Southside mum

I think I’m ready to join the workforce again. Well, part-time anyway. After six years at home with my kids I need something else to get my teeth into. My twin boys turn three in a few weeks so we will be entitled to 20 hours free childcare per week for each of them, which has helped me make my decision. A part-time job wouldn’t have been worth it if all my income were being spent on childcare.
I’ve thought about freelance journalism but decided it will be too hard. I’ve had some sporadic freelance work over the past five years but the source of that work has since dried up. I tried to apply for a grant recently to get some mental health articles published, part of which involved trying to get media outlets to show an interest in publishing the work. Most of them would only consider an article on spec, which would mean spending hours researching, interviewing and writing only for them to possibly turn around and say no thanks. I really don’t want to work for nothing, or next to nothing, which is what some media organisations are paying.
My ideal job would be about 20 hours per week, at a time that suits me and with the school holidays off. Not much to ask for is it? I am, therefore, looking for a job in a school. I used to work for the Education Gazette, which involved visiting lots of schools and it’s an environment I think I would enjoy working in. Mind you, every mum in the land returning to the workforce is probably looking for the same sort of job.
I’m not really looking forward to the job-hunting process, although I’m well accustomed to applications not being acknowledged and my CV being rejected.
I took the job at the Education Gazette in Wellington on return from my big OE in 2001. It wasn’t my dream job but after six weeks of hanging around at my parents’ house doing every cleaning job known to man to keep myself busy I was ready to work.
Once in Wellington I discovered a wealth of job opportunities in journalism and communications. I applied for so many jobs in the space of two years I lost count. I had interviews for at least five that I can remember but never quite made the cut.
I’m glad I already had a job – if I’d been unemployed I would have been devastated. I seriously questioned what was so wrong with me that no one wanted to hire me. It could have been something to do with the fact that I’d never stuck at one job for more than three years. My job history is quite extensive. I don’t consider that a negative thing – if I get bored I like to move on – and I think it’s more common than not these days.
I also thought that I didn’t make a good impression at job interviews. I always dressed smartly and thought I was reasonably confident but I struggled with some of the behavioural questions that started with ‘tell us about a time when….’.
When I did my communications paper at MIT we had to do a research assignment on how we might address a personal communication issue. I looked at how I might better prepare for a job interview. I learned a lot from that experience and will hopefully get to put it into action sometime soon. I’ll keep you posted!

I tried fish heads for the first time recently, including sucking out the eyes and the brain. It was okay, but not good enough for me to be bothered boiling them up and patiently picking them apart to eat. I was visiting with some good friends who, being traditional Maori, love their kai moana. I was also served up whitebait fritters, which are much more to my liking.
The reason I decided to try the fish heads, apart from having heard they were delicious, was that I was bragging about having eaten so many strange and unusual foods and thought, well, why not try this too.
My first venture into trying unusual food was at the Hokitika Wild Foods Festival in the mid 1990s. I had snail volauvents, possum kebabs, worm patties and gorse wine, but missed out on the huhu grubs as there was only a limited number available.
My husband and I went back this year for the festival’s 21st birthday. I got my freshly barbecued huhu grub (disappointing), muttonbird, and a cricket with satay sauce on French bread to boot.
We ate loads of whitebait fritters living in the South Island. Some people don’t like the eyes looking up at you from the plate, but they rock if you ask me!
Travelling around Europe I went for snails and frogs’ legs in Paris (like chicken), and pizza and gelato in Italy. Not unusual you might say, but they only put cheese and tomato on the pizza over there! I went for calamari (squid) and Ouzo in Greece (aniseed-flavoured liqueur), cheese fondue in Switzerland, lots of beer in Germany, apple strudel and schnapps in Austria, and frites (hot chips) with mayonnaise in Amsterdam. I also had a joint for breakfast one day. It certainly made my visit to the Van Gogh Museum an interesting one!
In Africa one of my first meals in Kenya was a leg of goat, which gave me the trots the next day. I also remember eating at a very swanky game lodge in Zimbabwe where I tried warthog, crocodile and various other wild animals. I also drank a lot of beer in Africa. I must have because there are beer labels stuck in my photo album from every country I went to!
Actually, alcohol features rather highly on the list of things to sample when in foreign countries. My husband took quite a liking to Raki in Turkey (very much like Ouzo) and on our three-day gulet (traditional Turkish sail boat) trip earned the nickname Dr Raki because he dispensed so much of it to everyone on board! Turkish food is great – they do wonderfully interesting things with vegetables.
In Spain we drank copious amounts of sangria (red wine with various fruit juices) and in Portugal we sampled a delicious array of ports. We passed on eating chicken heads but Andy tried a traditional dish of boiled bread with cod and coriander, complete with raw egg broken over the top – yuk!
I guess I’m up for most things but I doubt I’ll ever try kina (sea eggs) again. I tried one while collecting them with the same Maori friends mentioned above when I was about 16 years old. Some joker told me you ate the whole insides, but you are only supposed to eat the roe. I ate all the other crap too and it wasn’t pretty. Thanks bro!

