notes from Phnom Penh

I didn't think I'd be able to do this! I was prepared to have very little in the way of comforts, but here I am on Mels' laptop with a "dongle" stick, online. I have airconditioning in my bedroom, and there's a washing machine in the kitchen. This place is luxury. And what an adventure I am having! You can trace my steps.

how it is in June

My bags are half packed for Cambodia, I'm leaving in the morning. I've been sitting here watching these photos download off my camera, thinking about those girls of mine and how far away I'm going to be from them. We prayed together tonight, all five of us cuddled up close, and I thought, these people are my outpost, my base camp. They will be keeping life going more or less as it would normally, while I'm gone. I love them.

I should be in bed, obviously, but I'm dragging out the last stages of packing, and waiting for itunes to do its thing with my phone before I do. This thing that itunes does with my phone is something I feel I have little power over. I plug in my phone, that circle goes round and round, and I MUST NOT unplug my phone, or else! At the moment I'm not even sure that it's doing it's thing yet, I think it's getting ready to do it's thing. And I really want to make sure it does. Because I really want this lovely music in my ears on the flight. So I'm not going to bed quite yet.

It's been a whirwind week, and having a bad cold didn't help. I rushed around all over the place this afternoon, getting my jabs done (better late than never) and picking up all the things I thought I would have had time to get earlier in the week. The house is no where near as organised as I wanted it to be. I had visions of it spick and span with freshly made bread waiting in the freezer. But who am I kidding? It's been a strange thing, getting myself ready to go, and trying to leave myself behind at the same time.

adding to the family

Did you think that was all I was going to write about the wedding? People, I've only just begun! I couldn't wait to introduce you to the new members of my family. Can you believe that in one day I've gained a new step-dad, two step-sisters and three step-brothers, two more brothers-in-law, two more sisters-in-law, plus another niece and four more nephews? Do you think I'm happy about that? I'm telling you, happy is an understatement.

Right at the front of the photo, sitting next to Isobella, are Jack and Nevaeh, and up behind them next to Greer and Joy's son Isaac are Dominic, Liam and James. These boys got up to the cutest shenanigans during the ceremony, stealing flower petals from the girls and throwing them at each other in a manner that was just quiet and cute enough to get away with. Liam is the most stoic gluten-free kid I've met. Nevaeh is a sweetheart who has impressed my girls no end because she could ride a two-wheeler when she was three! (The girls on the other side next to Bill are Joy's Anna and my Abigail.) These kids love each other. They've got on like a house on fire ever since they all met, even the out-of-towners we only just met at the wedding.

Behind the boys are Bill's son Des and his wife Emily, and up behind them are Tim and his wife Casey, and Bill's daughters Aimee and Cathy, and their husbands Oliver and Dan, respectively. Then right at the back next to Paddy is Bill's son Caleb. The loveliest seventeen year old I know. I've always wanted brothers. Now I've got three of them! And you can never have enough sisters, as far as I'm concerned. Now I've got five altogether!

The girls have been talking about their "new cousins" since well before Mum and Bill got engaged. But I haven't breathed the word "step-dad" or "step-sister" or "step-brother" to a soul. It seemed a bit too forward, and a little weird given that Mum and Bill had only actually been dating since Valentine's Day. But I was quietly very thrilled. Then on Sunday night wedding photos were flying around on facebook, and we all got busy friending each other. I saw a photo that Bill's daughter Cathy had put up of Joy and I walking Mum down the aisle which she'd entitled "my new stepsisters and stepmum." I was chuffed, and that's when it really hit home. My family has grown.

I happened to be talking to a friend this week about families. She relayed a conversation she had with her mother at a time when she was finding her mother-in-law frustrating. She had started to complain mildly about her mother-in-law, who she loves, and her mother cut her off instantly. "Don't ever speak ill of her" her mother said. "She loves you and she is your ally."  I thought that was priceless. And so true. Our family is, or should be, by and large, our safe place, filled with allies.

