Rambles from World's End

So the morning of the last Saturday of the month’s rolls around, the Mauritian is off at gym working the past week out of his system and the butterfly is charging about the house naked when there is the expected knock at the door. It is time for the monthly visit from the local Jehovah’s Witness who goes by the name of Jeff. Jeff is a “landscaper” by trade, an intelligent man with an open and honest face and a friendly and respectful manner. He is also a lapsed Catholic who has dedicated himself to the “Jehovah's Witness” sect and it determined to convert me. I admire his determination, his debating skills and his knowledge of the bible and look forward to a debate I can sink my teeth into for half an hour once a month. I started out just listening to what he had to say as I had absolutely no knowledge of what a “JW” believes or does not, I even started reading the little pamphlets they give out. Then I started to compare the bible quotes in these pamphlets to that of my own bible ...

Just over a month ago, here at the end of the world, the earth moved! Stop smirking I mean that literally, the Australian and Pacific tectonic plates shifted and the earth literally moved. The Rictor Scale measured a 7.1 earthquake with the epicentre just south of Christchurch along a fault line that nobody knew existed. According to one report the last time this particular fault line is thought to have moved was about sixteen thousand years ago and it made up for this lack of movement by condensing it all into about two minutes and shifted up to five kilometres in places instead of a slow four millimetres a year. A month later and the aftershocks just keep coming with reports of up to one hundred aftershocks in one day. But the most miraculous fact about this is that to date there has not been a single fatality. There is a poem by William Congreve which ends “...Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn'd.” The earths temperature is rising the polar ice caps are melting faster. The h...

I had a bitter exchange with a woman at the supermarket a few weeks ago. The Butterfly was having one of her very rare disobedient moments and completely ignoring my requests or instructions. So after three warnings I smacked her butt, where upon this woman berated me for being so cruel and abusive and embarrassing my child like that in public! I was rather taken aback and retaliated with a rather bitchy “Would you rather I put her in a time out and gave her a lolly for misbehaving?” In hindsight I should have just acted dumb, smiled sweetly and nodded as I walked away. But as I generally leap before I look I plunged feet first into a very heated debate with a very hot headed stubborn and not so intelligent individual. Now don’t misunderstand me, I do not advocate smacking as the only form of discipline and I do agree that in some cases it can be abusive. I also do not discount using the “timeout” method. For both me and the Butterfly using a combination of smacks and timeouts works ...

The Butterfly was spending her “calm down time” before bed sitting next to her favourite parent and listening to a “Celtic Women” CD and I was struck by how clearly she sang along with the music, even those songs in Gaelic. I realised then what an amazing command of English she has, even the extent of her vocabulary seems impressive. People often remark about how alert and intelligent she is for her age, and so many people seem genuinely impressed by how well she speaks. Now I am her mother and by nature am biased, I also have no clue what she should or shouldn’t understand or know at her age and am therefore often blown away by my child. The Butterfly finds most foods “delicious,” my clown collection “gorgeous,” playing hop scotch with mum “delightful” and wine “superb.” I have no idea if she really knows what these words mean but she has never used them out of context. She has worked out how to swop CD’s and DVD’s and how to make them work she also now knows how to navigate around ...

I had an interesting conversation over Sunday roast with a friend about the “Creation vs. Evolution” debate. Most people have a basic understanding about “Darwin’s Theory of Evolution” and the “missing link” and most people are aware of the teachings of Christianity. I have listened to the view of the “creationist” and the “evolutionist” and I have marvelled at how blind to a compromise these people are. “Evolutionists” seem to think all Christians are “creationist” and therefore gullible and unaware and all so called “creationists” seem to label “evolutionists” as atheist. I think people have gotten so caught up in the debate and desperate to prove themselves right they have lost the ability to be “open minded.” I wonder how many of these people realise that Darwin was a devout Christian and that these theories he developed went against everything he believed and rocked the very foundations of his faith. Yet as a scientist he could not dispute the facts and proof that seemed to p...

I had made a comment on my “Facebook” page about the Mauritian, saying something along the lines of his “compulsion” for perfection was bordering on “obsessive.” This sparked a “conversation” between me, my Angel and my new friend about “OCD.” I have always wondered at the Mauritian’s insistence that anything he cooks or builds must be absolutely perfect and the smallest, unnoticeable mistake will infuriate and annoy him to a point where he will not enjoy the food or whatever it is he has done. I think he goes a little overboard and when he rants and raves I just roll my eyes, mutter under my breath and walk away from him. I like how his food tastes I don’t care what it looks like and the woodwork or drawings he has done look brilliant as far as I’m concerned, he disagrees a lot of the time. My Angel and my new friend between them seem to have a rather long list of compulsions. According to them, there is only one way the toilet roll should go on to the dispenser. Towels, sheets and...

The Butterfly’s third birthday has come and gone in a whirl of wrapping paper, balloons and smiles. Again the Mauritian and I were faced with the problem of what not to buy for her birthday. We were very proud of the fact that we only walked out the shop with two books, a cordless microphone, a small tub of “Play Dough” and of course the next addition to her collection of “In the Night Garden” toys. It seems almost unreal now that only three years ago, after a sleepless night the Mauritian and I were heading off to the hospital to finally welcome our daughter into this crazy messed up world. But three years ago it was that this stubborn, bright and beautiful bundle came into my life screaming, red faced and indignant. For the past three and a bit years now she has done or said something every day that has had some sort of effect on me. For the past three and a bit years I have been floating on a bubble of pride about this little miracle, who is a part of me. Every day I look at her ...