fuck cancer

I've often seen this phrase used. Funny how it really rings true when you know someone who's just been diagnosed.
She's a friend, not one of my inner circle, but we met at University and I'm very fond of her.

She has two small children, a husband, a career, a newly-acquired dog, a wicked sense of humour, a beautiful life and now, very very serious breast cancer.

The last few days I've been feeling so, so sad for her, but today I got angry.

Fuck you cancer. Seriously, fuck you.

As if life isn't hard enough with the daily grind, the fears and concerns. The striving to keep ourselves and our families safe and healthy and steadily moving forward. As if our heads and hearts aren't full enough of doubts and fears and worries about car accidents and genetically modified shit and small bruised ego's and large unfulfilled dreams. As if it's not enough that those we love will grow old and die, that we can't pause the march of time, that our children will face hurt and disappointment and there's nothing we can do to prevent that.

Isn't it enough that we must arm ourselves with compassion and courage and strength just to get through the normal days, without some insidious invisible invasive cells creeping up, silently spreading until they're detected and the knowledge of them throws everything, every single little thing, into disarray?

I just don't understand.

stuck in the middle with you

I used to joke that while some people lived 'all over the world', we'd lived 'all over Obs', and that in many ways it was the same thing. I'm starting to realise that was truer than I'd thought.

After 20 years of living in small rural towns, a couple bunking with my parents while I was studying and then 15 living in Observatory (I've just checked the maths, I think that's about right), it seems I'm now experiencing urban, middle-class, predominantly white, mostly Christian, South African suburbia for the first time.

And it's ... not that interesting.

In fact, it's a little drab.

I realise now how unique life really is in Observatory. A diverse suburb never torn apart by the Group Areas Act, always integrated, always diverse.

It was easy while living under the rainbow of South African nationhood to assume that it arched over us all, encompassing our differences while in a weird way keeping us all on the same page. Living in Obs was our commonality, and that gave us the freedom to express our individuality.

I have no doubt that the longer we live out here in the 'burbs the more people we'll meet with shared interests beyond just our age, our breeder status, our common wish to bring our kids up safe and healthy. But I think they're fewer and further between.

In Obs I never felt I had to look this hard.

In Obs I never felt I was living a stereotype. In middle-class 'burbia the part-time working, 30-something, home-owning, Golf-driving, flip-flop wearing, under-her-breath swearing mother-of-two is the Queen of Stereotype and I seem to fit the part perfectly.

Where we live is still utterly amazing, but as we venture out finding schools and attending swimming lessons I'm encountering the curse of the middle classes ... the banal names, the fake Christians, the bad genes jeans, the lack of critical thought, the material 'must-haves' and the emotional taboo's. And it's ... a little drab.

I'll tell you what's not drab though. Getting on a boat in your pyjamas before breakfast to visit a flock of flamingos. To watch them take flight above you and wheel over your heard in a flurry of pink and black against a grey blue early morning sky. To look over and see their long legs reflected in the eyes of your daughter as she gasps in delight.

That's what I'll remember as I grit my teeth and ponder my identity next to a warm chlorine-and-pee soaked pool on Thursday. And as I try not to overhear the banal conversations about Jayden's Christmas wish list and how expensive horse-riding is these days and who's under-15 rugby team is the best and who's fucking who on the PTA (okay, I made that up - I'd love to be privy to that one), I'll try and remember too that we'd all rather be frolicking with flamingos than doing the school run right?

We all know there's more to life than the new store in the mall right?

Please tell me I'm right?

how I met your mother

I love love stories. Stories about how people met their significant others.

Okay, I love stories and people and love but the combination of the three, with a really good love story, actually makes my fingertips tingle.

Here's a good one I heard recently.

A couple met for the first time aged 10, on a church camp. Then, completely coincidentally, again aged 13, another church camp.
Both times they really hit it off, first as buddies, then as giggly self-conscious tweens.
After that they didn't see each other for a decade.

She went to university, fell pregnant and moved to another city to live with her parents and face life as a single mum.
He learnt a trade, married young, had a child and then a nasty divorce.

Completely by chance, when her baby was 8 months old, she and her parents visited a mission station in a remote part of the country. They stayed with the couple running the mission and she, by looking at the family photos on the walls, realised they were her camp buddy's parents. They all had a good laugh.

A few days after she got home she emailed them some photos she'd taken while staying there. He emailed her back.

8 months later they married. He adopted her baby and a few years later they had one of their own.

Such intertwining of coincidence and circumstance can only be fate right? And although not a believer myself I can absolutely understand how they see the hand of God in their story, working to bring them together.

Fate or God clearly they were meant to be. And that's totally romantic enough for me.

I'm seeing someone

Not really the kind of thing one admits to in 'public' right? But luckily my husband bored of my blog years ago and very seldom visits anymore.

