Homemade Pork Pie ... Mmmmm

It rained this weekend. It hammered on the roof all weekend long. It was cold and gray. The clouds were low and solid. We made pork pies. I ate them. Today the sun came out. But we still have some pork pie left. (ck)

Top of the world, Ma.

A couple of weeks ago, Emeline and I spent the weekend on the west coast, in Fiordland. We already posted a blog entry about it. I'm posting a few more photos though, because the views were breathtaking and I thought you might like to see them.

We went on a four-hour hike to the top of Key Summit, such named because three of the south island's most important river systems begin there. My poor pregnant wife trudged slowly up the steep path, from tropical rain forest, up though rocks and pine, around switchbacks, steadily climbing, until finally we cleared the tops of the trees and the clouds, emerging at 1000-meters, on a windswept and cold alpine meadow, ringed by the huge formidable peaks of the southern Alps. Amazing views: clouds boiling and swirling over the ridge lines in the bright cold sunlight of altitude. Snow on the mountain tops.

The views reminded me of a poem by one of my favorite Beatniks, Gary Snyder, so I'll include it below. (ck)

Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout
Down valley a smoke haze
Three days heat, after five days rain
Pitch glows on the fir-cones
Across rocks and meadows
Swarms of new flies.

I cannot remember things I once read
A few friends, but they are in cities.
Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
Looking down for miles
Through high still air.

He/She/It

Here are the first images of the latest Kemp-Tolod human. We had our first scan last week. A very grumpy and annoyed woman squirted gel on Emeline's stomach and moaned at us as we simpered quietly at the miracle of life.

Obviously, this is something she's seen more than ten thousand times.

We, however, were amazed.

In the 10-minutes that it took to complete the scan, this little person turned completely around, like a dog trying to find a comfortable spot on a rug. It was practicing a tango in there. It started off positioned like in the picture at the top, lying on its side and facing us. And then it bucked around, and fidgeted, and shifted, and shimmied, and wriggled until it was lying half-upside down with a placenta sticking right in its spine. And you can see the spine! As it fidgeted, we could see the ribs, white and solid against the gray.

We mentioned this to the woman doing the scan, who found it utterly boring. We might has well have been describing a coffee table. I think she suppressed a yawn. Clearly, she has no idea how much we already love it. Undaunted, we sat in the dark and watched our little human clenching and unclenching its tiny fists like a little boxer.

I think it wanted to punch her.

On the way home we preached non-violence but ... well, kids, they never listen, do they? (ck)

In the Bleak Midwinter

Yesterday was a very short day in Dunedin. In fact, it was the shortest day: it was June 21st, which marks the winter solstice. According to an almanac I found online, the sun rose at 8:20am, very slowly turning the gray hills green, and only stuck around until 4:59pm before it was gone again.

But today is longer than yesterday. And tomorrow will be longer again. Et cetera.

The chronic lack of sunlight in these dark months is a big deal in Dunedin. Everyone seems to become a little bear-like here during winter. Ursine: lumbering home from work at night with a slow metabolism to eat stodgy food and go to sleeeeeep. Last night, we attended the Midwinter Carnival. A celebration of the longest night. And just about everyone who lives in Dunedin was downtown. There was a procession through the streets, with kids carrying paper lanterns they'd made in the last few weeks. There were huge bird-shaped lanterns: an albatross, owls, a goose. There were stilt walkers, medieval chanters, musicians, fireworks, and a merry-go-round. It all seemed a touch pagan. We've waited all day today to see if the Black Death or the grippe kicked in but, so far, we're fine.

Back to the almanac: today is 2-seconds longer than yesterday. I think I noticed the extra time. Tomorrow is another 6-seconds longer. And next Saturday will be 1-minute-44-seconds longer than last Saturday.

What will we do with all that extra sunlight? (ck)

Dunedin! City of Okay-ness

I saw this bumper sticker and just found it very amusing. Who came up with this? That's The Spirit of Dunedin: It's All Right Here!

