Illness Update

After feeling better on Monday, my cough got worse again on Tuesday, as did the tightness in my chest. I therefore took another sick day on Wednesday and went back to the doctor, not knowing if I should continue to wait it out, get more medicine, or be thankful that I had more energy again and just go back to work.

Unfortunately, I do not feel that my doctor's visit adequately answered this question. The doctor seemed unwilling be very definite about anything. He did, however, assert that the two types of antibiotics I'd been on had apparently not been effective against the particular kind of bacteria infecting my lungs. So now I'm on a super-killing form of antibiotics. I really wanted to turn down any more antibiotics, but I am so determined to get rid of this thing once and for all, and it just won't go away.

The doctor also recommended that I stay home for the rest of this week. I have never in my life taken so many sick days in a row, and I am having trouble accepting that this is the right choice, since I am definitely not as sick now as I was last week. However, I am also clearly not back to normal, and I am terrified by the very idea of making myself worse again. So here I am at home for four more days (including the weekend), trying, by sheer force of will (and quantity of soothing tea) to ensure that I will be 100% healthy by Monday.

I miss work, and have an irrational fear that my children will all have forgotten me by the time I go back. I've missed several 4th birthdays already, and I hate that!

That all being said, I am firmly believing in this new antibiotic (what other choice do I have), and the upset stomach it is causing is completely worth it if it gets my lungs back into gear.

The good news is that my more positive attitude, kick-started by all my wonderfully supportive neighbours, friends, and family, is here to stay. Four more days is not so bad. I can stay optimistic through that, and even do a better job of appreciating the good things about being at home - namely reading. I'm currently re-reading The Poisonwood Bible for the umpteenth time, and am as amazed and appreciative of it as ever. I could read it for the rest of my life. If you haven't read it, you should.

I'm hoping that this positivity is going to join forces with the antibiotic, and between the two of them, I won't be able to be anything but healthy. Look out, Monday!

Kindness is Healing

Just a few minutes after I posted my pathetic, whiney post yesterday, my phone rang, and it was lovely Jan from Whanganui! She and Brian had seen my post and wanted to call and make sure I was okay and give me some sympathy and support. We had a wonderful chat, and I felt better afterwards.

J, who has been doing extra chore duty while I've been useless, ran into two of our neighbours yesterday, and told them that I'd been sick. This morning, we get a knock at the door, and our neighbour Jan from down the hill was there with a fresh bouquet of flowers from her garden! Not too long after that, we get another knock, and there's Julia from across the street with some fresh-baked muffins! Both wished me a speedy recovery, and it warmed my heart.

Combine that with people being very loving and supportive on Facebook and in emails, and with J who continues to reassure me that I'll feel better soon (and who brings me tea in the meantime), and my cough doesn't seem to be such a big deal. I am a very lucky person, even in my sickness.

As for the sickness itself, I think today marks the first day of official progress. My cough is a bit less frequent, and has lost the hollow barking nastiness of the past few days, which is a huge relief. My head is not so achy and I slept well last night, so that's great. I still have tomorrow to rest, and then I'm really crossing my fingers that I'll be back to feeling good on Wednesday.

Thank you to all of you who are there, regardless of the distance, to support me when I need it. It means a lot to me.

Sick of Being Sick

For the last three weeks, I have had this persistent, nagging cough. It was irritating, and sometimes accompanied by headaches, but mostly I could ignore it. A couple weeks ago, it got quite bad on Thursday, and so I took Friday off, and rested all through the weekend as well. It didn't improve the cough, but I felt like I got my energy back, and headed back to work for the entire week following, and dealt pretty well. The cough persisted, but annoying as it was, I could ignore it.

Monday morning, I woke up feeling fine except for the cough, so I got ready and biked to work. When I got to work, I suddenly became dizzy, lightheaded, and found it difficult to see clearly or keep my balance. My very kind centre director actually drove me to the walk-in clinic herself, which was amazing, because it would have been an unpleasant walk to the bus stop and I didn't even really know where to go, as I haven't been sick since we moved here.

The doctor said I had pneumonia and prescribed me two very strong antibiotics and said pneumonia takes forever to go away, so I should stay home all week from work. I don't think I have ever taken a whole week off work, and I was convinced that the antibiotics would kick this thing in a day or two. Neither the centre director nor J was buying that at all, and I was firmly relegated to bed rest for the duration of the week.

