ex-spike

For nearly 3 weeks I had a dead hamster in my freezer.

Spike, the innocuous grey and white dwarf hamster Frieda got for her 8th birthday, succumbed a few months short of the 2 years we were warned hamsters usually last.
I ... didn't really get the hamster thing. He was kinda cute, very soft, but more likely to bite one on the sensitive web of skin between your thumb and forefinger and leave a string of turds down the front of your shirt than anything else.
His cage ponged and his wheel squeaked all night.
We had to keep the girls bedroom door closed all the time for bull terrier and cat risk.
Except for the couple of times we didn't.

Spike's most noteworthy achievement, in his small life, was to not once but TWICE ward off attack by voracious bully. Orca just couldn't resist that little guy.

#hamsterwatch

Very possibly the stress contributed to his shortened life span. Spike got steadily more crabby and less lovable. His fur lost its lustre and that wheel didn't squeak as energetically at night. One morning I realised he was really not happy. I called the vet to warn him I'd be bringing in a hamster for euthanasia, I prepared the girls (home for the holidays and remarkably - worryingly? - unfazed), I kinda berated myself for not being butch enough to just hold a ball of socks over the little guy's face until it was over, but call me 21st century soft if you will, I just couldn't do it.

And by the time I got upstairs to fetch him it was basically all over. He was lying in the sawdust, in a coma I think, occasionally a limb twitched but he seemed peaceful and that to move him would be more traumatic than to just close the door, tip toe away and come back later.

No more caged pets please.

Husband felt we needed a proper burial and so, in a box and a bag, into the freezer went Spike.
And then we forgot to bury him.
And the next night we all got home too late.
And the next day is was raining, or something.
And then it was rubbish day and I informed the family I was going to send Spike off in that great wheelie-bin to the sky.
And then I forgot.
And then the next rubbish day was Easter Monday and we were away.
And then finally, today, after that box had been opened a couple of times by morbidly fascinated children, after I'd shuddered more than once getting ice for a drink or scratching around for supper makings, after we'd had a very naughty but delightfully squirmy imagining about a ... hamster smoothie ... I managed to get him out, in time for rubbish collection.

RIP Spike.
No more caged pets.

the grit

A friend told me my blog has been looking a little squeaky-clean of late. Enviable family holidays away, gorgeous sunny birthday parties in the middle of winter, daughters who read all day and stay out of my hair, birthday lunches with lovely ladies ... yeah, it's been a wonderful few months ... but we all know life ain't like that all the time right?

I just don't really like to moan, don't like to come into this space with the blaah. Not that I haven't in the past, but the thing is, what do I want a record of?
The warm 'n fuzzy moments of my life - the big events, the everyday love, the heart-stopping moments of ordinary awe and immense gratitude?

Or, do I want to remember how in the last few weeks I've also ...
... had two jobs canceled (turns out they couldn't afford the full ass) and all the related financial stresses
.... been back and forth to the vet 5 times with my beloved Lego. She's had a big skin sarcoma biopsied, then removed, then re-stiched, then re-bandaged and re-medicated. Her little brother was responsible for the second round of stitches and bandages. Resulting eventually in this:

... managed The Cone: rearranged furniture, placated a seriously unhappy pup, had my shins smashed into over and over, kept the food bowl filled just so so he could use it and any number of times been called on to extricate him from some cone/bush/chair jam, once involving dog shit
... tackled our first case of head-lice in the family (not bad for 8 years of parenting huh?), which involved copious research, laundry, tumble-drying EVERYTHING, quarantining 2 black bags of soft toys, spray, comb, shampoo, check and repeat. Over and over and over and over and over.
... managed my annual seasonal asthma issues, lots of wheezing and discomfort and fretting at 1am about dying of emphysema until I get myself to the doc and hand over a lot of money in exchange for the welcome news that it's really not that bad, and the right (expensive) meds to manage it. Boring.

So ja, I could've blogged about all that for some perspective right? Life is not all hoorahs and polished apples.
But we know that, you know that, and I know that despite there being some challenges and tedious days of soul-destroying adulthood, my life is pretty damn fine.

It's more than fine, it's mine - and it's the best life I could be living right now.

this may #2

Tomorrow I'm off on my now annual pilgrimage to Joburg. That great diverse urban behemoth to the north which lots of Capetonians like to feel superior to but I LOVE to visit.

Also home to my bestie and her adorable smalls whom I haven't seen since September and her equally adorable husband whom I haven't seen since last year.
And 5 cats.

All of whom together could not possibly produce as much poo as I've had to deal with this last week.
Hashtagpuppy.
Not poo I'm responsible for anyways.

