2008-08-24

Some stories, good food and great company

Today was a great day. I had an enjoyable day for mothers organised by Tam (who is on a CCF committee).

The event was in the city and on the way in one of the streets I noticed these big electronic boards displaying how many parking spaces were left in some of the streets.

Mistake number 1 - don't ask your husband when you're not sure how something works.

Lea: "so how do these boards know when somebody parks in a parking?"
Terence: bursting out laughing and then saying "duh, you don't think it might just be hooked up to the parking meters and calculate the parkings each time somebody takes a ticket?"
Lea: (Mistake number 2) "Oh I was trying to see little sensor things next to each parking" (Okay stop laughing at me now...)

(It definitely brought back memories years ago when Terence and I moved from a small town to Johannesburg and for the first time in my life I drove on a motorway. So every morning on the traffic reports I would hear them talk about stationery trucks and finally one day I asked Terence so which stationery shop had their trucks breaking down every day. After Terence nearly crashed the car, laughing, he finally explained that in that context stationery wasn't relating to a stationery shop where you would buy pens and paper, but meant cars just sitting next to the side of the road. Okay then, at least I can claim that English is not my first language and not coming from Johannesburg, can't say that I've ever encountered stationery trucks before.)

So anyway, back to the event...

It was so nice (the event bit and not the Terence laughing at me bit). We had the option to do a bit of a presentation to tell the other mums a bit about ourselves. I chose to show them some photos and tell them a little bit about us, a little bit about Bianca's treatment and to share some of our coping strategies. Another mum shared photos of the beautiful quilts she made with her mother, Chris brought her scrapbooks that are beautifully done, Hannah shared a little video clip that her 9 year old daughter helped her put together and it was very nice with music and everything. Tam shared with us a little bit about her son's health problems that had nothing to do with his cancer, but certainly must have complicated matters for them. I cannot remember what it is called, but with the slightest bit of friction he would develop painful blisters and as a result the doctors and nurses were not allowed to use any kind of sticky tape on him at all (even though they did on occassion which would end up being a painful situation).

I haven't had the opportunity to meet many mothers yet, so this was just so great to get together and to find out more about their journeys. I did get to meet up with Laura's mum and Peter's mum and that was pretty cool! I've been following their journals long before we came to Auckland so it was nice meeting them in person (although I have met Peter's mum when I came through to find a house in Auckland).

We had a very nice lunch (sorry Tam, I cannot remember who prepared the nice meal) and then we all just chatted until it was time to go home.

It was very very nice!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well I guess it is universal! I can't ask certain questions to my husband either here in NY! I guess it just doesn't matter where you live.
Glad to see how well Bianca is doing at school. So happy for her (and you of course)
Rosemary
NY USA