It doesn't really say much about the city, does it? They've really decided to highlight its mediocrity. Here's an alternative I thought of:

Dunedin! Putting the Oh! in Okay. (ck)

A Beautiful Sound ...

At first all we could hear were irregular waves of crackling static. It's like listening to emptiness. A radio without a signal. Then the sound of Emeline's pulse, slow and steady, like something heard through deep water. And then nothing again. White noise. It sounded like the sou'westers that whipped around the eaves of the house a few weeks ago and bent the treetops and made the water in the harbor look like glass.

And then suddenly, through the murk: a rapid and rhythmic little whump whump whump whump whump.

A baby's heartbeat. A signal. What an unbelievable sound! Meaningless without context; beautiful with it. It's like a message from another world. I'm not sure if the video will work, but it's quiet so you'll have to crank up the volume to hear it. Our patient midwife, Maria, is doing the honors. We summoned her to our house last night because, as scientists, we demanded that she provide us with some empirical evidence. She indulged us.

Finally, we have data (N=1).

(ck)

Babymoon: Where should we go?

Babymoon, n. 1) a vacation taken by a couple expecting a baby in order to allow the couple to enjoy a final trip together before the many sleepless nights that usually accompany a newborn baby; it comes from the traditional term honeymoon.

There is no question about it: Chris and I are going on a babymoon. I don't care if it's just some money-grubbing-greedy-man's way of trying to sucker me out of my money (an American probably came up with the idea). A good idea is a good idea and I will give into commercialism in this instance. I know that many of you folks reading this blog (and there are soooo many) have children of your own and you wish you had thought of this.

So, since Chris and I agree that we should go on a honeymoon, there is one problem that we've encountered. Where should we go: Queensland, Australia or Samoa?


*Queensland, Australia. Located on the northeast coast of Australia. I know what you're thinking ... Australia is just a hot, dry desert. What does it have to offer babymooners?


*Samoa. I thought I'd give you a picture of exactly where Samoa is in relation to the world. Basically, in the middle of nowhere. Tropical island located in the middle of nowhere. Lots to offer the babymooner.

Oh, it's part of my struggle that I talked about recently. And I know you'll empathize. We're still trying to figure out where we'd be happiest. You can't go wrong with either location, really. Here ... maybe these photos of Palm Cove, Queensland, Australia and Samoa will help you help us make a decision.


*Palm Cove, Queensland, Australia. No desert here. In fact, Queensland is as tropical as many of its South Pacific island neighbors. This part of Australia is just mere miles away from Papua New Guinea! The Great Barrier Reef is located in this area, so there are plenty of opportunities to go snorkeling (me) / scuba diving (for Chris, but not me ... sad.)


*Samoa. White sand beaches. Clear blue waters. Isolation.

See? Now maybe you feel some of our pain. It'll be okay ... we'll be sure to send postcards. (ETK)

Ingenuity!

Necessity, as the saying goes, is the mother of invention. As this picture clearly demonstrates, motherhood is the mother of invention too. Over the past few weeks, Emeline has been on a journey. She's steadily graduated from not giving pregnancy a second thought, to only wearing certain pairs of pants, to fastening her jeans with a safety pin, trying to squeeze another inch from a waistband that she claims is shrinking.

Shrinking!

In her latest attempt to avoid the obvious (i.e. she's pregnant and needs to buy new stretchy clothes), Emeline is now fastening her jeans with an elastic band intended for hair. If these are her jeans, just imagine her hair! I'm kidding ... and I'm so proud of her ingenuity.

As she said in her last post, thousands upon millions, upon billions of women have made the journey that she's on right now. But how many of them have used this technique to combat their shrinking waistbands? Not many, I'm guessing. And it looks like quite an intricate knot too, doesn't it? It's a bit like a granny knot.

But different.

It's an expectant mother knot. (ck)

My Struggle

Okay, so I'm exaggerating. I'm not struggling. Millions of women have gone before me and have done the exact same thing that I do now.

