Getting to 40

 

In a few weeks I will be forty. Yes, the BIG '40'. I hear a lot of people (probably all over 40) who say that 40 is the new 20. Looking back 20 years, I can remember dreading turning twenty as I thought that to be twenty years old was to be really old. I know. If only I knew then what I know now. I must admit that a lot of wonderful things happened in my twenties. I graduated from university with my first degree and diploma, I met and married the love of my life and had the first of our three beautiful children.

Now that I'm turning forty, the kids are a bit older and as they develop and establish their identities, it is my turn to re-establish my own. Somewhere along the way, over the years, I went from being an independent individual with the usual family roles of daughter, sister, cousin, niece etc.. to being a teacher, a wife (and an in-law or out-law depending on who you talk to lol) then a mother. Somewhere along the path of life, I forgot who I was in the midst of the busyness of being a daughter, sister, wife, mother, teacher. I blinked and twenty years flew by. I write this not to express any regret because I have none. I truly believed that I would never marry and I didn't have a maternal bone in my body so I didn't ever see any children in my future. What can I say? The Lord works in mysterious ways and for that I am truly grateful. I have been richly blessed in a lot of areas and look forward to the next twenty and more years of my life.

'Fence sitting'

Okay, so it's the last day of June 2013.  Everytime I visit my blog with the purpose of updating it (more to get rid of the guilt I feel than actually providing something worth reading) I chicken out.  My fingers slowly tap away until I get to the part where I delete the blog and then I chicken out again. To blog or not to blog? That is the question.  

So, I feel the itch to write, to express my thoughts to nobody in particular and everybody in the universe at the same time.  To tell you what's been going on but at the same time, not providing enough details so that I can avoid the feeling of paranoia that comes when someone in my hometown gives me a look that says, "I know what you did last summer". 

Well, a lot has changed since the last time I posted.  I am now a 'sole parent' to my three beautiful kids by choice, because my husband has crossed the ditch to find employment that pays more than the peanuts on offer here in this wonderful country.  Thankfully he has found a job in a mine in an undisclosed location and it pays more than twice what he was making here which will be a great help to our finances.  It has taken a while to get used to living life without him here but with three kids and a full-time job, family obligations and a little business on the side, there is no time to be moping about missing him.

Healthwise things are looking up.  I remember writing some lofty goals early in 2012  with one of my goals being to drop three dress sizes (as embarrassing as that was to write, it was the truth because I needed to!!!) and to date I have dropped four dress sizes (yep, I had more than three dress sizes to lose lol).  So feeling pretty good.  I have climbed mountains, almost dropped telephone posts on my head, walked, hula swagged and aquajogged my way here but the main thing was definitely due to - 'kipi le 'ai - high protein, low carb and no sugar.  It is great to have a lot of support for this particular goal.   I have joined our local council owned gym as well.  It's okay, customer service needs to be improved but other than that it's all good. Well, I just have to keep on going!!!

Okay, I have to go meet a dear friend who is visiting Wellywood.  I'm glad that I have posted something because all I know is that the only thing  you get from sitting on the fence is a sore muli lol.

To be continued...

Happy New Year

I cannot believe how fast the month of January has gone by.  I mean, it's the 31st of January 2013 and this is the first time I have been able to blog as I do not have a computer at home and my work laptop was stolen last year.  So, what's the haps? I am in a better place physically speaking as I have dropped a couple of dress sizes.  I have started doing Hula fitness classes and I actually enjoy them even though I am terrible at shaking my hips. If you can imagine a robot doing the hula, that would be close to what I look like during the classes.  It's bad enough that I look like a malfunctioning robot trying to do the hula but I am always right in the front row where EVERYONE can see my terrible moves and feel a whole lot better about their own moves.

Work has started back and I have a lot of other goals professionally and personally which I don't have the time to share as I am currently blogging when I should be doing 'real' work.  Anyway, I am looking forward to having a great year at work and with the family. 

