Birth of a holiday

The delightful "Nightmare before Christmas" starts with the poem, "Now you've probably wondered where holidays come from. If you haven't I'd say it's time you begun."

Of course, they come from ritual and custom, but are made official by government. In the US, in 1870, Congress designated four federal holidays:

• New Year's Day
• Independence Day
• Christmas Day
• Thanksgiving Day*

These originally only applied to federal workers in Washington DC, but in 1885 extended to all federal employees. Six more were added over the next 113 years:

• George Washington's Birthday (1879)**
• Memorial Day (1888, originally called "Decoration Day")
• Labor Day (1894)
• Veterans Day (1938, originally called Armistice Day)
• Columbus Day (1968)
• Martin Luther King Jr. day (1983)***

Most US businesses do not provide paid time off for Washington's Birthday, Veterans Day, Columbus Day or Martin Luther King Jr. day, so most Americans only get 6 holidays per year.

In the UK, during the industrial revolution, holidays weren't just local, they were dictated by the factories -- when they shut down, everyone went on holiday. The Bank of England, however, had to be open every weekday for the government to function. In 1871 the UK defined the first "bank holidays" and in true "United Kingdom" fashion, they were different. In England, Wales and Ireland these were:

• Good Friday
• Easter Monday (Easter being the first weekend after the full moon which occurs on or after 21 March)
• Whit Monday (The day after Whitsun Sunday, the seventh Sunday after Easter, which often marked the beginning of the summer)
• The first Monday in August
• Christmas
• Boxing Day (aka St Stephen's day, the day after Christmas)

Scotland, being more puritanical, did not approve of religious holidays -- in fact, in 1640 Scotland made the celebration of "Yule vacations" (i.e. Christmas) illegal and New Year's Eve (Hogmanay) became the main midwinter holiday. As a result, Scotland did not get Easter Monday, Whit Monday or Boxing Day but got New Year's Day and the first Monday in May instead. (Christmas and Good Friday were still considered public holidays in Scotland.)

In 1971, the UK replaced Whit Monday with "Spring Bank Holiday" on the last Monday in May, and the holidays are the same across England and Scotland: New Year's Day; Good Friday; Easter Monday, the first and last Mondays of May; Summer Bank Holiday****; Christmas Day; and Boxing Day. Scotland also takes 2 January and St Andrew's Day off, while Northern Ireland takes off St Patrick's day and the Battle of the Boyne*****.

More than that, though, is that businesses have to abide by these holidays so most people in England and Wales get 8 holidays per year while Scotland and Northern Irelance get 10. The British government can also change the dates or declare extra bank holidays and they have done so four times in the past 20 years: In 2002 to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of Elizabeth II; in 2011 to celebrate the Wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton; and in 2012 to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II; and they have already announced an extra holiday in 2022 to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II.

New Zealand, as a member of the British Empire until 1947 (or 1986 or 2003, depending on how you define "independence") inherited the UK bank holidays (plus 2 January) but eventually replaced the "spring/summer bank holidays" with:

• Labour Day (1999)
• Sovereign's Birthday (1952)
• ANZAC (1966)
• Waitangi Day (1976)

The Holidays Act 1981 set out these dates plus established an "anniversary" holiday for each region (Wellington gets 22 January, Auckland gets 29 January, etc.) so in total they get 11 holidays.

Except now New Zealand has 12.

Matariki****** is the Māori name for the Pleiades star cluster, also known as Seven Sisters or Subaru in Japanese. In the Southern hemisphere, Matariki rises above the horizon in late June/early July and Māori mark it as the new year. It was a time of celebration and there have been efforts to make it a national holiday since 2009. Jacinda Arden pledged to make it official if re-elected and has just made good on her promise, although she did delay its implementation by one year to avoid any economic impact after Covid-19, so it won't be celebrated until 24 June 2022. (She needn't have worried: Stats NZ reported today that New Zealand's unemployment rate, which was expected to rise to 6% because of covid-19, fell to under 5%.)

So there you go: A new holiday is born, in case you needed another reason to wish you were in New Zealand.

* Thanksgiving had been informally celebrated since 1650. In 1863, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a "national thanksgiving day" as the last Thursday in November. In 1939, in the middle of the Great Depression, November had five Thursdays and retailers were concerned because (then as now) many Americans didn't start Christmas shopping until after Thanksgiving. To appease them, Franklin Roosevelt moved it up a week. In 1941 it was set as the fourth Thursday in November.