But it doesn't mean that I still can't complain.

The instant I found out that I was pregnant, I bought pregnancy books, read tons of pregnancy blogs, saw a doctor and booked a midwife immediately. I vowed that I am going to do this up right and make sure that this baby will grow in a healthy environment inside of my belly. That means that I had to give up certain things - and I am more than happy to as well.

However, while I try to stay healthy (or keep from becoming nauseated, more like it) my husband has tried his best to make sure that he enjoys the good things in life for the both of us. For all three of us, in fact. Take a look:


And while he enjoys things that I once enjoyed (will I ever enjoy them again?!!!), I continue to struggle.*


*To be fair to Chris, he has been amazing. He's been so sympathetic during my pregnancy so far and I am ever thankful and humbled by his care and love. I have made him eat his stinky, stinky dinners on the opposite side of the room (at least I didn't send him out of the room!). He hasn't had fish and chips and a curry for 3 months. If and when I let him cook onions for dinner, I make him put the exhaust fan on full blast so that we're practically deaf for about an hour before and after dinner. And he still tells me I'm beautiful, as I safety-pin my ever-shrinking pants together at the start of the day.

I don't know when I'll be back to my "normal" self again, but I just hope that it's soon. For now, I'll keep complaining and whining and Chris will continue to take care of me.

I'm milking these 10 months for all they're worth, baby. (ETK)

The Stomach Always Knows

The most visceral way to know that you're in a strange and new place is walk along the fresh produce aisles of the local grocery store. Ah, the stomach always knows! And so the other day, we bought a selection of fruit that we've either never eaten, never heard of, never seen, or only eaten as a processed ingredient in another food product.

So: on the far left, the ruby-colored egg-shaped little fruit is a red tamarillo. It's also called a tree tomato. According to various sources online, this South American fruit tastes like a cross between a passionfruit and a tomato, which seems like an unusual (and potentially unpleasant) mix of flavors to me. At the bottom of the the photo are two hard dark purple passionfruit. Who knew they looked like that? Everybody? Oh. For some reason, I didn't. After consulting some online sources, we now know that we have to wait until the skin is wrinkled before they're ripe. So, these fellas have a long way to go.

At the top, resembling a firm and voluptuous miniature pumpkin, is a persimmon. Pleasantly orange, and $3US for a kilogram, this is an affordable fruit. Once ripe, persimmons can be stored for months at a time in a dark closet. The plural: Is it persimmons, or just persimmon? Maybe it's persimmi. Who knows? Tropical syntax. Finally, on the right, we have a feijoa. Also South American, the feijoa is an important cash crop here. It's a very popular flavoring and additive, and is on shelves as a fruit in its own right. In the grocery stores, there are shampoos with feijoa extract, breakfast cereals with dried feijoa, feijoa flavored ice cream, health drinks with feijoa juice in them. Feijoa everywhere! From a distance, it resembles a lime but it's nickname -- pineapple guava -- probably says more about its flavor.

Wait a second ... feijoa. Feijoa. That's a nice name for a girl. (ck)

Kicks For Exactly The Cost of One Pie

We woke up on Saturday morning to white roofs from our window and trees bending in the wind. In the distance, on the other side of the city, the hills of the peninsula were white against the dark green hedgerows. After drinking plenty of coffee, we wrapped up in our winter clothes and drove to the beach through quiet streets. Dark windows. Slate gray sea. Cold sand. Wet rocks.

On previous visits to the beach, we've discovered (okay, I've discovered) how easy it is to torture seagulls by just staying in the car and waving food at them. It drives them crazy. Cheap kicks. Actually: kicks for exactly the cost of one pie. Three dollar kicks. They hover above the hood of the car in the sea wind, dropping low, fighting sudden gusts of wind, dipping, correcting, rising again, wings flapping, to take a closer look at your pie/chips/cake. And then they return to their railing, humbled and a little sheepish in the wind.

