Marsden is Here

This weekend (since Thursday, so Mr R has been coming to work with me, where he seems quite content to sit at the next desk with his laptop) both D and E have been in Auckland. This has given me the mental, emotional and physical space to make a list (on the big whiteboard) and power through it. Since Friday evening I have, in no real order because there has been a lot of back-and-forth between tasks...

* Cleaned the stove top, oven incl. fittings and trays, and microwave.
- bonus, replaced the oven light blub

* Shampooed the carpet in the living area, which involved moving everything into one half of the room, dry vacuuming, shampooing, waiting to dry, dry vacuuming again, moving everything back, repeat the next day with the other half of the room.
- includes assorted adjacent cleaning, like wiping down the baseboards and power points while I'm paying attention.
- included sorting a lot of things back to where they should be, putting in the garage to to go to storage, or binning them.

* Installed a video card in D's computer.

* Took a car load of containers to the storage unit, picked up a new cat-tree on the way back.
- did I mention we're expecting kittens? Two, brother and sister, once they've recovered from being desexed. Other members of the household couldn't cope with being cat-less at this time.
* Rearranged the garage to function as a proper spare-bedroom (at least during the warmer months) and cattery. Well, 90% completed this task.
- now that we don't have a spare room I've already been sleeping in the garage when D & I's body clocks are at odds, or she needs her audio book to get to sleep.

* Sewed on a pants button.

* Washed a duvet cover and hung the duvet out to air. I only count this as 50% complete as the duvet was still out when this evenings rain rolled in. At the time I was crashed out for a nap after next four items.

* Line trimmed a battery-worth along the back bank (about twice as much area as I had set myself) and sundry weeding.
* Picked up as much as possible of the mummified / buried and still mostly intact cat droppings from the gravel parking area. (About 1/4 of a brown paper supermarket bag). Did not manage part 2, the gravel areas down the side of the house, but that will wait for another day.
* Shovelled the wood chip across the shared drive back out of the gutter and onto the area it is supposed to be chipping.
- this is one of those strange areas which doesn't seem to belong to any of the 3 adjacent properties, although I suspect it's technically the responsibility of the property whose fence actually runs across it. They are not one of the two properties on the drive. The original neighbours at the end of the drive had it chipped when they were doing their landscaping, I weed it occasionally and someone not-me recently went over it with a line trimmer.
* Swept the bulk of the gravel which had migrated out onto the drive since the parking area was put in back in.

* Four loads of laundry, including Mr R's for the week and his bedclothes. Remade the bed.
* Also sundry other regular chores, like feeding the two of us, grocery shopping and and washing dishes.

* Processed and uploaded the Operation Glorious Porpoise photos.
* Made two other journal posts, including this one.

* Got the DVD drive on the main computer (which recently had a motherboard + processer upgrade) sharing and sharing media over the network and managed to watch one episode of Firefly. I'd hoped to manage more, but at least the technical details are sorted out now.

* Did not get to cleaning the Fridge-freezer (which needs it just as badly as the cooking appliances did) but that might be a good place to start next weekend.

~~~
I'm seriously chuffed at accomplishing what feels like a "real person's" amount of work over this period of time and have thoughts about how our home environment is not conducive to this sort of productivity more often, but I don't get to bask in or ponder further it tonight because Mr R has an 8am appointment tomorrow which means a very early start and I had planned to be in bed an hour ago.

Several weeks ago now I attended the funeral of an acquaintance who had died unexpectedly. I didn't know B personally at all well, we've basically just overlapped at social events, but I have known him and his partner since before they were a couple, so apparently over 25 years. I well liked and respected him, and coincidentally had bumped into him (not literally) a few weeks earlier while we were both filling up on either side of the same petrol pump. I think that would have been the first time we'd met since pre-Covid.

People tend to say nice things at and around funerals, but even so the consensus seems to be that B was one of the best of people, the type of perpetually kind, supportive and uplifting person most of us can only hope to be.

He was also only not-that-many-years older than me, falling in that space between parents and age-group peers. By this time in life, I've always considered that it would be normal to have lost grandparents and some number of my parent's generation to natural causes* and some of my own or younger to tragedies*.

*[Aside: natural causes can also be tragic, and on that note Fuck Cancer, again. I am currently and off the top of my head two or less degrees of separation from 4? 5? 6? people that I know of who are making the most of whatever time they have left after terminal diagnoses. At least two immediate acquaintances are in the liminal space between diagnosis of less advanced cancers and beginning treatment.]

So I think it is something about that intermediate generation starting to "suffer medical events" that made this hit harder than normal. Due to the nature of my social group I have quite few friends of about that age and whose funerals I fully expect to have to attend before I turn in my own boots, and I now find myself viewing those inevitable losses with a new clarity, alongside those of my own age. I'm hopeful that they all have another 30-40 years left in them ...

I have health insurances of course, which eat up a painful amount of our budget each month despite being not as comprehensive as I would like and never have being claimed on, and my will is in order so that D will be as taken care of as whatever assets I have left will allow.

I am growing to resent more and more either my own inability to reach out to people that I want to spend more time with /have more memories of before either I or they are gone, or this rat-race of a society which doesn't leave me with the time or energy to do so.

