Sigh

So after waiting two months for my supervisor to bother reading a draft I got it back. And he hates it. I told P1 a while ago that the worst thing you can get back is something with almost no comments on it because it means that it’s beyond saving. I changed my mind. Worse than that is something with a solid column of red down one side which is a combination of chunks being deleted and comments such as ‘what is the point of this? why did you even do this study?’

Not to mention when he got too annoyed with doing that and started leaving comments like ‘this paragraph doesn’t fit. Delete.’ and then ‘read comments for above paragraph’

Which wouldn’t be all that bad – I mean at least I know where I’m going wrong (answer, pretty much everywhere) except that I’ve been waiting so long I actually had another draft ready to go and a third one almost there.

I’m just glad that the flu made me lazy and I didn’t get much done for the last week because I was too tire. Everything else from the last 8 weeks has just been deleted and started over.

And I pay R16000 a year for this?

If it wasn’t for the gaping 5 year hole in my CV I’d be halfway to Sweden by now. Either way I’d always expected the next time I cried myself to sleep to be over boy trouble or friend drama. I expected wrong.

Oh well. Back to work.

I’m alive… sort of

Been feeling very hermit-ish this week. The headache to end all others isn’t helping either (I calculated my aspirin intake just now and was shocked and horrified… ). I think the flu is beginning to attack.

Not much to say except that i think I might just go home ad have some soup, and not think about productivity and stuff until tomorrow…

Anyway as I feel somewhat over-medicated and sleepy, I'm going to stop there and attempt to get some work done.

Have a great Thursday!

Hoping it’s just hormones

So I’ve had an awesome couple of weeks. Busy in the extreme, but always things that I wanted to do. Admittedly, my decision to calm down on the sport and the social life and spend more time doing my actual ‘job’ (it gets inverted commas because I pay to do it, or at best beg for scholarships) has crashed and burned and right now I’m out more than I was before (if that was at all possible).

So last weekend with the kiddies was awesome. It started badly with me having to spend the afternoon teaching drunk students ,followed by arriving at the field-trip place with a busload of drunk students, and eating a luminous purple meal (yes, purple). From there it really picked up though and I had a blast, leaving exhausted, but happy and sunburned and achy but in the best possible way.

Last week was heeeeecTIC – Monday night i was out, Tuesday morning I had a super-early start to teach my kiddies, Tuesday evening i went back to Tai chi for the first time in over two weeks. It was SO nice to be back, although I was very sore afterwards and for the next day or two!

Wednesday was skating – I got myself examined which was scary and I started shaking – this wasn’t made better by the fact that they made me take three exams at once (two for classes I skipped and one for the class I’m in) which included steps I’d never heard of before. The tester was kind enough to demonstrate so i could try them out though!

From there I had to hand my skates in to be sharpened, which was sad because I’d been looking forward to some skating-in-circles-thinking time, but good because I know that they’ll be sorted out properly, and I had time to go for a run afterwards which was nice!

Thursday I skipped tai chi and went with the Oracle, the nameless one and CG to meet up with some people and play some pool. I hadn’t played in six weeks and my skills went from abysmal to totally non-existent, but I had a blast – it was really nice to see the Oracle (who is quite shy sometimes and won’t join us often) having fun and dancing and chatting to people. CG was also looking like she had fun for the first time in ages.

Of course the time flew and before I’d realised it was 1am and we were going for pizza while my mother’s panicky messages started to come through and… so much for an early night… and of course I had to be up early the next morning and considering I’d only been to bed at 2:30 – it sucked.

Friday was The Day Of Many Meetings as usual, although my students took one look at me and decided to behave themselves which was fantastic. I nearly kicked a couple out of the class and it clamed them down a bit (even though they were still annoying). The plasticine I was using to teach them stained my hands and arms (and everything I touched, like my ears) purple. After that I went off to watch a movie and was asleep within a couple of minutes.

Saturday was my first day back at work since the fieldtrips and it was really nice and quiet and good to be back! I went home and passed out for a few hours and then headed off to meet someone’s new puppy (so so cute!). From there we had no real plans so we ended up going to Pretoria for a club launch which was hilarious and awesome – it was like a scene from a movie with glowsticks and bubbles falling from the ceiling and people in the most bizarre outfits ever. I was in jeans and a t-shirt but nobody seemed to mind! heck, i even managed to get two glowsticks from random strangers so that I could play the drums on the table…

On the way home we went to investigate a potential giant hole in the road only to find that it was surrounded by quicksand-y stuff. We figured this out when I sank up to my knees and had to be rescued. When we stopped off to swap cars I had to change into a semi-strangers PJs to go home in, while I thought my shoes were beyond repair.

So once again – a planned early night ended in me getting home at 4am, wearing someone else’s clothes. Awkward.

Yesterday I spent reading and sleeping and catching up on exercise a little bit. I also went back to church (I hadn’t been in a few weeks with all the trips and stuff) and today has been a day of working, marking, puppy-sitting, teaching (I want Luke’s students, they’re so much better behaved than mine!) and general movement.

I’m just feeling a little bit low at the moment. I know that by nature I’m a total loner, and all of the craziness is exhausting, but at the same time, looking back on each experience, it was awesome, I’d do it all again…

But right now I want to go and hide under a rock and not see another human being for a while. People are exhausting. I don’t want to be around them for a bit.

I just hope I can get out of this mood soon, as I have a crazy weekend coming up!

The return of the mood-yoyo

This has been a tough week, hence the lack of blog posts. I have tons to write about so I hope to get back into the swing of things soon!

I’ve been swinging wildly from euphoria to misery all week, and its getting a bit unnerving. It all started on Sunday night when I got sick. But SICK. As in not even able to keep water down kind of sick. I had some paperwork to sort out in town, and fortunately it rained so I didn’t have to feel guilty for not trapping as I sat and somehow typed up progress reports for the permits office among other things and Leia yelled at me over G-talk because I hadn’t gone to the pharmacy yet.

