1 July, 2000

American Independence Day Weekend - apparently - well yes, a date the entire world is aware of.. the fourth of july. My favourite Disney movie was Pollyanna, so I know all about the fourth of July (gradually adding capitals into the mix) corn on the cob and watermelon and little fluttering flags and ka-booming fireworks and singing the National Anthem and winning dolls and falling out of trees and never being able to walk again and the town rallying 'round to show how much they love you and going by train to a surgeon who can help. Yep.. I know allll about the 4th of July celebrations, thanks to that wonderful contraption, the television.

We have Waitangi Day on February 6th. It's to celebrate (I use that term loosely) the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. It was an agreement between the British and the Maori to end the conflict over land and ownership etc. A Treaty which is still being contested today, because the Maori claim it was unfair and they didn't or hadn't understood what they were giving up at the time. I really don't know a lot about it, it seems to be simple and complicated. Over the years, different tribes have been paid out in compensation, millions upon millions of dollars. Now I read that they want compensation for the use of the air and the airwaves, and I just, I don't understand it. I'm just mentioning it because I am just mentioning it. I haven't enough information to have any sort of opinion. As I am told, it is complicated.

I slept and dreamed restless dreams last night. After sleeping all afternoon I watched tv and kept an eyeball on the computer. Nothing strenuous there. Then back to bed to sleep again. Restlessly waking up through the night seeing it was still dark and drifting back to dreams. My throat is a lot better, I can still feel it but it's not so sore. The pain in my eye is still there. My eye has a headache when it's open. My muscles ache, my neck, my back. I feel better than I did yesterday, which is just as well, because I have a lot to do this weekend.

3 July, 2000

It's over. YAH! The Bartley-Smith Ballet Academy's Production for 2000 is over. My bones hurt my toe is sore (dropped a prop *doh*) but now I have my life back. I have been superstressed through this entire thing. Three weeks isn't enough to design and make sets when you only have after work or weekends to make them. It's like this every year I should be used to it.

(grr's at the printer)

I swear, besides word processing packages, using a printer is the hardest thing I have to do. This printer.. no, EVERY printer is so temperamental. I can never get a simple eight page document to print without having some kind of problem. My printer at home is a pain too. It was cheap, it is bottom of the scale printerwise (Epson 300) but really, 12 mins per sheet of type? and it hasn't got a paper catching tray, so if I need to print say, 24 pages of something, I have to set it running and then go to work. I come home to flutters of pages across the carpet - and if I don't make it add page numbers I am stuffed as far as sorting say, 30 pages of code into some sort of sense.

Rachelle is laughing at me. The printer has printed .. Oh i cant even describe what the stupid thing has done.

gggrrrrr

9 July, 2000

I was going to write something. Was in the mood or so I thought. Maybe it was the rhubarb, or the cream, but something's mellowed my brain into that soft spongey stuff of non-thought. You know when you are really really tired from great and satisfying exersion, and after showering and drying, powdering warm feet falling into bed sinking in the softness? that's how my brain feels. I am not sure I can claim it's been exerted of late to any real extent [thinks] i suppose the end of the week was a wee bit stressful and required some by-the-seat-of-your-pants decision making. I suppose.

My weekend has been very quiet. Being at home, cleaning [with my new colour co-ordinated cleaning equipment] sorting papers that have been loose for months, buying ink for the printer and a mouse pad and a spare mouse [USB for a change] and generally mooching around.

Ran into Simon and Crow at the petrol station [funnily enough at Dick Smith's today too - are they stalking me? they asked me the same question] they had just come out of Mission Impossible 2. I said I wanted to see it, so they said lets go.. and we did. Tom Cruise has a lot of hair.

Nearly bought a book today. Carried it around the bookstore for ages before decided I didn't really need it. It was a survival handbook.. how to survive a snake bite, how to survive when your parachute doesn't ope, how to save yourself from quicksand. Yeh, I know, great book. I actually found it funny. How to get a crocodile to release it's grip (on you?) or a shark? information you may need once in your lifetime.

Maybe I'll go back and get that book tomorrow. Hope I don't need to make fire without matches before then.

10 July, 2000

I knew there would be a time when I would get to climb the stacks of the Power Station. I had been told of the difficulty in getting permission to go up the stack, of the forms to be filled in and the day to be organised, but in the end, all it was a simple "Michelle should go up and take some piccies". Very casual. The door at the bottom of the stack for Boilers 1 and 2 was small, I had to stoop to enter, the inside quite dark by the time the door locked behind me.

