Skylar and Hori

I was driving home on Tuesday night after a long day at work.  The sky was golden, you know that perfect time in the evening before the sun goes down and you watch as the gnats and moths start filling the afternoon air, and they look beautiful as they dance in the light.  I turned off the main highway to head home, and came around the corner to see a man and a woman hitch-hiking.  Now, I don’t often stop for hitch-hikers because I’ve heard the horror stories and seen too many scary movies to think that it’s a good idea, but today I was in such a good mood that I thought I’d do another good deed for the day.

As I pulled over, I could see that the man and woman were happy as could be, despite the fact that they were on the side of the road with all of their groceries and their smile only grew larger as I pulled alongside them and wound my window down.  “Hi, my name’s Ike, where are you off to”?  No need to ask if they needed a ride, they weren’t hanging out on the side of the road for the fun of it.  “Thank you so much for stopping”!  Came their reply, “We’re just trying to get home, up the road a little bit”.  “Sure, climb on in, I’ll give you a ride home”.  And with that, they started bundling in their several bags of grocery shopping and a small LPG gas tank.

“I’m Hori, and this is my partner Skylar” said the man who looked to be in his mid to late thirties, seated in the passenger seat beside me.  “Thank you so much for your kindness”.  I could tell immediately that these were humble people, just grateful that someone had stopped their journey to help them continue theirs.  I pulled out on to the road, and we continued chatting as we headed east.  Skylar and Hori had been in to town to do their weekly shop.  I was very curious about their circumstance, and they were kind enough to share with me on the trip home.

Skylar and Hori live on his family land, as ‘kaitiaki’ or, guardians, and they live a very simple life.  As we turned off the main highway and on to a gravel road, naturally my mind started to wander with a little bit of unease, especially as we began to head in to woods and the gravel road narrowed into only slightly larger than a single lane, marked with potholes galore.  The more I spoke with them, the more envious I felt of their life, tucked away in the woods living as simply as could be.  I’ve become so tethered to the world with my technology and internet that I forget what it’s like to live a simple existence, but these were two of the happiest people that I’ve met on my new adventures here in the Bay of Plenty.

Skylar and Hori farm koura (fresh water crayfish), and as they proceeded to tell me how grateful they were for my kindness they mentioned that they would bring a bag of koura to me.  I told them that it wasn’t necessary, because by the end of our miniature road trip I actually felt as lucky to come across them as they had, me.  We drove about fifteen minutes, and came to a point where the road started getting thinner and suddenly we were by the lake and they mentioned that I could turn around there.  I felt a little confused because I hadn’t recalled going past any driveway, but they insisted that we had gone right past it.

I turned the car around and we back-tracked around 50 metres and they said ‘here it is’.  I still couldn’t see what they were referring to as their driveway.  They pointed it out, and as I looked out my window, right next to the car I could see a steep trail of steps that went down in to the bush and within ten metres was engulfed in the trees!  Had they not pointed it out, there’s no way that I would have seen it.  It turns out that the steps lead down on to a strip of bush covered land with water on either side, and a ten minute walk takes them to an island of sorts which is the land and house that hori has inherited and guards to this day as his family has before him.

Hori and Skylar gathered their belongings out of my car and again thanked me for my kindness and promised that they would come and visit me at my workplace.  As I watched them trudge into the bush I thought how thankful I was to have met them in such random circumstance because they reminded me of a simpler way of life and how it can bring so much happiness.

*  I wanted so desperately to get pictures of this place that could accompany this entry, but as luck would have it this would be the one day that my phone battery ran flat!

Hairy Nipples

I remember the advice of a family member who had finished school several years before me.  “Enjoy your time at school while you’re there because once you’re a grown up, it sucks and everything changes”.  I can remember being at school and thinking at the time that this sounded like a ridiculous idea, and yet something that I should probably remember.  At the time I only had a year and a half left at school and it seemed like the day would never come.  Oh, I couldn’t wait to be done with the place that had suddenly become like a prison.