** In 1968 George Washington's birthday was moved from 22 February to the third Monday in February in order to create a three-day weekend. Contrary to popular opinion, it was never renamed "President's Day" and makes no reference to Abraham Lincoln (whose birthday happens to be 12 February).

*** Washington's birthday was the first federal holiday to celebrate the life of an individual; Martin Luther King Jr. day was the second. Reagan signed it into law in 1983 and it first took effect in 1986. However, some States did not enact it until 2000, and today Alabama and Mississippi celebrate "Robert E. Lee Day" on the same day!

**** Originally celebrated in England on the first Monday of August and not celebrated in Scotland at all, England now celebrates the "summer bank holiday" on the last Monday in August while Scotland celebrates it on the first Monday in August!

***** Do not go to Northern Ireland for the Battle of the Boyne holiday, better known as "The Twelfth." It's ugly.

****** Matariki is a shortened version of Ngā mata o te ariki o Tāwhirimātea, or 'the eyes of the god Tāwhirimātea,' the god of weather.

New Zealand citizenship

New Zealand law states you have to be in New Zealand for five years on an "unrestricted" visa before you can apply for citizenship. That is, a visa that allows you to stay indefinitely. I wrote about this before: A "resident" visa has an expiration date but you're allowed to live in New Zealand indefinitely; you just can't leave. (If you do, and the resident visa is expired, they won't let you back in.) It's kind of messed up.

Regardless, I got my resident visa on December 9, 2015. (I'd been in New Zealand for over a year before that but was on a tourist visa.) Today I was eligible to apply for citizenship, and I desperately wanted to give the government $470 for no benefit whatsoever. Seriously, unless I wanted to join the military or get top secret clearance*, there is no benefit to being a citizen over having a "permanent resident" visa. I still get to vote, I still get a pension**, I can still leave the country and return***, etc.

But in my desperate effort to be like Jason Bourne, I wanted another passport, so I applied. In the past I took my own passport photos and they were awful, so I decided that this time I'd get my passport photo taken professionally. It cost me $20 but was so worth it:

New Zealand law states you have to be in New Zealand for five years on an "unrestricted" visa before you can apply for citizenship. That is, a visa that allows you to stay indefinitely. I wrote about this before: A "resident" visa has an expiration date but you're allowed to live in New Zealand indefinitely, you just can't leave. (If the resident visa is expired, they won't let you back.) It's kind of messed up.

Regardless, I got my resident visa on December 9, 2015. (I'd been in New Zealand for over a year before that but was on a tourist visa.) Today I was eligible to apply for citizenship, and I desperately wanted to give the government $470 for no benefit whatsoever. Seriously, unless I wanted to join the military or get top secret clearance*, there is no benefit to being a citizen over having a "permanent resident" visa. I still get to vote, I still get a pension, etc.

But in my desperate effort to be like Jason Bourne, I wanted another passport, so I applied. In the past I took my own passport photos and they were awful, so I decided that this time I'd get my passport photo taken professionally. It cost me $20 but was so worth it:

Of course that looks awful, but contrast it with my other passport photos****:

 

 

When I finished my application, I got a friendly email that read:

Tēnā koe,

Thank you for applying for New Zealand citizenship. We will assess the application and tell you the outcome within 5 to 10 months.

 

After it's approved, I still have to schedule (and pay for) a swearing-in ceremony, so I'll be lucky if this is completed within a year.

 

* New Zealand is part of the "five eyes" alliance with the US, UK, Australia and Canada, so my US or UK citizenship would probably qualify me, anyway.

** The cheeky bastards make me take any other pensions first and then "deduct" that from my New Zealand pension, so once I've taken my US pension they will not likely have to pay me anything.

*** Even during the pandemic, I can leave New Zealand, but if I want to return then I have to spend two weeks in a "government quarantine facility" and pay $3,000 for the privilege. (The quarantine facilities are all 4-star or 5-star hotels and include three meals a day, so $3,000 for two weeks is actually heavily subsidized, but I still don't want to do it.)

**** In my last US passport photo, I wore a Hawaiian shirt. I thought it was funny. Now it would mark me as a radical extremist.