Anyway, to cut a loOOng story short, I give you:

Happiness:

• My permits are officially in order. It turns out that the guy in charge is amazingly nice if you call him ‘Ludwig’ rather than by his nickname (‘Blackie’)
• Feeling much better and the weird medication-related dreams have stopped
• I’m almost done catching lizards. I need a few more and then i can stop trapping and get started on Phase 2.
• i thought some of my lizards were sick, but they seem to be OK (fingers crossed!), they’re certainly biting hard enough.
• It’s been pouring with rain (I thought the house was going to flood) for he past 24 hours, and the power didn’t go off much. normally rain like this is a guarantee of at least a day without electricity.
• This place is so beautiful. I was climbing yesterday and as I reached to top of the outcrop and I saw the panorama (that I’ve seen a million times and mostly ignore), the absolute hugeness of nothing hit me like it hasn’t ever before. I was listening to Keane at the time, which may explain it.

and Sadness:

• I was sick…  which means I lost a day’s work which meant sitting up until 1am for two nights in a row catching up (the work isn’t that bad, it’s the procrastination between that’s the killer).
• I’m missing Halloween AGAIN. I’ve never celebrated Halloween as I’m always busy or just not had plans. And now I get to hear about everyone else’s plans and it makes me sad.
• I thought some of my lizards were sick. which led to a frantic checking of all of them at two in the morning followed by a sleepless night. They seem to be ok, but it wasn’t fun.
• It’s been pouring with rain – hence no trapping even though the finish line is basically in sight. I have to finish this week to get back in time for my cousin’s wedding and the Killers! I also got to take measurements with flickering power – you have no idea how much fun it is to have a lizard on a treadmill when the power keeps going on and off.
• An armed response guy got VERY lost and wound up here tonight. He then left and got his bakkie stuck and came to me for help. He also greeted me with “Waar’s jou man?” (i.e. where’s your husband?). I was annoyed and therefore refused to speak in Afrikaans. So he said “Can I speak to your husband?” I told him that my husband is a mercenary and I think he went to poach a rhino. Then I phoned one of the farmers next door and told them to sort this guy out, and sent him back to his bakkie to wait for the tractor. I feel bad for being so rude, but he started it!
• This place is Just. So. Beautiful. And I can’t shake the feeling that once I leave there’ no coming back. It’ll never be Home again, even if I come to visit.

To finish it all off, I decided to wait out the worst of the storm by watching a movie, and as I’ve been a bit down I figured a kids movie might do the trick (I’m going to ignore how emotional “Meet the Robinsons” made me last time I tried this).

I should also know by now that any movie involving animals is a bad idea. and now I have the unfortunate distinction of having cried while watching ‘Beverly Hills Chihuahua’ – I’m sorry but when the big German Shepherd get invited back to the police force…

So ja, the random stories will continue, maybe when it stops raining I’ll be back in storyteller mode!

Pass the pink

It's freezing! It's been raining all day (apparently it started around 3am) and I'm totally unable to get warm. I went for a run on Wednesday and pushed myself a bit hard and now my ankle is punishing me - partly for overexertion and partly for not moving to the Sahara or Mexico or something. I swear I'm going to be one of those 90-year-olds who can predict the weather based on ankle-twinges.

I've been on a bit of an emotional rollercoaster lately. I guess there was some truth in what that person said when they said that my wearing pink signified that I was looking for change. Thigns ARE changing, but it's not a pleasant experience. Wednesday was one of the worst days I've had in a long time, although I was rescued by a friend who didn't quite know how to handle me and so talked about other stuff. I felt better after that.

Thursday was one of the hardest days I've ever had - mostly a result of Wednesday. I won't go into details, but there were some things that needed doing, and I did them. I spent a lot of time inwardly cursing Hollywood as well. It's all their fault! They make it look so easy and then you realise that while ripping off the bandaid (so to speak) may be the least painful method, it doesn't mean it's pain free, particularly when you're a slow healer...

And then there was Tai Chi. I know, I've had complaints that I talk about it too much. It's my blog and I will discuss the art of looking graceful (or trying to) while kicking someone (imaginary) in the shins if I want to. So THERE!

Anyway Tai Chi was my saviour. I was physically and emotionally exhausted, I had my ankle strapped to the point of non-mobility and I wanted to crawl into bed and cry rather than be sociable with the Tai Chi crowd (who are actually pretty awesome people, even if most of them are 20 years older than me and far more flexible that I ever will be). There were two beginner-beginners and me, and the advanced folks, so the other two were given some stuff to start on while the teacher (well the temporary teacher anyway) basically taught me a ton of new stuff! Bearing in mind it took me 3 1/2 weeks to learn the first form which only had 13 steps, I think I learned 11 this week of the new form! And one of them is the coolest thing EVER! It's called 'single whip' and it's SO much fun! I bounced out of there feeling so much better about life!

For the record the teacher totally thinks I'm crazy now! I think he noticed that I wasn't really myself and he was super-nice to me, while he fixed a lot of stuff I think he let more slide than usual because he knows I love learning new steps. His son (the real teacher) said he'd take over us newbies next week, which makes me quite nervous. I know the basics but there's a lot of polishing up I need to do to get it perfect.

I was on the Tai Chi high pretty much until halfway through labwork, when exhaustion set in and by the time I left (after 10 grueling hours in the lab) I was barely able to walk, and I had to go home and make dinner which woke me up somewhat.

So now I'm stuck with the dilemma- I'm freezing and I've got aches and pains. Is this punishment for the last week? Or is it the start of Swine Flu? I really wish I knew because right now I'm shivering with a blanket around me and I'd quite like to get to the gym and warm up, but obviously if I'm going to get a fever or something that's a bad idea. I tried practising tai chi but my house is too full of furniture and WAY too cold!

So for the record: "what's your problem?" is not something I want to be asked. In whatever code. It's nasty.

6 weeks to catching lizards and being able to breathe again! Just 6 weeks! 42 days and counting! I want to get away right now. Maybe I need more pink?

