” Will Bourbon do?” ask Lois.
“Yep, that’s just fine. Thanks!”
Tuesday, Christmas Eve 2013. I hadn’t missed a Christmas ever, and this year not only was I away from home, I was in another country, a day ahead, and spending it with a larger family. Since Andrew and Lois had invited me, I had decided I would make some Sweet Potato Pies for the day, as Sweet Potato Pies are my specialty during the Holidays. I had gotten the potatoes the day before, with no help from late buses.
I got up early and took an 8:30 bus to Petone, to get to the Pak ‘n Save. My bus driver today, a nice old man wearing a Santa hat. The bus had a few decorations up as well. When I got on I realized I was the only one on the bus, and might be the only one all day. I had a nice little chat with the driver as we headed up to Petone. I always try to sit in the front, I find I can read the driver’s stop monitor from there and that way I can’t get off the bus on the wrong stop.
There wasn’t much in the way of fun or plans today. All I had to do was get to the store, buy some pans, and extra supplies for pie-making, plan for leaving, and pack. First stop: Pie shopping.
So, ya, the store was a bit on the crowded side. As I think I’ve mentioned before, the store is like a Costco – warehouse style and big and giant signs telling you what aisle has what. Well, those signs are usually helpful… usually I say. I wandered around, trying to find pie pans, till I finally saw the “kitchen supplies” on an aisle. I think it took about ten minutes to wander through this aisle of strange New Zealand products. I couldn’t actually find a decent pie pan, so I settled on some Aluminum ones, that were crazy thin and small. More like quiche size, oh well. Later, I’ll hear someone pronounce Aluminum – “Aloo-min-ium”. That one would take me a second to translate.
I needed a pie crust, or else I was going to have to make one. I didn’t really want to make one but as it was, I couldn’t find anything I needed. I didn’t want to spend money on flour, or borrow flour, since I was going to have to borrow bourbon and brown sugar later from Lois. I went to the cookie aisle. There was one more trick I had up my sleeve: crumb crust. However, I couldn’t for the LIFE of me find graham crackers. Seriously, there wasn’t one graham in that crackerific aisle. Finally I found some ginger cookies, didn’t seem like it’d be terrible – just wait, in about 5 hours I’ll regret purchasing the ginger cookies because I’ll have to hand crush them all with a tiny knife.
After some more running around, dashing through crowds like a pro, I made it to individual check-outs. When I say “dashing…like a pro”, I mean using the benefits of being short and quick to get through the large groups stopped in the middle of aisles and staring at their grocery lists. It definitely pays to be short some days. The individual check-out counters, don’t really have a line, so I got cut at least three times because people don’t seem to understand the term ‘lines’. I think it’s because they’ve probably never been to a place like Disneyland.
Now, I’ve learned by now to just press enter when it asks me for a pin after swiping my credit card, but for some dumb reason, they have to check my card and have me sign even at these counters. Apparently I’m going to steal the Aloominium pans, the nutmeg, the eggs, and the cocoa I just already paid for. The attendant comes up, hands me the receipt. I sign it, and head back out into the covered parking lot towards the bus stop.
After three bus stop checks in the rain, I finally found one that gets the 83 back to Eastbourne. Well, I had about a half hour until that came. So I sat on the bench, a bench I’ve sat at before and typed an entire post on waiting for a bus. The rain wasn’t too bad. I like rain and wished it had rained a bit more while I’d been here. Several people passed by, a few buses came and went. Then two girls, clearly students based on their uniformed dress, came and sat on the bench with me.
They were loud, and both had black hair, and the same rain jacket covering. They were huddled close, and spoke in another language. The one with glasses seemed younger than the other, and more hyper. I really wanted to smack them. I got up after awhile since I couldn’t take their mindless giggling anymore, and went over to check the LED bus schedule.
<em> Another twenty minutes? </em> Sigh.
Glasses girl came up and stood straight behind me after another ten minutes. Like if I had turned I’d have bonked her easily. Did she really have to stand that close??
“There is no ninety-one to Eastbourne, it’s 81.” She called over to her friend. She had a chinese-english accent. Very hard to understand, let me tell you. We’ll be coming back to that soon. It was painfully obvious they would be on my bus. I accepted this fact, hoping they’d sit in the back – far from me.
The bus arrived just in time – another minute and I might have exploded. The doors opened and it was the same driver I had on the way to Petone. Excellent!
“Well hello again!” He said. I smiled and said hi, thanking him for picking me up again.