I'm seeing someone. Someone who makes time for me, who really (really) listens, someone who I can be completely open with, who doesn't judge me. Someone who accepts me completely.

Truth is the relationship was short-lived, we're no longer an item. Maybe this is why I can speak about it more freely now.

Truth is she only really wanted to see me twice. True to my history in these matters, she only really needed 1 and a half sessions. I only really needed 1 and a half sessions.
1 in which to sob uncontrollably and throw all my metaphorical dirty laundry around the room, to say out loud those things we all have unsaid within our heads and hearts.
And then a full, introspective week later, another session to tell her how I removed the stains, washed and folded all those grimy unmentionables and were now able to pack them neatly away, fresh and clean for at least another 5+ years.

God, therapy is amazing. I'm back, and I'm feeling great.

ffs

I'm sitting here with sore hands from gardening. Yup, gardening. What's happening to me?

I'm a full blown domestic diva goddess who enjoys nothing more than hanging up laundry on my new line in the courtyard of my new house. I bake (okay, I always baked), but this time I bake with a goddamn view!
This time the sun streams in on my vintage stand mixer as I bake and listen to my children's voices echo across the lake and I feel a bit like this.

I feel a little like I don't know how I got this lucky. I feel a teeny-weeny little bit like it's all a dream and sometime soon we'll have to pack up and go back to Obs.

And in the night I feel a little like something bad might be heading our way because how can one life contain so much goodness?
I'm taking tranqs again. Living in paradise and taking pills for anxiety. How much more fucking white middle-class and indulgent can I get?

I promise I'm only going to do this once ...

... because a list this good deserves to be, um, listed.

Our new house has:

- a walk-in safe, complete with 3 ton door and combination lock (although no one knows the combination...)
- a semi-precious rock garden, with great hunks of Jasper, Amethyst, Rose Quartz, Crystal and more
- a dressing room, just for me
- an under-the-stairs wine cellar
- a double-garage and outside work room (which currently smells really bad, but it's there right?)
- a laundry room
- a tool shed
- a (falling apart) jetty
- a small sail boat with all accessories barring (ahem), a mast
- a frangi-pani tree ('cos it's not a home without one)
- a secret attic room (I know!)
- an internal staircase perfect for wild games involving a giant Pilates ball and two little girls
- an external staircase perfect for playing Rapunzel
- a mud room
- a stoep with a view so breath-taking it soothes away the most stressful of days
- a lake, though I may have mentioned that?
- a fairy garden
- a zillion built-in-cupboards
- a bay window for basking
and, if you don't hate me already ...
- an art room (though husband prefers to call it a studio), for all manner of glitter-fuckery and creative pursuits

Many (most) of these are in various states of disrepair and decrepitude. Many of these were unknown to us on purchase. Many (most) of these seem to come straight from a long-held childhood fantasy of living in a ramshackle double-story house with hidden nooks and crannies.
All of these are why I feel like the luckiest girl alive and think we may just live here forever.

And ever and ever and ever.

reality bites

So you know how I said our new place reminded us so much of our current home 9 years ago? And then I mentioned how we hadn't opened a cupboard or done any close examination before putting in an offer?

Yup, the reality of all that bit us in the bums yesterday.

Laid bare before us she revealed herself; wrinkles, liver spots, stretch-marks, scars, unsightly secrets of her long and active life.
A house without furniture is not a home, can't conceal its true self behind the soft furnishings and knick-knacks of the people who live there. An empty house is just a house, and a house whose most recent occupant has been a little old lady with failing eye-sight and flagging energy is a house which requires a lot of TLC.

In one of the winter's worst storms she maintained her dignity though, she showed us how she buffered herself against the slamming North Wester, held us warm as we watched the lake splash hard against its banks, throwing suds of foam up onto the lawn. She revealed unknown nooks and crannies, surprises both pleasant and ... not so pleasant.
She dared us to wallow in buyer's regret, or see her for all that she is, beneath her scarred exterior.

Between yesterday and our return visit today, in the sunshine, reality bit a little harder and the fact that this house is ours, ours to heal and paint and renovate, ours to love and live and grow in has sunk in for us all. And made us so happy.

We went back today and, as is our wont, we ripped out part of the kitchen, pulled up a carpet, walked through the place in surgical gloves and threw away ancient woolly toilet seat covers (shudder) and random left-behind crap.

She may still be empty until the end of the week, is not yet filled with our things, but already she's started to feel like home. Our house on the lake.

caffeine fix(ated)

Our coffee machine died a few weeks ago. It was our first co-habiting appliance, bought in 2000 - it had a pretty good run.

Over the years, as our coffee appreciation grew, we'd started using a stove-top Bialetti to make the brew, and kept the great black behemoth of a coffee machine out purely to steam and froth milk.

Then it packed up and we were without The Foam. This was a BFP (big farking problem).