I wish there could have been someone that would have sat me down and told me squarely, that when you become an adult your entire world changes.  You’ll have wants and needs and desire to do different things that will ultimately cost you both time and money.  Your free time starts to vanish, and what you thought you knew of being busy before, suddenly pales in comparison.  Living free at home also changes because you don’t want to live under your parents roof forever (okay, secretly I wouldn’t have minded, but such is life) and then you’ll start to pay someone else rent.  Eventually you’ll realise that you’re helping someone else get ahead by paying their mortgage so you decide to go ahead and buy your own house.

You’ll be a proud home owner, but you’ll stay up at night for the first little while wondering how you’d come to land in this debt and if you’d made the right decision.  But you have right?  It’s the dream for most people, to own your own home, and make sure you do it while you’re young so you can have paid it off sooner!  Oh yes, that’s all good and dandy, but now the bank wants your money, as do the electricity and power companies.  And the insurance companies.  Don’t even get me started on the insurance companies.  You’ve got to eat, so the supermarket wants their fair share as well, and don’t forget that you’ve got also got to fuel your car and make sure it’s road worthy otherwise the police are going to want a piece of your already significantly reduced pie also.

You’ll want to keep up with the latest trends, and you’ll make deals with yourself in your mind that you can afford it, when your bank balance states otherwise.  But it’s okay, you’ll put the money back from your next pay, won’t you?  Sometimes you’ll become ill and you’ll need to pay for someone to look you over, and I reckon it was a lot cheaper ‘back in my day’.  That might be because Mum was paying for it, but that’s beside the point; it’s so expensive to be an adult!

Then you realise that hair is sprouting in strange places.  Like, from your ear, and when did the area around my nipples become so hairy?  Is that a wrinkle?  Oh lord, I should probably start looking into botox.  It can’t be all that bad right?  And at least I’ll always look pleased with, something.

Once, you could sing the entire lyrics to the Savage Garden song, ‘I Want You’, but you’ve started to notice that you’re missing whole lines and putting in lyrics that were never there to begin with, even though you’re sure you’re right and they’re completely wrong. Similarly, you may have an embarrassing encounter where you address someone by a name that doesn’t belong to them, but convince yourself that they must have lied to you in a previous meeting because that was DEFINITELY the name they gave you the last time you met.

It’s not all doom and gloom though.  You get to an age where you realise that you don’t care about what you thought mattered most before, and what seemed important once, suddenly isn’t.  You go through life with the highs and the lows and realise we’re all in this boxing match and have to take the hits with the glory at some point; we can’t always be victorious, but that’s okay.  You win some, you lose some.

You break some hearts and you get caught off guard and your heart takes a beating too, but then you find that one that’s synchronised with yours and that moment, that encounter, that journey that lead you to this point could have been paved in the bullshit you went through to get here a hundred times over, but it’s so totally, absolutely and definitely worth it.

You’re wiser now.  You now make the choices instead of having them made for you.  And eventually you’ll start to recede into an existence not completely dissimilar to the years when you were at school.  Running on the schedule of somebody else, eating what they feed you, until eventually perhaps you’ll need someone to wipe your behind again as you once did when you were a child.

There’s a long way between now and then, so instead of worrying about what the future is going to bring, simply enjoy the ride, take it all in and be thankful that for the moment, at least you only have hairy nipples.

16 weeks

I haven’t had alcohol in 16 weeks now. That’s officially the longest period I’ve gone without touching alcohol since I first started drinking. And you know what? I can’t actually say that it’s been that hard. I don’t want it to seem as though I’m discounting the fact that it’s an absolute nightmare for other people who have attempted to give it up, because that would be unfair to them. But my reality is that I have a drinking problem that I’m dealing with and something that I expected to be an absolute nightmare hasn’t been as bad as I had anticipated.

That being said though is not to say that it hasn’t been challenging, because there have times where it absolutely has been. I’ve made deals in my mind and then clearly nullified them, for example: Oh, I guess I could have just one? And then I think about the point that I came to that made me decide to give it up. Why I wanted to begin a clean and sober existence, and suddenly as though a light just came on, or someone opened the door to my house on a wintry day letting the cold air in, it hits me in the face. I’m on the right path, I just need to stay with it.

I’m so much clearer than I used to be, and that clarity is something that I was actively seeking, I just didn’t know how to attain it. The noise in my head seems like a gentle hum by comparison of what it used to be, as though I was listening to a radio station but it wasn’t quite tuned in clearly. It’s so hard to put into words exactly what I mean, but I feel like I want to share it with the world, just how much better I am as a person for choosing to live like this.

