The After-Effects

It has been a very long and fun weekend—two sets of houseguests down, three to go—and I am so tired. I finally made it to bed before five in the morning last night, which seemed like this huge accomplishment, and today I’ve been thinking long thoughts about going home and doing a face mask and actually reading a book or something and then getting into bed around eight, eight-thirty…instead of staying up and laughing and screaming and dancing and cuddling and downloading songs and doing yoga in the living room and hearing bands and randomly speaking Italian and drinking tea and eating large slabs of chocolate cake and losing my voice and taking pictures of echinoderms and watching half-naked girls dance on the rooftops of Cuba Street and singing all the words to all the songs in Dirty Dancing and generally enjoying myself very much. Everyone who has come to visit me in the last ten days, if you’re reading this? You are a lot of fun and I like you very much but girl, please. I am tired and I have to go to work and I need a nap.

I’m totally copping out lately with all the picture entries, but…yes, here are some pictures of the last week. Probably I won’t post another one of these next week because Rob and Anna are coming to visit (yay!) and probably pictures of us laying on the floor and gossiping while eating Tim Tams are interesting only to us, you know? Meanwhile, I give you pictures of girls in bikinis and sidewalk chalk drawings, which, really, when I think about it, sum up my life pretty well.

Man, I can’t even remember last weekend. Okay, wait, yes I can: it started when my cousin showed up in Wellington on a Friday afternoon. I was going to meet him at Te Papa, as you do, because Te Papa is free and it has two nice cafes and parking and also a kakapo sex video, which I believe I may have mentioned once or twice. I walked there from work and was a little late and was unsure which of the cafes David was in, until I came down the stairs and saw a bald man in a gigantic yellow motorcycle suit, waving enthusiastically as if he thought I might somehow miss him. We stayed up talking every night he was here until three in the morning, and I wish I had a picture of teither that or his motorcycle suit to show you, but instead I will show you one of him flirting at the camera the next afternoon, when we went to Frank Kitts park on the waterfront to see the Ukulele Orchestra and the Real Hot Bitches, both of which have become firm favorites of mine.

I finally got some pictures of the orchestra, as I hadn’t been able to do the last time I saw them. About fifty amateur ukulele enthusiasts showed up the show, ukes in hand, just to play and sing along with the WIUO. They invited everyone to do a “ukulele parade” and to sit on the grass in front of the stage and play along with them. A girl sitting next to me was all very seriously tuning up her instrument, worrying because this was her first time playing in semi-public and she’d only had a week of lessons. I asked her about how she got started and she said that it just seemed like a fun thing to do. “It’s really great at parties,” she said, tightening a fret. “How long are you in New Zealand for, six more months? Oh, you have plenty of time to learn, then!” She did caution me, however, that the ukulele store in town (yes) has temporarily run out of ukuleles, so I might have to be put on a waiting list…a ukulele waiting list…instead of getting one right away.

I also finally got that shot of me getting kissed on by the beautiful Gemma and Megan. (Please note my awesome All Right Tokyo shirt: my good friend Jill left last week, not only breaking my heart completely but also giving me a bunch of free clothes, so I have been wearing one of her shirts every couple of days so I don’t feel so lonely without her.) Also, for some reason Gemma brought a recorder to the gig and brandished about, calling for its replacement as a kid music class staple with, what else, the ukulele, “because you can’t sing and play the recorder,” as she very sensibly pointed out. Anyway, she let me hold it for the picture, in which I don’t look like I’m enjoying myself too much but trust me, I am.

And, apropos of nothing, here are some people dressed as sheep, wandering around the Fringe. And I never, never, never get tired of a) seeing the Real Hot Bitches dance and b) taking pictures of them dancing.

Sadly, these are all the pictures of them I have (for this entry) because even though last Saturday they were coordinating a mass dance to “Shot To The Heart” in the middle of Courtenay Place, we all got there too late to learn the choreography or even be able to see them very wel. Rest assured, though, I danced along as well as I was able.

Uh, okay. Where was I? Here’s a picture of my gorgeous housemate A., who is bucking the trend in our flat by actually sitting at the table to eat the fantastic dinner David made for us.