Solitude

This is kind of how I'm feeling right now. I can't explain it, but at least now I know I took this photo for a reason!
So a few days ago I was chatting to someone who has become a pretty close friend over the space of about two days (I'm not even kidding, starting a friendship with an hour-and-a-half heart-to-heart is NOT who I am!) and we ended up discussing depression. When I was a teenager I was diagnosed with it and given the requisite little white pills. I took one. I think it may have been half of one, but I don't really remember. All I now is that I never took one again, I refused to live my life feeling like the world around me wasn't really real.

Anyway he said that when you're depressed the colours around you fade and the world seems dull and ugly. I didn't really think too much about it, except to remember a specific sunset that was beautiful, that didn't move me in any way emotionally although my intellectual side could admire it.

So this week, with the crazy hotbed-of-emotions that is the meat-market lab (can't really call it the primate lab now that it's being cohabited by a primatologist, mammalogist and me) coming to a rather unpleasant and yet necessary end last night, when I woke up this morning the world seemed a little bit duller. I did a very girly thing - put my head under my pillow and refused to face the day for a few more hours, and not because of exhaustion (although that helped).

And I've been gripey all day. The people around me have been so amazing, I have been patted on the back, sympathised with, bought chocolate, treated gently... and I just don't want to talk about it! I was amazed by the depth of response in some people, people who I never expected to get that angry on my behalf and yet who did. People who seemed to notice that something was up and treated me gently even though they had no idea why. People who pulled me aside and gave me sympathy without making a big scene (which I was dreading at one point).

I guess part of me wants to cry because I feel so much like I belong here, and I have a little family of colleagues who are so totally amazing. It makes me feel like I am worth more than that, I am worth waiting for, I am worth someone putting in the effort and making me feel special. And that makes the colours a little bit brighter and tomorrow morning I may just leave the safety and warmth of my bed a little bit earlier.

And going away on Saturday (if it happens - it seems like the vehicle I was taking has been hijacked by the maintenance guy who won't give it back...) well I'm looking forward to it. I'm an analytical person, I don't bury my emotions, I just generally don't feel things very strongly, which is why this whole situation hit me so hard - I was all crazy and quivery like a teenager and I had no idea how to react to the fact that I was feeling the proverbial butterflies - and I can't wait for some solitude to think everything through and sort it out in my own head.

I've been in the city for far too long, and as much as I will miss the lab like crazy, I think it's time for me to get back to the field.

This has been (by far) the most emotional I've ever been on here. I'm sorry, don't freak out! Here are some pictures I've been looking at to try and relax and breathe a little bit.

Once again... why do I do this to myself?

So on Thursday night I headed off to movies with Luke, Duncan, Dave and Athena. Bearing in mind that this is the first movie I've been to since Batman (I fell asleep in the car-chase scene - maybe narcolepsy was beginning a long time before I noticed it?) I was pretty excited, but ended up screeching into the centre exhausted having rushed home, rushed off to collect Elvis, rushed to return diving gear and then rushed to go and meet Luke to grab dinner before the movie. In my defence I managed to only be about 45 minutes alter than I'd planned and I managed to sneak food into the movie-house so all was not lost (so for all guys out there, THAT is why we have bags. That and the fact that we feel an instinctive need to be prepared enough to survive on a desert island should it ever happen. More about this later).

We saw Madagascar 2 and I laughed the whole way through, but not enough to draw too many strange looks. Moderation and so on you know? When I got home at around 11pm or so I found myself nearly having a fainting fit in my bedroom. I sat down and had some water (it couldn't have been blood sugar as I'd had a massive blue slushie in the movie house) and decided that I had to take it easy for the next few days. All those good intentions...

To avoid being sucked into long long conversations with the other student in my lab, when I eventually dragged myself out of bed, dropped off Christmas presents and then stumbled into university I hid out in Luke's lab for the afternoon, and managed to get a lot of work done in not much time as well as helping him to write his first macro in visual basic. From there I went home and watched an episode of the x-files before heading off to my ex-work for the Christmas party. No, I wasn't going to egg them or anything, I just resigned over a year ago but still work there so I was invited to the party, and as they have a secret Santa I was kind of obliged to at least make an appearance.

I didn't anticipate staggering home well after midnight having laughed so hard I'm sure I tore a few stomach muscles. Lara was there and as usual the two of us went off on our own wavelength and ended up ripping everyone around us to shreds without them even noticing. The 'in my pants' game also made a glorious comeback, which was hilarious particularly (at the time) because we ended up running (literally) into a random restaurant at 11pm and settled down at a table next to a couple who were very obviously on their first date. It was fun to be completely immature for an evening!

The next morning I was totally exhausted and sat semi-comatose at the vet. Fortunately it seemed pretty quiet and I was able to help the few people who came in without needing to wake up too much. Then at about 10:30 6 separate clients walked in at exactly the same time. so I had to wake up to handle the chaos of dogs chasing cats, puppies escaping, crying people, people yelling and the phone ringing incessantly.

We only closed about an hour after closing time as people kept arriving and I haven't got the heart to turn away people who need dogfood or medication for their pets. Finally I managed to grab the phone between calls and switch it to answering machine mode and then cash up (for the third time) and sprint out the door with only an hour to spare before I had to meet Lara to go to her friend Storm's house. Storm is a huge One Republic and Maroon 5 fan, and as they were having a concert that night her friends had bought her a ticket and were surprising her with it that afternoon. Needless to say I arrived an hour and a half late and missed the surprise, as well as running off to the bathroom during dinner to put on makeup as according to Laurin (of the spastic colon) I looked 'totally worn out' (i.e. terrible).

