Lake House Last Weekend

It has taken me the better part of this week just to stop and write this. I have felt a certain amount of anxiety about writing. I think I just want to put some time and energy in to getting it all down correctly and I was feeling tired before I even started it. So, I have broken down my weekend holiday into little pieces and I will just write one at a time.

First thing is that we rented a house by the water. It was newly refurbished, which was nice. But, the kids were there for all of 20 minutes and the house was a mess. That is just kids though. Unfortunately, about 45 minutes after we got there there was a huge rain storm for most of the afternoon. But, before it started raining, we went on a walk around the property. It was right on Lake Roititi and there was a dock and a nice bench out by the water. There was also a fire pot, but we did not use that. There was a lemon tree. I really want one now. The lake was teeming with wildlife. There were baby geese, geese, swans, and other birds. I saw my first Tui, which is a bird with two large white vocal sacks hanging from its throat. When it sings, the sacks move. It is quite unique. I also saw a Fantail, which use to follow me in the kiwi orchard last year. They would eat the bugs I disrupted. Lastly, I saw my favorite New Zealand bird- the Pukeko. One of the strangest birds I have ever seen. It is called the chicken of New Zealand. It is dark blue on top and bright blue on its breast. It has gangly bright red legs and a bright red beak. Two came out to the water the first night to eat. I was so excited to see them.

It was a beautiful house on a beautiful lake. But, beware of renting. The lady was a total flake. At first she acted like she owned the house, but we came to find out that she was just the property manager. She pointed out there was a washer in the unfinished workshop down stairs, but then was aghast that we used it. Then, she did not let us know that we could not use the linen there, so we used it and washed it and hung it to dry. But, she said that she would charge us a fee. The water stopped working for 4 hours and there was a mouse, but they never even took that into account. They gave back most of the deposit, but kept $20 per set of sheets. Ridiculous!! I guess just read all the fine print and talk to the person A LOT before you rent a house.

As we were leaving the house, the same crazy lady came over and took Jenny through a walk through. She criticized that the floor that was just mopped was not clean enough. She made Jenny clean out the crumbs in the bottom of the toaster and went crazy over the linens. We were so happy to leave.