Making a story…

I remember on my 21st birthday (not the party, the actual birthday) my grandparents and aunt came for lunch and each of them told the stories of what they’d been doing the day I was born. The reactions, the mundane tasks. My parents had thought I would be a boy (they hadn’t asked the doctor but both suspected for some reason) so when I was a girl my dad ran out and got me a pink dress. My aunt told my brother about me, my mother was relieved that she’d changed her mind about my name (I’m pretty sure I was gripping the sides of the birth canal until she changed her mind) and so on.

So while I was attempting to stumble along the treadmill last night (darned festive season got me again) I thought about what I could tell little A when she gets old enough to ask about the day she came along.

Do I tell her:

• I was so nervous all day my brain was mush and I was useless until I went home, where I read Steven King’s Dark Tower series until I ran out of books.
• I got the message before my mother and she got all offended.
• I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone until I’d been given the all clear (people have to be informed in a certain order to avoid offense and stuff, and leaking something before time can mess up a carefully constructed social network)
• I broke the security boom at the hospital. Well not broke as much as I was the one that pushed the button as it began beeping long screeches and not going up. I got to park in visiting doctors parking for free!
• After all that stress I forgot the word for ‘maternity ward’ and went to the front desk where I demanded that the young man on duty ‘show me the babies’ – he was somewhat alarmed, but did help me once I explained that my brother had just given birth and that I had to go and see him. In retrospect I’m still surprised that he didn’t casually misdirect me to the local psychiatrist for a straight-jacket fitting.
• That that little girl is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, and my brother and his wife just… fit. They’re the right parents for her, and she’s just completely and absolutely perfect.

Revenge of the ear-worm

Tired of humming along to the dancing fruit? Maybe the 80’s are the answer?*

I’m just sayin’

This is inspired by my insomnia-inspired trip to the gym yesterday where I found out there was a 6am dance class! It was hilarious, as I joined in and did the cheesy dance moves with a bunch of adorable old ladies and their daughters.  Its very hard to take life seriously with cheesy choreography that belongs in the 80’s while picturing everyone around you in legwarmers. Too bad we had to use current music rather than the more appropriate classics, but I’m sure we can work on that! Not too much of a work out body-wise, but more than worth it for the boost it gave my mood for the day!

*And don’t pretend you didn’t at least think about trying some dance moves!

You want me to WHAT?!?

When I was eight years old I tried to jump off a high-dive board into the swimming pool at school. I realised for the first time that I was afraid of heights as I sat down, clutched the edges of the board and shook uncontrollably until I was able to crawl back to the platform.

By the time I reached 15 or so heights had become such an issue I found myself unable to stand on a desk without shaking, and walking over bridges made me incredibly nervous.

So anyway when I was fifteen I went on a school camp where rock-climbing and abseiling were two of many incredibly cool activities (like archery and raft-building) and I decided that it was time for me to get over all of my nonsense and climb that silly rock face.

Much screaming and crying and shaking and swearing in front of the headmistress later I got to the top! Unfortunately abseiling did not go as well, as I freaked out, went into hysterics and clawed my way up the rocks to the top again (I tried about five times, including once with an instructor next to me holding my hand).

Since then I’m largely better with heights. I climb things whenever I get the opportunity (kind of like poking at an old scar to see if it still hurts) and I discovered years ago that if there is a lizard to catch I lose all fear of anything, and so I’ve become relatively comfortable scrambling around rocks.

The fear of abseiling stayed with me though, and even though I was invited a few times I was always too scared. At the same time it was annoying. How can I be the fearless lizard-hunter if I’m terrified of dangling off the side of a cliff?

Anyway on Saturday evening as I was fixing up my nap-smudged eyeliner (I know you’re not supposed to sleep with makeup on, but does taking a nap count?) I got a call from Leia inviting me to go abseiling on Sunday. I agreed immediately (which was rather funny because I think she was expecting to have to beg and stuff).

So early on Sunday morning, she arrived with coffee and took me off to meet the other crazy cliff-danglers. And they pointed out the first place we’d be abseiling from/off/at/on (?)

You have got to be kidding me!

“Don’t be silly it’s only 50 metres! You’ll be fine…”

By this stage the others went to admire a little waterfall (complete with dismembered cow-head)

while the view of the bridge started doing this to me:

We got to sit around and wait for Leia and another guy to set it all up, and the bridge loomed over us, looking higher and higher by the minute. Fortunately the others were really nice and one of them even had blue hair so we compared notes and all chatted about silly things while I felt my heart-rate rising with each passing moment.

By the time we got to the bridge I felt like I was somewhere between throwing up and passing out. One of the other guys went first so that he could help people at the bottom and he very happily climbed over the edge and slid off.

And then it was my turn.

Let me just say: kneeling on a tiny little pipe while shaking (and apparently ghostly pale) and being unclipped from the safety line because it got tangled is NOT fun at all.

It is a good thing I hadn’t had breakfast.

I didn’t cry (yay!) but it was close.

I clung onto the bridge so tightly I ended up bruising my palm.

And for some reason once I had finally done the ‘letting myself slip off the bridge’ step (talk about going against every instinct known to man…) while being photographed a LOT and not really caring much at all (I cared later). I opened my eyes and looked around and… it was really pretty up there!

So i said so, and everyone laughed a lot and took MORE photos of me (smiling and with my eyes open this time) and then i got to work getting down to the ground because the harness had shifted slightly and become rather painful.

(this isn’t me, as I kind of had my hands full while trying to avoid an ugly death)

It LOOOMS!

(This isn’t me either)

All this next to the crazy bungee jumpers leaping around…

(I thought they were supposed to go straight down?)

(It may look graceful here, but you didn’t hear the guy screeching like a girl…)

From there we had a lunch break and then headed off to the next spot – a cliff-type thing that looked a lot shorter from the ground than from the top. We got to swim in the river, take a nap and generally enjoy the scenery for a few hours

While Leia and co set up the ropes.

