Don't tempt fate I always say. How true!
Back in the day, what could go wrong was a litmus test to the cosmos, just to even the odds. Rarely did anything go wrong. But I now get the feeling all that good luck has to be offset with bad and boy, are we paying for it now!
Where to start? From the back-to-back kidney operations. Which revealed the incredible shortfall on what we thought was the perfect medical plan. Yikes. R10 000 later and all we have to show are a few chunks of Ca/Mg crystals in a jar and I have a few more lines around my eyeballs. A bill for R8550 still pending. If you hear yelling in the not-too-distant future, it's me, reacting to the outcome!
The washer has just packed up. The electrical one, not the human one. But it's touch-and-go for both models at present. And his majesty delighted mineself with the news this pm that the former is now officially 7 years old and thus there are no longer replacement parts available. I did take a moment to point out that the latter is pushing 33 and any more bad news may wear some of her parts out too! So to the kindness of family and washing the delicates by hand. I lament, no wonder I don't get manicures. Total waste on a slave such as I.
I also recently lost some weight. About .5 carats to be exact. Yes, bye-bye 300yr old heirloom diamond, one of seven! Oh the shame. The Welsh arm of the family are doing proverbial somersaults in their caskets. I cried all day, about the diamond not about the Welsh!I love my wedding ring. It's the only item of real, hefty material worth I own. I scoured this carpeted purgatory we call home on my wee knees with an old hose over the hoover nozzle but to no avail. I did however make some interesting finds on my hunt. Am going to have to have some stern words with the "help". And the inhabitants for that matter!
I blizted the oven with cleaner this am before my departure from the abode and upon my return later (her madamness was slumbering) I decided to give it the "wipe-down". Whilst doing this I accidentally decapitated the middle finger on my right hand on the roasting-tray-catch-all doohickey that goes on the bottom of the oven. It bled quite badly and I must admit in light of the irritating events of the last few weeks I was tempted to squeeze it very hard and "bleed out" right there at the kitchen sink. But then my IQ kicked in and after some quick calculations I realised it was going to take forever for me to die and probably make a gia-normous mess that I was just going to have to clean up later and I would have to leave a suicide note and the pen and paper were miles away and oh, screw it, it was just too much PT!
There are a few more woes to expose to cyberspace but I'm growing rather bored of waffling on about them all endlessly. I am however keeping a physical list in my day planner. Who knows, I could give it a read in a few years time and laugh at my stupidity.
For now I try to surround myself with pitiful people, but I can't find any. I take comfort in the fact that I have an awesome support system. Those in my inner sanctum meet my needs on all levels. From fitness, to food, to folly, to friendship. And some special ones meet all those needs at the same time.
Today did however did deliver a gem of another kind in the eternally honest words of the sproglet who told me a I looked like a gorgeous queen fairy princess. I didn't have the heart to enlighten her that queens are not what they used to be! Heaven knows that chat is coming but may I be granted a few years. I need to get my story straight.
For now I am off to hunt for the lid of my water-bottle sans bath time and the madness that effects a hostile take-over of my boudoir each evening.
I would just like to add in closing, that you cannot have OCD and a toddler simultaneously and deign to remain sane.
Nighty night!
13 November 2012
27 June 2012
A man that rocks
The king is a rocker. Who knew?
When I fantasized about my dream guy, as a young girl, I imagined a guy that rocks. Be careful what you wish for. God really does have a sense of humour. You see, in my minds' eye I saw a musical bohemian who played an instrument and more than likely had a tattoo. I never foresaw this.
His majesty has been battling these jolly kidney stones for almost 10 years.. After we married, he went for a medical to take out health insurance and it threw up an abnormality. So since June 2002 we have been to and from winkie noodle doctors, hospitals, specialists, dieticians and we even tried the homeopath. I was almost really close to getting his majesty to commit to Pilates! he claims he came to his senses just in time.
We have noticed a 2 year cycle. It goes like this
He goes green around the gills one day and gets a pain in his back
He goes to the winkie noodle man
He is in hospital within 24 hours and has some sort of high falutin treatment
Passes gemstones for a few weeks
Goes for a post op scan and gets the "all clear"
We live happily until one day about 2 years on he goes green around the gills and we start again.
They say passing stones is akin to childbirth. Well, I had a baby and I'v never had stones. I cannot compare but just the look on his majestys' face when the stones are passing from his kidney to his bladder says it all. I often wonder the damage it's causing to his "wiring". His "plumbing". He says he's fine but I'm not so sure. Yesterday he started giving birth again and by 8pm we were the round parents of a multiple brood. I won't bother naming this lot. They will go into a speciman jar labelled "Stones - 2012 edition" and will be stored with the predecessors. Bet they all have a lot to talk about.
To date he has passed almost 100g of stones. I know, I weighed them on the kitchen scale last night. Obviously they have been cleaned.
Oh if only they were diamonds, all our troubles would be over and we could finally indulge in that overseas holiday we've been yearning for.
So this latest noodle-olo-gist has issued some food bans, namely cocoa. His majesty is a chocoholic. He is very sad about this news. I am also shattered as my baking revolved around chocolate for the most part. I am so desperate some days I consider snorting cocoa powder just for a "hit". His majesty went out to a study group the other day and I stayed home. I made a batch of chocolate icing and sat in front of the telly scooping it up with boudoir biscuits! Shame on me!
Amongst others is brocolli and carbonated drinks. No biggie. We're too poor to order anything that requires a mixer. So we exist off caffiene and H2O.
And the kidneys will possibly have a reprieve until 2014. But there's no guarantees.
About that Pilates!?!?!?
When I fantasized about my dream guy, as a young girl, I imagined a guy that rocks. Be careful what you wish for. God really does have a sense of humour. You see, in my minds' eye I saw a musical bohemian who played an instrument and more than likely had a tattoo. I never foresaw this.
His majesty has been battling these jolly kidney stones for almost 10 years.. After we married, he went for a medical to take out health insurance and it threw up an abnormality. So since June 2002 we have been to and from winkie noodle doctors, hospitals, specialists, dieticians and we even tried the homeopath. I was almost really close to getting his majesty to commit to Pilates! he claims he came to his senses just in time.
