winter layers

 Winter layers - as in vest, shirt, jersey, scarf, coat you ask?

Nope.

Well, a little bit coats. If you mean multiple coats (and so many hoodies) laying draped all over the place as the temperature fluctuates and different weather systems require different weights on different days. Add to that an assortment of beanies, but also caps because the winter sun can still be hot and biting, so low on the horizon.

Shoes also, in abundance at every junction of the house. We can't pretend that this is seasonal, but in winter these shoes are heftier. 6 pairs of discarded flip-flops in mid-summer don't hold the same sway.

Sports gear - also bulkier. Winter bike jackets collapse out the hall cupboard, too hefty to remain on their slim hangers. Two different weight riding gloves in circulation, naturally always pairing with an incompatible partner, like some of those friends one had at varsity.

Winter is hockey, which is shin pads and different sticks, used too regularly to be put away properly - apparently. Even the smaller accoutrements - gum guards, long socks - clutter about the place adding to a smaller but no less insidious layer.  

Hand creams play a big role on the hall table. Lip balm also. Our skin is dry. One half-hearted bottle of sanitiser remains there, jumbled amidst half-empty (half-full?) water bottles, notes from school, discarded rings, spare keys, a motorbike glove (a 5th one, how is this possible?), ancient post to Return To Sender and, like a cruel joke, some pretty knick-knack which was supposed to look elegant and nonchalantly curated, alone on that surface. 

Let's move on.

Winter is a time for Projects. Ongoing projects. Projects for which nothing can be thrown away.

There is macrame, 3D scanning, tail-light rebuilding, cardboard construction, Lego, puzzle-building, clay sculpturing and collaging all going on in our living area RIGHT NOW. Of course no is actually doing any of these things in there right now (15:20 on a wintery Sunday afternoon, what better time one asks oneself) but apparently they are all Very Important and Vital Projects which must remain active.

I think you can imagine that layer.

Let's talk pets. Pets need thicker blankets, and more of them, at this time of year. Dogs ask to be covered in said blankets but then 5 minutes later burst from their nest to bark (generally at nothing) and leave their blankets strewn across the floor. We've tried to train them to drag them back to their beds but those of you who know our dogs will know how ridiculous this notion is.

Also shedding. Winter is all about shedding. We have FOUR pets currently shedding.

And that's not even LOAD shedding, just fur shedding. Load-shedding requires its own fair supply of crap. Rechargeable solar jars must be put out for the sun during the day, but g(l)o off (see what I did there?) to far corners of the house with various members when the lights go out, to seek their fortune in new layers of clutter upstairs. Boxes of matches, burnt and otherwise, adorn the place. Saggy candles abound. The fireplace has its requisite crate of wood dropping bark and twiglets around and about, the tongs are always active, firelighters in a tin inexplicably on the other side of the room.

In winter our cave gets layered-up to pull through the cold. Three weeks of school holidays spent largely at home, 4 busy people, 4 crazy pets. The 8 beings, trundling through their layers of clutter and crap and lots and lots of love.

update on the 'sabbatical'

What have I been up to?

Well, not blogging clearly. Dammit.

But lots of actual things in the world with real people, which is good right?

I've spent some time with my little nephews. At nearly 1 and nearly 3 they are both just delicious, the older one chatty and funny and busy - the baby still baby enough to have a good cuddle. These are probably 'my' last babies until grandchildren and it's been wonderful to have this time with them.

I've been working out - 4 times a week at least, sometimes even getting up before 7 on a Saturday for an extra class (this is totally unheard of for me). 

I've made some progress on clutter and sorting out my home office and bagging stuff up for donation etc, but not as much as I thought I would.
Ditto personal admin. I've not been great on that. Turns out it's still as utterly boring as ever, I just don't have the same excuses about not getting round to it. I've done some good work on generating more though - namely reversing into my friend's car outside our own house a few weeks back! Ack.
Ditto website updates, inbox clearing and filing - I've spent very little time on all that rubbish.
Because really, do I want to spend any time on my laptop when I don't have to? Fek no.
(See also, reasons I've not been blogging.)

