Good-bye...

I have finally faced facts and accepted that my bloggy mojo is gone for good. So I've decided to call it a day on the blog. Just wanted to pop in to say "Bye" and to thank all my readers for the comment luv you have sent my way in the past couple of years. xx

Recipe for a perfect day

Today has been one of those blissful days that stands out from all the other grey, samey days around it.

* I woke up, bright and early this morning and waffled around the house doing my own thing. I absolutely love a day that begins with solitary me-time - even if that time is spent putting washing in the machine, feeding the pets and loading the dish-washer. The bottom line is I need that time alone with my thoughts at least once a week.

*The sun is shining, the sky is blue and the sea is jaw-droppingly gorgeous. A perfect Summer day on the South Coast of South Africa.

* I went to the shops (very briefly, fortunately) and happened upon a Terry's Orange Chocolate.

* Grant made us a couple of the most divine Pina Coladas. I'm loving this newly discovered talent of his and I have a strong feeling that this is going to be The Summer of The Cocktail. Oh yes, bring it on!

* For lunch we had a homemade prawn salad which was unbelievably delish.

* After lunch I retreated to my bed with a book and the Terry's Orange Chocolate. Bliss.

*Paula joined me on the bed and we painted our nails and talked about Robert Pattinson. A lot.

*Later on this evening we are going to the movies to see that gorgeous creature in action. I feel a bit like an over-excited teenager and I'm loving it. New Moon here we come. Team Edward all the way :-)

What a perfectly lovely day!

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The only downer of the day was that Paula discovered the Top Secret, Extra Special, Big Surprise, Christmas present I have bought her. The little wretch!

I am extremely good at keeping a straight face when I want to pull a stupid stunt. Take this morning for example: I totally convinced Paula that I had discovered that the much coveted New Moon movie tickets I bought on-line 2 weeks ago were actually for last night instead of tonight (this would be a crisis of note as the movie is sold out all weekend and all her friends have tickets for the show this evening, vitally important that she should be there!!). I kept a perfectly straight face, looked completely devastated and even swore a little to keep things authentic. The girl was beside herself, for the entire 30 seconds that I managed to keep up the act!

Then why, oh why, can I not keep a straight face when it really counts?! This afternoon Paula came bounding up to me and announced that she had just thought of something she really, really wants for Christmas: A "Team Edward" T-Shirt! I, in fact, hit on this bright idea last weekend already and bought her the very thing on Tuesday in an auction on e-bay. I have been secretly hugging myself with excitement all week and picturing her face when she opens it on Christmas morning. The surprise, the delight!! Well that was the plan. My stupid face totally let me down. I swallowed hard, looked vaguely in her direction and muttered "Yes, that would be a lovely Christmas present..." Then I gave her a hug, trying desperately to look nonchalant, but evidently looking completely dumb, because she took one look at me and said "You've already bought me one, haven't you?" I tried so hard to look her in the eye and deny it, but there was no way I could pull it off, so now she knows..... Damn, damn, double damn!!!

Hellllloooooo.....anybody out there.......???

I have not blogged for a month. A whole month! Bad, bad blogger!

If you're wondering why, and you want a straight-forward, honest answer, I have to tell you it's because my life is a bit of a train wreck at the moment. Nothing dramatic or earth-shattering going on, it's just.... me. I will admit it to you and you alone, I am being an hormonal, horrible cow at the moment - but don't tell the family, because I have cunningly (love that word!) convinced them that it's all their fault.

Life has just been so sucky at the moment. I know you are dying for me to elaborate (please say you are, because I am dying to elaborate!), so I will:

The weather has been abysmal. I now know for absolute certain that I could not live in the UK for any length of time (something I've always secretly kind of hankered after, after our aborted attempt at emigration) I have no doubt that I suffer from Seasonal Affecive Disorder (is that what it's called? I think so) We have had grey, rainy day after grey rainy day and it is driving me stark staring mad!

My children are all writing exams. Rox finished today on the very day that Paula started. Impi is writing matric and let's just say that science and maths are cause for concern.... The problem is that I take this way more seriously than they do, well apart from Paula who is a darling mini-me.

I am living with on-going genocide happening in my very bedroom. The cats are killing bunnies like you will not believe and bringing them into my house to boot. It is horrible. What really gets me down is that they look as happy as Hugh Hefner at a gang-bang while they are doing it. Oh my word and I love these animals (the cats and the bunnies) it is KILLING me!