Last May I couldn't wait to get there, to escape my life and my trying small girl and the mundane humdrum of too long spent full-time parenting and a persistent cough I'd had for weeks.
Like pioneers of old I was keen to 'take the prairie air' for my consumption.

This May I'm racing to hit deadlines before I leave and popping vitamins and writing up lists for my au pair and feeling a little guilty about the Out of Office message I'm leaving in cyberspace to no doubt disgruntle the hordes of delegates who enjoy 'reaching out' to me on a daily basis to find out what the weather will be doing in Cape Town in June, or whether the hotel we've booked has humidifiers in all the rooms.
Seriously, 1st world problems are a real thing ...

Last May the surprising find after my 4 days in Johannesburg was how much my big girl missed me. I'd thought it would be Stella but in fact Frieda did some real pining.
This May it looks like it'll be the same.
Turns out my eldest, my independent self-sufficient and sunny child, still misses her Mummy. Bless.

Yesterday afternoon at 4:30, with a scant half an hour work time left in the day, I came out of my office for some reason and ended up romping on the lawn with both kids until the sun went down.
The emails called, but my heart called louder.
'We haven't done this for ages Mum,' says Frieda. 'These days you're always working or cooking supper.'

They've seemingly adapted so smoothly to the new normal. Au pair 3 times a week, Granny once and the rare Friday afternoon with me. Weekends are full of family time, mornings and evenings and stolen moments throughout the day when possible.
But as adults we tally up the time spent in hours or days and think it looks sufficient, considering the circumstances. For the smalls, used to big blocks of daily dedicated Mum time, just a couple of days without that becomes an age.
This time of intense work has taught me much about the challenge of the working parent, and while I have, and am, enjoyed the professional affirmation immensely, I'm really grateful I'm still doing this freelance, and really, really looking forward to a time of unstructured US.
It'll come again very soon.

But for now I need to stretch those heartstrings just a little further. This trip to Joburg is work and play, so I appease myself with that, and know without a doubt that a whole weekend with Dad is actually just what they all need. Junk food and You Tube and puppy-romping and Daddy Gym.
They'll have a ball.

As will I! See you on the flipside.

bad, bad friday

The first inklings actually happened yesterday, Thursday, when at an unprecedented early hour, and just a scant 45 min after we'd gone to bed, the Baby awoke demanding her first feed at 11.30pm. Simultaneously husband broke out in a fever, I got the dread feeling that I was getting the same ailment as him, and the Child started up her hacking cough from her bedroom across the passage, a cough which was develop fairly rapidly into cries for 'Mummmyyyyyy'.
'Twas then that I knew it would be Bad Friday.

The feeling grew throughout the night as every hour it seemed one of us would wake with some or other complaint, but had I been psychic I would actually have known back on Tuesday evening, when I fell prey to a random 24 hour stomach bug.
Because, of the smorgasbord of ailments currently on offer in our house: sinusitis, chest infection, tonsillitis, bladder infection and radically grumpiness, the one Stella chose to embrace was, of course, the shits.

She rendered a display on our cream bed linen which would've made Jackson Pollack a little envious. She projectile vomitted from her bendy chair on the table onto the black slate floor so that it seemed a flock of seagulls had spent the morning in the kitchen.
By midday I had a full laundry load of soiled clothes and blankets in the washing machine. She's currently asleep under one of her hooded towels, with a stack more of them standing by for whatever the night may hold.

But it was in the afternoon, with a swollen and aching throat, shaky limbs, my ears still ringing from Frieda's piercing screams to 'COME WITH YOU MUMMY', as I sat in the waiting room of the emergency ward with Stella, while she filled my cleavage with yet another load of regurgitated milk, that I really, really knew: Bad, Bad, Baaaaaad Friday.

Stella is fine, I've just got to keep feeding her and cleaning up after her 'til she gets better, Frieda recovered from the trauma of being left behind but still has her cough, husband kept his head down and more importantly, his cool, and got us through supper and bath time relatively incident free, and now it's 8.30 pm and I'm dousing myself with breastfeeding friendly drugs (read: highly unsatisfactory medicine) and going to bed to weep a little into my Orla Kiely's.

The Easter Bunny better have a truckload of chocolate heading our way.

weekend adventures and whale love

On Saturday morning I had reason to head out of town to attend an event up the coast. Due to high temperatures and excessive grouchiness I left Child home with Husband and set out on my own with the iPod set to stun and the delicious anticipation of a few hours to myself.

All was going well 'til I hit some hellish beginning-of-the-school-holiday traffic but just the fact that I wasn't sharing an over-packed SUV with a bunch of kiddies and their assorted paraphenalia was enough to keep my spirits up.

