all the crazy

I'd written the final To Do list on the back of the in-flight sick bag flying home from Joburg one evening earlier in the week.
Reading through it made me feel vaguely ill.

That Friday I was on fire. Tearing around town with my hands-free plugged in - taking calls, sending docs from Google Drive, answering queries and mails, the pre-event Whatsapp group trilling like an insistent baby bird.
All hail the smart phone.

Meetings, collections, ego stroking, deliveries, putting out fires and lighting new ones.
It struck me I'd never felt so alive while at the same time wanting to die.
That's what event work does for me.

At home the madness continued. Wedding cake prep, food for the kids for the weekend, must do something about my toenails, deworm the dogs, email, email, email.

And into the next morning ...

Kids to my Mum's, frantic working until the very moment of departure - cake and accouterments in the back, me in the middle with lists, dogs scattered about, glad rags carefully packed.

We were off.

Emails and texts from the back seat, bull terrier drool on my contact list, car sickness and an over-riding impatience to just BE THERE.

Finally I sent the last text, we dropped the dogs off at the boarding kennels .... and we were free.

Free to watch our friends commit to each other. To laugh and play with some dearly beloveds. To soak in this view at sunset and moonrise while celebrating life and love.
That's some freedom right there.

Later there was The Cake - so unexpectedly yellow, but so delicious -

- and dancing and margaritas and night swimming and stumbling home to our chalets in big white fuzzy robes.
There was waking to birdsong and a hangover breakfast which couldn't be beat, and a swim in the ocean on our way home.
There was this brief respite before ....

A dawn flight to Johannesburg on Monday morning. A totally moving tribute to the work of the Treatment Action Campaign and a couple of personal tears for the memories of working with them nearly a decade ago - how far they've come, how far I've come!

Work hard.
Play hard.
Nostalgia.
Loved ones.
Back to me.

These are the recurring themes for 2014. It's been such a good year.