It's Sevens Rugby time down in Welly and so hopefully we will see more people having fun and dressing up in amazing costumes and less people drinking themselves into a stupor.  Have a great weekend peeps!

Bah Humbug

I am a victim of crime.  I may be partly to blame for the fact that my vehicle was unlocked (I was not the last one to leave the vehicle though but I should have gone back to check that it was secure before I went to bed).  Some bugger stole my purse and work laptop out of my vehicle which was parked inside my property on the driveway.  I didn't even notice that my belongings were gone until after work that day.  I got home and was greeted by the sight of my handback hanging on the handle of my front door!  It was empty except for a letter from the bank with my address on it. So now, not only does someone have my purse with my ID and bank cards etc.. in it but they also know my bank account details.  I think that maybe someone found my handbag on the street and returned it to my house after finding the letter inside.  I can't really see someone rummaging through my bag and then hanging it back nicely on the front door. 

I rang 111 (for the first time in my life) and reported the theft and after getting a reference number and a promise that someone would call me, I marched down to our local Police station to file my report in person.  Big mistake.  The officer who came out (after twenty minutes of waiting) took the reference number and said that he would check the details.  He came back out and said that there was nothing on the system.  He told me that someone would come out to talk to me and would get me to fill out some forms etc... Half an hour later, another nice young police officer came out, asked for my details which he wrote on a post-it note and then said, "We'll call you if we find anything".  He didn't ask me to fill out a form or anything.  I went home, thought about it a bit and realised that he had just fobbed me off with that post-it note.  I bet that he just dropped that note into the bin as soon as I walked out the door.  I went back to the station the next day with the serial number of the laptop and other details and asked for a form to fill in.  I asked the officer at the desk why I hadn't been given one the day before and he just said, "Well, you're here now so just fill out the form" - how rude! Honestly, they don't give a damn.  My confidence in the police has reached an all time low.  I am just glad that it wasn't anything more serious.  Who can you trust these days?  Nobody.  Bah humbug I say.

Get Growing!

Oka, I haven't been on here in yonks! Not that anyone noticed anyway so back to my update.  What have I been doing all this time?  I wish that I could say that I have been lazing on a beach somewhere exotic or tropical like Hawaii but then I would be lying. 

I am happy to report that I have been making healthy choices food and exercise wise and doing some gardening.  I am now the proud owner of a garden that has lettuce, silverbeet, parsley, beetroot, celery, tomatoes, courgettes, beans, pumpkin and last but not least - potatoes! I know, "How BORING!" you must think as you read this but I am thrilled that I am finally growing my own veges again and loving it.  Nothing beats watching dirt day after day watching for a sign of life, watering soil and wondering if the seeds have drowned or have gone bad and then one day... you see a tiny sign of green and it is a shoot!

My children really want to grow their own flowers, fruit and veges now so their father is getting them some material to make their own raised beds for planting.  Absolutely loving it. 

Next week is the last week of work so lots and lots of deadlines to meet. Our last day will be very sad as we farewell quite a few members of staff.  Lovely people who over the years have become very good friends.  Hopefully they will come back to visit. 

Let's get physical

Olivia Newton John has a lot to answer for with her leotards and headbands and that song that just gets stuck in my head on repeat whenever I prepare to do that darned (but necessary) thing called 'exercise'.  At this very moment, I am obviously not engaged in physical activity (well, you can't blog and sweat at the same time!) but two of my kids are sweating it out on the courts with a group of other like-minded, able-bodied youngsters their age.  They are enjoying their first experience of outside-of-school group fitness.  It's the kiddy version of the bootcamp that I joined a couple of weeks ago. 