For the record, I don’t care that those ropes can theoretically hold up a car. They’re SO thin! And the little spindly trees…

I had a full-on freak out and said lots of nasty things. To help matters my ropes got tangled up again which meant I had to do some square-dancing on the cliff-edge (step left, then right, turn around, turn back, step right…). Leia responded to my stream of verbal abuse (I don’t remember much of what I said, I was terrified and having nasty flashbacks to my previous experiences) by laughing, which made me yell even more. I do remember her explaining that she was giving me some slack on the safety rope and I yelled at her and made her take the slack in immediately.

Slack is scary.

and of course once I’d got going, yelled at her for laughing (you can’t grip properly if you’re laughing…) and had to negotiate the whole falling-over-backwards thing after a pesky ledge I made it down, collapsed into a quivering heap and confirmed via the radio that I was alive, albeit shaky (you should see the photos I took after this point, they’re completely blurred…).

I felt kind of bad for all the things I’d said, particularly since I hadn’t died and so most of it was entirely unfounded. Plus I hated that although I had finally ‘beaten’ the fear, I was still scared and it didn’t feel like I’d accomplished anything. A few minutes later the guy in charge radioed to ask if he could use my camera up top (I’d left it up there), so I gave him one condition:

“Can I do that again?”

And I managed to smile most of the way down the second time!

Sjoe!

So this weekend was INSANE! I spent most of it rushing around from place to place and dying of heat (never plan four different things on the Saturday after the Killers concert…), but it was totally awesome anyway.

I’m too tired to give many details so here you go:

We went to the KILLERS! It was awesome!

 

Although there were rather a lot of people. i was lucky enough to be able to see the stage (as I’m a bit on the tall side), even though we were behind about six GIaNT mutants (who were all friends, which was so strange). My friends are shorter than me but seemed ok with looking at the screens and jumping around like maniacs.

Witness the rather scary progression: from all dressed-up, to all-dressed up and rained on (sorry for the weird crop, CG would kill me for putting photos of her up here)

 

… to exhausted, rained-on and all-screamed out (and still wearing a seatbelt). I have to admit to spazzing-out completely when they started the “I’ve got soul” bit. I’m talking jumping up and down and SHRIEKING “It’s my song! Oh my gosh! it’s my song! they’re playing my song! Oh my gosh ohmygoshohmgosh!” and so on. What can I say, I have a a history with it. Note the flashing bunny-ears as well. They kept us entertained for most of the evening (the others got pink ones, I got blue ones) as well as the drive home, not to mention annoying enough of the tall people to get them out of our way…

After getting back and joining in an epic guitar-hero rock band game and generally being  bit over-tired and therefore manic we collapsed and I woke up the next morning to rush home and change, meet someone for coffee and go off to Tamara’s open house market-ty thing. It was AWESOME, the jewellery was absolutely stunning and I’ve already hijacked a Christmas present for me (they look better on me than the potential giftee anyway). Don’t judge me!

From there it was off to Athena’s braai, where I met a bunch of new people, got to document extreme pool-entries:

Appreciated some awesome T-shirts:

  

Reconnected with an old friend (who is also a blogger…). If we ever start a band i think this should be the album-cover. The angry face in my case was the product of extreme exhaustion, not unhappiness!

Appreciated Athena’s super-braai skills (she’s vegetarian, yet quite talented at cooking dead things)

Attempted to take another lab-photo

If we could stop laughing for long enough to take it…

If you’d seen attempt number two, you’d understand my grimace…

And of course, flashing (and fluffy) blue ears, while a total bonus, didn’t quite fulfil my weekend-hat-requirement. Fortunately Tom’s hat DID. Anyone in Spain who feels like buying me a hat, please do so! This one is AWESOME!

Unfortunately while the fun didn’t end there, I left my cameras at home for the rest of the weekend, so you’ll have to take my word for it!

Now to recover and face the week ahead! Which is easier when you have exciting things, like my appointment to re-blueify my hair tomorrow. And of course, visitors like this in the lab:

3…2…1… AWWWWWWWW!

Friendship

Warning: this is a cheesy cheesy post.

About 18 months ago I posted a whole long thing about friendship and how lucky I am to have such special people in my life. I’m not always the best friend that I could be, I‘m really busy, I’m away a lot, I don’t always notice what’s going on around me until my friends have found other people to talk to or else they bash me over the head and tell me to shut up.

A last week I had a really awful day. Everything went OK, but I had some realisations about things and it made me really depressed – the joy of being alone in the bush is that you’re trapped in a place with your own thoughts – things that wouldn’t usually upset me really do here because I have no distractions (except the whole farm being on fire thing. Thanks guys).

Then tonight while I talked it all through with CG on MSN, Leia on G-talk and someone else on Facebook I realised just how amazing my support system is. A lot of the time it feels like nobody even notices that I’m gone, but I realised that just because they’re living their lives doesn’t mean I don’t play a part in them, no matter how small.

A while ago I dated this guy, very briefly (very very briefly) and I wasn’t in a good place and treated him badly and we decided it was better to try and save a friendship and move on. And the other day out of nowhere I got a message from him, just checking up on me and thinking of me, and it was one of the most special things I’ve ever had – it came at just the right time! And I realised how much I don’t deserve it, I was a horrible person to him. sometimes I think we write people off without realising how much they mean to us.

So anyway long sob story over, I once again proclaim that it isn’t international friendship day, but I think that it is friendship day in my little universe.

