cacking

my pants.  I'm about to leave for the auction.  This'll be anticlimactic!

a place to call my own, in the sun, etc

Back to ME ME ME and the house purchasing.  I instructed a Builder and a Lawyer today, which surely must be about as grown up a thing as it is possible to do outside major life events (babies, moving in with your partner etc).  One of my new professionals is inspecting the possible house, one is inspecting the papers.  It’s blowing my mind.  This time tomorrow, I could have bought a house (but not settled on the purchase. See? I know how it works now!).  Certainly this time tomorrow I’ll owe some people several hundred dollars for their professional services.  The last time I spent that much money on anything I sweated for weeks over the sheer EXTRAVAGANCE and now here I am, blithely throwing money around in the face of a seriously large mortgage. 

Of course, the odds that we’ll be successful at auction seem perishingly slim.  It’s very hard to gauge how much interest there is in the house.  I know at least one other prospective purchaser has had a building inspection; the agent seems to think that others have dragged their builders through.  Who knows?  They could have been massively turned off by its state of repair.  Sadly, I’ve fallen in love with the idea of it, even though:

• It has at least two layers of peeling wallpaper;
• There are visible signs of bora in some of the floorboards;
• The window on the third bedroom doesn't close, due to it, um, what's the technical term? Falling apart;
• There is SO. MUCH. GROSS. linoleum on the kitchen/bathroom/laundry floors;
• No insulation or heating as far as I'm aware;
• It's heinously expensive for a do-up; and
• If we do buy it, we can't really afford to do it up.  So yeah, there's that.

BUT I LOVES IT, I DO.  I look at the pictures and for the first time in my young (cough) life I am possessed with desire to landscape.  Peel wallpaper.  Paint.  INSTALL SHELVING.  I want to move my furniture in there straight away (Um, I own two beds and a set of drawers.  Not exactly a houseload.  We’ll be squatting on the floor in the living room if we’re successful, believe you me). 

This is not 20s-me.  She was scornful of this sort of behaviour.  (She also wanted a cat though, we share that in common at the least.) 

AND - if we’re unsuccessful at our first auction, we do know this other great little place in Freeman’s Bay….

If I wasn’t property-obsessed before, I certainly am now. 

super

There is a man at my apartment building.  He says hello most mornings, averting the pattering hose, opening the door and waiting for a chance to chat. His mouth is at the ready to resume a conversation already begun.   

Sometimes I see him at the rubbish bin, genially approving of my flipping of cardboard into the large woolsack meant for CARDBOARD ONLY.  He chortles when I tip the rest of the recycling into a giant pile of glass and tin. 

He floats around the complex, spindly legs whirring and propelling his large motor around from point A to point B and back again.  He is in charge.  I think he likes it; but I bet he wishes we had more time for talk. 

My smalltalk is very small.  Rain?  Norain?  Sometimes it fails altogether, though I can always muster a smileandnod for the man at my apartment building.  I wonder what he takes care of that I don’t know about.  Is he secretly watering my rubber plant?  It seems unlikely.  Its leaves are sooty with exhaust.  Does he keep an eye on that window I leave ajar so that fresh air wends its way into my apartment and infiltrates the bedsheets?  He might; none of the cats have ever managed to get in, as far as I’m aware. 

I wonder if he speaks to Oscar, Burmese Prince of All He Surveys in our building?  I talk to Oscar more than the man at my apartment building.  Somehow its easier; Oscar does not care for my attention.  I am drawn to that which is not given lightly.  I am a cliché. 

apologies

So, I feel a little bit like a prize asshole and I've been avoiding you.  On Waitangi Day, I saw a "Racist Waitangi Bingo Card" that had been snarkily produced on twitter featuring all sorts of awful soundbites regarding Waitangi - that I won't reproduce, other than to say one of them was "Anzac Day is the real national holiday anyway".  I felt about *this* big when I saw that. 

Like a prize asshole, I'll try to defend myself.  My point was that Anzac Day helped shape our national consciousness in a way that perhaps Waitangi has not.  I don't mean to suggest it is or should be our national holiday.  Our nationhood has been defined by Waitangi; Ti Tiriti is our turangawaewae, in many respects.  It's just it's awfully touchy. 

You know what? I'm sorry I said it.  I'm sorry for being offensive.  I've thought the better of that sentiment and am appropriately ashamed.

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So, as advertised, I had a rather good night on Tuesday.  Eh, I feel terrible and I can't muster up a chirpy recap so that'll do for the day. 

Happy weekend, all & sundry.  Promise I'll be better. 

waitangi

Six February is a public holiday in New Zealand; Waitangi Day.  It’s the closest thing we have to an Australia Day or an Independence Day-type-deal, but instead it’s the anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, wherein sovereignty over New Zealand was ceded to the Crown.  It has a terrible shadow hanging over it - the Treaty is not a document of celebration, it has become a symbol of subjugation and resentment. 

Never fear, I am too ill-educated and ashamed of my colonial roots (my turangawaewae; place to stand) to get into a lengthy exposition on Ti Tiriti.  What I’m leading up to is that many New Zealanders don’t use the day as a chance to celebrate nationhood.  Instead, it is treated as a free day, devoid of particular meaning (much like the Queen’s Birthday holiday).  We tend to celebrate being Kiwi or our roots more on Anzac Day, 25 April.  That is the anniversary of the deployment of Australian and New Zealand forces on the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign in WWI, which ended largely in disaster but shaped our national consciousness.  I guess it’s sort of an equivalent to Memorial Day in the States.  Waitangi Day is in summer; we hit the beach, we bbq in the backyard, we fix our gardens/decks/cars.   

