Whittle While You Work

My Dear Princess and Dear Fellows,

We have started house-hunting! It is official! There are houses out there and we are HUNTING them!

Today we took the train up to Paraparaumu. And wouldn't you just LOVE it if we were to live in a place called Paraparaumu*?

We saw one place which required a lot of work and had a really weird smell and bad layout. But which we can afford. Then we saw a second place around the corner. It was lovely and cosy and needs nothing done with it. 

"This second place makes the first one look like a turd," I observed with my keen real estate eye.

We are not sure if we can afford this second place yet. But it is going up for auction next month and our top budget is $550k. Keep your fingers crossed for us.

Afterward we went to Loulou and Tiger's place. They too live in Paraparaumu, so theoretically we could all commute in to work together which would be cool. We got a warm welcome as always from those two, but it was a COLD day. Tiger offered Caro a loan of his poncho.

I should explain Tiger's fashion choices. Basically he loves to float about in harem pants and a poncho. He kind of looks like Blondie in "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly". Caro LOVED the poncho. You can see a picture of her in the extra. 

As for Loulou, she was very excited. She was running the first ever official meeting of the Kapiti Spoon Club. A fellow spooner who she had met at this year's "Spoon Jam" had come over and they were spooning together.

"Would you like to learn how to whittle?" Loulou asked me. 

I didn't really. But I didn't want to quash Loulou's enthusiasm. So while Loulou and her spoonfriend were busily making kitchenware, I made a stick with a point on the end. Loulou then offered to show me how to use the axe, but that made me nervous. Especially when she pointed at my groin.

"That is what we call the triangle of death," she informed me.

How very insulting. I know it's been a while, but...

But she was merely trying to point out the dangers of axe-use to me. I appreciated that and we used the axe very gently to split a log. "Try to see the spoon in the log," Loulou told me. "Try to visualise the scoop emerging from the grain."

I wasn't sure that I was ready for this level of commitment to spooning. I felt myself getting sucked in, like with the Scientologists. So I backed away. I feel that pointy sticks are the upper limit of my spooning ability and decided to quit while I was ahead. I could tell that Loulou was disappointed, but she already HAS a spooning buddy. She doesn't need me.

And listen, if you ever need to poke a vampire, give me a call. I can totally fix you up.

S.

* How you pronounce it depends on whether you are Pakeha or Maori or PI. White people just call it "Para-param". But the Maori bloke on the radio pronounces it "Para-par-OH-moo".  And if you are the Princess you call it "Para-para-oo-moo". I like the Princess's version best.