The Cat Next Door

Where is the Pied Piper when you need him?

This is my guy Baxter, and if I am outside, he is right beside me, bringing in firewood, hanging laundry out to dry, walking on the beach, weaving back and forth between my feet as I navigate the stairs. Sometimes I swear he is trying to trip me although it was Mark who ran over his tail with the gas grill. If I am inside, he wants to be there too. He lives next door, and I know his name because he wears it on a tag around his neck. He is persona non gratis as far as my daughter is concerned because of the incident where he scratched the world's most curious grandson. But I digress. It is winter here on the island, and there's a chill. Even the sea seems cold and ill-tempered, tossing large pieces of timber up on the beach at will and washing others away with no trace. The piece of driftwood pictured in the NZ Bach post - gone! Anyhow, because of the cold, everyone is trying to keep warm.......including the rats. That's right. I said rats. Not mice, RATS. They're in the attic, and everybody has them. Everybody. No problem......you put out bait boxes, and they party down and shrivel up and die. Yuck. My question is - isn't it Baxter's job to protect us from these invaders?

Well, maybe help is on the way:

http://nz.news.yahoo.com/070628/3/qwx.html

Tea Time

The Paekakariki Cafe is the Cafe Zola of the village. In fact, it is the everything of the village. The cafe is where people meet and eat and usually it is much more crowded than it appears in these photos. The kitchen is smaller than a large US bathroom, but the food produced in that small space is absolutely delicious -- from the open-faced lamb sandwich to the baby squid salad to the seafood chowder with those beautiful New Zealand greenshell mussels. And everyone comes for breakfast or morning tea on the weekends. Closes at 4PM. Besides enjoying the cuisine, one keeps an ear open for conversations at neighboring tables -- not so much for the content as for the accent. There are people from all over the world, speaking English with some sort of accent. The Europeans are easily placed, but some of the others are more difficult to pinpoint. So far we have not run into any other Americans. Where are all of you? I do wonder what all of these world travelers are doing in this sleepy little coastal village. They can't all be here to visit the world's cutest grandchild, can they?

It's always tea time here. I don't think I have the order figured out yet, but I'm working on it. Morning Tea is between breakfast and lunch. Afternoon Tea is at 4PM, and TEA is dinner. Whew! Any other time it's just a cuppa. Which reminds me..........I have to go put the kettle on. Mark is feeling better.

Going Out and Coming In

It's the Summer Solstice in AA and the Winter Solstice in NZ. What a flip flop - the longest day of the year for you, and the shortest for us. You are worried about your AC working, and we're ordering more firewood. You're eating cool salads, and we're eating hot soups. You're drinking white wines, and we're drinking red.


Weird weather - more like spring than the first day of winter although winter starts June 1 down under. Warm and wet - not so bad really. Very gray, low-hanging clouds, and occasional showers. By late afternoon the sky had lightened a bit, but we could tell there would be no sunset tonight. Unexpectedly, flashes of light appeared along the horizon. We blinked, not quite sure of what we had seen. More flashes and eventually some rumbling noises. Aha! Crikey! It's a thunderstorm. Huge gusts of wind and sheets of rain moved swiftly across the Pacific and huffed and puffed at our windowpanes. Sooo........summer/winter, but we all have thunderstorms.


The pictures are of the other side of our house - the side that faces the street and Paekakariki Hill with the sheep grazing on it. How they keep their footing is a mystery to me. They must be velcroed onto that hill.

Top image is our house. The first row next to the ocean, fourth house from the left. We're facing your direction.

http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=-40.992156,174.94675&spn=0.001842,0.004989&t=k&z=18&om=1

View From My Bath

I hope this is not too risque (can't find the darn accent mark) for the web. Too bad it wasn't taken on a day when I was holding a glass of wine with my foot! Anyhow, the reader should be focused on the view. Speaking of which.......it's hard to have a bad day when everywhere you look is this fabulous view of the Pacific Ocean. Needless to say, it's almost impossible to get anything accomplished. We are staying secluded above the sea since Mark is still fighting through the pain. The doctors seem to think now that he has a pinched nerve so we're focusing on that this week with anti-inflamatory meds and rest. It's a tough life. Unfortunately, he can't comfortably ease himself into the bathtub. The world's cutest grandson can, however. The tub is an oversized claw-footed speciman with a bay window on one side that looks out on a tropical garden. He is full of giggles and sly smiles when he floats his boats on the surface, then tosses them all out, flops over and "swims." The last time he was here, even though it wasn't bath time, he insisted on getting in "Nanah's bathtub" with his clothes on. Such joy exists in the very young......something we might do well to recapture. I don't know how much joy his parents are experiencing this week since, according to his mother, he has a bad case of the MINEs.

