Agriculture

 New Zealand is the land of land and boy do they use it. Agriculture is massive here and especially in the center of the island I live in, they grow crops or farm animals, and it is huge. Lots of export opportunities for our produce.

So obviously they have a 4 day event where you can come together and see all that is agriculture, all the new tractors, farming machinery and anything else you can think of. Companies offering their products for farmers to see what they need new. Like that million-dollar tractor that is a tall as a 2-story house and has all the latest gadgets and gizmos to make it run well, go fast and be more efficient.

It is open to the public, and it can be an enjoyable way to pass a full day, from 9am to 5pm, you wander and view and go wow at some odd machinery and fascinating equipment. The thing that caught my eye this year was the drones. Now we are not talking little ones with a phone attached to view the world below, oh no, we are talking massive things that fertilize the ground for you. I think my car was about the same size as this one drone I saw!

We don't go every year, not that much into agriculture, but once every 5 years is enough for you to see the changes taking place in the future of agriculture.

And sometimes, you dream of having a garden big enough and steep enough to have a robot lawn mower that goes up hills

Or the ability to need enough power tools to create your own transformer

Of course, everything on offer is in large size, so all advertising is done large.

We were lucky enough to get a beautiful blue-sky day to wander with, which makes all the difference, otherwise a day of mud is just not as much fun.

Working

 And just sometimes, you have to stay at work whilst it is dark.

In New Zealand, whilst we do have daylight savings, our wintertime is never a time that we get really early sun sets, usually 5.30pm will be the earliest and it will only be for a very short time. Unlike the UK that can have sunset as early as 3.55pm

So, if I am still working and it is dark outside, then something has gone a miss and, in this case, it was to get a student assessment completed for them.

Friday Home Time

After a long week of work, a walk home in the fading sunlight, despite the temperatures getting cooler, is still enjoyable.

What makes it even better?

An ice cream

Autumn Mornings

 Today I missed the bus, so I chose to walk to work instead. I had time and I am really glad I did, otherwise, I would have not got to see the spectacular scenery of fog that was blanketing the city.

Where I live in New Zealand, we have a river, and obviously when the temperatures and cloud are all lined up, we get fog.

It doesn't last; it moves by early morning. These pictures were taken at 7.15am and even 90 mins later, it would have been mostly cleared.

I love autmn in my city, some amazing natural beauty to be seen, and it never gets old looking at it.

28 Years

 Today, at 11am, I have been in New Zealand for 28 years.

I wouldn't change any of it 💖

Jigsaw #4 - Birdwatchers View

 A simple one that was a delight to put together, however, it is summer here and there has been other things to focus on, so that is why there was a gap between this one and the last completed one. I am aiming to still achieve 52 or more jigsaws this year. I just know that in the winter months there will be plenty of indoor evening time to plow through jigsaws faster than in the summer.

I actually have another from this series, so look forward to completing it at some stage.

2025 Jigsaw Update

 And just like that the year is ending.

I completed 32 jigsaws this past year, quite impressive considering I don't just sit around and do them all the time. They are my evening hobby and even then, sometimes it can be a few weeks between completing them.

There definitely was a conscious effort to complete a lot this year and that will roll into 2026 when I will be aiming to beat my annual total.

As mentioned in my posts, the jigsaws come from gifts, swapped, purchased brand new myself (usually always on sale), bought on Facebook marketplace or even loaned from a friend.

This next year, I need to complete some harder ones, ones that will challenge me a little more, push me out of my comfort zone. I have found some of them too easy. The colours are too simple to put together, the shapes are too easy to find. More detail leads to easier to complete. So, whilst there will be some that have a cute picture or fun design that I will complete because I want to enjoy them, I will be looking at larger more challenging ones that will take a little longer and challenge me more to complete.

I don't really have one that I hated doing this year, but I had two that were frustrating, and they both happened to be circular in shape!

The Floral Compass and Butterfly, although, reading back on the post I wrote about the Butterfly, I cursed more completing that one than any other, so guess that one was my worst to complete.

I don't have a particular one that was the best to complete, they were all fun and no one particularly stood out for me.

Onwards and upwards for 2026 and to see if I can beat 32 😊

Screen Door

 I have always wanted a fly screen door on the back door. I know, not your average wish but here in NZ I have noticed that the doors and windows are open a lot of the time. We do not have central heating, well, not that we don't have it in NZ just that most homes do not have it. I find that we need air movement in the house due to the fluctuating temps.

Back door can remain open but that leads to flies in the house and that aspect annoys me.