I tried fish heads for the first time recently, including sucking out the eyes and the brain. It was okay, but not good enough for me to be bothered boiling them up and patiently picking them apart to eat. I was visiting with some good friends who, being traditional Maori, love their kai moana. I was also served up whitebait fritters, which are much more to my liking.
The reason I decided to try the fish heads, apart from having heard they were delicious, was that I was bragging about having eaten so many strange and unusual foods and thought, well, why not try this too.
My first venture into trying unusual food was at the Hokitika Wild Foods Festival in the mid 1990s. I had snail volauvents, possum kebabs, worm patties and gorse wine, but missed out on the huhu grubs as there was only a limited number available.
My husband and I went back this year for the festival’s 21st birthday. I got my freshly barbecued huhu grub (disappointing), muttonbird, and a cricket with satay sauce on French bread to boot.
We ate loads of whitebait fritters living in the South Island. Some people don’t like the eyes looking up at you from the plate, but they rock if you ask me!
Travelling around Europe I went for snails and frogs’ legs in Paris (like chicken), and pizza and gelato in Italy. Not unusual you might say, but they only put cheese and tomato on the pizza over there! I went for calamari (squid) and Ouzo in Greece (aniseed-flavoured liqueur), cheese fondue in Switzerland, lots of beer in Germany, apple strudel and schnapps in Austria, and frites (hot chips) with mayonnaise in Amsterdam. I also had a joint for breakfast one day. It certainly made my visit to the Van Gogh Museum an interesting one!
In Africa one of my first meals in Kenya was a leg of goat, which gave me the trots the next day. I also remember eating at a very swanky game lodge in Zimbabwe where I tried warthog, crocodile and various other wild animals. I also drank a lot of beer in Africa. I must have because there are beer labels stuck in my photo album from every country I went to!
Actually, alcohol features rather highly on the list of things to sample when in foreign countries. My husband took quite a liking to Raki in Turkey (very much like Ouzo) and on our three-day gulet (traditional Turkish sail boat) trip earned the nickname Dr Raki because he dispensed so much of it to everyone on board! Turkish food is great – they do wonderfully interesting things with vegetables.
In Spain we drank copious amounts of sangria (red wine with various fruit juices) and in Portugal we sampled a delicious array of ports. We passed on eating chicken heads but Andy tried a traditional dish of boiled bread with cod and coriander, complete with raw egg broken over the top – yuk!
I guess I’m up for most things but I doubt I’ll ever try kina (sea eggs) again. I tried one while collecting them with the same Maori friends mentioned above when I was about 16 years old. Some joker told me you ate the whole insides, but you are only supposed to eat the roe. I ate all the other crap too and it wasn’t pretty. Thanks bro!

