Falling to certain death

Blog posts are coming few and far between, I’m afraid to say. It’s been two weeks since I last wrote, and every day I feel a little guilty that I’m letting my poor little blog sit growing dust while I gallivant off around the countryside, travelling between Wanganui and Tauranga and everywhere else under the sun.

Today I dropped 80 metres from a bridge above a canyon, all in the name of journalism.

That’s right, as part of my job, I was sent off to Gravity Canyon near Taihape to get strapped into a harness and do a bridge swing while our photographer took unflattering photos of my facial expressions. Needless to say, my throat hurts from all the screaming. He, of course, didn’t make a peep when it was his turn.

“You have to scream like a girl so that I don’t look like a wuss,” I said to him as he was getting strapped in.

“Bastard,” I muttered under my breath as I watched him fall and swing in total silence. The pictures afterwards only showed a look of mild concern on his face, nothing close to the almighty terror I was exhibiting.

Yeah, that terror.

 

The fun part of road trips

Sacha and I had the fun part of our trip today – exploring everywhere on the way home.

I think, scenery-wise, the trip between Hamilton and New Plymouth is my favourite out of all the trips I’ve done around the North Island. The hills are huge, the coast is beautiful, and the black sand and driftwood looks super cool.

As we drove home we saw a sign pointing left that said “White Cliffs Walkway, 11km”.  We figured we had plenty of time and petrol, so we followed the road. Eventually we came out here, and spent the next half hour running around with our cameras taking photos and hoping not to get trapped by the tide.

Shenanigans

In my final year at high school I found a cellphone that somebody had accidentally left behind on the bus. Being the responsible young woman that I was, I texted the guy’s mother to let her know her son had left his phone on the school bus. She asked me to get in touch with the boy’s girlfriend, as she went to my school. I did, and we arranged to meet up after our first class.

Seizing the opportunity while we could, my friend Janine and I spent the whole of that class filling his phone with silly photos of ourselves. I had crutches at the time because I had torn the cartilage in my knee, so when we set one of the photos as his wallpaper it showed me pretending to shoot Janine with the end of the crutch.

We were very pleased with ourselves when we gave the phone to that girl afterwards.

P.S I must be a super good person, because as well as giving that phone back, I once found $75 just lying on the ground and took it in to the school office. Tooting my own horn here but man, I’m great.

Subtle gifts

I came home from work today to find that my grandfather had laid out this somewhat large shirt on my bed.

I’m still trying to figure out what kind of message he was trying to send.

 

A taste for the finer things

I wandered into the rumpus room of my grandparents house yesterday to play on their baby grand piano while I’m here visiting. I noticed, with a grimace, that there was a big, brown spider dead (thankfully) behind the piano chair. Possessing no desire to move it or in fact touch it in any way, I sat down and ignored it.

I could not say the same for my cat, Tonka.

As he waltzed into the room behind me, he was immediately drawn to the small, food-sized bug in the corner. As I sat down to play I distinctly heard a crunching noise, and shuddered.

It was only when I came back into the room later in the evening that I realised Tonka had left all this behind: 

Someone obviously isn’t a fan of the legs.

Creeper

Earlier today I’m just sitting at McDonald’s enjoying a BLT bagel when suddenly: 

Hey Ronald . . .

The student life

I decided I wanted to watch Grey’s Anatomy online while I had a bath. There’s no powerpoints for my charger in the bathroom, so I went to drastic measures. The result was pretty good. Also made a delightful discovery – our bath has jets in it, which we thought didn’t work. I figured out how to make them work. We have a freaking spa bath.

 

 

Escapee carbs

My dad has an overly enthusiastic toaster at his house. Remind me not to lean over it to look at my toast, just in case I get a face full of bread.

Drugs and surgeons

Following a knee arthroscopy I had in February, I’ve got to say that there really isn’t any feeling quite like coming off a general anaesthetic.

Let me describe that day for you:

I woke up around ten, hungry, thirsty, but not allowed to eat or drink anything. Fun.

Mum and Nana came over from Tauranga so they could take me home with them after the surgery and look after me. We had until about four o’clock to kill time so we headed off to browse some shops, and for them to order some delicious looking food and slowly devour it while I looked on miserably.

When we got to the hospital I signed some forms, and the surgeon drew a big arrow on my leg so they knew which one they’d be operating on. In no way did it cause me any concern that they needed a huge arrow to tell them which part of my body to cut open.

I had to change into one of those awkward hospital gowns that open from the back, and spent a good deal of my waiting time holding it closed so people couldn’t see my underwear. The rest of the time was spent sitting on my little hospital bed making objects out of a little container of playdough that my mother had brought along. Yep, feeling like an adult.

After a fair bit of waiting around, they wheeled me off to the operating room, where they stuck a needle in my arm that made the whole thing go numb. It was like I could feel the other needles, but they didn’t hurt. At least, they didn’t hurt until he missed the vein and went a little too deep. Youch.

“Let’s get this party started,” said the anaesthetist as he drugged me up. No kidding, those are the actual words he said. Moments later, the room began to spin, and I started to laugh. I vaguely remember seeing the surgeon walking in wearing white gumboots, and then I was out like a light.

When I woke up, my first thought was “Oh shit! They  haven’t done the surgery! Go back to sleep!” The growing pain in my left knee assured me that my initial concerns were unfounded. My second thought, as I opened my eyes, was “where are my family? I thought they’d be here when I woke up? Maybe they went to get food and didn’t come back in time.” I spent a while feeling a bit sad about that, until I realised I was in a different room than the one I’d left them in. My third thought was “wow, my leg is really itchy”.

I’d been put on an experimental drug trial, so I wasn’t given any painkillers until I woke up. The nice, experimental drug trial lady gave me some pills to take, then had me mark my pain level on a little chart.

“You can put your oxygen mask back on now,” she told me.

About ten minutes later, a nurse came along and laughed. “Who put your mask on? It’s upside down!”

When somebody pulled back the blankets to look at my leg I nearly had a heart attack. It was bright red, like a tomato. My distress was short-lived though, I was informed that it was iodine, and not, as I had thought, my body reacting to something. My boyfriend later joked that I’d be getting changed and discover a bright red handprint on my boob. Luckily, that wasn’t the case.

Now, the feeling of that anaesthetic is something that I would be perfectly happy to never experience again. It was like I didn’t have any energy, but I didn’t have the energy to not have energy. I wanted to stand up, but I wanted to sit down at the same time. My body kept trembling as if I was cold, and I felt like I couldn’t lie still, but I couldn’t move either. It was really just one giant contradiction.

The nice, experimental drug trial lady brought me food, and I was simultaneously excited to eat it, and too tired to chew. Mum took this photo of me during one of the moments where I had to pause and contemplate my jelly and icecream before summoning the willpower to lift my arms and continue to shovel food into my mouth

It may seem like I’m thoughtfully stroking my chin in that picture, but actually I was holding my head up.

It took me a full day to shake off the weird, jittery, exhausted/restless feeling that the anaesthetic gave me. I hated every moment of it. Let’s just hope I never ever ever need surgery again.

Upon further inspection, it sort of looks like I have big muscles in this picture. I don’t want to mislead anyone, those aren’t muscles. It’s all fat.

Madness

You know that feeling you get when your feet are freezing and you get into a hot bath or shower? That unbearable burning feeling because your body can’t seem to handle the transition from hot to cold?

Think about how this lady must be feeling as she timidly dips her toe into that spa. Feel her pain.