I've done some quality appreciation of this beautiful place I live though.

A cycle tour through the City on a magnificent blue and gold day. From the touristy bustle of the waterfront, up Adderley street in the heart of the city, along pee- and dagga- smelling pavements outside the Station, past City Hall (where 1 year ago I was in the THICK of a massive project), through the serene Company Gardens, up cobble-stoned streets into the Bo Kaap and then down through Green Point and back to the sea.
This city will never, ever lose its allure.

Then the first leg of a summer project to swim in all (25?) tidal pools the Cape Peninsula has to offer. We managed 4 on a very blustery and overcast day, with plans to conquer the rest before the summer is out.

St James tidal pool, pictured on a very different day!

I've been a really great friend.
I've lifted kids and baked birthday cakes and helped arrange parties and run errands and delivered wine and covered bills and been (very freely) available for drinks and hang outs.
This all sounds fairly smug, but I don't believe in altruism and will happily admit I've gained so much from all this. Not self-satisfaction, but genuine happiness in being of service to those I love.

My people have been so solidly there for me the last few tumultuous years, all while going through some pretty horrible stuff themselves. We're all juggling so many balls, all feeling like we're dropping most. It has been such a gift to have the time and resources to help catch some, to do small things to help, to do big things to share.
How lucky to have beloved people in your life to do things for?

I've fostered an appreciation for the small things. How a weekend can be a weekend when you're not spending it catching up on everything you've not been able to do during the week. How dinner prep can be so much more satisfying when you're not slamming it together too late and too distracted to do it properly. How chats on the couch with my girls can wander on uninterrupted into all kinds of topics when nothing else is calling me away.

It's been so lovely to be here for them, my sweet girls. It's been so lovely to be able to give them the best of myself. Well, most of the time.

And finally, excitingly, some real progress on our planned home renovation! We have an architect. We have plans. We have moments of utter weakness at the challenges of packing this place up and subjecting ourselves to dust and builders and massive logistical challenges. But we have progress, and 2020 is set to be the year of the house.

Exciting times.

camera roll: May

Lol, these camera rolls get later and later each month ...

I started May with a day trip to Joburg. My first for the year - quite something after my bazillion trips up there last year.

It was nice to be back in the Big Smoke. A quick productive day of business and straight back home.
I was on a recce trip for a job which was due to happen there this week - but a few days after the trip it was postponed to August! Already my notes from this trip seem as hazy as this skyline ... eek.

It was my birthday - did I mention that? And what with going away and then losing my MIL and generally blah-ness it all become very disjointed and bitty - which was kinda crap but kinda great in that I kept being surprised by it - like this unexpected beauty gifted to me from the boot of a car at a kiddies party one week day afternoon ...

... I have always wanted this (can you tell by my face?) - telephone wire coat rack by Heath Nash. I have literally lusted after it for years. And dear friends remembered and said to each other 'Zahida was always really good at presents, we need to hit this one out the park' and bandied together, and DID.
The ribbon on a gift like this, is the knowledge that you are known, that your people get you.
And that was what I really needed this birthday.
That, and a telephone wire coat rack by Heath Nash!
That, and the reminder that regardless of everything - it is beautiful here.

But the hero story for May - the most wonderful (and oh thank god happy ending one) was this:

In the same week that my MIL died, this little old lady pulled a number on us too. Stopped eating, drinking - didn't leave my bed for 2 days. We were ... distracted, I'm ashamed to admit, so much else going on, and by the time we got her to the vet I was lambasting myself for being a bad mummy but when he got her out the carrier he was genuinely surprised that she looked so 'fantastic' for a kitty her age, and I felt hopeful. Khoki is 19 this year, but still soft as a kitten, strong and feisty.

She over-nighted at the vet, on a drip, the same night my MIL passed and I lay awake fretting - for Husband to lose his mum and his beloved cat in the same week seemed too cruel for words.

But she made it!

It's first stage kidney disease, it will take her eventually, but for now she's back - demanding and cranky as ever - and every night when she snuggles down between us (having yowled at us since dusk to come to bed) , I offer up the closest thing I have to a prayer - a message of gratitude to the universe - to her - thank you for staying with us a little longer. For all my concern for Husband, I don't think I could bear this loss too right now.