My team just got larger this weekend. I've got more allies. More people who, if push came to shove, would stick up for me, look out for me, and speak well of me.  And it goes both ways.

a for app, b for book

I went book shopping last weekend. It's funny how that doesn't have a ring to it in the way that clothes shopping does. Book shopping. But that's what we did. I got a few Whitcoulls book vouchers for Christmas, one from my little sister Esme, and the others from the girls. I didn't want to go to just any branch, partly because I wanted to have a good selection, and partly because I spent three years working at the big store in Queen St what seems like a lifetime ago, back when I wondered what on earth I was going to do with my life.

So into town we went. It rained all weekend, it was raining when we left. The drive right into town takes about forty minutes, and we drove in with the tires hissing on wet road all the way. I was really looking forward to having a nice time browsing and then coming out with a handful of treasures. I have good memories of working there all those years ago, and I remember clearly the layout of the fiction section where I spent most of the three years I worked there. It had a wall of fantasy and sci-fi, half a wall of classics, three stands of what we called "contemporary fiction" and a long wall filled with bestselling, money-making paperbacks. I spent my days dusting and tidying shelves, bringing armfuls of books down from upstairs and re-stocking, helping customers find or choose books, and serving at the counter when it was busy. The fiction section was tucked in behind at the back of the store, and it was a quiet oasis.

But I knew something was up as soon as we walked into the store. I could see cards where there used to be books, and cook books where there should have been NZ fiction. I walked around to where the fiction section should have been and my heart sank. It was a funny mix of business, craft and reference which melded around the corner into fiction. The entire fiction section fitted into the same floor space that the greeting cards used to take up. I found a few books I was happy with, but I didn't want to browse. It just felt wrong. We went upstairs and my unease grew. Stationery was spread out unevenly over the top floor, and sidled up to it were rows and rows of a complete mix-up of books, all with coloured stickers, most of them blue-stickered, meaning 75% off. I felt like I was at the bedside of a terminally sick relative.

Then we went up to Borders (now owned by the same company as Whitcoulls.) It was the last day of their closing down sale. If being in Whitcoulls had been like being in a hospice, then being in Borders was like standing in the desert and watching vultures consume the remains of a carcass. The once grand three level store had been reduced to one small level, and what books there were scattered on tables and stands there were random and dog-eared. I found a few things, but everyone was hungry and Abigail was starting to lose it, so we left.

I remember being horrified when I first heard about e-readers and the prediction that one day real books would be a thing of the past. I couldn't think of anything worse than no real books. How could you be truly reading without holding a book in your hands and feeling the weight of it? What was a book without pages, spine, cover?

Just before Christmas I read this post at Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef. It's about a recipe and the gorgeous Holiday Food app that the recipe came from. And it's about iPads and the creative potential that exists with apps. I was completely taken. I've got an iphone but I never used a reader on it, and I've never been interested in having an e-reader. But something in my brain came alive when I read that post. I spent the day with this bubbling going on inside, this incredible sudden alive-ness in my brain. I couldn't stop dreaming about apps.

So when Paddy came home with a surprise Christmas present for the both of us, I was petrified and desperately hopeful that he'd gone out and bought an iPad. And when my hopeful fears were fulfilled, there was no way I could tell him off for spending so much money because I was too happy. We bought the Holiday food app that introduced me to iPads, and it was even better than I imagined. It is luscious. Beautifully designed, easy to use, and full of recipes and how-to's. It has crisp, vivid photographs, and video too. I would never have thought that anything could be more beautiful than a beautiful book. But this app is even more beautiful than a book.

I can't believe I just wrote that.

At the end of our book shopping expedition I didn't feel sad any more. By the time I'd made my way round two stores, one trying to re-make itself to survive, the other already dead, I'd worked through my grief. E-books are here to stay. Within twenty years I expect that most of us will read more books in electronic form than we'll read printed on paper. But that doesn't mean it's the end of books, and it certainly doesn't mean it's the end of writers. Digital publishing means that more books will get to more people more easily. And writers will still get paid. But I don't have the same confidence for the publishing industry as we know it. Publishing survives on paper and ink and mass production and will have to re-invent itself several times over to avoid becoming a relic.

