Watching It

Being in a new country, it's very fun to check out new shows.  Sports here seems to be made up of rugby, cricket and horse-and-buggy racing.  I kid you not about the horse-and-buggy racing.  One of the channels we have seems to be made up of only horse-and-buggy racing.

Of course, we get some American shows, which means I'll be able to keep watching Modern Family and things like that.  But the best are these new shows.  Additionally, New Zealand doesn't edit out swearing or nudity after a certain hour, so you get shows uncensored.  Which has it's good and it's bad points.

Hands down, my favorite is Come Dine With Me, and it's Canadian counterpart, Dinner Party Wars.  http://www.channel4.com/programmes/come-dine-with-me

In this show, three or four people get together and host dinner parties.  They give scores to the host/ess based on the quality of the food, the entertainment, etc.  You know how sometimes you watch a game show and think, "I could totally win that?" Yeah.  I could win that.  The winner (highest scores) gets $1,000.  Or rather, 1,000 pounds.  No pound symbol on my keyboard, I'm afraid.

My favorite episode was one where the hostess said that anytime there was a lull in the conversation, she'd just talk about her boobs, which went down a treat with the lady who was uncomfortable with any kind of sexual banter.  The second lady?  She was a horse-and-buggy racer.  You just can't escape it.

Another show I enjoyed is Geordie Shore (http://www.mtv.com.au/shows/featured/geordie-shore-3).  Gary and I watched this quite happily a couple of times, thinking it was a British spoof of Jersey Shore.  Then we discovered, no - they are real people.  Wh-wh-what?  The shine dulled a little when we found that out.  We still let the channel linger sometimes when we pass by and Geordie Shore in on.  They curse quite a bit in it, but I admit most of the time I don't understand the accent and later go, "Ohhh, that's what they were saying.  Naughties!"

"Gaz and Sharon is like a Rubik's Cube.  No ma'ah how hard you get them colors to work - it just won't go."  That's poetry.  Think of Daisy, from Downton Abbey, totally trashed, with peroxided hair, wearing a bikini and making out with. . . no, even that doesn't do it justice.  People say, "Innit?" a lot on that show.  One of them is destined to be a horse-and-buggy racer.  I'm sure of it.

Embarrassing Bodies (http://www.channel4embarrassingillnesses.com/) is another that you can't look away from, no matter how much you wish you would.  It features things like - the girl who hates her feet so much that she refuses to take her socks off, ever.  So she showers in her socks.  Then takes them off in 5 seconds and puts on new socks.  If I explain to you the state of her feet, you would probably vomit. 

Then there is the woman who thought she had thrush for 9 years.  Turns out she had something else and would have saved herself 8 years and 11 months of agony if she had gone to the doctor for it instead of just buying more topical cream.  I might be over-simplifying it a touch.  But when it's painful to your "minge" just to walk - don't you think it's time you asked your doctor about it?  Maybe book in for, say, a common cold and then say, casually, "Oh yeah, doctor - can I ask you about another thing?"  You probably don't even need to look each other in the eye.  I know I, for one, could not tell you the color of my ob/gyn's eyes.  But his shoes are wicked cool New Balance ones.  I feel the need to tell you also, that her exam was right there on TV for all of posterity to view.  I can't imagine her calling her friends and saying, "Oh by the way, I'm going to be on TV tonight - set your TiVos!"

Note to self: Minge is a great name for a new pet. 

Finally, the Embarrassing Bodies person who I hope got paid handsomely for his participation, was an older guy who, ahem.  Has some leakage problems, or so he thought.  People in a pub could smell him after he'd, to coin a phrase from my brother, dropped his kids off at the pool.  After his examination - which, let me tell you, they show in full, non-pixellated glory, the doctor says, "I don't see anything - you just haven't wiped well enough."  WHAT???  "Try a high fiber diet.  That may change the quality of your output." 

Thanks, doc!  You'll all be happy to know that it worked. It worked wonders and led him to revamp his whole image!  He came to his follow up appointment wearing a wildly patterened shirt and sporting highlighted bangs. 

Now I have to book my own appointment - preferably someone with a white-hot sterilized needle who can remove the memory of watching a man get an anal exam on television.  Or maybe next time I'll stick to horse-and-buggy racing. 

Bugging Us

New Zealand is full of critters.  The nice thing about it is that most of them are friendly.  It has been a big change coming from Arizona, where you need to be wary of most of the bugs and creepies out there, to come here, where most of them are harmless.

The first couple of days, our kids would scream bloody murder when they saw ants.  "Ants!  Ants!  Don't let them get on me!" they'd yell.  Others would look at us puzzled.  Ants, apparently, usually do not bite here.  There are also a fair few of them around.  Once I found them climbing in orderly rows down my curtain rod to munch on crumbs from Seth's breakfast under the dining room table.  Creepy but probably not painful.

We see lots of spiders at our place too.  Short fat black ones, some with long spindly legs, little hopping ones.  Those suckers are industrious, too.  You can have a new web all over a corner within an hour.  Seems a shame to brush it away.

There's a plant outside our front door that the movers told us attracted monarch butterflies.  He said that they lay their eggs on it and soon there will be lots f caterpillars.  He may have just been messing with us, but we do have lots of butterflies swooping around outside.  Rowan has adopted them all and asked me to get a net so she can keep a few in jam jars.  Which is just what they want out of life, I'm sure.

Cicadas, snails, moths - and don't get me started on the birds. There's a pair of mynah birds livingin the tree outside.  They like to fix me with their beady eyes to let me know they wouldn't be averse to a few leftover toast crusts once in awhile.  There is a constant buzzing, chirping, warbing and singing going on outide.

My favorite, though, was last week when Rowan was making friends with a new, weird looking bug (a praying mantis).  The mantis was on our staircase leading to the front door and she was hanging out there talking to it and singing it songs.  A few minutes later she ambled inside.

"How's it going with the bug?" I asked.  She looked at me, chagrinned, and said, "It's so sad, mommy - that poor bug killed itself."

"Oh?" I asked, stymied.  "How'd that happen?"

"Well - he climbed right up to my shoe, and then squashed himself up on my shoe.  Because I was scared of him.  It was kinda an accident.  He shouldn't have scared me like that."

Tragedy, indeed.