When I first started looking at screen doors then the roof we had over the back door prevented this from happening. I wrote about this back in March when the porch roof finally came down due to the pergola being acquired. That has led to me investigating doors and finally I found one. It has only taken a couple of many years to achieve this, but sometimes I can be patient.

Finally, I have a screen door at the back and I love it, just in time for the summer.

That Moment

 And sometimes, you just need that first moment and it all comes together.

I am now on holiday for 3 weeks due in part to:

• work closes at this time of year for 3 weeks
• it is Christmas
• it is summer

It has, in the usual manner, been manic for the past few weeks at work, everyone wanting everything sorted before we close. Everyone one wanting all of this year's results secured and processed so we start fresh again in the new year.

So, to have a sunny day, be able to appreciate the crystal-clear blue of the water, despite being a little chilly at first, have that first moment of the year when you can sit in the sun and dip your toes in the water, also knowing that you are on holiday and can breath for 10 minutes.

It is still a great feeling, even if you do do it every year

Christmas Tree

 I like Christmas.

I like the colours, the lights, the decorations, the excitement that people have. The caring side that seems to come out in people more.

Ok, I can't say I actually like the day itself, the stress of food, presents, what others are doing, who will be around etc.

But I definitely like the lights and the gentle lull of the evening with the lights going, glowing in the dark. Therefore, I love having the tree up in the house, having all the other lights on low and watching tv etc. with that warm glow of the multi coloured Christmas tree lights.

Sadly, here in New Zealand, the days are getting longer and lighter at this time of year, so to see any pretty lights around, you have to stay up till 9-10pm. This means that there is actually a lack of Christmas spirit around as there are no lights as you finish work, no carols blaring from speakers in shops, Christmas window displays lack that cuteness as they inevitably show displays of beaches and sunshine (due to it being almost summer and everyone breaking up for the summer holidays from school and work),

You can actually forget that it is Christmas here in December!

This year, I wanted the tree up early, but life got in the way, as it frequently does at the moment, so today I finally got there. It is the barest of decorations, enough to show the significant ones that are important to me, but the main aspect was of course the lights.

There, finally, the house glows in the evenings (and very early mornings too)

Holdson Jigsaw

 Holdson has become my least favourite puzzle brand recently, after all the issues I have had with them, I have found the other brands to be a better quality. Will only get them off of marketplace now and not purchase them brand new.

Just not worth it as getting very bored with their designs and actually saw the other week, that they had taken a design that I have already completed by another brand and it had been reimagine, by the artist, to create a new one, but it was only small subtle changes that had been made so knew I had already done that design. 

New Holdson design

Come on, at least come up with new designs!

Are they that desperate for images to use that they have to work with the same artist from another country and recreate, when they could come up with something new.

Day 2 - Home Time

 The extra day/night in hospital was by far the best thing to do, and now it is home time.

Whilst it will be good to be in my own surroundings, I know for certain it is not like a hotel there, everything at my fingertips and a mini fridge in the room. This room is exactly like a hotel room; in fact, I think I have stayed in hotel rooms far worse than this hospital room!

Onwards with my recovery

Day 1

 To say the past 24 hours have been rough is a definite understatement. Crap is a better word, I think. It has not been a pleasant journey and consequently, the surgeon has decided that I am not going home today, and I get the joy of staying in for another night, and believe me, I need it.

Reaction to medication, uncontrollable pain, nausea, vomiting, more pain, lots of tears and low blood pressure.

It was lovely when a colleague/friend came to see me and bought me a small gift to keep me smiling. Ok, she did make me walk up and down the corridor (for my own good) to get the blood flowing to my legs and assist with easing my tight muscles.

I told you, nurses make the worst patients!

Surgery

Today is surgery day. Although I had to be nil by mouth and not report to the hospital until 12:30pm, I had nothing else to do in the morning, so rather than waste sick days, I carried on teaching this morning and then walked up the road to the hospital (about a 5-minute walk!) when required. Thus, why I have my laptop with me.

Talk about being a nurse patient and knowing how to push the limits 😎

I am all checked in, room allocated and now I sit and wait.

Been seen by the anaesthetist and the surgeon and just been told of a slight delay. Not much I can do about that.

My nursing was actually in the operating theatre for 20 years, so I totally understand all and everything to do with surgery and running of the department. I have scrubbed for many different specialties and have seen the inside of the body from the top of the head to the top of the big toe. I have helped to fix it, move it, remove it, replace it and generally anything to do with any part of the body, with the exception of cardiac and lungs, I have only scrubbed for one cardiac emergency case in my time, otherwise I have seen the inside of all of the body and it still fascinates me and amazes me at the miracle of what it does for our whole life. Even if it does go wrong occasionally and need bits removed 😇

I have lost count of the number of times I have scrubbed for this operation I am having today - Laparoscopic Cholecystectomy, so I know exactly how and what is going to happen. (Not sure if that is a good or a bad thing 😐)

Verdict

 The results are in, the plan is set, and we are all go

Today was the surgeon appointment and he confirmed my findings (😀) my gallbladder is coming out.