There was a torch but the steps were difficult to see. The lift was mesh and motor. Small and cramped. Slow and steady. 0.5 metres per second, 500 feet. Up. Up in the dark.

The last few steps to the roof of the stack was stairs. The door opened to brilliant sunshine, because the day was perfect fine wintered. The view breathtaking. The safety wall a little high for short woman, but I just held the camera out over the edge.

You can see the other stack rising from the back of the precipitators in this picture.

The top of the other stack, and the Waikato River winding it's way North.

I climbed to the top of the stacks at Kapuni Treatment Plant too, years ago. They weren't nearly as high at 123 ft but being so much smaller in diameter they moved, swayed, the platform at the top so narrow, it frightened me. The top of the Huntly stacks was comfortable and secure.

Failed absailing though. Crumpled and chickened out my arse hanging out harnessed in mid air. I regret the instructors didn't offer more confidence before hanging young girls out over a cliff because I would love to have the experience. Like I love the experience of white water rafting. I've done that and like it a lot. Skiing, well.. I am really terrible.. i am really really good at getting up, but that's because I am really really good at falling down. I remember having to walk off a mountain carrying my skiis because I couldn't ski. Two and a half hours with tears frozen on my face from exhaustion and frustration. Of course, being the sensible type these days I would have lessons but in those days I just followed skiers and failed spectacularly [coming off the chair lift and knocking four skiers off their pegs]

And I remember the time I was lost in the bush with girls. Not for long, just long enough to become terrified. Then to start thinking crystal clearly through the screaming hysterics of some of the others.

13 July, 2000

I was telling Rachelle about Kristy and Mark's wedding, proving the point that the Lawlor's can do lots on little. Mostly because we have to, and some of because we are a flippin' talented bunch.

Overlapping talents too. Not just one skill per person. Now lets see. We'll start with the chefs. My brother and my cousin. Wayne and Christopher. Slaving away in the kitchen turning broad beans and french bread into heavenly taste budding experiences. They are both very very good, though I don't think Wayne particularly likes to spend his holidays in the kitchen, he grumbles a bit but he does it. Kristy wanted a perfiterol (spelt the way i say it, but i don't know how to spell it but feel free to email me and give me the correct spelling) cake for her wedding. I think she imagined a towering delicate fragile delight to oo and ah over. Wayne wasn't sure about making one, although he had made them before, he knew they were tricky or time consuming or something (I wasn't really listening) but Aunty Pat suggested buying the pastry casings (at least I think she did, I wasnt really listening) and they could fill them [the casings] with custard and .. whatever else one fills the casings with.. the next day. Good Plan Stan, the day of the wedding and the boys were constructing the wedding cake.

It was less a 'delicate tower' and more a 'substantial apartment block'. But no doubt it was fabulous.. took two people to lift it but fabulous completely fabulous.. drizzled in chocolate and toffee. (apart from the fudge this ended up being the only food i had all day.. but thats later in the story). They slaved and slaved in the kitchen. Everyone in my family is a good cook. Well, my Grandfather and my Aunt, her husband and her brother, his wife and just everyone, all tiered all to certain degrees, good cooks, can contribute. And, although I can cook, I am very low on the talent rung. My job is to a) stay out of the kitchen and b) do as I am told. So, when my brother wants cream, I jump into my car and zoom into town (we live in the country - the Farm is in the country) and I buy cream and I come back and give it to him and he says he wants MORE cream I go and get more cream. It's how I help. So I do this. And everyone is on schedule (this story isn't about how the wedding was a disaster so all you ambulance chasers can go chase ambulances) and everything was right as rain and the day was fine and the garden was beautiful, and the film was fresh (did I mention I was to be the photographer?) and all was good.

So that's my talented cousin and brother. Now, my talented Aunt. Well, one of them. I have two extraordinary talented Aunts, I will tell you about Aunty Margaret first. She is very organised. She makes lists and she can delegate in a very nice fashion ie: firm and loving. She keeps her head about her when the rest of us are chooks in a yard. She can whip up a wedding cake/birthday cake/whatever at a moments notice and it looks like a professional has made it (my sister can do this too - see, overlapping talents). Aunty Margaret can arrange flowers. In the church she does a wonderful job (my sister and my Aunty Pat and Megan can do this too). My aunty Margaret can sing. Like, properly, like, an angel (she's alone on this, seven children and she's the only one that can hit a note).

