So Kiwi!

click on this link for the photo: Weta Cave Is Commissioned to do rugby statue - unveiled for World Cup

Of course, it was dedicated by a bunch of guys doing a Haka in cold, winter weather.

Happy Happy

Where Have You Been?

Not that anyone is asking.

January, February, March, April, now it's May.  Somehow, months and months have gone by the wayside.  The longer things go unsaid, the harder they are to say -- where to begin?  Although I have had quite a number of "Oh, I need to write about that" moments, and the opening lines of many many a post have percolated around in my head, there has always been something that has gotten in the way of my sitting down and actually writing the thing.  I've got some boring what-the-hell-has-happened-over-the-past-few-months stuff I need to get out in order to move on, but before I do that, I'll try to resurrect a couple/few of the things I should have written about. 

1.  Kiwi Hospitality.  I assume it's because we're living in Wellington, a busy, cosmopolitan-ish, sophisticated, home of the political and all that goes along with that, but after we moved here, we found that we were never really on the receiving end of any of that Kiwi openness and hospitality this country is so famous for.  People are nice, for sure, but people we met on buses were not inviting us home for dinner and no one handed us the keys to their bach, or gave us their old bicycles to ride, or told us we had to go and stay with their relatives when we were in Carterton, Whanganui, Waikanae, Motueka, Central Otago, wherever, next weekend.  We didn't really think the friendly Kiwi thing was a fiction, but we certainly didn't expect it anywhere, based on our first 6 months here.  Then we went to the Coromandel Peninsula for a few days with friends from the U.S. who were visiting.  And we had a giant plate of fresh fish handed to us through the window!  Finally!  The friendly neighbor of the bach where we were staying was a classic guidebook Kiwi.  The morning after we arrived he headed over, in his shorts and gumboots, across his yard toward our kitchen window as we were making breakfast.  In his hand he carried a plate heaping with beautiful fresh-caught snapper fillets, which he handed us with good cheer.  After a nice chat (and many exclamations of thanks on our part), he headed home, only to return later to offer us use of his washing machine should we need to do any laundry during our stay.  Wow. 

I should add that a couple of days ago, as I was heading out of Zealandia, a fabulous bird sanctuary a short walk from our house, a woman leaving the parking lot in her car slowed down, rolled down her window and asked me if I wanted a ride anywhere.  Since I only live a 5 minute walk away, I said no thanks, I just live up the hill, but I was pleasantly surprised to see this type of generous behaviour to strangers happening here in Wellington.  Who knows, perhaps it is only extended to tourists (Zealandia is definitely on the tourist circuit)?  We are in some weird category between tourist and local.  Lots of Wellington people are from somewhere else (in NZ) and are here because of school or work.  So there's less of that sense of small-town NZ here. 

2.  Paper Napkins.  Apparently there is a training course that any eating establishment in New Zealand must take before getting licensed for business.  There is only one module in the course -- paper napkins.  There are two rules for napkins here.  One, they must be as small and cheap as possible.  Two, they must be rolled around the silverware and "glued" together by moistening the point of the folded napkin in water (or paste?) and sticking it to the roll.  This guarantees that you will shred some portion of your napkin into bits as you try to get it unstuck from itself and unrolled from your fork and knife.  This rule holds true whatever the class of restaurant.  Evan and I were surprised (appalled, actually), to have tiny cheap paper napkins at a meal in a very upscale restaurant where the bill was north of $200.  We don't really understand it.  I have decided that this training course, and the whole "napkin conspiracy" is funded by Persil, or maybe some consortium of laundry detergent manufacturers.  One's clothes are much more at risk of being either used as napkins, due to aforesaid shredding, or being the target of an errant bit of food dropping into the lap, as the napkins are not actually large enough to cover both legs of a seated adult.  In a cafe or coffeeshop, there are never containers of napkins sitting about in case you need an extra one.  And if you go up to the counter to ask for one, they'll make a big production of finding you one - there is always a big stack of the pre-rolled napkin/silverware rolls, but never any solo napkins.  So, we have mostly learned to live with it and had stopped thinking about it so much until we went to Auckland, where Evan read an article in Auckland Magazine about the best restaurants in Auckland.  The reviewer was doing some generalizations about the places, both good and bad points, and he made an issue of pointing out that several of these high-end restaurants were still working in this paper napkin scheme.  WHAT'S WITH THAT?  the review basically scolded.  I finally brought it up with a Kiwi friend.  She and her husband had just had the same experience we did at the expensive Wellington restaurant and had remarked on it.  So it seems that at least some Kiwi diners know that a tiny paper napkin doesn't belong with a $200 dinner.  SO WHAT'S WITH IT?  I really want to know.

Contemplating a Different Site

I have some new volunteering gigs, which is really nice.  At one I am helping people who live in Wellington City Council housing to use computers.  More on that later, but as a part of that work, I am looking at all the various resources that are shown to the residents to help them get online and make the most of it.  One is a website called Weebly that  helps you make your own website.  It's really simple to use and since it's a website that includes a blog page, you can have more than one page going.  I named mine "Tiny Blue Hippo" which at the moment I am feeling very partial to.  It's too much work to maintain two blogs of course, so I may have to move over there or change the name of this thing to Tiny Blue Hippo.  I'd like to figure out how to better link to news stories than I do here (well, I don't here).  I do it on Facebook but haven't figured it out in blogland.  Maybe that will be Wednesday's learning experience at the computer hub.