Now I just have to wait the 5-6 weeks until surgery time but at least we have a solution, although he did say it was only a 50:50 chance of it fixing the problem! A chance I am prepared to take.

Product in NZ

 As you know, New Zealand is this beautiful little country at the bottom of the world. We have a small population of just under 5 million people. We have a lot of green space, and most people live in the main cities, meaning we have some vast open space that you can wander in and find no one.

Unfortunately, because of our size, we don't manufacture a lot of products and most of what we have, comes from another country. It is not that we haven't made things in the past, just that when production has become too expensive (with obtaining the materials to start with) then they have inevitably moved the production to another country (Australia & Asia) where it can be completed in bulk size which is faster and more cost effective for all. Then, obviously, it is shipped back to NZ for us to buy.

When it comes to variety, then no, NZ does not do this well, but that is due to the lack of population to have sufficient turnover of stock. Inevitably the smaller company just can't make enough sales to stay viable and so they end up closing.

I found this quite difficult when I first moved to NZ in 1998. I was used to the UK and having so much variety to choose from and then suddenly, I was in a country that gave you the choice of A or B. A lot of popular brands do not make it here as there just isn't the population to sustain them, even if they are big brand names in other countries. The cost of getting the products to NZ and then making it a price that we can afford is half the problem, people just aren't prepared to spend heaps on a product that they know is so cheap in another country and astronomically expensive here, due to shipping.

IKEA is one such company. Everyone raves about the simplicity of the company, their flat pack furniture, their cost efficiency. I know, I have been to IKEA and spent many a Sunday afternoon wandering the store like everyone else and having meatballs for lunch, because you just have to. And yes, I always walked away with some odd little gadget that you just had to have!

They are still aiming to open a store here in NZ soon (that soon has been on the cards for the past 5 years!) But, I know, when it does finally arrive, it won't be as cheap as everyone is hoping due to the cost of shipping the products to us in the first place.

So why am I writing about this today?

Jigsaw puzzles, yes, this all has to do with jigsaw puzzles.

We didn't have the variety of product or design. We had one main company Holdson.

Yes, they are a New Zealand brand and yes, they are manufactured here in NZ. As they say, they have been since 1939. They do great puzzles with some reasonable variety. Ok, not so much when they do a series of 4 and the picture becomes boringly the same, but they try, and it gives us something to do. However, they don't do large. They do 1000 pieces well and that is about it, unless you want to go smaller. After a while, 1000 pieces is boring, you want a challenge and something different and that is not them.

Obviously, we do have Ravensburger

They offer size and variety, but man were they expensive and it was difficult to justify the cost of the puzzle. They do great quality pieces too, but when you looked at their catalog of products and then saw what was available here in NZ, then you could only dream that someone, someday would bring more variety down here.

And suddenly, that has happened.

Jigsaws are definitely making a comeback. I think Covid may have had a lot to do with it, people are suddenly all into jigsaw puzzles, they are not for the reclusive person, the older generation who stay home on a Saturday night with no social life. It is almost like this secret little life that people are afraid to admit to as they are scared of what people will think, but they have cupboards filled with variety, colour, size and they are eagerly completing puzzles into the night.

This has also been shown in the variety of puzzle available in New Zealand, the different companies that we can get, the different sizes to tempt us. No longer want 1000 pieces, then fine, how about 2000, 3000 or even 6000. At one point, I did even see the large Ravensburger Disney puzzle in the shop window, a box holding all 40320 pieces (my dream puzzle) although I have also noticed that it is no longer about $600 to obtain, more like half a mortgage!! I think I saw it online for about $2300, yikes, just keep dreaming, just keep dreaming!

Suddenly we have variety of company to choose from & sizes and I for one, am loving it.

Every company makes their jigsaws slightly differently, the pieces fit well or sometimes, not so well. The colours are vibrant, bright and shiny and the cost is reasonable. Suddenly Ravensburger is not out of reach of the average person. We are getting lots of eeBoo, Cobble Hill, Clemontoni, Gibsons and some little brands that are smaller companies and they are selling well and fast.

We have a local party/cake product store here in town that decided to create a small jigsaw section, they sell online too, and they are selling fast and furiously across NZ. Their shipping costs are reasonable and their prices competitive. Luckily for me, they are local so I can order online and pick up close to work, but that also makes it dangerous lol, as checking their sales and seeing something I want gets expensive on the credit card, especially when it is going in the cupboard to join the other 30 waiting to be completed!!

