For all you UK followers, in the land of central heating. Here is what keeps us warm in the Winter – a heat pump. This blows out warm air and the living room is warmed. Upstairs it is baltic and we just pray for sunshine to heat the bedrooms. All very sophisticated.
I am so over them.
Gareth and I have had to work hard over the last ten years of marriage (that’s right, coming up to a decade of The Cowlzies) to find harmony when it comes to spending money. We come with very different ideas so the work is meeting in the middle or closer to one of our ends, but we meet and that’s worth working at.
Most of the time we just have to make decisions about one purchase and it’s not for a huge amount of money, so agreement is found argument free-ish. However, since coming to New Zealand it’s all about the big stuff; renting a house, buying a house, buying a car and now, how to spend the set amount of money we have left after the purchase of the house to make it liveable. The list looks like this:
There were other things on the list but they’ve been dumped…for now. Already we are way over the budget and then we realised we had to pay for boring stuff like:
Now it comes down to priorities and, for me, the lowering of expectations. We are currently on the long and arduous search for sofas that are practical, fit the room, attractive, comfortable and on budget…prayers for a miracle gratefully received. Hey if God can create Willamina and Jackson Cowles then he’s got sofas somewhere for us.
No matter how things come and what comes first I am excited, we nearly have a home and it’s lovely and I can’t wait to be the hostess.
Minnie and I had a delightful 10 minutes (seriously couldn’t do any longer with no wellies and no gloves) making a snowman – her first ever.
The snow is perfect, really sticky. So sticky in fact that once we had got in, cleaned up and got into dry clothes I realised my wedding ring must be somewhere in the snowman!
Don’t worry any of you who know I wear my great Grandma’s engagement ring, that is currently being valued at a jewelers for our new contents insurance, phew. However this means until the snow melts and I can get out there to dissect the snowman I have nothing on my ring finger – very disconcerting!
We’re trapped in the house for the afternoon now – have no idea how I’m going to keep us all sane until dinner time – please Jackson have a REALLY long lunchtime nap…
…oh no my mistake it’s the 6th June!
I’m all confused…
So I have never been that into the Royal family, in fact a few years ago I would have argued about getting rid of them (probably more to wind up my Grandad than actual conviction). In more recent years I have conceded that they make a lot of money for us, so they are worth keeping purely on a financial basis. How nice for them, they are financially viable!
Then in the last 12 months I have fallen in love with Wills and Harry and their lovely ladies (Harry having many more than Wills) and have felt really quite positive about our Royal future.
Now, having lived in a Commonwealth country for just over two months, I am positively brimming with pride for our Windsor contingency.
Twice over the Bank Holiday weekend (yes that’s right they have a Bank Holiday for the Queens’ birthday – every year!!) I have commented on how much more enthusiastic Kiwis are about our Queen than we Brits, “We don’t have a bank holiday every year for her birthday and she’s our Queen”. Both times I have had a very rapid response, “She’s our Queen too!” I am literally an idiot. To think, I was hoping to do a History degree, I so should have!
Our Elizabeth is a legend and it’s not until you move to a country where she doesn’t reside but is still on their money that you realise just how important she is and what a privilege it is to be a country with a decent monarchy. OK they are all a bit scandalous, but since when did our society expect good behaviour from people?! They do amazing work and they inspire others to do amazing things also.
Come on Elizabeth you can beat Victoria’s record!
Since having children and finding that I get short slots of time in the day and night where I can’t leave the house and I am really tired, I have formed a habit of watching a lot of TV. I can get through a box set in a fortnight. I have always justified it by the fact that I am really tired and we’ve been living in other people’s houses with about a tenth of our belongings so doing exercise, picking up a hobby or just being generally more productive was impossible. Plus some days I am so stressed and emotionally drained from a day with two littlies that I literally can’t hold a conversation let alone do something valuable. In short I just want to switch off.
