It's a bit soggy

Yes I know it's winter and I shouldn't expect anything different, but - I am getting pretty tired of it raining all the time. It would be nice to have just a few more days of clear, sunny days interspersed among the days and weeks of showers, drizzle and downpours.

I've been waiting for like 4 weeks to pre-wash and line dry the bamboo quilt batting that I bought to make my "real" Tamarack jacket from, as well as the burnt red linen that I'll use for the top layer. (I decided on a mid blue chambray for the inside layer, and that I'll do patch pockets instead of welt pockets because then I can make it completely reversible!)

In more upbeat news, I am taking a week off over the school holidays, so I'll have more chances to do the aforementioned pre-washing and drying, plus cutting, quilting and construction. (If you're a quilter and the idea of line drying bamboo batting sounds like a really bad idea please tell me!) I may even finish it before the end of winter.

And in even more exciting news, I am planning a trip to Hong Kong to see the relatives at the end of the year. The last time I was there was maybe 30 years ago - so I expect it will be even more crowded than it was then. But hopefully there will be more and better public loos than I remember...

Polar blast? Not today.

So I took a day of work today because I've felt a cold building up for the past week and last night I felt absolutely terrible (nose running like a tap, headache, stiff upper back, wheezing).

And I thought "It's probably a good day to stay at home, what with the gale force freez-ies predicted for tomorrow"(really - folks in the South Island have been shopping like the day before Good Friday, and preparing to hunker down for the next couple of days).

But...actually it's not been that cold. I turned off my heater just now when I looked out of the bedroom window, admired the lovely big rainbow in the sky, and noticed that I can't see my breath (there's no heating on in that room).

Also, I feel not too bad.Maybe it's the calm before the storm (cold-wise and weather-wise). I suppose I'll just have to wait and see.

Unseasonally warm

Today I was faced with a dilemma; when you've gone to work in boots and thick tights and the temperature surprises you with a lovely almost-summer warmth, which is worse - sweating it out in the boots and tights, or wearing the boots without the tights (and possibly still be sweaty but at least your knees will be comfortably cool)?

I decided to remove the tights. Fortunately my boots are leather lined, so my feet weren't tooooo bad. I even walked home this way, but it did feel kinda funny to be so intimate with the inner landscape of my footwear.

Though I probably wouldn't have risked it in synthetic boots.

A day in the tropics

You'd think it was spring rather than mid-Summer - one day it's cool enough to need a jacket, the next day it's warm enough to briefly consider going to work in shorts and a singlet.

It was apparently 29 degrees Celsius today, which is extreme in itself ('round these parts, if it's more than 25 degrees it's a heatwave). But it was super-muggy all day and then we got torrential rain.

It's just like being in Bangkok, except that you aren't on holiday, there aren't any tuk-tuks and the locals aren't smiling as much.

It's a summer...no, it's a winter!

The summer wedding that we went to yesterday, which  I'd especially bought a summer maxi dress to wear to, turned out to be more of a winter wedding. In fact, I wore the exact same dress that I wore to a mid-winter wedding 18 months ago (only this time the dress was a bit tight but the shoes weren't). Plus, I had on my new opaque tights and woolly coat which I'd had to take out of storage.

So my new summer dress hangs unused, as do most of my other summer clothes. And I read in this morning's paper that the rest of our summer is going to be just as disappointing. If only I'd known this back in spring, I could have saved myself lots of what-to-wear angst.

On the bright side, I won't feel like an odd-bod for lusting after the tweeds I see featured in Northern hemisphere magazines. I always prefer winter clothes anyway.

p.s. TLM came along to the wedding ceremony in her new Dora dress, which she insisted on wearing instead of the RTW dress I'd picked out for her (and looked adorable, of course). I'll take it as a complement.

An early spring

For once, the skimpy dresses in floral chiffon that decorate every women's dress shop window, are not entirely out of sync with the weather. In other words, we've been having some pretty nice weather lately.

We are having an early spring. Apparently this doesn't necessarily translate to a longer-than-usual spring, just an early one - which ultimately means an early end to summer. But that doesn't stop me from enjoying the clothes-drying temperatures. I just love sitting outside on the step, feeling the warmth on my skin, even if it means risking a sunburn-induced cold sore. It makes me wonder whether I can do a goth-summer kind of look, because florals really aren't my thing.