Just 1 pile of many!

So, long live the jigsaw puzzle, the variety, colour and shape. The excitement of completing one, that sense of achievement.

2 years ago, at work, we had a few spare desks and so I set up a green felt and started a jigsaw puzzle on it, it took a few weeks to get completed but it was lovely to see people slowly stop and fit in a piece here and there. It was never distracting but a great mental wellbeing area for someone to take 5 mins away from their desk and focus on something else, whilst they calmed their brain or thoughts, or just needed time out from the difficult moment they had just had in a classroom.

If you haven't completed a jigsaw since you were younger and at school, then maybe consider getting one and giving it a go.

You won't regret it, I promise

All the Time I Can Get

 When your oldest child lives 600 kms away, you don't get to see them much. Therefore, when they do come up, you spend every second with them.

In this case, he was driving his own car back down (he flew up to get said car), about an 8-hour drive and I wanted to make sure he had a good breakfast, so a 7.30am cafe run was ordered and we had a last meal together 💗

We Have a Winner

 Thanks to the power of modern technology, I knew my results of the HIDA scan and what they meant before I saw the surgeon again.

Here in New Zealand, we have medical apps that allow us to link into our GP and see all medications we are taking, all test results, all letters of referral and all appointment notes. We can also message the surgery on the app and book appointments with our named doctor (although good luck with that one since covid, takes about 10 days for an appointment) and request repeat prescriptions without having to go to the surgery.

So of course, when I got the message that a new result had been uploaded then I took a quick look and bingo, found the issue:

I have an inactive gallbladder.

Your gallbladder is an organ that sits underneath your liver and assists the liver with the excretion of bile into the digestive system when you eat. The bile helps to break down fat. You can live without it; your liver and cystic duct just have to learn to divert the bile into the digestive system a slightly different route. Most people have a gallbladder that fills with bile when you eat and then excretes it out as required, usually with an ejection fraction of about 50%.

Mine is at 16%, so a little slow and useless really

Therefore, when I eat, bile is accumulating in the gallbladder as normal and then it is not emptying properly, this leads to a full gallbladder that can then go into spasm or cramp. Thus, the colicky pain I was getting as it was full of bile and not able to empty it all out.

The solution (according to Dr Google, true nurse here!) is a Cholecystectomy, which in simple terms = let's take that gallbladder out.

Guess my appointment with the surgeon in the next few weeks will be to confirm what I have already established, unless the expert has a different solution (I do trust his knowledge) and that will be some future surgery.

HIDA Scan

 Today I got my nuclear medical scan of my gallbladder.

It involved a 90-minute scan, laid on my back the whole time, with no moving (although I could hold my kindle and read) and at the 45-minute mark, I had to eat a Mars bar and drink a glass of milk, all while lying flat on the bed with a scanning machine above my abdomen.

Firstly, I am not a fan of milk. I will have it with breakfast cereal, but I am not that person that will grab a glass of milk with dinner or because I am thirsty. My baby son, well that is a different story. he will gulp it down out of the bottle stood in front of the open fridge!

Secondly, a whole Mars bar! We are not talking about a mini snack size either, we are talking the whole 50g bar, at 9.30am.

I like chocolate but am not a person who will eat a chocolate bar because I find the feeling of just chocolate in my mouth a horrible feeling and texture. So don't ever buy me a bar of chocolate or Easter egg as it will last forever and bug those around me because it is sitting there and torturing them!

I do however, like Twix and things that are a little bit of chocolate, but nowadays, I seem to manage a snack size bar and don't need a large one, plus I would rather have a jelly candy instead.

So, eating this bar was going to be a struggle. But apparently that was the point, to feed my gallbladder a whole heap of fat all in one go (full fat milk as well) and see how it coped. It was amusing having this nice gentleman stand beside me feeding me a bite of chocolate bar and then offering me the straw to drink milk through.

A HIDA scan is apparently a hepatobiliary iminodiacetic acid scan, where a radioactive tracer is injected and then you overload the digestive system with fat, and it evaluates the function of the liver, gallbladder and bile ducts by tracking the flow of bile.

Let's see what these results show, if anything, but not holding out much hope!

Breakfast

 Unfortunately, I couldn't really understand breakfast on the day I was let home?

Now, if I had been 6 years old and just had my tonsils out then I would have been in heaven 

Ice cream?

But for me, in my 50's and just having eaten not much for the past few days (I have already lost 6 kg of weight through this past 5-week ordeal) then being given ice cream for breakfast just did not go down well at all, and consequently, I didn't eat it.