This year, my kids have not been involved in any club sports and so when I heard of this group for kids I thought it would be perfect for them. They get to run around, have fun and get enough exercise and then go home, shower, have some dinner and go straight to sleep instead of staying up late and then waking up late.  Thank goodness they have been blessed with decent sporting genes (thanks to their sports-mad and very athletic father) and actually enjoy playing sports, unlike their hermit of a mother who tends to take part in reading marathons instead of the actual running ones.  My usual trend is to run a mile from anywhere where physical activity is taking place - a bad habit I picked up at Leifiifi Intermediate School when we I joined the 'Kilikiti Samoa' group for Friday afternoon sports.  I would stand in amongst the crowd of about one hundred kids on the field and when I saw the ball coming anywhere near me, I would run like the wind in the opposite direction.  To this day, my greatest fear at any rugby match is to have the ball land on my head like it did once on some poor unsuspecting girl at a Manu Samoa match at Athletic Park many years ago.  They replayed that at least 10 times on the telly that night.  

Have just picked up the kids from their group and they loved it.  So, every Monday will be their exercise group with mine on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.  Okay, the Saturday one starts at 6.30am and I haven't actually managed to make it to that one yet.  It's kind of hard to get there at 6.30am when I am usually fast asleep at that time. I will do what I can, as best as I can but I am definitely not a Superwoman.  I can exercise all day, everyday but I will probably still hate it.   

If joining this group fitness teaches my kids to not be afraid of a ball landing on their heads and teaches them to run towards the ball instead of away from it - I'll be one happy Mother.

Mind your language

I am thinking out loud here. Why is it that I only speak certain languages to certain people and in certain situations? For example, I only speak in Samoan to my parents (only after I relearnt Samoan as a kid) and now I feel weird using English with them.  It's not that they don't or can't speak English but I just feel really awkward speaking English to them.  On the other hand, I only use English when I speak to my siblings.

Growing up in Samoa, I spoke only English at school.  That was mainly because there was a rule about not speaking Samoan, in Samoa - go figure.  Anyway, I didn't speak Samoan at school until I reached Year 12. I lived in Samoa and came from what my friends referred to as a 'kua back' village and yet I spoke only English at school.  At home, in the village I spoke Samoan to everyone but used English only with my siblings.  In my kuaback village, the only people who spoke English in public were either drunk or had some form of mental illness.  Heck, I am just starting to see now why I made the choices that I did!

At Samoa College, we had a Head boy who spoke only English (because it was the rule back then!) and one day, he was soooooo pissed off at the student body for some reason that he stood in front of us at assembly and told us off in Samoan and then said, "Can you see how upset I am? I actually spoke Samoan!".  When he walked off, one of the prefects who was a real comedian, said to the assembly, "Ia, vaai oukou ga ua makua'i ika le kakou Head boy kalu ai le kou faalogokaka.  Se, fai fa'alelei kakou mea faamolemole.  Vaai oukou, aua kou ke faia le mea e oso ai lo'u le fiafia ke'i ua ou faasaga aku gagu loa ia oukou".  I never forgot that assembly and the different values placed on the two languages. 

When I started 'dating' as a teenager in Samoa, I only spoke Samoan and to be honest, it was painful speaking English to the guys I went out with.  I don't know why, but it felt like we were acting out a play from a School Journal whenever we had a conversation in English - so stilted and uncomfortable (well, for me anyway).  I think that one of the reasons why I got on so well with my husband when we first met, was the fact that I could speak to him in both English and Samoan and feel totally at ease when switching between the two languages.  When I asked him if he had ever spoken English at home (in Samoa) when he was growing up, he replied that he would collect coconuts and do his jobs around the plantation having conversations in English with his brothers - then he laughed.  He laughed at the thought of anyone in his village walking around having everyday conversations in English. Anyone who was sober and not suffering from a mental illness that is.

I miss living in Samoa and being surrounded by the language all day, everyday.  I am lucky that I do have my family around and have the opportunity to speak Samoan to others (especially my parents) on a daily basis.  Spare a thought for those who live in countries where they are the only one who can speak their language and have nobody else to help them keep the language alive.  Keeping a language going can be tough in this day and age.  English is a dominant world language and some would say that English is a 'killer' language because it completely dominates and takes over the linguistic landscape.  I hope that it never kills the Samoan language.