A less than cherry Christmas

Because I couldn't eat this Christmas (a cruel twist of fate for someone who loves food as much as me), I had to take in the simple pleasures of Christmas day - in between lying very still on various beds in great heat.

I did manage some jelly tonight though so it wasn't all bad. And it made me think of all the people a lot worse off than me on Christmas day and other days. I hope people in hospitals and hospices and nursing homes and just alone found something to enjoy today.

All of the things. ALL OF THEM.

And now, Christmas is two sleeps away. And I am in bed sick. Good times.

Because it would take far too long to properly recap on the last month, here is a collection of photos with some context.

Lots has been going on at work - first of all, Ed designed this amazing Christmas poster.

Pip moved out. It was sad. But she made us an incredible goodbye dinner featuring pulled pork, spicy coleslaw, and lemon meringue pie.

My letter to the editor was published in the North & South, which confirms my future as an angry letter writing old lady.

I went to Auckland and ate like a Queen, saw the musical Little Shop of Horrors which was a really fun time, and saw 'Who Shot Rock & Roll' at the Auckland Art Gallery.

I went to Toast Martinborough for the third year in a row, this time with Ed, Nick and Little Claire. This is a chicken and quince pie by Ruth Pretty at Ata Rangi. Sadly there was no creme brulee this year which was honestly one of the reasons I wanted to go to Toast. I think I'll have a break from it next year, it was a good day but I need a rest from it.

We stayed at my family's house in Masterton after Toast and went for a walk to Rathkeale to walk off all the food we'd eaten.

We put on a Christmas sing-along show and I went to Auckland. Again.

To help market the show the cast and a couple of others (actually just Kate the Stage Manager and I), went and sang at the Christmas markets in Frank Kitts Park. It was really cute and some old people loved it.

We had a party under the dome in the Grand Hall upstairs at 1 Kent Tce to say Bon Voyage to BATS while we temporarily relocate to the corner of Cuba and Dixon Streets for 2013. My last week at work was spent in a makeshift office upstairs with a 12 metre drill below.

I got to go to carols at Longwood again this year, it was lovely as per usual.

Then I had a roast dinner two nights in a row, at the second one we had amazing bread pudding with chocolate, pears, and sugar syrup.

On Friday night there was some South Island road trip planning and a visit to the Telecom Christmas Tree. Then yesterday a visit to Alex for her birthday where there were some beautiful flowers and a beautiful baby. He is so cute.

Now, I'm really looking forward to feeling better (please let it be soon). I was meant to be in the Wairarapa already but I felt too sick to drive over. So I'm hanging out in bed watching first the clouds and then the fog roll in and magically disappear the harbour. It hasn't really felt like Christmas much yet, I haven't decorated a tree, didn't get time to make Christmas cards, I haven't done all my Christmas shopping, and I've only listened to A Very Cherry Christmas a couple of times. But my first 10 weeks of work have been crazy and we made a Christmas show, so that probably has something to do with it.

On the 28th I'm going down South for a little drive around (although, not so little really, one day involves five hours of driving...) as I've never been south of Christchurch. I'm excited. Let's hope Boy Alex (my Mum insists I stop calling him that, 'It makes him sound like Boy George' - but I've got too many Alexs around, I need to differentiate them somehow) and I don't get too sick of each other. I plan to take lot's of photos, so stay tuned.

A few of me photos

Every year this fiery orange tree at my Nana's blooms for only a few weeks. It's pretty impressive.

I went to a play as part of the Greytown Arts Festival which was performed entirely with marionettes. At the end, the main female marionette demanded to be released from her strings - she sank down and then the puppeteers picked her up and made her walk on air out into the audience and down to the back of the room where she disappeared. That was my favourite bit.

From our afternoon in Devonport last weekend.

I saw and liked this painting by New Zealand artist Bessie Christie last time I was at Auckland Art Gallery, and this time I took a photo of it. It's called 'The Art Class', dated around 1948.

