Little Pockets of Happy

I was just reading through some of my old blog posts and I realised that I actually really miss blogging.

I've been mostly absent from my blog for the longest time and although I was being perfectly honest when I said that I was just too busy to blog, I guess it's equally true that I simply haven't felt like it much either.
And now, after all these months of dormancy, I finally feel like blogging again. Aren't you lucky - you get to wade through whatever drivel I end up spewing out here!

As I mentioned in my last post, I've been a busy girl over the last several months. Some of you know that "work" for me has, for a long time, meant freelance copywriting. And up until the later part of last year, it was.

But, as you will have gathered from the previous post, I have been focussing my attention on something quite different for quite a while now. I started outsourcing my copywriting work toward the end of last year because I was just not getting around to doing it and although a small part of me is worried about turning my back on writing work, it has been a huge relief not to have to worry about meeting other people's deadlines.

At the moment, I'm in the middle of a massive costing exercise for the setup of my Radiant Heat Barrier Coating production plant and warehouse. I also urgently need to update the website, so if any of my blogger friends on WordPress feel like helping me out, I'd be happy to treat you to a fabulous lunch someplace cool in exchange for some pointers. (I'm thinking somewhere like Wolves - I've eaten a couple of lunches there before and their food is utterly scrummy! - or similar but am open to suggestions...) Hey, lookit me being all cool and bartering, huh?!

In case you're wondering , yes, I have spent many, many evenings and weekends working. But I have also enjoyed some very enjoyable days in the company of friends and family and done a few things just because...

On my birthday this year, I used a Groupon bought for me by the husband for Christmas to get my hair cut.

I asked David to take one last photo of my loooong hair the night before.

 My hair, cut off.

Most of you have seen it by now, but here it is: The New Look.

This was not the first time I'd cut my waist-length hair short. My hair grows really quickly so it'll grow from this length back to my waist in about 4 years. It's already grown quite a bit, actually, and I'm toying with the idea of having it cut again...

Meanwhile, I've also changed my hair colour...

This is a crappy, cellphone pic so it doesn't show how red it actually is but anyway... I like it.

Then, at the end of February, Hubby and I went on a roadtrip to Cape Town. It was a business trip but we had to drive so that we could bring back the giant paint mixer that we're going to be using in my paint manufacturing business. :)

It was a stunningly beautiful trip and I took loads of photos and tweeted one or two. But the highlight for me was the surprise visit to Nederburg on our way back. I was on the phone with a client when we drove into Paarl and took no notice at all of where David was driving to. I only realised as I finished on the phone that we were turning into a wine estate. 

We had taken an afternoon drive through Franschoek during our stay in Cape Town and I was blown away by how beautiful the place is. There are a whole bunch of things I'd like to go back and see and do. But I was really not impressed with our reception at the wine estates and one in particular, La Motte, where the receptionist was a downright snotty little bitch.  The place is exquisitely beautiful and I'm sure their wines and food would have been superb. But I've never liked snobs.

 The beautiful Franschoek valley.

Wine Tasting

Our visit to Nederburg more than made up for it, though, and I had a lovely time, tasting wine and getting quite sozzled before we headed off to lunch at The Red Table Restaurant. I can't remember when last I had such a delicious meal and the staff were friendly and the service impeccable. Definitely worth a visit.

So yes, in between all the work and stress, there are  pockets of happiness and appreciating what we've got.

What fun stuff have you done so far this year?

Faraway Places

I'm going through a nostalgic phase at the moment.

I was just flipping through my friends list on Facebook and looking up people I haven't seen or thought about in years.
And looking up places all over the world that I've dreamed of visiting. And missing people I haven't met yet and places I haven't been.

This is kind of typical of me. A lot of stuff has been going on behind the scenes for the past year and a bit and things that have been in the works for months are moving along. Being an impatient person by nature, I bore myself stupid repeating those words over and over but really, that's what it is. I guess I still have to get used to how long things take to happen in business - and in the roofing industry in particular.

