rivettingKateTaylor

Posted by: rivettingkatetaylor | December 21, 2009

holiday programmes

My kids were in their first holiday programme today.

Love it.

Well, I hope they did, I should be on my way to pick them up but I don’t want to shatter the golden silence just yet!

With a few deadlines to meet early in the new year, I thought I would take advantage of a programme at the pools in Waipukurau. Games followed by tennis or hockey after morning tea and then swimming for two hours after lunch – you can’t beat that!

If they enjoyed it, I might just put their names down for another go in the last week of January.

I might have to think about working again by then (I live in the notion that if I’m home, I’m not spending money so there’s less pressing need for me to make it?)

Four sleeps til Santa. Yay for Trade Me. Lachlan’s ExoForce lego arrived in the mail today. He requested about 15 different items of it from Santa this year – how was he to know it’s no longer stocked in the stores!!

Who stole Olaf?

Who’s that trip trapping over my bridge? Not Olaf.

It can’t be.

Someone stole him.

Olaf is one of the dozen 1.5m wooden trolls that stand guard around the Tararua township of Norsewood – just down the road from us.

Trolls are central characters in many Scandinavian legends – their presence in Norsewood celebrates its heritage as a settling place for Scandinavian migrants in the 19th century (also the reason behind Dannevirke’s viking promotions). Apparently, according to something I just read, Swedish and Norwegian trolls are friendly and not as scary and belligerent as Danish trolls. Oh, well that had worried me.

This photo has been borrowed from the Stonepress website www.troll.co.nz

The cover for the book The Troll's New Jersey of which we have a copy!

Olaf (the wooden one, not the real one that’s in the book, of course) can usually be found guarding the entrance to town on the Thor St bridge, near State Highway 2. But on Saturday morning he was no longer there.

There is a reward for his return.

Maybe he’s thumbed a lift to Dannevirke’s Fantasy Cave.

Ho Ho Ho

Like everyone, the build up to Christmas has been a tad busy in the Taylor household.

There have been several comments about the lack of blogs on my part in the past few days so here I am to rectify it. But I can’t talk for long – it’s the last day of school! (Disclaimer: when have you ever known me to shut up and get on with my work?)

Do you remember the days when you would bring a little white sealed envelope home for your parents to read – arrgh – the dreaded REPORT. My two girly swots (I mean that in the nicest possible way)couldn’t wait for us to open them – they knew they’d be good and they were (but nice to see the teacher feels the same about Sarah’s desk as I do about her bedroom – lol).

Sidetrack – for those non texters, lol is short for laugh out loud. Rofl means rolling on the floor laughing. I like them!

And no absences for the year for either of them – awesome! I’m sure we used to wag more than that at primary school. Although having said that, my nosy personality is such that I couldn’t stand to miss a day of school when I was older because I was convinced some earth-shattering or amazing event would happen and I would miss it!!! Adrenalin junkie, as my friend Rachel calls me.

Do parents feel like it’s the end of a little era when their children leave a classroom? I have been dealing with Mrs M for three years now and it will be weird not to have a connection with Room 4. But I guess I felt the same way after three years with Mrs O in Room 6. You get over it. Look out Mrs F in Room 2, here we come!

Where was I? The build up to Christmas. Yes. I think we love to hate it. You can say no to things just by saying sorry, have something else on – and you really mean it! A pet hate though is when someone says yes to something then bails cos they get a better offer, but that can happen anytime. If it was good enough to say yes to in the beginning – stick with it!

Jamie Mackay’s Farming Show on the radio was blessed to have my company yesterday (lol) to talk about Christmas.

You can hear it here: actually no you can’t, because I can’t manage to get the right link or upload or download or something so feel free to go to www.farmingshow.com and have a listen to yesterday’s blabber from me.

We talked about Christmas, more on that tomorrow as I have just received an Statistics NZ email about the cost of Christmas dinner, and also on the Young Farmer Contest (I do some media work for them).

The 2010 Contest grand final will be in Gore, which is dear to Jamie’s heart (and mine cos I will hopefully be able to send my children on a South Island mid-winter visit to their cousins in Tapanui!). But the news yesterday was that Masterton, two hours down the road from where I live now, will be host to the 2011 grand final.

The team will be ably assisted by good friend Paul McGill, a two-time grand finalist, who will be spending most of next year on a Nuffield Scholarship (so his spare time has been trashed for the next few years!)

Commiseration must go to Napier though, the hometown of 2007 winner Callum Thomsen and home to my last club Eskview.

Right, I have gone from having no blogs lately to one of the longest in the history of rivettingkatetaylor. Hope it you were still “rivetted” to your seat for the duration…..

Ho ho ho.

1 Comment

Posted in Family, Social themes | Tags: Christmas, Gore, ho ho ho, Jamie Mackay, lol, Masterton, rofl, school reports, Statistics NZ, The Farming Show, Young Farmer Contest

Posted by: rivettingkatetaylor | November 30, 2009

Did the earth move?

