Have registered for the 2011 OXFAM Trailwalker - 100ks in 36 hours and a commitment to raise $2,500. The fundraising is the most daunting part of it.
Finding time to train is going to be pretty hard also. Tonight, we went bowling and I walked home. It took me a brisk hour, so it must have been about 7 kilometres. It was also dusk - 9pm to 10pm. Walking at night will exercise my awareness of where my feet are (I can't remember the technical term for it).
Total k's practice so far = @27.5ks over 4 walks. Am probably going to wear out my shows before April's Trailwalker event. The bush tracks will be bliss after the hard concrete.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Sunday, December 19, 2010
OXFAM Trailwalker - Shall I or shan't I?
Just took myself for a test drive to see how far I could walk in one hour. The OXFAM Trailwalker is 100k in 36 hours.
I walked briskly around Bucklands Beach Penisula - great excuse to get out and walk along the beaches. It took me 1 hour and 5 mins to get home again. Then clocked it in the car = 8ks.
So, at 7 kilometres an hour, I should be able to do 100ks in 15 hrs, excluding toilet stops, snack breaks, blister-aid and injury.
The training schedule on the OXFAM website is daunting. There's no way I can find up to 8 hours to go for a walk just for training. I'll have to pick up jogging again, interspersed with walks.
Next thing is to get the team committed and register, then start fundraising (I think that's the hard part).
I walked briskly around Bucklands Beach Penisula - great excuse to get out and walk along the beaches. It took me 1 hour and 5 mins to get home again. Then clocked it in the car = 8ks.
So, at 7 kilometres an hour, I should be able to do 100ks in 15 hrs, excluding toilet stops, snack breaks, blister-aid and injury.
The training schedule on the OXFAM website is daunting. There's no way I can find up to 8 hours to go for a walk just for training. I'll have to pick up jogging again, interspersed with walks.
Next thing is to get the team committed and register, then start fundraising (I think that's the hard part).
Friday, December 3, 2010
Another toddler kicked to death
Good editorial piece from Dita de Boni in the New Zealand Herald on the killing of Karl Perigo-Check. Made me remember a poem I wrote many years ago upon over-hearing the poor little boy in the house in front getting a bollocking for something similar. In that case at that time of day it was the mother who was the abuser (which is not to say that the father wasn't as abusive also). They moved soon after that incident. Of course I rang Child Services immediately and held the phone out for them to hear the tirade.
Mothers
the mother is screaming you poohed your fuckin pants again I’m fuckin sick of it you’re not a baby anymore you know you’re not allowed to do that at kindy are you are you
the mother gave her kids up to the father even though he’s hardly fit certainly no more than she but she felt they were stealing her life she wants to work she wants her new boyfriend to stick around she doesn’t want to lose her house to debt she doesn’t want to lose her house
despite the likelihood of sons turning out like dads the mother wants her kids to have a relationship with their father now he’s out of jail for kidnapping assaulting and raping her they can see him in person do things with him
her son’s just come out her pride and joy oldest boy left the Air Force taken his beau and went home to mum but she’s not having him her religion’s against it never mind her younger days when she swung any way and got paid for it
Copyright (2001)
Mothers
the mother is screaming you poohed your fuckin pants again I’m fuckin sick of it you’re not a baby anymore you know you’re not allowed to do that at kindy are you are you
the mother gave her kids up to the father even though he’s hardly fit certainly no more than she but she felt they were stealing her life she wants to work she wants her new boyfriend to stick around she doesn’t want to lose her house to debt she doesn’t want to lose her house
despite the likelihood of sons turning out like dads the mother wants her kids to have a relationship with their father now he’s out of jail for kidnapping assaulting and raping her they can see him in person do things with him
her son’s just come out her pride and joy oldest boy left the Air Force taken his beau and went home to mum but she’s not having him her religion’s against it never mind her younger days when she swung any way and got paid for it
Copyright (2001)
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Found Lost Kitten
This is the 'mog shot' of the kitten that was lost but now is found. Lost by someone else that is. Found by us outside the local library.
She's ours now. Not that I wanted a cat. They make me itch. But, actually it's been great for our daughter. The kitten's an energetic playmate, curious and tolerant. A few scratches, the occasional flea bite and the smell of the kitty litter is a small price to pay for the laughter she inspires.
Of course she'll be spayed and hung with a bell - no native bird killer this one we'll allow to be. One life span only - no offspring. That's a cats life now.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Parental favouritism causes rifts for adult children
It's validating to find some research that confirms my own hypothesis about the nasty rifts and grudges going on in my family. Research by Pillemer and Suitor of Purdue University in the States has found parental favouritism is still causing problems among siblings even when they're well in to middle-age.
