Goodness, time has been whizzing by and I missed commenting on spring altogether.  Or much of our long, hot, dry summer to date. 

Alas I had my six monthly myeloma bloods and caught up with the haematologist recently, and I am very lucky to remain in remission.  So that is now two, somewhat unexpected, years off the chemo.  It feels like serious bonus time and we try to make sure we are very grateful for it, and I try and focus on that rather than comparing myself to my old self before diagnosis.  Hopefully that makes sense - I don't have near the energy I had before diagnosis, but how I feel at the moment is so much better than on lenalidomide, and I do feel very lucky to get such a good period of time off it. 

I am certainly not up to doing the coast to coast (to be fair, I don't think that was ever in my future before diagnosis). But it is my day off today, and instead of being crashed on the couch, I am writing here whilst supervising the microwave.  Obviously the microwave can make cooking waves all by its self without any assistance from me.  But I have been trying out microwave preserving this year.  it is quite good as I make less mess than pan preserving, it seems quicker, and you can do small batches easily (which either works well to manage energy or if you have wee gluts of fruit).  I did however boil some black doris plums over in the microwave last week, and I'd prefer not to do that this week as it takes a bit of tidying. This is the page I used, reassured Jan Bilton is a well known cookery writer. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/eatwell/recipes/bottled-apricots/EV5E6NGVYH3BP3FAXFUWGL6D2A/  I started with some apricots from the neighbour, and have then done some excess black doris plums from our fairly young tree (which is very exciting). They're definitely our two favourite preserved fruits - black doris plum for our christmas trifle and K does an excellent clafoutis, and Lucas enjoys them with cereal, and apricots for apricot pie.  We did open a jar of apricots the other day to "check" and they seemed great - and no cases of botulism occurred.

Life has been fairly busy with more significant things than jars of apricots though.  In October I finally met my half sister A, and her husband N, from the UK.  We got on very well, and K mumbled a bit about similarities - apparently we walk the same, might share some sense of humour, and I think are probably a bit similar in the way we think about work (I'm saying quite practical and quite committed to do it well).  We went to various places in Christchurch but I think they most enjoyed interesting walks with Ixir - he went up on the hills, to the beach etc - he was living the doggy dream.  We then took them up to Hanmer which K came with us for. And then we went on to Kaikoura and K went back down to Christchurch to fly up to Wellington for Z's tangi.  In Kaikoura we went for a whalewatch and enjoyed the brewery and beautiful surrounds.  For their last morning back in Christchurch they chose to take Ixir to the beach despite the drizzle, so he highly approved of them. 

In amongst that, K's stepmother Z passed away. She was much loved and had so many people to visit in the last weeks and days.  K went up for the tangi, and L and I came back to Christchurch with A&N early that day so we could be at home to watch the tangi on livestream, which had so many different strands of her life come together. A huge loss for my Mother-in-law in particular.

My good mate T then passed away in January.  Whilst we knew she had stage 4 cancer, she said to me between Christmas and New Year she was sure it was progressing and she didn't have long. I was saying to her they hadn't seen anything on scans, so hopefully something else.  But she was spot on in that, and passed away quite quickly after.  I think she'd worked on a funeral plan, but in the end everything moved so fast that if there was a plan, she wasn't able to say where to find it, or what.  But her family were very generous in allowing a small group of friends to work with them to put together a service, and as her Dad remarked "I don't know if you can ever call a funeral lovely, but if you can, that one was".  It really was such a lovely send off, that I hope she would have loved.  I used to message her near every day as she often liked to keep to herself, but also be connected to the world and tolerated my bizarre humour and obscure minutae....it is very odd now how often I think I'll just send her a snap of this, or ask her opinion of that, and she's not there.  It was a bit of an odd situation for us as a pair to have known each other so long, and to know we both weren't going to be the most long lived.  Which we certainly chatted about.  Alas whilst her course was sadly quick (two years from diagnosis) and she went through a lot of extraordinarily arduous treatment for those two years, she was always rapt to hear when I'd had a good report from the haematologist, which didn't happen so often for her. 