There's one other thing. If it is spring already, then I have officially been sick ALL winter.

Seasons greetings - a post of two halves

This is how I know that Winter is nipping at our heels:

• I have been able to wear knee-high boots to work, without cooking my feet
• The Little Madam is onto her second cold
• We sleep under 2 duvets occasionally and don't wake up sweating like Albert Finney's character in Broadcast News
• All the northern hemisphere blogs are going on about springtime

Of course, technically Autumn has only just started. Autumn is my favourite season, despite it's effects on my allergies:

• it's cool enough to wear coverup-y clothes (because I'm no fan of hot pants and halternecks) but not so cold that I must wear sheepskin and polypropylene with everything
• it's often warm and sunny during the day, but at night it's not too warm to sleep
• it's when the television networks start screening the good shows.

But it also means that yet another opportunity has passed for TLM to wear cute shorts.

Sometimes it's good to be S.A.D. *

Okay, so I'm grumpy when it's cold and windy, and I get depressed if the sun doesn't come out for a whole month.

But when I can bask in golden sunshine in my lunch break and don't have to hold onto a telephone pole if I'm caught in a wind-tunnel (i.e. trying to cross the street in the middle of the CBD), then life is good.

Today, the sun shone and it was lovely warm and there was only just enough breeze to air out last week's bucketful of pooey laundry. TLM has made a rapid recovery from the bug which still has the boy and I hacking like scared dogs each morning; I can see myself taking a week off at the end of my contract; the boy...well the boy is still sometimes fed up with work but he's planning on taking some leave too.

So I'm happy.

* Having Seasonal Affective Disorder means that crap weather makes you moody and depressive. But on the other hand, maybe it means that a nice sunny day can send you over the moon...

A wet sausage

I've been busy organising a fundraising sausage sizzle for TLM's childcare, and it's to be held tomorrow. We'd had the date booked for a month (because the site - outside a superstore - is so damned popular). Less than a week ago, the newpapers were predicting that our Indian summer would last at least until May.

Isn't it just my luck that we're suddently in the grip of a cold snap, and the forecast for tomorrow is...rain. Sob.

Hot air

It's fairly tropical in these parts right now. It's humid, it's hot, and there's a cyclone just around the corner. I'm not used to it; it makes me sweat, it turns the southern end of the house into a sauna (and I can only stand those things for about 10 minutes before I really need a cool shower), and my feet feel like a couple of large boiled potatoes.

My Swiss friend thinks it's way too windy here. What we call breeze, the Swiss apparently would refer to as gale force winds; what we call gale force winds, they call "time to batten down the hatches, bring in the goats and tie down the skis"; what they call wind, we regard as brownian motion.

It's what you're used to, isn't it? What I call tropical pre-cyclone weather, the Hawaiians would probably call Spring.

This windy day

20 months
TLM has turned 20 months and 1 day. For the record, I'll tell you that she has another cold - one which will probably keep her home from daycare tomorrow. But at least she had a great time on Tuesday, when the staff bundled up all 12 or so kids into buggies (the kind designed for twins and triplets) and walked them all around the zoo.

She's been enjoying playing with her cousins almost every day, but I hope she doesn't pick up their habit of throwing each other into furniture, for fun.

I dressed TLM in a fluffy orange jumper this morning because it was a freezing cold morning, but she's become so attached to it already, that even when she's not wearing it she's clutching it like some fashion-victim's version of a lovey.

In my eye
It's been so windy lately that I've taken to wearing my sunglasses outdoors even when it's overcast outside. A couple of nights ago, after a particularly gusty day, I complained of having something in my eye. The boy couldn't get it out, so I went to the bathroom and flicked out this thing with black bits and mucous-y bits.

It was an insect.

I remembered being especially annoyed that morning when stuff seemed to be blowing into my eye. Good god, I'd had an insect in my eye for 9 hours, and didn't even know it. I really hoped it wasn't an egg-laden female I'd unknowingly hosted all day.

