I recently got a new phone (Samsung Galaxy S3 woot! woot!) and started the process of getting my apps in order.
I spent most of last Friday night upgrading, re-installing and downloading some favourites, exploring some new ones (such a rocker, I know). It's been fun.
As with everything in my life though I haven't found the time to do all I want to do. I still have some standard message notification tones, don't know whether I've gotten an email, a text, a Whats App etc. It pings and I run to it, stroking it's cool, lithe casing (because of course I haven't found the ultimate sleeve yet) and trying to convince myself it's not somewhat ridiculously big (it is really).
But I quite like this two-yearly upgrade. The perfect opportunity to change and refresh my digital life. I haven't installed Google Reader yet, and am really enjoying reading blogs online and actually commenting - remember that? I haven't installed Twitter so only check that when I'm sitting in front of my PC, and as a result only really check the accounts I'm particularly interested in.
I haven't installed Evernote 'cos I'd stopped using it a number of months ago. Trimming the deadwood all round.
There are however some drawbacks, I don't have a proper calendar app yet and twice this week have managed to forget events or double-book myself. Amazing how reliant I'd become on my phone to keep my life in order.
And on that ... another unexpected result is that I've no idea when to expect my next period. I'd left that wholly in the hands of a 'period tracker' app - just clicking on the start and finish tabs and forgetting about it completely in between, until the app told me to expect the next one.
I've stared long and hard at our family (paper) calendar trying to remember when I had my last one but have drawn a total blank. Guess I'll just have to wait and see and maybe tune into my body more closely to let me know when it's imminent. So old-fashioned.
God, talk about a 1st world problem.
Friday, December 21, 2012
Sunday, December 16, 2012
fear
As South Africans we know about living in fear. Unfortunately we've reason to.
And I've often thought there is no worse fear than not feeling safe in one's own home. I'm not going to look for the stats but apparently we're one of the nations which spends the most on our home security - beams, bars, dogs and weapons, exorbitant monthly fees to security companies.
We've reached a point where one often feels safer in public, surrounded by people, then alone and asleep in one's home at night.
I've always thought that was weird.
But far weirder to not feel safe in public. To become a society which doesn't go to the movies, to shopping malls, to school for god's sake, for fear of lone psychopaths with semi-automatics, or coordinated terrorist attacks, suicide bombers or missile attacks from a neighbouring country. That is a whole different kind of fear.
Today I'll stick with mine thank you.
And I've often thought there is no worse fear than not feeling safe in one's own home. I'm not going to look for the stats but apparently we're one of the nations which spends the most on our home security - beams, bars, dogs and weapons, exorbitant monthly fees to security companies.
We've reached a point where one often feels safer in public, surrounded by people, then alone and asleep in one's home at night.
I've always thought that was weird.
But far weirder to not feel safe in public. To become a society which doesn't go to the movies, to shopping malls, to school for god's sake, for fear of lone psychopaths with semi-automatics, or coordinated terrorist attacks, suicide bombers or missile attacks from a neighbouring country. That is a whole different kind of fear.
Today I'll stick with mine thank you.
Sunday, December 02, 2012
productivity
There can be few occupations as unproductive as raising small children. Yes there's joy and drudgery and heaps of entertainment and utter exhaustion and the (arguable) benefit of being able to do it in your pyjamas etc, but productive? Not very.
Some would argue the proof is in the very long baking pudding, but even that you can't count on. Some of the best serial killers had at home parents.
I still can't quite get my head round how I can be so busy, for so much of the day and yet have so little to show for it in the end. A good home-cooked meal which everyone ate is often the highlight of my productive satisfaction. Add a spot of de-cluttering and I'm in ecstasies of achievement.
So when I manage to do this in a weekend, this one small thing, I'm beside myself.
Before: this very, very old desk - which used to be my change-table (as in to change my bum all those many years ago) - and spent 8 or 9 years rotting in our garden shed at the previous house ...
After: a good clean and drawers all freshly painted.
It's not a thing of any great beauty, and for that reason I can't promise I'll get round to painting the rest anytime soon, but it suits my small deskular needs and I couldn't live with that green for a moment longer.
I even rubbed soap along the wooden drawer rails inside and can happily report that old trick works wonders. Added bonus that the desk now smells clean and fresh as well as looking a whole lot better.
The room in which it stands was the previous owners home office, complete with wood paneling and cork floor for that fetching headmaster's office look. For now it's my study, and our art room, and perfect for flinging paint and good ideas.
I had a happy realisation while painting those drawers too (for isn't that the real benefit of doing something vaguely creative/crafty or DIY-ish, the time it gives your mind to wander and think freely?), I've got two and a half years until I turn 40.
And I pledge to myself that by then I'll be doing something a whole lot more 'productive', whatever that may be.
Some would argue the proof is in the very long baking pudding, but even that you can't count on. Some of the best serial killers had at home parents.
I still can't quite get my head round how I can be so busy, for so much of the day and yet have so little to show for it in the end. A good home-cooked meal which everyone ate is often the highlight of my productive satisfaction. Add a spot of de-cluttering and I'm in ecstasies of achievement.
So when I manage to do this in a weekend, this one small thing, I'm beside myself.
Before: this very, very old desk - which used to be my change-table (as in to change my bum all those many years ago) - and spent 8 or 9 years rotting in our garden shed at the previous house ...
After: a good clean and drawers all freshly painted.
It's not a thing of any great beauty, and for that reason I can't promise I'll get round to painting the rest anytime soon, but it suits my small deskular needs and I couldn't live with that green for a moment longer.
I even rubbed soap along the wooden drawer rails inside and can happily report that old trick works wonders. Added bonus that the desk now smells clean and fresh as well as looking a whole lot better.
The room in which it stands was the previous owners home office, complete with wood paneling and cork floor for that fetching headmaster's office look. For now it's my study, and our art room, and perfect for flinging paint and good ideas.
I had a happy realisation while painting those drawers too (for isn't that the real benefit of doing something vaguely creative/crafty or DIY-ish, the time it gives your mind to wander and think freely?), I've got two and a half years until I turn 40.
And I pledge to myself that by then I'll be doing something a whole lot more 'productive', whatever that may be.
Friday, November 23, 2012
self promotion are us
Thought I'd mention that the giveaway I'm doing over on the other blog is open to readers all over the world, like, all over.
So if you've a little girl (or little boy so inclined) in your life, head over there to check out how to nab this bit of cuteness.
And don't say I never gave you nothing for free.
So if you've a little girl (or little boy so inclined) in your life, head over there to check out how to nab this bit of cuteness.
And don't say I never gave you nothing for free.
Saturday, November 10, 2012
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.
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.
Monday, November 05, 2012
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?
Thursday, October 18, 2012
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.
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.
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
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.
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.
Monday, October 01, 2012
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'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?
Monday, September 17, 2012
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.
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.
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