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 |  A public journal? Sounds like a really bad idea! |
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Life is like a box of chocolates a dance floor!
Sometimes you're in the spotlight, sometimes you're not. Sometimes you know the steps and sometimes you feel way out of place. Sometimes you are a graceful ballerina, sometimes people are careless and they knock you down. In the end, we're all just looking for that grand finish. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
| The C-word is dominating my mind today... All of WDC is rallying behind Phoebe and her family now, but that's not the only reason it's tormenting me. Tomorrow a very close friend would have celebrated her 47th birthday, in stead her 3 young children have to 'pay respects' at the cemetery. Last night my mom was admitted in to hospital. She is only 49, I mean just turned 49 over the weekend! and she's in hospital with what looks like liver cancer. My heart is really sore. The only solution, however impotent it may seem, that I have is to pray. 'Jesus, please! Heal Phoebe, save my mom and bless Nicole's family with peace. Above all, your will be done.' I love telling anecdotes from my life that were bizarre or shocking, so let's distract our aching hearts with some history... "Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise"  Prompt: The person sitting next to you on the plane is quite talkative. Do you try to switch seats or make this person your new best friend?I have first hand experience with this one! I was 17 and taking my first transatlantic flight to beautiful South America. I boarded the enormous aircraft and eventually found my seat right at the back of economy class, next to the toilet. If seating shows social standing, I was the pleb, the lowest of the low. This should have been my first clue. Next to the window was a foreign sounding Indian man (I phrase it that way because South Africa has a large population of Indian people who have lived there for at least a few generations already. They have a very specific accent- This man sounded different). He immediately starts a long winded story about how amazingly successful he is and how stinking rich he has become in a few short years of business. Naive and spell bound, I bought his entire story. When we arrived in Sao Paolo he had mysteriously lost his wallet and casually asked to borrow some money from me. He gave me his snazzy business card and promised to reimburse me by the end of the day... Unfortunately for this Conman, I did not have a cent to my name. I tried to find someone at the airport who could help him but I honestly had no money and was connecting to Paraguay in an hour or so. On later, wiser reflection, I realised the poor guy had wasted his whole trip prepping me for a con that couldn't work because I was poorer than he was. I am a lot wiser now and make sure to travel with earphones, whether or not they are actually plugged into anything... Although, it does add spice and perhaps one days I'll need a slimy, smooth talking con man character to refer back to. "Blogging Circle of Friends " Prompt: What do you think about pseudonyms? Would you ever use a pen name on a published piece or would you rather use your real name?This is something I have been toying with since I could read. My first name is beautiful and I am very protective of it, however my maiden surname is typically Afrikaans. Me being a "rooi nek", this has worked against me all my life. People expect me to be Afrikaans, but I am not. It has made me feel quite displaced as a white South African, because it essentially means I don't have a culture. I'm not English but I'm not Afrikaans. I am African, but I'm white. It's all a bit of a brain teaser. Then I went and married a Namibian of Portuguese decent and ended up with a VERY Mediterranean surname. Ugh. Needless to say, my name, at least my surname, is not a reflection of who I am as a person. So, I've always planned to publish under a pseudonym if I was ever given the opportunity. I just need to find a name that encapsulates my feeling of landless-ness or foreignness. "Welcome To My Reality Forum" Prompt: What is the most embarrassing thing you remember happening to you?Oh boy, let's not even start on the list of embarrassing things that have happened to me! I'll keep it quick- I was about 15 years old. The teacher finally gave me permission to go to the toilet because I leaking from my eyeballs! Only, it was too late. About 5 metres from the bathroom I wet myself!  That should be it, right? But no... The embarrassment continued. Standing in a puddle of pee, I look up and my 3 best friends are walking towards me... I remember thinking; 'Earth swallow me now!' TMI? Sorry...They were gracious enough not to tease me about it but I still cringe inside when I remember it... No one should be wetting themselves at 15, right? Like I said in the blurb about this blog; a public journal??? Not a good idea! |