10 things I love about my friends:

1. I can be away for months at a time and when I get back it’s like I never left. Even now that I’m a little bit nervous about going home, I know there are people excited to see me again and that makes it not so scary!
2. Laughter. I don’t think I have a single friend with whom I haven’t laughed until my sides hurt. It’s the most amazing experience ever.
3. Learning: we’re all from very different walks of life and that’s OK. From friends I’ve learned about law, rocks, martial arts, investment finance, economic modelling, music, languages and life in general. Nobody ever discounts my opinion as silly because I don’t understand and I work in such  different arena, and as long as I ask questions they’re happy to help me to learn. Sometimes I get to explain things to them too. (they still think I’m crazy at times though)
4. They’re not afraid to tell me when I overstep a boundary and not afraid to tease and accept teasing in return.
5. We have fun. Lots of fun!
6. I don’t have to pretend to be someone I’m not anymore. By not having to pretend to be the Fun one, the Spontaneous one or the Quirky one I find that I am actually fun, spontaneous and quirky anyway and I don’t have to stress about it!
7. They go along with my crazy schemes. That takes courage, determination and complete insanity! I’m’ lucky to have them!
8. Wine on rooftops.
9. If you’ve ever had a conversation with someone and suddenly realised you’ve been talking for more than a few hours – that’s what we do!
10. Acceptance. I’m a bit odd at the best of times. I have a family that works on a Sunday morning and can’t wait up for me on a Saturday, yet I’ve never had a problem finding someone to offer me a couch or a spare bedroom. I get weird illnesses (occupational hazard of working with animals) and they ever complain if I change my RSVP because I can’t actually make it out the door without collapsing. I get angry when we watch documentaries, I’m obsessed with guitar hero. And they love me anyway!

I think we don’t appreciate the people around us enough, so if you want to list special things about your friends, I name this official Friendship Appreciation Day. Just let me know!

Those poor farmers…

As a lot of people have been commenting on the strangeness of the people out here, i figured I’d provide a slightly more well-wounded view of what’s actually happening. You see, although life out here is a bit… odd… at times, as far as the locals are concerned they’ve been invaded by a crazy lizard-girl!

Exhibit A: i was trapping a long fissure along an outcrop, but the lizards were too smart and would evade the traps regularly. as it’s hectically long and I’d had to carry extra traps in preparation of trapping the whole thing I didn’t want to go home empty handed, so I watched where the lizards were going, hid behind some bushes, waited for one to emerge and jumped out yelling “AAAAAAAhhhhAAAAAAAhhhhAAAAAAhhhh” (Whitney Houston would have been impressed!).

Worked like a charm!

So I did it again, with a little more imagination and a few flourishes. of course right then generations 4-through-6 from next door happened to drive past. I had NO idea I was so close to the road! Of course they stopped to watch and I’d just caught a lizard so I couldn’t stop and chat, so I waved, yelled a “hello! I got him!” and ran off. I’m pretty sure the representative fro generation 4 shook his head as he drove off.

Exhibit B: I had spotted some rocks along the main road. I had no idea who the land belonged to, but I’d spoken to everyone in the area who was around and there was an excellent chance that it belonged to the same guy who owned the outcrop with the dam and the crocodiles.

It took me about twenty minutes to get up there (climbing sandstone-granite mix and dodging giant thorny vines while carrying trapping paraphernalia is always fun!) and trapping went well. All in all a good day! until I tried to go home.

The thing with climbing is that going up is usually easier than coming back down. Often if it’s not too far I’m happy to let gravity help but there are these vines that have massive thorns (they’re about the same width as pencils) and I didn’t really want to land on them, particularly with my very precious lizards in tow.

After about forty-five minutes I was halfway down when I slipped and sat down rather hard on a rather spiky rock. My pants (which I’d sewn back together any times by then) ripped and i just managed to stop falling further, although I was pretty sure the rock was going to leave a scar (it did).

A moment later someone drove past, stopped, got out of the car and said “Hello! Hoe gaan dit?”

I smiled, explained that I was working with lizards and he said “Oh! you’re lizard-girl! I’ve heard about you!” We proceeded to have a long conversation with me sitting on the spiky rock and wishing he would go away. When he asked if I needed help I declined, and pretended to be looking for chameleons in the foliage.

So you see, the farmers aren’t the weird ones! I’m sure I’ve provided many stories to keep them occupied!

The Bathtub guy and the Leafblower Lady. Part 1

Anyway I realised that I never explained the whole leafblower-farmers wife thing. And that must be rectified! Unfortunately I have so many things to write about the people here that I will have to do it in smaller segments. Here is part one!

To start off, I’m living on a ‘farm’ inside a conservancy, which is basically a collection of little farms. Some of them are traditional farm-farms where they grow grapes or macadamia nuts or cows* and some of them are more game-farmesque. I’m on the East side of the Conservancy (it’s 30 000 hectares in total. That’s pretty big I think) which is mostly inhabited by old families that have been there for generations. They don’t like dividing the land between children so basically as soon as a son gets old enough to help run the farm and get married his wife moves in with the family and things carry on as normal. Some of the wealthier farmers even build houses right next to their homes for the eldest son and his wife.

It’s not unusual to find five generations living on the same farm. That’s the tricky part for me, because it’s very difficult to figure out who to talk to when I’m asking permission to trap lizards on their property. I’m very careful in these areas because there aren’t always fences and I can get very confused as to who owns what. And these guys are not against whipping out a shotgun at a supposed intruder (or so I’ve heard). The trick is to figure out who the oldest male family member is and ask him for permission before asking the younger guys who actually run the place. Just because Oom Piet is 94 and hasn’t got a clue about what’s going on, he’s still in charge. The easiest way to find the one ‘in charge’ is to phone the house at around 4pm, when they’d be bringing the cows in. That way you’ll be sure to get one of the wives on the line and they can be most helpful!

They are very kind people in general, although I don’t think that too much has changed in the last few centuries. Sure the veldskoen are replaced by crocs, but the two-tone khaki and kortbroek, comb-in sock sporting farmers make me feel like I’ve stepped into a Herman Charles Bosman novel sometimes. One day one of them will break out the peach brandy and pull out a pipe…

Unfortunately as charming as the old way of life may seem, there are nasty aspects. I’m fortunate in that I’m white and I speak Afrikaans which immediately makes me ‘fit in’ a little bit. I also don’t speak to any of them in formal Afrikaans, I use ‘jy’ rather than ‘u’ to put me on their level (and because I’m not very good at formal Afrikaans). Their farm workers still call them ‘Baas’ and wives obey husbands and so on. When they meet me they tend to get a bit confused. What is a 20-something girl doing driving a bakkie and running round after lizards. Shouldn’t I be married by now? They tend to get around it by deciding that I’m just a weird-looking guy. I get smacked on the back, shaken hands with, told about the rugby… and the wives look really confused.