~~~
Most of this post has been bouncing around in my head since I heard the news of B's death, I just haven't had the time and spoons to get it down. I'm writing it now partly because I do actually have an evening to myself and the spoons to do something with it, but also because I woke up from a dream this morning where most of the family (five of the six of us plus at least one uncle and some number of niblings) had been on a family trip back to Erewhon (there was a lot more going on in the dream but not relevant) and when we were starting to leave my father started to get very emotional because it would be the last time he visited.

I kind of woke up with the thought +feeling? +emotion? that "there is a last time for everything" going around in my head, and I'm not quite sure what to do with it. It's a statement of the obvious, that there must be as many last times for everything as there are first times for everything in a life, even if often they will be the same time.

This has been sitting in draft for a while, being completed by increments as I found the time and energy.
~~~
Although it was our turn to have the kids for Xmas this year L had elected to stay only until after Xmas. As travelling without him is much easier D had spent a large amount of her triennial paycheck on a package deal family holiday at Hanmer Springs for the four of us.

( Belated write up )

D and I have now been a couple for six years. Our relationship has ups and downs but an abundance of mutual respect and a commitment to talking things through as they arise has seen us through without approaching any breaking points. We don't get as much "us" time as either of us would like, as I try and time together alongside as much work time as I can manage[1], house and garden duties[2] and time just for me[3].

( snip )

Some months ago we were given notice of my brother (B) and his fiancé's (R) wedding, to be held beach-side in the the Coromandel. After looking at the costs and logistics of flights, rental cars etc just for a weekend trip versus the cost of the ferry, and discovering that there was a quilt show on that we could feasibly visit en-route, the decision was made that we could afford for me to take a week and a half off work, E would be taken out of school (which she could mostly keep up with remotely) and we would make an overdue family holiday of it, visiting places that D hadn't been in years and completely new territory for the other two of us.

( long post is long )

Thoughts in vaguely structured order.

17th of Sept (a Saturday) was the memorial service for D's mother, who passed away at the beginning of August. D. flew up at the beginning of the week to spend some time with the boys and help with organising. E, myself, and my Mum flew up on the Friday. One evening during the week I helped out formatting the service sheets via a google doc.

( Friday/Saturday )
( Sunday )

My talented, crafty wife got her first ever exhibiting ribbons this week, nailing the Best Art Quilt and BEST IN SHOW from ~200 quilts at a local guild exhibition (and another Merit). SO PROUD. Here's a quick gallery showcasing the 9 of her quilts which were present (one as part of a touring exhibition).

All her quilts

It's been a long year for everyone. Major positive events were our trip to Auckland to see the Lion King and moving into our new house.

A significant negative event that I didn't post about here was the second arson at Antonio Hall, in November, which gutted the original house and left the entire site basically, finally, awaiting demolition. (After photos, and after the 2019 fire, two years on).

( snip )

The weekend just been D, E and myself flew to Auckland to see the Lion King, as who knows when a show of its like will be in NZ again and who knows when we will be able to remotely afford such a trip again. The trip has been in planning since the announcement, including reserving presale tickets to the matinee on the Sunday afternoon.

I'm sure I would have enjoyed the weekend more had I not been running on emotional fumes for the past few weeks.

( Saturday )
( Sunday )
( Monday )

Yesterday D's kids (also now my step-kids, how weird is that?) returned to Wellington with their father after spending most of the past two weeks of the school holidays with us. Unlike previous visits the vast bulk of it was spent at home, partially because I was working throughout and partially because the weather was lousy for most of it.

We did manage one trip away, spending Friday/Saturday nights at "Nana South"'s as it is expected to be the final opportunity to do so. On the Saturday we headed inland snow-hunting, but it rapidly became obvious that despite the rotten weather and predictions of snow to low levels the previous week we weren't going to reach the levels it was actually visible at. Instead we stopped at Hanmer so D could visit the Mickey Rae's (quilting supplies) and then paid a visit to the Hanmer Animal Park for fuzzy encounters and lunch. L was a bit bored but uncharacteristically patient and E and R both really enjoyed themselves.

Speaking of behaviours all the kids have clearly grown in maturity between the last visit (Xmas/New Year/Wedding) and this one. (The next scheduled visit was cancelled by lockdown, but we were able to credit the flights, yay). They were mostly more reliable and proactive about doing their (pocket money earning) chores and alongside L's increased patience E and R are no longer so permanently attached / interdependent. Their fascination with LBTC Gytha has only deepened especially L (who was originally very wary) as this time he learned how to play with her from a "safe" distance with her ... chasey thing. For her part Gytha was much more willing to spend extended time in the presence of the kids (although the weather may also have had something to do with that) and accept being shut out of their rooms most of the time.

What mostly /didn't/ get done was the anticipated sorting and packing in the evenings. D's current injuries meant cooking parts of dinner often couldn't be started/progressed until I got home, which meant late dinners, which meant washing the dishes and other aspects of the nightly routine usually took us through to bedtime; I did stay up later (than I should have) several nights catching up on things online and trying to get my head around properties and price ranges and suburbs/locations and school zones ...

Today is a catch-up-on-various-things day and tomorrow evening the sorting and packing and paperwork will have to begin in earnest.

~~~
Yesterday was also the first anniversary of my father's death. We don't go in for big annual events in our family, life goes on and for me at least there are reasons to remember him every day. But I am glad that circumstances came together such that I was able to spend some quality time with Mum and help out a little with her decluttering. Several venerable, made-to-last kitchen/dining items now have appreciative new homes.