A girlfriend and I went to the hen’s night of an old school friend on Saturday night in Tauranga. Her friends couldn’t believe that in the twenty plus years since we finished college we had stayed in touch.
I also read an article in the latest Little Treasures magazine about how a career woman went about making new friends after she’d had a baby, and had a conversation with my sister about the migrant women who had joined her hockey team as a way to make friends in a new country.
I’ve touched on this in a previous blog, but friends are so incredibly important, and especially to women I think. As easy as your husband or partner may be to talk to, it’s not the same as having another woman’s shoulder to cry on. You want someone to empathise with you and your situation.
I didn’t make friends easily at school. I was a bit of a girly swot and hopeless at sport. As I got older I gained more confidence. I made lots of friends playing hockey – one of them introduced me to my husband and is still a great friend today.
I got on really well with work colleagues but only one remains a firm friend and that’s probably because we flatted together as well.
I was really nervous about travelling overseas for my big OE. Thankfully my sister came with me and by the time she went home I had made some new friends.
When my husband joined me in the UK one of the first things we did was take live-in jobs in a remote part of the Scottish Highlands. I remember crying a lot in those first few weeks and wondering what the hell we were thinking of moving to the back of beyond. He couldn’t understand the problem. An Australian girl joined us as a chef not long after and all was well again.
Down the track having children meant having to make new friends again. You still have your old friends, but you need someone who understands what you are going through right then and there.
My antenatal coffee group is still going six years down the track. There are only three of us and we don’t get together as often as we used to now that our girls go to school but they are always there if I need them.
I’ve also been going to the same Mainly Music and playgroup for five years and there are still lots of women there who were there on my first day and welcomed me into the fold. One of the Mainly Music mums was in tears this morning as we said goodbye to her youngest son as he heads off to school. As she said, it’s been such a regular part of her life for the past six years she won’t know what to do with herself next Monday morning.
I tried to find a nice soppy quote about friends to tie this up but the only thing that appealed to my uncomplicated nature was this:
‘I get by with a little help from my friends.’
Well said John Lennon.

‘We don’t know how lucky we are’. The iconic Fred Dagg song was playing at Te Papa – the Museum of New Zealand in Wellington – when we took the kids there on our North Island road trip during the first week of the school holidays. It always makes me think ‘yes, we are’ when we head out over the Bombay Hills.
We last took a road trip three years ago when I was pregnant with Sam and Levi.
With three kids in the back this time we borrowed a portable DVD player so they could watch the occasional movie when they’d had enough of playing games and ‘oohing’ and aahing’ over the lambs. Unfortunately it broke down 10 minutes down the motorway.
Luckily we had largely broken the trip up into bursts of no more than three hours driving time. The first night was spent with grandparents in Hamilton and then we headed off to Taumarunui. There’s not usually a lot happening in this small rural town but we arrived the same day as a tangi for a local kaumatua. His body was being transported by waka along the Whanganui River to his home marae and Maori TV was capturing the action by helicopter overhead. There had also been a huge slip on the road leading to our friend’s house the day before so there was mud and debris everywhere.
In fact, this was a common sight throughout the North Island during our travels. We might have had a lot of rain in Auckland but at least our roads were drivable.
We took the children up to Mt Ruapehu so the boys could see snow for the first time. It took us about 20 minutes to dress them in warm clothes and shoes for about 15 minutes in the snow. It was blowing a gale and bloody freezing! We warmed up by going to the thermal pools in Tokaanu, which I didn’t even know existed before.
After Taumarunui we headed to Wanganui, home of outspoken mayor Michael Laws and where gang members have been banned from wearing patches in town. I didn’t see anyone who remotely looked like they belonged to a gang. We stayed with people who have lived there most of their lives and say gang activity is pretty low key. We saw an average New Zealand town with colourful hanging flower baskets in the main street, friendly buskers and a fantastic children’s’ playground on the riverfront.
Next stop was Featherston in the Wairarapa to visit another friend who had just bought her first house for about $200,000. It was a beautiful old villa on a big section surrounded by kowhai trees. We have Tui in our garden sometimes, but I counted nine Tui in just one tree. What a beautiful sound to wake up to!
We wanted to take a train ride over the Rimutaka Ranges to Wellington but it only runs first thing in the morning for commuters so we drove over the windy road to Upper Hutt and caught the train from there. It was pouring with rain and 100km per hour winds. Typical Wellington day, but we got to Te Papa, even if we were wet and bedraggled.
We stopped overnight at a campground in Rotorua on our way back to Auckland. We had a great family holiday here at Easter. There are plenty of free things to do if you know where to look.
Our last stop was meant to be my parents’ bach at Waihi Beach but I think we were all fed up with being in the car. There are also only so many games of ‘I spy’ you can play without going completely bonkers.