But on Saturday morning, they were grounded. Perched grimly on the railing, backs to the sea, staring impassively at my lamb and potato pie. Earthbound. Stoic. It was far too cold to be airborne.

Wait a minute ... seagull. Seagull. Now, that's a good name for a boy. (ck)

Baby Names

To be added to the list immediately:

Banana
The Emperor
Amadeus
Shaquille
Delilah
Fleetwood Mac
Obama
Troilus
Rand McNally
Luigi

(ck)

Big News

How many people are standing here in this photograph, on the prow of a boat in Milford Sound?

If you answered, "One," you'd be forgiven for choosing the most obvious answer. And you'd be wrong. There are two people there. Or, more accurately: there's one person and one fetus.

To quote our midwife, Maria: Emeline has a, "perfect little parasite growing inside her tummy."

Obviously, Emeline and I both hope the baby isn't really growing inside her tummy. Although, it might explain why she feels sick all the time. So, we're having a baby. We've made another human being. And the rest of our lives will never be the same again. Not even remotely. We have lots of reading to do. And lots of things to buy. It's surreal, and a little bewitching, to think of this human being we've made, slowly taking shape as we go about our daily lives, forming its bones, and its fingers and toes, and becoming the person we'll get to know. It's like making gold from lead, isn't it? It's alchemy. It's witchcraft. Something from nothing. Mysterious. And it makes us happy that he or she will be made of this special place.

We have some names picked out, but would like for people to weigh in with suggestions. Here are the current favorites:

Frodo
Desdemona
Batman
Che
Grommit
Cleopatra
Ringo
Hillary
Genghis
Cher
Robert (pronounced à la française: Roberrrrrrrr)
Marcus Aurelius
Barbarella
Pow!
John

(ck)

Milford Sound: A Magical Land

This blog entry about Milford Sound need not require more than a simple photo to capture its essence, but I'll write a few words anyway to tell you of our journey to this magical land.

Picture #1:

See, I told you. This place is AMAZING. Even Chris thinks so.

It's not like any place that you've seen before, unless you've been here. But we seemed to arrive at a perfect time - rainy, misty, and cold. The ominous clouds signaled our entry into a magical part of the south island.

Imagine the movie The Lord of the Rings but actually being there. Don't imagine Hobbiton, though. Instead, imagine the parts with the Ringwraiths and their black horses or any of the Gollum parts. The scary parts. As we drove along the Milford Road, our views turned from cheerful farms filled with sheep, deer, and cattle to vast empty fields with a backdrop of gloomy, extravagant mountains. The further we drove into the mountains, the more we felt engulfed by them, slowly becoming them. The mist was so thick you could spoon it up. The rain was intense that the mountains looked as if they were weeping, numerous waterfalls slowly spilling over their rocky sides. At the highest points, you could see snow-capped peaks and the occasional glacier.

Speaking of glaciers, the name "Milford Sound" is in fact a misnomer. It's not a sound.

Sound, n. 1 a: a long broad inlet of the ocean generally parallel to the coast b: a long passage of water connecting two larger bodies (as a sea with the ocean) or separating a mainland and an island.

Rather, it is a fjord.

Fjord, n. a narrow inlet of the sea between cliffs or steep slopes

Hmmm. Merriam-Webster has failed me. I was looking for the definition of a fjord that tells you that a giant glacier, in fact, is responsible for the valleys and mountains that provide the eerie atmosphere of Milford Sound. You can tell by looking at the "U" shaped valleys in between these monumental mountains. Shifting tectonic plates can create mountains, too, but the valleys in between them are "V" shaped. Enough of the science lesson. Just look at the pictures.
And if you stick around long enough, you will see that Milford Sound can change. One day it can be a rainy, wet and extremely beautiful place. The next day it could be completely sunny, not a sign of mist hanging low to the ground, nor weeping mountains. It's like it was all a dream. (ETK)

A Different World

This story was in the newspaper yesterday. Imagine for a second if this had happened in the US. Let's all say it together: Taser. (ck)