Tonight I found out I need about $3500 worth of dentistry.
Multiple fillings and something like three root canals.
I did, however, surprise the dentist. I’ve managed to get to this point completely pain free.
It’s just more proof that I am a complete bad ass.
Soon to be a very very poor bad ass.
Anyone want to buy my stuff?
I was sitting at my desk at work, eleven stories up, when I felt the earthquake.
It went on for a long time. So long that I sent a message out on twitter and saw both before and after my tweet, similar Wellington based messages. After it stopped I thought about it and decided that I really rather liked these little reminders that we are small and insignificant. And then I sent the message that starts this entry.
What I didn’t know then was that the earthquake I’d felt in Wellington was actually centred over three hundred kilometres away in Christchurch.
6 months ago Christchurch was rocked an earthquake. It hit in the early hours of the morning and there were no deaths or injuries.
It seems that was only a practice run.
This earthquake hit just before 1pm on a weekday. People were at work, at home, out at lunch. Exchange students were in classes and tourists were in the Cathedral. I was in my office, wondering why my screen was shaking.
Everyone I know spent that afternoon glued to the television.
Parliament rose early.
There was a profound sense of shock. We saw the shock we felt etched on the dust covered faces of the people in Christchurch. I watched the unedited footage and saw someone rescued from the top of a flattened building, I saw people loaded in to the back of SUVs as the city ran out of ambulances, I saw broken buildings and broken people.
We clung to social networking sites and I have never been more glad to have twitter. Never more glad to be able to help in my small small way.
I watched as messages headed into the ether, asking if this person or at person was okay, people sending messages that they were okay, offers of assistance. I retweeted what I could, getting messages to a wider audience, but terrified of sending out misinformation.
I have no family in Christchurch. There was no one I was frantically trying to get hold of. I am loath to admit how much the earthquake has affected me because, in the most basic sense, it has not.
But I live in Wellington. We have been warned how overdue for “the big one” our city is. There is the guilt that it should have been us and not Christchurch. There is the guilt that we are relieved it was not us.
I held Craig close that night. We decided on meeting places in Wellington and vowed to get a survival kit together. I thanked whatever gods there are out there that we were safe.
At the time of writing the death toll in Christchurch is 145. There are still more missing. Our garden city has made news across the world and international urban search and rescue teams have come to our aid.
I have donated. I have worn black. I will observe two minutes of silence.
I will offer all I can and do my job diligently and to the best of my ability. Christchurch needs the rest of New Zealand to keep the country running.
They are a little busy right now.
If you can please spare a dollar or two to help
http://www.redcross.org.nz
In 199 days Craig and I will be back here:
Waikiki, Hawaii – August 2008
Almost exactly. We’re staying at the same hotel. For 7 nights.
On a cold, grey, Wellington morning, heading into the final stretch of rehearsals* I need to remember that there are bright spots on the horizon.
* this is when it feels hardest, when you are sick of your lines, sick of your costume, sick of the hours of rehearsal, but don’t yet have the adrenaline of performances
I hate the sunsets here.
It’s just another day ending in a country I find suffocating.
(photo from January 2008)
Here’s a photo of Kat‘s adorable puppy gnawing on my thumb.
p.s. That’s Craig’s manlymanly arm at the bottom of the shot. I am not that hirsute.
p.p.s. The puppy is a chocolate labradoodle (labraDOODLE!) called Bailey and is pretty much the cutest thing ever.
p.p.p.s. With me? puppies are like babies. I distrust them generally, like a few, am definitely not ready for one of my own.
p.p.p.p.s. Sir C and I will probably eventually get a cat rather than a dog anyway. You can’t parallel that one to babies.
My darling sisters and I read the following poem:
Dirge without Music by Edna St. Vincent Millay
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains, — but the best is lost.
The answers quick & keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,
They are gone. They have gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
My Grandmother, Iris
R.I.P.
* Craig’s line.
And to be fair, his Grandfather passed away a little over a week ago, and now neither of us has any living grandparents.
If you paid any attention to my twitter at all today, then you probably think I’m whiny, paradoxical, or both. I have spent months on end dreaming (loudly) of snow and ice, of the need to wear scarves and hats, of rosy-cheeks and dragon-breath.
And then! two scant days into New Zealand’s autumn, it’s all I can do to keep my mouth shut about how miserable and cold I am, cotton-headed, stuffed with phlegm (ew), and prickled with goosebumps.
The truth is? I only love winter (and I do love you winter!) is when it does not adversely affect me. I hate having a cold, and being inappropriately dressed for the weather drives me crazy. I hate having to walk in the rain because in Wellington when it rains, it is windy (and when it’s sunny it’s windy, and when it’s windy? it’s really windy) and in Wellington’s wind using an umbrella is pointless.
Instead I yearn for an idealised winter. Walking next to Craig, hands wrapped around a gingerbread latte or Monmouth Coffee*, bridging feet over cobblestones, deep dark brownies, and steaming venison burgers.
In my ideal winter it is perpetually Saturday Mornings at Borough Market, and I am wearing the following outfit:
Grey skinny jeans
Merino or Uniqlo heat-tech top
Butter soft black leather blazer
Effusive scarf & bobbly hat
I am going about replicating this outfit in New Zealand as well
It will be my winter weekend uniform.
Things around the Oh Darling household have been a little sad and grey and wintery themselves this week. On Wednesday Sir C and I are packing our bags and heading down to Dunedin for a family funeral.
Posting will be light or non-existent for the second half of this week.
* Monmouth is the best coffee I have ever had, bar none. The queue at the Borough Market stall was always monumental but the coffee was always worth it.
Southwark, Late 2007
Sunshine
The Blue Fin Building
&
Rain
The Millennium Bridge & the Tate Modern.
p.s. The Blue Fin Building can be seen in this photo. Looking like a little addition to the Tate Modern’s glass top floor, it protrudes either side of the Chimney.
p.p.s. I might have to stop this segment. It makes me sad. Wistful, wishful. If only I still lived in Southwark.
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