We have noticed a 2 year cycle. It goes like this
He goes green around the gills one day and gets a pain in his back
He goes to the winkie noodle man
He is in hospital within 24 hours and has some sort of high falutin treatment
Passes gemstones for a few weeks
Goes for a post op scan and gets the "all clear"
We live happily until one day about 2 years on he goes green around the gills and we start again.
They say passing stones is akin to childbirth. Well, I had a baby and I'v never had stones. I cannot compare but just the look on his majestys' face when the stones are passing from his kidney to his bladder says it all. I often wonder the damage it's causing to his "wiring". His "plumbing". He says he's fine but I'm not so sure. Yesterday he started giving birth again and by 8pm we were the round parents of a multiple brood. I won't bother naming this lot. They will go into a speciman jar labelled "Stones - 2012 edition" and will be stored with the predecessors. Bet they all have a lot to talk about.
To date he has passed almost 100g of stones. I know, I weighed them on the kitchen scale last night. Obviously they have been cleaned.
Oh if only they were diamonds, all our troubles would be over and we could finally indulge in that overseas holiday we've been yearning for.
So this latest noodle-olo-gist has issued some food bans, namely cocoa. His majesty is a chocoholic. He is very sad about this news. I am also shattered as my baking revolved around chocolate for the most part. I am so desperate some days I consider snorting cocoa powder just for a "hit". His majesty went out to a study group the other day and I stayed home. I made a batch of chocolate icing and sat in front of the telly scooping it up with boudoir biscuits! Shame on me!
Amongst others is brocolli and carbonated drinks. No biggie. We're too poor to order anything that requires a mixer. So we exist off caffiene and H2O.
And the kidneys will possibly have a reprieve until 2014. But there's no guarantees.
26 June 2012
How to get coated
Her majesty has just had another growth spurt. The gazzillion-th this year alone. If it's not the monthly purchase of shoes it's the sudden shrinking of the leggings I bought 3 months ago. I have been able to handle, whilst hemlines may have got shorter over summer, unless the armholes or crotch are death-defyingly tight I have chosen to ignore this.
We were blessed last winter when Beloved Cousin Rachel passed along some second hand windbreakers/windcheaters/pufferjackets or whatever you want to call them. But within the last month these have navigated up past madam's waistband are are pretty much useless in cold weather. So I have been prowling the shops for a few weeks now looking out for something in my realm of acceptable. I don't bow to fashion in any way myself and also since having a sprog I err on the side of practicality versus cuteness. Until she's old enough to buy her own stuff this is what she's getting.
So this a.m. I drag ourselves to XYZ store to look for a new coat. There they have it. Pink. Melton. Long-ish. In madam's size. It's a third of the price of the more labell-y type stores and a pittance in comparison to the kiddie boutiques (yes, they do exist!).
I would like to add that we live in Cape Town. Winters here have been known to last 7months. They are cold. Wet. Mouldy. Long. People start to smell like mushrooms. And yet, I wander into another clothes store this week and all the winter woolies have been usurped by string tops and hot-pants!?!?!? Erm, did I miss something. The last thing in my mind is choosing some new shorts when it's raining buckets outside and the mercury is barely managing to claw past 10C.
Anyhoo, XYZ store have marked most of their kiddies clothes down to half.....fine by me. R40 for a pufferjacket now. It's going to be trashed before October anyway so I'm not going to fall to pieces if it does.
What a mish just getting the sproglet to stand still and try anything on. Our sproglet is an odd shape right now. She is long and leggy, I'd like to say like her Mama, and her feet are rapidly becoming enormous, hmmmm, also like her Mama's?!? And she's only 2. So I am insistant that we try everything on before we buy. Of late the mass-produced clothing industry deems you cannot be tall and skinny at the same time. So we have ended up with everything being 4-5yrs. Shocker!
Madam is also going through a phase of defiance. I was not prepared for it to start so early! "I don't like it!" seems to punctuate her dialogues. From "I don't like jelly (her fave!) " to "I don;t like my feet, take them off!". Whatever. So I left XYZ store today with 1 coat and 2 windbreakers, none of which her majesty "likes". I hope she wakes up in a more agreeable mood on the morrow.
She is making me mental. Thankfully the welfare weren't at XYZ store as I may have been arrested.
We were blessed last winter when Beloved Cousin Rachel passed along some second hand windbreakers/windcheaters/pufferjackets or whatever you want to call them. But within the last month these have navigated up past madam's waistband are are pretty much useless in cold weather. So I have been prowling the shops for a few weeks now looking out for something in my realm of acceptable. I don't bow to fashion in any way myself and also since having a sprog I err on the side of practicality versus cuteness. Until she's old enough to buy her own stuff this is what she's getting.
So this a.m. I drag ourselves to XYZ store to look for a new coat. There they have it. Pink. Melton. Long-ish. In madam's size. It's a third of the price of the more labell-y type stores and a pittance in comparison to the kiddie boutiques (yes, they do exist!).
I would like to add that we live in Cape Town. Winters here have been known to last 7months. They are cold. Wet. Mouldy. Long. People start to smell like mushrooms. And yet, I wander into another clothes store this week and all the winter woolies have been usurped by string tops and hot-pants!?!?!? Erm, did I miss something. The last thing in my mind is choosing some new shorts when it's raining buckets outside and the mercury is barely managing to claw past 10C.
Anyhoo, XYZ store have marked most of their kiddies clothes down to half.....fine by me. R40 for a pufferjacket now. It's going to be trashed before October anyway so I'm not going to fall to pieces if it does.
What a mish just getting the sproglet to stand still and try anything on. Our sproglet is an odd shape right now. She is long and leggy, I'd like to say like her Mama, and her feet are rapidly becoming enormous, hmmmm, also like her Mama's?!? And she's only 2. So I am insistant that we try everything on before we buy. Of late the mass-produced clothing industry deems you cannot be tall and skinny at the same time. So we have ended up with everything being 4-5yrs. Shocker!
Madam is also going through a phase of defiance. I was not prepared for it to start so early! "I don't like it!" seems to punctuate her dialogues. From "I don't like jelly (her fave!) " to "I don;t like my feet, take them off!". Whatever. So I left XYZ store today with 1 coat and 2 windbreakers, none of which her majesty "likes". I hope she wakes up in a more agreeable mood on the morrow.
She is making me mental. Thankfully the welfare weren't at XYZ store as I may have been arrested.