This is so true in my family. And, just as the research found - I ended up seeing a counsellor. Two and a half years have passed and one of my sisters is maintaining her course to steer forever away from me. As the years go on, I feel even more convinced that I need to accept that she may as well be dead to us; since that's what she wants. But I am still angry and hurting, not because she's cut me off - I don't think she's ever had anything over me before that she could use to hurt me. But once I had a child - then she had something. Finally she could strike a blow powered by years of resentment. Like a Grimm fairytale, she swept her daughter up and whisked her far away never to play with her younger (by 1 year) cousin again; denying them a relationship as cousins; denying my daughter the closest person she would ever have to a sibling (given that we couldn't have any more children).
I've been hurt by a lot of people, and I guess family you have to become immune to pretty quick and while you're young, if you're to survive. This is a whole new vulnerability I did not foresee family members would be able to exploit for kicks - hurting my child. I feel sorry for my niece also, who is equally being denied what could have been important relationships for her.
But there you go - the evidence is out. Sibling rivalry knows no end. This nastiness could go with us to the grave. At least I won't be alone in my one - I still have relationships with the rest of the family, and I have a loving partner and daughter. I have actually always been loved. And therein lies some of the difference. My poor sister, and yes I do pity her - for in her self-imposed exile, once our Mum dies she will have only her children.
This is so true in my family. And, just as the research found - I ended up seeing a counsellor. Two and a half years have passed and one of my sisters is maintaining her course to steer forever away from me. As the years go on, I feel even more convinced that I need to accept that she may as well be dead to us; since that's what she wants. But I am still angry and hurting, not because she's cut me off - I don't think she's ever had anything over me before that she could use to hurt me. But once I had a child - then she had something. Finally she could strike a blow powered by years of resentment. Like a Grimm fairytale, she swept her daughter up and whisked her far away never to play with her younger (by 1 year) cousin again; denying them a relationship as cousins; denying my daughter the closest person she would ever have to a sibling (given that we couldn't have any more children).
I've been hurt by a lot of people, and I guess family you have to become immune to pretty quick and while you're young, if you're to survive. This is a whole new vulnerability I did not foresee family members would be able to exploit for kicks - hurting my child. I feel sorry for my niece also, who is equally being denied what could have been important relationships for her.
But there you go - the evidence is out. Sibling rivalry knows no end. This nastiness could go with us to the grave. At least I won't be alone in my one - I still have relationships with the rest of the family, and I have a loving partner and daughter. I have actually always been loved. And therein lies some of the difference. My poor sister, and yes I do pity her - for in her self-imposed exile, once our Mum dies she will have only her children.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Do children still learn to splash in puddles?
The lagoon was mine alone today
my bush-soul loved the quiet
the roof of cloud holds in our heat
holds June’s arctic blast at bay
the drizzle fell south, then west
then in my face
the harakeke applauded & the wind
gave me an occasional shove
What kind of city is this?
Where are its million people?
The rain is not acidic (yet)
In India they’d celebrate
Be out to walk among it
Here, I wonder
do children still learn to splash in puddles?
my bush-soul loved the quiet
the roof of cloud holds in our heat
holds June’s arctic blast at bay
the drizzle fell south, then west
then in my face
the harakeke applauded & the wind
gave me an occasional shove
What kind of city is this?
Where are its million people?
The rain is not acidic (yet)
In India they’d celebrate
Be out to walk among it
Here, I wonder
do children still learn to splash in puddles?
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
When Trade Me Traders See Red
Some days I regret ever hearing about Trade Me. Of course the first stories I heard were all about the amazing bargains friends were able to secure and the uncommon goods they could so easily find. My sister sold empty used CD cases, used (but clean) underpants, her children’s faded and worn clothes. It was the true tale of someone else’s trash being someone else’s treasure.
