It's been a good year for the roses...

I know, because I've been out pruning them lately. We have a guarded relationship roses & I. They tear big lumps out of me while I'm mowing the lawns & I wear a pair of welding gauntlets when I prune them. I dont know a lot about pruning roses. I probably do it all at the wrong time. I take off the dead head heads & cut back fairly hard on the low growing suckers that threaten to take all the skin off my ankles when I go to cut silverbeet to eat. They never get sprayed, or treated with the special stuff that you are supposed to anoint them with when you prune them, but they still grow & grow lustily. I've always liked that word & wanted to use it, now I have. I will admit though, that there is something that soothes the soul with puddling about in the garden. Pruning is a fairly low effort job for me & is about as close to nature as I care to get. The beech tree is in full leaf & the Starlings that come to the nesting boxes high in the branches are in full song & look absolutely beautiful. Throw in the dulcet tones of a tui & its just about as good as it gets.

If you are wondering, the rose pictured above is one of ours & is called Anna's Love. Jude planted it when our darling grand daughter Anna was born. Aside from the look, it has a most beatiful scent as well.

So yes, it HAS been a good year for the roses, which I guess is some consolation for Jude, because it's been a tough year in other respects. Not just for us either. A dear friend, Peter, otherwise known as Cwnda lost his wife Jean on Friday morning. Pete, we love you & mourn your loss along side you. Our prayers & thoughts are with you. Jude has had a couple of visits to the doctor this week because of an infection in her stoma. Apparently, its a yeast infection & tonight it was that tender & swollen I elected to take her to the hospital to get it checked. Hopefully, the medication will do its thing in the next 2 or 3 days, but we will be watching it closely I assure you.

Our medical practice, or the board running it, have bought the Brian Boru Hotel, one of the older watering holes in town.


They are going to keep the upstairs as accomodation & turn downstairs into a licensed restaurant & art gallery. its going to need some quite extensive renovation & repair, as nothing has been done to it for 10 years or so. We have been invited to the blessing ceremony, which is going to happen at 7.00 AM on Monday. Nice to see the old "Briney" stay in local hands. Just looking at the calendar is scary. damn we have had a lot of places to go & people to see & be seen by this month. To think we naively hoped to be in the South Island by now.........

We had a party today

Herself decided that it was time all our new neighbors got to know each other, so we had a BBQ at our place today. We had a blast. Everyone really enjoyed themselves. the kids were like little seals in the spa pool & all us grownups had a ball getting to know each other. one of our new neighbors sings professionally. She grew up in the States. She has seen Grateful Dead play live. She knew John Lee Hooker & recorded with him, including the last track he ever recorded. And she wants to learn songs from me. And she loves my old 12 string & plays it beautifully. Sings like a bird too. So after she went home & got her guitar, we had a jam session. Everybody really enjoyed it.

We all had a great time & made a heap of new friends. Made a wonderful change from all our trials & tribulations of late.

The Passport

Jude had her new plumbing fitted on Friday. Its called a Passport. This is a photo of what it looks like from the sharp end of an endoscope. It was all quite a big deal, with the company rep there to observe & all. You see, its the first one to be fitted in New Zealand, so it was all a bit of a fuss. Its a lot lower maintenance than a MIC KEY button. Now that its in, it should be good for at least 12 months. a mic key, you have to check the water in the bubble once a week.

I do hope that this is alright, because every time she has an anaesthetic, she loses a little more of her mobility. Her diet is getting more restricted all the time & its getting harder to find her things that she can eat. I feel mean every time I sit down for a meal of something like steak, that we have both enjoyed in the past, but, bless her, she is very understanding. It's just that at the moment its very hard to find the incentive to cook for one.

She has organised a get together for all our neighbors in & immediately around our right of way. Its just a sort of bring your own stuff & chuck it on the barby sort of get to know your new neighbours sort of thing & should go relatively well I hope. We can all sit down & discuss what an asshole the new animal control ranger is. He ponces round in military style overalls tucked into high top boots & has a serious attitude. I saw him eying up poor old Misty as he was hobbling home down the drive the other day.

We should feel special I guess, with all the attention that we get from Waikato Hospital. They really do look after us very well, with all the help that one could possibly ask for. Somehow though, it would be much nicer if our biggest worry was paying the rates.