I really liked the exhibition of Auckland Pasifika artists at the Gallery, and I got very frustrated by The Walters Prize works. Mainly because the blurbs giving the works some context were on the wall opposite to the entrance to the exhibition so I didn't see it and didn't understand what was going. Also, modern art can just be frustrating, I think anyway.

The end.

Tinui

I went away again this weekend.

This time to a 'cottage' in Tinui, which isn't very far away from the beach I stayed at the weekend before. The 'cottage' wasn't really a cottage, but a big old three bedroom house, beautifully restored with an impressively hot fire, an outdoor spa pool (which was amazing to sit in and look at the stars on a frosty night), and a 'walk' to the site of the first ever ANZAC ceremony.

We got a little off track on the walk, so instead of an hour, it took us about three hours of walking through mud, and climbing a very steep track. The view was worth it though.

We also went to Castlepoint (a different beach from the one I was at the weekend before) and walked up to the lighthouse and around the lagoon and tried to slide down the big sand dunes. The weather was very nice.

Now I have to endure the last three weeks of life as a policy analyst, before I start my new job at BATS. Exciting!

Also, I have made no progress on the Pebble vest, but the stitch markers I ordered from Holland Road Yarn Company arrived so I can take off the bits of different coloured wool I tied on and be all proper at Baby Knitters Club on Wednesday.

Take me to the beach

On the weekend I went to the beach. It was very, very, very nice.

Amongst going for a long walk, trying to form a biking gang of two adults to rival the biking gang of three small children we saw riding around, eating fish and chips, and falling asleep while watching March of the Penguins, I made progress on my Pebble Vest but failed to take a photo of it. It's pretty boring still. It's just 13 rows of 80 stitches with some stitch markers.

I decided I really, really like Norfolk Pines with their little stars at the top and admired them a lot.

I also made a still life with some flowers I stole from the side of the road, a shell I stole from the beach, and an eggshell blue tea tray and a Crown Lynn cup I wanted to steal from the house we stayed in. I made that coffee in the cup. In one of those stovetop percolators. I don't drink coffee, but I love those contraptions.

Also, I didn't set out to make a still life, just so you know. I put some flowers in a gravy boat on the tray and then put the shell next to it to look pretty and then decided I needed to take a photo and call it a 'still life' like a pretentious loser.

Also, also, it really annoyed me how March of the Penguins was all, 'Why do the penguins march? Because love.' And, 'Now the family get to spend some quality time together before departing, never to see each other again.' Stop projecting human emotions and concepts onto penguins. They don't do it for love. They do it for reproduction.

Spring has sprung

The Botanic Garden is actually making me later and later for work each morning. I'm usually already running late when I walk through, but now I'm all, 'Oh but look at that magnolia tree, I need to take a photo! Those daffodils have doubled since yesterday, I need to take a photo! Freesias in a little clump amongst purple-y blue flowers, photo! Tulips, photo! Poppies, photo!'

The tulips are amazing though. One morning there were a couple, the next morning quite a few more, and then yesterday as I drove past I saw there were HEAPS. Walking to work this week is going to be great. Unless this crazy wind ruined them all.

This week I saw a play I did not enjoy. But nothing else. I decided what I'm going to knit next for Baby Knitters Club. But I haven't actually started it.

Baby Knitters Club seems to be on a slight hiatus at the moment. However, Kate got busy in her own time and made these amazing bibs. They're like kerchiefs - they're square with a pointed bottom - and she put domes on them like a grown-up. Amazing! [I wrote 'put domes on them like a grown-up' while half-asleep last night before I gave up on finishing this post; what does it even mean? I think it means that domes seem like a hard-out thing and that only a grown-up, accomplished sewer could put them on something. Yeah, that's what it means.]

Here are two photos I took while passing through Carterton last time I was in the Wairarapa.

I think they'd need to add 'knitting' or 'sitting around drinking cups of tea, eating, and talking' to make the Club appeal to me. Neither of those activities seem crazy for a Senior Citizens' Club.