Christmas Joy?

Christmas has rolled around again and deliberations begin as I decide what the kids will do for Christmas, and where.  I initially thought that I would be gracious and let the kids spend Christmas with their father.  It makes sense.  Technically its ‘his turn’, they were with me last year and him the year before.  But in a real grown up tantrum moment I said stuff it, I want my kids for Christmas, you father of the children,  can go jump in a lake!  There was a sense of justice, a kind of rationalising going on inside my own head.  I have had the kids all year, done the hard work of raising them successfully (according to my own measures) and blinken heck, I think I get to reward myself on THE whanau day of the year surely, by sharing it with my special crew.

But there are other forces at play.  Dark stuff.  Lets face it, the ugly side of any break up is the inability to control the emotional torment and hell you insist on putting your ex through.  I have worked like a damn demon to recognise all the ‘triggers’, the physiological changes, the everything that goes into an all out torment and hell attack.  And I thought I had really gotten a good handle on it this year.  Queen of composure.  Not.  Even the best prepared defense is nothing when the underlying base is Scorpion, Māori and woman.  All my counselling flew out the window and a years worth of frustration at an ex who can fly around the world, take trips evey two weeks to Sydney, buy label shoes and gifts for his kids but who can’t organise time with his kids (yes, this is solely my perspective, he will have his own story) and has a million totally plausible excuses was too much.  Just too much, the taniwha was unleashed.  In a flash of complete brilliance I challenged him to come and get them – with a parenting  order or don’t come at all!  Huh!   I’m gunna have to dig out my counsellor’s card again.  Back to the ‘work it out’ drawing board.

Regression aside, Christmas really is such a special time, when whanau naturally want to be together.  But Christmas can be horribly lonely too, and I’ve obviously noticed it more since I have become a solo Mum.  I read once that our ontological vocation is to ‘be human’.   I get incredibly sad at the different ways that people, things, society etc. contribute to that notion of being.  You can feel such a sense of loneliness in some people, and a natural yearning towards healing this, which is inherent in the need to be human, yet never make a connection with that individual.  In our efforts to become something, we at times cease to be exactly what we need to be.  Human.  Woah, who pressed the contemplative, melancholy Sunday button in Otaki!!

So really, to be honest, part of the reason I kept my kids is because of the loneliness.  I couldn’t bear to be alone in a room full of people, even if they are whanau, without my kids.  and another reason, my special someone too will be at the other end of the country, as miserable as I am without him, and so that was part of the reason I reactively kept my kids this year.  I love them, and spending Christmas with them is always magic. But I do feel guilty that part of the decision to have them at Christmas is because I cant be with Mr New Guy.  What can I say, the woman in me is growing and nurturing a very special relationship with an awesome guy, and I love it when I have time to give to that.  Juggling this new relationship is not something I thought I would discuss through my blog but it adds another layer of complexity to raising a family on my own.  Because of course, the time I crave to spend developing my new relationship, which could have been over the Christmas/New Year Break , wont happen because I brilliantly decided to keep my kids to spite what I believe is an undeserving father.  Haha.  What is that saying about cutting off the nose to spite the face??  Me and my Scorpion, Māori, woman bloody waha.  As my grandmother would say - Kai tō!!

Geocaching madness

My sister recently put me onto this 'geocaching' game.  Its like a huge worldwide treasure hunt.  Members hide caches all over the world, upload the GPS co-ordinates to the web, you download them and you're away looking for the hidden treasure.  Its a bit techno, so it may not be for every whanau, you can get a geocaching application on your phone, and no matter where in the world you are, you can check if there is 'treasure' nearby.  I suppose you could print off the co-ordinates and navigate with a trusty compass and a good map but following a bleeping dot on a phone has much more visual, audio and techno appeal for today's generation of kids.  If you understand the bleeping dot that is.  More on that later.

My kids have already found many caches all over the North Shore, using their Aunty's iPhone (pooh) so they have the geocaching bug already.  Their mother's lack of a decent phone with adequate technical support has halted that bug for awhile.  Much to their disgust!  But my ANDROID phone is now geocaching compatible and I purposely saved the first whanau4life geocaching excursion for summer and my daughter's birthday.  She's the summer baby, she gets all the cool summer stuff.  We checked the website and Otaki has a few caches which was fantastic.  We picked the one along the Otaki riverbank.  I tell ya, its kind of cool to plan a treasure hunt, it has big kudos in my kids world and petrol and phone aside, is one of those relatively cheap whanau outings.  I was looking forward to it and the kids were pretty stoked too. 


