A few things

As D-Day approaches, we are less and less interested in what is going on outside around us and more focused on what is going on in my uterus. I think mother nature designed it to happen this way. It can't be helped.

But a few things to comment on this week:

There was a great thunderstorm on Wednesday night, the first one we'd seen since moving here. We watched the hills over our house as a herd of cows rushed to lower ground to find shelter. We were battered with wind and rain. The lightning here was different from lightning we used to see in Arizona. There were no distinct bolts zig-zagging across the sky, but just general light in the sky. Not sure if that's a hemisphere difference, or just a characteristic of this particular storm.

My birthday was also this week, so I had to take part in a new birthday tradition. Here, it seems, the birthday person buys cake for the non-birthday people. This is a new one for me. And I'm not sure if it's a New Zealand-wide thing or just a quirk where I work. I asked around, but no one seemed really sure. It seems the concept is not unusual in NZ, but at my work it has become part of the culture. So the rule is, when it's your birthday, YOU bring some cake or other treat to share with everyone. There is another person in my office who had a birthday this month and who has still not brought in anything to share, and he is hassled about it on an almost daily basis. So I was not about to break this important tradition. I brought a triple chocolate cake. Everyone was pleased.

There is a story in the NZ Herald online today about a Kiwi couple who moved to America and then committed suicide "after growing disillusioned with their US life". Eeek. I don't remember it being quite that bad over there... then again, we didn't live in Utah... (kidding, kidding!)

Of course, the very biggest thing going on this week (bigger even than my birthday) seems to be the U.S. Congress passing health care reform. This story made the front page of the World news section in our local paper. The general sentiment over here seems to be, "what's the big deal?" People here understand this is not universal health care, or "socialised medicine", but just a few tweaks to the existing scheme to make private health insurance more accessible. One woman in my office cornered me at lunch with the newspaper in hand to ask why Americans were so upset about this legislation. It's a little weird being asked to explain how "Americans" feel about something, especially when the view I need to explain is not one I personally hold. Personally, I think health care reform is long overdue and that this bill is only a step in the right direction. It's hard for me to understand those people who are shouting it down, but I did my best. My best is this:

In New Zealand, health care is a basic human right, much like education. But in America, it just isn't. It's something you have to earn.

It seems this is really hard for anyone outside of America to understand. A story published in our local paper (which was actually taken from the Times of London) said just that: Europeans will have a hard time understanding Americans' violent reaction to this bill. (I'm paraphrasing there.) At least in my small world here in Christchurch, that seems to hold true. No one can understand how it could be controversial for the government to ensure access to health care for its people. The rest of the industrialised world has been doing it for decades.

But anyway, this is not a blog about politics, so I'll leave it at that. I'll go back to watching the little man in my belly try to climb up my ribs...

We love Hell

Of course, we're talking about Hell Pizza, the most awesome pizza chain ever. Here, in no particular order, are all the reasons we love Hell.

1. All of Hell's pizzas have clever names like Greed, Sloth, and Lust.

2. Hell's website has little devils running around with pitchforks. You can pick them up by clicking on them, then drag them up to the top of the page and drop them back down again. Ordering pizza online has never been so much fun: try it!

3. The kids who work at hell wear black and have pierced faces. It's what you imagine real hell would look like.

4. This billboard we saw when we visited in 2006:

5. The pizza tastes really good.

6. If there are any leftovers, which is rare unless you have a fetus taking up the space where your stomach should be, you can keep it in Hell's very cleverly designed to-go box. Here is my left over Purgatory pizza in the pizza box. I've started to detach around the perforated edges:
And when all folded up:

A pizza coffin! Love it.

7. We like buying stuff from people who are funny and clever.

For the 'only in America' file

Someone at work brought this story to my attention this week: From New Zealand's news website, Stuff:

Buy Hummer, get free shotgun

By MATT CAMPBELL - SMH

An American Hummer dealership is sending the Hummer off with a bang, giving away a free shotgun with every new car.

An American Hummer dealership will give away a Browning Citori White Lightning shotgun, worth $2,000, with every new Hummer they sell.

Lynch Hummer in Chesterfield, Missouri is one of the highest selling Hummer dealerships in America, and last year they decided to add guns to their showroom.

With the recent ‘wind-down’ announcement from GM (the makers of Hummer) the dealership’s owner, Jim Lynch, says that he wants his Hummers to go out with a bang.

"There is now real reason to believe that the current inventory on hand at dealers may be the last of the new Hummers, we wanted to send them off with something memorable," he says.

"Browning and Hummer are prestigious brands and American Icons - bringing them together is a natural fit.

"The guns have been a huge hit with our Hummer customers and now we are taking the 'Guns and Hummers' concept one step further," says Lynch.

Not everyone who ends up behind the wheel of a Hummer will also get their finger on a Browning trigger, though - buyers will be bound by the same legal requirements as any gun purchaser before they get their gun.

The free guns are only available while stocks last, and a gun rack isn’t included in the purchase price.

It's no wonder New Zealanders think Americans are gun-crazed maniacs!

Bump update

We have rounded a bend and are now in the final stretch - 31 weeks down, 9 to go. At my last midwife visit, she said the boy's head was 1/5 into my pelvis already. He's making his way for the exit!

We had a small meltdown at 30 weeks when we realised how much we still have to do to prepare for the boy's arrival. So we made a list (we're list people). Now we have a long list to look at and freak out about. Gareth suggested we make a smaller list from the list. The smaller list would include things we need to buy, separate from the list of things we need to do. This might make both lists seem more manageable. We could probably spend the next 9 weeks discussing and organising the list(s).

