To sleep or not to sleep, bark is the question...um..ya

 When you've been sleep deprived from night shift, and then the dam dog next door, decides to bark just as you're drifting off into a wonderful oblivion, after a hot bath, and snuggling under the duvet, what do you do???

Well naturally you shout out the window for the bluddy thing to SHUT UPPP! it works for a mere minute..but then it starts again. Shutting the window, even though the room is hot and stuffy, you put the fan on full blast, and shove earplugs into both ears. But now you're annoyed...and start tossing around in bed. AAhh a sleeping pill...noo, noo that'll just make you groggy, you know how it knocks you out for a good ten hours, not the answer. 

A vow to write a nasty complaint to the owners of the puppy, and making a mental note to buy a good dog whistle, I resign myself to nibble gently on a tiny portion of Temazepan, and then drift off finally to sleep.

Next days off. Bunnings and $180 on Afterpay later...

That will solve the fly infestation that's begun since the barking thing arrived next door.

Online order of a very interesting anti-barking sensor device...$129...expedited shipping.

2 days later..unwrapping the thing gleefully I imagine noiseless nights, and sleep-ins of utterly serene bliss, devoid of any barking at all. I scour though the 'everything' drawer for some type of string to attach this little box ( batteries purchased that very morning) onto our patio pole.

Then I turn it on to number 2, and wait. I deliberately make a bit of a scuffling sound near the fence to entice the dear dog to bark. Nothing. Ha!

I go inside to put the kettle on, and wallah, it barks! So I run outside to look at the sensor, my sweet expensive new friend, sure enough the red light is on as the dog is barking, which means..its emitting the painful noise to the dog. The dog stops barking! Oh joy!!!

For 3 solid days I felt I had overcome the dog and its bark. But then...

Suddenly it seemed the dog was barking again, it would bark further down along the front of the yard, so it had discovered that the noise only affected it when it was closer to our fence. 

The range of this sensor on 3 is apparently 15 metres. 

Sometimes in life..you've got to say WTF!!!!

Perhaps there will be another solution, I'm damned yet if I'm ready to try the sleeping pills in sausages thing..but I'm getting seriously close.

The 12 Dancing Princesses

Christmas is around the corner, and the girls are heading back to South Africa

Hannah and Alex's dad has decided at the last minute to offer the girls a trip back to South Africa. They fly out on Christmas Eve!!

Hannah has decided that she will be staying in South Africa for a few months this time, to get some 'life experience'...hopefully this will be good for her.

There really is nothing worse for a mother than when her nest starts to empty at rapid speed. And with Jessica already in Wellington, and Jonathan in Canada, it is no wonder I am now in some state of confused shock, at losing yet another little body about the place.

I cannot fathom not being able to see those hazel green eyes and mop of unruly short blonde hair , and her gentle smile every morning. And that tall lithe, tanned darling little body of hers, exercising to her iphone music in the lounge regularly, and pottering around her little vegetable garden, or cuddling her overly soft and lovable cat, Clover. It really won't be real.

But strong I must be, and together, and happy,for her.

Not much more to say right now.

Remembering when we first arrived in New Zealand

Days off are a blessing, and with Christmas around the corner, the mind never seems to rest. Lying in bed this morning, I picked up my phone and scrolled through the various facebook notifications, and a whatsapp message from an old friend popped up. He is imminently moving to NZ, and asked me how I was enjoying it. I lay in bed thinking about how it was when we first got here, our first experiences.
I came over with my two youngest children, who were 10 and 13, and my mother. The plan was, we would stay with my mothers cousin and his wife in Auckland for the first few weeks, until I finished my 6 week nursing programme, (known as a CAP), which enabled me to register as a nurse in New Zealand. I was lucky to have my mom with me, because I didn't know her cousin too well.
I bought a car, a Nissan stationwagon, within 2 days of being in the country, because my course started that next day, and I had to drive into Auckland city for it every day.
My mother 'home schooled' the girls for that period, while I completed the programme,
After 6 weeks, I can safely say, cabin fever was at an all time high, and we were ready to move on. But my mother had to go back to South Africa in a less than 2 weeks, and I still had to find a job!
Luckily we had another relative in NZ, down in New Plymouth, and we decided to go and see her before mom left. I would start looking for work there.
We had bought bicycles while at my uncles place, and other things, from the second hand shops that are so tempting to buy from, because they're so cheap! So my stationwagon was jam packed with our worldly possessions, and bicycles on a bike rack that I had purchased second hand for $70. I remember feeling the pinch with that bike rack, soo expensive! And it didn't have any grip padding on the holds, so the bikes moved so much. I had to use sanitary pads to make the grips firmer, that was all we had in the car at the time that was suitable :) It worked well.
We stopped off at Rotorua for a night, and stayed at a really cool backpackers, all sharing a room. It was groovy, and a new, fun experience. Our car was a real eyesore, stuff everywhere!
The drive to New Plymouth was an adventure, we asked directions from a truck driver, and he showed us towards the freeway known as The Forgotten Highway. Something we only realised too late.
This was really scenically beautiful, and so awesome in some parts that you felt you were driving in heaven maybe.
Yet, it felt like we were also in an Indiana Jones movie. The roads are a bit like a rollercoaster, one 'saddle' after another. Up and over the saddle, and down into the valley, and again... and again. Six times in all I think. Two lanes suddenly become one lane!
Signs appear suddenly, " FALLOUT AHEAD", what's that, we wondered. When all of a sudden half the road was missing, literally fallen down the cliff!
"WASHOUT AHEAD", huh?? OH SHUCKS, a huge pile of rocks in the road, quickly veer right!
After a few hours of this, your nerves are shot. And then you see a mountain in front of you, with a tiny little one-laned arched tunnel going through it. Pitch black inside. No way to tell what could be coming around the corner from the other side. I just stopped the car. I stopped the car, and told my mother to please drive. It really felt never ending. The journey, the unexpected obstructions.
"Just turn your headlights on and drive" said mom. And so I did, and we got through and out, and vowed never again!
We arrived at a town called Whangamomena. It had a hotel, and maybe a trading store. But really, it was from another era. Perhaps we had gone through a wormhole during the trip?
New Zealand is full of strange and quirky places, where you often have to pinch yourself to see if you are in fact awake. This was one of those times.
Curious, we stopped, and looked around. We had a cup of tea in the hotel, and soaked in this experience. How did we get here again? What an adventure!