At last I broke free and got onto one of the most beautiful roads in the Cape (and this from a place with many, many exceptional roads), Clarence Drive (follow the link for some images which just about vaguely do it justice).

I've had a life-long relationship with this road. It was the most direct route from the small village where I grew up to anywhere resembling civilisation and when I first started school one of my parents would drive me, and a smattering of other (English speaking) local kids, along it to school and back everyday. We'd leave super early and I have memories of the drive in all kinds of weather, through all seasons. We saw baboons, seals, penguins, whales and once, a porcupine, all on the way to school. An education in itself. Less romantically I also remember many hours of car sickness along the drive's windy (and windy) bends ...
I practically learnt to drive on this road too, or at least perfected my technique. Through high school we braved it to and from a night out in the 'big city' (the next town, just enough bigger than ours to count as glamorous) and one of my favourite memories of the road is driving it very slowly in the rain while my cousin hung out the window manually operating the bust windscreen-wipers. Good times.

I was in a bit of a hurry this time though, so sped past two scrapping adolescent baboons without slowing down to watch, executed some masterful over-taking of slow tourist types and, with a pang of regret, had to keep driving even when I spotted a whole pod of whales close to shore in one of the bays.

I got to my destination with minutes to spare, just in time to proudly watch my Dad launch his new book, the biography of a wonderfully eccentric botanist who discovered all kinds of gorgeous fynbos in the region. I saw lots of people I've not seen since I was a child, had many little old ladies patting my baby bump and my cheek and reminiscing about how I used to run round their gardens stark naked. Ah, more good times.

Then after a huge cream tea and with a gathering storm darkening the sky, I headed off back home at a much more leisurely pace. And discovered the whales still frolicking in the bay.

Southern Right whales are an inherent part of my childhood. They come to the Cape every year between May-Oct to calve and the arrival of the whales was always a big deal for us. Spotting the first one of the season was an event celebrated with ice-cream, long cold windy walks along the coastal paths to spend time with them was part of our winter routine.
I have memories of watching them jumping and jumping and jumping out to sea, of sitting on the rocks with a giant whale eye surfacing just metres from us. I've countless surfer friends who tell tales of suddenly realising they were surrounded by them just beyond the break, I've one friend who had a whale surface right under him, lifting him on his board right up into the sky.

But since moving to the city I've not had nearly as many opportunities to hang out with whales, so on Saturday that's exactly what I did.
Still plugged into iPod, with no camera to distract me with trying to get a great shot, I stood on a rock for what felt like hours, being buffeted by the strong stormy gusts, and occasionally spat on by small flurries of rain, hanging out with whales. A big pod of mothers and calves, sheltering in the bay from the choppy seas further out, rolling and splashing and waving their tails, calling out to each other with those distinctive deep and melodius whale calls. Bliss.

After a while I noticed a path down through the milkwood trees, which seemed like it would get me closer to the sea, and thereby closer to the whales. I gamely set off, with the branches crashing round my head, but as soon as I got a little way I realised it was quite skanky down there, lots of rubbish lying around, and at a bend I saw that the path came to a dead-end so I quickly turned around to get out of there.

And turned straight into a branch. And poked my eye quite badly. And stumbled backwards. And by god very nearly stood in a pile of human shit. And had a little dry heave. And scrambled back up the path as fast as I could!
And waved goodbye to the whales with one streaming throbbing eye and retreated to my car out of the wind.

Stinky vile humans.
Lucky old whales.

But a couple of hours later, home to crawl into bed with Husband and Child curled up asleep together, to have lovely dahl and home-baked bread for supper, to watch a movie on the couch with my beloved, I was feeling that maybe human life wasn't so bad afterall ...

writing on the walls

I've mentioned before how much I like living in a part of town where people paint on the walls. In a suburb of thinkers, students, activists and drama queens ~ many of whom seem to like to live out loud.

I've also said how I love that South Africans have such a strong tradition of political commentary, often expressed through satire. This trait kept many people sane through the apartheid years, and I'm pleased the trend still seems to be alive and well.

This professionally printed poster went up in a random shop window within days of South Africa refusing the Dalai Lama a visa, and remains there still.

Ja, wtf was up with that?? 

And then, just days after we got our new President (he of a dubious legal past), these went up all over the 'burb. 

And I had to include this one, also a new addition. A simple Peace sign. Nice.

Of course I nearly stood in dog poo twice while taking these pics, and I drove from site to site 'cos I didn't want to risk walking with my camera on my own. And I got some broken glass lodged in my shoe. 