The concert was awesome! I am not a maroon 5 or a one republic fan, but they had two of my favourite bands playing first as well as three little bands doing a battle of the bands type thing. The group that one definitely had the best bad, but their lead singer should be shot. One of the bands that I really wanted to see was really incredible. They aren't as much a band as two guys who DJ while playing about 5 different instruments each at various stages. It was amazing! Admittedly I was the only one in my immediate vicinity who even knew their music (and went ballistic, to many strange looks from the people around me) but by the end of their set everyone was going ballistic. at one point one of the guys was playing a little saxophone riff and we all started singing along, to the point where he was able to stop playing while we sang it back to him, over and over and over. His smile just got bigger and bigger and we got louder and louder. It must be amazing to have a huge arena with a good 20 thousand people in it singing your music back at you!

Once we got to the main acts I got through mostly on the strength that La and I have been to so many concerts together that we know when the other wants to dance like a moron/sing along/make snide comments or just be left alone to listen (that's usually more me than her). We also totally filled in Timbaland's part in Apologise (Eh! Eh!) which was awesome although we were nearly lynched a few times. Some of my students came to say hi, but I think I scared them a bit... We finished up at around 1am (having been standing/jumping around for a good 7 hours) and I headed over to Lara's house where she made me a huge mug of coffee and we ended up staying late talking crap. Like how that Bear guy said if you want to be rescued on a desert island and you have red lipstick you can write HELP with it. Of course that has its problems as (according to Lara) only sluts wear red lipstick therefore only sluts would be rescued, unless we were to start carrying it around as a precaution in case we were ever to end up stuck on a desert island. And that is how out bags get fuller and fuller!

Eventually she managed to shut me up long enough for her to go off to bed and I passed out in her room for about 5n hours until we got up and had breakfast with her mom. It was really awesome, sitting around eating snack-witches in out pyjamas while her mom recounted every episode she'd ever seen on national geographic (this is a relatively common reflex for most people when they find out that they've just met a zoologist). I felt like I was 15 again and it was awesome!

So after all that I went home and lay down for a nap before I had to get up and get some work done. I woke up about 7 hours later and had to rush off to church before rushing off to the ex-work to protect Lara from Laurin and get a movie. And then I settled in bed with my laptop (around 11ish) when Duncan decided that he's had enough to drink and that it would be a good time to call me. It was very entertaining but after about 40 minutes my mother started screaming at the computer so I had to help her. Turns out she was trying to talk to my aunt in the UK over Skype, but my aunt couldn't hear her. After I plugged the microphone in it was all fine though and I went off to bed.

So, to the title of this post, once again ti is morning, I am at university and I'm exhausted. Why do I keep doing this to myself? And why do my friends have to be so much fun that I can never go for 'an hour or so' as I promise myself every time so that I can go home and sleep? I am a lucky lucky person! Darn it.

Go back to high school

SO, once again I have promised to write about something and I'm not going to. Yet. I will have to make a list and work through it all one day. I DO want to write about diving, I DO want to write about visiting the zoo yesterday and seeing the monkeys again and playing with a lemur. And back in time I still need to write about the desert trip and the bush pig bathtub guy and the farmers wife with her leaf blower.

But for now, something is bothering me.

I have a friend from high school. Most of the people I spent time with back then I have lost touch with and, thanks to Facebook I chat to one or two of them from time to time, but that's about it. Partly because high school was not a happy time in my life by any definition of the term, and partly because I find that if I do see them we have nothing to talk about. I'm away a lot and so when I'm around I really try to make an effort to be a good friend, but that means (as nasty as it sounds) prioritising people. I can't get my work done and still see all the people I care about. I can barely cope with getting my work done and seeing the friends I would classify as 'close' plus the people I am in the "getting to know" phase with who I really do want to get to know better.

I used to be a good friend, I never forgot birthdays, I kept up to date with how everyone was, I drank so much coffee with various people that my mild liking for coffee developed into a full-blown addiction. But not anymore.

So back to the point. This girl is... difficult. We were friends through school because we did a lot of extracurriculars together. We were at a fancy private school where I didn't fit into the traditional mould of "long blonde hair and eight layers of makeup" and neither did she. She went off on a weird pagan phase and I was into punk rock and metal and would have dyed my hair blue if a)my parents and b) school regulations would allow it. We were both from normal families which had morals and values rather than piles and piles of money and as such we found that we could relate to each other.

But after school things changed. I went to university and on my first day, in my first lecture I found an empty seat and shyly asked if I could sit there, and the girl who moved her bag out of the way became one of my closest friends. And so it continued. I'm not saying that university was a social cakewalk... but I was never alone or unhappy and I have been blessed with some of the most incredible people who I can call my friends.

This girl (who I will call Susie for anonymity and because I can't think of a better name) had a similar atmosphere. I know some people from her classes and I like them all. They're all lovely, sweet, friendly people. And yet by the end of a four-year degree, she had no friends in the world except for me and her next-door neighbour. We went of field trips for our studies, I went to a lot more than she did, and I survived everything from sharing a 1-person hut with 6 other people to showering in shoes because of a spider invasion, to sharing 2 showers with 60 other people and getting up to shower at 3am to avoid the queue, only to find a queue because everyone else had had the same thoughts. And those trips are among the happiest memories I have. You learn to appreciate the awfulness of a situation for it's humour and for the weirdness of choosing a career where getting into the shower to open the door to get out of the bathroom while trying to keep your socks dry in subzero temperatures can be considered normal. And through it all you bond as a group in a way that I've never known in any other situation.

She went on her first trip and phoned me every day to complain because the bath was dirty (first rule of fieldtrips: DO NOT use the bath! Shower if you can, otherwise find some extra-strength disinfectant first!). She made no friends on that trip. One of my brother's closest friends and a girlfriend who went to the same place, and she told me that she'd never had more fun...

I tried to prompt her into a more positive outlook. I like to whine myself, but usually purely for the drama of it, but I tried to explain that she would have more fun if she tried just a little bit... But it didn't work. As the years passed it got harder and harder for me to spend time with her. We really have nothing to talk about. I got tired of the phone calls which, as if scripted always go as follows:

me: "Hello?"
Susie: "Hi, is that Helen?"
me: "yes."
Susie:" It's Susie, how are you?"
me: "I've got a leg in traction and I haven't slept for 3 days, but otherwise everything's awesome! how are you?" (obviously the injuries change between calls)
Susie: "*sigh*" and then a half-hour rant about how awful her life is and how cute her dog is and how he sat when she told him to, but the he wanted his rawhide bone. Not the rawhide bone that you get from the petshop down the road from her, he only likes the rawhide bones from the market... and so on.

