Nothing To Do

The other day I was speaking to a friend on Skype. Once again, thanks Skype, I don't think I could exist without you. I am, after all, very far down under here in New Zealand.

Anyway, my friend asked how I could bear it: living on a farm with nothing to do and nothing ever happening. So, here is an open blog to all of you dreamers who think I am spending my time eating bon bons and watching the rain fall.

My days for the past two weeks since my stuff arrived from Arizona has been spent unpacking. That is when I am not checking the stock, checking the water troughs, hiking down to get the mail, doing the activities of daily living - cleaning, laundry, etc. I do still eat, wear clean clothes occasionally, etc. etc.

Unpacking is a real challenge. You try getting the contents of a 4300 sq. ft. house into 2 rooms. I am not being too successful at it. I have managed to scatter some of my furniture into the apartment in Auckland and the living room in the big house here. But what do I do with my books and dvds? I stack them so that I look as though I'm living in the midst of some weird second hand book store.

While that has been going on, I have also been preparing the 2 freezers for the home kill which we should collect next Monday. This has involved getting a tow hitch for the station wagon, borrowing Dave's flat trailer, moving all the meat to the house freezer and cleaning and defrosting the coffin freezer in the garage. Note: there is a lot of water when you defrost a freezer and this is one big freezer. It is also a deep freezer and I can't reach the bottom of it without falling in. My solution has been to throw towels into the bottom, wait until they are saturated, pull them out with a broom handle and leave them to dry on the fence outside.

The tow hitch was Yael's contribution and Dan borrowed the trailer. So I have not been alone in all this. I never am. I am mostly an observer of the continuing construction of the garden. Dan has now gotten to the point where he and a neighbour are putting in the planks around the perimeter to keep out the loathsome possums.

The porch is still not finished. We can't paint in the rain and there is plenty of rain. The big house is heated by a wood burning stove which means we need wood. Dan takes care of that. Helping fell a neighbor's trees and getting the trees to chop up. Which he does and then splits them and stacks them ready to heat the house. I, on the other hand, have a nice little electric heater and my efforts at keeping warm consist of pushing two buttons.

Oh, and did I mention that while all that is going on, we are having the a new load of gravel put on the driveway? It seems that our poor, misused driveway couldn't handle all the moving vans and turned itself into a pitted pond of mud. Yael had to gun the wagon and surge up out of the driveway while making a sharp left turn in order not to get stuck. Scared me to death! Alessia thought it was funny.

So the next time you think of me, whiling away my time reading or snoozing in my cozy little nook, DON'T. The chances are that I am busier that I ever was back in the States. And loving every minute. Well, most of them anyway.

Strange Sentences

The other evening Dan called me. "Mom, I've been worried about you. I called a couple of times and there was no answer."

"I was out setting the possum traps."

This set me thinking. Of all the sentences I have spoken in these 68 years (I didn't speak at all until I was 2), the above sentence may be one of the weirdest. I grew up in Washington, D.C. As far as I know I had never seen a cow, definitely not seen one up close. And even more definitely, had no knowledge of possums, no desire to catch one, no blood lust to kill one. How things have changed! So here are some of my favorite strange sentences.

Yael and I are traversing Mt. Everest, AKA paddock #1, to bring the steers down for the home kill guys to dispatch them to the happy grazing grounds so we can have our next year's meat. Now that is a strange sentence. I had never linked live cows with my hamburger. Now I do and I have to say that our hamburger is delicious. Still, there is more than a twinge as my buddies for the past 2 years amble off for the last time.

Yael has graciously offered to sprint up the paddock and move the steers down in my direction where I will herd them to the next outpost.

"If I fall in a tomo, tell the kids I love them," she shouted as she skirted the tomo barricade. Now that's a strange sentence!

I have had my household stuff shipped from the states and the moving van has pulled up to our gates. Our driveway won't take the large van so they have driven a smaller van to transport my books,  bed, etc. from the gate to the house. It is a horrible day weather wise. It is cold, gray, and wet.

"The rain is coming sideways, so we'll have to pull the feeder truck in at an angle to try and keep your stuff dry." It took me a while to understand what he said and then I puzzled some more. What difference did the angle make when you have to carry the stuff across the driveway and and down into the barn or across another driveway and into the house? I still don't know but I occupy my many idle moments trying to figure it out.