Infinished movies
We started to watch Apocolypto, but it turned out to be every bit as violent as I'd feared it would be. And that was only in the first half hour or so. So that DVD was ejected and replaced with a Gilmore girls episode.

We also started watching Ong Bak, the Thai boxing movie I'd heard lots about. The boy walked out half way through, in favour of returning to World of Warcraft. I was quite enjoying it, and only stopped watching because it was encroaching on my dishwashing-then-sleep time. Sure, the plot is a bit cheesy and the hero has an off-puttingly high voice, but it's all good fun and reminded me of some of Buffy's better vamp fights.

How to have a terrible weekend

(I know that really, I should count my blessings because in general my life is good, but just bear with me while I grumpily recount the events of the weekend..)

1. Pick the weekend that Daylight Savings ends, because you've been trying to reset your toddler's eating and sleeping patterns since last Wednesday.

2. Ask the weather gods to ensure that most of the time it will be cold, wet and windy.

3. Then let your toddler catch the cold virus to end all cold viruses. She's not just snotting, cough-y and grumpy, she's got snot for Africa and the coughs sound like the entire population of France is trying to escape her breathing passages (y'know, frogs). It's so bad that the television is on during most of her waking hours, because Wiggles DVDs distract her from both illness and cabin fever.

4.And just before the weather turns nice on the Sunday afternoon, get a call from a family member who needs to have an embarrassingly located boil lanced at the hospital.

5. When you get to the A & E, you're enraged to find that you'll have to pay for parking. Then you find out that you didn't after all, but not until you've already pushed $4 down the parking meter slot.

6. Because it's an especially busy day at the A & E, there will be long delays. By 8pm that evening, you haven't been home in 8 hours.*

7. You're been advised that the boil removal requires a surgical operation, so now you've got something else to worry about other than the fact that your child at home is too congested to sleep.

8. When you get home, the boy is exhausted from caring for, and worrying about, the sick toddler. He's in no condition to look after you.**


* An icing on the cake would be that the homeless person who used the reception's phone before you, left his characteristic homeless person-smell AND some dodgy beads of moisture on the handset. And you only find out after you've put it to your ear.

**On the plus side, the boy wasn't too exhausted to record Gilmore Girls for me.

Breathability

I ended up having to hem up my new jeans by hand* , but when summer suddenly ended at the beginning of the week (as suddenly as it had began, right after Christmas) I was able to slip into something toasty warm - my new straight-legged, high-waisted jeans.

After a couple of days wear, those jeans are finally feeling mostly comfortable. I say mostly because that high waist is still a bit constricting about my middle. In fact, if I wear those jeans with my new bra which still hasn't "worn in" (i.e. stretched out), I can actually give myself an asthma attack.

The other thing about this particular cut of jeans is that I have to put out of my mind just how similar they are to those jeans we all wore in the 80s. I remember now how some girls had to lie down in order to zip theirs up. I also remember how just being able to sit with my legs crossed, whilst be-denimed, was usually a challenge and often a lie.

Really, the only difference between these and those, is that the new ones are stretchy and shouldn't be teamed with anything shoulder-padded.

*Because my sewing machine is broken, my sister-out-law's is in parts because they're getting ready to move house, and the only other person with a sewing machine who's offered to lend it to me is on the far side of town.

The month was sultry...

At the risk of sounding like one of those annoying people who always find something to complain about, I'm going to...complain. About the weather.

December was such a total disappointment in terms of weather, because even though it was supposed to be high summer by then the actual conditions were depressingly similar to those of mid-winter.

But January couldn't have been more different. Going from December to January was akin to leaving mid-winter Wellington on a jet plane (temperatures in the single digits and a bracing galeforce southerly for extra chill) and landing in the Aussie outback (30-something degrees C in the shade) a few hours later. It's been a shock to the system and I still haven't gotten over it.

As I did a lazy shuffle down to the pharmacy (for some Nurofen for The Little Madam), this afternoon, be-hatted, sun-glassed and a little sweaty, I wondered whether the hot days are hotter that they used to be or whether I'm just getting too old to tolerate the temperature extremes.

I suppose the answer, really, is less clothing and more swims.