I know that her life is, to all extents and purposes, pretty empty, but at the same time every call got a little bit more draining until I just couldn't. So sometimes when she called I wouldn't answer and I would wait until I had a bit cup of coffee and I would listen to her voicemail. And then I would call back, or send a message or something and we'd invariably end up having coffee or something where I'd end up having to hear all about her dog again.

The kicker for me was when she got her name changed (officially) because she didn't like correcting people's pronunciation. It was the equivalent of doing all the paperwork to change her name from "Susan" to "Susie." She's adopted, and her parents waited for over 2 years to get her, and they picked out her name really carefully and they love her to bits. I I felt like she was kicking them in the face for it.

And so, over the past 6 years our friendship has kind of deteriorated and I feel guilty, but I'm just not around enough to spend lots of time with her, and I know that every time she calls and I'm out of town she feels like I'm avoiding her, but there's nothing I can do!

So anyway. She called about a week ago while I was having a narcoleptic episode and didn't leave a message. I would have answered it too, but - as anyone who knows me during nap time will tell you, it would take a small earthquake to wake me and my ring tone isn't that loud. I didn't call back because I figured if she hadn't left a message it was because she would call back. Then the conference and diving happened and I hadn't had time to sit still since then when I woke to this message this morning:

I just want to say that I won't bother u with phone calls or smses anymore since u never answer them. Good luck with everything. Our friendship was great while it lasted. Susie"

And now I don't know what to do. I know she's lonely, but I don't know if I should respond, or leave her to her sulking. And if I respond what do I say? I feel like I'm 15 all over again!

Losing faith in soup

So I was still completely miserable yesterday. My voice is all crackly and about an octave deeper than usual, I'm coughing all the time and my nose started running. At lunchtime, after a very frustrating morning of discovering that one of the pieces of equipment essential to my work isn't working (and it was fine a few weeks ago...) Luke dragged me off to get lunch. All I wanted was soup, and for some reason (this isn't the first time) nowhere on campus had it! I had started feeling really nauseous, so anything else was out of the question (scary stuff: I'd been helping mount UV lights for the honours student's lizards, and he's had the same flu. Apparently vomiting is scheduled for me for the next day or two...).

My supervisor was also around for the first time in over a month (he was conferencing overseas) and I had to get him to let me into the lab after I locked myself out, and then he had to take the offending piece of equipment to be fixed after it became very evident that if I had to handle our scary Russian maintenance guy it would end it tears.

By the end of the afternoon I was sounding really bad, but I'd got one of the new programmes working with my equipment (I don't understand the readout, but we're getting there!) so I went home and stopped for soup along the way. And it didn't work.

Admittedly it wasn't my old standby tomato, it was a fancy tomato and red pepper with basil, but I still coughed all evening and ended up waking up repeatedly until at 3am, when I was coughing so hard I had tears streaming down my face (from impressive bloodshot eyes!) I dosed myself up on decongestants cough syrup (I restocked along with buying soup), painkillers and throat lozenges. I'm feeling better now (i.e. I can breathe again) but I'm tired and I don't wwant to go oout tonight but I promised and I have to get a new DVD drive for my computer and go pick up equipment and figure out the stupid readouts. It wouldn't be so bad if the soup had done its job. I'll have to go back to plain tomato tonight and see if there's a difference.

Oh, and as it was very rightly pointed out, I haven't posted a picture in a while! Here is the view from one of my trapping sites. The house I stay in is at the bottom left, on top of the little hill (the line of trees hides it).

Should have had more soup...

I felt a whole ton better yesterday, and had a fairly productive day! After I left the lab I went off to the vet to tell that that I will work this Saturday (I figured that a cold front and flu makes going on fieldwork 2 days earlier a bit silly) and then went down the road to say hi to Jo and to get more soup.

I think the whole of Joburg has this flu - they were out of cough mixture, medlemon AND all the nice soups. Joey was awesome though, she saw me, told me that I looked 'really sick' (i.e. terrible) and made me mint green tea. She also insisted that I stay with her for a few hours so I decided to skip having a nasty soup and have dinner with her.

It was fantastic! I haven't much time with her lately, considering that we used to go for coffee at least once a week, often more than that but I've been so busy buried in the lab that I've neglected her slightly. We both pulled out our laptops and discussed our photos (she is also a professional photographer, although I wonder about her style sometimes), showed her pictures of all the people I work with and places I go to regularly. She was very funny in her reactions to some of the people, I guess I talk about the lab and the people here so often that she had a mental picture of them that didn't quite add up.

A few other people came to visit, and before I knew it I had been there for 3 hours and I was exhausted, so I went home. I woke up at 2am unable to breathe, and I realised that as great as the Thai food was, soup would have been a wiser option! At least I got up early! Coughing works so much better than my alarm clock! And now I'm off to calibrate equipment and try and figure out exactly how it all works...

Once again, the restorative powers of soup!

I discovered yesterday that although allergies may have played a role, that I had full-on flu. After an entirely non-productive morning where I nearly cried at the futility of my attempts at visual modelling and Luke was really kind and offered sympathy and bought me popcorn (I will write something about the restorative powers of popcorn at some stage, although it is only a temporary fix - a bit like a band-aid when you need a cast and a hospital bed).

Just after lunchtime when I went all over campus looking for lunch and deciding that I didn't want anything I gave up and went home. I took some work with me, but halfway home I realised that with several layers of clothing, a scarf and the heater on full I was shivering violently. By the time I got home I had all of the aches and pains of flu to go with my fever and I couldn't even swallow the cough syrup that I hadn't poured all over my carpet the night before.

