A Challenging Day

Strange as it may seem, but more & more I am finding the thought of doing things that stretch my abilities a lot less abhorrent now than I used to. I guess that it comes from having to interface with people a lot more now that Herself can't. I used to leave all the wheeling & dealing up to her & just sort of switch off when I came home, but the realisation that it is going to have to be me doing all this sort of stuff from now on is a challenge. I guess that I will rise to it.

My challenge lately has been that my Boss has given me the early run, (6.00 am start) to Auckland at least twice a week. This involves handling a 550hp 8 wheel Scania & trailor through rush hour motorway traffic & backing & manoevering it once I get to where I load up. 12 months ago, I would have found the prospect terrifying, but I enjoy it now. I had a really bad intro to big trucks. I was given the Volvo on the side of the road by another driver & had never even sat in it let alone driven it. The guy I took over from wasn't really that interested in showing me the finer points, let alone being helpful, so I just had to pick it up on my own, not a good thing to have to do at 5.30 in the afternoon in Auckland.

When I got back to the depot yesterday, I was given the crane truck, which I had just restrung with a new lifting cable, with a load of tiles for Whitianga, & a kitset trailor for someone 8 km up the Whiti side of the Tapu Coroglen road. When I stopped to check my load at the top of Sailors Grave, I saw this...

Its difficult to see, but he only has about 6 inches either side of the gate posts & the house is fairly firmly wedged between trees. Thats the sort of challenge that I dont think I will ever be up for. The guys that drive the house transporters are amazing.

Anyway, I managed to get my load off the deck of the truck with the crane without incident & finished up 8 km up the Tapu road, so the sensible thing was to carry on all the way over to Tapu. I'm glad that I did. It brought back some lovely memories like going through there as side kick to help unload the weekly truck & trailor trip that a company called Parker Wilson Transport used to make to Whitianga. We take more freight through in a day now. Like visiting the old eccentric at the top who had prominent signs up stating, "trespassers will be shot." I was working for a prospecting company that had the rights for a block in behind his place, & permission to cut through his farm would have saved us over an hours walk. We plied him & his sons with huge amounts of alcohol & we all finished up as drunk as lords. It didn't help though. his parting words were, "You're still not fucking well going to set foot on my property." We believed him & took it seriously. The month before, him & his boys had 3 guys from a rival company bailed up in a patch of scrub on his place by shooting over their heads with old army rifles for about 3 hours. They had to stay there until it was dark enough to sneak out.

I've also been lucky enough to see the very rare Hochstetters frog in a side stream up there. I've only ever seen the one, but I consider myself very priveleged to have done so. memories are wonderful things aren't they? They allow you to escape reality for a few precious minutes every once in a while.

News From The Western Front.

We had a visit from the Lightwrite people today. They have loaned Herself a new lighter, far more portable talking machine. She has this to trial & evaluate for a few weeks. If she likes it, then they will apply for funding so that she can have one for the duration. I finished work at lunch time, so that I could get a few things done & still be here when they came. It all worked out fine.

Meanwhile, we have heard from Waikato Hospital. Herself gets her feeding tube done next week. The neuro nurse has arranged for me to stay in the same room as Jude for the duration bless her. My ever tolerant bosses have given me the week off so that I can be with her. This is the latest in a long string of kindness & compassion that they have shown us both since Jude started getting really ill.

The morning sees yet another full load of product down from Mt Wellington, so its another early start. more later I guess.

I haven't written much this week.

That's not to say things haven't been happening, because they have. Its just that I haven't felt a lot like talking about them. Mainly I guess because I have been floating on a bit of a high from last Sunday still. Herself finally came to a harsh reality this week. She made up for tea one of her favourite mince & pasta dishes, & very nice it was too. As we sat down to eat it, she looked at it & said, "I really want to eat this." Unfortunately, it wasn't to be. Three mouthfuls & one Heimlich manoeuvre later, she was sitting there with tears streaming down her face saying,"I'm not normal any more am I ?" Its very hard to retain optimism & objectivity in the face of something like that.

The Boss rang on Friday night, There was two must go deliveries for a new client, one for Waihi & one for Katikati, would we like to do them on Saturday morning ? We did. A couple of extra hours will help clear the bills I guess.

Herself has an assessment with a speech/language therapist & an occupational therapist from a trust called TalkLink on Thursday afternoon. This is to assess her level of disability & to decide how much help they can give her. Meanwhile, we still haven't heard when she is due forinsertion of the feeding tube. Over Friday beers, my boss very kindly suggested that one of these might be a good investment for her.

He had to concede that he found it very hard to see Herself actually agreeing to the concept. Still the idea was there. Hook it up to the feed tube, add an IV regulating clamp, start a syphon going & instant hands free intoxication. I mentioned this to Herself & , much as I expected, got ' "The Look." Somehow, it really wasn't that unexpected.

