(No) Ordinary Day-Part 2

(No) Ordinary Day – Part 2

Continued from previous post

...Ordinary days are magic, if only for the fact you faced neither calamity nor miracle. The "no calamity" part is self-explanatory. No miracles, from where I hang, upside down at the bottom of the world, suits me just fine. When life floats on an even keel, you don't look for miracles; You seek instead to adapt to the inevitability of change.

So here, in a paua shell, is my ordinary Kiwi day, April 6th, 2011:
(continued from previous post)

10:30 a.m. Help in Fiona's classroom. Her teacher is having the kids write an 8-line poem (an "octopoem," he calls it) about their backyard. Fi's backyard is pink, sunny and has a TV. One of Fiona's classmates gets in trouble for talking/walking/not paying attention and is made to sit outside the classroom to finish his work.

Fiona, Bree and Ruby at lunch outside their class room

12:30 The bell rings. Lunch time. I brought my lunch so I could eat outside with Fiona and her classmates. Fi sits between Ashley and Bree. She barely gets through half her sandwich before her friends starting pulling her to the playground.

1:00 Sit in Cafe 88, downtown at The Mount, drinking ginger tea, checking e-mails and writing the blog. Procrastinate by reading my inbox from an online dating site. Respond to a message from a guy much younger than me. Resist the urge to correct his spelling and punctuation.

3:00 Back to school to pick up kids. As we cross the street, Finley yells out to the teacher who leads crosswalk duty, "'Bye, Sneaker!" He says this every single school day. I didn't know the teacher's real name (Maureen) until about a month after classes started. Fi and Finn told me Maureen sneaks into their class and steals pencils. I don't know if it's true, but the way Finn says "Hi, Sneaker!" and the way the teacher responds each time with, "'Bye, Sweetie," melts my heart.

3:30 Feed the starving vultures (Fi & Finn) crackers and cheese. Half the crackers land on the floor. Clean kitchen while listening to David Letterman on TV. Weird to hear Letterman in the afternoon. He's doing a bit about former V.P. Dick Cheney's heart.

5:00 Kelsey, the sitter, arrives. Kids jump on her like she's the last teenager in the world. They love her. Kelsey's one of the first people we met in the Bay of Plenty (BOP for short). I found her through a notice on a community bulletin board. She lives in our neighborhood.

5:10 Run 2 miles down the beach. Narrowly avoid tripping over a fishing line. Run into a woman I know from play group (Suze) and her son as I head up the stairs to run the road. Turns out, she lives just across the street from my turn-around point. "Now you know where we are, if you want to stop by," she says. Run 2 miles back home along the road. Feels easy after running on sand.

5:45 Get ready go go out. I had a kind of "date" lined up that I bungled by asking my date to bring a friend to the pub for Quiz Night. Then someone else asked me if I could drive another friend to the pub. The date has turned into a singles' night.

7:00 Pick up a woman from my Hash (crazy) runners' group. Leslie (a.k.a., "LesB bin") tells me her daughter is borrowing her car tonight. No worries.

7:20 Arrive at pub for Quiz Night. Find the organizer of our group, Jay, and meet her friends.

"Jay's Mob"

7:40 My new friend, Pete, arrives with his friend, Dave. They're both cut-ups. This could be more fun than I thought...

8:00-ish Quiz-time: The moderator, a woman with a heavy Northern English, Irish or Scottish brogue, (there's dissension at our table about this) calls out questions we can barely understand. Are Californium and Americum elements on the Periodic Table? (yes) When's the last year Tiger Woods won the Master's? (2009) How many Oscars did Elizabeth Taylor win? (2). Which major public figure is planning a trip to Ireland in May to trace his Irish roots? (Barack Obama – I actually knew this one, but my teammates wouldn't believe me, and crossed out my answer. Hmph :). Several of the questions involved Kiwi sports figures. I hadn't a clue about those.

9:45 Quiz is over. No prizes for "Jay's Mob", but I had fun, met new people and tried something different.

10:00 Drop off Leslie

10:30 Arrive home, finish blog, read e-mail. Watch half an episode of "The Real Housewives of Atlanta." I'm not addicted to the show or anything (yeah, right), but I can tell you Cynthia should postpone the wedding, and Kim's a horrible singer.

11:30 Lights out, electric blanket on.

Just another ordinary day in Kiwi country. Extraordinary.