Is anyone else sick and tired of the rain? It hasn’t been a cold winter but it’s been the wettest one I can remember in a long time. At least if it’s cold you can rug up and take the kids for a walk, or to the local park. But rain means mud, mud and more mud. Our back yard is like a swamp in parts. The kids can’t stay inside all the time so it means lots of soaking and washing muddy clothes. Muddy footprints are a permanent fixture around the back door – I’ve given up trying to mop and just brush up the loose stuff every now and then.

I’ve been dreaming about taking a holiday somewhere sunny but we definitely can’t afford it this year. We’re saving for a family holiday to Rarotonga next year, our first overseas jaunt since Ella broke her leg on our Gold Coast holiday four years ago.

I’m not sure that taking three young children on an airplane to stay near the water is going to be a very relaxing holiday but I’ve never been to Rarotonga and I’ve heard it’s lovely.

When my husband and I were travelling around Europe in an old Ford ambulance (sign written like a real ambulance with ‘paraletics’ on the side) we came across lots of families travelling by camper van with children on board. One of them was a New Zealand family and we thought they were mad. It was stressful enough spending 24 hours in the company of my husband without adding kids to the mix.

I love travelling though and I would love for my kids to travel and experience other places and cultures as well. I don’t see the point in going when they’re too young though because they are unlikely to remember it.

I could see us all in a camper van travelling around Australia, or taking an elephant ride in Thailand. Although I’ve travelled extensively in Europe there is an awful lot more of the world I’d like to see – parts of Asia in particular. I never saw the attraction when I was travelling and I thought that because it was closer to home I could leave it until later.

I’ve seen a bit of Africa that, when I headed over to Europe, I had never thought about visiting before. I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything. Getting up close with mountain gorillas in Uganda, dancing with Maasai warriors in Kenya, white water rafting on the Zambezi River in Zambia, standing in front of the amazing Abu Simbel rock temples in Egypt, riding a camel at sunset. Well, maybe not the last one. They really hurt your backside.

Oh well, dreams are free aren’t they? Better make sure I’ve got a Lotto Powerball ticket for this weekend. It’s up to something like $17 million, which would pay for a heck of a lot of holidays….

Wow, that earthquake in Christchurch at the weekend sounded pretty scary. Friends who live there told us it felt like they were being thrown out of bed. Another couple we know had access cut off from their two young children, but once they were able to get to them they discovered them fast asleep. Probably just as well, because there are some terrified little nippers down there at the moment, particularly with all the aftershocks.
I’ve experienced a few earthquakes but nothing like that. My first one was in Italy in 1989 while on a school trip. We had just walked across an enclosed motorway overbridge when we felt the earth move under our feet. I certainly wouldn’t like to be in one of those in a big quake.
The second one I felt was in Rotorua in the early 1990s. I was lying on the couch at home with a hangover. I had to check with my flatmate that it was actually an earthquake and not just my head spinning.
The last one was in Christchurch in 1996. I was working in the dispense bar at the Grand Café restaurant in the casino when the glasses started tinkling followed by the big chandelier in the dining room starting to sway. It was short and sweet but my co-worker had the presence of mind to pull me into the doorway away from the large beer fridges. It was quite funny watching diners helping themselves to the buffet. They couldn’t decide whether to ditch their dinner and duck for cover, or wait it out.
Nothing funny about the earthquake this time, however. Luckily it happened in the early hours of the morning and there were few people about otherwise there could have been a steep death toll.
It’s made me start thinking about our ‘disaster plan’ again. After the tsunami in Samoa last year I got proactive and filled up lots of empty 3L juice containers with water, stocked up on emergency food and batteries, and checked first aid supplies. I’m going to go through it all again and make sure there is nothing missing. You just never know, do you?
My husband thought I was mad storing all this water in the garage but I did have need of it a few months ago when the water supply was turned off for a few hours for maintenance.
One thing I do have plenty of is medicine. My GP is a lovely guy but he does tend to over prescribe. Why have one tube or bottle when you can have three seems to be his thinking. If you’re ever short of painkillers, anti-inflammatory drugs, or anti-histamine come and see me.
I picked up a great little transistor radio at a garage sale a few months ago that I thought would be perfect for my emergency kit. Unfortunately I killed it by plugging a 9V battery into it to see if it worked. Overload! Back to the drawing board on that one.
To anyone reading this in Christchurch, I wish you a speedy recovery back to a shake-free life.