There is this thing going on which involves some of my Zulu compatriots planning to kill a bull bare-handed by strangling it and gouging it's eyes out. It apparently happens annually, but this is the first time I have got to hear of it and it's upsetting me something terrible. It's called the First Fruits Festival. I know this has no direct bearing on life as such, but it's bugging me and making me more irritable than I already am. Which, by the way, is very irritable indeed.

There are Particular Family Members in my life that are behaving badly. Can't go into too much detail in this public forum, but suffice it to say that I would rather they were slightly more sensitive than the back end of a rhinoceros. That would be nice.

Okay, that's enough for now. Got to go and watch Private Practice.

Love you all and I WILL be back!! Trust me!

Disgusting! Really, really disgusting post

As you will know if you've been reading this blog for any length of time, I am a complete naff. I am scared, grossed out or nervous of just about everything. Geckoes included. Living on the South Coast of Kwa-Zulu Natal, geckoes are everywhere and where they aren't their poop is. Horribly disgusting little creatures. They love to creep around the ceilings with their pinky-grey-brown semi see-through bodies, purely to torture me. I'm always scared they're going to plop down on top of me. With good reason, seeing as about 16 or 17 years ago one did.

Picture the scene: It was almost bed-time and Grant had gone into the kitchen to make tea, I was sitting in the lounge, clothed only in my nightie (I know, too much info, but it's relevant to the story, so bear with me), reading a book. Next thing a gecko fell off a picture frame, right down the back of my nightie. Oh my word! For a moment I completely lost my marbles, ripped my nightie off and began to wave it around my head, shrieking and dancing around the middle of the floor. Grant came tearing into the lounge and stood gazing at me open-mouthed. Well wouldn't you? I could just see him thinking "Finally, she wants to play stripper fantasy games - I like it!" It took quite a while for him to get out of me exactly what I was up to, I was completely speechless for at least 5 minutes. So I don't have a great track record with geckoes.

Now that we have cats, I am presented with gecko corpses on a daily basis. To my mind, the only thing worse than a live gecko is a dead gecko or a piece of one. Eeuuuuw! The cats just love to hunt them, they'll go to enormous lengths to stalk them (see below) with an incredibly high success rate.

Pepsi on top of the grandfather clock.

Last night I was sitting in the lounge chatting to my Dad and Grant, unconsciously playing with something with my bare toes, picking it up, rubbing it under my feet (truly I have no idea quite why I was doing this...need to see a shrink!) We'd been sitting there for ages, when we got up to go through to the dining room. As I stood up I suddenly became aware that I had been playing with something with my toes, I bent down to see what it was and there it was, between my toes ......... shudder, shudder, shudder.... I realised that all this time I had been fondling a large, dead gecko with my feet. Total freak out! These great big shudders kept going right through my body - I still get freaked out just thinking about it. EEEEeeeek!

Me again.....

You must be getting SO tired of me ranting and raving and moaning and groaning...... I promise this will be the very last negative post for at least a week. Watch this space for a very upbeat post about everything that's making me happy soon, soon!

Today, however, I have to have a gripe because I am royally peed off.

Reason being that some silly ar$e has made my daughters all nervous and scared in their own home. And I just hate that. To me your home should be a place where you feel comfortable, relaxed and nurtured. You should be able to go to sleep at night without feeling scared. I know, I know..... I live in South Africa and nervousness goes with the territory. But really, until Saturday, apart from Rox who lives in a perpetual state of anxiety regarding her safety, we felt relatively safe in our house at night.

On Friday night Paula slept over at her friend's house, which is just a couple of roads away in our neighbourhood. My friend Tania (the mom) woke up in the early hours and heard a noise in the passage, got up and came face to face with an intruder. Thankfully and surprisingly, he looked her in the eyes and began to back away and then made a run for it. The police were called and arrived, with dogs, in 10 minutes, but were unable to find the intruder. He got away with the contents of their wallets (over R1000), and a laptop. He'd entered by bashing in the burglar guards on a window in the lounge. I can't stop thinking about how much worse it could have been.

At the time Paula seemed totally unfazed, she was just really mad at being woken up from her sleep! (This is a girl who loves her sleep) But yesterday she was unhappy about staying at home in the afternoon while Rox and I went for a walk ... not like Paula at all. Grant was away last night and Rox got hardly any sleep. She woke up in the night convinced there was someone in the lounge and was up and about searching out the baddies.....

It makes me so mad that some shameless criminal (Tania said he didn't look a day over 16!) has made us feel all vulnerable and anxious. I hate it. If I could lay my hands on him, I would wring his neck for him! AND spit in his eye!

