Happy New Year for 2009

Happy New Year. May 2009 be very good to you all. Maybe I’m getting older but I find myself, ever more frequently, being so thankful for the life I have. The expression ‘living the dream’ so applies to us. That does not mean that our life is perfect, by any means. My biggest stresses are; the girls, that usual lazy, teenage selfishness that probably just means they are like any other teenager. Alice just completely ignoring me when I tell her to do something, or not following the very specific instructions I give (“Alice. Please empty the compost bin {onto the compost heap} then rinse and dry the bucket, put a sheet of newspaper in the bottom and put it back” 2 hours later {when I want to use the compost bin}, I find it dirty and on the drive haven fallen off the deck where it was dumped after being emptied), and Harriette arguing in a ‘why should I have to do that’ manner, every time she is asked to do something. The second thing is lack of time. So Hey, that's me and almost all of the rest of the female population!! The cash flow could also be better (which is true of lots of people also, but not many in Matamata I think) and I really do not want to be working full -time, but, other than that, life is pretty damned good. All these issues will be addressed though. I am determined to work on cutting my hours, hopefully this year. Eric’s salary should continue to increase, though the current economic climate will probably slow that somewhat, and he is due to be made an associate solicitor in April, and finally, the girls will grow up soon. Unfortunately, just when I expect them to grow out of these attitudes, and become the delightful adults I know they will be, they’ll leave home, and I cannot tell you how I am dreading that!!!!

Christmas has been quite relaxing. Almost minimal entertaining on our part, and hardly going anywhere, has really kept the pressure off. We had neighbours, Mom and Daddy, and friends for early evening drinks on Christmas Eve. As I had agreed to drive to Midnight Mass I had to keep off the wine. Mom and Daddy stayed on for supper (or tea as the evening meal is called here) and then we went to Mass. Well Harriette and I did, Alice was too tired and so Eric stayed at home with her. I actually think the real reason was he was just knackered! I am making my NY’s resolution to ease up on some things and not crawl through to Christmas 2009 on my knees yet again. Trouble is, I am not sure what to drop. My current thinking is to get a secretary for Schools Band to take some of the pressure off me there. Waikato Youth Music Association, needs some serious attention and I feel I should focus on that this year. We’ll see.

Back to Christmas. It was 2am before I got the bed on Christmas morning but the girls don’t wake us too early. I think it was about 7am when we woke, later than the usual 5.45 – 6.15am. We moved away from our traditional kedgeree for breakfast and had pancakes, fresh fruit and cream. Alice was in charge of breakfast, Harriette was doing veg and Eric the beef Wellington so, in theory, I was not required in the kitchen all day! Breakfast did not go to plan. In fairness Alice followed a pancake recipe. Since when have you seen a recipe that says ‘makes 8 pancakes’ make any more than 3, unless of course you have a midget frying pan. She was making tiny, thick pancakes that would not fold nicely into 4 and insisted that as long as they tasted OK presentation didn’t matter at all. Any other day maybe but not on Christmas Day, not in my books!!! She did her usual teenage rant and stormed off to the bedroom. I made a (bigger and thinner) batch of batter then retrieved her from the bedroom to help. By the time we ate she had calmed down!

The girls then unwrapped a pressie. After coffee and stollen (there was a bit of a gap between breakfast and coffee) and we headed off to Matamata. I make stollen every Christmas and always, something goes wrong!! This year I made 2. I use the Delia recipe from her Christmas book that I have adapted for breadmaker. I misread the flour amount and used too little. I decided to make another version by hand and it didn’t rise very well so I had 2 stodgy versions. I then realised that the yeast expired in 2007 (shows how much bread I’ve made in the last few years!!). This is a downside of having cupboards stocked ready for an earthquake or pandemic. Thins expire. I bought fresh yeast and yesterday made another stolen, this time for Richard and Robyn coming that evening (more on that later). Back to Christmas Day. The churches do a Christmas meal for those who are spending Christmas alone and we had volunteered to help serve. They did not need volunteers but asked if the girls would play some carols. They only had 2 days warning but, with Alice on clarinet and Harriette playing flute, they put a programme together. We then returned home and cooked our own lunch. As I said beef Wellington, from one of our own animals. Of course, It is actually still hanging in the chiller. Eric had to strip the fillet out on Christmas Eve. He was convinced that it had not hung for long enough but it was fantastic. Definately a 10 out of 10. The beef was accompanied by new potatoes (rocket variety, the nicest new potatoes I’ve had in years) and parsnips both from the garden. We also had a few roasted potatoes (for Eric’s benefit) as we were roasting the parsnips and asparagus and sweetcorn cobs. The asparagus season has just ended and sweetcorn are just appearing in the shops. I have a few plants in the garden but they are weeks away. The broad beans (that I planted very late), courgettes and peas, were all just a few days away from cropping. We’ve since had feeds off all of them. Dessert was chocolate cheesecake with blueberries and raspberries, made by Alice, her own choice. It was very nice and beautifully presented!

