7th December 1996
Well this is the first chance I have had to even think about updating my journals since November... I had planned on a weekly update, which then became a monthly update and here I am updating every two months...what's next? An annual update?
Life here has been more than a lil hectic. I think I have gone out more in the last 6 days than I have in the preceding 6 months...exhaustion doesnt come close to describing how I feel. Ok...this is some of what we have been up to since picking up my mother-in-law from the airport on Friday the 27th:
Day 1: We left the airport at approx 2pm and took the "scenic route" home...we drove along the water front and then up Mt. Wellington so show her the view from there. The quarry where Chris works was directly below us so she got a good view of what he gets up to to earn our "bread and butter". Then we took the long way home, trying to show her as many crappy houses as we could so that ours would look better by comparison >:)
Chris had to work on the evening of her arrival so after a chat and something to eat and drink he disappeared leaving me to tame the dragon (and I thought he loved me...just goes to show huh!) Anyway, at about 6:30pm she decided it was time for a walk around the block so I did the backside slide down the front stairs and off we went...a few houses up I lost my courage and stopped off at the play ground where the kids were playing cricket with a few kids who live nearby. She enjoyed her walk and I was relieved for the chance to get back home. Later we watched some Ballroom dancing video she had brought over from Zimbabwe. We all went to bed at about 1am..so endeth the first day.
Day 2: Shopping!..Window shopping to be more precise. Zimbabwe money is worth nothing here so she wanted to make sure her hard earned dollars got her what she really wanted. Conversion is approx Zim$8.00 = NZ$1.00 : NZ$1.00 = US$0.68...not too hot huh! Anyway we browsed for a few hours and finally came hom, watched some TV ate a lot and went to bed at about 1am again..so endeth day two.
Day 3: The tree planting ceremony and Fergus. We pottered around and generally had a quiet day until we decided to plant the tree.It was a family affaire planting our lil Weeping/Flowering cherry tree. Once the hole was dug and the bags of compost were waiting the wind picked up. An elderly gentleman who lives nearby stopped and watched us for a moment before commenting that we had chosen the wronge day to plant a tree. We must have looked a little puzzled so he went on to say "Well Cyclone Fergus is approaching fast and I doubt that lil tree will stand up to the wind." With that parting comment he walked on, leaving us feeling a little stunned. We watched the wind whistle around us and our new tree prior to the predicted arrival of Cyclone Fergus..what a day to plant a weeping cherry sapling! However it was too late, our little tree was already in the ground so we staked him down as well as we could and hoped for the best. Later we watched the news and weather report with interest, and got all concerned about our safety as we are near the water and on low ground, there were "heavy weather" warnings, high winds and flood warnings too. We packed our emergancy kit and then spent a quiet evening watching more TV. Graphic shots of the chaos up north and some archive footage of the devastation cause by Cyclone Bola in 1988 and Fergus was supposed to be in the same league..thrills!
There wasn't much more we could do other than wait it out and we eventually headed for bed at around 11pm. All of us wondering if we would have an early wake up call thanks to Fergus (who was due to arrive in Auckland at 6am)
Well to cut a long story short, Fergus side stepped a little at the last moment and all we had to show for the excitement was a few extra leaves scattered on the front lawn, a bit of an anti-climax! One good thing came of it though..it gave our new tree a name (everything has names in our house) yep, you guessed it..we called him "Fergie"
Day 4: Hmmmmmm starting to forget stuff here...I better check my diary. I think I'll end off here though and save the next exciting adventure for my next entry :)
A close call at Goat Island..Watch this space!
Anyway I have to go again....reality calls.
I wish you all the best for 1997 and sorry I couldnt share the celebration with you...next year huh?