| Twice in one day??? What? {i}this was mostly written yesterday...{/i} Yip... Peeps, Baby is still sleeping and I missed two fantastic prompts over the weekend, so now's my chance! Seize the day, Monkey!  Firstly, Charlie ~   asked: How observant are you in your daily life? Do you notice strangers and hear their conversations while you're out, or are you more the 'inside your head' type?I grew up in South Africa, as I have made a habit of telling you in this blog. If you know anything about this country, it has become renowned for its extremely high crime rate. Mostly these crimes are opportunistic and involve petty theft, unfortunately a lot of it is violent and premeditated. As a result of spending my formative years in this beautiful but damaged country, I am always watching everyone around me, especially at the mall or on the street. A few times, some chance takers (in Afrikaans that would be 'kans vatters', which sounds infinitely better) have tried to distract me in the street or even at the magazine rack to have a go at my hand bag. Suckers! They can keep trying! I even told one pair of would be thieves "You've got to do better than that!" Haha.  That's not to say that I have not been duped... Once people start talking to me, I'll believe almost anything they say. Now who's the sucker?  I once gave a scruffy looking guy a third of my salary because he had a folder of photos of kids and claimed to be from an orphanage. My boss laughed his head off when I told him, apparently the guy liked to scam the holiday makers. Being a local, I felt really stupid.One thing I really enjoy doing is 'people watching'. I can sit alone at a cafe and drink coffee and come up with fictional lives for the other patrons... It's enormously fun! And of course, I try to over hear their conversations... It's funny how seldomly people communication in full sentences... (Hmm, did you know that seldomly is apparently not a word?) Now onto Lyn's a sly fox   's prompt from Saturday; "What is a valuable lesson you learned from a teacher?"I attended a public school and did alright, definitely did not even try reaching my potential. Teenagers, what are you gonna do? But I had some really amazing teachers that really taught us about life, not just the curriculum. The higher grade maths teacher, Mrs. Serfontein was feared by the entire school. Even if you were not in her class, she might lean out the door when you were innocently passing by and find something about your person that deserved detention. Although never unfair, she was VERY strict! In grade 10 I had an idiot young teacher just out of school herself who, obliviously, wore see through dresses and couldn't form a whole sentence. She managed to babble through 6 months before she was replaced. Unfortunately for us, we were 6 months behind and barely surviving in higher grade. Mrs. Serfontein came to the rescue but I wanted out. I tried to drop to standard grade but she insisted on giving her a chance to turn my grades around. In the end Maths was my lowest mark, but boy, I'm so prod that I passed. The class was really struggling to retain information and she came up with a brilliant analogy of the process of remembering- Now as you might have noticed, I really enjoying writing about memory and remembering. So, this image has stuck with me. She said that our brains are like huge empty warehouses with lots of hooks hanging from the ceiling and pieces of information are like silky strips of fabric. Every time you hook a piece of information to a hook you can recall it later. The more hooks in one piece of information, the longer it will stay there. If the slippery info has only one hook, it runs the risk of falling uselessly to the ground. I miss Mrs. Serfontein  |
| Welcome to my reality Prompt: What is your favorite thing to do in your spare time? Why? How often do you get to do it? So, every single person on this site is going to say 'read', right? Or write, I guess. I do both of these in most of my spare time. Like right now, monkey baby is down for a nap so I'm frantically ticking away to finish this post before she wakes up. But I have plenty of other hobbies that eat my precious spare time up, for instance, I love to crochet. We're going on holiday soon so I started crocheting a bikini! HAHAHAHA! That has been an experience... It's nearly done but somehow I doubt I'll finish it. It's like finishing that last chapter of a great book, it takes more discipline than the other 150pages, right?? I also doubt I'll wear it. I get fearful that it will be a failure so I just stop right before the finish line. I've already started another crochet project as an excuse, I guess, not to finish the first one... Perhaps I need an intervention. If I'm honest it takes all my self control not to plop down in front of the TV as soon as I am alone! Between July and August I watched all 7 seasons of Gilmore Girls! I knew Lorelai and Luke would get together, I just had to see it! Ugh, and it was such a let down. So, now I'm on a TV detox and forcibly stopping myself from reaching for the remote. The worst part about watching so very much TV is that if I sit down to write, all I can think of are the characters in the series and the plot, there is not one original thought in my brain. Ugh  Lately, I've been making time for writing. It's partly therapy, writing down my feelings and subsequent thoughts day to day and partly educational... I'm doing the Exploratory Writing Workshop with percy goodfellow  and each week we must hand in assignments that will ultimately... hopefully... become the basis for a novel. I'm so excited!!!! It's totally dorky to be this excited about doing homework. |
