Carpetted

An old, comfortable if shabby couch – free to a kind home

It’s now Monday July 24, 2023. Kia ora!

Well, it’s carpet laying day today, and the carpet layers turned up promptly at 8 am.  I got up well before 7 am and was duly breakfasted and showered before they came. The builders came a little later, and continued their work of pulling up the existing carpet and nailing down floorboards.  I moved more things from the master bedroom into the ensuite bathroom, and moved essential stuff downstairs, such as meds, toothbrush, newspaper, mobile phone and charger, computer and other essentials.

JD and I went up to Simmer Café for morning tea again.  It’s very cold this morning, and raining off and on, so we drove up rather than walking. I remarked that there weren’t many people there, but JD reminded me that it was only 9 am!  We had our usual oat milk lattés, and I had a cinnamon pinwheel (freshly baked), while JD had his usual – a blueberry muffin. Delicious. When we returned home, we went downstairs to come into the house. I am quite comfortable in one of the downstairs bedrooms, with the heater on, of course.

Yesterday afternoon JD made a superhuman effort to clear the dining room table, and other papers that he’d managed to hang onto. I say superhuman, but he’d left it to the last minute, and I was very cross with him.  We photographed and packed up the large jigsaw puzzle that was on top of the table.  I proceeded to establish that we can take the extension out of the table. What a lovely dining table it is. It’s quite wide, so you can have it as a table for four; you can put up the folding extensions at either end and have a table for six, or you can put the extension in the middle and have lots of people sitting there, providing you can find enough chairs that are safe to sit on!

I hope that JD can be tidier after this. 

Last night we watched the first episode of the new series of Brokenwood Mysteries; I managed to stay awake for the whole episode, and I also picked the guilty party.  Fern Sutherland has changed her hair – or is she wearing a wig? The detective now sports some grey hair, has gained more weight, and has rather ugly reading glasses. Having said that, I thought it was quite a good episode, with lots of Shakespeare!

Today the weekly Covid 19 report is published. It is as follows: there have been 3764 new cases of Covid-19 reported in New Zealand over the past week and 24 further deaths.

Of the new cases, 1844 were reinfections – close to half. One-hundred-and-nineteen people are in hospital, and three in intensive care. The seven-day rolling average of cases has dropped to 535.

Five deaths were reported in Auckland, six from Waikato, one from Bay of Plenty, one from Hawke’s Bay, one from the Wellington region, three from Nelson-Marlborough, three from Canterbury, one from West Coast and three from Southern.

Last week saw 4332 new cases reported and 13 further deaths.

It’s now Tuesday July 25^th.

Last night we were back to some kind of normality, in the main living room, anyway. I was going to put china back in one china cabinet, but it’s hard to get to this china!  We discovered that although the Sky cable has been cut (by mistake), we could log into TVNZ+ On Demand using my login, so although it wasn’t very consistent, we were able to watch Nicola Walker in Unforgotten (Series 4).  I think I have seen it before, but no matter, it’s good to see it again. JD thinks we don’t need the Sky cable; I still like to watch some things on Eden, or Prime, or Bravo;  it seems we can get Te Whakaata Māori on screen and select something to view.  It would be nice to not need the Sky cable any more.

This morning the carpet layers were due to come at 8:30 am. Accordingly I set my alarm to 7 am. It was still dark, but I got the newspaper in, started the dishwasher, and made some breakfast. I duly showered and washed my hair and got out of the master bedroom by 8 am, so there would be free access for the builders to move remaining furniture, and the carpet layers to finish their work.

JD and I went up to Simmer Café for morning tea again (to get away from the noise!) Actually I will miss this, in a way. We enjoyed café lattés again, and I had a cheese scone while JD stuck to his favourite – a blueberry muffin.  I must admit, they do them rather well.

Now I’m warm and comfortable in one of the downstairs bedrooms, before the big task of putting things together again.  Over morning tea we discussed where to put the lovely rugs, mostly given to us by a cousin of JD’s (now deceased). For years we had placed them to hide wear and blemishes in the old carpet; now we have different choices, and what a joy it is to have them. Perhaps I can feel a little proud of our house again, and remind myself that I also own it.

It’s now Wednesday July 26^th.