So I made a hot water bottle and crawled into bed. I woke up at sevenish and went to a 24-hour grocery store to get throat lozenges and tomato soup, and then went straight back to bed. I woke up this morning a little bit congested but otherwise fine! As I felt like death after my 4 hour nap in the afternoon, I must give credit for the recovery to the fantastic restorative powers of tomato soup!

So forget the flu-caps and vitamin C, just drink soup!

For crying out loud, it's AUGUST already!

And no, I'm not going to do the 'my oh my, time has flown this year' thing. It has, and it hasn't and that's entirely a topic for discussion at another time, preferably after rather too much Perky Pink. What I'm shocked by, is that it's August, not even 2 weeks from the official beginning of spring, and it's colder than it has been all winter, and foggy!

Just to make things worse, I have all the hayfever associated with Spring, and a bit of a cold from the freezing weather, which meant that I woke up this morning sounding like Norah Jones. I was also up ever few hours during the night to re-dose on cough mixture, which I managed to pour all over my carpet at 3am. And the chemist wasn't open at 7am (how DARE they) so I'm having to make do with an old box of medlemon and some nasty lozenges that don't work.

I ahte to admit this, but I'm almost looking forward to the brutally hot weather in the lowveld!

Family ties

I am exhausted at the moment! Last night my aunt arrived from Cape Town. She lives in England, but had a business trip to the cape, and now she's spending a few days with my grandparents. Her flight arrived at 8pm, so my dad and I collected her and went to my granparents house for a late supper. Wow, my grandmother is a really good cook, and while I appreciate that she made us an incredible meal, it was the size of about 2 of the meals that I cook at home, so I spent most of the evening feelnig mildly ill.

It was really nice to see my aunt again, but I found it strange, and a bit sad, that I'm not upset that I won't see her again before she goes back overseas. When I was youger she came out once a year and we all went on holiday together. When she was in the UK the biggest treat for us would be to phone her and talk for 5 minutes. Now I guess we have Skype and email and it feels like she's not all that far away.

I'm struggling at the moment a bit - the sick lizards are taking a lot of time, as well as the fact that I feel obligated to help at the zoo more often because they've helped me out. My actual work is falling behind, although I'm getting a lot done, and I'm making up for it by staying up late. When I finally collapse into bed I struggle to sleep. I think it's all the stress. This morning I think my body outvoted my brain, and I slept until 9:30. That means that this weekend (besides coming in to university every day to treat sick lizards) I'm gonig to have to catch up on a lot of work.

Fun times...

where did the last 2 days go?

So I came down with a nasty bug, and my doctors are treating mr for Giardia. After all that! I think they were right - the medication worked really quickly and I feel fine, except that I've developed a nasty tendency to sleep for at least 18 hours a day! I got a DVD to watch in bed and efll asleep during the first 10 minutes this morning, only to wake up about 9 hours later with a splitting headache and some of the weirdest dreams ever!

At least I'm feeling better and I'm off the hectic antibiotics after tomorrow. I'll also have to go and do some serious work to catch up after sleeping for 2 days.

It was worth it though!

Back to black... or white

Wow, I hadn't realised that my post yesterday was so multicoloured! Although maybe it will cause the world to sit up and realise that Giardia is no joke... Although I just spoke to a friend who has had it before, and she said it's really not that bad, and if you get treated quickly it's over in a few days. Kind of like tickbite fever I guess - ever since I've had it I'm not nearly as stressed about ticks as I used to be! It's horrible, but it's survivable!


It's being a frustrating week, I'm not sleeping well yet, so I'm tired pretty much all of the time. I made myself get up really early this morning (and it was freezing!) and I'm hoping that that'll reset my clock a bit!

I went to the zoo just after 7 this morning and got the frogs cleaned out and fed before the volunteers arrived. It was nice being ni there on my own again, not worrying about being in the way or anything like that. Two of the frogs that were perfectly ok when I cleaned them out yesterday are getting sick now, which is very upsetting!

Otherwise I just finished redoing a bunch of stats, which means that I have to start making rpetty graphs, I can't procrastinate any more! Making graphs is easy, making them pretty on the other hand...

aaaaah!

I just found out that the monkey who I love very very much, has Giardia! Apparently they didn't feel like telling anyone... here's what Wikipedia has to say about it:

"Symptoms include loss of appetite, lethargy, fever, explosive diarrhea, hematuria (blood in urine), loose or watery stool, stomach cramps, upset stomach, projectile vomiting (uncommon), bloating, flatulence, and burping (often sulphurous). Symptoms typically begin 1–2 weeks after infection and may wane and reappear cyclically. Symptoms are caused by Giardia organisms coating the inside of the small intestine and blocking nutrient absorption. Most people are asymptomatic; only about a third of infected people exhibit symptoms. Untreated, symptoms may last for six weeks or longer.
Symptomatic infections are well recognised as causing lactose intolerance,[2] and while usually temporary, may be permanent.[3][4] Whereas in asymptomatic infection, although hydrogen breath tests indicate poorer rates of carbohydrate absorption, this is not to a diagnostic level.[5] It has been suggested that these observations are explained by symptomatic giardia infection allowing for the overgrowth of other bacteria.[6][5]"

Mmmm, explosive diarrhea!

In other news, I have a huge amount of work to do, and it's all annoying, fiddly stuff that takes ages without providing too much by way of intellectual stimulation. I had to take the bakkie off to be washed yesterday and it took them over 2 hours! I'm also helping out at the zoo because the main quarantine vet is leaving, so I'm helping get everything dewormed and sorted before she goes, as well as training new volunteers in the next few days.

Awesome fun, but I feel guilty about the pile of work waiting for me!

Running out of steam

So I caught lizard number 12 today, about 6 sites and 2 days after the victorious rock-climbing hair-raising capture of number 11. I even went back and did some similar rock-climbing only to find that there were no lizards for me to catch. It was a cold and windy day yesterday, so I wasn't all too shocked about not catching anything, as much as I was still a bit upset. The problem with doing something single-mindedly day in and day out is that after a while it becomes personal. So yesterday was a very hard day, even if it wasn't the only lizard-free day on this trip.