About that deleted post....

So some of you will have noticed that I deleted my previous post? Just wanted to let you know that I haven't gone out and committed a murder ;-)

I ummmed and ahhhed about deleting the post. I thought Rox might have wanted me to delete it when she read it, but funnily enough she didn't, in fact she said something along the lines of "You go mom!", Paula rapped me over the knuckles about my bad language (blush, blush), but also felt it was a valid post. But eventually I decided it would be better to pull it. So I did.

This is exactly the reason why I sometimes have my doubts about keeping my blog going. I want my blog to be real, to be true to what's going on in my life. I don't want it to be some fake, prettied- up version of my life, I want it to be about the real me, warts and all, the moody, stubborn, sometimes bitter and twisted, often bitchy, but usually nice me - because, truth be told, that's who I am....but the frustrating thing is it can't be. What's going on in my life is generally related to one or other family-member and I don't think it's really fair to spread their lives all over the internet, tempting but not fair. The bits of their lives that I feel completely comfortable about sharing are so boring; it's the juicy stuff I want to share and that's the stuff I have to be protective of.

So for now, you're going to continue to get the candy-floss version of my life I'm afraid. Don't know how much longer I'm going to be comfortable with that, but we'll see.

Random Dozen

Trust me, I will get back to posting some sensible blog posts soon, truly I will. Right now I just have so much going on (don't worry, it's all good) that blogging is waaaay down my list of priorities.

Although I am late again (the questions go up every Tuesday and are meant to be posted on a Wednesday), I kinda like the questions on this weeks Random Dozen, so I am doing it anyway.


1. On an average, how often do you splurge and buy something for yourself?
I used to be terrible about spending money on myself - I'd buy for the kids, the pets, even Grant and never for me, but as I am getting older I am getting better at spending money on me.

2. Are you more like Hall or Oates? Just kidding. Real question: What is the last creative project you began/finished? Feel free to post a pic of it. Sore point, I have a cross-stitch project I have been working on for something like 5 years....

3. OK, Goldie Locks, do you consider your house too big, too little or juuuust right?
I love my house, it's nothing fancy but it has loads of cupboard space (a biggie for me) and it has a very user-friendly kitchen BUT I desperately need a spare room and an office, especially the office.

4. What is your favorite outdoor chore?
slightly hysterical laughter....... let's just say I'm not an outside chore kinda girl. Does walking the dog count? I love walking the dog!

5. If you knew that cigarette smoking was not bad for your health but would be a weight loss tool, would you use it? Why or why not?
In my mis-spent youth I smoked - only about 3 a day, but I LOVED smoking. I gave up a few months before I fell pregnant with Paula and haven't had one since. I could start smoking again tomorrow though, I really could....but I won't because (a) I have the most rotten sinuses in the world and (b) I don't like the way I smell when I smoke.

6. On a road trip, would you rather drive or ride?
Oh gawd, I hate driving and will get out of it at the first opportunity.

7. What do you consider a trivial pursuit?
Dare I say "Blogging" LOL

8. This weekend, we downloaded the movie "Duplicity" with Julia Roberts and Clive Owen. Within 5 minutes, I was bored and annoyed, but I kept watching 5-10 minutes at a time hoping it would get better between small chores. I finally gave up and Jorge watched it alone, and then regretted wasting that time because he disliked it intensely, too. So ... how long do you watch a movie or read a book before giving up on it?
I hate giving up on a book and will soldier manfully on for at least a few chapters before admitting defeat. Movies I will happily walk away from in about 30 seconds.

9. Is there a song that you really love but are embarrassed to admit because it's not cool or it's racy or because it's by Hall and Oates?
"I touch myself" by The Divinyls. I have no idea why I like it, but I really do.

10. On a scale of 1-10 (10 = extremely) how spontaneous are you?
It depends what we're talking about here. Buying books or magazines of a bottle of wine - I will do it very spontaneously. Planning a holiday, or a new home, or car, or something like that, I will plan, plot and ponder for weeks.

11. Are you a food and/or beverage snob?
Hmmmm...... in some ways. I'm not big on overly fancy cuisine, but I like to buy good quality ingredients (I like to get my fruit and veg from Woolies)

12. Who/What are you trying to control in your life? (I hear people gulping and see them sweating in anticipation of how to answer this one.)
Everything and everyone! Truly. I am a control freak of note. The only thing I am really struggling to control is myself, evidenced by the uncontrollable spread of my buttocks!!!! How's that for honest?