OMG.  The bloody bleeping dot.  You know how you do geography at school and you study maps and keys?  The teacher tells you that blue is the universal symbol for water?  No brainer.  I did geography, relatively successfully I might add, and I had the map, the co-ordinates.  Geocaching?  I got this!!  I clicked the application on, got the co-ordinates and using the insipid techno voice of the GPS on my phone to navigate, we headed off. My son who had seen the map says "just go to the river Mum".  I'm like all anal and saying nooo....we have to follow the GPS. "Turn left".  Again he says, "just go to the river".  And again I persist with the insipid techno voice directions "turn right", and we get to - the river lol.  The ITV on the GPS says "2.5 kms" so we park up and start walking.  The Otaki river looks peaceful  on a beautiful summer's evening, we are all talking and chatting, laughing and watching the meandering river.  They have all learnt to swim in this river, I have many fond memories.  We check the map every now and then, it bleeps the closer you get to the treasure. "1.8km", the bleep is taking a longtime to bleep.  I kept seeing the blue ribbon on the map with a dot on the other side of it.  Suddenly the dot starts bleeping "You are here".  Here?!  I realise in horror thatMiss ITV is telling us we're here but the damn dot is bleeping over there somewhere.  I didn't make the connection until we were physically  right opposite the dot with the 'blue ribbon' of the Otaki River between us and the treasure, that we were on the wrong side of the river.  How do you tell a five year old you cant read a GPS map?  Or that you let some insipid techno voice override your common sense?  We've just walked 2.5kms and he just wants to get thedamn treasure!  I'm a Mum.  I winged it, bluffed my way out of it and said "who wants to throw stones in the river!!".

Now, if I had actually applied some logic, I would have realised that the GPS navigates, using the nearest roads to your destination, based on where you start from.  If I had actually read the map, the old fashioned way we were taught in geography, and applied my local knowledge of the Otaki area, I might have over-ridden the GPS directions and gone the right way!!  Lessons learned.  We trudged back to the carpark, laughing at being on the wrong side of the river (lots of nek minit jokes), and made plans to attack the 2.5km walk the next day.  As a consolation or a bonus I looked up another treasure and we found one down by the Waitohu reclamation ground, by the Otaki beach.  We headed over there, without Miss ITV thang's help and scrambled up the bank.  With the last of the summer light fading, my tired geocachers searched half-heartedly but the 5km walkbefore  had them beat.  They sat down dejectedly and failed to find the treasure.  My 5 year old declared he was tired and wanted to go home.  I was pretty gutted for them. 

We stopped to buy a birthday cake on the way home and my 8 year old says quietly "Mum, we suck at geocaching.".  We so do.  But we will head out again, and I will hopefully be more clued up and we will nail geocaching as a whanau.  Trials and tribulations, so they say.  Not everything is successful the first time around.  I might let them school me on what their Aunty did, and do a bit more research or at least reading of other's experiences and then we are going to dive straight back in that geocaching deep-end.  We have to, my sister is streaks ahead and "one, two three, four, I declare a geocaching war" has been set.  Geocaching game on.  The upside was the walk.  Otaki is so beautiful, the river so healing, and there is something about the sound of running water, on a still and glorious summer evening.  And my gorgeous children's laughter and chatter echoing across the land.  Memories are made of this. 

Selecting stones for throwing in the river, its the simple things for 5 year olds.

My keen, geocaching kids.  Smiling despite being on the wrong side of the river!

 

Birthday madness.

I love my kids' birthdays.  Yesterday we celebrated my youngest daughter's eighth birthday.  She woke up and I had already cooked her favourite pancake breakfast, her siblings were all seated at the table and we sang happy birthday, she opened her presents all carefully wrapped and it was a magical start to the day. :-).  Oh wait, no I must've read that magical start to an eight year old's birthday somewhere else!


Our birthday day started completely different.  My just turned eight year old daughter stumbled into my room just after 6am.  I blindly reached out to her for a cuddle, she had been banished to her bedroom at 6pm the night before for god knows what and I knew she needed the reconnecting hug.  I snuggled her into me and, still half asleep, sang happy birthday to her, morning breath and all!  Magical lol.  We let the moment last for a few milliseconds and then I told her to go wake the whanau up.  Regatta day in Porirua, and my crew of waka ama paddlers had to be breakfasted, changed, packed and ready to go in under an hour.  No small feat.  The eight year old ripped open presents on my bed, I plaited two sets of ponytails, bellowed at the older kids to pack the lunch I'd made the night before and fill the water bottles, washed and changed myself, thought about breakfast, flagged it and assumed everyone had eaten.  We left at 6.52am.  Only seven minutes late.