And then autumn, waning in all its beauty ... my mum bought this little broom and wheelbarrow for my little nephew to sweep the vine leaves on her stoep - but Stella clearly decided she's by no means too big for that herself yet ... segued into winter ...

... and the cubble got real :-)

camera roll: January

January really does feel like the longest month of the year. At 31 days it's not any longer than a bunch of other months but wow, it really encompasses a LOT.

31 days ago we were on holiday, nursing our hangovers with a long walk beside the ocean, a soft-serve, a swarm of bees and later, fortifying red wine as the first full moon of the year bathed our optimistic new year selves in warm golden light.

Then home, to the reality of the drought - hitting hard - and a dawn patrol of police helicopters, looking for an elderly man who went missing in his canoe. His body was found later that morning poor chap - a suspected seizure while out on the water. Not a bad way to go really. I got a text from my Mum saying 'Hang on to those unseaworthy craft of yours. Dad and I will take a spin in a few years time.'

The only part of our garden I care about keeping alive - my succulent babies doing well on rations of dishwater and leftover dribbles out of the family's water bottles ...

Good eating in January. The glut of fruit and fresh abundance, and the time to prepare and serve pretty, healthy things. All the indulgences of the holiday eating magically remedied (or so we tell ourselves!) in lots of fruit and salads.

Not such a great month for Nacho ... lil' pup finally got spayed after I won the furious puppies v no puppies debate. She was down and out for a couple of days but bounced back remarkably and was soon back to her mischievous self.

On the subject of babies, and mischef ... early beach mornings with my delicious nephew while my SIL and my eldest daughter played at surfing.

Even after Husband and I were back at work we successfully kept the holiday vibe alive (and cheered Nacho up no end) by procuring a second-hand sofa for the stoep. Perfect for lazing and dreaming and pretending we still have endless days for such ...

Goddamn that light is ugly...

There was even a teeny-weeny bit of rain!

And I discovered that the sound of water running into our storage tank actually brought a lump to my throat.

It doesn't take much to bring a lump to my throat lately.

My last pic of January 2018. Little old lady cat in the afternoon sun. Deaf as a doorpost, as cranky as always, only happy when she's lying tight up against me at night. Still my sweetest first baby.

31 days later the full moon rose again, but this time we weren't watching is ascend all chilled and wine'd up with buddies. This time we were chasing deadlines, and children to bed before school. A brief glance out the window, roused in the night by a glare to the eyeballs.

Same moon, same month, feels like a long, long few weeks in between.

And now, as experience shows, the year starts galloping along. Shew this crazy life.

colour blocking

This time last year I was doing this. And it hasn't really let up much.

To be honest the year has been brutal.

Sometimes one needs to hide ...

... and spend a day faffing the shelves.

I painted these shelves, turns out almost exactly 3 years ago. Must be a spring thing then ... sprucing.

It was so good to not think. To handle things which have a story for me - the books and the figurines and the things - to dust, to sort, to place. To use my eyes not my heart, my hands not my head.

Regaining control over some tiny corners of my life.
Let's go October.
Be gentle.

the ups and downs of October

This post is to filed under 'diary'. I need to record this last crazy month for myself, for the record.

I've come here so often with an opening line, a thought or an observation, but the back story has always been so enormous - October's stories have been enormous - that I've either shied away or the next thing has happened before I could finish writing/processing about the last.

Emotional ro-la-co-stah. I'm tired just thinking about writing about it.

October is a beautiful month (which month isn't really right?), but this one has brought some pain.

On the 1st of the month one of my very best friends was admitted to hospital after weeks of what we all then thought was 'flu.