When Dan and Yael went to a restaurant for dinner, placed their orders, and waited 45 minutes for the non-appearance of their food, they questioned the owner.

"Where is are our food?" they asked politely.

"Surf's up," came the reply. It seems the wait staff all booked to the nearby beach for play time and the diners were left to wait until the surf surge was over. The strangest part of this was that the owner didn't seem to feel there was anything strange about that at all!

I could go on and on. The stock boy, who in response to my query as to the whereabouts of light bulbs, stared at me fixedly and said "You're American!!" Now I wasn't in the wilds of Borneo, there are lots of us Americans here and we are all over the television (last season's shows, but still American). He had to have heard an American accent before, hadn't he? And besides, what was the deal with me being an American?

I have had a lot of strange reactions to America and my being an American. Perhaps that will be the next blog. See you later.

Meet Smudge

Meet Smudge! No I didn't name her but when I adopted her from the SPCA the name came with her. I might have chosen something else but I didn't have the heart to make her learn a new name along with a new home, new people to order about, new food, etc. So Smudge it is.

I probably could have taken over a small South American country for less trouble than the adoption process entailed. But I chose to adopt a cat. I have always had pets and these last few years flying solo have been lonely ones. Now that I have permanent residency, it seemed that I could settle in with a pet. A dog would have meant a lot of training and it rains all the time now so I couldn't picture myself outside doing the "Sit! Good dog." routine.

Off I went to the SPCA which is on the south side of Auckland near the airport. I live an hour north of Auckland near nothing. This meant that Yael had to bundle 3 kids in the car, give them morning tea in the car, and drive forever. She did it! I am so lucky. She kept those kids entertained while I wandered the cat aisles. Gorgeous kittens but we had decided that an adult cat was our best bet.

There were some fine ones but only one managed to uncoil herself from the back of the cage and come greet me, purring all the while. An hour later, a mound of paperwork, and significant inroads on my bank account later, she cuddled into her cat carrier, sat on my lap and took the long, long ride to the farm with nary a sound! I was congratulating myself on a wise choice.

One of the many papers I signed covered cat care for the first month. In it I promised not to let Smudge out of my room for the first week and not out of the house for the first 3 weeks. In this case, it meant a month in my room which was also my house. Two hours after leaving the SPCA Smudge went missing. Dan, Yael and I each separately searched my room. No cat. We searched the farm. No cat. We alerted the neighbors. No cat. Finally I sobbed my way back to my room and went to the hot plate to make myself a cup of tea.

There, behind the tea pot, sat Smudge gazing calmly at me. This was a Tuesday. By Saturday she had a roaring case of cat flu. On Monday the vet was so astonished at her temperature he took it twice. A procedure that Smudge made clear she did not appreciate. She was one sick cat. She didn't eat for 6 days. Or do much of anything for that matter.

Then she made a miraculous recovery and within 24 hours was catching mice. This has made her Yael's favorite non-person. Since she had been a farm cat in her former life, I expected her to adjust fairly well to this new life. She has exceeded my expectations. The remainder of her 3 week incarceration passed swiftly enough and the time came to "Let Her Out". (She talks in capital letters.)

So I let her out. I dreamed of doing some re-potting work on the deck on the left of the house in the picture while Smudge lay quietly in the sun adjusting to her new surroundings, smells, etc. I got the re-potting part right. However Smudge decided she didn't need any adjustments, leaped the railing and was off.

I called and called. I wandered around the house and yard over and over. It rained and rained. No Smudge. A day and a half later, I heard her meowing when I called but still no visibility. Finally I saw her up the hill lying on a woodpile watching me. She said hello but when I moved toward her, she ran off. Now I was cold, worried, and wet. And in a snit. I gave up and went to bed.

At about 9 pm I felt a cold draft on my neck as Smudge pushed open the door. Then she joined me for her evening snooze. She left in the small hours of the morning, returning periodically for food and friendship before disappearing again for most of the day. And that is how every day has been since her return. I have the companionship I dreamt of but on Smudge's terms. I can live with that. I've had cats before and you always end up in a relationship on the cat's terms. Reminds me of my marriage.