 

***** That's far too many asterisks. What would my English teacher say... 

Lecretia Seales

From https://lecretia.org/about/

Lecretia Seales was a lawyer based in Wellington, New Zealand. She was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2011. In January 2015, Lecretia’s health entered a decline despite her treatments and she came to the end of her options for treating the cancer effectively.

She began to review her end-of-life alternatives. She discovered that if she was very lucky, she might die quickly, but that the more likely outcome was that she would have to undergo a drawn out, undignified death, after losing her mental faculties and all quality of life. Her other alternative was suicide.

Lecretia would have liked the choice to receive physician-assisted death, to bring about her demise before she entered a long, pointless and wasteful period of suffering prior to her death.

On 20 March 2015, Lecretia and her lawyers filed a statement of claim with the High Court of New Zealand arguing that her GP should not be prosecuted under the Crimes Act 1961 in assisting her in her death with her consent, and that under the Bill of Rights Act 1962 she had the right to not be subjected to the unnecessary suffering of a long, cruel death. Her claim was denied.

Lecretia’s case brought awareness to the plight of the terminally ill, and through her hearing she both clarified the current state of New Zealand law and catalysed New Zealand politicians into engaging with the issue of assisted dying for the first time in more than a decade.

Lecretia passed away on 5 June 2015, the same day the judgment was released to the public. In December 2015, Lecretia was named New Zealander of the Year by the New Zealand Herald.

Parliament had attempted to legislate assisted dying or euthanasia three times since 1995 but all had been blocked. The End of Life Choice Act was passed in November 2019 with the proviso that a public referendum needed 50% support before the Act became law. In October 2020, it passed with 65% and will become law on January 1, 2021. 

If a person requests assisted dying, two doctors – the person’s doctor and an independent doctor – must agree the person meets all the criteria:

• is suffering from a terminal illness likely to end their life within six months
• significant and ongoing decline in physical capability
• unbearable suffering that cannot be eased in a manner that the person finds tolerable; and
• be able to show they can understand the decision and communicate their response.

The person then chooses a method, date, and time and can change their mind at any time. The lethal dose can be administered by the person (ingested or intravenously) or the doctor (feeding tube or injection). In Victoria, Australia, where it is already legal, most people ingest pentobarbital as a drink.

I mention all of this for two reasons. First, obviously, the option of physician-assisted dying has become very personal to me, and I am very grateful this is an option. And second, because my wife and I were house-hunting and looked at a home just a few blocks from us. It's very hard to go house-hunting because it's a constant reminder that at some point my wife will not be able to use stairs, and may not be able to get out of bed, and we want a place that she will be happy in.

This particular house was perfect: One level, on the flat, just a short walk from the shops, quiet with a lovely deck and backyard. The vendor said she was selling the house on behalf of her niece, who had died a few years previously. We noticed handrails in the shower and asked if she had mobility issues. That's when the vendor told us her niece was Lecretia Seales.

I'd only been in New Zealand about six months when her court case unfolded on television but I remembered it well, especially how heartbreaking it was she died the same day they unsealed the judgment. Unfortunately we did not get the house -- the New Zealand property market is out of control, and we were outbid by a significant amount -- but it was only because of that interaction that I realised the End of Life Act was a direct response to her case, and that I owe a debt of gratitude to this woman I'd never met.

Queenstown hotel and spa

My wife and I found a hidden gem in Queenstown. Technically, it's in Frankton, about 10 minutes from Queenstown, between the airport and Lake Wakatipu. We spent four nights there, with all meals included, and the best part, it was free*!

I should note they didn't have a pool or a masseuse (though they did offer physio and, uh, "colonics") and they only had single beds and shared bathrooms/showers. There was a lounge with piano, but we didn't discover that until the third night. (To be fair, it was behind a plastic curtain that said "red zone" and it took us several days to work up the courage to go through.)

If you want to go, the place is called Lakes District Hospital, but I should warn you they're quite particular about who they let in. Collapsing outside the ambulance bay seems to be a good way to gain entrance, though.

At the beginning of the year, the airlines had a sale and I booked a 3-day trip to Queenstown, including an all-day coach/cruise tour of Milford Sound, which is supposed to be one of the most beautiful places in New Zealand. (And there's a lot of beautiful places in NZ!) Of course that got cancelled and the airline and tour gave us credit, not refunds. A few months ago, there was another sale so I rebooked the flight for November. Then I found out the Milford Sound tour was now only offered Fridays and Saturdays, and the new flight landed Saturday afternoon.