15 May 2012
Brain (click-shuffle)
Time. I have none (I have loads for pasta). It's not for the lack of planning. I am an OCD sufferer. Every aspect of my life is planned and plotted, albeit in my mind. Everything in my head is broken down into little pixel-sized nuggets that I move around my brain as things happen. Wake up (click-shuffle), make breakfast (click-shuffle), get everyone dressed (clikc-shuffle), and so on and so on, all day long.
This system works very well for me, however since his majesty is not clairvoyant and I don't verbalise my mental algorithms, there is often some tension. Since I'm the one with the grand fantastic plan in my head I always know what's going on. It's his majesty who quite literally misses the memo.
All this is just riff-raff as judging by the date, my darling little blog, I have neglected you. Sorry. I have been making mental posts in the traffic each day. I just haven't had a nano-second to put carpels to keyboard. I have however eaten my way through at least 8 good books since my last post, so I'v not exactly been picking my navel.
I hereby solemnly swear to be a good girl and try to write to you daily. Or maybe three times a week. Or let's just see how it goes.
For the love of gooseberries, I'm the mother of a toddler, just summoning a pulse most days consumes too much time.
But dear blog, I will be better.
Starting tomorrow .....
Toodles
This system works very well for me, however since his majesty is not clairvoyant and I don't verbalise my mental algorithms, there is often some tension. Since I'm the one with the grand fantastic plan in my head I always know what's going on. It's his majesty who quite literally misses the memo.
All this is just riff-raff as judging by the date, my darling little blog, I have neglected you. Sorry. I have been making mental posts in the traffic each day. I just haven't had a nano-second to put carpels to keyboard. I have however eaten my way through at least 8 good books since my last post, so I'v not exactly been picking my navel.
I hereby solemnly swear to be a good girl and try to write to you daily. Or maybe three times a week. Or let's just see how it goes.
For the love of gooseberries, I'm the mother of a toddler, just summoning a pulse most days consumes too much time.
But dear blog, I will be better.
Starting tomorrow .....
Toodles
25 March 2012
Books for worms
I am a word-slut. I covet, covet with covety covetness words, books, leather (down boy!), libraries. I am actually so bad that I asked for a dictionary for my 21st birthday! Yes, I am not a well puppy most of the time and the rest of the time I'm just plain mental.
I am currently reading my 30th book of 2012. I know this for fact, I am keeping a list just to be sure. Now, you may ponder how I manage seeing as I am a professional mother as well as being chief bean-counter in our business. But...I have a secret. I speed read. It's fabulous. I can remember vividly our Std.6 English teacher herding us in to the library projection room and taking us thru entire passages of text at increasing speeds and teaching us to focus our minds on filtering out the gobble-die-gook and gleaning an overview of the story in very little time. This is an amazing party trick if you can master it. It blew the lid of my library subscription. Where I was allowed to loan 7 books for 2 weeks, I found myself chomping at the bit after only 5 days!
And I am not at all label conscious. I will read anything once. And I have run my retinas over some humdingers! There are only so many heaving bosoms and throbbing members a girl can stomach!
All this reading has also stood me in very good stead. Whilst I cannot brag of a university degree, I know pretty much a little something about everything. Sure I am not going to revolutionise cancer research but I've read enough about to know it's a tough nut to crack! I can hold my own in conversations about pretty my anything, shockingly except rugby, considering I grew up in the Free State (but it was Orange back then when colour mattered as much as it didn't). Yes, the Sharks are bitterly disappointed.
And joy of all joys I have now been blessed with an amazing young somebody who obviously reads as much as I do. Oh my word, it's like having conversations with myself, insert John Malkovich here. How awesome to drop the label of a really obscure work and her eyes light up and she says yes, she's read it too! My heart is happy.
That being said let me add some celebrity glitter and honorary mention. My darling heart friend, Greta. Who so casually handed me her copy of The World According To Garp 12yrs ago and started my love affair with John Irving, amongst. Together we read something stupid like 120 (?) books that year, just because we could! We would sit for hours reading the encyclopedia to see who know more than the other and it was always even Stevens!
So now the moon is tipping and my latest page-turner beckons.
Bon nuit bibliophiles
I am currently reading my 30th book of 2012. I know this for fact, I am keeping a list just to be sure. Now, you may ponder how I manage seeing as I am a professional mother as well as being chief bean-counter in our business. But...I have a secret. I speed read. It's fabulous. I can remember vividly our Std.6 English teacher herding us in to the library projection room and taking us thru entire passages of text at increasing speeds and teaching us to focus our minds on filtering out the gobble-die-gook and gleaning an overview of the story in very little time. This is an amazing party trick if you can master it. It blew the lid of my library subscription. Where I was allowed to loan 7 books for 2 weeks, I found myself chomping at the bit after only 5 days!
And I am not at all label conscious. I will read anything once. And I have run my retinas over some humdingers! There are only so many heaving bosoms and throbbing members a girl can stomach!
All this reading has also stood me in very good stead. Whilst I cannot brag of a university degree, I know pretty much a little something about everything. Sure I am not going to revolutionise cancer research but I've read enough about to know it's a tough nut to crack! I can hold my own in conversations about pretty my anything, shockingly except rugby, considering I grew up in the Free State (but it was Orange back then when colour mattered as much as it didn't). Yes, the Sharks are bitterly disappointed.
And joy of all joys I have now been blessed with an amazing young somebody who obviously reads as much as I do. Oh my word, it's like having conversations with myself, insert John Malkovich here. How awesome to drop the label of a really obscure work and her eyes light up and she says yes, she's read it too! My heart is happy.
That being said let me add some celebrity glitter and honorary mention. My darling heart friend, Greta. Who so casually handed me her copy of The World According To Garp 12yrs ago and started my love affair with John Irving, amongst. Together we read something stupid like 120 (?) books that year, just because we could! We would sit for hours reading the encyclopedia to see who know more than the other and it was always even Stevens!
So now the moon is tipping and my latest page-turner beckons.
Bon nuit bibliophiles
5 March 2012
Can I get an Appleberry and two Apads to go please?
I suffer from terrible gadget envy. No sooner than I've signed away my life for a new doohickey with silver flaps on, then the manufacturer releases their latest and greatest doohickeys with even shinier bells and whistles, leaving me with a terrible case of buyers remorse.