My first couple of weeks into my new life, I would drive past liquor stores and look at them and think, oh there’s the local, and perfect, it’s right on the way home! Then I’d remember my promise to myself. I took it a week at a time, and to be honest I thought that I would have failed by the time the first weekend rolled around. It had become habitual. I wouldn’t drink massive amounts on a regular basis (perhaps see this previous blog entry for context about my drinking) but if I was going to have a night on the booze, I’d make sure it was a good one. Until the next day. Soon the weeks rolled over and I found myself ticking them off on the calendar.

Everything at this table is a prop, but that is indeed alcohol!

At this point I was still nervous about the odds of me slipping back into my old habits with my old friend, alcohol, but a little more confident about where this was leading. Then it was time for my Mum to visit, and there’s my favourite drinking buddy right there, coupled with the fact that it was her birthday while she was going to be here. I let her know before her visit that I’d embarked on a new sober journey and so I wasn’t going to be drinking while she visited, but I was sure to let her know that I didn’t mind in the slightest if she wanted to have some drinks. We even went and bought a nice bottle of wine that she could have with her birthday cake. Three months later and that same bottle of wine is still sitting in the cupboard in my kitchen! Mum said she had an amazing time, and I felt as though I needed to apologise for being so boring and not having a drink with her on her birthday. She told me it didn’t even enter her mind or phase her because she enjoyed her visit so much. Phew!

So that hurdle was leapt over, but then I was going to go home to the Far North at the end of September. Yikes. How could I possibly go there, see my friends and not drink?! Absurd right? Some of the conversations were amusing, a lot of them expected. “So, you’re never drinking again? Yeah right!”. “Oh come on, you can have just one”. It doesn’t really bear repeating, if you could imagine a variation in your mind of what may have been said, it probably was. But every single person was accepting of it and my reasoning. I didn’t really need to go into great detail about it. I have friends, and not just acquaintances and that’s a nice feeling.

By this time I’d made it through various family and friend situations and I returned home with an enormous smile on my face. Is it possible that I get redemption and a pass to start over? What’s the catch? It surely can’t be this easy, I must be missing some crucial piece of the puzzle. And I kept on waiting for the cravings to begin. And it did, but only for a fleeting moment. The weather had started to get warmer, and I live at a lake where the sun sets on the balcony late into the evening. A cold beverage absorbing as much UV as possible, entertaining banter with friends and good music is an essential equation of oncoming summer, right?

I went on a road trip with friends to Thames, and enjoyed Lemon, Lime and Bitters while they consumed the golden amber of their Coronas, but I didn’t even desire it. It was at that point that I realised I had crossed the threshold. I’m still me when I’m sober. I don’t need to drink alcohol to be fun, and I get it, like, really get it. I’m still loud and fun. I still go out and have a good time. I still dance like nobody is watching. I’m just having a lot more fun the next day than I used to.

I’m loving making mocktails, and I enjoy being able to be the sober driver, the guy that will take you home at the end of the night and make sure you get there safely. I’ll listen to the same story you told me five minutes ago and react to the crucial parts of it as though I’m hearing it for the very first time because you forgot we already discussed this. And I’ll stay up all night with you if you want me to, because I’m your friend, I’m just your new sober friend. Same shell, but the software has been upgraded 😉

My favourite mocktail

Adventures in Rotoma

As I write this, I’m laying on the beach of one of the most beautiful lakes I have ever seen, and I just so have the good fortune to also call this place home. I was about to write that I am the only person occupying this little piece of paradise, but as I was about to type that, a man in a white Subaru has just invaded my lake. Yes, I’ve decided that this is my lake and he should really ask my permission before he turns his engine off. He doesn’t even appear to be dressed in the correct attire to attend my lake; khakis and a business shirt. I can only assume he’s stopped off for lunch. I’ll allow it, I suppose.

I’ve decided I love having Mondays off. It almost feels that I, and my newfound friend (or invader) are the only people alive while the rest of the worker bees tend to the hive. I quite like my time by myself, so this is rather ideal. I’ve even been for the first swim of the season and I’m glad I gave it an extra month before dipping my toes in because the water feels just perfect for swimming now. You know when you jump in sometimes and the water is so cold that it takes your breath away and what seemed like a good idea at the time suddenly isn’t? Well I’ve had no regrets thus far.

