Wednesday, October 31, 2018

Halloween 2018.

It's been a rough few weeks. I wasn't in the spirit of tonight .. I think the event at the chapel has actually gotten worse over the last few years and it might be a good idea to move the location from the chapel to elsewhere next Halloween. Not being judgemental .. but the spirit of red was active tonight.

Let me tell you a story.
Don't put acrylic paint on a childs face for halloween.
The end.

Someone was brave enough to commit sacrilege. It was the funniest thing of the night and that in itself is desecration.

Happy dia de los muertos.

Sunday, October 14, 2018

End of the holidays

School holidays have ended .. for mostly everyone. I still get a week off because with labour weekend coming up, our school thought it would be better for the holidays to run through labour weekend to spare parents travel expenses.


Loquats .. they're tasty, but they grow everywhere. Someone needs to 1080 the loquats.

Saturday was spent cleaning up the Grandparents yard.

This is how we clean up.

It was freezing yesterday.

Coral, Tyler & Shaily.

Aavian & Hubs.


This morning.

Term 4 will be 3 weeks long with seniors and an extra 5 weeks with juniors .. then it will all be over and Santa will come.

Tuesday, October 9, 2018

One child. One job.

I've raised a confident child. She's already braver than I was at 16 and she's only 8. She has an opinion. She likes to fight her case and she's extremely head strong. I know it's just her growing up, but the last few months with her have been a little taste of hell. Hitting a child is illegal in New Zealand, but it hasn't stopped me from the odd flicking of her ear when it's absolutely needed.

I tried to inject in her that Mum is the boss of all, but the older she gets the more of a joke that injection has become. I know this is normal. I know that I am not immune to the wrath of a child. It's my first time parenting a child who is determined and hard headed, but I also know that how she is is a ramification of being with family where we, without thought, collectively raise each others children.

A few days ago we were sitting at my Mums. She walks into the house and I asked her to shut the door (so the dog doesn't come in). I don't want to. It's hot. I let her know we don't want the dog to come in. It's hair is everywhere anyway. Who cares. I ask her why she isn't listening. Because I don't have to.

I get up and flick her ear then my Mum, after hearing the conversation, tells me to leave her alone.

Honestly .. what's that teaching her? I just want to raise her the way I feel best to raise her.

While Stiddy was here last night I saw her watching me with him. She started to get lippy and annoying and I made her sit on the floor and tell me why she had such an attitude. After tears and shrugs of the shoulder she finally pointed to Stiddy.

You don't look after me like you look after him.

I told her that was pretty normal to feel that way when a new baby comes along. I told her it happened with Rome when Avi came along and that babies need more care than bigger kids who can do more things for themselves. She understood that, but for me that didn't explain her attitude for the past few months because he's only been here a handful of times.

You're mean because you make me clean my room and brush my hair and brush my teeth.  All the other kids don't have to do that.

This is where I thought, oh poor little demon spawn .. you don't know squat.

Long story short ... a little girl is going without a device and TV till December, not for punishment, but because fresh air and life can be found outside.

I was talking to my cousin about it a few nights ago. A proud mother of 4 raising her kids in Saudi Arabia. She said the best way to raise a kid is not to give them anything.

I'm not going to give Hub's what she wants.
I'm going to encourage what she needs.
Love her to bits .. but she's bloody impossible.

Sunday, October 7, 2018

Tea and coffee.

I've been researching the last couple of days. At our staff break up I got to talking to the science teacher and in her drunken state she wanted to confirm a rumor circulating that my family were LDS. Not newbie LDS either, a few generations worth of LDS. She was so interested that I decided to accept her in all her prosaic redonkulousness and answer the questions she threw at me.

There were questions I couldn't answer, like the temple stuff. She'd already looked on youtube anyway and if you're gonna do that, you may aswell turn to the bible for answers to your questions because they're all in there.

The most simplest question was the one that got me.
Is the reason you don't drink tea and coffee because of the caffeine?

I've heard so many different reasons that all lead back to caffeine. Then I heard it was 'hot drinks' that were a no no. There's a few versions out there, but I turned to Brother Google over the week.

I learned that black tea and green tea come from the same plant - camellia sinensis. How they're processed is what makes them different. In the process of making black tea, it's fermented. Green tea isn't. The claim is that both teas are ten times richer in anti-oxidants than any vegetables or fruit, but both are definitely riddled with caffeine .. possibly more than what's in coffee.

I already know that coffee is habit forming and overtime has been shown to cause health problems.

If you're going to be pedantic about the Word of Wisdom, then following it at all is a little useless. We are given commandments and precepts as a guide, not a must. We have our free agency.

So my answer is that I don't drink tea or coffee because we're told not to drink tea or coffee.
That's the only reason I myself don't drink either.
The answer was there the whole time. ... and I didn't even have to dress up like a bat to seek my own spiritual justice.

Friday, October 5, 2018


Family time with the farmers on Wednesday night. The Livians came later, when the camera battery had gone flat.

End of the year term party for the staff at work. My Mum made me go. If I did anything un-Christlike that night, it was vaping some blueberry white chocolate concoction from a co-worker.
Drunk co-workers are W-A-Y better than sober co-workers.

Spent alot of the day with AviVi today.
She's still a newborn in my eyes.

Off to the park.
Believe it or not, kids will become one with nature when you kick them off of their device. It forces them to have actual conversations with each other.

The holidays have begun.