I must say my recent acquisition is my nokiaberry, super ceding my limping LG. I was ashamed of it I refused to take it out in public. I was even loathe to answer phone calls in the presence of another human being and heaven help me, I never, ever, under any circumstances left it on the table at the coffee shop! I was scared the greenery on the table might just decay by being in it's orbit and I might be asked to leave.
So Papa Bear (my dad) was inevitably going to acquire the Une Pomme Du Jour. It was only a matter of him deciding how many giga-gerbils he was going to invest in. And I jokingly add, if it came in a shade to match the paint colour of his car or his shoelaces. So he got a PommePad - in a lovely shade of silver to match his temples. But on a recent visit he was trotting around the place snapping pics of grandkiddies and so on and blah blah blah. But Mama Bear not to be outdone whips out her PommePad! And we're all like "Oi, what's going on here?". Insert head snap.
Allow me to put you in the picture. My mother is brilliant. She can get blood stains out of a cashmere cardie without so much as a furrow in her brow and whip up an entire 3 course meal with nothing but a few funny onions and a can of lentils. But electrified (as she calls them) objects are not her strong point. She only learnt to send an sms about 2 years ago, the earth paused on it's axis that day, I joke ye not! And she still keeps her phone switched off unless she has to make a call, whereby all the outstanding messages are delivered, her phones starts beeping like a mad thing and she promptly switches it off again out of pure fright! So you see why we were all so shocked.
Papa Bear also recently got one of those vowel phones. It starts with an ae(i)ou.......you know the one of which I speak? So now all his gizmo's can synchronise and he can now be tracked down anywhere on the planet to within a wombats armpit hair of the GPS co-ords. Yes, because he lives in fear of being lost. Well, I gather he must do because he's owned a GPS for as long as they've made them and he has a telescope bigger than his carboot just in case he's ever tricky to find. In fact you can now officially track him on other planets! If you ever wanted to of course. I think Papa Bear may be preparing for the Apocalypse but if that happens then we're all going to be vapourised anyway and nothing but the gadgets will remain I know this for fact. I've seen Wall-e! Disney can't be wrong!
To add insult to injury Mama Bear also had the latest up to date, fresh off the assembly line cellphone. The perks of Papa Bear getting an upgrade. How humbling to find out that your parents chat via Whatsapp and you can't be bothered to send an sms any longer cos your phone seldom has a pulse! Who are these people?
I too now have whatsapp and chat with both Mama and Papa bear on a regular basis. Mama Bear and I spell like dyslexic children (sodding teeny weeny QWERTY keypad thingy) whilst Papa Bear (being an Aquarius) spells like the Longman. But then again we all know he's hooked it up to his PommePad via blueteeth and the giga-gerbils are doing the typing anyway. Cheat!
Must also add that I noticed that everyone at church is no longer taking a bible. It seems the humble Word has been usurped by the PommePad. Must've seen about 10 people doing this?!?!? Is it going to become the norm? Hey, I don't have to explain myself to the Maker one day.
Moving on. Traded in my beloved green machine........Oh. My favourite colour is green. In 2008 I set about colour-matching all my gizmos. Phone, calculators, laptop, knickers, I tried for a green car but his majesty was thankful that our flavour of vehicle wasn't being made in green that year. Alas the blessed green machine took a tumble off the desk last year when in a moment I lost focus and was beguiled by a toddler. The green machine's brain was salvageable (now in a pretty black case that looks a little like the paint colour on my dream car, the Porsche 911 Carrera) but the heartbeat flat lined and resuscitation was going to be very expensive. So I wrapped her in her case and left her alone for a few months. I felt such guilt at handing her over at the pc shop. But the green machine is destined to become green waste and the salesman assured me that she was going to a better place. And now I have a new green machine that isn't green. Does the same job but I am taking longer to fall in love with this model. I do like the numeric keypad. Also helps that I no longer have to lug around my keyboard like a real spas. I hate the carpel exercises when you have to use the numbers on laptops. It always leaves me with a fit of Tourettes syndrome. Actually everything leaves me with a fit of Tourettes of late.
So I come to you tonight compliments of the A-Dell whilst my Nokiaberry snuggles next to my teacup making me feel human again. Also got a wireless printer. Where has that doohickey been all my life?
Now my giga-gerbils need a rest and I have a real book to nuzzle so Bon Nui.
I must say my recent acquisition is my nokiaberry, super ceding my limping LG. I was ashamed of it I refused to take it out in public. I was even loathe to answer phone calls in the presence of another human being and heaven help me, I never, ever, under any circumstances left it on the table at the coffee shop! I was scared the greenery on the table might just decay by being in it's orbit and I might be asked to leave.
So Papa Bear (my dad) was inevitably going to acquire the Une Pomme Du Jour. It was only a matter of him deciding how many giga-gerbils he was going to invest in. And I jokingly add, if it came in a shade to match the paint colour of his car or his shoelaces. So he got a PommePad - in a lovely shade of silver to match his temples. But on a recent visit he was trotting around the place snapping pics of grandkiddies and so on and blah blah blah. But Mama Bear not to be outdone whips out her PommePad! And we're all like "Oi, what's going on here?". Insert head snap.
Allow me to put you in the picture. My mother is brilliant. She can get blood stains out of a cashmere cardie without so much as a furrow in her brow and whip up an entire 3 course meal with nothing but a few funny onions and a can of lentils. But electrified (as she calls them) objects are not her strong point. She only learnt to send an sms about 2 years ago, the earth paused on it's axis that day, I joke ye not! And she still keeps her phone switched off unless she has to make a call, whereby all the outstanding messages are delivered, her phones starts beeping like a mad thing and she promptly switches it off again out of pure fright! So you see why we were all so shocked.
Papa Bear also recently got one of those vowel phones. It starts with an ae(i)ou.......you know the one of which I speak? So now all his gizmo's can synchronise and he can now be tracked down anywhere on the planet to within a wombats armpit hair of the GPS co-ords. Yes, because he lives in fear of being lost. Well, I gather he must do because he's owned a GPS for as long as they've made them and he has a telescope bigger than his carboot just in case he's ever tricky to find. In fact you can now officially track him on other planets! If you ever wanted to of course. I think Papa Bear may be preparing for the Apocalypse but if that happens then we're all going to be vapourised anyway and nothing but the gadgets will remain I know this for fact. I've seen Wall-e! Disney can't be wrong!
