Merry Christmas 2009!

The stockings were hung on the tuba with care...

In hopes that the berries would still be all there (and not already eaten!)

Good gifts were exchanged (Thank you everyone!!)

An amazing pie was made (Greg really needs to cook more often!)

The Christmas puppy didn't get into too much trouble.

And everything was kept on track thanks to Mr Time-keeper and his new watch.

("OK, Mom. Time to get off the computer!")

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Other questions I like to avoid

Well, this next post was going to be about people asking how the house is coming along...

then I gave up the will to post on a blog.

BUT, now we have good news!! Things have been happening...

I'll write more about it soon. Promise!

Questions I try to avoid

(This is part one of a question avoidance theme posting.)

Question 1: So... what is happening with the vineyard?

As many of you know, we leased a vineyard last season. (I say "we", but it was really Greg - I just got regular updates and helped out occasionally.) It was good and bad. It is a marginal vineyard, but Greg managed to produce a large amount of beautiful-quality fruit. Unfortunately, this year the wine market was just flooded with fruit.

Everyone and their second cousin has been putting in grapes on any spare half acre for the past 5 years and it all hit the market like some kind of grape tsunami this year. Bad luck for us. We were able to sell our Pinto Noir, but nothing else. The birds got a great feast.

We lost some money (though, surprisingly not that much - it was mostly Greg's time), but feel that we were able to test the market in an invaluable way. Any money that we lost this year was far less than if we would have gone into debt planting our own vineyard right away! So, because of this past year and where we see things for the next few years, we are putting off planting our own vines for a while... who knows for how long.

We're looking into cows at the moment. That should be an interesting experience in itself!

My incident with the school bully

OK. I know that I haven't posted anything in months. Sorry.

A lot has been going on. I'll write another posting shortly to get you up to speed. Unfortunately, I don't have time for that. Right now you'll have to settle for this email that I recently sent out... an insta-blog moment, if you will.

The following all happened on Wednesday. Thought you would enjoy remembering what a complete nutter I am. : )

So. I go to pick up Burgess from school yesterday. I'm sick with a headcold and tired and probably not in the best state of mind.

This girl (7 yrs old) runs by and falls, scraping her leg. She sits down, starts rubbing her leg and tries not to cry. This punk kid (12 yrs old) starts laughing and making fun of her.

As I walk by, I glare at him and say, "You don't need to be that way."

"What?!" He asks, shocked that I said something to him.

"You know what I mean."

"Ngee nge ngee ngee" he replies in a high pitched voice. The kid is MOCKING ME!

"It's not nice"

"Ngee ngee ngee"

"Stop acting like an idiot!" I snap. "Grow up and act your age." I'm walking away at this point.

"Shut up, mumble, mumble."

"Excuse me?" I whip around. "Do you want to go see the headmaster?"

"You just called me an idiot!" He replies righteously.

"Yeah cause your acting like one. Come on, let's go."

At this point he must realize that I'm a bit insane. He starts to back away (that's right - s l o w l y) and says a bit quietly... cautiously "go away".

So I do and forget about it.

Until this morning. When I get a message from the headmaster at Burgess's school wanting me to call him to discuss the incident.

Crap! I called the kid an idiot. I'm an idiot! They are going to ban me from interacting with the kids. I won't be able to help out with the field trip for Burgess's class. I've really blown it this time.

So, I call the headmaster and right away tell him that I said the kid was being an idiot, that I was wrong. It was a poor choice of words. I shouldn't have spoken that way. I'm the adult and he's the child, after all... He let me go on like this for a while, then laughed and said "Beth, you are saying all the right things, but I wanted to talk about what he said to you." Apparently he said something much worse than just shut up. I can only imagine. They wanted him to call and apologize to me... which he has.

And tonight I will be writing the kid an apology for using a poor choice of words to describe what I thought of his behavior. Because I feel guilty over calling him an idiot!