The problem is that my family could really do with me being a little more “engaged” again. We move into our new house in four weeks time and we’ll get all our things then so proper life can begin. I need to be ready.
So I am fasting TV this week. I imagine there will be a few more blogs, lists drawn up, budgets created and purchases made for the new house. More importantly Minnie and I will draw together, Gareth and I will have complete conversations and I might start to feel more excited about the future.
That’s not to say the episode of Lewis coming online at the end of the week isn’t totally planned for viewing on the weekend!
As many friends and family will know, due to a slow moving bowel in my youngest, I am unusually interested in the contents of his nappy.
I am delighted when a poo comes out of its own accord. I love a good soft easy one.
Tonight’s nappy looked like it might have smarted on the way out.
There were five puzzle pieces and two bites of cheese on toast. Thankfully these had only travelled down the back of his vest and into his nappy. The crazy thing is, they had been down there for about an hour and he’d sat in a car seat with them making an impression on his bum and lower back – no complaints.
As I was putting him to bed tonight he was trying to shove a card down his back so I am looking forward to nappy checking being far more interesting in the next few weeks.
We watched a film last night, “Last Chance Harvey” – melancholy but very watchable thanks to the wonderful Emma Thompson and intriguing Dustin Hoffman. I’m not going to explain the film’s story, other than it’s about two lonely people meeting and creating hope and happiness in each other.
Towards the end of the story, in the bit where it looks the worst just before the happy ending, Emma Thompson’s character explains why she is scared of embarking on a relationship with the man, “..because I am comfortable with disappointment”. A fairly sad statement no.
I’ve been thinking about it ever since and it does resonate with me. I have had my fair share of disappointment during my life. I say fair share and I mean it, not too much, not too little, just enough to say that I am like most people. I do think it’s not the disappointments themselves that mould us, but rather how we deal with them. And in that I am still learning…and failing.
Anyways the question here is, am I comfortable with disappointment? In many ways I think I am. For instance if something is not disappointing, i.e. surprisingly successful or fortunate for me, I find it quite uncomfortable. I worry that it’s going to be taken away or I don’t deserve it. Conversely I have this nasty habit of often talking down the good things in my life or overly focusing on the not so good stuff, because I’m more comfortable being the underdog.
One thing I’ve realised is that infertility and doing something like IVF does stay with you. I probably thought that because I was fortunate to have two children through IVF that the pain of facing a possible future without children would disappear. It doesn’t, it’s lodged in there. So is the anger of not being able to get pregnant the natural way. I don’t ever have to inject myself, worry about egg harvesting or embryo implantation ever again, but knowing that the physical union of me and my husband could never result in a son or a daughter is something I mourn. Perhaps when I am through child rearing age it will no longer bother me.
When faced with disappointment the decision has to be, I shall not wallow and I will not be comfortable with this. Because if I did I would miss out on the unexpected successes and the surprising joy that comes when you hope for the best, have faith and go for it. I wouldn’t want anything less for my children and who is teaching them how to live?
Spoiler alert: the woman in the film went for it.
Minnie’s best friend in New Zealand is without a doubt Ethan, who is most certainly a good choice for a best friend – he’s gorgeous and a very good influence on my little madam. On top of that he lives near the beach so this Sunday we went for a walk on the sand.
What this photo does not show you is about two minutes after this was taken me and the littlies got soaked by a rogue wave unexpectedly chasing us away. I took it the worst – I really find beaches too messy for my OCD tendencies and am not a fan of sand in my toes.
But I will learn to love the beach because I know my children will and this is part of our life here in Christchurch. I am posting this photo to remind me of the good times before the damp walk back to dry land.
I thought it was a good time to do one of these lists. I will probably revise in 6-12 months time. And this list will not be including my wonderful family and friends – they are a given in missing the homeland.
In no particular order, other than what springs up first when I think of home:
copywriting editing proofreading project management
food and other important things
(Texts from Expats who are Wives. Simple.)
the things not said 