On the joyful things in life

So it's been a while...

There are many reasons why - and I'll discuss them at length soon hopefully - but this post is not about that.

This post is about joy.

A LOT of big things have happened in my life recently which have not been great for my mental health.  And on Wednesday, as part of a conversation around this topic my GP asked me if I had things to look forward to.  She asked it in a caring way - although I know it's also part of a suicidal ideation checklist thing.  But for me, this was the easiest question of all to answer:

Yes.  Always.  No matter what craziness is going on in my life I am always looking forward to something.  No matter how anxious or sad or low energy I'm feeling I am always excited to see what's next.  I rattled off a list of things happening over the next two months that I was excited about.  And these are just the things I know are happening that I'll enjoy.

And while part of this is because I actively put effort into creating opportunities so I do have things to look forward to*, the bigger part is that I am excited by so many random things in life: cool bugs, seeing my kids learn something new or tell a dumb joke, funny bumper stickers, people being nice for no reason.  We never know what each day will bring!

So I wanted to write a list of some of the unplanned cool stuff that I've witnessed.  I'm not talking about the paid activities I've been on, or the encounters I've had at zoos, but the unexpected stuff.  And because of who I am and what excites me - they're mostly animal related.

So in no particular order of importance - here are some cool life experiences that have brought me joy:

1. The second time I was in Rarotonga we met a three legged dog on the beach - he was missing a back leg.  He was so friendly, and just wanted to hang out with us on the beach which was fine by me.  And while meeting random dogs in Rarotonga is not unusual, what we witnessed shortly after certainly was.  He was fishing!  He started herding little fish toward the shoreline, trapping them with his front legs and then snapping them up in his mouth!  It was just not something I knew dogs did or ever expected to see.  And yes, we were in Rarotonga which is extremely privileged in and of itself, but this moment was so unexpected, it made the holiday that much more special.

2. I rescued a kereru.  We were driving to Mahurangi because it's one of my favorite swimming beaches and I wanted the kids to experience it too.  We were only about 10 minutes away from the beach when I spotted a kereru on the side of the road.  It was just sitting on the ground pretty much on the road which I thought was a bit weird and I was concerned it might get hit by a car.  So, to the resigned annoyance of my whanau, I turned the car around to check on it, thinking maybe it was fruit drunk and just needed to be encouraged away from the road.  Once observing it close up, it was clear it was actually injured - it could not fly properly.  So I cornered it, scooped it up and instead of visiting Mahurangi, we took the kereru back to Birdcare Aotearoa - which is only 15 minutes away from our house, and visited a local beach with the kids instead.k

 After a few weeks of specialist medical care, decent food and rest, we were invited to release the kereru back to Mahurangi, which we did.  It was a pretty special experience.

3.  I saw a seagull do a little dance.  I know they do this to imitate rain and get critters to come out of the sand just like blackbirds and thrush's do, but I never expected to see it actually happening in front of me!  I did not want to disturb the seagull because I needed to see its little dance so I had to zoom the camera in quite close.  But it was so cool!  Not something I've seen since, but every time I see a seagull, I'm hopeful.

4.  We got to help a hermit crab find a proper home.  When we were on holiday in Samoa Etta found a hermit crab near the resort gym that had decided to make a bottle cap its home.  It was not ideal, and Etta was pretty upset about it.  So we went hunting to find a shell that the crab would fit into.  It took about three shells before we found the right one.  We got to watch the hermit crab feel around each one to see if it was the right fit.  Once we brought the right sized shell it very quickly maneuvered itself out of the bottle cap and into its new home.  We have kept the bottle cap in our china cabinet as it was such a special event.

On the same trip we also got to see hermit crabs lining up to swap shells!  I have read about this, but never thought I would see it.  They actually line up big to small and eye up their neighbours to see if it's a good upgrade.  I have no idea how they work this stuff out between each other, or the science behind this, but it was pretty damned cool!