My other Aunt, Pat (I used to call her Aunty Patty now I just call her Pat - Kristy's mother and my god mother). She can do everything. Cook, paint, flowers, gardens (her garden is just fantastic) oh, just, everything, she works really hard and hardly ever complains (i just moan all the time if you havent figured that out yet.) She was the Mother of the Bride. Quite nervous about hosting such an affair and of her eldest daughter marrying. You know how it must be.

Okay so who else. OH.. their little brother, my Uncle, Brian (if you have seen my album you know that he's the young boy in the rock pool) has the gift of great oratory. He is comfortable and damn good at speaking in public. He has a talent for tone and for timing. He can ad lib with ease and can have us laughing for joy and crying for sadness all at the same time, as demonstrated at my Nana's funeral. He speaks from the heart I think I have decided, that's one of the reasons he is so very good at it.

Okay, so .. we have a cake, we have food, we have a bride and groom, maid of honor and best man. Mother of the Bride and a photographer, a Master of Ceremonies. We need transport. Mrs Master-of-Ceremonies, or Jen as we call her for short, Brian's wife, drives the local school bus. Of everyone, she is the smallest of the small, a petite woman with a big red bus. Festooned (is that a word?) with bows and balloons to transport guests to the church for the vows. (the guests mostly stayed at the Farm, we hired caravans so people could stay. The Caravan Park on the Farm).

The wedding itself was held in a country church. One of those beautiful white churches with a red roof and an old church bell my cousin Ryan rang as the Happy Couple left as man and wife. It was a beautiful ceremony, touching and short. My Aunty Marg sang and made me cry it was so beautiful. I got some wonderful shots in the church.

The reception was to be held back at the Farm, in the garden. We had hired white tables and chairs and they were dotted around the green lawn. Clustered. The marquee would hold the food. There was fudge and rum balls on every table. A small tent was the bar, be-kegged and beered and wined and ready. My stepfather Chad was most helpful serving to those ferrying beverages to and fro. My mother red in one hand white in the other keeping people's drinks topped was chirpy and talkative flitting about. I was a maniac taking afterwedding photographs. By the time I had finished, it was dark.

Nick, Megan's love, had realised the need for light earlier in the day. There had been fairy lights hung in the trees but we needed more. So armed with wire and pliers and endless cans of beer, Nick fashioned candle holder thingies. I can't do them justice with describing them, but they were beautiful. Twisted and curled and candled. Some had old tins to hold smaller candles, with pinprick holes in the sides to twinkle light through. Once the first few drops of molten wax had fallen on a couple of guests and adjustments were made, they were perfect, and beautiful.. He's an import.. but talented enough that we've adopted him.

This is just a tiny splattering of how talented my extended family is. I didn't even mention Megan making her own Maid's dress and doing people's hair or the way she made the tents beautiful by twisting ivy over their poles and roofs. I didn't mention my sister making lots of beautiful food and designer nibbles. Or the way my young cousin Frances managed to charm everyone and help guide older relatives home in the dark whilst completely under the influence of too much wine. Or how my cousin Ryan has the gift of the written word but that has nothing to do with the wedding. Mostly because I have completely lost the thread of this story, but I want to leave you with this:

I come from an exceptionally talented, funny, wonderful family. We may never have much, but we have what we need.

19 July, 2000

I have a head ache in my eyeball.

Nothing serious, just weird.

I've worked 12 hours today. Renaissance phoned to say my CD Writer had arrived in stock so I high-tailed it over there to get my muchawaitedbaby, but alas alack, when I got back I found the invoice lied and the CD-R's were not in the box so it has to go back. That's okay, I am patient. I'm buying a box and motherboard, PIII 500mgz chip and a 32mb graphics card off my boss. Gonna rape and pillage my 233 and have a nice little beastie on my hands. I'll put the writer into that, and seeing as I can't buy the box from the boss until he purchases new hardware for my NEW (work new) computer, I shall just wait. He's hiring another staff member who will get my computer and I will get a more powerful one with a better video capture card so I don't have to kick him off his everytime I need to capture video, plus, we just need more stuff *nods*

Things are ticking along hunkydoryish for the most part. Work is okay-ish. Communication between staff members leaves a lot to be desired but I get information eventually.

My eyes hurt too. I wonder if it's sinus kinda deal going on in my face. I might just be tired, but no, I feel reasonably perky considering the long day.

