pinterest

Sometimes I love Pinterest for reasons not even Pinterest could have predicted ...

I'd call it 'subtweet' but the person I'm referring to isn't reading.

Man sits down at a bar. Small voice says, 'Nice shirt.'
Man looks around confused, catches the barman's eye who indicates with his head, 'It's the nuts,' he says, 'They're complimentary.'

Drum roll ...

The ability to take a compliment has become one of my measures of a person. The manner in which one receives a reasonable compliment speaks to your confidence, how comfortable you are in your skin or your stage of life - take it well and you're my kind of person.

I'm no gusher. If I tell you I like your laugh, your house, your hair or your mind, if I compliment your kids, your style, your ass or your driving skills, I'm being really sincere.

So it bugs me when people - adults - are too self-deprecating to take a compliment. Specifically people who have beautiful homes, good jobs, healthy families and the wherewithal to serve bloody good champagne.
I know that everyone has shit, I know that seemingly perfect lives can be deeply flawed, I know that people are not always who they seem.
But acknowledge your privilege. Count your blessings. Have the grace to take a good compliment on the chin.

Your hair looks amazing!

the first night

Tonight is the first one. The first soft, still, warm summers evening. It makes me so happy, but in a calm, almost nostalgic way.

It feels like Sunday night, this last night of September. It feels like a Sunday night at the end of a 2 week weekend. Not just because it's the last night before the 4th term starts tomorrow (back to school is very fucking cool when you're a work-from-home parent), but because the last few weeks have been so full.

I've spent the month writing for a blog project which goes live tomorrow. A blog site dedicated to breast cancer issues for the month of October. It's writing work which has come directly from blogging, and ironically from this one, not C is for Cape Town.

It's been incredibly stimulating and I've enjoyed the process immensely, although the subject matter is hugely sobering.

I was a bit side-tracked a week or so ago by getting sick though. A real nasty flu bug which wiped me out. I'm still coughing, and have just been googling all the kids meds we have in the house seeing if I can self-medicate this one. I do not feel like a GP visit (especially as I'm paying for psychoanalysis right now!) but I must be well by the weekend - I've a rock festival to attend! (I know!)

Then the school holidays hit, just 10 days long and jam packed full of action. We had 4 birthday parties in 4 days - two kiddies and two grown-up (perfect!). I baked and dressed up and sorted out gifts and meals and baby-sitters and schedules and it was all such fun, but how quickly these events recede into the distance in these crazy busy lives of ours.

Maybe it's all receded particularly quickly as I've just spent the weekend with FOUR smalls in tow (fact: being outnumbered by small children will cause brain cells to flee in indignation). My bestie's been here, with her 2.3 yr old and new 4 month old delight.

Charl was away on a bike rally so we borrowed my parent's 7 seater car and played Mormon wives for the weekend. It was completely wonderful, in a totally chaotic, nonsensical, relentless and extremely loud way.

My dear friend is right on the front line of toddler + baby craziness, a state I still remember so very well. It is incomprehensibly intense for anyone who's not been there, and such an eye-opener for me on how far I've come.

In some ways my days with the girls now are a complete walk in the park in comparison to then, although I do remind myself that it's just a new set of challenges really. But there's no doubt the physical demands on me are less, the personal space is broader and the reminder of this has left me feeling so free and, of course - because us parents are always such suckers - a little sad.

To be reminded of the exquisite purity of that moment when your hungry baby latches on to your breast. The happy grunt, the tiny hand patting you appreciatively, the eyes staring at you in gratitude, satisfaction and a little bit of what-the-hell-took-you-so-long.

I'll never feel that again, which is more than okay on every level except the deep thrum of nostalgia.

I lay next to Stella as she fell asleep tonight, my baby who seemed (and acted) like such a big girl these last few days. The night outside was soft and still, the first night, and also one of the last.

Such is life.

Hello summer.

these cats

These cats don't get photographed as much as they once did. Our black Khoki is increasingly wary of the children. This house is big enough for her to stay out of sight most of the day, until the girls are in bed and she slinks out to demand the attention she is due as our first baby. It's impossible to photograph a black cat at night.

