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365 Days of Fun and Chillaxation As I Raise My Son and Grow My Good News Website – Blog#15

Submitted by on April 30, 2010 – 5:28 pm

It’s nine-thirty in the A.M.  We’ve been up since around seven on this moody, rainy day.  Still yearning for more sleep (the plight of the parent), I initially lay on the couch for half an hour, listening to the rain (soothing) and the birds partying hard (amusing and vaguely irritating) as they psyched themselves big-time up for their day.  Meanwhile my son joyously rode his new three wheeler trike outside in the rain, while my dog, after several attempts, managed to jump the fence without my noticing so that she could reunite with her lesbian girlfriend across the road.  My dog is on heat and she’s taking it all out on ‘Rachel’.  Rachel’s a pup and my dog ‘Maia’ is teaching her a whole new style of play.
Before I’d even broken out of my pajamas my social life had spluttered to a start for the day.  Here in this close knit rural town in the Golden Bay, somewhere at the ‘bottom’ of the planet, the people just kept arriving at our house.  First there was Cat – who, when I first met her, would proudly flaunt her name by consistently wearing clothes associated with the feline species, but now appears to have stopped doing this – she was delivering the GB Weekly.  Then Sol the awesome organic gardener came by and  gave me a warm, rainy hug, saying ‘I knew you’d be back’.  Then Paul (Rachel’s dad) sauntered past, carrying a yoga mat on his shoulder, with my wet, muddy dog at heel.  He said he’d had his work-out for the day and thought he’d carry on with a good yogic warm down (down at the local yoga class).  I was impressed.  He said you’ve got to work at it when you’re approaching sixty.  I pondered this and nearly asked him if he did cross-words too, like my Grandmother did for a similar reason – to keep her mind limber, only I didn’t want to infer that he’d reached the ‘elderly’ age bracket (would that have been an insult? If so, why?  What’s wrong with being ‘elderly’?)
Next Phil the graphic designer turned handy-man/house builder/organic soap producer turned up to do handy-man stuff on my rented house.  I enjoyed telling him I felt grumpy and tired when he turned up.  And in actual fact, the honesty increased my cheer.  When he’d completed his list of small maintenance chores we chatted about growing businesses and houses.  He said a friend of his had recently said something really profound: that building a house is the ultimate exercise in being ‘in the now’.  Because the whole time you’re building, you’re working away on something for the future, and ideally you have to be really ok about where you’re house is at, day by day.  It’s the same with growing the subscription base of your good news website to 100,000.
Now I reckon I could just sit here and the people would continue to rock on up and entertain me all day long, but finally I must tell you about the highlight of the morning: Steve the Poo Man.  Every night I hear a low warm hum coming from somewhere near our fine abode.  It’s actually become strangely reassuring.  It’s sort of like, while I’m sleeping, somewhere, things are being taken are of.  Phil recently surprised me when he told me it was one of the local poo processing stations, which happens to be located right outside our house, in a very well tended too bit of Tasman District Council land.  They’ve grown nice native bushes there, which are doing very well – Hmmm …  I’ve watched a few men come by to tend to the poo machine’s needs.  Recently two men swore at it in strong English accents and then this morning Steve the lovely poo man turned up.  Maia, being on heat, had to jump the fence to assist him as he checked out the machine and before long Steve, Phil and I got to talking.  He introduced himself and gave us the run down on how the reassuring poo machine works.  He even opened the gate thing so that we could hear the rush of the raw sewage and he joked ‘You wouldn’t want to be down there!’.  A deep shudder passed through my body and I leapt away from the noise like gazelle.  Steve explained the long journey that the town’s poo took and implored me to call ‘0020’ if the red light was flashing or the smell ever became too much for me.  Prior to learning about the poo machine I’d assumed the smell, which seemed to arise in the evenings, was from the near-by dairy farms (slightly more romantic).  I’ve decided not to let it bother me, I’ve managed to clump the poo smell into the ‘reassuring’ category along with the noise of the poo machine.  Steve seems happy with the machine, almost reverent.  It’s good that we talked.
Today’s rating (bumped up by one point by Steve’s visit) 9/10.

365 Days of Fun and Chillaxation (as I raise my gorgeous son and grow my good news website to a subscription base of 100,000 people).  The Low Down on this Blog.

Check out yesterday’s blog.

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