To add insult to injury Mama Bear also had the latest up to date, fresh off the assembly line cellphone. The perks of Papa Bear getting an upgrade. How humbling to find out that your parents chat via Whatsapp and you can't be bothered to send an sms any longer cos your phone seldom has a pulse! Who are these people?
I too now have whatsapp and chat with both Mama and Papa bear on a regular basis. Mama Bear and I spell like dyslexic children (sodding teeny weeny QWERTY keypad thingy) whilst Papa Bear (being an Aquarius) spells like the Longman. But then again we all know he's hooked it up to his PommePad via blueteeth and the giga-gerbils are doing the typing anyway. Cheat!
Must also add that I noticed that everyone at church is no longer taking a bible. It seems the humble Word has been usurped by the PommePad. Must've seen about 10 people doing this?!?!? Is it going to become the norm? Hey, I don't have to explain myself to the Maker one day.
Moving on. Traded in my beloved green machine........Oh. My favourite colour is green. In 2008 I set about colour-matching all my gizmos. Phone, calculators, laptop, knickers, I tried for a green car but his majesty was thankful that our flavour of vehicle wasn't being made in green that year. Alas the blessed green machine took a tumble off the desk last year when in a moment I lost focus and was beguiled by a toddler. The green machine's brain was salvageable (now in a pretty black case that looks a little like the paint colour on my dream car, the Porsche 911 Carrera) but the heartbeat flat lined and resuscitation was going to be very expensive. So I wrapped her in her case and left her alone for a few months. I felt such guilt at handing her over at the pc shop. But the green machine is destined to become green waste and the salesman assured me that she was going to a better place. And now I have a new green machine that isn't green. Does the same job but I am taking longer to fall in love with this model. I do like the numeric keypad. Also helps that I no longer have to lug around my keyboard like a real spas. I hate the carpel exercises when you have to use the numbers on laptops. It always leaves me with a fit of Tourettes syndrome. Actually everything leaves me with a fit of Tourettes of late.
So I come to you tonight compliments of the A-Dell whilst my Nokiaberry snuggles next to my teacup making me feel human again. Also got a wireless printer. Where has that doohickey been all my life?
Now my giga-gerbils need a rest and I have a real book to nuzzle so Bon Nui.
20 February 2012
A particular kind of heaviness
I think its terribly unfair. His majesty's body remains the same whilst mine has been driven to the brink ,both large and small. One of my argements with life (and there are many!) is that boy's just seem to have got the better deal. Let me list some motivating factors - no make-up, hair straighteners, tampons, bra's, hair-removal, plucking, bleaching, tweezing, fluffing etcerta etectera etcetera. Sure we get to bring forth life but the preceding list does sometimes make me reconsider.
I put on 30 kgs during my pregnancy. Eeeeeeeek! I am not proud of this but my body did loads of funny things I had no control over during this time so I am citing temporary mental-dissassocaition on this subject. Sure the cheese-covered first tri-mester wasn't exactly helpful but by the time I came to my senses the damage had already been done. Irreverisbly, I'm afraid. I have since learnt that stretchmarks are for life! Did anyone else know this and if so why didn't anyone bother to tell me!?!?!
But after the investment of the Mac-Daddy of all treadmills during my gestation I was able to keep the weight gain to within a fair range and was also able to waddle it all off after I squeezed out my sproglet! It took my a year but I lost the 30kgs and then some. Thankfully because I wanted to just die being unable to fit into my beautiful pre-preggers kit!
Then what with our move last year and the stress and panic attached thereto, I lost more weight. I am acutally smaller than I was before but what with the great "body-shift" that happend during incubation things are far less perky. I am now...............gulp...........drawn to the shapewear department in Woolworths. Before I would crave and covet something killer to wear in the bedroom. Now all I want to do is find something that will masqurade a muffin-top and hoist my boobs back to where they once happily resided. I would just love for my aunty in Canada to send me a Spanx for my birthday. I won't be offended. I promise.
I now find myself insisting on being on my back during conjugal grapplings. Not because I am a lazy shagger but simply becuase I can then suck in my tummy and my boobs will fall back and lie in vaguely their old position. I imagine I look like my former, firmer self. But I probably just look silly. I blame the media. It seems that Adele is the only accpetable earthling with an inch to pinch at the moment. The rest of us are relegated to looking like a badly packaged pork bangar.
And then yesterday I slid into and old pair of shorts and felt that familiar tightness around my derriere. I can't blame it on hormones as my week of ovarian servitude is over so I have to accept that I am just putting on the pounds again. You can't get skinny just reading the Men's Health Muscle Bible, you have to actually get off your bum and burn off some kilojoules!
Now where is that short-cut button again?
I put on 30 kgs during my pregnancy. Eeeeeeeek! I am not proud of this but my body did loads of funny things I had no control over during this time so I am citing temporary mental-dissassocaition on this subject. Sure the cheese-covered first tri-mester wasn't exactly helpful but by the time I came to my senses the damage had already been done. Irreverisbly, I'm afraid. I have since learnt that stretchmarks are for life! Did anyone else know this and if so why didn't anyone bother to tell me!?!?!
But after the investment of the Mac-Daddy of all treadmills during my gestation I was able to keep the weight gain to within a fair range and was also able to waddle it all off after I squeezed out my sproglet! It took my a year but I lost the 30kgs and then some. Thankfully because I wanted to just die being unable to fit into my beautiful pre-preggers kit!
Then what with our move last year and the stress and panic attached thereto, I lost more weight. I am acutally smaller than I was before but what with the great "body-shift" that happend during incubation things are far less perky. I am now...............gulp...........drawn to the shapewear department in Woolworths. Before I would crave and covet something killer to wear in the bedroom. Now all I want to do is find something that will masqurade a muffin-top and hoist my boobs back to where they once happily resided. I would just love for my aunty in Canada to send me a Spanx for my birthday. I won't be offended. I promise.
I now find myself insisting on being on my back during conjugal grapplings. Not because I am a lazy shagger but simply becuase I can then suck in my tummy and my boobs will fall back and lie in vaguely their old position. I imagine I look like my former, firmer self. But I probably just look silly. I blame the media. It seems that Adele is the only accpetable earthling with an inch to pinch at the moment. The rest of us are relegated to looking like a badly packaged pork bangar.