Last month and I got an email that the flight had been "impacted" by Covid-19, so I could accept it or change to a different flight for free. The "impact" turned out to be the flight was ten minutes later, but I took advantage of the offer to move the flight to Friday, and then booked the Milford Sound tour on Saturday. Then I found out that the Airbnb I booked was not available on Friday.

Then I had a brilliant idea: We could rent a campervan. My wife had wanted to do this for years, but pre-Covid, these were ridiculously expensive and often had a minimum booking of one or two weeks. Post-Covid, with no international travellers, they were less than NZ $100/day and you could rent them for a weekend. I booked a 7-meter, three-berth van with a toilet, hot water shower, kitchen and bbq.

A couple of weeks before the trip, my wife developed nausea so the doctors gave her some new meds to try. On the morning of the flight she was feeling ok but by the time we landed, just an hour later, she was pretty miserable. It was a ten minute walk to the campervan pickup and I, being cheap, refused to pay for a taxi. Along the way we passed the hospital and my wife announced she was going there.

Obviously in hindsight I should have gone with her, but I thought she was just tired and needed a place to lie down, so I said I'd get the campervan and meet her there. She later told me that by the time she crossed the street, she felt very ill, and it turned out we were in the back of the hospital so she ended up at the ambulance bay, which was locked. She pushed the button and then laid down on the ground.

Meanwhile, I was two blocks away, completely oblivious. The guy was showing me how everything worked, and when he was showing me how to fill the water tank, the pipe fell off in his hand. He was clearly quite embarrassed by this and went off to find a mechanic. They said it would be forty minutes to glue it back on so I walked back to the hospital. That's when I found my wife in ED, shaking terribly, obviously in a lot of pain. The doctor looked at me and was clearly wondering why I would drag her onto a flight when she was like this. I assured him she was ok when we left.

Queenstown is known for skiing and is the original home of bungee jumping, so I'm sure the hospital is used to tourists showing up with all sorts of injuries, and their goal is to patch them up enough that they can get home. They took the same approach with my wife, though I was still hopeful we could continue the trip. I collected the campervan and even bought some groceries. It then sat in the hospital parking lot for two days before I returned it. They were a bit surprised I returned it three days early with only 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) on it, but they assured me there would be no refund.

They tried her on various drugs and every time she felt a bit better, I'd start looking at booking a flight, but then she'd relapse. Her main complaint was a debilitating headache, but an x-ray and CT scan didn't find anything. They put her on an IV with an anti-psychotic medication that also happened to treat nausea and migraines. It helped, but only for a few hours. On Sunday they tried Oxycontin and she was feeling so well, we talked about getting a hotel room and spending one day in Queenstown before catching our scheduled flight Tuesday morning. A few hours later, she was doubled over in pain and we never got to see Queenstown.

Monday afternoon we made a plan to give my wife all the drugs at 8:30am, get her to the airport at 9:30 for the flight at 10:30. A friend was going to meet us in Wellington so she'd be home by 12:30pm. It was a four hour window but it was the best plan we had. They gave me a prescription for Oxycontin and asked me to get it filled before we flew. It was 5pm, the nearest pharmacy was a 20 minute walk and they closed at 6pm, so not a problem. Except, that pharmacy was out of stock, the next closest pharmacy was a 40 minute walk, and they also closed at 6pm. I called an Uber and we ended up getting stuck in horrendous rush-hour traffic. Thankfully (!) there was a new shopping mall under construction and he took me down a dirt road through the site and got me to the pharmacy just before they closed.

(I'm sure the hospital would have just given me a few, but I'd spent four days feeling completely helpless and they'd finally given me a job to do and I was determined to to do it.)

Tuesday morning went as planned. I tried to call Uber but it turned out they were banned from the airport, and the closest they could drop us was *further* than the hospital! We got a regular taxi and paid $20 to go about half a mile. I'd arranged for "assistance" at the airport which, it turned out, was just the airline giving us a wheelchair to use. We checked in, got to the gate, and then they announced the flight was delayed by an hour. Later they announced it was at a different gate.