I joined in 2004 and have over 360 trades myself now. It’s five and a half years later. That should put some perspective on it. That’s on average 65 trades a year, buying or selling. I’ve accumulated 356 positive feedbacks, 1 neutral blue face, and 2 angry red faces which is about to increase by one. There have been more than four sour trades in that time, but some trades take a while to complete (or not complete) and the time limit for posting feedback elapses. Still, four traders unhappy with me is less than one a year. So, that should make me feel better. It should…
What takes me a while to get over is the nastiness that can spew forth in to my inbox when disagreements arise. Some disagreements are simple: I say ‘the goods never arrived’, they say ‘I sent them’, I say ‘can you check the address’, they say ‘yes I sent them to that address’, after waiting a lot longer I repeat ‘well they have not arrived,’ they say ‘bad luck I can’t take responsibility for New Zealand Post – tell them.’ So I go to NZ Post and they happily accept, given the Trade Me receipt and email thread, that I have a valid claim, but the sender has to corroborate the story. Should be no problem. Should be. But, so and so-I’m-operating-as-an-under-the-table-secondhand-dealer-on-Trade Me gets some twisted perspective that she’s being hard done by by me and lies to NZ Post that the goods were delivered as intended. What? It wouldn’t even have cost her a cent. What spite! Yes, I posted a red face to warn people. And, of course so does she against me.
There’s been a couple of times buyers have been unhappy with what I was selling. One time I was selling DVDs on behalf of a family member. Hmmm lesson learnt there – they were bad foreign dubbed copies. I should have watched them first, but I didn’t suspect and there was a small box full. The buyer wasn’t mean about it at all. I gave the remainder of the DVDs back to their owner. If I sell on behalf now, I check the goods first.
The latest angry face comes from a disappointed buyer who claimed that the item I sold was faulty. Damaged in transit? No, he was sure I deliberately sold it with the fault. Plus, he was unhappy that there was a piece missing which was clearly obvious from the photo pre-sale. Then he used the item and wrote again that it worked but it really wasn’t what he expected. I parried the emails politely expressing disappointment also, assuring that I’d not had any problem with the appliance myself. Weeks passed, Trade Me sent a reminder to post feedback. The buyer wrote again, ‘what should he post, he’d never had any trouble with Trade Me traders before.’ Well I have, I said. It happens. What did he want? Asked outright, he recoiled and spat, ‘you’ve got three choices: 1) give a full refund and pay to have the item freighted back; 2) give him $30 (which amounted to the cost of the freight he’d paid); or 3) do nothing and he’d post negative feedback to warn buyers to be wary of me.
It’s happened to me – I bought a bike. It was old, said to be in working order. It wasn’t. The left hand gear handle was bent, not working and the guys at the bike shop just looked at me like I was an idiot – not worth fixing they said. It was a dud trade. Ripped off. That’s the risks you take if you buy sight unseen from an online auction site from anonymous traders. The seller denied the damage was pre-existing and refused to reverse the sale. So, I onsold the bike, giving an accurate description and got $5 for it. So I lost maybe $30. Another trade, I sold a car stereo unit out of my old dunger which sold for half what the stereo had cost me. The buyer reckoned it didn’t work, so I drove over there, picked it up and gave him his money back. He’d tried to ‘fix’ it. The casing was damaged where he’d attacked it like a novice burglar jemmying the back door. Had to just chuck the thing out. Sometimes, somebody’s trash is just trash afterall.
Some new items for sale on Trade Me selling at bargain basement prices – like an odometer for my brand new bike bought from a proper bike store, belong in the bargain basement from whence they came. But that’s the risk, my risk, that I chose to take. No point abusing the seller. The cycle gloves I got cheap from the same people are okay. Live and learn, I console myself. Why can’t other people do that? Just take responsibility for their decision to buy secondhand stuff sight unseen on Trade Me? Just tell themselves off for getting caught up in the competitiveness of the bidding which leads them unwisely to pay too much and learn from it.
The nasty incidents do cause me to step back from Trade Me. I try to minimize contact with people with low emotional intelligence who are quick to project their anger (that more correctly should be directed at themselves) onto others. But, I hate doing garage sales because the contact there is face-to-face. Admittedly though I’ve never had a garage sale buyer return repeatedly to score blows. Anything worth over $10 really should be sold via a Trade Me type site or Trade and Exchange paper, because people rarely want to give you more than $2 for anything at a garage sale. The exorbitant Trade Me fees undermine the worth of the experience as well… but that’s another blog.
I’ll be staying hooked on Trade Me though, at least as a buyer, because I can still find strange and wonderful things that I might treasure, that others need to trash. And sometimes, the price is right. And most of the time, it’s quick and easy and there’s no quarrel. I’ll just have to keep reminding myself of that, to keep it in perspective.
