25 December 2024

Merry Christmas

It got slightly chilly through the night, so I pulled up the fleece at the bottom of my bed, but it wasn’t uncomfortably cold.

This morning, we actually got up about 7.30am. And I’d actually slept soundly enough that Pen hadn’t woken me when she’d got up at one point, which is unusual as I’m quite a light sleeper and would always hear D.C. get up. In that case, I’d always say: “I’m awake” so that she’d know that she didn’t have to tiptoe around.

I cut my toenails this morning. This isn’t such a big deal, except that I’d held off cutting them until today. The ants that walk past our door absolutely love toenails. Fingernails they could take or leave, but they fight over toenails and it’s fun to watch them hoist this big Big Toe toenail over their back and stagger away with it.

After last evening’s adventures, we decided to take it easy this morning. So, after breakfast (chocolate twist, kiwifruit, OJ) we went for a walk through Kidney Fern Glen and Kowhai Grove.

Kidney Fern Glen’s not as easy to traverse as it used to be as, during the big storms of 2018(?) a lot of the ground beneath some of the root structures across the path had been washed away. This is leaving a net of roots with gaps between and beneath them, which means that that that track was slow going. Which didn’t worry a whole lot of pīwakawaka/fantails as we were kicking up insects for them to munch on for longer. (And we also saw and heard tūī, saddlebacks, and grey warblers.)

Kowhai Grove is a lot more forgiving as far as walking goes – even with the steeper bits. But, of course, it didn’t have the kowhai in flower and the tūī partying/scrapping amongst themselves. (That was the reason why I visited Rangitoto during September. And, I had been lucky with the week I chose, as the weather turned to custard the week after.) However, we did find a bamboo orchid(?) in full flower, as were the epiphytic orchids.

When we came out on the coastal track next to North’s/Trainer’s, I decided to shift the Christmas card I’d attempted to post through their door. As there could be a thunderstorm moving in, I shifted it to above the door where (hopefully) it’ll be sheltered from wind and rain.

Something else that Pen wanted to do that she’d never had the chance to do before, was have a paddle, in the sea, on Christmas Day. (She’s already done the same on her birthday on the 15^th, so this was a bonus.) We went down North’s boat ramp, she took off her shoes, took up her penguin, and got her feet wet whilst I got photos. (Which I hope I’ll be able to post here, but for some reason WordPress has made displaying and captioning photographs more difficult than it used to be.)

Like yesterday, the sky was clear and blue…

That was to change as the day progressed.

We came back to the bach, and worked on our blogs before enjoying our lunch of cheese on crackers and fruit salad. And watched a guy paddle slowly on a boogie board out to the boat in the bay. Watching him was entertaining because, just as he was approaching the boat, the current caught it and it seemed to decide to run away from him at a speed that was faster than he was paddling. And then it turned and appeared face him down. Eventually, he did manage to climb aboard.

In the afternoon we did some more relaxing, and I even almost nodded off. I didn’t quite as I was analysing… something that I can’t remember now, but I was on the edge of falling asleep.

This afternoon Pen gave me a hand to put a tarpaulin that I’d bought down in September on the long drop roof. It hadn’t been fun sitting in there with water dripping onto me, but it would have been difficult to have installed the tarp without her help, as it involved sweeping down the roof, removing rocks that were acting as weights, and then removing the sheet of corrugated iron and the bit of tin that was protecting the old tarpaulin that was protecting the old corrugate iron roof. Once I’d swept the roof clear of leaf litter, I put the new tarpaulin on (over the old), replaced the corrugated iron and non-corrugated tin, and returned the rocks to their original weighing down positions.

So, something else Pen had never done at Christmas.

The weather was starting to close in, and we decided to try to get in a short walk before it did. (Thank heavens we did our big walk to the summit yesterday and stopped to do a bit of stargazing on the way.) And so, we walked along the coastal track and past the largest Black Back Gull colony in New Zealand. And the Black Back Gulls do not like people walking past their colony when their chicks haven’t fledged. Try to step off the path and you’re likely to get dive bombed. Scientists studying them have to wear protective helmets.

We had planned to walk until 6.00 pm, but it was starting to spit, so when we got to Tomcat Bay we made the decision to turn back. And came across a couple of wary Black Back Gull parents and their three fluffy/gangly chicks. Of course, we had to get photos.

I stopped off at Darren’s to say thank you for fixing the dry rot on my bach, but he wasn’t home. (Probably at Happy Hour at Rick and Vick’s, but I did see him walk past our bach later and was able to shout a merry Christmas and thank you then.)

We came home and I put our Christmas dinner on to cook. That is, I put the kettle on to boil. Tonight’s tea was freeze dried roast chicken and potato and “fresh” salad, with sparking apple juice. (I thought I was buying grape juice.) Whilst I don’t think the roast chicken smelt as much like roast chicken as it had the first time I had it, it was still tasty.

I had a little surprise for Pen. There is a company called Waste Free Celebrations, and they paid Afghani women to make reusable Christmas crackers. I’d bought two, with a New Zealand bird patterns on them, and had installed Christmas cracker snaps, Thunderbirds’ jokes (one I’d got from the Internet and the others from the 2004 travesty of a movie’s joke book). Plus, instead of Christmas cracker paper crowns, I’d made felt International Rescue uniform hats, that I’d just managed to squeeze into the crackers. For the gifts, I gave myself a cat pen holder like the ones featured in a YouTube video dancing a polka, and for Pen I gave her a smaller “Quiller/Scott” luggage tag. This one, I had been pleased to discover, fitted in the cracker. That was until I realised that it fitted in the larger segment, but not the smaller interior one. So the luggage tag got wrapped up beneath the Mug Rugs that Sue Green had made for us.

A ferry came into the wharf this evening. Don’t ask me why, as there weren’t any during daylight hours.

We did the dishes, and then had a go doing a 100-piece WISGIJ jigsaw that I think Jan Doherty had given me years ago. And then, before we did the dishes and cleaned our teeth, I had a go at teaching Pen how to play Yahtzee.

It was a good Christmas Day and a very different one for Pen.

My watch tells me I took 7622 steps today.