A few years ago, we were in Auckland when I developed shingles and my wife drove eight hours non-stop to get me back to Wellington. She wanted to go straight to the hospital but I insisted we go home, so I understood when she insisted she just wanted to go home. Since then, she's had a couple of periods where she felt like she was sliding down that path but has been able to get the pain under control. No doubt we'll be meeting with the doctors and hospice to try and sort this out, but for now she's doing okay.

In two weeks, we're planning to fly to Napier to see friends. It's just for a weekend, but then in January we're planning to fly to Auckland to visit the kids on camp, and in February we're probably going to drive to Auckland to drop the kids at University. Hopefully we can get this under control so it doesn't impact our plans.

* Uber to airport: $32

Flight to Queenstown:  $179

Campervan for five days: $507

Groceries: $133

Uber to pharmacy: $15

Taxi to airport: $20 

Soy chai latte at airport: $7

Total: $893

So maybe not free, but four nights in hospital in the US would have bankrupted us so I am not complaining.

Leaky buildings

In 1952, the New Zealand building code required framing timber to be treated to resist pests, rot and termites; it required a cavity around the framing timber to provide ventilation; and it required eaves and flashings to deflect water away from the building.

All three were slowly chipped away by an industry that wanted to make houses cheaper and faster. By 1992, the New Zealand building code had abandoned all three of these principles. As a result, an entire generation of homes were built using untreated timber, no ventilation and ineffective flashing. The results were predictable and dramatic: New homes were unlivable within ten years.

All buildings leak, but these buildings -which often didn't have overhanging eaves and lots of architectural embellishments that werent easy to flash - would leak more. The water would get inside the frame and be trapped against the timber; there was no cavity for it to drain away and no ventilation that would allow it to dry. And since the timber was untreated, it would start to rot very quickly. This also invited pests and fungi to flourish, so it was not only structurally unsound but unhealthy to live in.

A government report in 2002 finally addressed the issue and by 2005 the building code had been changed to include these three elements again. (Although still not at pre-1952 levels.) There were a lot of lawsuits, both against builders and the councils who had allowed it. The only remediation is to rip off the entire exterior, replace any rotting wood, treat the rest, then re-clad the building. This can easily cost in excess of $200,000 and is not covered by insurance. Plus it can't be lived in for 12-18 months!

New Zealand has always had a shortage of homes, never more so than today, and replacing all buildings during this 13 year span is obviously not going to happen. So kiwis play russian roulette, buying homes they hope will survive their occupancy, and that they can pass the problem to someone else. It's a terrible situation that the building industry and the government, in a classic example of "regulatory capture," have inflicted on the public.

A tale of four toasters (and four toaster ovens)

When my wife's original toaster died in 2016, I convinced her to get a toaster oven. I had bought one in my early twenties and had it for about fifteen years. (For all I know, my ex-wife still has it.) Since I never had a microwave, it was my go-to appliance for heating small meals, plus it made great toast. If you can love an appliance, I loved that toaster oven.

She agreed and I did my research and bought one that was disappointing from the start. In particular, it didn't make good toast. Instead of pushing a button, you had to set a timer, and if you didn't get it exactly right (or watch it like a hawk) it burned the toast every time. That is, except when you forgot to put it in "toast" mode, in which case you came back to warm bread.

My research also indicated the heating element tended to blow after a couple of years, so I paid $10 for the "extended warranty," which is something I never do. Two years later, the heating element blew, so I took the whole thing back and they gave me a new one! A year later, the heating element on that one blew, so I took it back but the model had been discontinued so they refunded me the purchase price! It was like I'd rented a toaster oven for three years for $10.

Now at that point I should have listened to my family and bought a toaster, but instead I listened to the salesman who sold me a "better" toaster oven. I got that home to find it took up the entire countertop, so it immediately went back and I came home with a much smaller one. This one had the same issue as the first one -- burnt toast -- so my wife went to Kmart, picked up a $9 toaster, and the kids were ecstatic. They'd been without a decent toaster for a quarter of their lifetime! Bread consumption shot way up.

Of course a $9 toaster is not going to last, and within a year it went supernova -- literally, when you turned it on, it lit up like the sun. (We unplugged it before we saw what happened next.) We took it back to Kmart and, to their credit, they replaced it without question. A month later, the lever on that one stopped working, so we were going to take it back but then Covid-19 lockdown happened. When the lockdown was lifted, our car died and was in the shop for nearly a month. When we finally got the car back, we took the toaster back to Kmart and were told the warranty had expired two weeks earlier*.