Oh yes! on that subject, our local council has passed a new bylaw. It would appear that we now have to pay $65.00 a year for the privilege of parking our boat trailors on council property while we go fishing on the peninsular now. What a rip off ! It would be nice if ratepayers who are resident here got at least some form of discount... Retires to basement muttering about mixes of fertiliser & diesel & appropriate months of the year.....

P.S. I was gonna upload a pic of Jude's new fitting but for some reason I cant upload any pics at the moment, so you'll just have to wait until I can OK ?

Thoughts on strength

We were supposed to go fishing today, but we didn't. Herself didn't have a good night last night. I think that was partly due to me having a good night. Some nights I actually manage to sleep right through, but there is always a penalty. I snore. On those nights Herself moves out to the spare room. In itself, not going fishing isn't a big thing. It's what it represents more that has reduced me to tears at this point. It's another lot of good memories that have been denied me by this disease she has.

I'm being very selfish here, but also I hope, very honest. You see, what is happening with Herself, aside from the fact that it is killing her is affecting me very badly at this point. There are so many things that I miss. The sound of her voice saying "I love you." Talking to her plants. Singing along to the radio in Sherman with her. She had such a sweet voice as those of you that know her will attest. We have lost so much already & days like this just accentuate it badly.

Yet she shows such strength. When we go shopping, even if its just for groceries, she still finds the time to write, "Thank you" on her talking board. She has the most amazing inner strength that is helping her cope with life. I know it is affecting her though. Especially when I get up at 2.00 AM & find her here on the computer playing games to numb her mind. We both read a lot these days. Thats good anesthesia as well.

I'm pretty much sticking to my resolution to do something constructive every day. Some days its easier than others to do stuff. Today I don't know if anything will get done, although it's only ten & already I feel like its afternoon. A Chinese philosopher once said that the longest journey begins with the first step. He had nothing, I don't think to say about the strength of character needed to take the one after that , and the next. Then the one following that & all the subsequent ones. I don't like digging the vegetable garden all that much, so I just look at the bit that I'm digging & try not to look at the unturned bit. Human nature is a terrible thing though & it's next to nigh impossible not to raise your head to look at what is to come.

On a journey, its that steep climb, or the rickety suspension bridge with only a few boards between you & a screaming drop to the rocks below. In the garden, there is that difficult corner where one of Herself's roses lie in wait for an unwary arm, or the stubborn patch of Couch grass at the end under the trellis. But there are compensations. After the climb, or the nerve shattering creep across the bridge, there is the satisfaction of arriving at your destination, meeting friends or relatives, or seeing new sights. With the garden, there is the gentle joy of seeing newly turned rich dark earth, where there was once only weeds & puggy clay & the anticipation of eating warm fresh tomatoes straight from the vine.

With my life at the moment, I am trying very hard not to look beyond the next step, or the next spadeful of earth. Most days I succeed, but every once in a while, human nature dictates that I rear my ugly head & look at what the future holds. Materially & financially things look OK. It's only when I start looking at the things that really matter that I start seeing the steep & rocky hill, the missing bridge planks, the weeds that are next to impossible to eradicate & most of all, the thorns that cut deep & bleed the soul. I'm not a quitter. This isn't a fight that I will walk away from. This is my life & its the only one I have. I will care for Jude with all that I have while I have her to care for. This I will do because I love her, not because I feel any sense of duty , or any sort of obligation, but love.

It's only when I lift my head & try to picture what lies ahead in my life that things really get shaky for me. When I was 12, I used to imagine what it would be like to be 21 & paint pictures in my head of what my life would be, now that I was "A MAN" It came as a major revelation that nothing changed. I was still me. My next mental milestone was turning 5o in the year 2000. That milestone came & went too. My life was nothing at all like I had envisaged in younger years. I really have stopped looking ahead now. My 20 odd years with Jude have indeed been my days of wine & roses. OK, there have been a few thorns & a bit of couch grass & the odd rocky bit along the way, but they have been & still are, the best years of my life. Thats why when things don't happen when they should now I find it upsetting. Its a bit like getting close to the bottom of a really good bottle of wine I guess. You really savour the last few mouthfuls because you know there aren't going to be any more.