I'll tell you what I do have confidence for, and that is for small publishing houses who specialise in very special books, treasures that will be works of art in themselves, and the small but clever book stores who will sell them. I don't believe we will see the demise of all booksellers, but I do think the bell has tolled for supermarket-style booksellers, the ones who think they can sell lots of everything without really knowing the books they sell or the customers who come to buy them. The kind of stores who have no idea about range other than to make sure that they have a good stack of bestsellers and a handful of whatever has been recently published.

I hope I get more book vouchers next Christmas, but this time I'll ask for vouchers for Time Out or The Women's Bookshop, both veritable institutions who have weathered the rise and demise of the supermarket bookstore. They both have a loyal following of customers, and both have a genuine online presence. In the future stores like these will become treasuries and precious links to the past. Books will be collectors items, and families will pass them down like heirlooms. And writers? We'll keep on writing.

going bush

I took the dog for a walk yesterday. Once I'd finally finished vacuuming, made lunch, and sat Abigail on the couch to watch Curious George, I grabbed the lead and my trusty dog whistle, and called out to Paddy, "I'm just taking Silas for a quick walk." I walked across our wet lawn, through the gate behind the trampoline, and up the bank to the stand of Macrocarpas that tower over the back of our section.

We walked together up through the trees and then came out at the top of the reserve that borders our property. We sloshed down the muddy slope and around to the edge of the bush, and took the path that travels through the bush between the beach and the bottom of our section.

We walked along the track, through muddy patches, over the stream, gradually going higher. I looked through the trees towards the harbour and I could see the water in distance, now quite a way below us. Suddenly I realised we had gone further than I'd ever gone before. To the right of the path was a fence that was falling towards the ground and covered with gorse bushes and dead leaves.

I knew Mum had managed to walk from the house through the bush to the track one day, and that she had tied strips of fabric to the trees as she walked. I thought the fence must be the edge of our property, and wondered if I could make my way through the bush back to the house, hopefully finding her path.

At the same time as I was pondering the wisdom of this action, a girl came walking up the path behind me with her dog, a fat pit bull terrier. It looked like an over-sized stuffed toy, only menacing. I looked at the girl and then the dog, and in an instant found myself walking off the path and straight into the bush.

In that moment I knew I had no idea whether I was going to regret my decision. I knew I didn't know exactly where I was, and I knew I had no idea if I was going to be able to get back home safetly. I also knew I had left my phone at home. I was wearing gumboots, I had the dog, his lead, and the dog whistle.

I have a default position when it comes to challenge and adventure. Something like an unwritten rule that I don't ever turn back. It's related to tenacity, which is good, but it's also a kind of stubborn refusal to turn around even if that would be the sensible thing to do. On a superficial level it's simply that I don't like being bored, that I hate going back the same way as I've come. I thrive on the new.

When my sister and I were teenagers we went on a family holiday up north. We took my step-dad's little dinghy with us, and one day we putted out to a small island just out from the beach. We built a fire and cooked damper, played around by the shore. Then my sister and I got bored and wanted to go exploring. I took the lead. "Don't do anything silly" Mum warned me as we left.

The island was pretty small. It probably only took us about 15 minutes to get to the farthest point. We had been clambering along big boulders and along rocky slopes and it was easy, but this was the obvious place to turn around and go back. My sister Joy, who was probably only eleven or twelve, wasn't so enthralled with the adventure, and would have been quite happy to do that. But going back was the boring option. I persuaded her to keep going. We ventured around the tip of the island, to the opposite side that we had started from. The boulders gradually turned into rocky cliffs that jutted out with just enough of a ledge that we could clamber along. It was thrilling, but Joy was starting to struggle, and Mum's parting words were ringing loudly. At one point we were three or four metres up from the beach, creeping along a thin mossy ledge. Joy slipped and only just stopped herself from falling all the way down. I can still remember it vividly, more than twenty years later.

We got back eventually, and said nothing of what had happened. It was a secret I held to tightly, a sobering reminder of the trouble I was capable of getting myself into.

Fast forward to yesterday, and I'm forging my way through thick bush, my gumboots slipping in the wet mud. I'm holding tightly to the dog's lead like my life depends on it. I can't see more than a few metres ahead, and I really can't tell which direction I should be going in. I see another fence in the distance and I'm relieved. I try to head up the slope alongside it but the gorse and bushes right beside the fence are too thick for me to walk through, so I head in the same direction as the fence, hoping I don't lose it.