This is exactly why I need to live somewhere like New Zealand. I am far too nuts for modern civilized society.

But at least all the kids at Burgess's school know to be on their best behavior when I'm around!

Moving Right Along

While staying in the lovely adobe house, we had a number of people contact us with offers of house sitting.  Rumors of Kiwi kindness and generosity are not exaggerated.  We feel so lucky to live in a part of New Zealand that is not just physically beautiful, but also full of people who are so wonderful and caring.

We ended up accepting an offer to house sit for some previous employers of mine.  They are in Europe until September and have generously allowed us to rent their house until they get back.  

Mike and Britta are lovely people who live an amazing life.  Mike invented a game called Tantrix, which sells all over the world.  You can play it online at their website.  Apparently, their house was partially inspired by the colors of this game, but also by their love of rock climbing.  The house has incredibly high ceilings and incredible views, but the most outstanding feature is the two story rock climbing room!

Burgess likes to climb up two or three meters and 

launch himself off onto the mattresses below.  Greg makes it about one meter off the ground and decides that is high enough for him.  (Keep in mind his feet may only be one meter high, but because he is so tall, his head is three meters up!)  I climb occasionally, but get nervous if I get over two meters up.

A slice of Kiwiana

A kind reader pointed out that it had been a while since we last posted.  Sorry about that, as you will hear over the next few catch-up posts, things have been - well... tumultuous to say the least.  (Geez - you'd think living in a bus without power or running water would garner a wee bit of slack.)  So, what better way to get back into blogging mode, than to write an innocuous, fluff, travelogue-y piece on some of our favorite parts of life in NZ.  We do this simply for your edification (not some shameless attempt to re-summon our blogging muse...really.)

The greater Nelson region, where we live (Google earth link), among other things, is particularly known for it's horticultural prowess.  Besides producing world class wines (esp. aromatic whites!), Nelson is renowned for it's hops, amazing beaches, and apples.  Think Pacific northwest.  

Fall around here means a few things; 

The grapes are in -Phew!

Our view changes from brown to white.

Chilly Sat morning soccer games

And... the glories that are the roadside fruit stand!

Gypsy Living is the New Bus Living

OK, we’ve moved out of the bus. It was great fine for the summer, but by late February it was getting a bit chilly… and cramped. Plus, we heard of some friends that would be away for most of March and were looking for someone to house-sit.

Forget bus living. It’s time to move on to gypsy living! Whoo-hoo!

So, we packed up our basic necessities and moved on to our friends’ house. I have to tell you it is a very cool house. Daniel and Dianne (along with their two boys) used to live in yurts. (Yes, you read that right.) Which was fine until, one winter a few years ago, a big storm blew their yurts down in the middle of the night. This is when they decided to build a more permanent house. Daniel spent the next couple of years constructing… sculpting… their adobe house. This is the house that we stayed in.

It is beautiful work of love.  You can really tell that Daniel poured his heart into it. He even did carvings on some of the wood beams throughout the house, which are all beautiful. 

What we enjoyed the most, however, was the bathroom. The bathroom is separate from the rest of the house. (The unattached bit is the one thing that I didn’t really like about it. I mean, who wants to walk outside to use the loo at 2am?) 

It’s really quite big, with the shape of a yurt – but with built up wooden walls and a canvas ceiling. Half of the walls are floor to ceiling glass – including the whole wall of the shower... which means amazing mountain views, but also that anyone coming up the driveway can see you in all your naked splendor. Fortunately, this is pretty far out in the country and you don’t get too many unexpected guests. They also have a composting toilet, which is something that I always wanted to try living with. (My conclusion – I really like them. Not smelly at all and double as a composter for your kitchen scraps. Plus, compost for the garden!) The bit I enjoyed the most, however, was the piano! It was a quirky way to entertain each (and add dramatic effect) other while someone was in the shower. I don’t think the humidity did much to keep it in tune, but think of the possibilities!

