Naptus Interruptus

The house was clean, my belly was full of brunch and the feather down duvet was inviting so I laid down to take a nap.

It was an awesome nap. It really was.

And then I was rudely awakened by a particularly shrill version of Greensleeves.

In the groggy haze of my nap brain I became convinced that a Renaissance Fair had established itself on the lawn.

I soon realized it was the local ice cream van taking an excruciatingly long time to negotiate his way out of the cul-de-sac in front of our house.

I suppose there is no greater support of the local meteorologist's claims that we are having a mild winter than the fact that an ice cream vendor was out in full force with his rangley jangley version of the romanesca classic.

I tried to settle back down to my nap but I'll be damned if the ice cream van didn't keep coming back down the street as if he was stuck in a mobius strip.

And so a perfectly good nap was brought to an irritating conclusion.

How things are going

I have gone through a bunch of changes recently, not just growing to the size of a small whale but also switching from a student visa to a work visa and becoming a journalist once again.

I have put the PhD on hold for now and I don't mind at all.

I work for a farming publication where the sheer amount of science involved keeps my mind stimulated and intrigued.

I think if and when I return to academia it will be to do a thesis on social habits of the captive and wild Kea.

Nick, the NPR and I have moved into a larger house with more space for us all.

Nick's mom has come over from the UK to help out with the baby and keep us company.

She arrived last week with her partner Dave.

They had flown 11 hours from London to LA and spent another 12 on a flight to Auckland.

When we met them at the airport in Christchurch they were in relatively good spirits for people who had traveled half the globe and last eaten a 4 a.m. breakfast consisting of a tiny omelette and a glass of wine.

For the next month our house will be home to two Brits, two Americans and one Kiwi.

It's like the United Nations: Varieties of Vanilla.

I think I'll invite my French Canadian colleague over for tea complete the "circle of whiteness."

Anyway, the new house has a lovely conservatory attached off the living room and I thought it would be the perfect place to put a few tropical plants and let Archimedes spread his wings.

I bought a very expensive plant that looks like a shefflera but has a more loosely configured branch system. I was very proud of it and spent quite a few minutes trying to get into just the right spot in the conservatory.

Upon his first release, Archimedes flew around and screeched happily. All the starlings and blackbirds and house sparrows in the area came to check him out.

When the sun went down he returned to his hanging cage and I took him in for the night.

The next day I let him out in the conservatory again while I went off to run errands.

When I returned I noticed that several stems on the expensive shefflera like plant had been completely torn to bits and were hanging limply.

For the first time in the seven months I have had him, I genuinely lost my temper with Archimedes.

This little stunt came a few days after he had chewed through one of the folds holding his "happy hut" in place and caused it to dangle pitifully from his top perch.

I propped it back up on the perch and he has taken to nesting on the top of it. At least, I think that's what he's doing. He may have formed some sort of romantic attachment to it for all I know.

Anyway, I got really miffed when I saw my mangled plant and I chased him around with my gray sweatshirt just to be mean.

Why is it I can go into the Kea enclosure at Willowbank and be perched on to by half a dozen semi-wild parrots but my tiny, hand reared, domesticated parrot still won't let me get in his personal space?

And now I have to deal with his destructive tendencies.

Too much.

Nick isn't a huge fan of Archimedes and says that he is willfully antisocial and would need therapy if he were human.

When I pondered finding a new home for him however, even Nick said I was being a bit hasty.

I meant this to be a positive post about improvements and stuff but then the dad gummed bird got me all worked up.

Anyway, life is mostly good and stuff right now if we just don't dwell on my overpriced, recently denuded houseplant.

Pregnancy: The Final Trimester

So I'm just getting into my eighth month of pregnancy and I'm pretty much over it.

At first I was all like:

But now I'm all like: