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.

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?

School day blues

I am a terrible mother. My own mother was her own brand of Hitler so perhaps it passes down the lines. Whatever!

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???

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

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

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

Happy Birthday to me

Turned 32 today. Must admit it doesn't feel any different to 31. Ask me next winter when the aches and pains of injuries inflicted in my youth kick in.

Special day. What I thought was going to be a sedate tea and cake with a few family members turned out to be a very hush-hush gathering of mates near and dear, all of whom I thought were busy with Christmas and families if their own.

Spoilt rotten. Again. His majesty gets better at this year after year and I am always left feeling like a queen, albeit for a day. The elves come at midnight to fetch the pumpkin and tomorrow I am back to a mere commoner.

But, his majesty is on leave until mid-January so I can ease off the childcare a bit and maybe get a break in myself.

Three more sleeps 'til Christmas. Then it's another round of presents and family and fellowship.

I blame my parents for being hippies and having me during the festive season but I get to be showered with stuff, barely find place to pack it all and then it'd round 2.

Lucky me.

Now off with you all to baste turkeys, bake gingerbread cookies and overdose on sellotape and tinsel.

Toodles.