But hey, sometimes I think I'd still rather bear all that than live in a suburb filled with fake Tuscan architecture and whiny middle-class whingers.

the other one about camping

The thing about camping is ... you never know what you're going to get.

A good camp is a thing of wondrous beauty and infinite soul-delight. A bad camp is, well, pretty shitty.

This was a bad camp. And extremely shitty.

Herewith a seasoned camper's guide to seasonal camping:

1. Rule 1: Be Game.

Big storms predicted? Bah. Potential very cold conditions? Bah. Arriving after dark and setting up camp with a small child? Whatever.

What's the thing about camping? Yup, you never know what you're going to get. But if you don't leave the house, you'll never find out.

Turns out - in this case - that what we got was a dark dank field, miles from anywhere, with no proper signage, no hot water (which we were promised), no running water (except from the sky - in buckets), and a veritable CARPET of cow shit. Which the puppy thought was delicious.

The next morning. Still raining. We'd picked up a lot of poo. 

Made me view those brownies a little askance. But only for a minute.

2. Rule 2: Be Prepared.

And if not, be innovative.

Such as, when feeding your small child a picnic supper on the front seat of the Jeep in the dark and pissing rain, and on discovering that you have no spoon and that to get one would involve getting wet and covered in cow shit and maybe the dissolution of your marriage, make a plan by locating said child's toy box in the back of said Jeep and feeding her yoghurt off a small plastic spade. 

3. Rule 3: Stay Upbeat.

I mean, it's not like you're going to turn around and drive home right? Not after packing all afternoon and driving for hours and getting all excited and finding someone to feed the cats. And bah-humbugging in the face of everyone's dire predictions that you'd be rained out ... cough ...

Nah, you push through the rough patch and the next thing you know the tent is pitched, the child is peacefully asleep, it's stopped raining, someone's gotten a bonfire going and you're holding a glass of wine. And right then you're really happy to be there.

Of course the puppy's still eating cow shit but hey ...

4. Rule 4: See the Beauty.

Protea Aurea - isn't she utterly beautiful?

'Cos regardless of what kind of camping experience you're having, you're outdoors see, and ergo there'll always be something beautiful. 

5. Rule 5: Know when to Quit.

And pack up the kid, the dog, the wet and shit-bespattered tent, and make haste to a friend's beach-house for the rest of of the weekend.

forest path

I've been reading about a Week of Paths here & here, and like Julochka I couldn't focus on this for the whole week (I know, I know but I've had a sick kiddie ok, I can show you the x-ray of her ginormous adenoid if you don't believe me), but we did get out for a forest ramble this morning and I took these.

Something was up with the ISO setting on my camera, but I quite like the sparkly effect.

This is the wonderful Newlands forest, just a hop, skip and a jump from suburbia - you gotta love Cape Town!

The weird part is you can hop & skip through this long subway under the busy M3, thereby avoiding having to cross said busy highway by car and added bonus; unlike most subways in CT this one doesn't smell of urine!

Only thing about Newlands Forest... it's very well-used so there can be a bit of a dog poop issue. And y'all know how I feel about that!

the poop chronicles: chapter 2

So, what, 6 months later or something, I'm back with a quick update and then to permanently, for now, change the tone of this blog.

The Husband, in an attempt to keep the neighbourhood rogue tom-cat from pissing on his bike cover, purchased Get Off, one of those sprays which claim to keep cats & dogs away from the treated area.
This seemed to work so well on his cover that he started spraying our drive-way gate, to deter dogs with lazy%&*!!owners from pooping there.

Imagine my amusement a few weeks later when I noticed that our drive-way had been remarkably clear for some time? Then a short glance up the pavement revealed that a scant few metres away, our neighbour's drive-way was totally besmirched, covered in poop!
Proof that this product not only prevents dogs from pooping where it's sprayed, but also causes a spontaneous bowel release just a bit further down the drag?

Wha ha ha ha ha.

However, I should really start spraying the neighbour's gates too... 
Posted by Molly at 10:16 PM Sunday, August 17, 2008

the poop chronicles: chapter 1

You know that dog poo is a problem when you find walking in the road safer than walking on the pavements. 
What I especially love is driving through dog poo when pulling into my gate, and then spreading it all the way up the car port and having to hose it down while simultaneously having to keep it off your shoes and try not to retch from the stench....
That occasion led me to pen the following:

 

I soooo badly wanted to stick it up outside our gate!

You can understand therefore why I had a giggle when I found these:


Love the creative use of inverted commas, or inverted 'comments' as I once appropriately heard them called.

And my personal favourite...

courtesy of www.curbed.com 

Posted by Molly at 10:30 PM Sunday, January 27, 2008