After dinner we unwrapped presents. Now there were 2 huge boxes which had no labels on. When asked by the girls I lied and said they were for Mom and Daddy but refused to say what they were. The girls weren’t convinced. On Christmas Eve as Mom and Daddy were leaving I had to go to the loo. On coming out I cried out to Alice that she hadn’t given Mom and Daddy all their presents. The 2 big ones were still under the tree. “oh well, never mind they can have them afterwards.” Now the girls did believe they were not for them. We let them unwrap all their pressies and then said they could unwrap the big parcels. We had bought them midi music systems for their bedrooms. They were rapt. And after unpacking them disappeared off to their bedrooms for the rest of the day! Not a major problem as it was 7pm-ish by now!

I made a proposition in early December that we only spend $20 on each other and try to buy as much as we can for that. I implied that that was all we would spend, except of course the $2-3,000 for my bike!!!! I must confess that Eric and I did not get organised to do this for the girls but the girls managed it. One of my presents was a nicely bound piece of music that Harriette composed for me called ‘Merry Christmas Mummy’. I was very touched! Eric got a collection of op shop ties and a gross shirt. The shirt was given to him as an example of what he was not to wear. And to make sure he didn’t wear it they bought it too small for him!!!!

I did not have much to unwrap as we had picked my pressie up several days before. I am now the proud owner of a Specialized road bike. It’s priddy, white, red and black! For the uninitiated Specialized is a make. I was cycling a few days later towards Arapuni Dam (28km from the house where Eric was fishing), and a guy called Jim caught me up. We had a chat and it turns out he leases land to our neighbours, Ian and Shirley, for grazing. I remembered that Ian had, months ago, suggested I speak to Jim if I was buying a bike as he is in the business. Jim said he was expecting my call (I had to admit I had totally forgotten!). Anyway, he said that Specialised is one of the 2 brands he would have advised I go for. I have the shirt (from my round Taupo ride), cycle shoes (with clip-on cleats), gloves, hat, repair kit, bright light, cycle computer – the whole kiboodle. I’m a very happy cyclist!
Boxing Day. Like Christmas Day the weather was not good. In fact, and to Eric’s horror, I lit the fire for a few hours in the afternoon. The day was a lazy one. Breakfast was smoked salmon and scrambled eggs cooked by Harriette assisted, or rather supervised, by me. She hasn’t got timings right yet, wanting to put toast on before starting anything else. Dinner was a seafood platter but the seafood was pretty tasteless which was disappointing. A few days later Eric did an Asian seafood meal a prawns satay, which was divine, a gingered seafood stir-fry with prawns, squid and baby octopi. A much better meal.

The rest of the weekend was lazily spent. We went to Waihi Beach for a 40th birthday party on the Sunday but that was rather boring. We didn’t really know anyone and most people were on the beach. Trouble is when we went over there we didn’t know who were the party goers so just had a walk and sat on the beach on our own for a couple of hours. We were able to leave early as we had arranged to have tea with Mom and Daddy.

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I was officially working. I managed the first day OK. The Tuesday was our 16th wedding anniversary. Les from Rotary delivered flowers, in Rotary tradition, so he was here for an hour or so. Then we went into Matamata to go out for lunch. The girls didn’t join us. They were more focused on hitting the sales with their Christmas money and said they thought we’d appreciate a romantic lunch on our own! We had decided to buy ourselves some feijoa trees as an anniversary present. The girls also bought us one so we had a trip to the garden centre for those.

Wednesday was sooooo hot. Eric phoned his sister Ava and so I stopped work to have a chat with her. Shortly afterwards Henry (another Rotarian) and his wife Ann called in for morning coffee. Henry recently broke his arm and spent several weeks in hospital, where I visited him a few times. He is the clubs sergeant and so as his corporal I have been standing in. By the time they left it had got very hot. I really did try to work but ended up giving up! Instead Eric and I spent the day on the deck reading, sunbathing and swimming.

Thursday, NY’s Eve Harriette invited some friends over for a sleepover. They planned to swim, BBQ, take over the cottage and watch videos for the night. It was really hot and apparently Rebecca was swimming at 3am! They are all still asleep. I am now going for a bike ride. A circuit, SHW29 towards Matamata, up Puketutu Rd, left onto Buckland Rd, down Todd and back down Taotaoroa Rd. Going that was means the last 10km is mainly, and seriously, downhill. Buckland is very up and down. Should be about 30km (PS it was 38.4km took me 1hr 40mins, got up to 70km an hour on one of the hills. Alright as long as you don’t think about coming off!!!).