2025 is A Chocolate-Free Year

We all make a difference

#smilingontheinside – Tuesday 01 July 2025

I read in the NZ Herald that RJs – the manufacturer of Jaffas – the orange flavoured chocolate balls – is stopping manufacture. How sad is that! I bet there’ll be spike in sales now.

I wonder whether me being Chocolate-Free this year made that much of a difference to their sales…? Yeah! Nah!

One of my sisters told me that was all in my dreams… yup – she’s correct. As much as I enjoy Jaffas, I can’t say I really bought them beyond going to the movies … which we rarely go to.

Still. It’s sad. I like Jaffas!

Cockroaches – I’d go crazy if they were spiders!

As soon as we moved into our house we realised we had a cockroach problem – it sounds horrible, I know.

Until this address, I’d never really seen a cockroach in real life before. Now I can recognise two sorts – the Gisborne Cockroach and the other – not sure if it’s German or American – either way – ugh!

Alan jokes that there’re only two things that a nuclear bomb can’t kill – one is a former PM, the other is cockroaches. We’ve tried spraying them with fly spray but that doesn’t work – they just continue running. So now we cover them with a glass, put paper underneath to capture them, then flush them down the toilet. We’ve discovered that unless we kinda smother them with toilet paper first, they’ll survive a flush or two. Perhaps they would survive a nuclear bomb as Alan claims!

Apparently dirty houses are attractive to them. Which sounds pretty sad and awful. Maybe the previous people who lived here were like that…? But surely they should’ve gotten the memo by now that that’s no longer the case…?

I’m just pleased it’s cockroaches that’re the problem and not something that’d really send me over the edge. Like spiders… or rats… I think I’d end up in an asylum if we had those as a problem. I. Do. Not. Like. Spiders! Or rats.

I was going for my walk yesterday … opened the sun filter curtain in front of the dining room ranchslider and felt something drop onto me – eeeek! it was one of those humungous poxy Gisborne cockroaches! And then another! I did a bit of an arms-flapping, screaming dance that no one saw or heard because I was home alone.

Turns out this foul-smelling stuff does work though! If you can get to them fast enough!

Back to Two More Sleeps

Well, I won’t be picking up either our motorhome or Alan tomorrow as planned. Turns out he’s not coming home on Wednesday after all.

The thing that gets me the most, is there’s no request to stay longer, but a directive. Whoever makes the decision somehow seems to totally ignore that there are other people impacted and affected … that the employee has a life beyond work… that plans have been made in line with rostered days off.

Somehow, the goal posts get moved and those doing the moving, don’t seem to care. When these tours of duty were first arranged, they were sold to those doing the duty, as ten days away followed by five days rostered off.

By the time Alan had his first tour, someone had moved the goal posts and reduced the rostered time off on returning home.

And here we are on his third tour and they’ve been moved yet again. Five days off has been reduced to three. And not even a weekend – to allow those returning home any meaningful family time.

Alan and I were planning on going away in our motorhome on Thursday. Although we hadn’t decided on a destination – it was weather dependent – at the top of my list is Pauanui in the Coromandel.

I want to climb the Summit at Pauanui; and we both want to explore the new cycleway – the Tairua-Pauanui Trail. We were planning on doing both.

Now I have to rearrange everything I’d planned – at work and at home.

Of course I have no objection to doing it for My Hero – I love him with everything inside of me – it’s the reasons I’m required to do the rearranging – that’s what gets to me.

The upside in all of this is Alan successfully negotiated keeping his promised three days off (one was going to be lost) and we now have a weekend together. #smilingontheinside #reframe #silverlining #resilience

The Weather In My World Today

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Here’s to surviving a dance that no one saw or heard…

Here’s to rearranging plans…

Here’s to looking for silver linings with reframing!

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Here’s to SmilingOnTheInside!