7 hours or so after leaving Rotorua, we arrived at my Aunties house in New Plymouth. We literally fell out of the car.
We enjoyed her and her husbands kind hospitality for 5 weeks, because once I got a job offer, which was very soon after arriving, I then had to apply for a work visa, and this took 4 weeks! Mom had gone back to South Africa, content, knowing I had a job offer, and would be allowed to start work as soon as my work visa had kicked in.

Here we are.....in New Zealand

The Camelia's are already starting to bloom on the shrubs in our garden.
It was just a year ago that we moved into our first rental here in New Zealand, and the Camelias were in full bloom then.
We moved into the little yellow cottage by the sea in the dead of winter, just the two girls and I.
All our worldly belongings at the time were a fridge, a television and a brass bed, given to us by my Aunt, with whom we had stayed for the first few weeks here in New Plymouth.

The rest we purchased on Trademe, a couch for a dollar, a bed for ten, and so forth.
We also discovered the Hospice shops,and Salvation Army store, where we obtained cutlery and crockery, and linen, and other odds and ends we needed.

It has been a miracle journey really.
There's nothing quite like "just doing it", and it actually working out.
God has been ahead of our path at every turn, and it was evident in the way I got a job offer just 5 days before our visitors visas expired.
It was evident in the way my mother was able to come over and help me for the first two months with home schooling the two girls at my uncles, in Auckland, where we were first staying, whilst I completed the CAP programme to register as an IQN ( Internationally Qualified Nurse).
It was evident in the way we were able to leave South Africa when the girls father had tried his utmost to make it impossible, by dragging the courts into an unecessary and unwarranted battle to try and stop me from taking my children overseas.
But God was watching, and the truth prevailed.
Then we manage to obtain furniture, for free, which is really incredible.
Friends were put in our path to assist us, by God.
The home we are renting is spacious, and older, and in a very good area, with beautiful sea views. Were we lucky? No, God has been watching over us!
He surely does provide.
When we have been financially low, God provides just what we need, and I am absolutely humbled by His constant love.

Nelson Mandela dies

December the 6th was officially the day that Nelson Mandela was declared dead. There are speculations that he actually died in June...but we won't go there. He was a good man, who tried hard for our country, and it was eye openeing to watch the movie on his life, based on his book, "Long Walk to Freedom" We will miss you Madiba!!

Driving through Pinetown on this memorable day to purchase a light cover for the diningroom light, at the duplex that I am renting, as my 13 year old decided to bounce a rubber ball in the house and subsequently smashed it to smithereens. This was two weeks after we had moved in. Now we are moving out, a year and a half later, and need to fix everything we broke...nothing else was broken thankfully.

Sitting at the robot, I had my window just a finger open. My mother had given me a beautiful gold chain for my 40th birthday, and it had been on my neck just over a month.
A tap on the passenger window,..
Somebody is trying to tell me something, I am looking at him and trying to figure out what he is saying, when I see a black arm reach into the car, and grab at my collar, he grabs and pulls, and scratches, he reaches down seemingly to try and pull my bra off as well. What is happening?? I am screaming in shock, over and over again. I am hooting too. The cars around me start hooting too.
The boy's face is contorted and nasty. Nobody is around to help, and the robot finally turns green. My legs are like jelly as I find myself driving off, looking to see that I still have my bag and phone. I realise that I am still screaming, but I cannot stop. Then I realise that my chain is gone....

Driving lessons..for the young adult.

Jessica is finished matric, and she passed with flying colours. She has decided not to go to the UK for a gap year with her girlfriend Michele, instead they are both taking a gap year in SA.  Strange, but true.
The girls both got part time jobs in a Blockbusters dvd rental store, and I am having to happily taxi them around everywhere until one of them manages to get their driver's licence. Hopefully soon.
Driving lessons have to be one of THE MOST stressful things to go through, not only as the pupil..but as the instructor. They should really get paid danger pay as well.
When my 18 year old asks for a lesson, I squirm inside, but never show it, no...one has to appear calm and in control of these sort of things. The 'pupil' must never know that you are actually terrified to get into the car with them in case they may write either the car, or both you and her, off.That thought must never enter the head of the pupil.
So...all smiles, and a confident, " Yes sure love, when would you like to go?"
Of course the answer is, " now?"
To which the anxious knot in one's stomache seems to twist a little tighter.
Generally a tranquillizer is required, but should you nothave one of these, then a stiff glass of something AFTER the lesson is more than adequate. So by the time you've gotten out the driveway ( you drove out the driveway), and swopped seats, your young adult is rearing to go. It takes a few minutes to get the hang of clutch control..before you're off with a hearty jolt. The trip around the block is going relatively smoothly, and you start wondering why you were so tense. The ride is quite smooth, and even the gear changes are going well. There's a stop street ahead, so you gently warn your young adult to slow down. The car seems to still be going at a good speed, so you shout, " SLOW DOWN! BRAKES!!!"CLUTCH AND BRAKES!!" The young adult looks panicked, and quickly does as she is told, but the car stalls, and cuts out....on a hill!
" HANDBRAKE UP!! .....
Very grateful for driving instructors, oh VERY!