5.  When we were on our honeymoon in Brunei, we ended up staying more days than originally planned due to me still recovering from breaking my ankle.  Brunei isn't exactly renowned as a touristy destination and we'd decided to catch a bus to this crazy theme park** we'd seen was there.  Weirdly, this theme park is in quite a rural area where there was a dairy, a mosque, the theme park and lots of cattle.  I wanted to get a better angle to take a photo of this magnificent looking cow. Murray was yelling at me not to step off the path because there might be snakes - and, having done my research I knew there weren't any land based snakes in Brunei so I ignored him.  So I stepped off the path and directly onto a monitor lizard... It just took off away from us very fast.  Murray was absolutely terrified, but I still think it was hilarious.

6. Little Richard coming into my life.  I could not have anticipated the massive effect rehabbing this duck would have on my life. She came into our lives early on in 2021.  When we first met her, we named her Wombat (her siblings were named after other marsupials) and we assumed she was a boy because we'd never seen a female duck with a ring neck marking before.

She and her siblings visited our place with their Mum like quite a few other ducklings around this time.  But one day Little Richard hurt her leg somehow and could no longer run fast enough to keep up with her whanau.  So, based purely on gut instinct, I caught her, strapped her leg and popped her into our chicken coop. She was probably just a few months old.  It really upset her and her family, so we decided to keep her in the coop only overnight and allow her to be with her family during the day.  And when she was fast enough that I couldn't catch her anymore, I deemed her well enough to go back to being with her whanau fulltime.

Little Richard has a permanent limp, and as such her first few years were pretty rough.  When she was about three she was so badly attacked by male ducks during mating season that we had decided to put her back into the coop.  She had a serious eye injury, and the back of her neck was featherless and raw.  I put antiseptic on her wounds.  She was so miserable that after three days we let her out because we thought she might die from depression.  Even though she was here most days, she is still a wild duck, and being held in captivity is extremely unnatural.  We were not sure if she would survive, but we could not be responsible for her being so miserable.

She has been visiting our place for more than five years now.  Thankfully, breeding season has gotten easier for her, and while she still has a limp (which is always worse in Winter) she is a very bolshy duck who can hold her own.  Little Richard taught me that you could rehab a duck without removing them from their flock.  Since then, we have rehabbed quite a few ducks with minor injuries (even a partial amputation!) which we have been very lucky to see grow into adulthood.

7. I saw a bittern in the wild!  They are EXTREMELY hard to spot and also exceptionally rare (less than 1000 left in Aotearoa) so this felt pretty special!  This happened last year while my Grandmother was dying.  My Aunt was sure she'd seen a bittern in this paddock one day, so I decided every time I was driving through we'd do a 'bittern check' to see if we could spot one.  The first time I saw one I was over the moon!  It helped put a bright spot into a difficult time, and gave me something to look forward to.  I have seen this same bittern in the same paddock a few times now, and it never fails to make me smile.  I also campaigned for better signage to help protect the bittern from being struck by a car (it is right next to State Highway 16) and this campaign has resulted in a sign.

8. I met a cat at a beach!  On one of my many alone time holidays in Warkworth I headed out to Algies Bay to go for a walk.  I don't tend to like walking around the more popular places because I like to be alone on my alone time holidays (the whole point is to not have to deal with so many people), so I'd gone to a not very swimmy looking rocky place only accessible at low tide.  I was just walking along when I noticed a cat on the beach.  As soon as it saw me, it ran away toward the treeline.  Then I noticed some people were also at the beach - a man a little older than me, and his son - about Etta's age.  The cat was their cat.  They lived just up the hill from the beach and their cat had started following them when they went out on walks to the beach, so they had started just letting him.  We had a lovely chat, and whilst I definitely prefer being alone on my alone time trips, I really didn't mind meeting this man, his son and their cat.  It was an unusual but lovely interaction.