I'm getting to the stage where I've had enough. It's weird to say that, considering that last year I spent almost 3 months here, and hated having to leave at the end of it. It's not even that fieldwork wasa easy last time - far from it. It was easier than this time in that I found lizards a lot more easily, but thing still went wrong, and it rained all the time, and i had to live with someone I didn't particularly get along with most of the time. I think it's just the frustration of working really really hard with little reward. Plus I have a ton of other work that I should be doing here, that isn't happening. It's all the data analysis and writing that I usually associate with being behind my desk in the lab, not my favourite part of research, but one of the most important parts nonetheless.

So beside the fact that I'm working really hard and essentially getting nowhere, I've got the naggin feeling in the back of my mind that I should be using all of my time effectively. But when I get in from the field and I'm hot and dirty and usually bleeding (you try crawl throgh the thorn-bushes I went through today and see how you turn out!), with a throobbing headache from being in the sun all day, all I want is a nap. And I've learned from long experience, that naptime is ALWAYS worth it!

Speaking of which... I'm going to go and sleep now!

woe is me

I've had a bad day in the field. A really bad day. I don't want to talk about it.

Now it's cold and I want to go to bed, but it's only 7:30 and I've started having trouble sleeping. I think I've been sleeping too much. I want to go home now!

But I really hate the idea of going home empty handed. And as I'm staing here for free, and hardly driving much, it's not costing me anything to keep trying.

Keep on trying...

I was watching the Long Way Down with Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman just now. I got the DVD while I was in the UK. it makes me want to travel, and at the same time makes me incredibly sad that I will probably never be able to do a trip like that because: a) as a girl, travelling alone is really dangerous. so much so that you can't get a visa for a lot of African countries if you're a girl travelling alone; b) I don't know anyone crazy enough to do a trip like that with me. c) I don't have 3 months free and d) I'm not famous, so probably couldn't get the sponsorship and equipment for a trip like that unless I saved up until I was 90. And as a 90 year old I probably would be ill-advised to take a trip like that.

I'm also sad that they hardly get to see any of South Africa. I'm excited that they went down the west coast, and I'm hoping I'll recognise some of the places when they get there, but I think they missed out on some of the really beautiful places south africa has to offer. They also didn't recognise Chad as it's own country.

And they didn't go to Mali! Why does nobody ever want to go there? I'd love to go there! And Malawi, nd Kenya and Tanzania and Namibia and Botswana... and before all the violence I really wanted to go to Chad. Oh well.

More than anthing I'd love to go to Moambique and then down, around the coastline up to the skeleton coast and then across the desert on a quad bike. Anyone keen?

cooking (and cooking and cooking and cooking)

So there's a fieldtrip that goes to the east coast every year to teach the little second year students all about the marine ecosystems and the stuff you find living there. As well as basic ecology and systematics and experimental design. That's in 10 days! 8 if you don't count travelling days. It's an awesome trip and I really love it, you get to go to all these incredible places and look at things that are so interesting and so different from the usual stuff we do at university that it feels like a break in another world. In the previous 2 years I went as a taching assistant, which was awesome because I got to do all the cool stuff without the stress of the exam at the end. This year I wasn't invited. Rather, I was not invited as teaching staff, but rather as 'caterers assistant' by the caterer who has become a good friend of mine after I spet the previous 2 trips helping her in every spare moment. The cooking facilities are really bad and feeding around 50 people is a big job!

So I agreed. I figured that I would still have time to help students, plus I love the trip so much I thought it would be worth cooking (something that I hate) just to be there. I was wrong.

Firstly, I had no idea how living in the middle of nowhere for 3 months had affected me. I've actually become somewhat antisocial and having 45 people around all the time drove me crazy. I actually started taking breaks where I would go and walk on the beach for an hour or so and just take some 'alone time' to breathe!

Secondly I hate cooking. The facilities consist of microwaves (in separate cottages. I did a lot of runing from cottage to cottage) and stoves the size of microwaves with a hot plate on top. Either the hot plate OR the stove could work at one time, and if too many cottages were using theirs our food didn't cook. Often I would have pots going in adjacent cottages and just sprint back and forth to stir and so on...

Third, we had load shedding. That is where our infrastructure can't handle the electricity requirements of everyone using power, as well as power stations needing maintenance, so random areas have power cuts that last up to 2 hours, often twice or three times a day. If that happens just before dinner, you're in a lot of trouble! One day we had to make 45 individual pasta salads,and we had a power cut, so when it came back on I sat until 2am cooking pasta (the caterer was feeling sick, and I let her sleep through the whole saga). To this day I can't eat pasta without feeling ill!

Fourth. It's hard to say this without sounding egotistical. Basically, I know the work. I really really do. I loved the course and worked really hard, to a point where I very nearly left my current university to go to the coast to study Marine biology. So as much as I enjoyed the fact that I was making their lives easier and making it possible for the kids to work without worrying about anything else (and for the record, they were the nicest group of students I've ever encountered on a fieldtrip, always volunteering to help, and nice to chat to), I came to resent to people who were there to teach, and I also resented the fact that whenever I wanted to participate I had to cook. There was even a day when I came down with heatstroke on the beach and went to lie down, only to be woken up half an hour later to make lunch. Yes, it's why I was there and I was happy to do my job with a smile. But it shouldn't have been my job.

It was possibly the hardest 10 days I've had in a long time. I had to think through my priorities and my rationalising being there. Fortunately I have some really supportive friends (on and off the trip) who were always willing to listen, even when I just needed to complain to get the nasty thoughts out of my system. I realised that I was holding onto something that ended when I wasn't invited back. And as much as I love the trip, I don't love it that much. So, unless I get invited as a teaching assistant again, that was the last time for me and the fieldtrip. I'm glad I got to spend it with such fantastic kids, and sad about the politics going on amongst the staff that very nearly ruined it for me. And at least every time I cook now I can rejoince in the fact that it's only ONE tomato! or one cucumber. Not 10 or 500!