| My husband is a creature of this fast paced world that whirs around me. He is constantly planning, thinking, worrying, never focused on just one thing but trying, always to be everywhere and everything. It must be exhausting. When we first got married we'd sit together on the couch for about 1.34 seconds and he'd say "So, what should we do?" Ugh. My go-with-the-flow response; "Let's just be, babes." After 7 years he has finally learned the art of "Just being" but he's still not very good at it. Neither is monkey baby. I love to talk, my dad calls me "Yak" (I'm not sure if this nickname will translate for the international audience... If someone is yakking, they are talking a lot, they are not necessarily a large, shaggy ox like animal...? Does it work?). My real name starts with Kay and he thinks he's being very clever turning it around and arriving at Yak... Lately, though, I've noticed that my fondest memories are of the times I didn't talk. The times I listened or just occupied the same space as someone else, with out having to talk. Perhaps this is what savouring is; to stop yakking and experience the moment happening around you. Because its spring here in the SH, monkey babes and I were in the garden this afternoon trying to revive my catatonic grass. She stripped herself down and got full of mud. Oh boy! It was precious!!! That's my 'goodness' for today. She is my goodness, always! Like, when I fetched her from school today she was crying because another little brat had hurt her. I asked if he had said sorry trying to encourage the worm to do so. Instead, my tiny monkey hugged him back and said it's ok. I was a puddle! Now on the subjects of savouring and goodness, I wish there as more time to write!! Alas, that is all she wrote... |
So, the one day in over a week that I have time to blog and the topic is Labour- sorry- Labor Day. Ugh. Here in the SH it's actually Spring time! Yay... Let's talk flowers and rainbows instead... Happy thoughts!          Anyhow... let's move on and start this day right. I'm not a morning person, in fact before 9am I'm a dragon! (Perhaps that explains the above reaction) My 2 and half year old doesn't really care though and wakes up at 6am every day so I've had to learn to cope. My most important tip for starting the day well: go to bed early! Now and then we stay up until about 10:30 or 11 and boy! do I suffer the next day. I admit it openly, I am a granny in a 29 yr old's body. Now, I have not taken my own advice lately...  but the toddler calls... So, now I must be energetic and fun... |
Oh man... I really don't have time to be on WDC today, I have so much work to do. But I'll justify it to myself... (internal dialogue: "Yesterday was a public holiday and yet you worked for 7 hours, that's commitment! And you haven't blogged in 2 weeks, do you really want to drop off the face of the earth again?" ... "You're right, I really should blog today! I owe it to myself."  )Well, alright then, let's do this. So, who would I want to be for a day and who was I at 16? Let's just call it the same prompt for the sake of saving time. When I was 16 I was obnoxious, selfish and obsessed with my looks. I was afraid to be alone and yet never really shared myself with anyone. I had a small amount of talent as a dancer and could have been decent if only I hadn't been so darn lazy. If I could be anyone for a day, I would go back and be me again. I would tell my best friend that she is beautiful and I love her. I would apologise to my mom for being such a jerk and I dance like my life depended on it. I would do my homework, as well as possible and spend time with my brothers. I would also break up with my high school boyfriend. He was nice but really, there were more important people I should have been spending my time with. I don't even talk to him now. I would read more. It's funny how retrospection shows all our flaws. If only I could have had a little retrospection back then, it would have saved me a lot of loneliness and regret. Man, was it just me or are all teenagers jerks? |