We were told at one stage to avoid a certain farm because the people there weren’t nice. I’d already had to chat to the local butcher (who is also a horse farmer) and someone who was convinced that I was after his rather mangy bull (it looked at me and I freaked out a bit) so I was rather afraid of that place. They have a lot of dogs too which isn’t unusual around here, but they were all vicious-looking.

Anyway after much  discussion with Malcolm, my favourite pig-farmer and local gossip, it became apparent that the people were not all that bad. What had happened was that two of the mega (like 6-generations at once) farming families had spent generations peacefully ignoring each other, until the daughter of one of them married the son of the other family. They weren’t banished entirely, but sent to live on a distant corner of a farm and nobody would speak to them.

Towards the outskirts of the Eastern half of the conservancy is a creepy ramshackle house. We’re not quite sure if it belongs to the people who live there or to their grandparents who own a lot of the land in that area. They run a weird stall-type thing that sells water features made out of broken pots. The weird part: they make the pots, then break them strategically and us them to make water-features.

The only people I’ve ever seen in or around the house are three or four youngish guys. If you go in they put you on their duct-taped couch, offer you French Toast and say things like “There are GIRLS in the conservancy?” (True story, fortunately it didn’t happen to me). When they get bored they take their shirts of and take turns driving up and down the a stretch of the highway on a tractor.

No you didn’t misread that.

That’s all for today, I have to be up early tomorrow!

 

*you buy those cow-hoof things from Pick & Pay and start them off on your windowsill in some damp cottonwool

remember when?

So I haven't been keeping up to date with my 90's music posts, simply because life kind of got in the way, and if you've ever read Children of the 90's you'll know how incredibly amazing their coverage of all thing's 90's is... makes it hard to keep up!

This song is a must for the list. Unfortunately embedding is disabled, but check it out if you want a music video that will certainly give me nightmares!



Collective soul was my favourite band for a long long time - I think I fed lizards with them playing on my mp3 player for about 6 months... And you have to give them extra points for the Dr Quinn-inspired hair!



And some Sheryl Crow just for the weekend! I love this song (and I think I can forgive that painful - no pun intended - First Cut is the Deepest song because of the other ones that were awesome!).

Happy Friday folks!

Shiny things, men in uniform AND fireworks!

So A couple off weeks ago I was invited by my fabulous cousins to attend the dress rehearsal of the South African tattoo. This is the advert:


Basically my cousin's fiancee was dancing in it and as he was helping around backstage the free tickets managed to get redistributed to his younger sister and she offered one to me! I was super-excited as I wanted to go last year but didn't get around to it until the tickets were sold out... Plus I had no idea that my soon-to-be cousin does Highland dancing! And the cousin who gave me the ticket (therough the other cousin of course) drove me there and home which was SO nice! We also got to catch up a bit which is nice as we were almost inseparable as young kids and then kind of took our own paths as we grew up.

The show was so much fun! There were fireworks, the lights were pointed at the sky (it was outdoors) which meant that we got to pretend that there was a UFO above our heads until the performance started (I am easily amused) and we got to sit in the second row from the front and see EVERYTHING!

As I can't write about everything without it taking until next week I will do a Things I Learned list:

• You can be an individual while wearing a kilt - one of the guys looked exactly like I'd imagine a goth-piper to be. He was dressed exactly like everyone else, but the long hair and earrings remained, and the attitude was still there!
• We have drum majorettes in this country. I had no idea. They were adorable, with their big smiles plastered on and so much enthusiasm.
• There are local groups suppteaching music and dance to kids here, and they were incredible! Watching a few hundred kids doing some really fast-paced gumboot dancing is not something I will forget in a hurry.
• Yellow kilts look suspiciously like skirts, particularly when the men choose to wear them short...
• Rifle drills are AMAZING!
• It's easy to see who is enjoying themselves and who isn't - and how easy it is to ignore the performers just going through the motions and watch the ones who are smiling and really getting into it.
• Flag-throwing people from Italy are very Italian. And very skilled considering they did all their flag-throwing stunts with the wind blowing rather harad!
• I'm not quite sure why there was a stunt-motorcyle exhibition, but it was unbelievable! There are very talented (and crazy) people out there!
• The marching band leader guys (I should know the name for them) take themselves very seriously. There was a world champion leading one section and he didn't even flinch or smile or blimk too much. We discussed his inner emotions in depth from the stands.
• The Highland Dancers were really good! Not that I can talk as I was *cough*forced*cough* into it when I was four and never made any progress at all besides deciding that the swords were fun to play with between lessons. And I think it's very cool that my soon-to-be cousin can do it!
• When the older men from the SA Navy went off to the side to play electric guitars and drums for us we realised that there's no age limit on playing what you want to!
• I want to go to Burundi and hear their drummers again. They had the most incredible energy (and giant smiles) and the vibrations from the drums kind of resonated in my collarbone and it was one of the most amazing experiences ever.

So I I'll definitely try and go again next year! Failing that... anyone keen for a trip to Burundi?

If I was green I would die

I had an epic trip to Pretoria this morning to meet a chemist person about some of the work I need to do (of course he was an hour late because he was at the dentist...) and then back to the lab to meet my sister-in-law for coffee. Fortunately she was late too!

And I was diced this morning in my neighbourhod by some idiot who had baby-on-board stickers on their car. I mean REALLY!

Anyway being Thursday means that we have to reminisce about some of the musical classics from the 90s. Of couse this wont let me embed, but it made me dance around in my chair, so check it out! Of course this lead me to reading a lovely series of comments in youtube arguing about the lyrics. Someone is totally convinced it says "I'm blue if I was green I would die" and now that I listen for it I can see their point! Of course the homophobes jump in with "I need a guy" instead. Anyone hear anything different?