The dog's struggling too. The lead keeps getting caught up, and we are trampling over dead branches and gorse. At least I've got gumboots. We get to the top of one ridge and I'm hopeful I'll be able to see where  I'm going, but I can't see anything other than what I've been seeing for the last fifteen minutes. Nikau Palms with their fronds like dancer's arms reaching upwards, the skinny charcoal branches of Ti trees filling in the gaps. And the muddy ground littered with dead palm leaves and branches. I was clambering, nearly on my hands and knees in places. I slipped twice, landing squarely in the mud.

I was starting to have visions of me breaking an ankle and landing incapacitated in the mud with nothing but a dog whistle. I knew the dog would eventually find his way home, but it would take Paddy hours to find me. I didn't even know where I was. If there had been a point where I should have turned back I had completely missed it.

By the time I finally got to the top of the highest ridge and could see clear sky ahead, I had completely overshot our property and had come out on the top side of the neighbours directly above us. I was covered in mud, leaves and gorse prickles, and had been gone more than an hour. I was exhausted and slightly shaken, but enthralled. "Have I got a story for you!" I said to Paddy and the girls when got in.

I made a mistake in going out without my phone, I know that. But I've thought about it a lot and I don't think there was a point where I should have turned back. If I had turned back any time after the first five minutes or so I would have got even more lost. I think back to that moment when I decided to leave the path, and I now see it as almost inevitable. I love a good adventure.

I did something else rash this week. I started a new blog. I wasn't going to tell you about it. I was going to keep it almost-secret until I had figured out where I was going with it. I went to a lot of trouble yesterday to email and message a few people privately. I wasn't going to tell everybody, because I know not everybody is going to be interested.

But then I went and got lost in the bush, and that got me thinking about me and adventure and how sometimes it's the right thing to forge on anyway, even when the going is tough. I know this new thing I've started could get me in a bit of trouble occasionally. I'm pretty sure I'll end up with mud on my backside. And I know that I've really got no idea where I'm headed. But is that really so scary?

Packing the kitchen

We are packing to go away again. This time to Taupo, where there is a chance of snow! We are going away with Paddy's family to celebrate his mother's seventieth birthday.

The kitchen bench is covered with food from the pantry, waiting to be packed into bags. I want to take as much food as possible, partly to save money, but mostly because we have some interesting dietary requirements in this family and it's easier to have the ingredients so we can still do all our normal cooking and baking at home. And we can't do baking without baking equipment! A sieve, the scales, a large round cake tin so we can make a birthday cake for Gran, the slice tin I use for the oaty slice I make all the time, and two muffin tins. (I'm so excited about this gluten-free whole grain muffin recipe.) When Paddy sees the enormous pile he's going to have a fit. It's not like we have a big car.

I'm not much of a chef, I'm useless at chopping, and I can never get the timing of things right, but I like cooking. I especially like cooking when I'm not rushed. Baking in particular can be calming and grounding. Collecting and then measuring ingredients, mixing and pouring. Even better if no one is talking to me while I do  it.

When I clicked over to Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef just now to find that muffin recipe, Shauna was writing about a fellow food writer who has just very sadly and unexpectedly lost her husband. This friend, who has been supported amazingly through this funny thing we call the internet, had to decide whether to keep the summer holiday plans that had been made before her husband passed away. A holiday to a cottage they go to, or had gone to, every year. She decided to go for the sake of her girls, and told Shauna that three whole bags out of their luggage were for the kitchen. The kitchen is a good place to do grieving.

I'm not grieving, but I can't imagine going on holiday and not cooking. If it means taking less clothes to make space, then so be it. Cooking brings people together, it makes us more mindful about what we eat, and it is one of the simple yet so meaningful ways we can love each other. A friend from church recently had a new baby and a few of us made some meals for the family. Now sitting in the bottom of the church freezer are a random collection of plastic containers, all labelled with the handwriting of the person who made the meal. A vegetable pasta bake, sultana cake, shepherd's pie. The scrawled writing on the top a clear reminder to my friend that someone was thinking of her when they were in the kitchen.