It’s just me, hanging out at Lake Rotoma

Getting rid of the tee shirt tan

Legs

So, I’ve been living here in Rotoma for four months now; I know, I know, where did the time go? And what have I been doing? Am I happy? Has the relocation worked out to be everything that I hoped it would? Let’s discuss.

Rotorua and the area as a whole is nowhere that I ever thought that I would be living. Of course I’d visited here in the past and I’d thought that it was a great area, but I didn’t imagine that this would be somewhere that I’d move to. It just seemed, to me, to be one of those places you travel through, not land in. Even right up to the moving day I had reservations going through my mind about whether this was a good decision, not only for myself personally but for Ryan and I both. Was shifting here a good idea for his, my and our relationship?

Well, I’m glad to be able to say that I love it here, and I can’t recall a time that I last felt so happy and content for such a long period of time, and that is what makes me feel validated in my decision to move here. I’ve met some amazingly interesting people along the way who have changed me and contributed to my happiness. Moving to a new location is such a daunting decision to make, but I’ve come a long way past the notion of worrying what other people think about me, or even if they’re going to like me. I’m just fortunate that the people that I have met have been so accepting and inclusive, otherwise I could imagine that I would have struggled integrating into their world and my newfound home.

Ryan and I live in a house that is a half hour drive away from Rotorua. In the morning we both head in different directions; he heads east towards Whakatane, while I go West for Rotorua and we meet back in the middle in time for dinner. We’re just at the entrance to the lake, and it lends itself to the perfect little walking trek so that we can often get in our exercise before we begin the working day. We moved here in the middle of winter, and I have never lived somewhere so cold in my life. I’m quite the wuss when it comes to temperature. Very Goldilocks. I don’t like it too cold, and I don’t like it too hot, so I was devastated when on the second day of being here I woke to find a blanket of ice outside on the lawn. Fortunately it started warming quickly, but lately you’d be forgiven for thinking that it was still a little wintry what with the cold snap in the wind.

The top of my car

The top of my car

Down by the lake

Ice!

A swan on the lake

Lake Tarawera Falls

Lake Okataina

Morning stroll around Lake Rotoma

Morning at Lake Rotoma

Morning at Lake Rotoma

I also appreciate that this place is so central to a lot of great things. Did you know I got to see snow a couple of months ago? I know that sounds really country bumpkin to say, but I have never seen falling snow. Ryan and I went to the snow back in ’07 on Mount Ruapehu, but it wasn’t falling and so I decided to ask him to take a picture while I scooped a heap of it up and threw it up in the air. He has the picture printed in his office at work, me with a dreaded look on my face as I realised the idiocy of my idea right before it landed on my head. It wasn’t soft and fluffy like in the movies. It was hard and lumpy, like coming out of a chilly bin that you use to cool your drinks at the beach in summertime, where it’s solidified in to one icy mass. Well anyway, as we were driving to our friends in Mangaweka we were headed across the Desert Road and the snow began to fall. Only a light powdering, but enough to fill me with glee and make me squeal like a little girl.

Snow on the Desert Road

Yesterday, I asked Ryan if he wanted to go and get ice cream. While he was in the States last month, my friends and I took a road trip to Thames. We stopped off at this little place on the way home and bought the most delicious ice cream with real fruit inside, made fresh to order. Ryan agreed to go for said ice cream but didn’t know where we were headed, and to be honest I couldn’t remember how far away it was from home either. Well, it turns out that little drive is an hour and a half away, but one hungry lick of deliciousness and we were of mutual agreement: worth it.

Katikati Ice Cream

Hanging out with Ryan near Katikati

It’s these little things that I love. Ice cream and snow, and knowing that if I want to head home to the Far North, it’s not a big drama to. The sound of Tui singing, and the wind blowing through the trees. Going swimming, safe in the knowledge that there’s nothing in the lake that can eat me (except for a Taniwha perhaps?) or that Ryan can come too and his chances of drowning are in my mind reduced significantly. I do miss living in the Far North. It’s a beautiful place and I’m lucky to have grown up there, but we can always go back and visit.