Last night it was supposed to be very cold (very cold in my book is below 10°C), but I wore fleece pyjamas and was rather too warm in the night. What a strange problem to have.  I got up early to go to hymn singing (which is really a bit of a lie-in compared to the last two days; I try to get away by 8:55 am), but as I was eating a quick slice of toast for breakfast I  read an email to say it had been cancelled, so I needn’t have hurried after all.  It’s pretty toasty in the master bedroom, although I believe it’s very cold outside. It’s raining heavily off and on, but now this afternoon it’s sunny and a little warmer.  After hymn singing I was debating whether to go to an exercise class at 12 noon (there’s a bit of a gap between that and hymn singing), but I think I won’t be going anywhere today.  I am really tired today, but I have done a bit more unpacking: I’ve moved remaining things out of the ensuite bathroom; and I’ve unpacked and restored precious things in one of the china cabinets. That feels like quite an achievement.  I’ve also put some things in there that were formerly in the other cabinet, and so there’s more room on the kitchen table.

I should put back things that were on top of this cabinet, but I should really clean the silver before I do so.

I am getting a better picture of where things are.  Again, I am wondering whether to throw away things of JD’s that I don’t know what they are or what they’re for.  I asked him for my suitcase that I took to Australia in January and to Taiwan in May; he took this without asking, and now it contains papers, I’m told. What happens next time I want to go away?

We also got more Persian rugs in from the garage, and have placed them in different spots, since they’re no longer needed to hide stains or specially worn passages of the old carpet.

I have also cleaned the downstairs shower now that it has a new fan, and got rid of some cobwebs.

Yet again, the weather’s not too wild here, but it’s snowing in places in the South Island and in Auckland the Harbour Bridge is closed because of wind – again! Before the last year or two I don’t remember the Auckland Harbour Bridger ever being closed because of wind.

It’s now Thursday July 27^th.

This morning I went to my Thursday morning singing, which was lovely, of course, although I had a really croaky voice to start with. Thankfully this cleared up.

Afterwards JD and I shared a pizza for lunch. Then we went out to Kenepuru to return the carpet sample we still had, and bought some new curtains for the mezzanine area.  We also swapped the part JD had bought to fix the lamp I’ve been trying to get repaired. We bought some tape to hold rugs down, since one of our rugs has a tendency to turn up, providing a tripping hazard.

Overseas, some strange things are happening. In Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu is persisting with a judicial overhaul that would further limit powers of the Israeli Supreme Court to deal with his corruption, despite significant ongoing protests, which are now being met with tear gas. In Ukraine, fighting persists, although Putin has raised the military recruitment age to 30. In Greece and other parts of Europe very high temperatures and forest fires persist, forcing evacuations. Sinead O’Connor has died, and Kevin Spacey has been cleared of sexual assault. Mitch McConnell froze for several seconds (it seemed like a long time) during a press conference he was holding. Actually that’s what happened to me when I first became ill – I couldn’t speak. Just saying.

In the US everyone is on Trump indictment watch, but it hasn’t happened yet. Lawfare really got into the weeds with a podcast about the practicalities of perhaps running four trials of Donald Trump, and the risk of Republicans politicising the effort to hold him accountable. He’s “running” i.e. standing for president, after all.  Actually he’s standing for the Republican nomination as their candidate for President. He’s polling far ahead of any other Republican candidate, so far, although Asa Hutchison, a candidate for President, believes Trump won’t be the Republican candidate. That may be wishful thinking, although there are differing views of Trump’s electability vis á vis his electoral support.

In Nigeria, an army coup has overthrown the “democratically” elected leader. In Spain’s recent election, the far-right Vox party did not do as well as expected.

It’s now Friday July 28^th.

This morning the builders fixed a number of things around the house, the main one being adjusting doors as necessary for the new carpet and underlay.  Consequently I breakfasted in the kitchen, rather than in bed as I usually do. They also installed brackets to secure a bookcase and a china cabinet against their walls. I unpacked more china and put it in the china cabinet. They’ve also put a new hinge on the letter-box opener, and installed a new toilet-roll holder in the guest bathroom. Now JD will have no excuse for not changing the toilet toll!  JD has put up the new curtains we bought yesterday; they’re “ivory”, not white, but they’re a bit lighter than the previous curtains, and not as wide.  Perhaps we’ll change them – they weren’t expensive, and we have to go to Bunnings again.  The pantry door in the kitchen has been fixed, and the front door too – it used to stick, sometimes.  The doors to the ensuite bathroom, and between the kitchen and living room, have been adjusted so they shouldn’t rattle any more. 

