Friday, May 20, 2022
what I've been up to lately
Sunday, March 27, 2022
growth
Have you also spent this last month looking at your kids, your pets, your home, your things and thinking what the actual fuck would I do with all of these if we had to flee?
Then doom-scrolling some more about the devastation in the Ukraine, making a comment about Zelenskyy being the hottest short guy in the world right now and going back to living your hyper-blessed life in your own deeply problematic and damaged country on this here burning planet?
What a time to be alive.
Because we are. We are alive and the wheel turns in the same ways it always has - the tide ebbs and flows.
Stella turned 12!
Wednesday, February 16, 2022
galentines
Saturday, February 05, 2022
we can do hard things
...but jeez, we will generally go to huge lengths not to.
Well, I do at least. When I have a choice, I'm all about that path of least resistance, min effort for max gain, keeping it simple, keeping it fun, taking the shortest way round.
But already in these first few weeks of 2022 I've done some hard things - and it's felt really good.
I've gone on two group motorbike rides with total strangers.
The first just me with a bunch of cool kids, but on my small bike on a route that I know well. The second with Charl, but on my big bike, a totally unknown route and at least 25 other proficient riders. Shooweee, my nerves!
Motorbike riders are cool right? And ballsy, and mostly all they want to talk about are bikes. This crowd is quite a bit younger than me, with hipper gear and better stories and way more experience. But I kept my nerve and un-wedgied my big girl panties and tried earnestly to remember my bike's specs for the coffee chat and not fall too far behind on the ride and to not forget to put on my gloves before my helmet like a newbie.
So rad.
How cute is my bike though? |
I've gone back to CrossFit.
Six weeks short of two years later, I walked back in to a CrossFit box. With my atrophied muscles and my pandemic weight gain and my complete lack of fitness I've signed up to a box where I know no one. That first class I was a bundle of nerves, but I walked (staggered) out of there feeling like a champ and have been back and have signed up for more. What. A. Vibe.
How cute are my shoes though? |
And then just today, another hard thing.
How cute is this though? |
From motor-biking to CrossFit to puzzles which require reading glasses - 2022 has had some challenges already. But I'll take these over drought, death and disease - some of the challenges of the last few years - any day.
My wish for this year is to have agency. To not just be reactive to the shit life throws at us, but proactive in doing things which make me feel stronger and better and more in control.
We can do hard things, and not all hard things have to suck.
Wednesday, February 02, 2022
2 Feb 1990
Facebook just gave me this - the memory of something I wrote on 2 Feb 2015.
I'm reposting it here because I'd like to preserve it, and because I can still remember that hot, hot afternoon and the miraculous events which played out from then.
Monday, January 24, 2022
the hottest place on earth
Well, so it was predicted on Friday, a day when we couldn't really even comprehend of how hot it would get.
It got incredibly hot.
This last weekend Cape Town surpassed its own hottest recorded temperature ever by 3 degrees Celsius and clocked in a whopping 45.2C on Saturday.
It's been confirmed that we were the hottest place in southern Africa and you know, we'll take it. No need to go into direct competition with mid Australia ffs - Saturday and Sunday were hot enough and scary enough, we don't need any more accolade than that.
It was a weekend for lying down and avoiding really. And that's mostly what we did.
Lying down and napping with the blinds closed. Drinking litres of water and moving slowly and mainly trying not to think about climate change.
Our children might never live on the same planet as polar bears Frieda tells her sister over dinner.
Yeah but, people told us that when we were younger too I say, and you do.
Now recycle that container and don't use too much water rinsing it out.
Balancing the messaging is hard.
Then on Sunday we received a clip from family in the UK, a short capture from The Green Planet - Sir David Attenborough's latest series on BBC. It features an interview with my little brother.
My little brother as a whole ass PHD on ecology change being featured in an Attenborough series. Five year old Frieda would have EXPLODED with wonderment and joy. Fourteen year old Frieda was pretty damn excited. As were we all.
The clip was on fire (our fynbos needs it) and particularly the fire lilies which lie dormant for years (and years) waiting for fire and then blooming within days of one - making themselves the only source of nectar for miles and guaranteeing pollination (seems rather dramatic but then, nature). The takeaway was that fires are getting more frequent, hotter, faster and fragile ecosystems like this are in real danger.
Sobering stuff. And yet also, miraculous.
As is life.