Where there’s one, there’s twenty

This entry comes to you from the bustling Metropolis that is, Whangarei.  It’s been a long two days at a conference in Auckland, it’s now 10:30 at night.  As you can imagine I am a little weary and looking forward to climbing into bed, writing my blog for the day before drifting off into sweet, sweet slumber.

This entry was going to be uplifting, thought provoking and entertaining.  You’d read it and be filled with inspiration to perhaps do something tomorrow that would potentially change your existence forever.  But alas, as all good plans go ladies and gentlemen, we’ve hit a bump in the tracks and been derailed.

I am for the night staying in a Motel here.  The grounds look lovely, the girl on reception was nice.  The room is acceptable if a little small, however the cockroach I located was neither of the two. Yes, there was a cockroach and we all know that where there is one, there is twenty.  It really is the one thing that you hope won’t be greeting you when you enter the room, and to be fair it wasn’t.  All it took was for me to open the door to the minibar, so not that reassuring being that it was near a food source.

Isn’t it strange what the mind does when it sees something like that?  I’ve since had it removed and destroyed, sprayed and flushed but don’t think that didn’t stop me from checking remaining spaces in the room before turning down the entire bed linen because I once read that a cockroach could survive a nuclear holocaust or something like that.  I feel like I have an all over itch, and that’s simply because of something that I have imagined as a result of seeing that one cockroach.

Coincidentally, while I was attending a conference yesterday, the speaker that was on stage held up a pink post-it note.  He then told the room that prior to starting the session he had randomly placed a pink post-it note, like the one he was holding, under a chair in the room.  The person that had this under their chair would have to go on to the stage with him and demonstrate what we had just learned.  The room was immediately filled with gasps and sighs, and nervously people started getting out of their chairs and inspecting the underside of the one that they were sitting on.  For a moment my body froze in place, my eyes widened, my pulse quickened and I resigned myself to the fact that I’m unlucky so it’s definitely going to be me.  I didn’t get out of my chair, I simply held my breath and reached underneath from the left and ran my fingers along it, and then over to the right hand side.  I was actually safe! The room suddenly emptied of gasps of panic and filled with sighs of relief.

As we all turned back to the stage, our speaker drew a large smile across his face, still holding the pink post-it note in his hand.  He then revealed that there was no hidden note under any chair, but it was simply a demonstration that the mind can quickly imagine and create the worst case scenario from not only a pink post-it note, but an invisible pink post-it note.

So, I’ll apply that learning here.  There might very well be an entire colony of cockroaches ready to do the macarena across my unconscious body, but until I see them with my own eyes, they simply don’t exist.

Sidenote:  I’ll absolutely be giving this place a hideous review on Trip Advisor, but let’s get through this night first eh?

Today sounds like…

We started building the tempo with yesterdays song, so let’s crank it up another notch!  In 2012 Ryan and I attended San Francisco Pride and fortunately one of the performers that I had the pleasure of seeing was former Pussycat Doll, Jessica Sutta.  In 2011 Jessica released a song called ‘Show Me’ and seeing her perform it made me fall in love with the song instantly.

It talks about being in a relationship but that it involves work and that you can’t just expect love to be given, you have to show that you want it and what you’ll do to get it.  It’s driven by a great pop beat, synthesizers galore and Jessicas vocals, so I love it!  You can watch the video for ‘Show Me’ by clicking the image.

Ghosts from the past

The last couple of weeks have been fantastic for me to catch up and reconnect with people that I have lost touch with, not through any particular incident, but because we’ve all just become so very busy with life.  It really does suck being an adult sometimes, responsibilities and such you know?  And I don’t even have children.  Phew.

Over the past week I got over a grudge and reconnected with my Mum after a ‘disagreement’ that only one of us was aware of (see The Grudge) oops, attended a wedding on Friday and saw numerous faces that I hadn’t seen in a long time, received messages from friends that I haven’t hung out with in a while that would like to, attended a Bank Manager conference in Auckland which saw me catching up with people that I have met at previous meetings and trainings, and tonight at an event  bumped into someone that I haven’t seen in person in nine years.