Of course when I was a little teenager it was cool to go and listen to bands on weekends, my particular favourites (among others) being Tweak, Sarongas (which became Seether) and of course these guys:



The drive out to Pretoria today also brought back a lot of memories from my first job when I was 15, my boss would pick me up in the morning and we'd drive out to Pretoria for the day. One of the songs I remember lsitening to on the way in to work was this:



And because I actually still kind of love those songs, I thought I'd have to put in one that makes me cringe. A lot.

And I thought it was just me?

If these don't have you giggling (or blushing) over the momories, and/or bouncing in your chair then you're too old or you spent the 1990's living under a rock. Yip, it's Thursday and so we have to remember those songs that influenced our childhood and teenage years as well as maintaining their ability to get well and truly stuck in our heads!

As I didn't manage last Thursday (I was too busy being gosh-darned miserable) I'll put up two songs today!




This one was one of those songs that I heard a million times sing by a million people (notably my counsin who I know reads this. HI!!!) and yet it was years before I heard the original. I kind of suspected it was one of those songs that people now by magic or osmosis, like school bus songs!

And this one, well, I like the violin part! And it's cool. And it made me feel all rebellious while longing for a leather jacket...



Ok fine, I'll give you three, just because I suddenly remembered this being my favourite music video at the time! Except or that one where everyone is lying on the street and someone is trying to figure out why. I get hte feeling it was Radiohead, but I'm not sure. Anyone got any ideas? I'll give five points to whoever figures it out!



Happy Thursday everyone!

And it's not even mandated by Hallmark!

I know that Mothers Day and Fathers Day are long past, and to be honest I find both days annoying. Why is there never a kids day? I mean we have Youth Day but that's actually in honour if people who did stuff and... stuff...

But lately I've realised that they both deserve some pretty sincere appreciation, so here goes:

My mother has taken her 4 degrees off to Oxford for a 2-week conference and left me to keep an eye on things and feed my father (who for some reason has a cloud of bad kitchen-karma. He tried to roast potatoes once when I was a kid and I can still taste the ash in my mouth...). I don't mind cooking, I've been helping out with it ever since my mom came up with the idea of letting us cook to earn extra pocket money (it was that or weeding the garden) or as punishment (which is a bad idea unless you want to be fed mashed dog food. I don't get mad, I get even).

But I hadn't realised how much changes when you have to be home to let the maid and the gardener out, or have dinner ready before Tai Chi, or have packed lunches ready and waiting in the morning, or make sure the laundry doesn't pile up. And somehow my mom manages this while working full-time, including weekends. It's pretty impressive and I must admit I will be supremely relieved when she comes home this weekend and I can sleep in safe in the knowledge that I can stay at the lab until 8pm to get my work done.

As for my Dad... we've always been a musical family. My parents met in a choir after all! I have a clear memory of my mom trying to teach me to play the recorder when I was 4 (which was quickly replaced by a weekly music class when she realised that we just liked making a noise) and when I was 6 my brother and I (and a bunch of friends) were allowed to join the church choir.

when I say 'allowed' I'm not kidding! The choir was run by a gentleman (no other word for it really) who had won scholarships and all kinds of things and been in some of the bigwig music schools in the uk before moving to Joburg. We sang Latin and harmony and all kinds of stuff. I think I may have been reading music before I could read words.

Anyway once teenage rebellion set in and my brother and I left the choir my parents stayed and we saw the choirmaster from time to time. We were always taught to be respectful to him (I still feel awkward referring to him by his first name) and we liked him because he used to pay the kids when we sang at weddings! I think it was the princely sum of R2, which was a lot to me considering I got R4 a week in pocket money (and made dinner for R10!). Am I giving away my age?

As the choirmaster was once an awesome singer and has now settled into his eighties, my father decided that he should give a concert. Did I mention that he's an organist in his spare time? He plays at a mega-huge church most of the time and at our church occasionally. I was the only kid at school who had an organ at home... So he and my dad picked a programme, practised, retuned the organ a gazillion times because the weather kept making it go funny and so on.

As my mother is off in Oxford, I got the enviable task of turning pages. basically that means you sit on the organ bench and follow the music and when you're a few notes away from the end of the page you turn it so that the organist (who is already playing with both hands and feet as well as pushing buttons all over the place to change which pipes get used) an keep going. Sometimes if it gets tricky the page-turner gets to push the buttons as well. I had a mildly stressful piece where I had to push the button that is RIGHT NEXT to the one that you must NEVER push (the one that turns EVERYTHING on and blasts the poor people in the congregation into oblivion).

And I realised two things:

1. It's been years since I've read music and even longer than tat since I read music of more than one line (viola has one, piano has two (left hand right hand) and organ has three (left hand, right hand, feet) and organ with choir tends to jump from 3 to 5 every now and then). It was really difficult to follow the music! The mega voluntary at the end was particularly bad where I was relying on sort of being right and hearing a 'NOW!' if I was late.
2. My dad is pretty darn good. There was one piece that he was literally just about tap-dancing on the pedals while playing on the keyboards like a maniac an I was stunned by how good it was.

So Ja... I guess it's time that I appreciated that my parents have done a lot more in their lives than produce the two of us, and that they're pretty darn talented in their own right.

And now I must go back to the lab so I can get home in time to make dinner before spinning class!

We aren't really that crazy...

So last night I had a HORRIBLE dream and once I woke up I sent messages off to two people outlining the awfulness to them. They replied with their dreams, which made me realise just how often I swap dream stories with people.

Luke and Leia and I had planned on having a discussion on music in order to show all you people out there that we aren't all that crazy, but after about half an hour of trying to get Luke to stop working and come and talk to us (he kept saying "I'll be right there... " and then he'd start something new... it was lunchtime! You're not supposed to work during lunch!) so that we could record something before our labmate comes back. So of course half a minute into it the labmate appeared so you can hear him wandering around.

I hope you can understand us, I tend to talk pretty fast and the others don't sit still very often so it can distort... The picture isn't really significant, it just wouldn't load without an image so I put one in...

Oh, and besides the fact that I speakk faaster than I should, what it the general verdict on our accents? Luke and I have both been told that we don't sound very South African, so do we all sound like we've spent most of our lives in Joburg? Or has the accent been educated out of us?

