Sunday at the Storylines Children's Book Festival

Today did the nicest job of redeeming a funk of a weekend. I was about to continue to work on my body imprint Ive got going in my new bed. Ive been putting in lots of reclining hours in the last week, trying to get over this virus. The family had planned to go to a Children's Festival at the Aotea center downtown all week, although, I had just convinced Jordan he could go without me. The kids were getting the classic symptoms of cabin fever. The frequency of the shouting and bothering outbursts was getting to what I consider critical mass, soon everyone would be roaring like the four winds.
My delightful pal Amanda text ed me, to check on our tentative plan to sneak off for coffee as part of the day. That gesture pulled me back from the plan of slothful pondering of the rain and the phenomenon of wakefulness when you really want to sleep and all the distractions are gone. Sometimes relaxing is just too much pressure for a gobot like myself. I buoyed up, had a little coffee, hacked and sputtered in an attempt to quiet the rattle in my chest, put on non work, non pajama clothes and things were on the up! Now any parent of young ones knows that getting yourself ready is easy, getting children lined up can be a little trickier. Desmond was motivated to clothe himself by the "costume" appeal. Luckily, the superhero boy costume (with a red and blue "H" to avoid trademark infringement) was clean and locatable. Jordan even got him to take it all off and put a layer on underneath. By this time I was working on Lillian's inertia. I thought the leopard suit would do the trick. Lillian has her own mysterious standards, though, and that would not do at all. She settled on a lovely floral skirt, acquired last week in our first hand me down bag here, its actually stylish, floral shirt and of course, floral socks. I used the "choose a coat from these two" trick to get her into outerwear warm enough for the Auckland drizzle.



We headed off, had our routine parking argument and finally dispatched ourselves to the center where children with balloons, painted faces and general calm and contentment were ambling out of the complex. Amanda found us just outside, we all stepped into the arena of music, storytelling, non fiction rooms, beloved authors, devoted readers, crafts tables, booksellers, face painters, pirate-mermaid teams, handmade wonderful braille books, there was even an exhibit of Jane and the Dragon, an up to the techno minute animated children's show by Weta, a P. Jackson project. (By the way a weta is a very big New Zealand bug. When you meet one it seems like a larger animal than an insect, about the size of a chocolate eclair with a grasshopper head and extra long feelers-quite authoritative: ewe! If I could design a superhero, it would be bughandler-man, he would manifest whenever need arises. I inherited my bug squeamishness. If you don't believe me you should check out my mother's Vacuum cleaner bag)
Back to the festival....
There were such wonderful storytellers, It made me want to become one. I think the event pleased us all in some way. Jordan had a rough time after I left to have a girl visit, though. I think he experienced the vanishing child panic for the first time.
Amanda is a good friend. Our relationship is young, but even from the start we could see eye to eye and are both good visionaries. She has a business called Rocket online and she is very professional in her demeanor. I'm not sure what she actually does for folks. I think it has more to do with online than rockets, though. We went to Borders and sat in the modern and comfortable coffee shop there. It felt urbane. I had a sinful and soothing chocolate mint bomb, which was made with ice and slid with relief down my irritated throat. We caught up and laughed some, which I think is so important. Jordan showed up some time later and dropped the kids with us and went off in search of a sizable blank grid lab journal. He spent lots of time, actually looking in three different places for what he wants to keep his Scientific calculations and insights in. When we got home I went on Amazon and found plenty, but they wont ship them here. They ship books that are filled in with writing, though, Huh? If anyone reading this loves Jordan dearly and wants to put a smile on his face they could by acquiring one or two of those. Its funny the things you cant get here, like Masa Harina and microwave popcorn without all the chemicals and salt and Weleda shampoo. Best foods Mayonnaise costs a fortune here and Gas prices are not through the roof. Different.

I sometimes feel safer here in New Zealand, from some of the big nasty things like nuclear energy and big power bloated defence departments, but really the core dilemma of us consuming more than the planet can give is just as recklessly out of control here as it is in the US. What is it with us humans, anyway- needing more and better and to look better and have better stuff. Its a lot to maintain, the appearance of looking successful, it could steal a lot of your precious time on earth right out from under ya. I was reading in James Bryner's blog about his reflections of not working (and not having a TV) and his observations and experience of how the world opened itself up to so many opportunities that we usually cant be bothered with considering because we have our schedules.. What if you never caught a glimpse of that spaciousness??
I'm so far off the track, I'm putting the whole train set away and going to bed now. More later. Good dreams and blessings to you.