It was a moot point, anyway, as they were out of $9 toasters and I refused to pay more. So we went back to the toaster oven, and bread consumption went way down. A couple of months later, they were back in stock and we bought a new one. Two weeks later, it looked like this:

Now, you might be wondering what happened to cause the plastic to literally melt off the top and sides. Was it a fault? Did the kids stick a knife in it while it was turned on? No. My wife decided that, rather than use the toaster oven to heat up a tortilla (which it's really good at!) she would rip the tortilla in half, stick it in the toaster briefly and remove it when it was warm. Of course she got distracted and left the kitchen for a moment; the tortilla halves flopped over and by the time the toast cycle had finished, they were on fire. Fortunately my wife returned and caught it before anything else happened.

Do I tell this story to embarrass my wife? Yes. Did I take the toaster back to Kmart, tell them the toaster caught fire spontaneously and demand a full refund? No, but I did think about it. (My father would have done it.) I did go and buy a new $9 toaster, bringing the total I've spent on toasting appliances over the past five years to $122 (plus about $1,800 on bread).

* Some of the details have been changed to make a better story.

So...my wife has cancer. Four words I'd never thought I'd have to write.

In October 2016, she was diagnosed with a breast tumour. They quickly removed it, as well as the lymph nodes around it. They did find a small amount of cancer in the lymph nodes but didn't think it had spread beyond that, and they treated her with localised radiation rather than chemotherapy to minimise the side effects. They then declared her a "cancer survivor" and in my mind, that chapter was behind us. Like most people, I thought any cancer detected early enough was survivable.

Exactly three years later, just as the pandemic was circling the world, my wife started having difficulty breathing. She was tested for Covid-19 but it was negative. Her GP gave her an inhaler to see if it relieved the symptoms; it didn't. Finally her GP requested a CT scan, which was scheduled for 30 March. On 26 March, New Zealand went into lockdown and the hospital cancelled all "non-urgent" scans.

Because of her history, oncology were already aware of the situation and they called to say they would try to organise a CT scan through a private hospital. That happened on 31 March and on 1 April they told us her cancer was back. I'd like to say it was an April Fool's prank, but it wasn't.

They said the reason she was having trouble breathing was because there were lesions on the lining around her right lung (the pleural) which were causing the lining to fill with fluid, preventing the lung from expanding. They put a needle in her back and drained the fluid: Normally there is about 10ml of fluid (less than a capful); they drained 1.5 litres.

After a few days, she was able to breathe normally, but it was short-lived and she had the pleurel drained three more times. On the last one, they injected talc which -- for reasons they don't even understand -- tends to turn off the fluid production. Thankfully she hasn't had any issues with her lungs since then.

While that was going on, they also did a biopsy to confirm the cancer was the same type as the original tumour (it was). On 27 April, they scheduled a meeting to tell us what they had confirmed: It was stage 4, meaning it had metastasised (spread) and it was not curable. All they could do was slow the growth to give her more time, but the 5-year survival rate was less than 25%. That is, my wife has a 1-in-4 chance of seeing her 56th birthday.

The cancer was hormone-receptor-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer, which meant they could target it with endocrine (hormone) therapy rather than chemotherapy. The problem with the endocrine therapy is they know it's only effective for a short period; the mean time for letrazole is 15 months. There is another medication, palbociclib, which extends that to about 24 months. New Zealand had only begun financing palbociclib in April of this year; before that it would have cost us over NZ $5,000 (US $3,325) per month. If there was a bright side to this diagnosis, that was it.

I think there were 3 lesions on her pleura, 2 lesions in her bones and a "mass" near her heart. I say "I think" because when they were giving us this diagnosis, I was thinking about the scene in "Breaking Bad" where Walt is being given a diagnosis of lung cancer, and as the doctor is talking about treatment options all he hears is a ringing noise, like tinnitus. It was a powerful scene, and I felt the same way.

My wife was, oddly, relieved. We'd agreed after the 1 April meeting not to google it or second-guess the doctors, and I'd carried on obliviously, thinking we might have to go through another round of surgery and maybe even chemotherapy, but we'd get through it just like before. She had promptly googled it and, based on what she'd read, thought she had months to live. To hear them talking about years rather than months was a relief.