Vacuum Cleaner Hooray

You would think I was Harriet Nelson I was so happy when I bought a new vacuum cleaner about a month ago.  Perhaps because of their lack of central heating, most homes in New Zealand are covered in wall-to-wall carpet, ugh, and this house is no exception.

You would also think that with the amount of shag and fibers around here, that all vacuum cleaners would be the type with the turbo motor in the rug cleaning head.  But not at this house.  After a few weeks I couldn't deal with trying to vacuum - I felt like I never knew where I had been, and I was mercilessly flailing the thing back and forth across the floor without feeling like I'd accomplished anything.  So I spent a couple hundred dollars and bought a new one.  Nothing fancy, but at least it has a turbo head cleaner.

Turns out that even that was no match for the long shaggy rug in the "rumpus room" where Ari plays.  After trying the  new super duper turbo vacuum cleaner and seeing that there were still crumbs and stuff in it, I sat down one afternoon while Ari was playing and really starting peering down through the rug fibers to the base of the rug.  YUCK!

Years of accumulated crumbs, dust, lint, finger and/or toenail clippings, tiny bits of gravel were all lurking down there, out of reach of even the super vacuum suction.  (I guess for super long shag you can try using something like this thing with fingers, but basically, shag rugs are bad for your health and can't really get cleaned well.  Evan's public health persona doesn't usually bleed over into our home life but he has always been adamant about no long pile rugs.)  The next day I rolled up the rug, wrapped plastic garbage bats around it and put it in the storage closet outside.  So much for renting a furnished house.  Let's see, I've now purchased a vacuum cleaner, a bedside lamp, and yes, now a new rug for the rumpus room.  Here is the fabulous fake animal Ari is now using as a base for his Playmobil and Lego play. As you can see it blends right in with the zebra-striped bean bag chair that was already here.  Now I just have a few more things to sell before we leave . . . .

I am learning that cleaning the house, despite being a good way to avoid doing other things (one reason I used to have to study for exams at the library during law school was that I would find myself cleaning the toilet, or anything, to avoid studying), is not really something I derive a great deal of pleasure from.  Yes, I was thrilled about the new vacuum cleaner.  I do like to see the stainless steel counter shine, I suppose, and it felt great to get the mold spots off of the sliding door curtains here by sponging them with bleach.  But I am too anal to do the cleaning quickly, and I think I'm generally better off paying someone else to clean my house.  This year I have guilt around having no income, so no matter how many times Evan says "just get a cleaning person" I know I won't.  But this time of house-wifery is definitely teaching me that staying home may not be for me if I can't bring myself to pay someone else to clean unless I am earning the money to pay him/her with.  Something to think about.

Bothersome Bones

Ari broke his arm at school a couple of weeks ago.  I was home, luckily, when the school called to say that he had hurt his arm and that I should come and take him to see a doctor.  Evan had the car for a training in Porirua, about 30 minutes away, so Ari and I took a taxi down to the urgent care for an X-ray, and then over to Wellington Hospital where Evan joined us just in time for the laughing gas, resetting of the bones and casting.  Here in NZ the cast is just as often called a "plaster" (which is also what band-aids are called) as a cast, but both words are used.  The orthopedic resident was a bit too tentative for our liking, so it was hard to get a solid read on whether he wanted us to have him try to set it with traction, using only laughing gas for pain relief, or whether he thought we should just try for surgery.  We opted for the former, and he did consult with the senior resident after Ari's arm had been re-X-rayed after the cast, and he apparently thought it almost certain that the bones had been put back into proper place and would heal without surgery, although we'd have to wait a week for a confirming X-ray to be sure. 

Ari was a trooper and it was funny to see him on the laughing gas.  Like watching your kid get drunk for the first time.  At one point he said "Dad, there are 13 of you."  He mostly giggled and laughed at what we said, and we had to keep reminding him to continue breathing the gas until the whole procedure was over.  Here he is that first night, still in his hospital shirt, showing his lion his cast.

And then some time in the first couple of days, looking a little worse for wear . . .

And the cast getting its first decorations from mom and dad --

Thankfully, he has now had 2 post-break X-rays, each a week apart, and so far things look really good.  It's possible he'll get the cast off on Christmas Eve, which will be 5 weeks from the break.  If not, our Christmas trip to the beach, where we're spending 4 days, will be much more of a hassle.  Guess we'll look at it while playing indoors.  Can you imagine trying to keep a 5 year old from getting sand in his cast? 

We managed to get the cast wet while giving him a shower (his second casted shower, but somehow we got the tape all wrong that time I guess), so just over a week after he got the cast, when it had all been nicely decorated by his friends at school, he had to have it reinforced with fiberglass.  I have to say the red does look nicer than the plaster, but poor kid - it has added extra weight to the whole thing.  Even so, he never complains about it, and we've only had one short episode of unhappiness from itching in two and a half weeks, so all is going well.  Here is his lovely red appendage.  It hasn't slowed him down that much -- he's still climbing on things and being his usual happy self. 