PS, while writing this post I came across this one, and it seemed an apt reminder that we've been at the brink of societal collapse before... and also, jeez we've weathered a LOT in recent years.
Monday, January 10, 2022
weathering it...
I cannot explain how much better the first week of January feels this year in comparison to last.
Last year there was so little light coming down the tunnel, so little reason to feel optimistic. And I'm not even talking about Tr*mp and the storming of the Capitol, just about Cape Town and lockdown and how we never thought we'd get vaxxed or back to any semblance of proper life ever again. We'd never started a year so glum and uninspired.
But here we are. Things are easier. And whatever fuckening might be waiting just down the road, I'm having a moment of deep gratitude for how far we've come and how much easier and lighter things have been this holiday season.
We spent two 4-day stints on either side of Christmas in our favourite Onrus with some of our oldest friends.
And Christmas, Christmas was glorious.
All the sweeter for having spent last Christmas all apart, for being our first time hosting, for everyone being well and relaxed and happy. Magic.
We've weathered this storm alright, all things considered. As have many of my dearest friends, who for a time there looked like they'd never come out the other side.
A friend who got retrenched back in April 2020 has found a new, rewarding, fulfilling, bill-paying job after nearly two years of hustle and high stress.
Another who was facing a failing relationship back then, exacerbated by lockdowns and general weirdness, is happily blissed out with a new partner, after a long time of heartache and self-doubt and pain.
Friends who very nearly lost their home are clawing their way back up the credit-rating ladder, finally able to relax their jaws slightly and step back a bit from the daily anxiety of trying to keep their lives together.
The girls are back to full class, full time, in person school in a couple of weeks. Our curfew, the last of the Covid restrictions, was lifted on 31 Dec. Our National State of Disaster, 666 days old today, is most likely to be lifted soon.
Cautiously, cautiously, optimistic.
Tuesday, November 30, 2021
in the African night
On Sunday evening I did a most beautiful thing with a dearest friend.
Another outdoor movie. This time on a picnic blanket in the magnificent Kirstenbosch Gardens, still one of my favourite places in the world.
This time Out of Africa, possibly one of my most watched films of all time. But not for years.
Time slowed and exhaled, we wept and laughed. On screen the sound of crickets chirping filled the African night, as around us in the gardens the sounds of crickets chirping, filled the African night.
Bliss.
Thursday, September 30, 2021
in the middle of the middle?
But when it comes to time, where is the middle?
My friends and I, as we have our second round of pandemic birthdays and are still, each year, amazed to discover that apparently we are 'grown-ups' now, have been pondering the particular complexities of reaching middle-age in the middle of a pandemic.
It stands to reason that every age will feel the effects of lockdown etc in relation to the age they are during this, and no one can really claim their experience to be worse than any other's (except maybe that poor 20-30 crew, I do really feel for those guys), but I think us of the middle-age are having a particularly interesting time of it for a couple of reasons.
Growing acceptance of one's own mortality and the inevitable death of your parents and loved ones?
BOOM - global flu pandemic to just really drive that home and place the risk of it literally around every corner.
Growing realisation that you might run out of time to visit all those far-flung destinations on your 'bucket list' (horrible term)?
BOOM - travel restrictions starting from your front gate to extending to most other parts of the world.
Growing unease at whether you've made enough provision for retirement / your children's future / the medical costs of growing older?
BOOM - total loss of career and all prospects of it ever picking up again PLUS flooding of the dwindling jobs market with thousands of younger and more relevant jobless candidates.
Growing independence from your children and freedom to plan around them and return to a bit of your own life?
BOOM - homeschooling, a thing you SWORE you'd never do, becomes your reality, school days shorten in the absence of extra-murals, kids are at home all the time.
Growing determination to get healthier and stronger and counteract the aging effects of weakening bones and muscle degeneration?
BOOM - all gyms and exercise classes close, or remain open and become cesspools of contamination.
So no, I'm not saying we're having it worse off than anyone else. I'm just saying we're not having it any easier. No one is having it easy.
It just feels like it would all be more manageable if we knew where we were in these things... are we in the middle? Of life? Of the pandemic?
Maybe the advantage of living through this in middle-age is the acceptance we've come to that we'll never know what's coming next. We've seen friends die unexpectedly, we've seen towers fall and countries burn, we've seen fax machines come and go... maybe we've got a better handle than some on the truly unpredictable nature of life.
Maybe we should know better than to overthink this.