You're Either on the Bus or You're Off the Bus

OK. I know that you've been waiting very patiently. Here are some pictures of the bus set-up that we currently call home.

What can I say about the bus? It's not so bad. It looks questionable, sure. But knowing that it is just for the summer... Well it's a lot like camping. Really nice camping, actually.

Burgess is fine with it. It's all a big adventure for him. He has his whole room set up in the sleepout, which helps to give us all a little more space. The bus can feel a bit small sometimes... especially when it is rainy out.

But we make do...

I've definitely lived in worse places (even if those places were in third world countries!). It is certainly an adventure... a good one. It'll be great to look back with a glass of wine and think...

"Ahhh, remember the bus? That was nuts!"

E-lectricity... Eeelectricity

An important part of building a home on a section is getting water and electricity. Water is easy. We will collect rainwater into two huge tanks. This is a fairly common practice out here. We certainly get enough rain in the winter and two big tanks should see us through most dry seasons. We could drill a bore... and would love to... but the expense is a bit prohibitive at this point. (Foreshadowing...)

Now, electricity to the building site. We had thought that would be relatively easy also. Not so! When we originally looked at the property, we were told that there was electricity cabled to the end of the driveway and down by the damn. Great. Fine. Unfortunately, this information was wrong. (*sigh.*) For most rural property that is subdivided, electricity needs to be taken to the property boundary (by council law). However, in our case, the property owner at the time was somehow able to get an exception! There is telephone cabling to the two spots that we were told about, but the electricity ends further up the road... meaning quite a financial difference in getting power to our building site. (Arg!!)

We feel stupid, as if we did something wrong... but, like I said, we DID look into this. Unfortunately, we actually believed what we were told... which was wrong? This is so incredibly frustrating! I mean, if you can't believe the professionals around you, who can you believe?! Perhaps we should have had a rep from the electricity company come out to verify that info? It didn't seem necessary at the time.

We've looked into what we should do about this. There may be a couple of different legal routes that we could take... but what a pain in the butt! Besides, we might just end up getting very little in return for our effort (when you take into account legal fees). Either way, we still need power to the building site. So, we'll just have to bite the bullet and get it done.

House Design Revisited

The house is coming along surely, but slowly. We started talking to the architect (as opposed to communicating via email) after the craziness of the holidays. He agreed to work on the plans to get them within our budget. It was then a matter of figuring out where to cut corners. His suggestions ranged from practical (changing from a Hebel structure to wood frame) to acceptable (aluminum framed windows, hollow core doors) to ridiculous (leaving half of the house un-gibbed).

At this point, we feel that the house design is finally something that we can work with. It is not the house that we originally planned on, but it is close enough. And we will be able to build it and not go bankrupt. The architect will now re-write the plans, our builder will look things over to give us a rough quote and see if there are any other areas where it would make sense to change things. Then the plans will get re-submitted to council and we should be away and running... er, building. The whole process not quite as exciting as it once was. We just want a house.

If we were to do this again... we would involve a builder throughout the planning process. The architect has a great sense of space and design for our lifestyle, but not such a good handle on building within a tight budget. The builder that we are now working with is someone local that we have known for a number of years (Burgess is quite good friends with his son). Not only was he recommended to us as an excellent builder, but he is honest and trustworthy. We could really use someone honest and trustworthy at this point! He has made a number of suggestions that are practical and easy to implement - without causing us to feel like we are cutting back on quality.

So. No house before winter, but maybe by next spring? Not sure. I sincerely hope so! We are told that the planning process is the most time-consuming. Once they start actually building, things should move along quite quickly. yay.

Goin' off the grid for awhile

OK.... it's not quite this bad!

But we do kind of like the idea of the clouds, though : )

Just wanted to let everyone know that there will be a "brief" (?) period of darkness on the posting front, as we enter the period of "Bus Livin'".

Ummm... not quite that either! Maybe somewhere between the two.