I finally rearranged the shade sail this morning. The big one is now over the spa pool, so hopefully, we will get a little more privacy & herself won't get so wet from the rain while having a soak. i must admit to finding it ironic that she frets about getting rainwater on her while sitting in a thousand gallons or so of water. Still, if it makes her happy then its not a problem, & she does, as I do, enjoy her soak in the pool at night.

Well, thats about it for this week. Its nearly time for two episodes of Deep Space 9 then a nap. Catch ya later...

I came, I played, I rocked....

I finally did something today that I have been putting off doing for a variety of reasons for a lot of years. Herself & i went down to one of the local watering holes Where they had an open day for muso's. I have been practicing. I played some killer blues & I played them bloody well in front of about 70 odd people. I knew I was doing OK, because most everybody shut up & listened, Which was pretty good seeing as they didn't know 3 out of 4 of my songs. Was a nice feeling to have them singing along to "House of The Rising Sun." It was a buzz having a band behind me that knew what they were doing as well. I didnt really know what I was missing until I had it if you know what I mean. The guy that sings for the band came up & shook my hand after, so I guess I did it good.

Even my harshest critic, Herself, gave me her hand sign that means "OK" when I finished. She wasn't originally going to come, but I put my foot down somewhat & also used a smidgeon of emotional blackmail, so she relented. She admitted afterwards that she was a bit scared of being out of her comfort zone. That made two of us really. She admitted afterwards that she enjoyed it in spite of herself. That made two of us really.

Rockin On

Some time ago, Morty gave me a box full of cassette tapes, (remember those ?) I finally remembered where I put them last night & had a rat through them & hauled out half a dozen or so. You see, this morning I had a dream run to do. Leave the depot at 6.00 am, straight up to Mt Wellington in Auckland to a well known soft drink manufacturer, load 15 pallets of produce & come home. I was back at the depot by 9.30 am. A very proffessional load out too. I was in out & gone in 30 minutes. here's a pic of what a well loaded 8 wheeler looks like.

Note the way that the pallets start out relatively small against the headboard, work up in size so that most of the weight is toward the back axles, then tapers off again so that nothing is going to fall over, (Very important.) Anyway, back to tapes. This truck is an import so comes with the usual crap jap radio. It does however have a good factory installed tape deck. So picture one very happy old hippy trucky rockin on down the highway with a big grumbly diesel V8 under him & Jefferson Airplane, Stevie Ray Vaughn & The Dooby Brothers in the speakers. It doesn't get a lot better workwise really.

I managed to keep my first born

But it was a damn close run thing with a couple of second cousins. Let me explain. I finally managed to get to the doctor for myself today. I needed a couple of scripts filled that go back to when we were changing doctors. They were for meds that I haven't had done from our current provider, so we had to see a doc. I figured that while I was there, I may as well have a whinge about all the rest of the stuff that I had wrong with me. He listened & threw one or two others at me as well. Now I have enough stuff here to start my own pharmacy. Hope it all works. As I told him, we'll start with easy, (redo the scripts) & work our way down to the difficult. (Find a cure for Motor Neurone Disease)

Boobs Bum & Bollocks

We are unfortunate enough to play host to my Mum's dog. His name is Misty, & he is a pedigree idiot. This is him in a typical at rest pose....


Not many dogs have their own eiderdown & black velvet cushions, but he does. This says something about us I guess, but I'll leave it to you to say it. Because of his breeding or lack of, he is also a fairly high maintainance sort of mutt. He has cost us substantially more than he's worth in vet fees. One of his main problems is excema on his back. The heat stuffs him up something chronic. Guess what he's got at the moment ? Yep. A while ago, I was suffering badly from Buzzard's crutch, to the point where walking hurt. I called in at a pharmacy in sheer desperation for something to ease it. They sold me a tube of something called 3B Ointment. Its very good.

In sheer desperation the other night, after he had been bathed & clipped & was still all inflamed & itchy, I had a brainwave & hauled out the old 3B. Worked a treat it did. The inflammation went down in about an hour, & all the red is gone. Was good while it lasted , now the dopey bastard has gone & chewed it red raw again.

BREAKING NEWS........ how about the dopey bastard on who wants to be a millionaire Australian that did a big long walk to raise funds for his church, but didn't know that the third book of the Bible Old Testament is Leviticus..... Even a hardened old sinner like me knows that .

OTHER NEWS...... Took a short day today because the nice little Scottish Lady that is our support person For the Waikato branch of MN Support came for lunch. She has offered all sorts of support which is very heartening. I have been starting to feel a little bit out on a limb lately. See, Herself has always been the one to talk to people & sort awkward stuff out, but thats not real easy for her now, so its up to me a lot more. I dont like doing it, but I havent got a lot of choice these days. Its like everything else I guess. Character building.