Must go tend to the King of Pain........hope we're back on the beach soon.

Another Sunset Down Under

Almost every evening we watch the sun set, sometimes with a glass of wine, sometimes not. Each sunset is unique, but they are all awesome in the true sense of the word. Unfortunately, not all of them transfer successfully to film. When the sunset fades, the stars appear - what a show that is! - standing on the deck looking out into the abyss above the roaring of the surf. The sky is so dark and the stars are so bright from the horizon on up and over, so you have to tilt your head back to see them all. Of course, I guess you could swivel. So far I don't recognize any of the constellations. No Big Dipper! J pointed out the Southern Cross, but I'm not sure I actually saw it. Guess I'll have to get a book to further my knowledge. There's a bar down the road that has dozens of photos of the sunsets on the walls - or you can just look out the window. Of course, we don't even have to leave home to enjoy the view from beachfront to top of the hill.

We are still dealing with the hubby's stones and excruciating pain. As I mentioned before, these Kiwis are a strong lot. No Vicodin or Percocet for them! It's codeine and acetaminaphin and grin and bear it, mate. At any rate, we have an appointment with a specialist the day after tomorrow so he should get some relief.

NZ Bach

Weather is colder this weekend so we've kept a fire crackling in the fireplace all the time. I've learned to build a fire and keep it going by lugging logs in from the shed and positioning them correctly. Whew! Who knew a fire could be so much work when it's not just ambiance? Haven't these people heard of gas logs? Or central heating, for that matter. Notice I said I am in charge of keeping the fire going. Hubby is dealing with kidney stone(s) so we spent yesterday at hospital in Wellington chauffeured by the world's greatest son-in-law who, being a Kiwi, helped us navigate the intricacies of the New Zealand health system. Not to sleight the world's greatest daughter who steered us through the local clinic the day before, toddler in hand, who kept inquiring, "Where's Oh-pa?" (Emphasis on the Oh.) Not a tour that we had planned to include in our itinerary. We should feel like residents......if it weren't for these darn accents.

I notice there's a hot spell in the US so some of you are probably enjoying the beach. We are enjoying our own, but wearing considerably more clothing than you probably are. Hmmm.....now that I think about it, wonder whether I could drag that piece of driftwood up to the fireplace? That is our residence on top of the hill behind me. Panoramic views of the Tasman Sea 24-7. (That's the name of this part of the Pacific between NZ and Australia.) On some days we can see the South Island to the southwest and usually Kapiti Island to our northwest, and we can tell the wind direction as we watch it blow across the waters. Hard to keep in mind that the southerlies are the bad guys. Yep! We're not in AA anymore.

Saw sailboats in the Wellington harbor on our way into hospital yesterday so if any of you want to sail on down.............

It's Still 2007, Isn't It

Still waiting for the laptop to arrive.....must be on a slow sailboat to New Zealand.

It's been a month since our arrival, and winter began June 1. The temperature is in the 60's inside and out. Don't want to hear how you have your air conditioners set to that temp. So like you energy- hog Americans. The humidity is high -- inside and out -- so we're still relatively comfortable. Of course, I've always loudly proclaimed that the one modern convenience that I absolutely could not do without is a garbage disposal. Not here. Everybody has a compost pile in the garden. And clothes drying on the line --- outside and in. And with the high humidity it's difficult to tell whether the clothes are ever really dry. On the plus side, there are people who pump your petrol for you. Still costs $60 to fill the tank. Some things are the same worldwide. Well, we're on our way down to the beach to look for that boat.