That weekend, beloved English cousins currently living in the States woke to the news that their 23 year old son had died in his sleep.
Shock rippled around the world as we gathered in small digital huddles - on FB messenger, Whatsapp and eventually a Tribute Page - trying to cradle a family in unimaginable pain with words and images shared on these platforms, knowing that none of it worked as well as a hug, but that all the hugs in the world wouldn't heal their hearts.
When a healthy 23 year old guy dies in his sleep on a Saturday night there is one conclusion that everyone jumps to, and from the talk it does seem he lived a colourful life - partying and living it up in the film industry in which he worked.
But louder then that were the reams of words testifying to his gentle care of those he loved, his sense of humour, his intelligence, his diligence to his work, his magic touch with animals - all these words proven by the multitude of photos of him shared on the page, in each one of them he has his arms around someone.

I recalled so vividly the boys like him I knew at that age. Young, gorgeous, healthy young men who worked, had plans, took their jobs and their lives seriously, earned well, and partied hard. Those boys were the best friends a girl could have, watchful and caring, they were the most fun to have at a party, loud and gregarious and hilarious, they were generous with their love, their time and their drugs - and after a heavy night out they would go home to Sunday lunch and be the most attentive, genuinely devoted sons and brothers. They thought they were invincible.

So many are lost in grief at his passing.

On the 4th we celebrated our 13 year wedding anniversary.

It was a magic evening, warm and golden and still. We'd made no plans, but that afternoon I remembered two bags of prawns in the freezer, a bottle of very fine wine we'd been saving, a box of creme brulee magnum ice-creams I'd seen at our local store ... I lit the fire and watched the girls play wildly on the lawn as we waited for the sound of his motorbike arriving home.
We ate grilled prawns 'til the butter ran down our arms, washed down with sublime wine, and grinned stupidly at each other over our daughter's heads. 13 years.

A couple of nights later we ditched the girls and went out for a proper grown-up dinner in our beautiful 'hood.

But still my friend was in hospital, and the news was not good. An inflammation of the spinal cord, a rare auto-immune condition, crippling pain and uncertainty about the path ahead.
Sobering updates as we rallied around her family, setting up an online meal roster to cook for them, a Whatsapp group to keep all those concerned in the loop.

I traveled to Pretoria for work. Twice.
Pretoria was hot, and dry, but magnificently purple.

Jacaranda trees were introduced a hundred years ago, blatant invaders from South America, for their beauty and their shade. They kind of hung around and once a year transform Pretoria from a fairly drab and run-down city to a psychedelic wonderland. Well played invaders.

The work was good, the people I met inspirational and fun.

Our country has had a hard month too. Our Minister of Finance is facing trumped-up charges of misconduct, leveled at him by a President fueled only by his greed. Our students are rising up to demand the education promised to them 20 years ago, and getting beaten in the streets by our dysfunctional police force. Our academics and universities are reeling from the damage - to their campuses and their careers. Our general public are split down the middle on a topic so complex that you can only see it in black and white if you're at the heart of a the struggle or being a total asshole. Their are a select few who are both.
It's a fucking mess.

The activists I was in Pretoria with were for the most part much younger than me, black and very active in education. We spoke at length about the current situation and it was so reassuring to me, a white, middle-class, (cough) middle-aged lady, to check in with them and find that we shared many opinions on these issues. It's easy when you live among your peers to believe that you're right. It's a gift to step out of that circle and find others, very different to you, who feel the same. I love my work for the worlds it opens up for me.

Back home and straight into a very special celebration. My Dad turned 70.

Which necessitated a party, with some of our dearest family friends, and a rainbow cake for the birthday boy, with ants on it - because he's all about the ants, about the ants, no spiders - according to one of his silly granddaughters.

And then another anniversary - a really BIG one.

On the 24th my man and I marked 25 years together - a silver anniversary - from bumbling high school sweethearts to married-up parents.
We celebrated with an enormous bunch of chinkerinchees, a bottle of bubbly and the gift of a vintage silver dollar from my parents. How exactly did I get this lucky?

And still ... my friend is in hospital. Still battling pain and an uncertain future, but still smiling when she can, still strong, still her.

This growing up thing is not for sissies, the realities of life and aging are hard and painful. But the love, the love just gets stronger and sweeter - and the knowledge that that is all that is important gets clearer every day.

This year has worn us out already - is it holidays yet?

and what I've been doing with it ...

All this free time that is.

Yes, there's been lots of productive practical stuff, but there's been lots of indulgent fun stuff too.