As it turned out, going back to work was not on the cards anyway, because after a few days on antibiotics, my stomach was a disaster, I was exhausted and achy, and my cough had developed into the horrible, hollow, barking seal cough that I recognize from multiple bouts of bronchitis. J listened to my lungs with his stethoscope and confirmed that while it sounded like I had a bit less fluid in my lungs at that point, I also clearly had bronchitis. Which is a virus, and will run its course regardless of the antibiotics currently killing off everything else in my body. In the meantime, the intensified cough made my whole body sore from the way it wracked it and made it very difficult to sleep.

I'd like to say that there's a happy ending to this story, but it is now Sunday, and tonight will mark the end of my week-long intensive antibiotics course, as well an entire week of nothing but resting on the couch, which is ridiculous. The icing on the cake is that after all that, I don't feel better yet, and just have more resting to look forward to for the next few days. I have Monday and Tuesday off work for Easter, and unless something drastically changes, I'll be spending them right here on the couch.

BUT, by next week, (when I promise to post something more positive), I will be feeling SO MUCH better! I know it!

In the meantime, here are some beautiful pictures of clouds from our flat. The sun rises behind those hills, and so sets in the opposite side of the sky, but the reflections from the sunset are amazing!

Wellington Botanic Gardens

A few weekends ago, J and I went for a walk around the Botanic Gardens. Before I get to the pictures, I'll tell you a few things that have been brought to my attention about them.

1) Approximately 99.9% of Kiwis call them the "Botanical" Gardens. It says "Botanic" on the signs, but the use of "Botanical" is so pervasive that I started to think that perhaps I'd read them wrong. However, I was privileged enough to meet a member of the .1% who say it correctly, in the form of one of the parents at work. She heard me talking about them, and delightedly said, "Wow, finally a person who actually says Botanic instead of Botanical!" She is my favourite parent now, both for her enjoyment of proper word use and because her statement relieved my worries about my inability to read signs. So it is Botanic, and Kiwis, usually the kings/queens of abbreviation, have chosen, for some reason, to lengthen this word. (Perhaps it is a bit like Kansan's habit of ending sentences with prepositions, even when the sentence requires no prepositions at all).

2) The reason that I was talking to this wonderful parent about said gardens is that every week, we take a group of children from our room and walk the two blocks over to the gardens, where we spend a couple hours out in nature, learning and exploring. It is still a fairly new part of our programme, and much less developed than many "nature-based learning" programmes that are popping up all around NZ (and around the world). It is something that we as a teaching team are really working to expand and improve, but it is already a wonderful time to get out of the centre and climb trees, collect acorns, observe ducks, find cicada shells, balance on stone walls, etc. We are always looking for ways for children to connect to nature and to challenge themselves.

3) I love that many cities in NZ have Botanic Gardens. There is so much natural beauty in this country, but I also feel that people are more aware of it, and beauty is planned into places where people live and work, which is wonderful.

4) I get to bike through the Botanic Gardens on the way to work every day. Or, if I take the bus for some reason, I walk through a different part. It's quite nice, especially since the rest of my bike ride is rather traffic-heavy and intense.

I didn't take a lot of pictures while we were there this time. You can also look back at my post from the first time J and I went to the gardens, back in November 2013, which has a few pictures. Click here to go to that post. 

This sculpture reminded me of the Inukshuks we saw in Ottawa.

I love how this sculpture, while being made of hard, shiny stone, actually blends in with its surroundings, courtesy of light, shadow, and reflection.

I'm pretty sure that this tornado-looking sculpture was made just for us Kansans!

Look at the crazy way this vine has looped around the tree!

I found this rock garden/succulent area very beautiful.

I love this wooden carving of a beekeeper, but J thought it was a bit strange.

Eyes like this, made of paua (abalone) shells are common in Māori carvings. I like that touch, as the rest of it is not in the Māori style, but that little touch grounds it in NZ.

I don't know what kind of bird this is, but I was very appreciative of it for being willing to sit still while I took a picture, and in such a lovely spot. I am always seeing all kinds of beautiful birds around, but they always fly away before I can take a picture. So this one, while simple and brown, wins the thoughtfulness award, which is more important than beauty anyway.

I am becoming increasingly fond of eucalyptus trees. This one didn't smell much, but it is still beautiful.

The Botanic Gardens is planning and working on a Children's Garden section that will open sometime this year, I think. We're planning to get our children involved, which will be really fun. I'm looking forward to continuing to get to know these gardens better.

More Te Papa

I could post endless pictures of the exhibits at Te Papa and never get anywhere close to capturing what is available there. But I thought I'd share a few more things from one of my recent visits.

This was just added this year - it is a modern version of a Wharenui Carved House on a Marae. It is hard to see the detail, but I recommend that you click on it to make it bigger, because it is a stunning work of art! The varied pastel colours are definitely new and different, because Māori art is usually bright red and black. 