We told the kids straight away. It's hard to know how they are processing it, because they don't often talk about it, and I don't usually ask because I don't have the reserves to support them while dealing with it myself. One night a couple of months ago I was helping my daughter do some homework and she was frustrated and started saying stupid things like, "I hate my life" which to her was just a phrase; it didn't have any meaning. But to me it was deeply upsetting and I blurted out something like, "Mum's going to die and you're complaining about your homework?" That did not end well.

The good news is she has responded to the drugs; there are no new lesions and her "cancer markers" have fallen from 150 to 50, which means nothing to me but the oncologists are quite pleased. After the first month -- when we were at the hospital two or three times per week -- we've gotten into a routine, seeing the oncologist once a month and having a CT scan every 3 months.  We saw the "palliative specialists" from the hospice and the doctor got my wife on a mix of fentanyl, paracetamol (acetaminophen) and ibuprofen which generally manage the pain. Unfortunately the hospice counsellor was useless, and my wife's one attempt to see the hospice physiotherapist ended when she couldn't find parking.

My wife gave up her job because the combination of the cancer, pain meds and endocrine therapy left her exhausted, and she wanted to spend what energy she had with the kids. She usually sleeps about 12 hours but it's very broken sleep. Sometimes she'll take a nap, but she's always been a very active person so I know it's difficult and frustrating for her.

Our friends ask us what they can do and I tell them, "Nothing yet." Right now she's still able to take care of the house and the meals and the kids and me. At some point that will change, but I can't even imagine it. Which is to say, I can't let myself imagine it. It's like getting too close to the edge of a cliff: The thought of falling is so terrifying, you can't imagine what it would be like to actually be falling.

We don't talk about it much; usually something sets us off and we end up just crying and trying to console each other. I can't imagine what it's like for her; we can talk about mortality in the abstract but we can't conceive of our own death. I'm sure she can't imagine what it's like for me, either; she has no idea how much I depend on her, how much her love enables me to just function every day. We often talked about growing old together, and in my mind this always ended with me going first because I could not conceive of life without her. I still can't.

Does it feel better to have written this? No. Does it feel better to talk to people about it? No. Does it feel better to know people who have gone through similar circumstances? No. My uncle often quoted his father (my maternal grandfather) and these words resonate now more than ever: "Sometimes there's just no use talking."

I voted

It's hard to believe it's been 12 years since I last voted. My birthday is just before election day and I've voted every year since I turned 18. However, I couldn't vote in the UK until I had citizenship, and I moved to New Zealand three days after I got that.

(If I had put my name on the electoral role before I left the UK, I would have been able to vote for Brexit, but I was more concerned with packing all my stuff and selling my car. Also, at the time I hadn't expected to leave Britain forever. I guess what I'm saying is that Brexit is my fault.)

As an American ex-pat I am able to vote for President, but only for President, and my vote goes to the electoral college for the state I last lived in, which is California. I understand the absentee ballots are only counted if the election is too close to call, and since California is always strongly democratic, it seemed like a complete waste of paper (and an expensive stamp).

New Zealand would let me vote once I had permanent residency, which I got one month *after* the 2017 election. And unlike the US, where you vote for a mix of federal, state, county and local officials at the same time, in New Zealand you have separate national and local elections National elections are every three years and you only get two votes: Your local parliament representative and your party vote.

I think I spoke about MMP (mixed member proportional representation) before but the quick recap is that parliament is adjusted to reflect the overall country. To put this in US terms, about 31% of Americans are registered as Democrats, 25% as Republican and 40% as "other." In the Senate, however, Republicans make up 53%, Democrats are 45% and "other" are 2%! That doesn't represent the country at all! If the US had MMP, the elected senators would still be there but the Democrat Party and third parties would be given extra seats so they made up 31% and 40%, respectively. It would no longer be a two-horse race and the third parties would have real leverage as the big parties needed their support to form a working majority.