And then yesterday I slid into and old pair of shorts and felt that familiar tightness around my derriere. I can't blame it on hormones as my week of ovarian servitude is over so I have to accept that I am just putting on the pounds again. You can't get skinny just reading the Men's Health Muscle Bible, you have to actually get off your bum and burn off some kilojoules!
Now where is that short-cut button again?
24 January 2012
School day blues
The little madam started playschool last week. A phasing-in process has begun and since then I've been nothing short of frantic. Heaven knows if I thought I had no time to myself before then this has got to be a new type of mental.
I now have a new-found respect for school-moms. How do they do it? Running up to school. Drop off. Back home. Patter around - me doing some housework, the privileged masses probably doing coffees at the local barrissta. Fetch from school. Do lunch. Nap time for midgets more housework for mama's then its supper, walkies for everyone and bed. No time for a manicure, not even a nanosecond for the now well-coveted solitary wee!
I go on like a looney and I've got only got a "wee-me" in playschool. Prep, Primary and High School still loom. Oh, God give me the energy. I have no books to cover.No uniforms to procure in multiples. No sports meetings to suffer under intense heat and the smell of cream sodas and sweat. I have no recitals to endure by pain of auditory failure. None of the above. And I'm already flagging. It's only week 2 for heaven's sake.
To all the mama's past, present and future - I salute thee. Kids, I am beginning to notice, are hard work the older they get. But yet you just slot in and get it done.
I am nurturing what is promising to be the mother of all colds. In summer no less! Not only am I drained most days but this bug seems to have sucked the few kilojoules I have left right out from under my left bum cheek. Let's hope it comes back for the other butt cheek before the end of the week. I have a pool party to attend and don't want to be left with a limp.
Til the morrow......
Toodles
PS. I would like to state for the record that I love my mother very, very, very, very much! She was strict, hard and brutal. She smacked my bum. She made me eat my peas (argh!). But she also wiped my tears, coddled me when I was ill and taught me the value of hard work and sunlight soap.
PPS. Was that kiss-arse enough for you, Mummy???
17 January 2012
Four-letter words that start with an F
Today I have lost what feels like the thousandth dummy (pacifier) and thrown my millionth internal fanny-wobble.
How many times have I misplaced this rubberised item of sedation. A big crime in her majesty's eyes and punishable by torture in the King's - no chocolate for a month I hear him saying. Luckily there was an old, decaying, fuzz-covered specimen hiding away in amongst her socks.
I somedays just feel like a cosmic juggler. It's like I have these million chores on my mental chart and I go about daily saying tick tick tick to myself.
How on God's green earth am I meant to keep track of it all. Today went something like this
Get up
have a wee
get madam dressed for school
check school bag and pack school bag
get myself shampooed and clothed
slap on some war paint
make up bed
strip midgets bed
throw load of laundry in to wash
go to school
spend 2 hours there
go home
hang out laundry
fetch family
go to library
go to play place - the King wanted to try the coffee (!)
go home
bring in laundry
put madam down for a nap
remove refrigerated supper from fridge to have for supper
check mails
keep dogs quiet
think about tomorrows supper
madam awake
grab stuff to go swimming at friends
go to friends and have swim, chat, Cooley's, nice nice nice
go home
start supper
feed dogs
entertain madam
cook remainder of supper
serve supper
eat supper
clean up after supper
do dishes
entertain madam
bath madam
read to madam
make sure madam asleep, soundly enough to have an audible conversation
have a cuppa
catch some news, maybe a little telly
chat to the King
flop into inadvertent coma
And woe betide whomever asks me what I've been doing all day. Then I begin to imagine four-letter words that start with F.
Food, frog, fuzz, figs, the list goes on. Dirty minds!!!!!! Naughty, naughty, naughty!
Toodles
How many times have I misplaced this rubberised item of sedation. A big crime in her majesty's eyes and punishable by torture in the King's - no chocolate for a month I hear him saying. Luckily there was an old, decaying, fuzz-covered specimen hiding away in amongst her socks.
I somedays just feel like a cosmic juggler. It's like I have these million chores on my mental chart and I go about daily saying tick tick tick to myself.
How on God's green earth am I meant to keep track of it all. Today went something like this
Get up
have a wee
get madam dressed for school
check school bag and pack school bag
get myself shampooed and clothed
slap on some war paint
make up bed
strip midgets bed
throw load of laundry in to wash
go to school
spend 2 hours there
go home
hang out laundry
fetch family
go to library
go to play place - the King wanted to try the coffee (!)
go home
bring in laundry
put madam down for a nap
remove refrigerated supper from fridge to have for supper
check mails
keep dogs quiet
think about tomorrows supper
madam awake
grab stuff to go swimming at friends
go to friends and have swim, chat, Cooley's, nice nice nice
go home
start supper
feed dogs
entertain madam
cook remainder of supper
serve supper
eat supper
clean up after supper
do dishes
entertain madam
bath madam
read to madam
make sure madam asleep, soundly enough to have an audible conversation
have a cuppa
catch some news, maybe a little telly
chat to the King
flop into inadvertent coma
And woe betide whomever asks me what I've been doing all day. Then I begin to imagine four-letter words that start with F.
Food, frog, fuzz, figs, the list goes on. Dirty minds!!!!!! Naughty, naughty, naughty!
Toodles
15 January 2012
Holidays past and future
So holiday season seems to be over. The last of the schools are opening their doors this week and slogging starts in earnest. But all this got me thinking of our family holidays past. You know, when most hotels didn't come with a TV. Where the pool was communal and all the entertainment was free and non-motorised.
My maternal grandparents retired in the late eighties from the Iscor clogged skies of the Vaal Tiangle to a quaint caravan park on the Natal North Coast. They lived in a mobile home called a Plett - a big caravan with a permanent patio attached. This became MECCA to us grandchildren, cousin Jess aka Gecko, my sister and I in particular. Not only did we love this granny and grandpa more than Oros (the drink du jour of the tartrazine age) but Mtunzini ticked all the right boxes for us. Permanent summer. Swimming 10mths of the year. Only 10 rainy days every 12mths.