Check out this kiwi egg! Notice how it is almost as big as the whole, entire bird?!?! I learned that kiwi eggs are six times bigger than the eggs of similarly sized birds. And the egg takes up 20% of the mother's body (compared to 5% for a pregnant woman). While that is amazing enough, what I don't understand is how it gets out!!

Biologists hypothesize that this size mis-match is due to kiwi birds have decreased in size over generations, while the egg remained the same size. Craziness!

There is a beautiful outdoor "bush" area of the museum, my favourite part of which is this bridge.

This rock formation shows geological movements and the way strata can be jammed together and shifted due to fault lines around New Zealand.

This is one of my favourite things about the museum, although it is very depressing if you actually think about it. It is a computer game, where you're going to a new "planet" (NZ) and you have to pick, from these plants and animals, what you will take to help you survive in this unknown place. I thought this seemed very exciting, and enthusiastically picked my four and off I went. Two of my chosen creatures could not survive in the new climate, and the other two thrived to such an extent that they destroyed the local ecosystem. Thinking I had picked poorly, I tried again, eventually cycling through all the choices. Turns out, no matter what you pick, the results are disastrous. Your creatures either die or kill everything around them. Hmmm... I wonder what the moral of the story is? Perhaps introduced species are not particularly welcome in this wonderful, unique NZ ecosystem? And no wonder.

On a similar note, they have a huge storage container that you have to walk through, trying to find all the pests or other dangers that might be inadvertently being brought to NZ by boat. I found it very wonderful that it asked me to pretend to be from MPI, since that's where J works. Good thing I don't work there, though, because I would have missed a lot of invaders.

Te Papa Tongarewa: Dreamworks

I have posted about Te Papa Tongarewa (mostly called simply Te Papa) before, as it is definitely the most amazing museum I've ever been to and I have gone many times. I like museums, but don't actually want to move at a snail's pace, reading long descriptions next to each item. This sometimes surprises me about myself, as I can sit in a chair for hours, not moving at all, reading descriptions in a book. But anyway, Te Papa is a perfect museum for me, because it is engaging, beautiful, diverse, and does not simply rely on reading signs.

Recently, J and I went to Te Papa to see the Dreamworks Exhibit. Most of you will know that J and I love animated children's movies, whether they are by Disney, Pixar, or Dreamworks. So we were understandably excited to hear that Dreamworks was coming to Te Papa. We didn't know exactly what the exhibit would be like, and it definitely exceeded whatever expectations we thought up. What we were most impressed by was how visually beautiful everything was. It makes sense, but I'd never thought of how many stunning works of art would be created in the process of making an animated movie.

These are masks of characters from Magadascar: Maurice the leemur, Gloria the hippo, Melman the giraffe, a stack of the penguins, and Alex the lion.

These are models of most of the main characters from Kung Fu Panda, which is J's favourite movie in the world. Good job, Dreamworks. It's hard to tell in the picture, but the models are unbelievably detailed!

This is a watercolour of one of the smallest dragons in How To Train Your Dragon (another of our favourites). It's such a charming painting.

This is a painting that was based on a real Chinese painting, which served as inspiration for the visual effects of Kung Fu Panda. Sorry about the reflections off the glass.

This is a wall-sized video we watched of a voice actor doing a read-through of a scene from Shrek. His voice acting skills were amazing, and it was cool to watch him move from one still frame to the next. They use this process to figure out how the scene will sound, and modify it accordingly.

This is an actual set from Wallace and Gromit (which I didn't even know Dreamworks had done). Everything in this set was actually in the movie, except Gromit himself, as the characters in the movie are made of soft clay, so that they can be moved and positioned.

This is the mural of Africa that inspires Marty the zebra to want to escape the zoo and go to Africa in the first Madagascar.

This is Berk, the island settling of How to Train Your Dragon. Again, difficult to tell in the picture, but in real life, it's like a whole, complete world.

These are paintings of different settings for The Croods, which we actually haven't seen yet, but if it's that beautiful, we will need to!

Last, but not least, we got to use animation equipment to animate a short segment. J figured out how to use it immediately, and we made some short videos of a foot kicking a ball and such simple things. It was quite fun, but it reinforced my belief that I do not have the patience to be an animator, as the 15th time we drew almost the same picture was the end of my attention span, and I really think that a feature-length video is a bit more of a time commitment than that. I'll stick to watching them.

It is great to be living in the same town as Te Papa, and I'm eager to see what other exhibits come our way in the near future. I actually have more pictures to share from other times I've gone exploring in the permanent exhibits, but I'll save them for another day.