I haven't really been avoiding you

I've just had a lot happening inside my head lately. Things have been getting more than a little on top of me one way & another. The weather hasn't helped. When I quit work, one of the guys in Auckland that I know gave me a whole heap of stuff. Among it was one of his company work shirts, with the remark that it was my new fishing shirt, because it's UV resistant. We went fishing a week or two back. I hauled it out of the wardrobe & came to the realisation that I hadn't actually used it or been out fishing since i quit work. Not good. We have now been out a couple of times. Not much in the way of fish, but we enjoyed ourselves.

Another problem is lack of social contact for me. We have come to a bit of a hiatus in our travels & I miss socialising. To remedy that, I have started volunteer driving to take patients from our medical center to Waikato Hospital. have done two trips for them so far.

Meantime, I'm getting back into actually achieving something every day at home. So far so good. Pretty soon, I'm gonna have to bite the bullet & actually start concreting. Herself goes to waikato hospital on Friday for hopefully what will be the last in the series of feeding tubes for a good 12 months or so. now all we got to do is get her wonky knee sorted out..

Old Dan's Records.

I recently did a bit of what for me was a very clever little bit of horse trading. The details aren't important, but for me, its a win win situation. I have ended up with a lot more space in my garage & a kickass stereo system. I've been busy the last couple of days sorting it all out & installing it to my satisfaction. Its absolutely fantastic. I wont bore you with all the details, but I now have Wharfedale speakers at one end of the lounge & my good old trusty Fishers at the other end. TV & DVD all run back through it as well..

One of the things I had to do to run extra speaker wiring was shift one of the stacks of LP's that I have on the shelves. Its fatal to do that with me. It wasn't long before I was siting there thinking, "Hey, I haven't heard that one in a long time... Or this one. " See , these days I have such a good collection of CD's & they are so easy to play that I haven't given my vinyl much though. So there was "Gord's Gold" sitting there. Gordon Lightfoot. So me being a glutton for punishment I HAD to put it on. Herself is away at patchwork, so I can play it how I like... LOUD.

The only problem with playing Lightfoot is the memories he brings back. Some of the tracks bring back memories going right back to when my first marriage broke up. Good memories of a friend that I now have no idea where he is. he was a good friend at a tough time & he used to know Gordon. We used to sit in the cabin of his yacht & I would play & sing & he would sit there with a far away look on his face. He would tell me how much I reminded him of Gordon & how well we would get on.

One of the tracks on this album herself & I had played at our wedding. Its a very appropriate song for us now. We had no idea of the implications in it at the time. The track is Rainy Day People. Here it is..

A few of my Favourite things

Don't expect all the raindrops on mittens & hound dogs on kittens garbage that Julie andrews sings about in The Sound of Music. For the record, it is my proud boast that I have never actually SEEN that movie. Sorry, but Julie Andrews just don't spin my wheels somehow. Even the picture above isn't actually one of my favourite things. I'm more your basic hunter gatherer type. I'd rather go out & kill something to eat rather than wait for it to grow.

However, the look on Herself's face when she found out that I had installed the above picture as her desktop wallpaper was definitely right up there on my list of favourite things though. So is the taste of fresh snapper. I had almost forgotten that one. We got out fishing on Wednesday. It wasn't till I got back that I realised that we hadn't actually been out since I quit work. Thats way too long. It wasn't the best of days & we only caught 5 snapper, but that was enough for two nice meals for us. Sadly, Herself can't eat battered fish any more, but I had a bright idea & she enjoyed her fish. I pan fried it & served it with a lovely (even though I say it myself) caper sauce. Turned out nice it did.

The picture at the top of the page ? That's Herselfs favourite clematis out the front of our house. It is really looking rather beautiful at the moment even if you can't eat it.

Keerist its CCCCCCold !!!!!

Old man Winter has snuck up & smacked us round the ear for one last (hopefully) time it would seem. Ever since my son arrived from Southern Climes, the weather has been crap. We were intending to be down south by this stage, but I'm glad we're not. Im even glad that our trip to Hastings is out of the way as Jack Frosts icy fingers have insinuated themselves far enough North to close the Napier Taupo Highway as well as the Desert Road & a heap of other alternatives as well.

Once again, we have given in & lit the fire. It IS bloody cold here, as you can see by the attached pics. Both Tigs & Misty burrowed their way under their respective blankets for the afternoon as you can see by the attached photo's.
















Meanwhile, I carry on polishing the boat. Damn its going to look good when it finally gets on the water.....