And this little girl is very much getting on in years. Fritta, though nowadays mostly just called Ginger, is completely nonplussed by children, visiting dogs, vacuum cleaners or thunder claps. But rattle a plastic bag within a 3 room radius and she streaks off in an orange flash.

She spends more and more time in bed. As an elderly lady should be allowed to do.

I don't photograph them as much as I once did. But they are here.

f**king with my brain

I saw a clinic psychologist this morning. Someone who specializes in cognitive psych. It was somewhat reassuring to hear him say he's not really interested in my childhood, my history, my inter-personal relationships.
What interests him, is the neuron reactors in my brain. Specifically the ones which link toads to my adrenal glands.

Like Pavlov's dog, learnt behaviour links parts of your brain which weren't original joined. Bell = saliva. Toad = freak the fuck out.

And apparently, according to my guy Larry with his slow speech and his bright intense eyes and the somewhat off-putting wet corners of his mouth and completely refreshing ability (especially for a man of his years in front of a 'young-ish' woman) to use fuck in a sentence within the first 15 minutes (he was quoting someone but still I loved it), we can trick my brain into releasing that link.

We're on a 6 session strategy (after that, if I'm not 'cured', he carries on treating me for free), it seems a bizarre thing to spend money on. But we spent a whole lot more than that on this magnificent house on the lake, and I'm damned if I'm going to cloud my summers with fear and anxiety.
It's just not practical to have to drink 2 glasses of wine before I'll go out on the lawn after dark. It's time-consuming to have to send the dog out to sniff around the stoep before I'll step outside at night. It's just plain ridiculous to leave our outside workroom standing open all night because I forgot to go out and lock it up before dusk.

Larry and me, we're going to fix this thing.

Completely unrelated picture of a completely different creature. These ones I love.

pre-menstrual

Full and tender, I carry this cup from room to room. Nothing must jar it.

Not the indignant shriek of a child, not a stubbed toe, not the last drop of milk in the house one drop too little for my tea.
Not a dog underfoot or a page printed skew or a hair in my shirt tickling me.

Sometimes it's a heavy chalice, set with jewels and laden with images of womyn, carved with stories of childbirth and fecundity throughout the ages.
Other months it's as inconsequential and irritating as a discarded styrofoam cup on the side of the road.

But when it's brimming, it must be carried with two hands and a studied frown. Nothing else must be poured into it.

Not a concern for the future, not someone else's bad luck, not a newspaper headline which brings tears and the perilous danger of giving a fuck.

This cup must be balanced and managed and held, until it is ready. And then in a wave of relief and blood, I can put it down and get on with my life.

outside the courtroom

A woman came clack-clackety-clacking down the corridor in very high heels.

I was drawn to turn and look at her, smiled when I met her eyes. She looked back, her expression half blank, half defiant.

Why draw attention to yourself if you don't intend to engage?

Maybe this is why I wear sneakers so often. So as to be inconspicuous should I so wish, to have the choice as to whom I smile at or not.

Though arguably she still has that choice, even in heels.

I could totally take her in a foot race however.

27 June 2008

Frieda was just one. She and I had spent the afternoon at a friend's. I remember I'd had more than one gin and tonic. It was Friday and it felt that way.

We got home a little late for starting supper etc, and swooped straight through the house to the kitchen. I put Frieda in her high chair and started scrabbling for something to feed her.

The alarm had been on when we'd arrived, I'd disarmed it before we entered. The study door was closed but that didn't strike me as odd, we often closed it so Frieda wouldn't toddle in there unsupervised.

It was only when I tried to open the back door, and couldn't, that I realised the broom cupboard which stood just outside it was on its side. Then I saw all the broken glass and went cold.
Where they still here?

I grabbed Frieda and my phone and walked straight out of the house again. Stood in the bitter wind phoning my husband and the security company. I wrapped her close in my big jersey, my heart thudding through us both.