So who did I vote for? The Labour party, lead by Jacinda Arden. Three years ago the National party had been in power for nine years, the economy was doing well, the Labour leader wasn't well-liked and the polls indicated Labour were going to have their worst result in history. Six months before the election, the Deputy Leader resigned and Jacinda was elected to replace her. Then two months before the election, the Labour leader stepped down, as well! Jacinda stepped up and ran an unrelentingly positive campaign. She was passionate, informed, empathic, and she didn't have a chance. She didn't win the election but she saved Labour and, more crucially, she stopped the National party from achieving a majority on its own. National had to form get a coalition to get a majority, but no third parties wanted to work with them!

Then a crazy thing happened: Jacinda formed a coalition with the "New Zealand First" party. They were unlikely bedfellows, much like the Tories and Liberal Democrats in the UK in 2010, but with the roles reversed. Jacinda, at 37, became the new Prime Minister. She was very likeable but her track record was a bit spotty - a lot of promises with little to show for it - and she may well have lost in the next election except for a little thing called Covid-19. By relying on the doctors and scientists, and expressing compassion, she got the entire country working together and was able to nearly eliminate the virus from New Zealand. It wasn't perfect and of course the New Zealand economy has taken a big hit, but everyone knew how much better they were compared to the rest of the world.

In 2017, rather than an historic defeat, Labour won 14 new seats. In 2020, they won an additional 19 seats, The National party, by contrast, lost 3 seats in 2017 and 23 seats in 2020! Going into 2020 they had a very unlikable leader; he was challenged by another member of the party and lost, but then the new leader stood down a few weeks later, allowing a third person -- Judith Collins -- to take the role. It should have been interesting, having two females contesting for the role of Prime Minister, but Judith ran a very mean campaign and everyone hated her.)

So in 2014, National had 60 seats and Labour had 32. In 2020, Labour has 65 seats and National has 33. Amazing how quickly the tides can turn.

(On a personal note, it's the first time I've ever voted for a liberal party. In the US, I always voted for the Libertarian Party* because, as I said, California was always going to vote Democrat so I didn't have to worry about keeping out Republicans.)

* True Libertarians, not scumbags like Rand Paul.

Fish tank, week 6

It would help if I would use a consistent format...

I have 5 neons, 3 black skirts, 5 pearl danios, Gizmo the angelfish and a Siamese algae eater named "Ali G" (get it?).

I had a bit of a scare earlier this week - the larger black skirt was looking bloated and sitting at the bottom of the tank while the two smaller ones were hassling it. However, the next day all was fine. I suspect the larger one is a female and she was ready to release eggs, and the smaller ones are males who were looking to fertilise said eggs. I think she laid her eggs at night, which were probably a treat for everyone else. In my youth I would have immediately thrown her into quarantine and treated the tank. Now I just couldn't be bothered.

My next project is building a chicken coop. (Or, to be more accurate, a mobile chicken coop.) Watch this space...

A tale of three sofas

Since I got my office back (it was a bedroom from February to July) and have been working from home more, I thought it would be nice to add some extra seating to have some company. (And to save heating two separate rooms.) Although we have three sofas, my wife didn't want to shift any of them, so I started looking on Trademe, the NZ equivalent of eBay.

At first I was looking for a Lazyboy but we both agreed they were hideous. We did look at some smaller recliners, but they weren't very sturdy. (I also looked at some really cool designs, but they were way, way out of our budget.)

So I focused on two-seater sofas, and I finally found a black leather one that looked perfect. I paid NZ $150 and drove 40 minutes to collect it. It was deeper than expected, and about half an inch too wide to fit in the car but we were able to get it on the roof and bring it home. 

That's when I found it was *much* deeper than expected, and I could barely move my chair without bumping it! My wife also didn't find it very comfortable, so "papa sofa" needed to go.

I had also been watching a blue sofa on Trademe that was advertised as a "Small 2 seater couch. Ideal for bedroom or study." It had only gotten one bid so I put in a cheeky bid of $1.50 and won! We picked it up and put it in the office and it was the perfect size, but there was a wooden bar that made it impossible to lie down on, so "baby sofa" needed to go. 

I relisted both of these on Trademe and in a few days I'd sold baby sofa for $30, a $28 profit, and papa sofa for $127, a $26 loss. 

Then another sofa appeared on Trademe that was described as a two-seater sofa in near-new condition. It wasn't as deep as Papa Sofa so I bought it for $200. When we went to collect it, we found it was a full-size sofa! (You could probably sit four people on it.) However, it still fit in the room and looks good, so "Mama Sofa" is staying. 😀