The sun rises at 4am in the summer. And we kids usually slept on the convertible sofas in the lounge. Old people are early risers and a vivid memory was my granny making us tea every morning, with 3 sugars nogal. We were only allowed 1 normally so already granny was a rebel and rule-breaker. "Don't tell your da, right!" in her cockney, Pomeranian accent with a wink and click of her false-teeth. God rest her soul.
We spent the entire summer in the pool. I remember my grandpa telling us off for being in the pool so much he said we were going to go mouldy. I remember all us girl grandchildren learnt to swim in the pool of that caravan park, each earning a big, shiny old R1 coin for our efforts and achievements. One Christmas we all got goggles as presents. We spent so much time under water that my grandpa called us La Loutre, or French for otters! By the end of the 4 week holiday our porcelain complexion resembled that of Bulgarian Gypsies complete with cozzie lines and freckled noses.
We only used to head back home at feeding time it seemed. I remember being eternally hungry. Of a persistent rumble in my tummy. Thinking back I can only surmise it was all the fresh air and exercise. My grandparents being WW2 escapees were never going to be up for any culinary awards but the spartan meals they did put out appealed to every fibre of the child in us. Bully beef sandwiches. Canned ham, home-made potato chips fried in a pot on the gas bottle out on the patio with minty peas.There was only Weetabix for breakfast. Which we ate with full-cream milk (my parents were of the powdered generation). Gallons of lemonade which my grandpa bought in the old glass 1lt Sparletta bottle and stored in a crate in the garage. Braai's. Always chicken. Even now that smell takes me back to 1990! And my granny's pineapple fluff pudding made with a tin of evaporated milk beaten by hand, a packet of jelly and a tin of crushed pineapple and lined with Marie biscuits!
We were old enough to look after ourselves, entertain ourselves. Living for the nights when they would burn the sugar cane and all the cane rats would come running through the caravan park with all the local ethnics running after them Good eating they reckoned and kids being kids we were always so puzzled why they were eating cane rate and we weren't!?!
Or daring each other to run up and touch the trunk of the avocado tree where the big python lived. Spending hours on the trampoline after lunch - 'cos we weren't allowed to swim but bouncing was healthier, erm? Playing pertanque with the park directors' kids when they were home from boarding school.
On rainy days we would play Bidgie. Gin rummy to mere commoners. We would play with my gran for real money and for real points. She was a wicked and ruthless teacher. There was no Mr-Nice-Guy with her. You learnt very quickly how much a ace was worth and not to hold onto your cards. You learnt to keep a straight face no matter how good a hand you had. And you learnt to "read" people. At the end of the game, after we had played from Ace though to King, granny would tally up the points, do a little doodle in her book and announce who owed what. We would all sit there with our velcro wallets and hand over our 5c or whatever silly figure it was. To this day we all reckon we actually owed her a hang of a lot more money but she going easy on us.
These holidays punctuated our year. We spent so much time at the coast we began to refer to ourselves as locals. We knew more about the ecology of Natal than of our native Free State. We cried on the "leaving days" and the first thing we did when we got home was count how many days til our next visit.
Those days are over. Granny and grandpa are long gone and the cousins have moved onto the cooler climes of Canada. We are older with children of our own and working on making our memories. I sometimes forget those times but just once in a while a smell or sound instantly transports me back to a moment from the past.
As the digital age encroaches I am planning a resistance. I think I may be alone in this. Her majesty will be dragged outside while there is still nature to enjoy. I will demand that her cousins come on join her so they can make the memories I have. I will seek out places without DSTV. Where fun is DIY
For now it's her majesty waking the birds and me whose less-inclined to remove myself from the linen but I am planning a whole lotta fun for the years to come. I hope you Will join me in this movement.
Til then....
Toodles
My maternal grandparents retired in the late eighties from the Iscor clogged skies of the Vaal Tiangle to a quaint caravan park on the Natal North Coast. They lived in a mobile home called a Plett - a big caravan with a permanent patio attached. This became MECCA to us grandchildren, cousin Jess aka Gecko, my sister and I in particular. Not only did we love this granny and grandpa more than Oros (the drink du jour of the tartrazine age) but Mtunzini ticked all the right boxes for us. Permanent summer. Swimming 10mths of the year. Only 10 rainy days every 12mths.
The sun rises at 4am in the summer. And we kids usually slept on the convertible sofas in the lounge. Old people are early risers and a vivid memory was my granny making us tea every morning, with 3 sugars nogal. We were only allowed 1 normally so already granny was a rebel and rule-breaker. "Don't tell your da, right!" in her cockney, Pomeranian accent with a wink and click of her false-teeth. God rest her soul.
We spent the entire summer in the pool. I remember my grandpa telling us off for being in the pool so much he said we were going to go mouldy. I remember all us girl grandchildren learnt to swim in the pool of that caravan park, each earning a big, shiny old R1 coin for our efforts and achievements. One Christmas we all got goggles as presents. We spent so much time under water that my grandpa called us La Loutre, or French for otters! By the end of the 4 week holiday our porcelain complexion resembled that of Bulgarian Gypsies complete with cozzie lines and freckled noses.
We only used to head back home at feeding time it seemed. I remember being eternally hungry. Of a persistent rumble in my tummy. Thinking back I can only surmise it was all the fresh air and exercise. My grandparents being WW2 escapees were never going to be up for any culinary awards but the spartan meals they did put out appealed to every fibre of the child in us. Bully beef sandwiches. Canned ham, home-made potato chips fried in a pot on the gas bottle out on the patio with minty peas.There was only Weetabix for breakfast. Which we ate with full-cream milk (my parents were of the powdered generation). Gallons of lemonade which my grandpa bought in the old glass 1lt Sparletta bottle and stored in a crate in the garage. Braai's. Always chicken. Even now that smell takes me back to 1990! And my granny's pineapple fluff pudding made with a tin of evaporated milk beaten by hand, a packet of jelly and a tin of crushed pineapple and lined with Marie biscuits!
We were old enough to look after ourselves, entertain ourselves. Living for the nights when they would burn the sugar cane and all the cane rats would come running through the caravan park with all the local ethnics running after them Good eating they reckoned and kids being kids we were always so puzzled why they were eating cane rate and we weren't!?!
Or daring each other to run up and touch the trunk of the avocado tree where the big python lived. Spending hours on the trampoline after lunch - 'cos we weren't allowed to swim but bouncing was healthier, erm? Playing pertanque with the park directors' kids when they were home from boarding school.
