Garage Sale! (by Carrie)

Maybe it is becoming spring, or maybe they just do garage sales all year here, but Friday we got a little notice in the mailbox: the area Bowling club (not bowling like big heavy balls and pins, but bowling like little balls, akin to horseshoes) was having a garage sale. I have to admit, I was excited. Emily and I got up and went at 8 Saturday morning--well, we got there about 8:10, along with lots of other people. Pretty much just like a church garage sale in the States--but one particularly rich with puzzles (we got two) and kitchen stuff (we got some miscellany). I got an iron. No exercise machine (we'll keep looking for that--seems like it should be a good garage sale item. that's how we got the one we had to leave in Kansas). I decided this morning I need to make a list of all the appliances we need, and check them off. We are already the proud owners of a toaster, a crock pot, an iron, and a space heater, all with funny plugs.

Manford and I also spent a couple of hours at our future home, meeting with a kitchen designer, figuring out what to put where. She will make up a plan and a price (yikes. but seems like less than it would be in the States to rip out the whole kitchen and put in a new one) and we will meet on Friday and pick out colors. We also measured the bedrooms to try to figure out how to fit in at least some of our furniture--a bed and a dresser is about all that will fit in our room, maybe a small chair, but it has one built-in set of drawers between the two closets. Joseph's room with be dominated by his Harry Potter bed, but he does everything on the bed, anyway. Manford is right, the yard is a challenge, but at least it is conveniently divided up into sections, and maybe we can tackle one zone at a time.

It's raining again this morning--the roofs here are nearly all steel, and the sound of the rain on the roof is kind of soothing...I think especially to Kiwis who have grown up with it. One house we looked at had a concrete roof (which sounds very odd, and looked a bit odd, too--the concrete was shaped like tiles, kind of, but still concrete colored), and the realtor was musing that concrete roofs were good, but you missed the sound of the rain...yesterday it started off foggy, and cleared off nicely in the afternoon, so that Emily and Manford and I explored a little in the reserve (park, basically big green area with grass and trees and a small gully) just behind our rental house. It was soggy, but a nice big place to run and play ball and hide in the copse of trees, where Emily was convinced there might be a kiwi. Hopefully it will dry out some so she can enjoy it before we move--there are a couple of these reserves near our new house, too, but not right out the back gate. There is lots of green space here--but unfortunately, most of them don't have what Emily calls "real parks," meaning playground equipment. Though her school has great playground equipment, and we could walk to it from the new house.

I'm halfway through Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and looking forward to being able to talk to Joseph about it.

Work is getting busy, as I venture out and try to learn about the local mental health and family support services. I've been following our first-year clinical graduate students around as they do visits to the local agencies, and also making some of my own contacts. Last week I went to the Waikato Family Centre, which is run by an incredibly energetic nurse/midwife, and resides in a beautiful house that used to be a brothel...it's kind of like the breastfeeding resource center, plus--families can come and they help with nursing, but also with figuring how to put the baby to sleep (they have cribs and separate rooms, so they can get the baby to sleep, and then the mom can either sleep or talk to someone), and anything else, for the first year, free; they run postpartum depression groups, and screen everyone for postpartum depression (data!). I'm going next week to spend some time there, and later to interview some of the women about their experiences with the health and mental health systems, to give me some leads on what kind of research might work and needs to be done. And teaching seems to be going fine--I am getting off easy this term, and it is clear I'll have more teaching to do in the future, but it's great to have the luxury of some time both to figure out the university and to set up some research.

I hope you are all well and happy, and staying cool!
Carrie