My twin boys started pre-school recently and, though I love them dearly, it’s been wonderful to have a break from them twice a week. In theory I should be spending the time on myself but I often end up catching up on housework, shopping or writing this blog!

Despite my joy at having time alone I very nearly pulled them out of the pre-school they are attending, as it doesn’t impress me much. It’s a council-run centre and has traditionally been run as more of a crèche than an early childhood centre I think. It follows the early childhood education curriculum, Te Whariki, and the people are nice, but they have some funny ideas.

One thing I hate is that they grab the children’s lunch boxes and start feeding them almost as soon as they walk in the door. When I questioned this practice they said it helped some children settle in. Getting them involved in an activity is a much better way of helping them settle in I would think. I always try to steer Sam and Levi towards something to do before I leave but it’s hard when all the other kids are eating.

The centre has a lovely grassed outdoor area, which will be fantastic in summer but in winter (and especially now) it’s a big mud pit. Inside, the building is run-down and the facilities cramped. It always seems dirty and a bit unloved.

Most people I know whose kids go there rave about it – I can’t see the attraction myself except that Sam and Levi, after weeks of anxiety about mummy leaving them, do seem to be enjoying it. The other reason I won’t be pulling them out is cost. Until they turn three they are not eligible for the 20 free hours childcare and we don’t qualify for the WINZ childcare subsidy. This centre costs $54 a week for two children for two half days. If we went anywhere else it would be at least double that.

The cost of early childhood education is going to be an issue for a lot of families soon.

The Government recently announced that from February next year the funding rate for registered teachers will be lowered and there will only be funding for 80 per cent of a provider’s registered teachers. At the moment ECE providers are encouraged to have up to 100 per cent registered teachers with higher funding for registered teachers.

This will mean providers will probably have to put their fees up to cover the shortfall and/or employ fewer registered teachers. Having seen the difference between trained and untrained ECE staff firsthand I would definitely prefer those who have trained.

I’m about to put Sam and Levi on the waiting list for the Christian kindergarten my daughter attended for two and a half years before starting school. (They don’t take them until they are three). We are not religious but I like the values-based education that this centre offers, among other things. It caters for families from all cultures and socio-economic backgrounds (which I like) and, as well as being well trained, the teachers genuinely love and care for the children entrusted to them. Just what you want in an early childhood centre I reckon.