Talking Tea leaves and believing in God The thought of palm readers and fortune tellers takes me back to a time when my very intelligent, logical and well read mother took to reading tea leaves. She is self made and hard working... a realist... and yet, she reads tea leaves. This is rather preposterous to me, personally, but then again I believe in an almighty and loving creator of the universe who died for me. So, who's to say what's right? I say, go ahead, drink your gritty tea and see whatever you hope to see. I will continue to put my tea in bags and drink every last drop. Or, actually, I'll drink coffee. Can you read coffee grounds? Ugh! That would be really awful. Now, my grand mother is... let's just say... she seesaws. For a time she will be devoutly Christian and will read nothing but the Bible and self help books authored by upstanding people of the faith. When that ceases to be amusing or she gets an urge of some kind, she will swing dramatically to the other side of the spectrum, reading signs in everything and being beset by omens. It's a bizarre thing to watch as a child. One day when I was about 16, I had a job as a waitress in a local tea garden. That Saturday morning I jumped on my blue Yamaha Mint 50 cc scooter and headed off to work. I had been working for about 3 years at that stage and enjoyed it very much, especially the extra dosh. But that day she told me not to go to work. I brushed it off because her lucid moments were hard to spot. About 500m from my house I was hit by a bakkie . The accident wasn't bad but I've always put that down to my laissez faire attitude toward impeding danger. I simply did not fight the collision and rather went with it relaxing my body as much as I could. I lost a toe nail but that serves me right for wearing slops on a scooter. After the a trip to the ER in an ambulance and a brief once over by a doctor, I was sent on my way. At home I laughed with my dad about the whole thing and my brothers waited on me hand and foot out of concern. My grand mother paced back and forth in the background until I was alone. Suddenly she rushed towards me claiming that she warned me not to leave the house. In her hands she had a withered and tattered bunch of dead flowers. "These were at the gate," she said gravely, "I knew it was a bad sign." So, there it is. I believe we see what we want to see. So, I would not go to a palm reader or fortune teller. It's enough for me to know that "He works everything for the good of those who love him and are called according to His purpose." Beautiful dreams Seeing the future seems to be a common thread today. "The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams"? Eleanor must have been reading her tea leaves that day and seen an orchid appear in the limp brown sludge. I get this from a political revolution point of view, If you believe in a better world, justice, peace, equality, then the future should be yours. But beautiful dreams probably refers to a more emotional state of being and that is: hope. If you have hope, you have a future. If you do not have hope, there is no future. And that I really do agree with. One more scripture for good measure: "Hope deferred makes the heart sick." So, how's that for today's Bible lesson?? And to play us out... Take it away Doris! "When I was young, I fell in love I asked my sweetheart what lies ahead Will we have rainbows, day after day Here's what my sweetheart said. Que Sera, Sera, Whatever will be, will be The future's not ours, to see..." |
| "Hello?" she whispered into the mic, "can you hear me?" A half empty room slowly lifted their eyes to the stage. "Uhm," she cleared her throat."Well, thank you for being here. I'm sorry for the lengthy delay and thank you for your patience. Your entertainment will commence shortly." Queue music... queue lights... and dancing monkeys... GO GO GO! Ah, it feels good to be back. I have no excuses so I won't try invent any. I literally blinked and 10 months had passed without WDC. How is that possible? I blame the toddler. It must be her fault Moving swiftly along while I have a spare moment... let's talk She Sheds. Sounds like the place she keeps her shells she sells from the seashore. Oi! My mind is also twisted now, not just my tongue  Perhaps it's all the "pat-a-cake" and baa baa that's been assaulting my sense for the last 2 years. Did I mention that I love my child..?  I'm not sure how it happened but my Monkey Baby ends baa baa with "one for the little boy who lives in-a-da tree"  Namibia has shockingly high property prices so our town house is basically a She Shed. But I can imagine... a world where all my crafty gear and notes pads are housed in one beautiful, serene, mommy-only space of my own design and planning... No wait, I can't. That's stretching my imagination too far. A room with no Monkey Baby toys? Impossible! Even the kitchen is Monkey Baby territory, even the garage is over flowing with Monkey Baby paraphernalia. I guess it's Monkey Baby's day, even Prosperous Snow celebrating  's 1000 prompt keeps me circling the offspring like an anxious mother hen. I could count and give you the exact number but I'm running out of mommy-only time... So, let's assume it's right around 1000 days now. 1000 incredible days of Monkey Baby! In the beginning I had the distinct Douglas Adamsian feeling of being struck in the face with a gold brick with a lemon tied around it. I stick to this analogy. Having kids is a total shock to the system. But as Ouma says these days, she's really company now! She has an opinion about everything and wants to go shopping 5 times a day. This morning she insisted on wearing the little ballerina tutu that I made for her with polka dot socks. So, here's to the next 1000 days my lemon-wrapped gold brick!  While writing this post I have a brass band playing in my imaginary background... which reminds of something I read on FB, 'one of life's greatest tragedies is that in reality there is no background music'. Hear Hear! |
