have I mentioned I love camping?

Two girl friends and I took our assorted kids camping this weekend.

Our husbands/partners were all otherwise committed and the trip we'd planned some weeks ago looked like it was going to fall through until we decided to go it alone and headed out on Thursday late afternoon (it was another long weekend here).

This is the second time in two months I've packed up the girls and taken them away.
Both times we've missed our fourth family member loads, but yet there's something so empowering about doing this on my own.

It really shows me how much they've grown, that the thought of looking after, and out for, both of them in a strange environment is not intimidating at all.

They are independent and adventurous and always up for new experiences, and I value that so much. For it allows me to be independent and adventurous, to broaden my (and thereby our) horizons, and after near-on 7 years of small people parenting, it's a massive corner to have turned.

All 3 of us had a great time, together and separately with our respective friends.
Some of my best childhood memories are of camping, and after trips like this one I like to think some of theirs will be too.

It was good timing too. After 3 sunny days, sunburnt and mozzie-bitten, we drove home into this ...

Sayonara summer, catch you on the flip side.

er ... what?

We're just finishing off our second long weekend in a series of three. Hard on the heels of the week long school holiday. With another public holiday on May 7th for the elections.

This sounds idyllic, and probably would be if I didn't have so much work to do, but frankly right now it's a pain in the arse.

I'm a mother, a wife, a housekeeper, myself and a service provider. I have four different clients. I have a limited number of working hours in the week. And now my weeks have a variable amount of days.

Frankly I'm feeling a little bit like this guy ... I think his expression says it all.

20 years today

I was 18. Voting for the first time, just like millions of my countrymen and women.

We were in the tiny seaside town where I grew up. In 1994 there were no designated voting stations. We pitched up with our green bar-coded ID book and voted. All of us.

It was heady, surreal and we knew it was HUGE - even without twitter, facebook, 24h TV, text messages or the internet, we could feel the vibe. Could feel the world's eyes, the enormous exhale, the teeth on edge, the fingertip tingling belly cramping slightly nauseous inducing excitement and apprehension: what next?

For us, what was next was to go down to the beach, huddle out of the rain in the deserted life-savers' shack, play cards, drink quarts of beer, smoke cigarettes, play djembe drums, and try and imagine how this would change the course of our lives.

On that grey and rainbow-hued day, I think this was kind of what I had in mind.

Frieda and her bestie - June 2013.

This country is so radically complex, but basically: humanity wins. Amandla.

how puppies are like babies, and also not

It's going to be puppy-heavy around here for a while. I mean, why wouldn't it be?

How puppies are just like babies:
~ they cry for no reason, have no control over their bodies, can't sleep through the night, get crayzeeee when they're hungry
and also not ...
~ you can ignore their crying (well I can, for a bit), they don't wear nappies (why? why not?), you don't need to nurse them at 3am, the hunger thing is just the same.

But they are in that ...
~ you can swaddle them (and it really works, especially at 3am!), if you don't shower during their morning nap you're screwed, you forget from one puppy to the next how much work they are ...
but also not because ..
~ you can put them in the bathtub to scrabble around while you shower, and then hose it down afterwards (puppy and bath), related: you don't have to sterilise everything they touch ...

They're just the same in that you can put them to sleep anywhere ...

... but mainly they're the same in that when you spend time with them you remember what a privilege it is to spend time with a young creature.

Puppies, like babies, don't come along all that often, and despite the work involved it's very special to watch a small thing grow.

Thank god puppies grow faster than babies though!

an abominable procrastination cake

Remember back when Red Velvet Cake was a wild novelty? Something to fuss over and perfect. The first recipe I ever used required some fancy chem-class-type fizzing of baking soda and red food colouring at just the right moment to acquire the correct texture, never mind colour, for an authentic Red Velvet experience.

These days we have this...

An abomination right? An overly-sweet abomination at that. AND the rose petals are not included! Pah.

But ... I happened to have this in the cupboard, and some leftover butter-cream icing in the freezer ... and it was Nonki's 40th birthday ... and I just couldn't get in to working today.

Naturally I blame this.

I mean ... really how ridiculously cute?

So! I baked.

And surprised Nonki with it when she brought the girls home from swimming. We all had tea and cake and sent the rest home with her for her kids.

Yes, I employ someone to look after my children while I bake her cake. Today I may have been the world's best boss.

But I sure wasn't the world's best employee!

PUPPY!!

Look what the Easter Bunny brought us ...

Orca. 5 weeks old.

'Cos every little girl deserves a puppy right?

With sharp, sharp little puppy teef.

And if you're going to get another one they may as well match!

party like it's 1998

It's shaping up to be a nostalgic year.

There was the cripple phase back in January when I went through old diaries and memories (husband and I had dinner one night back then talking about 'potatoes and porn', namely how we'd prepared the potatoes we were eating and my long-buried recollection of finding a friend's parents' porn collection - unrelated but indicative of how immersed I was in dredging up old memories).

Then there was revisiting my friend Adam, the old schmuck boyfriend, a 40th birthday lunch with a friend I spent many, many a happy afternoon with when we were littlies - and have hardly seen since (she lives abroad).

I made her this card, which kind of summed us up - perpetually dressed up, rock scrambling and beach exploring in the playgrounds of our youth.

Blasts from the past have abounded, and I've really been enjoying it.

We think we remember so much, but in truth there are really a handful of well-worn memories that we remember over and over again. There is so much more lying dormant, there but unacknowledged, and sometimes it takes a person, a smell, a picture, a conversation or an event to nudge those moments out of hiding, and then it all comes flooding back.

Last Thursday I went to a party. A revival of the super-duper 'Pickle' parties of my Varsity days. '96 to '98 Pickle parties were our jol, our crowd, our beat, our playground. The friends who DJ-ed back then were back in town and arranged a reunion.
It was magic.

Packed with faces I knew, but hadn't seen for years. Thumping with music my body instantly knew how to move to - and did!
Everyone was happy to be there, everyone grateful to recapture a feeling - an intersection of emotional and physical memory. Everyone was smiling, Everyone got it.
I didn't have a single 'what are you doing now' conversation. I don't know about anyone's kids or lack there of, I don't know where they're living now or what their home-owners status is.
We just hugged, smiled, danced.
We just existed in a space where none of that was relevant.
Just like 1998.

A perfect resurrection for Easter weekend.

the more things change, the more they ... you know

My ex-boyfriend contacted me through Facebook.

Those of you paying attention will know how extremely ex he must be (approx. 25 years).

He wrote to 'ask forgiveness' for his 'ass-hole-ness'. He was an asshole, but we were young and I probably was too so I brushed it off.
'Nothing to forgive.'

He persisted.
'I need you to accept my apology.'
'I need to know you've forgiven me.'
'I want to make atonement.'
There was more.

Yawn.

And then:
'I was a self-centred asshole back then, only thinking of myself.'

Yeah, glad to see you've done some work on that ...

sunday

Could we have had a nicer weekend?

I don't think so.

saturday

a home-baked cinnabun & love cappuccino from my husband

a decorated present depicting the birthday boy as a dinosaur-slaying prince, the illustrator as a caged fair maiden and her little sister as a fearless dino-taunter

a gorgeous dinosaur cake

and very clever dino-terrariums 

All this in the barmiest balmiest weather for April. We were swimming at 6 pm.