Turns out the burglar was long gone. He'd smashed the solid pane of the study window (having realised that the alarm worked with contact points on all the opening windows and doors), closed the door to the study and helped himself to everything in there - 2 laptops, a tablet, a bike jacket, a mobile phone, some cash etc.

A bloody fingerprint stained the strip plug he'd unplugged my laptop from.
I am so grateful I'd copied the photos of Frieda's 1st birthday to a flash drive to share with a friend.
He left a can of mace spray behind.
I'm so grateful we came home when we did.

He left some other fingerprints too. And the reason why I tell this story now is that tomorrow I go to court to bear witness against him. 5 years and another dozen charges later they've got him, and although I don't really see the worth of my testimony - I can't add anything to the original police report, I never saw him - I'll do what I can to help find him guilty.

We were 'lucky' to have only been burgled once in all the years we lived in Observatory. (Actually we were broken into twice but the other time the perp only got into our garden shed and took a dump - I was away working on a shoot so I guess that time just I was lucky!)

But I don't feel particularly lucky now as I have to leave home in the dark and rain tomorrow to spend the morning on a cold, hard bench in the unsavoury environment of the Cape High Court.
But Justice must be served right?

winter

There's a gecko on the outside of the sliding door, half a mm to the right and he'd be in danger of being squished, but he's been hanging on there for days.
Dude's too cold to move.

Each time I open or close the door I hold my breath and watch him, willing him to stay put. I open that door more than one would think in this weather, as various pets decide they need to be out and then, jesus christ no, back in.
All day I open and close the door for temperamental cats with iffy bladders just as all night I lift and drop the edge of the duvet for them to come in and out.

You know it's winter and you're a sucker when you prise yourself away from the warm back of your husband to make space for a cold and elderly ginger cat to wedge herself between you. The warmest place in the house. There's 2 of them in our bed these nights.

The draft from the ill-fitting edge of that sliding door cuts through the room like a knife. I stand sofa cushions upright in front of the gap and wedge them there with a dining room chair.
I've masking taped the keyholes of the west-facing doors.

Today I watched coots tumble-weed down the lake in the face of a bitter gale force wind. The water has white-capped waves which lap up the lawn. Our jetty has detached and undulates in the foam, whole palm branches and swathes of litter caught up against it.

Winter was a long time coming this year but she's here now. Oh yes she is.

on aging

I saw a photo of myself recently - a side-on of me smiling - and the lines around my mouth seemed to meet the crinkly lines from my eyes, drawing a circle around my face akin to those inside a tree trunk. An age line to count my years by.

Maybe it's short sighted of me (I believe that comes with age as well), but it so doesn't really bother me.

I've never been a `lotions and potions' kind of girl. I've bought one tub of anti-aging cream in my life - a panicked response to the first smile lines which appeared around my thirtieth birthday. I use a face cream with a SPF factor every day, but only because my skin feels tight and uncomfortable without it, not for any real hope of slowing the aging process.

I had my first facial a few months back. It was lovely, I really enjoyed the deep cleaning aspect of it, but after that I got a little bored with the host of creams and powders and 'deep tissue massage' thingies the therapist started applying to my face. Lying there with my eyes closed I was reminded of the scene in Love Actually where Rowan Atkinson's character is extravagantly wrapping the adulterous gift purchased by Alan Rickman.
How many more layers was this woman going to add to my face? A sprinkling of fairy dust maybe? A scoop of lavender? A cinnamon stick inserted in my nose?
At the end of the session she told me I should use a face cream with a higher aqua content, and suggested some complicated and radically expensive options. `Like aqueous cream?' I asked. She blanched.

I just can't get excited about that stuff.

And it's not like I've got particularly good genes in this department. I have wrinkles. I have bags under my eyes. I still get acne for gods sake.
But yet I can't bring myself to spend money on products to make me look younger (maybe I'm counting on the acne to do that ha ha ha).
I might be kicking myself in a few years time, but I reckon I'll take my chances.