Anyway if you're brave enough you can hear about:

1. each of us has a weird dream story from last night, and Leia added one in from last week where her tooth looked lie a carrot inside (?).
2. The aftermath of our first ever experience with doctor pepper.
3. The return of stationary to the rightful owners.
4. The horror of Lady Gaga songs being stuck in your head.
5. My realisation that I can smell and taste in dreams!
6. The evilness of our security gate.
7.The awesomeness of 2-ply lab paper!

In other news I had an amazing meeting with a collaborator/mentor this morning and I was so excited! I should be getting a huge load of lab work done really soon!
And, being a Thursday I thought I would mention some of the fabulous 90's songs that shaped out childhoods (is that a real word?

Do you remember:
The Chemical Brothers: hey boy, hey girl!
I hated this song SO much! This lead to a big debate in the lab about whether the songs on the list had to be things we had enjoyed, or just songs that were influential. The jury is still out on it.

And based on our discussion last time, bearing in mind that my labmates have yet to see Centre Stage (which was a bit part of my teenager-dom), I feel that I must mention:

The Red Hot Chili Peppers: Under the bridge.

This was one of my favourite songs when I was younger, it made me feel all rebellious and cool. The fact that I had a mega crush on the lead singer didn't hurt either.

And, for the purposes of being stuck in your head for the next few days... do you remember this one? I had completely forgotten about it until we stumbled across it the other day:

Blogger just ate my last post, which was almost finished and had pictures and everything! Rather than rethink it all I'm going to leave you with this quote from a friend of mine who was giving me advice over herbal tea last night (thanks EEbEE!). Basically I explained that being dumped really sucks and he replied with (paraphrased with my random comments removed):

"Wait. You think the dumping thing is bad!!! It's the BEST thing EVER. you are getting away from someone who doesn't like you instead of having one of those fake relationships. Look just stay away from anyone who thinks less of you. best recipe for a good future. So there."

Not bad for someone who claims he's useless at relationship advice!

Also I thought having made a giant list of songs form the 90's that shaped our childhoods, I wouldn't want to waste all that reminiscing. So I think in future I will post something on that on a Thursday. So basically the list of songs is about 3 pages long, but if there's anything that you remember that you really loved let me know and I'll add it onto the list if it isn't already there!

This week we have:

This was used in a play at my school and I was on backstage duty, I had to wait for the"He drinks the whiskey drink, he drinks the vodka drink" line to know when to start moving things around!

And of course we can never forget the way that only cool people listened to Fatboy Slim (and I absolutely adored this music video and spent an afternoon glued to MTV so I could see it once!)



And of course there is Radiohead. Maybe this was the start of the emo-mindset? All I know is that I spent several of my teenage years (when I wasn't pretending to like boybands or listening to angry music on the Night Zoo while hiding under the covers to muffle the sound from my headphones) identifying very strongly with this song!



Anyone got any particualr memories of these three?

Happy Thursday!

when the world gets too confusing, just live in the past!

It's Tai Chi night! I'm so excited! Really, I just did a little happy-dance in my chair. I never thought I'd get that excited over it, particularly when you only started doing Tai Chi in order to loosen up Pilatesised muscles...

Anyway, last night I was looking through a cupboard for an old camera box for Luke (long story and he can tell it) when I came across my old diary from when I was in high school. I used to be a total diary-geek and kept several, the first being pastel shades of purple, with scented pages and a lock that was amazingly easy to force open...

This one is slightly less awful looking, bright blue in a gellish cover that's a bit squishy and has flowers and pastic crystal thingies on it that sparkle. and I think I got it shortly before I stopped writing a diary so it's mostly empty. From the few entries in it I learned a few things about myself:

• my handwriting used to be HORRIBLE! How the heck my teachers ever managed to understand my work baffles me!
• I still feel like nothing much has changed, I'm the same person I was 10 years ago and so on, but reading through the old entries taught me that I definitely am not that much like my teenaged self! I think it's a good thing!
• I was not a very nice person.
• My spelling has improved dramatically! I used to be appaling and write things like 'sux' and 'RULEZ' and ;get with' and other things that make me cringe! I was also a big fan of writing in capital letters whenever I freaked out.
• I really loved multicoloured pens!

Anyway to illustrate just how far I've come (and to make you all giggle at the inanity of me at 16) I will provide you all with some excerpts:

I wrote a really bad essay fo Afrikaans, but Mev R-T loved it. It was al about trusting my friends when I was scared or some crap like that. Now it's going in the school magazine** which sux. The only one that was kitscher was someone who wrote about "Die lewe is soos 'n toffie"*** which was all about her puppy called Toffy who died and that life can be sweet like a toffee, but sometimes it's just really hard to chew."

"Since the last round of concerts I'm' really loving music. It sux bcuz I know I can't have it as a career bcuz I suck. I'm playing in 5th pos now. It HURTS!"

"He's such a loser! I mean he's not much older than me and he already has GREY HAIR and he's just a total LOSER. And he uses HEAD AND SHOULDERS**** and he LEFT IT IN THE SHOWER! and I totally tripped over it like 6 times, and he STARED at me like the whole way through lunch. And people knew he was coming to stay with us so I have to figure out what to tell them. Maybe I'll just say I didn't see much of him? I mean he was so BLATANT."

"Went to movies with G tonight and ran into KD. He invited me to a party tonight but I didn't go. It was just kinda late notice and I have like nothing to wear. I woulda liked to go tho, too bad KD's in boarding school and I totally never see him."

At the same time there are some entries about the holiday I spent volunteering at a preschool for kids with disabilities and how powerful and amazing the experience was. So maybe I wasn't a total loss!

It makes me sad that I've lost a lot of the innocence of the time, but also really glad that I've grown up a little bit!

**yearbook

***life is like a toffee

****anti-dandruff shampoo

Things that make me feel better when I've had a bad day

So I haven't been in a very good way lately. I don't want to talk about it. when I feel unhappy with life, I like to look through my old photos and remember the adventures behind each one. So I figured that today I would share some of my favourites. I'm not going to explain them, but rather let people use their imaginations!