2 months down the line...

I really missed blogging! I got a lot more stuff donethough, I didn't realise how much time I spent blogging and reading other people's blogs (I missed all of them too!). But I just realised it's almost 2 months since my last post and I think you all deserve an update.

My proposal is currently in the form of a very well though out and organised 2-page long list, that I've tried to translate into fuull sentences and ended up with 40 pages of stuff that doesn't really make sense. I took it to workj today to work on and then left it there. So I'll be trekking out up north tomorrow to go and retieve it. not that it's really necessary (besides saving the trees by not printing another copy), but I was working in an old book that has some notes in it from a subject I really loved when I was in second year. So I want to hang on to them. I went off to the Northern Cape for just under a week in April. I spent y birthday with mylizards. the place is so incredible! It's beautiful! And everyone was really nice. The people camping near me were really friendly and kept trying to feed me when they saw I wasn't doing the traditional "make-a-fire and cook half a cow" south african thing but rather having a sandwich and going to bed at 7pm.

Every night it was someone different. I had the old guy from Upington with his son from New Zealand. This guy had cycled over 8000km around south africa and then bought a motorbike and done about that around Namibia. He's leaving next month for Australia where he has planned a 3-month cycling trip from Sydney to Perth (or the other way around. I forget). The next night was a very sweet family from Cape Town ('we made too much Potjie. PLEASE help us eat it!) who sat on the steps of their camper-vans playing the harmonica and then started up sokkie-treffers and sokkied the night away next to my tent. After that was a lovely family, also from Cape-Town who I got very fond of and spoke to them a lot. They'd pretty much taken their kids to the Kgalagadi transfrontier park for a month even though it involved their daughter missing a week of school because they figured she'd get a better education on a trip like that. When I told them about my lizards they got very excited and actually saw some the next day and took a really nice photo which they gave to me. There were also the strange conversations in the bathroom about what the word in afrikaans for bath-plug was because you had to bring your own and stuff. The night before I left a very motherly tannie chased me out the bathroom because I was leaving early (I left at 4am) and should go to bed. this was on my birthday so the whole way through my phone was ringing and bleeping while I was shooed to my tent by a middle-aged lady in curlers and pyjamas with fluffy pink slippers.

What was really amazing was how friendly the Afrikaans people were. they were mostly from the Cape. Gauteng people made really tight circles with their cars (almost like oxwagons ;)) and put their tents inside and didn't speak to anyone. I almost wanted to cover my number plate on my car so I wasn't linked to them in any way! It was a really amazing trip though. As muich as I didn't want to go on my own I'm glad I did. Partly it was a chance to prove to myself that I could manage a 940km drive on my own (it was actually quite fun1), and partly to have some time to be quite completely alone. I was out with my lizards from about 7am until around 4 or 5pm, and I didn't have to worry about anyone else and if they were bored or miserable or tired. And then I went to bed at about 7 (sunset) so I caught up on tons of sleep and got home ready to really get started. I got excited about my project for the first time in months anbd it was fantastic!

I resigned from my job last week after the politics got too much and I got so stressed out with university and work and people that I actually made myself sick (not in the finger-down-the throat way, in the I'm-so-stressed-I-can't-sleep-and-get-all-nervous-and-nearly-pass-out-and-can't-keep-anything-down kind of way. Kind of like the end of honours last year). It was really sad. I felt ok about it, considering the politics of having the manager's brother hate me and her listening to him were really childish and resulted in her phoning the owner literally seconds after I went to speak to him to demand an explanation for me going to see him. but I'll really miss working with Lara who can ALWAYS make me laugh! and when I saw the pile of horrible christmas music we have to listen to every december I got a little bit emotional. And I'll really miss the free movies! But I think it's for the best and I'm really looking forward to having my weekends unstructured and empty soon.

My supervisor is being a moron. I helped him out and with something for when he was away and all he could say afterwards was how much he had to fix up everything I'd done. Loser. I think it hurt so much mainly because I was quite nervous that we hadn't done a good enough job even though everyone else said we had. Maybe that's why I wanted him to supervise me, we have roughly equivalent standards when it comes to work. But it doesn't change the fact that I've lost a lot of respect for him as a person.

I'm finished with my first year's for the year. I'm glad that the course is over, but sad to see them go. I had a really nice group this year and we got along well (I even gave them chocolate for working hard! I've never even thought about doing that before!). A lot of them said they were thinking of doing Zoology next year, so I'm sure I'll cross paths with at least a few of them in the future. It was really frustrating though because I only had 2 students who were failing (out of 16. this is very unusual, usually at least half of them are struggling if not failing) and finally, about 2 or 3 weeks before the end I sat down with one of them and we talked through was should go in a drawing, what you should and shouldn't label. How to make your work look nice and neat (like tracing a drawing if it's been redrawn and erased and redrawn on top of itself in heavy pencil), and how to write answers that are relevant. He finally started coming right! It was so incredible! He was still failing, but he'd just about doubled his marks and was borderline-passing by the time we finished! I felt a little bit validated considering everything else going on.

The third years on the other had have been a disaster. they have lied to me, moaned at me, had a screaming match over their marks withme, complained to the lecturer about me, requested that I don't mark them... and so on. Fortunately they're really not very intelligent liars so it's easy to shut them up, but considering :a) my third years hate me; b) my proposal is proving to be tricky; c)I can't do a simple job well enough for my supervisor and d)I couldn't get along with a little 17-year-old well enough to stay at my job; and e)I found a grey hair last week (I'm22! I can't be going grey!) I've been feeling a little bit miserable lately.

so I took things to extremes, skipped the social-after-work/varsity friday evening and went home and had soup. It wasn't enough, so on Saturday (yesterday) I had more soup, and dyed my hair.

Now I'm feeling better.

Tomato soup and hair-dye rocks!
(not together obviously!)