The 6^th falls on a Wednesday this year.  Free day Wednesday = two Friday nights this week.  JUST ASKING FOR TROUBLE, BASICALLY.  I have friends from London in town, a boatload of work to avoid and some sunshine on the way.  A potent combo, you might say. 

Now that I think about it, it’s so odd that we’re a secular country that considers itself free and independent and yet we have public holidays for the Queen’s Bday (she’s still officially the head of state, I guess) and Easter (the baby Jeebus.  It’s not even a pagan/spring thing here – southern hemisphere autumn, ffs).  I think what we’re really about is a day off.  More public holidays, more of the time!

And that concludes the (half-assed and ill-expressed) Kiwi lesson today, boys and girls.  Day off = booze and loose behaviour, with a little greenthumb and DIY.  (You know I jest, right? - we New Zealanders are more diverse than that. Still, if the shoe fits...I'll wear it).   

places i have lived ii

To the serial work entitled ‘Places I Have Lived’, we add my current accommodation:

 

-       September 2012 to March 2013: The Two Bed Auckland Apartment in a Very Nice City Fringe Suburb with Excellent Brunch Next Door.  Where sadly, last night at 3am, there was a fire alarm in the middle of a downpour (NOT our fault this time, I hasten to add – but I did say to P “I wonder who left the prawns on the stove?”)  I managed to find time to put a bra on (?!) and to pick up an umbrella (saving the precious items in the event of a fire!) but also managed to open the umbrella into my eye in front of 90-odd other residents, huddling on the street.  When the alarm was finally declared false by the lovely fire service folks, I stumbled damply back to bed with a hand clutched piratically across my eye.  I’ve been EXTREMELY squinty today. 

 

We’re working on the next instalment at present.  Wow, looking to buy a property is a wonderfully awful experience.  If my life was a movie (and trust me, I think about my life being a movie/sitcom/reality show ALL THE TIME) it would have a horrendous tagline like:

 

‘Two people. One weekend. Eight open homes. Welcome to the Suburbs.’ 

 

There were god-knows how many pairs of jandals lined up at the door of every home we visited and just about every goddamn pair were brown/black/white havaianas -  we were all the same white-middle-class-upwardly-mobile-professional-types.  I didn’t have the grace to be ashamed; I just felt hot knives of resentment stabbing my innards.  Yup, I was classy enough to just want to beat all these people in the purchase-race and declare the good real estate MINE ALL MINE for the choosing.  Don’t worry, the hot knives of resentment have receded and have been replaced by the icy cold forks of shame and guilt.  Just be a better person, A.  Less competitive, hey?

 

I’ve become OBSESSED with the hunt.  It has taken over my brain, my conversation, my LIFE.  I expect it will also take over my blog.  Although, to be fair, I did find time to go to the basketball and get ridiculously fanged on beers this weekend so, you know, balance or whatever.  Go Breakers.   

shivery

Current bane of my existence: workplace air-conditioning.  It is twenty-something degrees outside, yet I’m sitting here in jeans (casual Friday!), top, blazer and full coverage shoes, shivering.  I’ve tried to get the building manager to turn it up but apparently the sensor in my office has a warped sense of humour and pushes it right back down again.  (Yes, privileged office professional first world woe.)

I don’t think I’m one of those too-cold girls.  I mean, last night I resented having to pull up the sheet to keep the mosquitoes off my tasty, prone carcass.  I adore an excuse to cuddle up under a rug on the couch but inevitably push it off, sticky, clammy and overheated.  So no, I don’t think the problem is mine (certainly its mine in that I am currently too cold; but not mine in that I am not the source). 

 

On re-reading that first paragraph, I had a vision of an equestrienne attired woman in the workplace.  Rest assured, you did read 'jeans' and not 'jodphurs', and there is no helmet topping my blazer combo.  Though, to be sure, there are small shoulder pads in the blazer...it's not an 80s throwback thing, I swears it -- more a Looking-Less-Round-Shouldered-Technique.  Us statuesque women (those over say 5'8 or 5'9) can pull off the blazer look, I promise.  Oh for fuckssakes, I probably can't pull it off but I don't care.  It's warm.

 

And speaking of office attire...I saw three colleagues this morning before the fourth pointed out I was wearing entirely different shoes.  A grey suede wedge on one foot, black leather pump on the other.  When I arrived in the office this morning, I kicked off my jandals and slipped my feet into shoes under the desk without looking.  HOPELESS.  I'm still not sure if any of the others actually noticed and just thought I was crazy, or whether they were still in need of caffeine and therefore incapable of picking up on detail. 

 

Wearing two different shoes feels a bit like that usual romcom/teen novel trope, doesn't it?  You know, the one where the otherwise smart, lovely and likeable heroine is clumsy and/or scatterbrained about everyday life.  Except let me just be clear: two shoes in two different colours, styles and heights?  That's just goddamned useless, that's what that is.  Trust me, it's not a  quirky-yet-endearing character flaw.  It's just obliviousness. 

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I’m generating a little heat snickering at this: my thing of the day for you.  Good God, Lemon!

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It's my mother's birthday today.  Happy birthday, Mumble dear.  Many happy returns.