We reached the petrol station where the teams were meeting, I did a quick stocktake.  No one had had breakfast, my youngest son had no jacket and no shoes, the chilly bin for lunch looked strangely like a bright yellow PaknSave bag, and we had one water bottle - by default, it was leftover from the last outing.  Inwardly damning my lack of follow up before we left, I handed cash to my oldest son to go buy me a mocha from my favourite Streetwise coffee cart .  Caffeine.  When all else fails there is caffeine.  I went inside and stocked up on water, bought a raspberry lamington for Mr 5 for breakfast and handed more money to my oldest daughter to go buy me a mocha from my favourite Streetwise coffee cart. Duh.  Not a magical birthday start  at all!!  Saturday sports days that start at 6am will be the death of me.


The rest of the day was pretty damn good.  My paddlers did really well, enjoyed the day and got some fresh air and exercise.  I was caffeined up and enjoying the show from the side, and the five year old was ignoring all the requests not to throw stones, and was throwing stones.  We went shopping after waka ama (having made an executive decision to leave Miss 14 waving the starting flags for the races from the back of a boat in the middle of the Porirua Harbour lol) and treated the birthday girl to a birthday lunch - she chose Maccas, the 5 and 10 year old did too, I had sushi and the neverending pit of a stomach on my twelve year old son had Indian.  Nothing makes Mum's feel like they're getting something right than seeing them all happily eating.  I was exhausted though.  We made it as far as the QEII turnoff and I knew I needed to pullover.  We pulled over and the boys and I crashed in the car at the park while the girls wondered off and explored the beach.  I managed ten minutes of sleep before thoughts of water disasters, wondering children and loud family picnics woke me up.  We got home, tidied up, had leftover salad rolls for tea and then the long awaited geocaching session was on!  We geocached (see next post) and then on the way home the birthday girl got to choose her very own birthday cake from New World.  What can I say, that's how busy solo Mum's do it.

A song, a piece of cake and then one happy, exhausted eight year old crashed out on the couch.  Much love my beautiful Princess, may all your birthday wishes come true. 

Whanau4life: the next three years

So the election ran last night and the results are quite frankly mind-blowing.  No surprises really with National getting 48 percent of the party vote.  But the lack of strategic thinking from the Labour and Greens voters in Epsom allowing John Banks through was hard to stomach.  Peter Dunne!!  Winston!!  Aue.  Watching the party vote for Maori and Mana was also hard to watch.  What have we done?  It was humbling I'm sure for the Leaders of both Maori and Mana parties, and there will need to be some very serious thinking if we are to regroup, regather, and regain some real strength at the next elections.  I was pretty gutted at the lack of sentiment from Annette Sykes, in conceding the Waiariki seat to Te Ururoa (though the "sell-out" message I agreed with).  Equally though, Te Ururoa did not hold anything back in claiming his victory.  Basic tikanga missing from that equation I think, something that I thought I heard Pita hint at last night as the driver for the Maori Party going forward. 

I am seriously concerned for all my whanau for the next three years.  John Key outlined his priorities and we can expect some real hard hitting welfare reforms by Monday (thats is an exaggeration).  I just feel like weeping because to hear John Key and John Banks conceive of poverty and welfarism as a shameful blight on the Nations coffers and not as an impact on tamariki, pepi is heart breaking.  220,000 children living in poverty (fact) becomes 220,000 people on welfare (John Key turn around).  Reform welfare, solve poverty?  No John, no.  Our assets are a signature away from being sold (another exaggeration).  Choice, now I wont be able to afford the rates I currently pay for power AND the ability to have some say in that anyway will be stripped. And the discourse around cuts to the public sector, though tenth in the priority list, is something that will affect me too.  I have just spent three days in a planning meeting with State Sector Union reps from around New Zealand, and the reality of what we face as a Union whanau in the next three years was pretty palpable.  I will have to have the fortitude of an ox and its herd to get throught the cuts we know are coming, and the thousands of members it will affect.  Our strategies will be many, our hearts will be big, the mountain not completely unassailable I hope.  Policies derived from a National, United and ACT line-up for my whanau will only be bad news.
  
I didn't want to come on here and blabber on about politics, and the piece is written from my heart and not from any evidential or factual reading of anything, so if you wanted to pick at the facts I haven't got right well go on, make your day.  On a personal front, I have decided that I need to be a part of the Maori Party, not as a candidate (lol hell no!), but I need to find some way to contribute to growing the the strength I believe is still there.  I have chosen this party as best able to represent my whanau needs in the years to come.  Just know I feel incredibly sad today, and feeling much love for Aotearoa and our people.

*Once again, I wrote from the heart, didn't consult anybody and have no idea to the real truth of any fact that might be in this post.