9. I found some cool mushrooms and ate them.  And then I made a map to lead a friend to them.  The cool thing about mushrooms is because of how the mycelium works, most of the time you can reliably find them in the same spot during suitable mushroom fruiting weather (wet, but not too wet).  I was extremely excited to find what I thought were wood blewits on a track I often walked down.  And, after asking online, checking the spore print and smelling the mushroom - I found I was correct!  So I have harvested and eaten wood blewits from this spot a few times.  I was talking to someone I met through the school Board of Trustees about them (because he's a mycologist) and he said that was one mushroom he'd never found in the wild.  So I used a combo of Googlemaps, MS Paint and a photo of the mushrooms in situ to make him a 'map' so he could find them too.  And he did!  And he sent me a picture of the wood blewits he found.  I felt like a pirate leaving a treasure map somewhere that successfully led someone to a treasure.  It still makes me happy just thinking about it.

10. I went to the Helensville Museum and ended up helping ID people from photos from my Primary school!  The weather was absolutely atrocious that day, but I'd wanted to take the kids to the museum for a while, and we made a day of it and brought Mum and Auntie Shaz too.  As we were paying our entry fees we were asked if we were local (probably different pricing for locals than proper tourists) and I said that Mum and Shaz were, and I'd grown up localish but had since moved.  They asked where I went to school, and when I told them they said 'Oh!  Someone has donated a lot of photos from Waioneke but we don't know who anyone is.  Could you help us?'  After a very enlightening tour of the buildings, I sat down and looked through photos from my primary school, naming people where I could.

They also let me take photos of some of the photos - which was amazing!  I could remember some (but not all) of the events in the photographs and found some amazing pics, like this one which was from a bunch of us singing along to a Sting and the Police song around 1991.  I can name everyone in this photo (I won't - but I'm the second one from the left).  This is definitely not what I was expecting to be doing on a visit to a small museum, but it was definitely pretty special.

There are so many other memorable things that have brought surprise spots of joy to my life - finding a double daisy, another parent helping me rescue ducklings from a drain, hearing a kookaburra in New Zealand for the first time - I could probably list at least twenty more pretty special things.  

The point is, we never know what each day will bring us.  No matter how tough things are or how much craziness is happening in the world it's important to remember that there is always joy to be found in amongst it.  It's important to lean in when these opportunities present themselves - when we wonder about those mushrooms, when we hear about cool birds, when we think something looks a bit odd.  


* By planning holidays, trips to the beach, walks in the cemetery - just generally ensuring I do things that allow me to enjoy my life.

** On arrival we discovered the theme park did not open until 5pm - which was about 6 hours away.  Weirdly though, you could just walk around the theme park when it was closed - so we did!  That was pretty cool in and of itself.  It was one of the craziest places I've ever been.  Very outdated - the major feature was some kind of fountain that played music by Michael Jackson and The Backstreet Boys

Ten good things about 2022

So I know for most of us 2022 is a year we'll quite happily leave in the past.  With Covid killing millions globally, Russia invading Ukraine and the rising cost of living impacting most of us, it certainly hasn't been a beer and skittles year.  However, I'm a great believer in gratitude.  So this post will highlight ten good things that happened to me in 2022.

10. I won some hummus

You can't complain about winning stuff, right?  My only concern was that we wouldn't be able to eat it all before the best before date.  But we did.  And it was delicious.  Nom nom nom!

9. I went to an Ethiopian restaurant for the first time 

This won't all be food related, I promise!  But I do love food.  And I think trying new things is the spice of life.  I love going new places, meeting new people and eating new foods.  When I read this article about a restaurant not far from us I was excited to visit.  And I was not disappointed.  I particularly loved using the injera to mop up the sauce of my curry.

And the service was amazing. Our waitress was super friendly and happy to talk through the menu with us.  She even offered to comp us for Murray's drink when they accidentally gave us the wrong one (we refused.  The drink was delicious and we'll happily try another one next time we go.  Plus there's a vegan menu.  As a lapsed vegetarian who doesn't eat a lot of meat, this is something I really appreciate.  Definitely the culinary highlight of 2022 for me.