According to a report in the Weekend Herald steep grocery prices in New Zealand mean we have to shell out more of our weekly wage than they do in the UK, Australia and the USA. It doesn’t surprise me one bit.
I try hard to keep the shopping bill as low as possible but I still managed to have the most expensive one ever recently.
As part of its report, the Weekend Herald asked a Ponsonby family of two adults and two teenagers to compile a cut-down weekly shopping list and the newspaper calculated the cost of the items at online supermarkets in New Zealand, Australia, the USA and Britain.
I had to laugh at their ‘cut-down’ weekly shopping list. There wasn’t a budget item in sight and it included things like organic beef mince, anchovies, real chicken stock, Vogels bread, coffee beans and extra virgin olive oil. Mine is likely to contain non-organic beef mince, a tin of tuna, powdered chicken stock, Budget wholegrain bread, instant coffee and canola oil. That’s not totally true as I do allow myself plunger coffee as a treat, but I’d love to be able to buy things like real chicken stock and extra virgin olive oil. The reality is we just can’t afford it on one wage. It must be noted that the family above were in a high-income bracket – no kidding.
I do our weekly grocery shop alone, at night, ever since my two-year-old twin sons decided they no longer wanted to sit in the trolley. They think it’s great fun to pull everything off the shelves and put yummy things in the trolley when mummy isn’t looking.
I’m a Pak n’ Save shopper mostly, although up until last week I had been giving our new local Countdown store a go. Eventually the crappy service and rising grocery prices sent me back to Pak n’ Save. I do miss the good cuts of meat from there though so I’m either going to have to go back there or find a decent butcher. I also hate the fruit and vegetables at Pak n’ Save so I’ll have to start doing a separate shop at the local fruit and vegetable market again. It’s a hard road finding the perfect supermarket.
When it comes to milk and bread I buy the budget stuff at the supermarket and the even cheaper budget stuff from some of our local dairies. The bread might not be as good but as the kids eat most of it they don’t care. The milk is exactly the same as the more expensive brands.
In summer we grow some of our own vegetables in the garden but I reckon my husband spends more on gardening products and pest control than it would cost me to buy them at the supermarket.
As mentioned in my last blog I’m having a go at making my own cleaning products so, after the initial outlay on ingredients, I’m expecting to save some money there. I’m also trying to bake more in order to save money on shop-bought biscuits and snacks for the kids.
On Thursday Sam and Levi helped me bake Afghan biscuits – the kitchen looked like a bombsite – but by the end of the day they were gone. The kids, their cousins and a friend Ella brought home after school put paid to most of them. Plus I ate two, which is another problem with baking – I end up eating most of it and my waistline could really do without it.

My husband’s friend bought him a new ironing board last week. I haven’t seen him that excited since he upgraded his old mobile to an iPhone.

Andy is the first to describe himself as a great ‘kitchen bitch’. His mother obviously trained him well, and years of having to iron his own business shirts didn’t change when he met me. In fact I’m so hopeless at ironing he won’t let me near any of his clothes. Which suits me just fine.

My two elderly grandmothers marvel at what my husband and brother-in-laws do around the house and were gobsmacked when they saw them changing nappies. They come from a generation where men didn’t do ‘women’s work’.

Andy’s dad is great around the house too; my dad less so – he probably wouldn’t know how to use an iron but can manage a vacuum cleaner okay.

I don’t remember having to do much in the way of housework when I was younger and I had no idea how to cook when I left home. When I told Mum off about that one she said it was always easier to do it herself which, in the same position now, I can understand.

My first flatmate was a trainee chef so I didn’t have to cook. The second flatmate also accepted that I couldn’t cook and was happy to do it in exchange for my dishwashing expertise. Flatmate number three told me I had better learn fast because she wasn’t about to do it for me. And so I learned. I have greatly improved over the years but still make most things from a recipe. Never be without an Edmonds Cookbook is my advice.

Cleaning I am very good at. Andy and I lived-in at a four star hotel in the Scottish Highlands for a summer and cleaning the rooms was in the job description. Andy got to be a whiz at scrubbing toilets, I mastered the ‘Hoover’ and we both know how to make a bed with hospital corners at top speed.

Fortunately Andy likes vegetable gardening and is as anal about his lawns as he is about his shirts so I don’t have to push the lawnmower around. I have taken more of an interest in gardening since owning my own house and have made our own compost for the past few years. We’ve recently finished filling the gardens with river stones and hardy plants such as yuccas and succulents that require little looking after. That’s my kind of garden.

My latest domestic project is making my own cleaning products, courtesy of Wendyl Nissen’s recipes. So far I’ve made laundry detergent and liquid hand soap, the latter of which one of my sons poured down the sink this morning so that’s on my ‘to do’ list this afternoon. I’m also on my way upstairs to mop the floors with my new steam mop. I must admit to being quite excited myself about this one. No mops and buckets of water and no cleaning products.

My friend and I had a good laugh about the things we get excited about these days. I had my new mop and she just got a DVS ventilation system installed in her house. She couldn’t tell the young girls she works with at a beauty salon about it because their idea of an exciting purchase is a bag full of new clothes or make-up. Ah – domestic bliss!