Apparently Hawke’s Bay had a five-point-something earthquake in the early hours of this morning, centred a few kilometres away between Takapau and Waipukurau, but I never felt a thing!

Earthquakes make up a large part of the history of Hawke’s Bay thanks to the big one that hit in February 1931 destroying much of Napier and Hastings. But in the rebirth of those cities after the devastation, came beautiful Art Deco and Spanish Mission architecture that attracts tens of thousands of tourists to the region every year (the fact we make great wine helps too!)

I remember an earthquake when my first baby was just a few weeks old. We picked her up, bassinette and all, and ran for the dining table. She didn’t even stir. It was funny because the big rumble and roll that preceded the actual shake coincided with the end of an action movie and the timing was perfect (like we were in a movie studio with added effects!)

Another favourite quake memory was standing in the kitchen with Mum watching the hedge around the house at The Glen (my home farm) roll like a ribbon. Very cool (although we probably should have been getting under the table!)

Are you sorted for an earthquake or similar event? Do you have emergency supplies? Torches, battery-operated radio, food, enough water for your whole family for at least three days?

Rural people usually have all these things anyway for power cuts and snow falls and all the usual things that define being rural (and we wouldn’t have it any other way). Rural people can’t pop down to the Red Cross tent at the local town square – rural people have been self sufficient for years (although I do love the fact that I now live 4km from my local four square!)

We have a container out in the shed with all our goodies. We’re organised (it’s a first for me, it certainly doesn’t happen on a daily basis). Let’s hope we never need it.

1 Comment

Posted in Rural | Tags: Art Deco, earthquake, Hawke's Bay, quake, shake, Spanish Mission, Takapau, Waipukurau

Posted by: rivettingkatetaylor | November 28, 2009

Laughing out loud

The best medicine is hearing people laugh out loud. Really, really laugh. From the belly. The kind of laugh that makes you smile in spite of yourself.

The Tom and Jerry cartoon has my kids doing just that this morning. The two of them are having their Saturday morning relaxation in front of the box (relax, they are only allowed TV on the weekends) guffawing with laughter every 10 or 20 seconds.

And it is fantastic.

I am on the deck with a coffee and the Saturday morning paper (although it took me longer to read the Dymocks book brochure that it did to read HB Today). Sarah and Lachlan have run out a couple of times to regale me with tales of something that happened (as if I have not seen them many times before in the old World of Disney at 6pm on a Sunday!!!!)

While I am fresh thinking about HBToday, an old colleague of mine called Roger Moroney had a great twist to an Erebus story on the front page today. He had interviewed Don Wood, whose parents perished in the crash of Air NZ flight TE901 at Mount Erebus 30 years ago.

Mr Wood has the watch his father was wearing on the plane and it hasn’t gone since the crash… until yesterday. No, not a story from the Twilight Zone, Roger reported. Mr Wood had taken the watch out, as he had done many times before, and placed it on the table. Roger wrote:

Don agreed for it to be used in a photograph, and after that he placed it back on the table and began talking about how he lost his parents on that flight. After a couple of minutes, he stopped talking and simply gazed down at the watch. “It’s going,” he said quietly. His wife Cheryl came in and told Don his hands were shaking. “That hasn’t gone for 30 years,” he said, pointing at it. Understandably it took a few minutes for him to get his thoughts back together as he watched the thin seconds hand of the watch go round.He said he had had the watch out many times through the years, and had once even tried to get it to go – but the winder appeared not to work and its hands had never moved. Until yesterday.

Freaky aye!

And last on my musings for today is the 40th celebration on TVNZ on Thursday of the introduction of One Network News (funny to watch TV3 by mistake last night (forgot to turn it over after Home and Away!) and see it was celebrating 20 years since its inception).

The old newsreaders reading the news were cool – especially Dougal Stevenson.

I loved this comment on a blog in the Dominion Post this morning (and on stuff.co.nz) by Jane Bowron.

My favourite of the roundabout is Dougal. His voice is still authoritative. If there is an end-of- the-world broadcast kept in readiness for the final moments on Earth, I hope TVNZ has chosen Dougal to announce it. With his sense of humour he would probably add the codicil that, post-apocalypse, normal transmission will resume as soon as possible.

Very cool.

Enjoy your weekend – I plan to!

The second coming….

Posted by: rivettingkatetaylor | November 26, 2009

Cane toads in Queenstown

Unbelievable. With all the problems NZ has with the introduced pests of rabbits, possums and plants like gorse, it is inconceivable that a poisonous cane toad should be able to hop its way into Queenstown this week.

According to a story on stuff.co.nz this morning, a lady had just flown in from Cairns and was at a briefing before walking the Milford Track when the toad hopped out of her bag.

People recognised what it was and captured it (luckily a staff guide worked part time for MAF). The staff member killed the toad by popping it in a freezer.