I’ve decided that this year I’m going to try and give more time to my friends, and complain less about the time that I don’t have anymore because “I’m so busy with my career”.  Wah wah.  It has been fortunate for me that I have met people who haven’t given up on me just yet, and if that’s you I thank you!  I’ve met some great people through my friend Richard James, social butterfly of Auckland, and I look forward to meeting many more.

If you’re reading this, when did we last see each other in person and if it has been a long time, why?  What would you like to do when we see each other next?  Let’s make it happen.  Let me know what you think.

Today Sounds Like…

Let’s pick up the pace just a little bit.  Remember that massive song, ‘Clarity’?  If you don’t, where have you been living?  Every one, their Mother and their pet Llama knows that song.  Well, you may not know that the singer on that track is 24 year old British singer, Louisa Rose Allen who goes by the stage name, Foxes.

Foxes re-released a brand new recorded version of her song ‘Let Go For Tonight’ and I love it.  It’s drama, it’s intrigue, it’s pop, it’s everything.  Click the single image to watch the video on Youtube.

Auckland Pride Festival

Tonight I was fortunate to be in Auckland for the switching on of the rainbow lights to mark the closing week of the Auckland Pride Festival. This is my first New Zealand Pride after attending San Francisco Pride in 2012, and I am so thrilled to have been able to make it to now two events, and by the time the close rolls around on Saturday night I will have then made it to at least four.  Not bad for a country bumpkin from the North!

Sometimes as a loud and proud out gay-man living in a rural community it can feel as though I am on a ship that is traveling down a river, against the current that is taking all of the other boats in the opposite direction.  We’re all in the same stream but I just can’t seem to steer my boat the right way, and occasionally I’ll bump into other boats along the way and the Captain might point it out to me.  

To say that it’s bothered me that people often see my sexuality before they see me would be an understatement.  It’s often on the fringe of discussion and has made me uncomfortable because nobody really wants to feel as though they don’t fit in. I’m lucky to have found people along the way that accept me for who I am and all of my quirks. There have been times when I wished I wasn’t as loud as I am, or speak the way that I do, but over the years I’ve learned to accept myself for me, and that acceptance of myself came from finding other people who loved those things too.  

This is what I love about the Pride Festival.  Being here has reminded me that I am part of a large community that I have for the most part kept away from, mainly because of geography. Standing on the steps of the Auckland Museum tonight listening to history-maker Louisa Wall speak resonated with me, as did being there to watch as Tamati Coffey flipped the switch to light up the Auckland Museum.

This community feels welcoming, inviting and just like coming home.  I feel so very full of Pride!  No matter your sexual orientation, always hold your head high.  In reference to a great lyric from the Heather Small song, “What have you done today to make you feel proud”?

Today Sounds Like…

In 2012 Ellie Goulding released her album, ‘Halcyon’.  She then re-released this in 2013 with extra tracks and one of my favourites from this set is called ‘My Blood’.  I hadn’t heard this song for a little while and then it just kept popping up over the past week so I definitely take it as a sign that it’s meant to be on the list.  I love how her voice sounds different in the verses to that beautiful airy but powerful almost wood-wind instrument quality she usually sings with.  Click the image to listen to ‘My Blood’ on Spotify.

The Simple Life

I miss my old, simple life.  This is a tale of reflection, an advisory of how we can only move forward and never back as much as we wish we could, and a yearning of days gone by.

—-

Friday nights, if I wasn’t heading out to catch up with friends and drink far too much to feel any sort of good the next day, I’d get through the front door of our house after walking five minutes to get home.  I’d get out of my work uniform and watch TV while I waited for Ryan to get home.  I’d see him pull his car up on to the front lawn and wish he wouldn’t because I’d already asked him about five times not to park there because the lawn is dying, but he’d forgotten and done it anyway.

He’s walking in to the house and I say, “Hi sweetness, how are you?” and we take a few minutes to catch up over the things that had either been the making or breaking of our day.  I watch him as he removes his tie while taking a big sigh and releasing from all of the frustrations, or listen as he excitedly talks about all that he has accomplished.

Maybe I’ll mow the lawns tonight while it’s still light outside?  Or we could head down to the video store and pick out some movies to watch together on the couch?  But we’ll learn from the last time we hired too many and didn’t end up watching them because we forgot that we’d invited people over the next day.