Several people at the stop with me got on the bus. The 81 I had taken earlier was now an 83, and that meant it was a good half hour because we were going to go up through Queensgate and around to Eastbourne instead of straight there. The entire time I heard the girls on the bus chatting away in the back like little hens. I have found I don’t like it when people talk on the bus. I don’t need nor desire to hear their conversations.
Up and around we went, more people getting off at Queensgate, and a couple getting on.
<em>More last minute shopping at the mall there, I guess. </em>
Eventually, we made it to the bays. There were about two or three before my stop, and the girls were still on the bus. Yap, yap yap. I pressed the button for my stop, and prepared to get off.
I picked up my bags, and hurried off, waving Merry Christmas and bye to the nice driver. I was about half way up the first hill, and I could still hear the bus at the stop. I didn’t know why he was still there, I was the only one who had gotten off…wasn’t I?
No. I was NOT, the only one who had gotten off. You see, the girls had decided to FOLLOW me off the bus. They may have asked him to wait but, the driver did not because I saw him drive away several minutes later while I was getting a bible lecture. Oh yes… we have come to that.
So, I’m not a religious person. Never have been, never will be, but I respect others who are unless they do horrifying things “in the name of” or “meaning of”. The uniforms the girls were wearing were starting to make more sense now.
“Excuse me!” I hear a very annoying and familiar voice behind me. I don’t want to turn around. I try not to, but there was no one else around and I’m really not a rude person, so it was obvious they were trying to flag me down.
“Uh, yes?” I ask, quite confused.
“Do you have moment to listen to my school presentation?” Glasses girl asked me.
“I really don’t, I have groceries here -”
“Please, won’t take long.” She interrupted. Her friend was nodding behind her, but staying quiet.
“Uhm, well, as long as it’s quick…” It wasn’t, or rather, didn’t FEEL quick. I thought it would never end.
She did a magician–type trick and pulled out a bible almost immediately. She went straight into this “presentation” and began flipping pages and reading passages and pointing to things she’d highlighted in the book. Raindrops kept falling on the book from the trees above. She kept trying to shield me from the rain, and I just kept telling her I was fine.
The hills up to my rental basement were mostly covered with trees on each side, until you get to the middle hill and then it’s not covered. Where we were was covered by trees, so you could hear birds and the branches moving in the mild wind that we were having that day.
For the next, I don’ t know how long, I stood there, in the rain, listening, trying to figure out what she was saying. She spoke quickly and not very clearly. She asked me things about what religion I was, and just so you know, when you tell a bible student that you’re Atheist, they suddenly change their stance and look at you like you’re all wrong.
<em> Why didn’t I wear my skull sweater this morning…</em> I wished.
I just remember something about a Mother, and a Father, and following the Mother over the Father, and don’t I want to go to a something-nice-place, …what??
Eventually we were done, and she asked if I understood what she said and how she did. I said she did well, and wished her luck. She asked if I wanted to go.. someplace. It had to do with Heaven, maybe? I said, nah, I was good with the one life I had on earth and wasn’t interested in Eternal life.
“Would you be willing to meet with us again?” She asked.
<em> She’s kidding right…</em>
“Oh, uh, no, no. I’m only here for maybe one more day, then I go back home.”
“Where you from?”
“United States.”
“Ohhhh. I see, okay.” She replied slowly, as if everything made sense to her now. She gave me another look, and looked at her friend too.
<em> What kind of reaction was THAT? </em> Apparently the US doesn’t have a good reputation with bible students from New Zealand…well at least these ones.
Managing to end the conversation, I waved and wished her luck and hurried up the hill. They stood there a bit chatting. I’m not sure what they were going to do next, or where their destination had originally been, but I KNOW it was not where I was going.
The rest of the day was full of pie making. Just FYI, if you’re going to cook indoors, during the rain, with high temperatures, be sure to open a window so there’s no running condensation down walls, windows, and the ceiling for the next, oh, six hours while you cook. Just a small tip in case you were wondering. There’s this whole thing about hot & cold in science that explains all that.
I went up mid-pies, as a break from very frustrating cookie crushing of seriously hard ginger cookies, to borrow the bourbon and brown sugar I needed. I met the youngest son, Doug, and his partner, Christina. They were industrial designers, but not allowed to talk about their work. Fancy.
“Excellent, well I’ll bring these back. I know it looks like I’m going to go get drunk on a sugar rush right now, but I promise I’m not..” I said carrying the container of sugar and the rather large bottle of Jim Beam’s Bourbon Whiskey downstairs.
I was on my way finish up the three quiche-sized Sweet Potato Pies, with a make-shift buttery-ginger crust that took longer to make than the actual pies.