Stream of consciousness

As I write this, it’s Saturday morning, February 12, and Kevin is in his element.  He got ahold of a few sharks that someone caught (another story there!) and he is showing the neighbor boys how to filet them, in case someone sometime would want to eat shark…?  These will be bait, likely in a few days.  In the meantime, the meat will reside in our (small) freezer….

Which reminds me to tell you the possum roadkill story. Weeks ago, we passed a possum roadkill on the highway.  Kevin had to go back to check it out. Being the former Luther bio person that he is (so am I, I might point out, and I don’t do things like this but that’s always his line) he stops for roadkills and in my experience, if the roadkill is in excellent condition (his words) he will put in in a plastic bag, put it in the trunk and then into OUR FREEZER at home to save it to take it up to Luther for somebody to stuff, for whatever reason.  (I hope you understand here how patient and wonderful a wife he has here)  So, being on the beginning of a 4 day weekend, when we don’t have a readily available excuse like Luther around, or a large freezer anywhere, I was NOT to pleased about him doing this.  He put a dead possum, in a plastic bag, in the trunk, drove to a side road (you should hear fuming coming across time and space here) and took his catch several yards behind the car in the ditch. While he was doing this, I tried to calm down and decided that it was possible this could come out to a win-win, if he was able to pluck the possum hair (has to be done while the beast is still warm) out to knit into a scarf, and leave the carcass. Well, he DID!  Peace is restored, you’ll be happy to know, and we have a good story on both of us to boot.  Now what I need to do is find out 1) if I can bring it to the US, and 2) if so, what shape it has to be in both to bring it and to use it.  Hmm, good project for today maybe? :)

  Some things certainly transcend time and space. I’m smiling remembering hearing the neighbor boys discussing with their mom who would get to sit in front, getting into the car. And I wish I’d had a camera yesterday. When driving into town to pick Kevin up, I passed the elementary school and it had just let out.  At the crosswalk, the two students were manning the crossing, and had these really cool (I thought) gates that swing out into the street to stop us drivers, or the boys would swing them back in front of the sidewalk to stop kids. And this is the transcending part (besides the guards themselves), two boys ran up to the gate hollering “keep it open, keep it open” as they were closing it (on the students) to allow me to pass.  Those of you in the bigger city might have this viewing opportunity often; living in Decorah, I have not seen it for years (since I was a crossing guard, with a lowly flag?)

Regarding school, when a child turns 5 they start school. Then.  As in, the day of, or after, their birthday. So during the first school year, students come in throughout the year.  What a headache for teachers; evidently they are considering having two “intake” dates. The comment I have heard when I mention our method of having a cut-off date for starting kindergarten is that that’s not really fair to the children that have to wait, is it? As to the school calendar, there are 4 sessions of 10 weeks, with breaks of 2 weeks in between, except for summer (ie, over Christmas and January!) when there are 6 weeks. Or something like that. And between “districts” or towns, there might be slight differences in the dates that those breaks start, but the length of time is prescribed.  So Dr. Hull’s grandson told me that he was going back to school a few days earlier than his younger cousin(both of whom live in Wellington), but they all had the same number of days so it was fair.  Next year, when NZ hosts the Rugby World Cup, school schedules will defer….as I said, some things transcend… 

The other day on my walk on the beach, I passed a tractor (green and yellow, for those who need to know) pulling a boat trailer. I thought I had told you about our beach being a road, but maybe not?  At Waitarere Beach itself, there are two roads that lead right over the sand dunes, onto the beach.  As you drive onto the beach itself, there are signs stating that this is a registered road, your car must be registered and warranted (licensed and insured, I think) and you must follow the speed limit signs.  And there are official speed limit signs, at 30 km/hr (where normal in town speed is 50 km/hr) stuck into the sand along the way. So on the far “ends” of the beach (it doesn’t end, it goes on for miles, but this refers to the end of “town” next to the beach) you’ll see cars and pick-up trucks (“utes”, another vocabulary word) with fisherpersons nearby. Anyway, I digress again..so I watched this tractor and it’s boat trailer make it’s way towards a fishing boat coming in. No boat ramp needed here!  A little later, along came two horses, being ridden pretty much all out by what looked to me like jockeys, or their trainers.  A morning workout!

Now I’d better tell you what I know about the fishing here; Kevin always reads my rough drafts, maybe this time he’ll have some editing to do!  There is surf casting, which  requires a rather huge pole and a kind of anchor thing to hold it which goes into the sand.  This pole can be used from the beach or a boat, to catch red snapper.  Then there is the flounder net, which is a 20 or 30 meter long net, about a meter (a meter is about a yard) high, and has two long poles inserted along the short ends for two people to drag through the water.  It has weights along the bottom, so as to hug the sandy ocean bottom and bring up the flounder into the net.  (They are the flat fish that lay on the bottom, with both eyes on the top side, and they are yummy!) Then there is the crab pot, which is shaped like a big tuna can but made from a nylon cord with two trap doors through which the crab unwittingly (are supposed to) go into, and a top opening through which the lucky fisherman takes them out. The Sands are now the proud owners of each of these pieces of equipment. They have NOT (yet?) bought a kontiki, which is hauled to the beach on a small trailer with it’s accompanying electric winch. The kontiki has a small electric motor with about an 8” propeller and is shaped like a big sausage, or a shark :) . It is connected to the winch by a “long line” which is how this type of fishing is referred to.  The kontiki has a timer on it, and is set to run for 15-25 minutes with another setting that allows to accommodate for the direction of the current, which is dependent upon low or high tide. As the kontiki draws the long line out away from the beach, the fisherperson (and his help?) attach the leaders with many (30?) hooks and bait to the long line, which then dangle from it about 18” under the water’s surface. Generally the line is left out there then for about an hour.  Then it’s winched in slowly, so as to allow the hooks with catch, of course, to be taken off the line as it comes in. The motor gets turned off as it gets into shallow enough water. What is hoped for is to see many red snapper. What might be seen instead are small sharks or barracuda. Of course, some of this fishing might not be particular to only NZ, maybe US residents along the ocean’s shore are familiar with these means.  Kevin is out fishing now, for crabs, because 1) it’s his day off, 2) we’re home, and 3) it’s not raining! It’s a “fine” day today, as opposed to a dull day, which is cloudy, gray.

Vocabulary lesson - an ongoing education!

nigglies = a little bit crook (crook=sick)

a correction to “grizzly” - it is not “really sick”, as I earlier wrote, but fussy, as in the baby is grizzly :)

plaster = band-aid

piss = beer; Kevin was told, “Doc, I’ve been drinking too much piss”!!!!

grommets = ear tubes

boot = trunk of car

loo = bathroom

pinch = to steal

shift = to move, as in “I should shift the car” ie from parking on the street, or to shift from one house to another

across the ditch = to Australia