I don't really know how you topic change from those two big losses.       

So, unrelated to anything before, we went to Whanganui and Wellington over the new year.  Lucas and I had done very well at minimising our aviation carbon footprint and hadn't been in a plane for over a year by that point.  But it was lovely to get back in a plane and get up and see most of K's family just after Christmas (Covid meant we got to spend time Trigger, her brother and his wife's dog, but not them - they did arrange a contactless handover of Trigger at their gate though so we could take him for a walk).  And then we went on to Whanganui for four nights which was just lovely.  The weather was warmer than we expected.  And the huge rainfall inland meant we didn't get our canoe on the Whanganui river we'd booked (and looking at the water flow, we certainly were not upset about not getting in a canoe that day), but it was lovely.  Really interesting place to spend a few nights. 

This year we won't be doing quite so well on minimising the aviation carbon credits.  I am very very excited that I have a work conference in Edinburgh this year.  I have been assiduously doing all my CME online for the last 6 years. I think I now have almost all the key speeches at the Australasian meetings memorised.  Okay, I overstate it.  But I am getting less and less out of seeing a similar group of people speak, and said to K I did wonder if I should try and get to the UK for the Royal College meeting.  It would be fair to say I was stoked to discover the destination for the congress is Edinburgh.  So I will have a week visiting A&N near London.  Then go up for the conference. Then K kindly approved 5 days to look around whisky distilleries.  After much much cosnideration of an intineray I have squeezed in three nights on the isle of Islay, and two nights in glasgow!!  So I'm excited about all the parts of the trip.  And it is so great that L is now so settled and self propelling that I can be away for three weeks.  I know that will still be a lot of work for K in terms of all the meals, dishes and washing I normally help with and so I'm hugely appreciative - but it is so different to when he was little and not settling to sleep.

L has a few nights away himself just before that, as he is flying to Melbourne to see his Dad, as his Dad's parents, L's Ouma and Oupa will be Melbourne, so it is a great chance for him to see them again.  

And K - K gets to go to an EMDR training in Porirua.  She is quite enthused about the training, but Wellington Central would have been a bit easier....

So on to other topics I usually cover.  The cricket has been great with some test match cricket played in our time zone which I have hugely enjoyed.  Will be interesting to see how the team goes against some top flight opposition (the Australians) as opposed to the South Africa B team they just played.  I have tickets for a couple of days for the christchurch test versus the australians, but was disappointed to see the squad they have selected for the match includes a player I don't think should represent NZ due to his treatment of women, and so if he is in the match day team I might be sitting that out.  I think we'll get taken apart by the australians on our current form, but I will retain a bit of hope. 

Book wise I can't recommend Lessons in Chemistry enough - it is the best fiction book I have read in absolutely ages.  A great pick by my sister-in-law S.  Non fiction wise I have been reading The End of the World is just beginning by Peter Zeihan.  Some of the things he says infuriate me, and he clearly isn't right on everything.  But there is an awful lot of food for thought in his discussions (if only to disagree with him) and overall I'd recommend it.  Though don't read it just before trying to decide how to organise your savings for your wife's retirement as you'll do your head in wondering if the world will be in anarchy then.  At least she'll have a good stash of fruit on our property as her hard work in the garden is slowly, literally, bearing fruit.  Oh on that topic, still no kiwiberry. To my horror, after much research I discovered it was the man kiwiberry plant that was 15 times the size of the lady kiwiberry (smothering her) so all the profuse blossom this year were only good for fertilising any neighbouring kiwiberry.  This remains a work in progress.....maybe a 20 year plan.      

And work.  I don't really know what to say.  I've been enjoying moving between teams still.  It keeps me interested doing new and different stuff.  I have work till August and then I am looking for either a specific permanent job in the public system if it comes up, or I think I will try my chances as a contracter/locum.  We will see what the year brings :-). Overall I am so pleased to still be working and earning money at this point (and able to go to a work conference in June) but I'm not sure what the future brings.  

Anyway, hope you are all doing well, and I will hopefully get back to you in autumn.