The story said:

A MAF biosecurity spokeswoman confirmed the woman carrying the toad had arrived in Queenstown on a flight from Sydney on Tuesday. She declared her boots on her arrival card and was taken to a bench where they were cleaned with detergent. “The boots had socks stuffed in them, the toad was possibly inside the boots. “We’ve tipped the boots, looked at them, cleaned them and returned them to the passenger.” The spokeswoman said the toad would probably not have survived the South Island climate if it had escaped into the wild.

Probably would not have survived?

Excuse my French but bl**dy hell. Can you imagine what NZ would be like with a hybrid poisonous cane toads? Last year it was red fire ants (nasty nasty things).

Think of all those nasties that could not only affect our agriculture and horticulture industries (or destroy) but make life very unpleasant.

I know MAF and Biosecurity staff personally do their best to stop these things coming in. But should there be as many avenues? We already have a huge coastline should we be tempting fate with dozens of international airports as well?

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Posted in Family | Tags: biosecurity, cane toad, international airports, Milford Track, Queenstown, stuff.co.nz

Posted by: rivettingkatetaylor | November 9, 2009

Not another dead pet.

No, not another dead pet. Hurrrrrrrrrray!

Kitty, shadow, psycho, whatever you want to call him – our black cat is not dead.

After no sight nor sound for several days, we thought he had come to a possum-like end on the road, like Marcella and Fluffy before him.

I resisted the urge to write about this when I talked to you this morning. But after I pushed publish, I decided to go for a wander down the road to find the body.

There was no sign to the north although a bunch of pine cones gave me the wobblies for five minutes (is there a term for a bunch of pine cones?) Every funny looking tuft of grass made me queasy – I SO did not want to pick up another carcase with a spade and have a funeral procession to the nice, shady spot behind the magnolia (actually I have no idea what the tree is, but it sounded pretty).

Waving to passing traffic while looking earnestly into the long grass (reminds me of golf actually), mournfully calling out “kitty kitty” and not really expecting anything to come of it.

Well! Imagine my surprise when I hear a pitiful meow from a huge blackberry patch about 200m south of the house (and fortunately, strong enough to allow me to think it wasn’t nursing horrible and death-defying injuries from being introduced to the front grill of a speeding car). In fact, I think I got just as many scratches getting him out of the blackberry but they were licked better by my grateful little feline friend on the walk home.

He doesn’t just have a purr now – there’s a freight train a’comin’!

Now I can’t wait for the kids to walk through the door this afternoon (now that makes a change doesn’t it!)

Kitty (as opposed to our other cat Puss) but otherwise known as Shadow or Psycho Shadow, depending on his mood!

3 Comments

Posted in Family | Tags: cat, dead cat, funeral, kitten, missing cat, Puss, run over

Posted by: rivettingkatetaylor | November 9, 2009

Racing sheep and chucking bunnies

Posted by: rivettingkatetaylor | November 3, 2009

Another pet lamb bites the dust

Yet another lamb has inhaled a large bag of milk powder only to cark it the day before our local lamb and calf day.

Bugger.

The Rangitoto Girls and Boys Agricultural Club is a shadow of its former self (going back 20 years) but is still an awesome opportunity for rural children to compete in the show ring. Lambs and calves of all colours and personalities gather at either Norsewood or Takapau Schools in Central Hawke’s Bay (alternate years).

I haven’t had anything to do with the calf side, but the lamb competition includes three sections – leading (funny to see some being dragged and others trotting along faithfully like a dog), care and attention (naming breed, what they get fed and how often, how care for the animal) and catch and call (not a good idea if your fence is not fully intact and no bottle is in sight).

Back to the complaint of the day. My son’s lamb died on Sunday afternoon. He said at least he hadn’t practiced too hard. Like any good farm kid, he was quite okay with the life cycle not really working in his favour this week. But I told him people would expect him to be a “wee bit sad” when talking about his lamb, so he practiced his sad face. For five seconds.

Sarah’s lamb died a week or so before the lamb and calf day a few years ago. When we told her the lamb had died, she looked at us and said, “oh, are we having it for tea?”

We quickly trained up one of the other pet lambs, a boy, because it was the biggest, but had already had its balls off. We still have diesel, three years on, and all the red ribbons he won that year. I talked about it another time:

https://rivettingkatetaylor.wordpress.com/2008/08/11/procrastination-and-pet-lambs/

So for now, I’m preparing my thoughts of life in the world of rivettingkatetaylor for Jamie’s farming show on the radio tomorrow.

I caught up with an old friend yesterday too (should add we’ve known each other for years, as opposed to her being wrinkly and in need of a walker). We had a coffee Te Mata Cheese near Havelock North (and a very nice salmon and cream cheese thingie).

It’s easy for months and months to go by without making the effort to take time out to catch up – so my thought for the day is MAKE THE EFFORT!

And hi Fi 🙂