8. I started growing kawakawa

One positive things the many lockdowns gave me was rediscovering the joy of 'going bush'.  I now have regular walking spots which take me almost entirely away from the hustle and bustle while still being very close to home.  In one of these spots, there are always little kawakawa sprouting and me being me... I pinched a couple* and took them home.  Now they are big enough I can harvest kawakawa from right outside my door!  I have found kawakawa tea great for sore throats and feeling generally not so great.  I'm so glad I have it easily at hand for whenever there's a need.

7. I discovered Wonky Box 

Never heard of Wonky Box?  Neither had I until recently but it's a service that sends you fresh, local produce that would otherwise end up in landfill.  It's definitely not something that would work for every household - you don't know what fruit or vege you'll be getting until very close to delivery, but it works for us. 

What I like most about it - besides the environmental aspect, is that it forces me to eat seasonally.  Plus it encourages me to use ingredients I am less familiar with.  Life is more exciting when you're not eating the same boring stuff week in and week out.  This is also nutritionally fabulous - eating fresh, local, diverse foods is definitely a great way to get a wide range of vitamins and minerals into our diets.  I've not used turnips much before, but now latkes are a dish served fairly often in our household.  The humble kumara has been honed into many delicious new forms and leeks both feed us for a meal PLUS have a new lease on life as we replant the base in the garden (after re-sprouting it in water on the windowsill. This is all thanks to the fabulous Wonky Box

6. I saw Hannah Gadsby 

With Covid and lockdowns and so many canceled holidays it was exciting to go see, well anything!  And after the first show we'd booked was postponed when our Aus/NZ travel bubble burst, I was not sure if I'd ever see this show (or any other international act for that matter).  However, 11 months after we were initially supposed to see Body Of Work we actually got to see it! 

And it was brilliant!  Hannah Gadsby is not just a funny, autistic human, but she's a masterful storyteller and all round aware person.  These days I'm not so big on live music or large international shows, but I love me some comedy.  And feminist, local(ish) comedy from someone with a background in art history is definitely my jam.  So glad I got to see her live (and get the goss on how she awkwardly proposed to her wife).

5. I got curly hair

This will seem like a frivolous thing.  That's because it is.  It's not on this list because I'm grasping at straws because that's how bad 2022 was, but more that I LOVE my new hair.  Not just because I think it's pretty, but because I'm glad something good came of me being very sick with Covid.

In my case, it was a big auto-immune event.  Consequently, as can happen when people go through things like childbirth or surgery, Covid caused me to experience hair loss.  Instead of losing the normal rate of around 10%, I lost probably 25 - 30% of my hair in a short space of time.

Usually hair loss is considered a bad thing.  And often times it is.  When you're so ill your body goes koo koo bananas it's never a good thing.  But I have very, thick and wavy hair.  So for me it's just taken some of that weight away and allowed my natural curl to shine!  Other than cutting it to encourage the curl and taking care of it so it's healthy, I haven't done anything to my hair.  And while it's slowly growing back in, so this level of curl probably won't last, right now I'm loving it.  

4. Duck rescue
 

We have chickens.  Only three, and they freerange between our place and next door.  But as a consequence of keeping chickens and living close to a stream, we also get ducks.  Some of them have been visiting us for years.  Others, were basically hatched here.  And while ducks are messy and loud and annoying at times, they are also full of personality and I love them to bits. 

While we try not to interfere with nature, we do love our ducks, and we have intervened on occasion.  This year moreso than any other time as we've been deemed by some locals to be something of a duck rescue...  So for short periods we've homed injured or orphaned ducks. 

We had Yoki for just one night.  They'd got too cold and couldn't keep up with Mum and the neighbour found them shivering on the driveway.  We warmed them up and kept them inside and reunited them with Mum the next day.  Sinbad stayed with us overnight for almost three weeks.  Their leg was injured in what was likely a cat attack, and until they could keep up with their family, we decided to keep them safe with us.  Daisy was dropped off by a school friend.  She was found alone at the park and was only a day or two old.  And Flash was an older orphan from school. We only had Flash inside for two nights before we successfully introduced him to our Mum duck Cilla and she welcomed him to her family.

Yoki and Flash are still alive and visit us most days.  It's truly lovely.