Let's focus on what we have done. The boy's room is painted a nice shade of green now. The hideous light fixture the previous owners left in the room has been replaced with one we like much better. The boy has a cot (crib) and it's fully assembled. He also has a toy box, which maybe was not essential at this stage, but the place selling the cots had nice toy boxes, and we got a deal by buying them together... We have lots of clothes for the boy to wear, thanks to hand-me-downs and the packages of adorable tiny things arriving weekly from my mom in America.

We've bought a buggy (stroller), but we don't have it yet. This is New Zealand, and sometimes you have to wait for stuff. Small economy and all. We wanted the green and black version of the Urban Jungle by Mountain Buggy, but it wasn't in stock, so we ordered one and we now wait for it. It should be arriving any day now. We also ordered the 'carry cot' connection, which will double as a bassinet in the early days.

I break into a cold sweat whenever I think about car seats, so we haven't got one of those yet. But need to do it. Need to do it soon.

We're still planning to do a home birth, so there's lots of extra preparation we need to do for that. Our midwife gave us a list (another list!) of supplies we should have on hand for the birth, which is a little daunting. Towels, wash clothes, hot water bottles, buckets, a container for the placenta... oh yes. We're also going to rent a birthing pool and really should start looking into that very soon. And Gareth has been gathering supplies to make a 'birthing mat' for me to labour/sweat/bleed on. That's true love.

Soon we start our antenatal classes with Parents Centre. These are free. They're 2-hour classes once a week for 8 weeks. The last one is the day before our due date, so if the boy comes early, we might miss out on the last class or two. We're really hoping they front-load the important information...

Avalanche peak

Yesterday Gareth took part in the Avalanche Peak Adventure Race - a 22km running race up to the top of Avalanche Peak in Arthur's Pass national park and back down again, along a long rocky river bed. I'm really glad he took the camera so that I could see what he saw up there - I never would have been able to get there without a helicopter. The climb is 1,178 metres high (3,864 feet), which wouldn't be so bad, except that you have to climb that in just 3km (1.86 miles). Gareth says, "Brutal!"

You don't need a helicopter or legs of steel though. We bring you the goods right here:

(Those are 2 keas - alpine parrots - hanging out in the mountain mist.)

In this last photo, you can just see the specks of runners coming down the river bed. This photo was taken from the finish line, which was cruelly located on top of a hill.

Trading on Trade Me

America has eBay and Craig's List; New Zealand has Trade Me. We sold a few things on Craig's List before moving, but always found the experience to be a little less than satisfactory. It seemed everyone who was interested in buying our stuff was really flaky. Maybe our stuff just attracted flaky people.

We're having much better success with Trade Me. Trade Me is huge here - it seems everyone is a member and everyone is using it. You can find anything, even things that you might have thought were garbage. We actually bought an old rubbish bin (garbage can) on Trade Me for $1 shortly after we arrived to use as a compost barrel. That means someone took the time to take a photo of their old rubbish bin, go online, post a description of it along with the photo, let an auction take place, and then arrange for the winner of the auction (me) to come to the house and pick up the rubbish bin. All that for $1. Well, less than a dollar actually, since Trade Me takes a small cut of the proceeds.

I'm not sure why people bother, but they do. It might have something to do with the reduce/reuse/recycle mentality that seems to prevail here. Nothing is trash - everything can be re-purposed.

If we were in America, we probably would have just thrown away the horrible curtains that were hanging in our bedroom when we moved in. But we're in New Zealand now, and so we know that someone, somewhere can make good use of them. So we listed them on Trade Me with this photo:

We had 2 sets of them - the one shown in the photo and a matching set hanging over the sliding glass door that connects our bedroom to the patio. We listed the whole lot together for a reserve price of $1. We sat back and waited for the bids to pour in, wondering who would want these curtains.

We received 7 questions from interested parties. In the end, only 2 people bid on them, but there was a mini-bidding war between them that went back and forth 20 times. We ended up getting $35 for them. The winner will be coming round today to retrieve her new curtains. Coming all the way from Timaru even. We get 35 bucks, the lady from Timaru gets a great deal on hideous curtains. Everyone's happy!

We've also been able to sell a bread box ($8.50), a set of vertical blinds ($47), and some net curtains ($2 - we left the curtains outside, he left a $2 coin on our door step).

You really can find anything on Trade Me. Right now there's a guy selling a giant inflatable cow.

In case you're interested, here's a link. But be quick, auction closes in less than 6 hours. The current bid is $1,503. !! Payment by bank deposit only, says the seller. That means if you win the auction, he'll give you his bank account number and you can have your bank directly transfer money into his bank. Often you can do it online. A lot of people here transfer money this way - another thing that's new to us but that we've taken to pretty quickly.

Yesterday I drove to the other side of town to retrieve our new dining room light from a Trade Me seller ($26). Gareth installed it yesterday and it looks great. The old light is listed on Trade Me right now, waiting for its new home.

Veggie patch: the beginning

When we first decided to put an offer in on this house, one of the biggest selling points was all the room in back for us to grow vegetables. A lot of the space is taken up with bushes and flowering things right now, but there's room to add some veggies. And we're not opposed to getting rid of some of the less useful vegetation. Although I'm liking the rose bushes. They can stay.

Over the weekend, Gareth cleared an area near the back fence that just had a few plants growing in it. He added some compost and raked it in with the existing dirt. We went to the garden centre (thanks for the gift card mom!) and bought ourselves some seedlings. Although it's late summer, there are still some veggies that we can plant. We've gone with lettuce, broccoli, spinach, chard, and kale.

Behind our veggie plot, you can see the potting shed. It comes complete with running water. Gareth plans to be doing lots of pottering around in the potting shed.

Look at our adorable little seedlings! Hopefully they will take nicely to their new home and flourish. Just like we are :)