Unfortunately,

Mom is not her usual happy self, due to something very wrong with my right foot.  Pop! it went, a week after Ari broke his arm.  Suddenly, the ball of my foot was distended, I couldn't put weight on it, and a large portion of my upper-mid foot began turning blue, purple and green as some apparent internal bleed began sending the blood around to places where it wasn't supposed to be.  We still don't know exactly what's wrong with it, as X-ray and ultrasound did not show a problem (the practice of medicine is so weird -- you have the radiologist reading the ultrasound outside the exam room saying "it's totally normal" when if you looked at my bruised and swollen foot inside the exam room, you could see clearly that that's not the case.  However, that's not what the radiologist does - they look at pictures, not people).  So I am waiting on an MRI, which I'll have next week.  That's a downside to government-provided medical care -- it takes much longer and more doing to get an MRI.  At home, I would likely have had an MRI within 2-3 days.  Although I don't like the result in my case, I still think that overall it's probably a good thing -- keeping costs down and making sure that expensive diagnostic tests are really indicated when there could be less expensive alternatives is something we could learn about back home.

So walks and hiking are out, and I am trying not to walk more than I have to.  Easier said than done.   I am guessing it's something structural that's been building up for a long time - it's just weird that there was some kind of sudden rupture, but whatever happened, the long-term problem needs to be fixed.  I'm having a temporary orthotic made, and then in a few weeks, when things are more under control with swelling, etc., then I will get a nice, spendy new orthotic.  It seems I'll also need to re-train myself to walk by really thinking about pushing off with my big toe and second toe as I roll forward, and not the outside of my foot.  This will probably also require some strengthening of various hip and pelvic muscles and especially my adductor muscles.  Being too flexible has not been holding me in good stead all these years, as my legs bow out from the hip slightly, but just enough that I am not weighting the right part of my foot.  Having a second metatarsal that is longer than my first is also problematic, as this is always the last thing to leave the ground on each step, and so takes the entire load of my weight all by itself for a fraction of a second.  Add to that that the fat pads in the ball of your foot are reduced by about half by the time you reach 40, and that's a recipe for a "dropped" metatarsal or other problems with the metatarsal arch, which seems to be what's ailing me.

I had vowed not to make this blog a boring diary, so I'll have to stop with these few thoughts:

1)  boy, do we take our feet for granted

2)  orthopedists in NZ aren't any less of the obnoxious, macho type than they are at home (and in the UK according to a Brit doctor friend).  I had such a bad experience with the first one I saw that I had to call the clinic and ask that Ari never see him during the course of this broken arm saga

3)  it is really hard to keep water off specific parts of your body using plastic bags and tape.  I have failed twice to make a waterproof seal for my foot now, and we failed once with Ari (although I think we now have his scheme down).

4)  I am not a very good invalid.  I should work harder at this and just lie around with ice on my foot and read books. 

Join the New Zealand American Association?

Why?

This morning I was on the State Department website belatedly registering our family as living abroad, and it prompted me to try to figure out why when I put in my residence country as NZ, the dropdown box next to the country only had "Auckland" in it for "local embassy/consulate" when my local embassy is here in Wellington.  In any case, I was therefore looking around on the U.S. Embassy Website for New Zealand, and I discovered links to some local organizations, including the American Women's Club (apparently defunct), the Wellington branch of the American Chamber of Commerce in New Zealand (not my peeps for sure), and the New Zealand American Association.  On first glance, I took this third organization to be aimed at providing socializing opportunities for single Americans in Wellington, or perhaps to be set up to help those pining for good old American holidays to properly celebrate Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July.  But on second glance I noticed photos of a lot of older people (men mostly) and saw that they give grants and scholarships to young Kiwis to study or pursue career goals in the U.S., which doesn't sound like it would be something a group primarily aimed at after-work drinking and socializing would do.  So then I notice that they have a "Ladies Auxiliary" which has "Coffee Mornings" on a monthly basis. What?  Are "ladies" only auxiliary Americans?  I suppose there have been more American men working here in Wellington than women, what with the head of gov't here and things like U.S. State Department jobs traditionally being held more by men (even now the State Department gives its stats as 60% male/40% female, and that includes all 25,000 employees), but come on.  The goal of the New Zealand American Association is to promote "mutual understanding and goodwill between the United States and New Zealand."  Can women only be auxiliary to that?  I am tempted to attend one of their coffees just to grill them on this organizational structure.  Then again . . . .

I did find, while on the U.S. Embassy website for NZ (and Samoa), that the American Ambassador does maintain an interesting and informative blog. Apparently he just returned from a trip to Antarctica where he visited McMurdo and Scott Base over a couple of days, and he had to leave quickly in order not to get marooned there for several extra days by a big storm that was heading that way.  I wonder if he writes his own posts, as a "lesser ambassador" to a smaller country, or if he has a media person that gets that job.  I'd sign up if it meant I could fly to Antarctica every once in a while . . . .