OH.. I had my hair cut yesterday.. quite short again. Coloured to soften the harder blonde I had last time. I am really too old to be blonde, well.. light blonde. This is more my dark blonde with warm bits and irish creamy bits. Sound nice? It's nice. I couldn't style my hair out of a wet paper bag but last night, coming home from the hairdressers, I looked fabulous. She said I could just wake up and smoosh it down and it'd be fine today but on waking I found it looked more like a firecracker had gone off in my hair. So I washed it and it's back to it's froofy self.

I finally got around to buying a new toothbrush and toothpaste and mouth rinse for work. I really hate not being able to brush my teeth during the day. I already replaced the cake soap with pump antibacterial stuff with Vit.E for moisturising. I am particular about washing my hands. I hate picking up dirty soap. It's okay at home because its my soap and my germies, but at work, well. I just don't like the colour of the soap either. So to make a long boring story long and boring. Now I can clean my hands and brush my teeth and I feel better for that.

You know I buy Ferrari cars? Little ones. Hot Wheels and MatchBox and Burago. I was worrying in the weekend because, well, you guys must know me by know well enough to know that while I buy these little cars I would never open the packet and play with them (I was considering buying one of those mats with the road patterned in the carpet.. but then I would need a train set so I didnt get the mat). Where was I? oh yeh.. so I was beginning to think that maybe I was being silly and I should rip open all the boxes and take the cars out and to hell with the scratches *gulps - don't believe i just said that*. Simon assured me I was mad, and that they looked cool in their boxes. Either he understands me well enough or we are too much alike. Either way, I felt less alone and stroked the boxes containing my scaled Ferraris.

22 July, 2000

I bought a desk. It's a big, rimu desk. Maybe an accountant or a manager owned it once years and years ago. It has ink stains in the drawer. I used to have a drawing board laid flat for my computer desk. That was okay so long as I didnt want to open a book or write anything down etc, but inevitably, a person does want to open a book or type from another document, and I need the room. So I bought this desk from the second hand store.

It's a bit nippy, my knees tell me. I'm going to go to bed shortly and read a bit before going to sleep. I'm quite sleepy, to tell you the truth. That milo and bag of vanilla marshmellows hasn't helped to perk me up at all. Don't tell me refined sugars are losing their ability to ressurrect my personality *gasps* Oh Lord, then what will I do?

Nothing I planned to do today I did. Except take possession of my new desk, and wash my clothes - I didnt dry them though so technically you can't say I did my laundry, which is what I was supposed to do - my laundry. The Warrent of Fitness I need to drive my car on the road I still don't have. I am so vague lately. Got that whole airy-fairy thing going on.

Last night I dreamed I was pregnant. Not big and round and hard stomached pregnant, but tiny peanut-just-conceived pregnant. I can't remember how or who, I do remember thinking it wasn't the best of timing but I was happy to have this happen - I must like the father or... maybe it's a dream about the birth of a new idea? nothing to do with babies at all, which would explain how a sexually inactive person could become pregnant. hmm. So, yes, anyway, in my dream, I was knitting, and I was digging out old unfinished cross-stitching projects telling everyone I was "nesting". The two clear things I remember about the dream were the kernal-like knowledge that I was pregnant and Mags saying - on my nesting comment - "oh for goodness sakes, you've only been pregnant two minutes".

24 July, 2000

Foodtown makes great muffins. I especially like the rhubarb crumble and the black berry. They have a bit of a processed taste, like those instant cakes you buy in boxes, but that's okay. They are moist and sweet. I can make muffins, mine are nice but heavier than these. David loves my spicey apple muffins. I love Foodtown muffins.

26 July, 2000

Concorde crashed shortly after takeoff in France today. It seems to have disturbed me. After hearing it over the phone on Sunday. Seems in the week before this morning's crash I had heard or read about the craft two or three times. It was on my mind. My brow keeps furrowing. Those poor people.

I don't quite know what to do. I have that restless-not-that-happy thing going on. It's work. Nothing serious, not real life just work stuff you know? No, no. I know. I have some goals I need to achieve before I move on. I am not very good at sticking to something that's work. By that, I mean, pure slog. No Joy. I love working hard, find it really satisfying IF i have joy in what I am doing. It's been sucked from my very marrow. Drained from my bones. I need to just put my head down and do it until the New Year. To prove to myself I can do the things I know I can do. Need the tangible evidence that will help my confidence in walking into another play and doing this all again. What I can't understand is, why i have less confidence 6 months into this job than I did after graduation. Bit rambly.

Not really writing sense so I will stop. Buck up mish. The 10th isn't THAT far away. right?