He’s heading to the kitchen now to make himself a snack and I’m picking up our work clothes.  I think there’s enough to put a load in the laundry now, and if I get them done tonight then we won’t need to worry about it again all weekend.  “Have you fed Lola today?”.  “Yes, we really need to cut down on how much food we’re giving her, she’s getting quite large”.

I watch him as he prepares one of his snacks.  Cheese on crackers.  “Sweetness, don’t eat too much or you won’t be hungry for dinner.  What do you feel like?”.  “Oh, why don’t we just fend for ourselves tonight, it’s been a long week.  Please tell me we haven’t got anyone coming over tonight.”  “No, it’s just you and I.”

The sun is setting now, and I’m about to put the lawnmower away.  Thankfully I beat the sun, and I managed to get them done on one tank of gas!  The miniature flaxes are getting a bit out of control, I should probably cut them back soon.  I start to roll the lawnmower back to the garage and rap my fingers on the window.  He’s sitting on the couch playing xbox and as he turns and our eyes catch one anothers I poke my tongue out and he smiles.

We head down to the video store and we still haven’t learned from the time before.  We’ve picked up five movies that we want to see, but it’s okay because they’re week-long hires.  We’ve seen one of them but we both really liked it and want to see what it looks like on Blu-Ray.  It’s been a couple of hours since his crackers so we decide that I’ll have chinese takeaways for dinner, and we’ll swing by McDonalds so he can pick up a ten piece pack of chicken nuggets and a coke zero.  I feel the quickly passing wave of frustration wash over me because I know that every time he orders the nuggets they make us pull around to the carpark in the front as they cook them fresh and I just want to get home and have my dinner.

We’re set up in the lounge now, our meal of choice spread out before us and I’ve decided to let him pick the first movie that we watch.  I know he doesn’t want to watch this one, but he picks a movie that I selected because he knows that this is the one that I would have picked and he’s considerate like that.

Half an hour in and I pick up my phone and start checking my Twitter and Facebook.  I can see him out of the corner of my eye, watching me frustratedly because I should be paying attention to the movie.  I’ve always been bad like that, no attention span.  It’s really warm in here, so I remove my socks and slouch into the couch.  I’ve put my phone down because I can sense that I’m irritating him.

The movie finishes and we say to each other, we’d better clean up the mess so we don’t have to do it in the morning.  It’s late and we’re not sure if we can watch another one tonight, so we decide to head to bed with our laptops and check out what’s happening on the internet.  Lola is running towards the bedroom from the kitchen and we both laugh and make a joke about how she’s so heavy that she sounds like a dog coming down the hallway.  She slows down as she approaches the window sill in front of our bed, and we watch as she leaps upwards, disappearing behind the curtains, trailing shapes along the length of the window in the soft light.

It’s one of the rare occasions that it’s happened, but Ryan closes his laptop lid and the glare disappears from his half of the bed.  I don’t want to feel like the last to be up, so a couple of minutes later I shut mine as well, discard the extra pillows to the chair in the corner with a swift heave and shuffle down to the end of my bed, cosying in to my pillow and draping my arm across his chest.

“Are you sleepy?” I ask him.  “Yes,” he replies, “do you want to go to the market in the morning?”.  “That’d be cool,” I say, “what time?”.  “I’m going to sleep in, so probably around ten, ten thirty”.  “That sounds good sweetness.  I love you very much.”, “I love you too”.  “Sleep sweetly, sweetness.  Goodnight Lola”.  And as I lay there listening to cars in the streets across town, the last thought that enters my mind is of the laundry that I’ve forgotten to hang out and will need to go through another wash cycle in the morning.

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Yes, I miss the days when life was simple.  I hate that we don’t live together anymore and I know I did appreciate the times when we lived in Kaitaia but I have an overwhelming feeling that there were so many missed opportunities to just love one another and the life that was there.  We can never go back and we’re growing as individuals and as a couple, but I would give anything to return to those moments and say let’s just stay here in our own little cocoon forever and never let the world in.

I don’t like living alone and this ‘me’ is a stranger to the ‘me’ from seven months ago that I sometimes feel like I don’t even know anymore.  But I’m on a path, and the path is never meant to be easy, but we will always have the memories to remind us of where ‘home’ really is.

