). I’m waffling which means time to go. Bye.
PS Just picked up BBC headlines. “England hit by flash floods”. Nice summer you’re having up there J