I watched this emotional short film this week. I found it, bumped into it, on Pentimiento. It may make you cry, but I promise you it is worth it.


This was grace - short film from Andrew Laparra on Vimeo.

This is the story of a family, of a mother and father who have a special needs child. One of the first scenes is of the mother feeding her son. It's a simple, probably exhausting task, that happens many times a day, day in and day out. Yet it connects her to him. By feeding him she is loving him, sustaining him, serving him.

The pre-dinner rush on a normal week is often one of the most stressful times of the day. I hope that while we are on holiday we get the chance to appreciate the wonderful thing that it is, to have each other and to feed each other.

here's why I love the internet

A few months ago I was looking around here and there and I found this blog.

Now before you start thinking I'm flash and click away I'm not. I have no idea how to make that image into a link. If you do, please tell me. Until someone does, you're going to have to keep reading until you get to the actual link. It's coming.

This blog is pure genius. An agnostic and an atheist are spending 2011 going to church every Sunday. And they really are. They are going to church on Sundays and blogging about it.

The reviews of the churches they've been visiting make good reading. They're occasionally cutting, often irreverent, but always genuine. The pair have even found a church called The Bridge they actually like and want to go back to. Amanda, in particular, is witty and insightful. I like her honest and intelligent perspective. Her stories of visiting everything from The Bridge, a rough bunch of people who meet in a warehouse, to a rainbow church on Gay pride day, are fascinating and sometimes even inspiring.

Take this post, for example. Amanda writes about how on basically the crappiest day of her life, she got a message from Donna, one of the pastors at The Bridge, inviting her out for drinks. The message left her complaining that Donna was "making it really hard for me not to believe in God anymore." She goes on to write "because no matter how ugly it gets... I haven't lost the ability to see beauty everywhere... In the church pews, in my children's faces...in amazing conversations..." She even says "because of the heathenous things we write on this blog, Joel and I are probably the two most prayed-for souls in all of Portland, Oregon, but this was the first time I ever really FELT those prayers, welcomed them even."

Amanda promises us she's not on the road to "accepting Jesus Christ as my personal saviour" but she has decided to start reading the bible, along with The Bridges' booze and bible study group "Red Letter Pub". She's been won over by that Pastor Donna, and says " I don’t have to believe in Jesus to want to surround myself with people doing their damnedest to live like him"

And there you have, in one sentence, why I love the internet. Out of the mouth of a self-confessed "heathen", on one of the most random blogs I've found, were words that impacted me more than any song, book or sermon.  "People doing their damnedst to live like Jesus" is the best description of a Christian I've found. It cuts me to the core.

But before you think I"m going to get all serious on you, here's the other reason why I love the internet.

Yeah I know, this guy has been around for years, but last week he made my day. It's been pretty crazy here, finishing off the mammoth drainage operation we have undertaken, and rushing to get the downstairs flat habitable before our tenant moves in next weekend. We've reached that uncomfortable stage of starting to run out of both money and time... So there's plenty of potential for stress. But this guy was just what we needed.

Now as you probably know, this is Gary. He's become rather famous since he posted himself on you tube lip-synching to this song by the band O-Zone. (I think those Bros boys must have some secret Romanian love children!) The band themselves never made it even half as big as Gary did, as he's the second most watched video on the internet, and I think I know why. Gary knows how to have a good time without even trying. His unabashed silliness reminds us all how much fun we can have when we give up worrying about what other people think.

Thanks to Gary we've all been dancing and singing to our heart's content, and laughing like we haven't laughed since the night a couple of weeks ago we all got high on carpet glue! Even the baby sings it. "Maia - hii, Maia haa, Maia hoo, Maia ha ha!!!" 

And me, well, the truth is I've been singing it the most. So much so that even the kids have started getting sick of it! But I'm not ashamed. Because when I sing it my heart lifts and I remember that there is more to life than drains and mud and walls that need painting. In fact, strange as it is, that song makes me think of heaven.  About that unimaginable after where everything will make sense. It might be a tacky love song made famous by a random guy sitting in front of his computer, but it reminds me that one day the complicated and heavy weight that this life often is will one day be lifted.