Today Sounds Like…

I owe the playlist a few songs as I’ve been a bit busy over the last couple of days.  You can listen to each of the songs in Youtube by clicking their accompanying album or single picture, or on Spotify via the link below!

First up is a fantastic track called ‘Heartbreak Warfare’ by John Mayer.  I’ve always liked the majority of John Mayers music, but this is my favorite and comes from his 2009 album, ‘Battle Studies’.  “If you want more love, why don’t you say so”?  I love it.

Secondly comes a song called ‘Click, Click, Click’, released on the 2008 album ‘The Block’ by New Kids On The Block, or NKOTB.  I know what you’re thinking; “What the hell”?  This song and a few tracks from this album were actually quite good, so give it a listen before you judge!

And finally, in 2007 Sophie Ellis-Bextor released her album ‘Trip The Light Fantastic’.  The album was good and the song ‘If You Go’ is one in particular that I go back to quite a bit.  Enjoy!

 

Bad things happen when Tom Hanks goes to sea

Remember Wilson?  Tom Hanks went crazy in that movie, Castaway, and had a bloody handprint on a deflated volleyball that he made into a face and he called it Wilson because that was the brand of ball it was.  Then he started talking to it and it became his best (and only) friend until they were separated at sea and he ends up calling “WILSON!!  I’M SORRY WILSON!”  I admit, I became a little teary eyed for poor old Wilson.  Then there was that movie he was in last year called Captain Phillips.  Great movie, but I really think nothing good can come of Tom Hanks going out to sea.My question to you today is…

If you were lost at sea, you get to choose three items that will magically wash up on your island because you willed the island Gods to make it happen.  What three items would you choose, and why?

Today sounds like… 

In 2011 I discovered a great artist by the name of Moxiie who released her first independent EP, Jungle Pop that year.  The album contained the track, ‘Dancing In Dirt’ which I would love to have the pleasure of introducing you to if you are yet to hear it. I love the beat here, her vocals remind me of the fantastic Wynter Gordon and this song was a standout for me on her EP.  You can listen to the song via Youtube below, and as always, grab it on the official blog playlist on Spotify.

‘Seven Degrees of Change’ now has a Spotify Playlist.  Click the logo on the right to access it on Spotify where you can find all of the previous ‘Today Sounds Like’ songs.  Don’t forget to hit the ‘Follow’ button in the app so you’ll get the all of the future additions automatically.

The Grudge

I’m the kind of person that holds grudges… but not for very long.  I’m useless at it, no commitment.  I feel that to be able to hold a grudge properly, you really need to dedicate yourself to the cause.  No contact whatsoever with the person involved, and that includes messaging either by text or social media.  And that’s why I’m terrible at holding grudges.

It also doesn’t help that I don’t believe in holding a grudge.  Nobody likes to go to sleep on a disagreement, so I try not to.  I hadn’t seen my Mum in nearly two weeks because in my mind, we were in a fight, minus the fighting.  I have learned that you just need to accept people for who they are, their quirks and personality.  Trying to change anything about them means that you’re trying to change who they are, and if you do that and succeed, are they still the person that you loved in the beginning or a shell that you moulded into what you wanted to see?

Lesson learned.  Don’t hold grudges because life is short and you want to spend time on this earth loving the ones that you are with.  Accept them for who they are and what they stand for and understand that you can’t change everyone.  Well, that’s it for me though.  Doesn’t mean I won’t get frustrated every now and then, but I like to think I’m on the right track.

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Today sounds like… 

‘I Am The Best’ by Korea’s 2NE1!  Holy moly I love this song and I don’t even know what they’re saying, except for the words “Oh my god” and “billion dollar baby”.  I love it because of the beat, the attitude and especially the hot video! I used this song in my Zumba classes last year because it’s fun and infectious.  It was bound to land on this blog at some point, so enjoy it for what it is; fun!  You can watch the video below and subscribe to the playlist that it’s now on on Spotify!

‘Seven Degrees of Change’ now has a Spotify Playlist.  Click the logo on the right to access it on Spotify where you can find all of the previous ‘Today Sounds Like’ songs.  Don’t forget to hit the ‘Follow’ button in the app so you’ll get the all of the future additions automatically.