Thursday, January 21, 2010

DramaDramaDrama

Sorry to Sarah (again) but Hatting must wait, it’s been a tough week…

On Tuesday Laura came to visit! She’s been based in Oxford doing scary things like a masters in running around Columbia and a doctorate in visiting SA often and having a ridiculously dark tan for someone who lives in the rainlands…

Halfway through an awesome chat with her and The Great One (she’s like an oracle of advice for people like me who have no idea how to speak human half the time) I got a phone call from my mother to say she’d been in a car accident so I rushed off to fetch her.

She’s fine (albeit a bit shaken up), but the car isn’t, so after much paperwork (insurance accident reports and so on) and my mild freak-out at having to be the responsible adult for my mother (thanks for listening Luke), we’re also trying to figure out how to deal with being a car short, with me pulling long hours in the lab, my Dad (who came back from a business trip yesterday) working like a maniac and my mother’s tendency to never stay in one place for more than a couple of hours (her work involves lots of travelling and is relatively close to home so she’s used to driving backwards and forwards several times a day).

So I’ve been playing taxi-driver a lot, which means I have to limit time in the lab a bit so I have to focus more. It also means I’m three steps from foetal position under my desk most of the time, as my mother likes to schedule meetings in/around rush hour. There’s a reason I leave home at 5:30am twice a week and after 9 the other days, and why I never leave the lab before 6pm… People in Joburg can’t drive. Seriously!

At least nobody got hurt, the other person admitted to being at fault and has insurance and it was on a quiet street so there weren’t too many problems post-crash. I’m also hoping to use this as an opportunity to get my mom to go to the gym with me a bit and get some exercise, I nearly got her to dancing class this morning so maybe next week…

We’ll make it work, we have to, her car needs a new front axle, so it’ll take a while. I just feel like I’m living in a sitcom: “Sorry, I can’t go out tonight, my mom has the car!”

Oh and my phone died. As in the three buttons I absolutely cannot use the phone without (like the ‘ok’ button) don’t work…

Because this week wasn’t being nasty enough. On the plus side I get to use my dad’s old phone (which is like one of those nokia blackberry-esque thingies) which is AWESOME! and I’m about a year overdue for an upgrade anyway, so I’ll be phone-shopping with my father soon. Maybe me awesome cousin who knows about these things can suggest a new phone? I’m not handling the QWERTY keyboard well, I keep pressing letters more than once because I think of ‘L’ as ‘555’ and so on… I’ve also got longish nails right now so the tiny buttons are being really difficult. Any suggestions are welcome!

And Luke and Leia are back this weekend!

And I just had such awesome coffee!

Oh, and a preview, just for Sarah (and for Tamara considering you can just see the edge of one of the earrings I got at her open house last year!):

me and drummer 2

4 comments:

EEbEE said...

in first year i didn't have a car (too young...). having to wait for a lift home every day was the absolute worst thing.

Still, at least i didn't have to be a taxi driver... good luck!

EEbEE said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Kath Lockett said...

Maybe you could get your Mum to join you at the gym if you get out your Tai Chi 'sword' to 'encourage' her?

Tamara said...

Wow... that sounds rubbish. Kewl earrings though ;-) I dig the hat too.

Glad your mom's ok. Although with all the rain at the moment, being a taxi for her sucks - people in Joburg lose whatever pathetic driving skills they had. They're like gremlins - just add water for chaos.