This is Cilla with her babies (including Yoki and Sinbad) and Flash

Abby and Etta on their speech performance day

3. I saw our kids perform

One of the most awesome things about 2022 was that school started to return to something resembling normalcy.  The highlight of this for many at our school was the return of Pacific Cultural performances and Kapahaka. Having it back has felt like the heart has returned to our school community.  And while in the past I have enjoyed watching other kids perform, this year I got to see our kids perform.  As someone with Māori whakapapa who was actively discouraged from performing in kapahaka by certain teachers, it feels pretty damned special seeing my kids live a different experience.

Not only did I get to see them participate in kapahaka, but I got to see them deliver fabulous speeches.  Both were selected within their classes to present within their school syndicate.  It was so awesome.  Etta's speech on why Joan of Arc shouldn't have been executed was a brilliant, feminist argument masterfully presented.  And Abby's speech was just her mihi, but the only speech presented in te reo Māori.  Three winners were selected, and Etta was one of them.  It was a super proud day.

2. I recovered from Long Covid

While I know plenty of folk handle Covid with ease, this was not the case for me.  I was very, very sick.  I should have gone to hospital, but at the height of the pandemic, the prospect of doing so was as scary as staying home.  I got a chest infection.  I was off work for almost three weeks.  And then I developed Long Covid.  This affected every aspect of my life.  I had to cut back my hours at work, I had to cut back on jobs at home.  I had to stop exercising**.  I couldn't focus enough to read books.

The strange and frustrating thing about Long Covid was that it came it was inconsistent.  Some days just getting out of bed was an effort.  Other days my energy levels felt normal.  I found it very difficult to assess whether I was overdoing things, or doing less than I should.  Because some days I could go for a half hour walk and feel fine afterwards and other days I struggled to walk to the mailbox.  Sometimes the lethargy was predictable.  I could look back and see how I might have 'overdone things' in the days before.  Other times though, it just hit like a tonne of bricks for no apparent reason.  Colds which would previously hardly affect me, knocked me on my arse.

And it was like this for about seven months.  It wasn't until October that things started to feel closer to normal.  But the take-away here is that now things are closer to normal. Some people have Long Covid for much longer than I did.  Some suffer far worse symptoms than the lethargy and exacerbated asthma that effected me.  Some people will suffer from Long Covid for the rest of their lives

It wasn't easy but I did get through it and I am so grateful that I'm now doing ok.

Our attempt at a couple photo

1. Big changes at home

A really, really big thing happened last year that I haven't spoken about because it's just hard:  Murray and I separated for three months.  I know that separation sounds like a big and bad thing, but in the context of our lives we both believe it was necessary.  Because this isn't just about me I'm not going to go into details but in short, Murray needed to address some health issues.  I needed to have time to work on my health, and those things just weren't possible with us living together.

We set boundaries.  We ensured he still had time with the kids.  We talked about some very hard truths.  And he did some hard mahi.  Honestly, we would not be together today if he had not and I'm very proud of him for doing it.  Separation isn't a magic wand - it hasn't wiped our problems away - but it created space for us to take a step back and assess our priorities both as individuals, as parents, and as a couple.

Things are not perfect.  There is still a lot of work to be done, but we are willing to do it.  Without this, our whanau would be in a very different place today. 

*                    *                    *                    *                    *                    *                    *

I'm not going to lie, 2022 was a hard year for me - just as it was hard for many of us.  But out of the struggle has come a lot of learning.  I am grateful to start 2023 armed with the knowledge I gained from last year.  And whatever this year brings, I will continue to find bright spots to hold in my heart.

* It's from council land, so technically not legal buuut it's in a scrub area which is natural, and there's not a lot of space.  So taking a few plants isn't hurting anything, and gives existing plants more space to grow.

** I had tried cutting back, but I think that's what contributed to my developing Long Covid.  When they say rest - they mean rest.  Like, stay in bed and do nothing level rest.  Cutting back swimming on swimming 1.2km three to four times a week to swimming even 500 meters twice a week was far too much until very recently.