Goin' up to the Spirit in the Sky

David Attenborough was taken to task by a Christian group recently. It seems that he never acknowledges the hand of God as being instrumental in creating the various natural wonders that he creates his wonderful programmes about. His reply was that there is a worm in Africa that exists solely to burrow its way into the eye of a child & live there. He can't see the hand of God working there. Frankly, neither can I. There has been a reply to that in a herald column that I read on a regular basis. A rabid God botherer has written in stating that God created the world perfect & it was only man that screwed it all up.

Personally, I have serious problems with the God as portrayed in "The Book of Books," The Bible. I mean figure it out for yourself. One slip up & we were out of the Garden of Eden. he had Abraham on a treat, leading him on to the last minute that he had to offer his son as a human sacrifice. And look what he did to Job ! All to win a bet with the devil. Pretty shabby I think. He nuked Sodom & Gommorah. I mean, c'mon, we all gotta have a bit of fun sometimes. If that wasn't enough, he had to rinse out the test tube & start again, with only Noah & his family & a few bugs & beasts to start again. Think what a genetic nightmare that would have started. Appalachia, eat your heart out. probably where Jehovah Witnesses spring from if the truth be known. OK, there were some good bits too, like the freedom of the Israelites from Egypt, but He had to torment the living daylights outta the Wogs before they let them go. Everywhere the hand of God appears someone inherits a pail of misery. He even let his only son sacrifice his life in manner most dreadful to atone for all our sins, past present & future.

Christians see this as a good thing. I see it more as throwing "our Albert" to a pride of Lions to eat so that the rest of us can sneak on quietly by while they are busy, congratulating both Albert & the Lions. The end result is the same. Albert/Christ has died in a manner most dreadful while God/The Lions are satisfied & leave us alone.

I'm sorry, but I have huge problems with this scenario. Even a mere human parent can find it within themselves, (most times) to forgive a wayward child without demanding one of their siblings offer themselves in a bizarre form of sacrifice. If a mere human can do it, whats wrong with God ? Isn't he supposed to be perfect? Anyone else see the anomaly? I have, as do all of us in some form or another, my own ideas about what happens to us when we bite the big one. I'm not saying that I'm right, I'm just saying that I'm happier believing in a more laid back deity that pretty much lets me do my own thing & find spiritual enlightenment in my own way. I'm not saying that I don't have issues within this. You know as well as I do that I have. Recent events have forced me to not only wake up & smell the coffee, but to have a rather large dose of very bitter & cold old coffee forcibly administered, but I guess thats where the issue of faith enters the picture.

Speaking words of wisdom

I have this friend in Texas who has an uncanny knack of asking me very searching questions that I have to dig very deeply within myself to come up with reasonable answers. This, in part, is a letter that I wrote to her in reply to some of those questions. I thought you might find it interesting.


> When we are young, everything seems to be in much more defined shades of
> black & white. Some sort of faith was a lot easier to maintain because
> we had so little experience with life & it was easy to believe. Its not
> , I don't think, until life kicks us around a little that we start to
> realize that gray & beige are legitimate colors as well. You speak of
> wisdom. I have found out that there is a point where no matter how well
> reasoned your logic & choice of faith is, there is a point where you
> have to let go & step in to the very strong currents of the river of
> life & trust that it will carry you to where you need to be. I think at
> this point that it's still possible to maintain your beliefs, but you
> have to acknowledge that no matter how well defined you think that life
> is, there are still undercurrents that will pull you off your perceived
> course & set you on a new path. I think that this is something that
> happens to us all to a greater or lesser degree, & even though we may
> perceive our burdens as being heavier or lighter than another has to
> carry, they are still burdens none the less & are just as real &
> important to all. Perhaps challenges would be a better way of referring
> to them.
>
> There comes a time in your life when your beliefs are challenged head
> on by events & you start to seriously question your values & can't see
> how this particular challenge slots in with what you believe. This is
> the point where belief becomes faith. If you can progress beyond this
> point, life does get easier. Personally, I think I am right on the cusp
> of this at the moment. I still have issues in who is learning what
> lesson for what reason, but I think I'm getting there.
>
> You say that you wish you had better ways to say things. How you are
> saying them is just fine. We both know that you love us, care for us,
> pray for us & think of us regularly, & that means a lot to both of us. I
> think one of the lessons that I have to learn is that there are some
> things in life that you can't cope with on your own. I'm really having
> to suck in that stiffnecked Gaelic pride , accept help & realise that
> all people want in return is a simple "Thank you" Meantime, its a case
> of spending as much time as I can with Jude & celebrating every day that
> we do have each other & a depth of love that will carry us through this.