Housekeeping

This blog is going to be an amalgam of random thoughts that I've had in the past 2 days, some of which pertain to being in New Zealand and others are just a product of the dust bunnies in my head.

Remember how I take baths because the shower is broken? I came up with an old school solution. I use an empty ice cream tub to create a whole makeshift shower and take the bath element out of bathing. I fill it up with hot and cold water and then I pour it on my head. It is crude, but effective. The ice cream was delicious, but it feels even nicer to be clean. My personal cleanliness meter sometimes points to slightly obsessive compulsive. I think there are worse things to feel a compulsion for and until my desire to be clean impedes my normal life, to me clean means keen.

A Sumner note, the wind was really cold on that day at the beach. It was so chilly that Gordon and I were both in physical pain from the wind whipping into the ear that was exposed to the offshore wind as we walked parallel to the shore. It's a stinging inner ear pain that I hadn't felt before on any beach or mountain. Next time I go to the beach, I'm bringing my winter hat. I just thought it was odd that it wasn't the sand or the water, but the wind that hurt my ear.

There are convenience stores all around Christchurch and most likely all of New Zealand and they are called Dairies or the singular form Dairy. They sell the same stuff as most gas stations in the states, like soda, chips and candy. They also sell cheap pies of the meat variety. These pies only cost NZ$1 a piece. It's a delicious deal. I can safely declare that I have found love in New Zealand and it is with these pies. While they tantalize my taste buds, I'm fairly certain they go in the category of foods that will probably kill me in less than a fortnight if I don't exercise moderation. In this equation, taste and health are inversely proportional to each other. The better this pie tastes the more I am certain that this pie has the same caloric and fat content as 3 big macs. This might have been an exaggeration, but individually wrapped pies that sit under a heat lamp all day at a Dairy cannot be good for someone's health.

What is with Zed? The Kiwis pronounce "Z" phonetically as "zzz-ed." Most NZ websites end in .co.nz so they say dot co dot "en zed". I was going to rant about how we say "zee" even though it sounds like "c", "v", "e", but as I was typing my rant I realized that we don't use "z" nearly as often as they do. Most of our websites end in dot com, dot net, dot org or dot gov, but most of their sites end in dot nz. We, Americans, hardly use "z" in our daily lingo. If we used it as often as the Kiwis do, we would probably also use another sound for the letter "z." Rant self denied!

Speaking of keen, we say "keen" here. I like it. I also like the word neat. They don't say it, but I do.

I think I look up at the sky a lot more than I used to at home. I'm not sure why. I feel like the sky is some how bigger or the clouds are some how much interesting. It's hard to say, but I can climb a hill and see for miles. I think it is simply because I can see so much of the sky that I notice it more. I wish I could capture the feeling of expansiveness that the sky gives off because it makes me pause every time.

Today, I was lying in the grass of the neighborhood park and reading "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter." The sun was out and it was warm with a little bit of a cool breeze. I ended up drifting off to sleep. I succumbed to the moment that everyone is familiar with while reading outside. You're in the sun, reading and suddenly your eyes start to get heavy. You begin to struggle with the your focus on your book, but then you realize that you don't have to fight it and you can just give into the nap. So you rest the book on your chest and close your eyes. Yes, I took a nap in the warm sun and yes, I woke up to a ladybug crawling on my arm. I named the ladybug, George. It's a wonderful thing when you can have a nap in the sun and just go with it.

My super spidey sense has been off since I got here and so I've been slightly spider paranoid. I had been told that there were only two spiders in New Zealand. I heard one will bite you and it will be painful, but the other will bite you and death will ensue. One is the white-tailed spider and the other remains unnamed, but mainly because I forgot the name. I went to the bathroom the third day after I had gotten to the house and freaked out because there was a spider on the back of the door so I ran out and told everyone. They called in spider expert or rather just all clustered in the bathroom, only to find out that it was a daddy long legs. In my defense their daddy long legs look different from ours. Then I saw a spider on my bed, freaked out and spent the next 20 minutes googling the white-tailed spider. Then I realized the white-tailed spider looked nothing like the spider I lost in the bed and that white-tailed spiders aren't really very poisonous and won't kill you. I'm still paranoid, but I'm keeping it a secret from my flat mates because I just end up looking foolish.

This isn't going to make sense to a lot of people, but E.P. I found a place for your brother to live. You may have to click the picture, but it's a beautiful garage.

I just wanted to say that even in New Zealand I am plagued by Nights in Rodanthe.