On rainy days we would play Bidgie. Gin rummy to mere commoners. We would play with my gran for real money and for real points. She was a wicked and ruthless teacher. There was no Mr-Nice-Guy with her. You learnt very quickly how much a ace was worth and not to hold onto your cards. You learnt to keep a straight face no matter how good a hand you had. And you learnt to "read" people. At the end of the game, after we had played from Ace though to King, granny would tally up the points, do a little doodle in her book and announce who owed what. We would all sit there with our velcro wallets and hand over our 5c or whatever silly figure it was. To this day we all reckon we actually owed her a hang of a lot more money but she going easy on us.
These holidays punctuated our year. We spent so much time at the coast we began to refer to ourselves as locals. We knew more about the ecology of Natal than of our native Free State. We cried on the "leaving days" and the first thing we did when we got home was count how many days til our next visit.
Those days are over. Granny and grandpa are long gone and the cousins have moved onto the cooler climes of Canada. We are older with children of our own and working on making our memories. I sometimes forget those times but just once in a while a smell or sound instantly transports me back to a moment from the past.
As the digital age encroaches I am planning a resistance. I think I may be alone in this. Her majesty will be dragged outside while there is still nature to enjoy. I will demand that her cousins come on join her so they can make the memories I have. I will seek out places without DSTV. Where fun is DIY
For now it's her majesty waking the birds and me whose less-inclined to remove myself from the linen but I am planning a whole lotta fun for the years to come. I hope you Will join me in this movement.
Til then....
Toodles
1 January 2012
Doing it again
So 2011 is over and all and sundry are tooting to 2012. And with that everyone is contemplating and considering the prospects. As per normal you've got the usual suspects asking the introspective "what are your plans for 2012"?.
My answer : Survive it. Plain simple and completely honest.
Every New Years eve his majesty and I have our NYE boudoir conference (this is where all our good chats happen) and reflect on the last 365 days and how we fared.
Must say 2011 was a doozy. Again. Nothing gets easier it seems.
But it beats the year of THE NEW JOB (mine)
The year of HIS MAJESTY's KIDNEYS BEING BROKEN (shocker being 22 and thinking I was going to lose my husband)
The year of HYPERTENSION (mine)
The year of FINDING OUT WE COULDN'T HAVE KIDS (and finding out I wasn't the broken one)
The year of HYPERTENSION (mine)
The year BENTLEY DIED ( I loved that silly dog more than chocolate!)
The year of HYPERTENSION (mine)
The year of NEARLY LOSING HIS MAJESTY (watching my soulmate lose 20kgs in a month and being at deaths' door for the better part of twelve months)
The year of HYPERTENSION (mine)
The year of THE MISCARRIAGE (awful - saving this for another chat when I have more energy to use the tissues)
The year of HYPERTENSION (mine)
The year of DUMB THINGS JUST HAPPENING ONE AFTER ANOTHER (oh wait, that's every year if your name is Tiffany!)
The year of THE MOVE
But although terrible, heinous and all round kak to deal with there has also been :-
The year WE SAID I DO (I look back at the pictures and we seem so young!)
The year WE BOUGHT OUR FIRST HOUSE ( we had sex in every room just for good measure)
The year of BENTLEY (our pseudo-baby furry person wannabe)
The year of BUYING A BRAND NEW CAR OUTTA THE BOX (which I pranged the same day in our own yard! I just want to hide under a stone every time I think about it!)
and my personal favourite the year IMOGEN ARRIVED! (no topping this one!)
I have learnt that life seems to dish us equal parts of bad and beautiful. I surmise it's just our ability to meditate on either side of the scales that makes a year either good or bad. Our reactions to the ebb and flow of circumstance.
So my resolution would have to be optimism. But always with a good measure of realism and sarcastic spunk to keep his majesty laughing. As long as one of us is happy then it's all good right!
To you and yours I say just get on with it and live it without the endless pondering and planning, heck, it's over too soon. Smile more, eat less and live better.
Much love
Toodles
My answer : Survive it. Plain simple and completely honest.
Every New Years eve his majesty and I have our NYE boudoir conference (this is where all our good chats happen) and reflect on the last 365 days and how we fared.
Must say 2011 was a doozy. Again. Nothing gets easier it seems.
But it beats the year of THE NEW JOB (mine)
The year of HIS MAJESTY's KIDNEYS BEING BROKEN (shocker being 22 and thinking I was going to lose my husband)
The year of HYPERTENSION (mine)
The year of FINDING OUT WE COULDN'T HAVE KIDS (and finding out I wasn't the broken one)
The year of HYPERTENSION (mine)
The year BENTLEY DIED ( I loved that silly dog more than chocolate!)
The year of HYPERTENSION (mine)
The year of NEARLY LOSING HIS MAJESTY (watching my soulmate lose 20kgs in a month and being at deaths' door for the better part of twelve months)
The year of HYPERTENSION (mine)
The year of THE MISCARRIAGE (awful - saving this for another chat when I have more energy to use the tissues)
The year of HYPERTENSION (mine)
The year of DUMB THINGS JUST HAPPENING ONE AFTER ANOTHER (oh wait, that's every year if your name is Tiffany!)
The year of THE MOVE
But although terrible, heinous and all round kak to deal with there has also been :-
The year WE SAID I DO (I look back at the pictures and we seem so young!)
The year WE BOUGHT OUR FIRST HOUSE ( we had sex in every room just for good measure)
The year of BENTLEY (our pseudo-baby furry person wannabe)
The year of BUYING A BRAND NEW CAR OUTTA THE BOX (which I pranged the same day in our own yard! I just want to hide under a stone every time I think about it!)
and my personal favourite the year IMOGEN ARRIVED! (no topping this one!)
I have learnt that life seems to dish us equal parts of bad and beautiful. I surmise it's just our ability to meditate on either side of the scales that makes a year either good or bad. Our reactions to the ebb and flow of circumstance.
So my resolution would have to be optimism. But always with a good measure of realism and sarcastic spunk to keep his majesty laughing. As long as one of us is happy then it's all good right!
To you and yours I say just get on with it and live it without the endless pondering and planning, heck, it's over too soon. Smile more, eat less and live better.
Much love
Toodles
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