I joined in 2004 and have over 360 trades myself now. It’s five and a half years later. That should put some perspective on it. That’s on average 65 trades a year, buying or selling. I’ve accumulated 356 positive feedbacks, 1 neutral blue face, and 2 angry red faces which is about to increase by one. There have been more than four sour trades in that time, but some trades take a while to complete (or not complete) and the time limit for posting feedback elapses. Still, four traders unhappy with me is less than one a year. So, that should make me feel better. It should…
What takes me a while to get over is the nastiness that can spew forth in to my inbox when disagreements arise. Some disagreements are simple: I say ‘the goods never arrived’, they say ‘I sent them’, I say ‘can you check the address’, they say ‘yes I sent them to that address’, after waiting a lot longer I repeat ‘well they have not arrived,’ they say ‘bad luck I can’t take responsibility for New Zealand Post – tell them.’ So I go to NZ Post and they happily accept, given the Trade Me receipt and email thread, that I have a valid claim, but the sender has to corroborate the story. Should be no problem. Should be. But, so and so-I’m-operating-as-an-under-the-table-secondhand-dealer-on-Trade Me gets some twisted perspective that she’s being hard done by by me and lies to NZ Post that the goods were delivered as intended. What? It wouldn’t even have cost her a cent. What spite! Yes, I posted a red face to warn people. And, of course so does she against me.
There’s been a couple of times buyers have been unhappy with what I was selling. One time I was selling DVDs on behalf of a family member. Hmmm lesson learnt there – they were bad foreign dubbed copies. I should have watched them first, but I didn’t suspect and there was a small box full. The buyer wasn’t mean about it at all. I gave the remainder of the DVDs back to their owner. If I sell on behalf now, I check the goods first.
The latest angry face comes from a disappointed buyer who claimed that the item I sold was faulty. Damaged in transit? No, he was sure I deliberately sold it with the fault. Plus, he was unhappy that there was a piece missing which was clearly obvious from the photo pre-sale. Then he used the item and wrote again that it worked but it really wasn’t what he expected. I parried the emails politely expressing disappointment also, assuring that I’d not had any problem with the appliance myself. Weeks passed, Trade Me sent a reminder to post feedback. The buyer wrote again, ‘what should he post, he’d never had any trouble with Trade Me traders before.’ Well I have, I said. It happens. What did he want? Asked outright, he recoiled and spat, ‘you’ve got three choices: 1) give a full refund and pay to have the item freighted back; 2) give him $30 (which amounted to the cost of the freight he’d paid); or 3) do nothing and he’d post negative feedback to warn buyers to be wary of me.
It’s happened to me – I bought a bike. It was old, said to be in working order. It wasn’t. The left hand gear handle was bent, not working and the guys at the bike shop just looked at me like I was an idiot – not worth fixing they said. It was a dud trade. Ripped off. That’s the risks you take if you buy sight unseen from an online auction site from anonymous traders. The seller denied the damage was pre-existing and refused to reverse the sale. So, I onsold the bike, giving an accurate description and got $5 for it. So I lost maybe $30. Another trade, I sold a car stereo unit out of my old dunger which sold for half what the stereo had cost me. The buyer reckoned it didn’t work, so I drove over there, picked it up and gave him his money back. He’d tried to ‘fix’ it. The casing was damaged where he’d attacked it like a novice burglar jemmying the back door. Had to just chuck the thing out. Sometimes, somebody’s trash is just trash afterall.
Some new items for sale on Trade Me selling at bargain basement prices – like an odometer for my brand new bike bought from a proper bike store, belong in the bargain basement from whence they came. But that’s the risk, my risk, that I chose to take. No point abusing the seller. The cycle gloves I got cheap from the same people are okay. Live and learn, I console myself. Why can’t other people do that? Just take responsibility for their decision to buy secondhand stuff sight unseen on Trade Me? Just tell themselves off for getting caught up in the competitiveness of the bidding which leads them unwisely to pay too much and learn from it.
The nasty incidents do cause me to step back from Trade Me. I try to minimize contact with people with low emotional intelligence who are quick to project their anger (that more correctly should be directed at themselves) onto others. But, I hate doing garage sales because the contact there is face-to-face. Admittedly though I’ve never had a garage sale buyer return repeatedly to score blows. Anything worth over $10 really should be sold via a Trade Me type site or Trade and Exchange paper, because people rarely want to give you more than $2 for anything at a garage sale. The exorbitant Trade Me fees undermine the worth of the experience as well… but that’s another blog.
I’ll be staying hooked on Trade Me though, at least as a buyer, because I can still find strange and wonderful things that I might treasure, that others need to trash. And sometimes, the price is right. And most of the time, it’s quick and easy and there’s no quarrel. I’ll just have to keep reminding myself of that, to keep it in perspective.
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