This morning I went to a NZ Film Festival movie on behalf of a friend, Saint Omer. It was a French movie, with subtitles, where I chose to read the subtitle instead of trying to understand the French. The dialogue was very important, and I didn’t want to miss any of it.  The movie centred around a court case of a young woman from Senegal who had killed (and admitted killing) her baby daughter.  This case was watched by another young woman, also from Senegal, who was pregnant with her first child. It was a complex story, with several interweaving strands, resulting in almost a desire to see it again and understand it better. The material, however, was disturbing.  It’s very disturbing when a mother kills her child/ren; the film had shots from a film of Medea, too. I had studied Euripides’ play Medea when I was at university. It certainly raised disturbing issues. While it’s very upsetting when an angry boyfriend kills a child, it’s even more disturbing when a mother kills her child. Alongside this we have daily evidence from the Lauren Dickason trial, where she is on trial for killing her three daughters.  I am very upset indeed by the idea of children not being safe and protected at all times: there’s a new podcast series entitled “I love my children, but…”. I now feel strangely normal.  I loved (and still love) my children enormously: they didn’t ask to be born, I used to keep reminding myself. Children now seem very vulnerable again.

Afterwards I had lunch with my friend and her sister and her husband, and we talked about the film, and what it meant.

It’s now Saturday July 29^th.

Today, thankfully, we don’t have to do anything.

Last night we had Egg Foo Young for tea – delicious. The place where JD buys it provides some rice as well, and furthermore, there’s enough for two nights.  Last night we watched another episode of the latest series of Unforgotten. The lovely Nicola Walker’s character has died, and she’s been replaced with a difficult woman who has issues of her own (her husband told her he’d been unfaithful; she’s devastated, she’d had the “perfect marriage” until now. Ha!) the lovely Sunny Khan doesn’t like the new “gov” (not “ma’am”), and she has made no effort to get to know the staff or get along with them. So although in this series we miss the lovely shots of Cambridge, which are replaced by ugly wind machines, it’s still well worth watching.  Of the odd things worth watching on TVNZ on demand, this is one of them.

In other news, the very troubled Irish singer Sinead O’Connor has died, aged 56. We presume she took her own life, as did her 17 year old son Shane recently.  While this must have been devastating, she still has three living children, who now have to deal with the deaths of two people close to them.

A Russian right=wing blogger has been arrested; the foreign minister in China has disappeared; in Nigeria, an army coup has taken power and deposed the democratically elected president; and so on and so on.

Yesterday there was more shocking news about Donald Trump, with serious charges added to the Mar-a-Lago/classified documents indictment. There are now 41 charged (or perhaps 42?) in this case alone, and another person has been indicted, a Carlos de Oliveira, a maintenance manager at Mar-a-Lago. It seems that Trump wanted security footage, as held by a server, destroyed. He’s accused of impairing justice by destroying footage of handling of classified documents.  This is serious stuff, whatever his supporters may think.

Oh, and Mitch McConnell just froze for several seconds during a press conference. I like to joke that he choked on the word ”bipartisan”, but he was unable to speak for several seconds and was escorted away, although he returned soon afterwards, saying he was fine.  There is concern about him, however.

In Ukraine, it seems the counter-offensive by Ukrainian forces is ramping up; Putin has cancelled the grain deal, whereby he allowed Ukrainian grain to be shipped out from Crimea to African and other nations. As if the world didn’t already have huge problems.

Today we went to Peppermill Café for lunch and had yummy Belgian waffles with our oat milk lattés.  But we couldn’t get a new fastener for a kitchen cupboard, because neither of us had photographed or measured the existing one, so that’s a shame. Back in Johnsonville, JD decided he needed to get petrol, and we ran into a traffic jam.  It has been a fine, sunny day, after a very cold start, and now it is getting cold again. One could get quite used to this climate! We can cope with very cold evenings and mornings if it’s fine and sunny in between, with little wind and no rain.

That’s it for now, Slava Ukraini! Ngā mihi nui.