And boy, did it open a can of worms.

In the last few weeks I kid you not when I say we've spent more time talking about coffee, coffee machines, how to get the best head (shut it), beans v ground, latte art etc, than anything else.

You Tube clips have been watched, product reviews have been read. Emails have been sent, experts consulted, machines have been bought and returned, arguments have been had and coffee-drinking habits have changed significantly - all this in pursuit of the perfect cup of home-brewed coffee.

Because it seems this is the most important thing happening in our lives right now.

This afternoon, when I called Husbandguy from the shops to consult (yet again) about which type of coffee I should buy I commented (yet again) on the ridiculous amount of time and energy we were putting into this. Never mind that we're facing A MAJOR MOVE in 10 days time.

His response? Some people have religion to get them through stressful times. Some smoke, some do crosswords, some knit and some game.

We, it seems, have decided to deal with this particularly monumental moment in our lives by immersing ourselves in the dark brew.

Besides, we wouldn't be sleeping well now anyway right?

Blink. Blink.

with fronds like these, who needs anemones*

*with apologies to Marlin, father of Nemo, for stealing the punchline of his only joke ...

I had occasion again recently to wonder what the hell is wrong with some women?

Women who invent/encourage/imagine/perpetuate all kinds of CRAP in order to power-play/over-dramatise/lord it over other women?

To be clear, none of this happened to me. I was just privy to some intel on it happening to others, and by serial-offenders no less, and it made me sad.

I don't understand this kind of one-up-bitchship. Or one-bitch-(wo)manship. I don't understand this shit.

A woman who decides to dislike another woman to the extent that she'll spread really vicious rumours about her, that she'll poison and often terminate any friendship between her partner and the boyfriend/husband of the girl she has it in for. That she'll spread the venom so thinly and widely that all kinds of other relationships are tainted and damaged in the process.

I can only see such actions as motivated by fear, depression, sadness and a damaged heart. I see them like that to try and make sense of them, but truthfully they make no sense at all.

here's me

It sucks great big hairy donkey nuts that I'm not posting here anymore. I need this space more than ever, and I keep telling myself I've not time to be here.

Truth is I don't have time to be anywhere right now so why discriminate?

I've learnt and re-learnt some truths about myself in the last couple of months.

1. I can't relax if there's nothing pending.
I had this problem when I was free-lancing, but it made more sense then. If I didn't have a job lined up I couldn't enjoy my down time for worrying about it. As soon as I got a booking, my down time disappeared and I beat myself up for not using it more wisely.

But I discovered during the weeks when our house was on show and closer to perfection than it (or any house in the future) will ever be again, that I couldn't relax.
There was no piles of clutter requiring my attention, no shit-hole of a study spewing chaos into my head-space, no DIY project half-done and nagging for attention. Nothing but clear, calm, immaculately styled (well, relatively) space and I hated it. It made me restless, and nervous, and weirdly ... unproductive.

Suffice to say since the day we sold the that picture changed, rapidly, and now in the midst of half-packed, half-sorted, half-assed houseness, I'm zinging with creativity.
And have no time to indulge it.

2. I suck at change.
Yeah, this one wasn't really a surprise either. You know those anxiety attacks I had before Frieda was born? Yup, I had a couple more of those.
And although I could draw up a pretty comprehensive list of where the anxiousness was coming from, truthfully there was only one source: shit was changing and I didn't like it.

While part of me is glad this whole house-selling/buying, transfer, packing, moving process is a process, I can't help but wonder if it all happened in a week whether it wouldn't be easier on the emotions.

3. Living in Obs makes me feel cool.
And moving to an area which has a reputation for being exclusive and wealthy makes me feel uncool.
At the beach the other day (where we did this which was totally cool), I was hesitant telling people where we were moving to - concerned that they'd assume we were ... what? Wealthy? Snobs?
Then all the way home I laughed at myself remembering the few times I'd felt embarrassed telling people we lived in Obs - concerned they'd assume we were ... what? Hippies?
For fucks sake Molly, grow a spine.

4. I'm a soppy, nostalgic hoarder.
Seriously, you should see some of the stuff I've kept for years and years. I've been dutifully opening sealed boxes and sorting through them to ensure nothing surplus moves with us, and I've had a couple of good laughs at myself and shed more than a few tears at the things I've found.
(And I'm wildly excited to re-read a vast number of favourite books I've unearthed. In fact, I've packed them all into the same box - it's to go straight into our new bedroom and onto my nightstand.)
(Because of course we'll be unpacked and settled in mere days and then I'll have nothing to do but read read read.)
(Sob.)

5. Packing appeals to my neglected spatial awareness skills.
Many different sized boxes, many many many many different sized things. Throw both at me and I'll astound you with my feats of spatial manipulation.
I always was very good at Tetris.