Of memories and weird dreams

So lately I've been watching the x-files a lot... and it always results in me having weird dreams. Once I got to the end of season 7 I found that season 8 wasn't really grabbing my attention (although the weird dreams got weirder, particularly whenever I fell asleep in front of the tv during an episode, which happened quite often. Considering that the only other option was watching our cricket team skillfully grabbing defeat from the jaws of victory (and that's all I will say about that except that Duminy rocks!) it wasn't too bad.

Then I really got into spending my work-time playing with visual basic and my free time at the gym or doing photography and my dreams returned to normal. Then last night i had the weirdest dreams!

It was like I was a little kid again, and two memories that I had all but forgotten resurfaced: The first was about easter when I was about 8 years old. I found a white t-shirt in my room and started drawing on it with koki-pens. I drew all the Easter-related stuff I could think of: eggs, rabbits, brightly-coloured squiggles and so on. And when my mom caught me she didn't yell at me, as I would expect any parent to do upon catching their offspring drawing on clothes, but rather she gave me a bunch of other pens to use and I completely covered the t-shirt in drawings. On Easter day we went out to the East rand to my grandparents and I wore the t-shirt all day, despite the funny comments from various relatives. The sad part was that when it was washed the bright colours all washed out leaving a tie-dye effect with some of the other drawings staying, so the shirt was pretty much ruined, which i was very sad about. I had hoped it could replace my favourite shirt (which had a plastic face on it that played a song when you pressed the eye, actually my brother and I each had one but we ended up sharing when one of them went through the washing machine and the face came off...).

The other dream also revolved around me destroying clothes... my favourite game as a child was throwing my barbie dolls out my window and waiting for it to rain. Then I would bring them inside, cut my clothes into strips and bandage them up. This really upset my mom, although quite often she would wonder where a specific item of clothing was and then one day she'd go into my room, see brightly-coloured strips of cloth lying around, mentally connect the dots and go "Oh, Helen..." anyway the thing I remembered in my dream was not about any of this, but I felt I must explain the scenario. when I was about 6 I desperately wanted a porcelain doll. My grandmother obliged and for Christmas I got one and named her Lily (yes, really!). She was extra-cool because she wasn't one of those stiff ones that have to go up on stand and you can't play with then, but she was made out of a bean-bag type body, with china arms legs and head. I spend almost every waking minute with the doll, and even got a matching haircut once (it helped that it was identical to my usual haircut, but I took her along to the hairdresser to show him what I wanted. He seemed quite tickled to be taking orders from a 6-year old and even offered to take the hair he'd cut off me to make her a new wig. I refused.). So what the dream was (and this really happened) was one day when I was about 7 or 8 and there was a drought, so none of my barbies were getting 'injured' enough, I decided that Lily needed open-heart surgery and so i took a permanent marker and drew stitches across her stomach.

The weird thing is that I'd completely forgotten about all of these things until I dreamed them! and when I woke up I went into my cupboards, and the doll still has 'stitches'! I will have to got through the photo-albums at some stage and confirm the existence of the amazing Easter t-shirt, but I'm pretty sure that happened too...

I'm sorry to drag on about this, but it's the first time I've ever had a 'real' dream, and definitely the first time a dream has brought back memories that I'd forgotten!

On another note entirely, this is the kitten who is currently sitting at the vet and looking for a home. She's the sweetest cat ever, so if anyone knows anyone who wants a cat and could give her a good home, please let me know!

Good Company

So while I was working the other day (with Lara) we had to watch all the DVDs that had been brought in with reports of damage. So we ended up watching Mamma Mia. The main point of that was that the alternative were 3 copies of the new Mummy movie, or 2 copies of Don't mess with the Zohan. We also took it as a bonus that we could annoy the poor guy who had to work with us as we sang along to songs that we didn't really know while making up works that kind of fitted.

And by then end of the movie we were giggling helplessly and thoroughly enjoying it. Then I took it home to watch the beginning (we'd only started it halfway through because the damaged section was reported as later on in the movie) and I hated it.

Then I started to think of other movies that I loved when i saw them with other people but would never watch when I was alone:

• Kung Pow: watching Matt giggling helplessly made me laugh, and it became a Saturday afternoon standard. I think I've seen it at least 50 times and La and I laugh like crazy every time.
• Step up/Stick it/Save the Last Dance/insert any other dance movie title here: Although we usually watched these to annoy Chris, there's something all warm and fuzzy about watching dancing-movies that have a happy ending. unfortunately watching them alone is kind of like eating ice-cream or drinking alone, you feel guilty and don't enjoy it.
• Snow Dogs: I saw it back in high-school and loved it, only to find that none of my other friends enjoyed it. I think I was just in the right mood.
• Centre Stage: This deserves a separate entry to the other movies because I have seen it many times with many different people, and enjoyed the experience of watching it with them without actually enjoying the movie at all. I watched it with Lara (and Chris, poor Chris) the other day and we were almost crying we laughed so hard, between the eyebrows and the socks... No, I can't explain it!
• Joe's apartment: you know the kind of movie that's so bad it's actually boring,but when you watch it with the right people... josh and Niel were watching it the other day and I found myself enjoying it rather more than I'd admit.
• The Notebook/insert other romantic dramas here: I mainly enjoy these when I watch them with people who don't mind me yelling sarcastic comments at the screen. Even better if they join in!
• Bad horror movies: who am I kidding, I love them! But among the better memories have to be jumping on some random tough guy during the ring and then running away, yelling "He's going to die next!' at random characters during... pretty much anything, watching Fragile in the farmhouse with the American (a weird bonding experience) and the Descent at Sedgefield with Luke and Duncan, and the Cave (also at the farmhouse) where I couldn't differentiate between the characters ("Not Kyle!" "That isn't Kyle!" "It so is!" "No, Kyle is already dead!" "no way! not Kyle?"), or even that horrible werewolf movie where we spent half the time looking for the zip on the costume...

That's all I can think of right now, so does anyone else have an movie experiences that are totally memorable because of the experience of seeing the movie with someone else rather than the actual film (which could be complete rubbish, or really good, it doesn't matter!)