Was that perhaps too far with the title? I was trying to combine the prompts using an old song favourite by Lloyd Price. My hubby says my humour can be a bit... not funny. Ha. Ha Moving swiftly along...To blog or not to blog? Earlier this year I was gifted an upgraded membership for a couple months by "RAOK Upgrade Brigade Group" . My free membership portfolio was jam packed and I was just getting into a groove so I was really grateful. In those two months I started this blog simply because I could. Soon, I realised that I couldn't go back to the free membership if it meant loosing the blog.At first it was purely a stage for my never-ending one woman show, but then... people starting reading it... I even got the odd comment and soon met some friends. A few months in, I read a few blogs each day and like to comment wherever I have an opinion. Now WDC is more than just a portfolio housing site. The highlight though? Has to be CJ Reddick  's "Invalid Item" . I'm not one for Halloween or spooky stories, so I took a lot of liberties with the challenge but it was thrilling!!!In two years time I hope to be gloating about having a novel published??? Aim for the stars, right? I guess that's just my personality (smooth segue, if I do say so myself  )You've got Personality! Walk, Personality! I am a sucker for a personality test! It's intriguing to see everything that makes us unique reduced to categories and scales (I'm not being sarcastic, I really do like them). In this case though, I'm not sure which category I belong in. I've spoken in a previous post about my relationship with competition... Basically, I am the least competitive person you will meet. I enjoy board games for the journey, not the title. I loved dancing because there was rarely any one winner, we all got to feel graceful and elegant. I do not respond well when told that I am competing with a colleague for a promotion, my previous boss (definitely an A) never got that and was always trying to pit us against each other... Ugh. I don't mind a bit of stress but does it make me apathetic? I'm not sure. So, I guess I'm B or C, definitely not A. Although I do work well under pressure, so long as I can do my own thing and not have to be micro-managed. I think my hubby is C, he works incredibly hard but at some point the stress makes him shut down. Ugh, I couldn't live with some one that was A... That would drive me nuts. I know a few of them and boy, they are exhausting. Apologies to any A's on the readership... This test is pretty basic and I don't know how helpful it is. I prefer the Jungian Personality types. The test is so accurate with me and gives great career suggestions, it also helps a person to understand their spouse, for example, by reading about how they interpret the world. It's great! I am ENFP which is the idealist or advocate. Perhaps that's why I enjoy the navel-gazing and expressing my opinion with fervour. Hmm... I wonder if we could use these tests for our characters? Would it be helpful to know what type of personality your character has??? |
George Who? Knock knock! Opens door slightly and sees two strangers on front porch. "George who?" Mumble mumble "I'm sorry, I don't know you... Please go away." Shuts door. See "Invalid Entry" for more thoughts on this topic.Let me not just sulk, I'll re-interpret the prompt for a Namibian circumstance. If Sam Nujoma and his wife arrived at my door, I would bow my eyes and curtsy when he takes my hand (I've been told that this is how a woman respectfully greets a Oshivambo man). His wife I would kiss on both cheeks and greet aloud, I think this is acceptable. After seating them in the lounge and offering drinks, I would pretend to be busy in the kitchen while my husband talked politics, that's the only reason I could ever imagine Sam Nujoma coming to my house. Namibia as a country is in it's early 20s and our founding father still lives and breathes, this could very well happen... Who knows!? No way Va-cay I grew up on South Africa's 'South Coast'. It is green and warm and the ocean is like a warm bath in the summer. It is every holiday maker's dream vacation. All through the year it would be quiet, the locals would revel in nature's beauty. We were mermaids and mermen; free of the cares of the two legged. Around the end of November, as the schools closed and the heat turned up, these ridiculous creatures would start swarming in on us like a plague; the vaalies . These neanderthals seemed to leave their brains at home and run rampant on our beautiful, serene coastline for about 8 weeks. They would drive like maniacs with whole families loaded on the back of open bakkies and shout rudely at spinning waiters. It was too much for us mer-people. So, we would watch the devastation arriving over the hills, pack our own bags and retreat inland for the season. |
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