Remember how he’s working with a chef in his spare time? He busted out with the lamb in cream sauce, and the goat-cheese risotto, and the pan-roasted vegetables, and the amazing salad that incorporated an entire head of raw garlic and which is now my favorite thing ever. Anyway, here he is, wreaking havoc in our wee kitchen, much to everyone’s delight. Don’t tell him, when he gets back to Welly on Friday? I’m totally making him cook again, except this time I’m going to insist he use two heads of garlic in that salad.

And, wait, while I’m thinking about it, here are some photos of some of the chalk drawings we saw that day on the waterfront. There were buckets of chalk everywhere and people did some really amazing art, which always makes me very happy.

David took off for the South Island on Monday, and then Mat, whom I met over Christmas in Whitianga and who had shown up in Wellington on his way to the South Island, decided to stay another couple of days so we could all go together to the Cuba Street Carnival. My sweet friend Abi got in from the South Island on Thursday evening and Friday, after our much-looked-forward-to trip to the Kapiti Bird Sanctuary was canceled due to weather (we were robbed), we invited Lydia (whom I also met in Whitianga and whom I love unreservedly) over for Top Gun, hot chocolate, and double entendre. I ended up sleeping on the floor of the lounge on the couch cushions, as there was no more couch space, and thought a lot about the ABL and about how easy it is there to spend a day or so just sitting around and having the best time doing nothing.

We didn’t make it out of the house until 5:00 the next day—there was tea to be drunk and real British Cadbury’s (bought for the astronomical price of nine dollars NZ, which I didn’t think was really worth it but which the English people begged to differ) to be reverentially eaten and you know how the day gets away from you when you’ve had three hours of sleep. We finally made it to the bus stop, a full twenty meters from my house, where Mat had to take a little nap while we waited.

When we got to town, there were many marvels to behold, starting with som entertainingly anime’d up body paint models.

We got some food and I met up with the lovely Amy, who is an expat Kiwi currently in New York who was home for a couple of weeks and who found my blog, somehow, through some sort of Harvey Mudd connection at Cornell, or something. A weird band that involved jumpsuits and inflatable orca whales played, and Abi bought a great outfit from one of the vendors and also got chatted up by some random dude while I was in the bathroom. I finally got to hear The Phoenix Foundation play a little, which was all to the good, and then it was time to stand around Cuba Street and take pictures of each other and wait for the parade to start.

My experience with the Santa Parade back in November had led me to suspect that Wellington, when planning a parade, pretty much just goes, “Okay, who here has got a crazy costume?” and whoever shows up just gets to walk down the street in it. Which isn’t such a bad way to do things, really.

Of course, at one point, there was just a regular Metlink bus with “Cuba Street Carnival” in the window, which I’m not really sure counts as a parade float.

I was in a dance-y party mood, sort of; I was on second wind number fifty-seven or so, in that I had to keep closing my eyes to take a little nap standing up in the street but would perk up whenever something musical came along. I have been uniformly disappointed in my efforts at having a good dancing experience in Wellington but it was pretty good just to walk down the street, feeling everyone swirl around me and just floating along. I sort of wanted to stay out a little more—on my way to the StarMart to get wholegrain bread and extra-trim milk, while everyone else was picking up drunk food, I not only passed not only some duelling breakdancers but also heard “Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough” playing at a pleasing volume—but sensibility won out, ever so briefly, over awesomeness and we cabbed home and sang along to Dirty Dancing and called it a night.

Yesterday was Abi and Mat’s last day in Wellington and we marked that solemn occasion by eating leftover Indian takeaway and finally leaving the house at 4:30 to walk down to the beach in Island Bay. It was windy and a little chilly and I could feel this brief summer ending, but that didn’t stop us from clambering around the rocks and sticking our fingers in tidepools and doing cartwheels on the sand and taking pictures of oystercatchers and sea stars.

Mat managed to break himself on a slide in a playground and then give himself freezer burn with an icepack (long story), but we made it to Espressoholic for cake with Lydia and Charlie and some of the other people we’d been hanging out with before having to turn around and go home again so they could get packed up and so I could reduce the after-effects our weekend had had on the house before A. got home from her weekend in Wanganui. I confess that I am really really looking forward to an early night tonight, but I’m also really glad that people from so far away whom I’ve known for so long have come to see me, and that more of those people are on the way.