Our second duck Josephine has been very patiently sitting on a nest of eggs for the past month, so it was uncharacteristic of her to be up and about yesterday…

I think she wanted to let us know of her latest arrivals, eight nine ten ducklings.

Meanwhile, our very clucky chicken is a proud foster mum to a young chick.

That brings our numbers up to two geese, seven chickens, and twenty ducks + a cat.

It’s been good so far, but we will cap our numbers at what we have, least it gets unmanageable.
That means collecting any more duck eggs, least they become ducklings…

The bench press is probably the best and most basic exercise to build your chest muscles up.

To build up muscle, you need to push the envelope and lift the biggest weights you can get away with, while still keeping good form.

The problem though, is that if you bite off more than you can chew, you could be stuck with a bloody big weight on your chest.. 

My state of mind and attitude play a big part on what I think I can lift, so the right frame of mind is important.

One solution, is to ask someone to ‘spot’ you, and they stand behind you ready to help. A psychological effect of this though, is that it’s now ‘easier’ to lift that heavy weight, partly because your not worried about ‘what if’.

It means you lift weights heavier than you normally would.

So I find it’s hard to max out on the bench press as a result, but then again, been a naturally cautious person, it’s sort of easier to push the worry of ‘getting stuck’ aside, know that I naturally err on the side of caution.

Lately, our house has gone errily quiet, and my wife has walking around like a lost person with no direction.

Our youngest daughter, you see, has gone on a Scout Jamboree (adventure camp) for a few weeks.
It seems there’s always something happening when our busy daughter is around, so now the atmosphere at home has gone from a never ending busy vibe to a library with no customers vibe.

It’s a bit of a precurser for how 2026 is going to play out for us, because, she is starting University in a far away town.

It looks like we are getting a taste of what it’s like to be empty nesters.

“The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The realist adjusts the sails” -William Arthur Ward

NZ’s still suffering from the covid years that they would rather now just forget, rather like someone having a hangover the next morning after that party, where they did things they really shouldn’t have…

The economy is plainly in recession, but whats notable is a distinct lack of enthusaim in general. It’s rather like everyone’s just over been been gaslit constantly with LGTB..whatever, climate change, covid, Ukraine/Russia, etc.

On a happier note, local district council elections were held last year, which resulted in a clean out of most of the  ‘big spender’ councillors.
(the last thing we need is rates increases when people are struggling already. )

A potential cloud on the horizon is a general election this year. As usual in NZ, it becomes a media event with lots of noise and gas lighting.
Front and center will be  NZ’s mainstream media which is very similar to the USA’s CNN. (or in other words, highly biased and tries to manufacture the news rather than just report it.)

These days, our friends and I see national and worldwide politics and events as distractions at best -we dont necessarily believe anymore what we cant see with our own eyes, and we have no real influence on worldwide events anyway.

Most of us are quietly working on resilence and self-sufficientcy, we certainly aren’t interested in any government entanglements -NZ’s heavy handed covid response has a loty to do with that.

On a happier note we now let our ducks and geese have the run of our property (free range). It took a bit of effort to get them used to each other, but now the ducks and geese generally mutually respect each other.