Santini's!

So on Saturday night I was finally dragged off to Santini's a sokkie-club in Honeydew! Sokkie, for you non-South african's out there is a traditional form of dancing that is enjoyed by Afrikaans people and ridiculed by pretty much everyone else. It's also known as "Langarm sokkie" and looks kind of like a weird afst waltz accompanied by regular music remixed to have a very distinctive beat. All sokkie-music has the same beat, so besides being distinctive, once you've figured out the dance you're pretty much set for life.

Not to be mean about it, to watch a bunch of people who actually know what they're doing is pretty impressive. I've resisted going to Santini's as long as I could, but Saturday was Laurin's birthday and I didn't really have a choice. La has always promised that she'd be there the first time I went, but she's writing tests and stressed beyond belief, so I was on my own.

Despite all my protests, it weas actually pretty cool! I was amazed by:

1. The old south african flag was stuck up EVERYWHERE! Darren and I counted about 6 flags, and the place isn't very big!
2. Men in short shorts and rugby jerseys - yes it is the Afrikaans uniform, and we had been playing rugby, but to go clubbing?
3. The number of girls in rugby jerseys - ddn't really match the mini-skirts, but hey...
4. The number of old people (toppies) out-sokkieing the youngsters
5. The game trophies on the walls
6. and, despite all of that... the signs everywhere were in English! And not just the ones about not smoking or drinking on the dance floor - which I could understand meaning that the English visitors don't know how to behave or something, but even the signs for the entrance and the business hours and the bathrooms...

All in all it was an awesome evening and Laurin seemed to have a great time! And not all of the music was sokkiefied, so those of us with less coordination got to have fun as well. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I might be going back there sometime! I'll try and add some photos at some stage, as soon as I can get them from other people...

It's a monster!

I must explain that "monster"is not entirely a bad thing. Ever since Thandi the mandril hit her first 'terrible twos' stage, a few people I know have referred the the monkeys as 'monsters' which I've picked up from them. It's actually quite an affectionate thing!

So anyway, as of Saturday night, Oliver the spider monkey has a new baby sister. He really doesn't lke her very much, but she's still really small and doesn't do much, plus they're not in any physical contact. Her mother basically abandoned her lke she did him, and so for the first month all ahndling is with rubber gloves and facemasks and everything is super-sterilised before she comes into contact with it.

To backtrack a little bit: we saw Sarah on Thursday night and it was awesome! She brought me a really cute little keyring thing of a little chef eating sushi (complete with chopsticks!) and it was really really great to see her again. It felt weird - like she hadn't been away at all. I walked in, said "Hi Sarah." and then "Hang on... SARAH!!!!!" it just felt realy normal to have her back. She's such a bubbly and energetic person that I think there was a pretty big void when she left and it was just... right... or something. Unfortunately she's not around for long, but I hope we can see her as much as possible before she leaves again at the end of next week.

On Friday I was a total zombie and nearly fell asleep several times during the day. I'm not sure why, but I decided to go off to see the Dark Knight in the evening anyway. It was fun, although going fof to Luke's side of the world was confusing - I always get lost out there - not only on the street, but also in the shopping centre, in the parking lot... I really do appreciate the fact that most thigns are nearer to my house usually and I totally appreciate all the driving that other people usually have to do! It was a good movie, just a bit long and I kind of fell asleep once or twice before neaking out right before the end - it was late and my Dad was going to be stressing about my safety and so on and so on. I did enjoy the movie, but I guess it's partly that I'm not really a batman fan and I've hardly seen any of the other movies or read the comic books or anything that I didn't find it as life-changing as everyone else did. I'm glad I saw it though, and I thought they did a really good job.

Anyway, on Sunday morning, after a very stressful session of collecting my mother from the airport (I'm sorry, HOW does it take an hour and a half to get luggage from the plane to the airport? and how can a 'car guard' in a place where you're paying R1 a minute for parking get to demand payment when he hasn't done anything?) I went off to the zoo hoping to get there in time to scrub out my frustarion on some frog and/or lizard tanks. I got there quite late but as it happened they were desperate for help and I got to do the whole room I usually clean out on a Sunday! I was quite annoyed to fond that a bunch of the animals which had been reallocated to a certain place had been taken on Friday and nobvody thought to tell me so that I could say goodbye to my frogs - Speckle as well as Mr and Mrs Speckle (our volunteers have great eharts but not much imagination when it comes to naming things) are gone as well as a pile of the big geckos and a few of the tomato frogs. I got to put some of the other geckos outside in the sun for a bit though and it was awesome to see them rush out and bask!

After all that I saw Althea, who showed me the new baby spider monkey. She isn't names yet, and she's so absolutely hideous that it's totally adorable! Feeding her was a huge battle because the bottles they ahve for baby animals have really hard rubber teats and she couldn't cope with them, but she's too small for a baby bottle. As I ahd to go and get a birthday present for my sister-in-law I offered to go bottle-hunting. The best to use for her was apparently a baby medicine bottle.

So I spent my afternoon and evening going to every pharmacy and hopsital that I could find looking for them. Half the people didn't know what I was talking about, and the rest usually said that they knew them, that they were amazing and fantastic things, and no. Nobody had them. Finally I went to visit Lara and Laurin and sat ont eh floor behind the coutner with teh phone book, calling every pharmacy I could think of and then calling whoever they referred me to, until at about 6 pm I found a dodgy little pharmacy that was open until 9 that had them! Strangely enough it was owned and staffed only by men, but they had the one thing that every woman who had had a baby swears by! I went and got three different variations on the nmedicine bottle adn then rushed off to Althea's house to drop them off.

I ended up staying for a few hours, I got to hold the baby while she sorted things out (it's usually in an incubator, but mid-feed Althea whould suddenlt nees something or have to rush off and I'd get to sit with the little monster who is SO UGLY it's toally adorable! Two feeds later she got the idea and drank all 10mls! I was so excited!

And I went home and collapsed and, of course, couldn't sleep. Cue the mondya morning zombie!