I joined a gym (which falls into a category somewhere in between the two above), and I've actually been going!

I finished an embroidery project to gift to my SIL for her birthday.

For which I also made Nutella Cheesecake, among other things.

I lost an hour or two to Seinfeld clips on You Tube.

I may have lost a couple more watching endless movie trailers on the same channel.

I might even have watched a couple of episodes of Ray Donovan one morning while everyone else was at school/work. Although I'll never admit it.

I started some washi doodles on the large expanse of living room wall which we're kind of flummoxed as to what to do with. We can't hang anything framed there (damn lake is so reflective) we'll probably (hopefully) bash a large section out of it in the near future, I had a lovely piece of fabric up there which it turns out husband hated - so it's become my sketchpad, on which I will doodle in totally non-permanent and forgiving washi tape, because blank wall is just .. blank, right?

We sneaked in another long weekend away, the Cederberg this time, with my parents and assorted extended family.

And just this last week, I've been nursing this poor Tiger. Chicken pox yo.

Then this afternoon, the call. Dates are set, things are back on, and as of tomorrow I need to start easing back into things. Work things.

It's been a magnificent hiatus. I think I'll open a bottle of wine this evening and eek out the last few hours.

the gift of time

We came back from Tankwa to a house of chaos and mountains of laundry. My office was a tip - my hasty departure for Durban evident - accumulated crap from a week away strewn about the place.
I spent the first day back trying to make sense of it all, trying to catch up to myself.

The next event, a 3 day conference in Pretoria, was looming large and I needed to pull myself together and get on it stat.

And then it got postponed.

Postponed as in, it has to contractually happen before the end of October but new dates have not been set and therefore I. am. free.
For a bit.

Free to stop for rainbows.
To hang with my girls.
To make decent suppers, and lemon curd.
To read.
To create.
To hang with my pets in the sun in the mornings when hours expand and move slow.
To sort out some cupboards and update some shit and get photo albums sorted and catch up on my blog.
To lift the girls to school and spend time with them afterwards.
To catch up with friends.
To breathe a bit.

This time is a gift. It's not scheduled free time - a statement in itself an oxymoron. It's not 'ermahgerd will I ever have work again time'. It's time which will end in a big job, time which could end in a phone call, an email, any day now.
Time which is precious until then, and there's virtually nothing I can do which isn't exactly the right thing to be doing at the time.

oh april

You are predictable.

You are a month of transition and changing gears. A shape-shifter morphing from hot, still perfect summer days to gold-tinged awetumn, stabbing us in the ribs with some fierce winter storms, chilling us through with your sudden icy evenings.
You are a month of sunsets and rainbows.

You bring otters and owls and flamingos. You bring the stillest, stillest nights for us to hear when they're about.

You, recently, have brought my return to work after a month of rest/illess/disability.

You also bring plague.

Frieda's had her third lurgy in almost as many weeks. This one a radical 'flu thing - high fevers, night sweats. THANK GOD the child can read. The Prisoner of Azkhaban, Little House on the Prairie and Ramona Beezy have all been consumed in a feverish frenzy on the couch.
I can't imagine her dreams.
She's been floppy and docile and ever so sweet. I had to confess to a friend that it has been lovely to get a chance to baby my big girl a bit. There was some back chat this morning though so she's on the mend.

You are the start of waking in the dark, cardigans at 4 and slippers by 5 all day. I came downstairs in proper shoes yesterday and Frieda immediately asked if I was going to a meeting. Working from home is so louche.

The door to the stoep stays closed more and more. Letting pets in and out consumes vast quantities of time and bargaining chips.
I start longing for winter curtains, for 'drawing in' and all those fun-sounding Northern Hemisphere autumnal things.
I might make an apple crumble after I post this.

April does like to bake.

You are also the month which houses our greatest day. Our shining hour. Today, Freedom Day.
But this year I'm not really feeling it. This year Freedom Day feels a little tarnished, our country feels tired and sad.

Quick: puppy!

April has brought us one of our favourite things.

You're an interesting month, April. I'm ready for my birthday month now though!