Sometimes, looking back at where I've come from and where I've been is good because it shows me how far I've come. But sometimes it makes me sad because when I look at 6 or 9 or 11 year-old me, I remember the dreams and aspirations I had and am ashamed to have to admit that I haven't made any of those dreams happen.

At the same time, I'm excited about the things that are happening and looking forward to seeing the results of all the work and stressing and planning that's been done over the past months.

I've secured a premises from which to begin manufacturing the product I've been working with this last year. From this same factory/warehouse, I'm also distributing another product, which compliments the one I'll be manufacturing. Although I haven't had much of a marketing budget and the product is still largely unknown, the sales leads have started picking up again after a bit of a slump these last 2 or 3 months and I have a couple of nice, big orders more or less in the bag. Ideally, I'll be set up to manufacture those within the next month or two.

The most immediate goal is to pick up the pace on the marketing end of things and to promote like crazy. I'm going to have to figure out a bunch of things in order to make this work though. Like email marketing and how to use all the features on things like MailChimp, for example. And how to do certain things on WordPress, so that I can do regular updates on the company website. I know how to update the blog but am not sure about other things like how to embed a Google Map or update the picture gallery.
I'm sure these are all fairly simple things to figure out but I find myself unable to do them for various reasons, ranging from worrying about fucking it up to being distracted by Facebook and Twitter to interruptions from the kids and not enough hours in the day....

Maybe I can get one of my clever interwebs friends to help me figure some of these things out in exchange for some cake?

And if things continue to move along I might, in time, get to realise a few of those old dreams and visit some of those faraway places after all.

What have you been up to lately?

Soap

I *adore* Johnny The Homicidal Maniac. One of the many things I love about JTHM is Happy Noodle Boy.

I tell you this by way of providing some context for today's post.

I've seen a few things on the web over the past few days that have made me want to get on my soap box and tell the world to fuck off. But I can't tell people to fuck off on my blog, just in case someone who shouldn't see it, does. So this is me not telling the world to fuck off on my blog, okay?

Firstly, who the fuck is Michael Crook? And why is anyone bothered with his opinion?
I read a tweet of his that someone retweeted a couple of days ago, some crap about how a skimpy outfit amounts to implied consent and that women who dress like whores should expect to be treated as such. Naturally, many women (including myself) were offended and hit back. But after throwing my two cents into the mix, I have to ask why we're even giving this douche a platform? Seriously, c'mon, people!

And moving swiftly along...

One of the people I follow onTwitter tweeted a link to a Facebook promotion in celebration of National Cleavage Day on 30 March, through which someone stands to win  R30K boob job.

Considering that nature is a bitch and witheld my share when the boobs were being handed out, my bank balance is pitiful and having 4 kids has taken its toll on my virtually non-existent mammaries,  I see nothing wrong with this. In fact, I intend to be present on the day and to get my entry/entries in. If someone's going to win a perky pair, it might as well be me, right?

Yes, the sponsor is an alcoholic beverage brand and entrants have to purchase a shot of their beverage  in order to qualify for an entry.

Yes, they stand to profit from this exercise.

Yes, the implication is there that full breasts are more attractive than small ones.

Some women are awfully upset about all of this and while there are one or two arguments I don't entirely disagree with, I'm struggling to understand why some women are so very deeply offended.

For example, one person said that they would applaud it if the sponsors were giving away the breast augmentation surgery to a cancer survivor who couldn't afford a reconstruction but condemns it as a marketing action as they are then simply taking advantage.

I can see how sponsoring a cancer survivor would be a most generous and commendable thing to do. And I agree that it would be wonderful if the sponsors did something like that.

But what's wrong with creating an opportunity for an ordinary woman with low self esteem/body image to get a makeover? Anyone who, like me, has ever seriously considered breast augmentation knows that it entails major surgery. Any woman who's had to steer clear of an item of clothing for lack of having anything to fill it with or who has endured teasing for being flat chested would, if she's  anything like me, still consider it. And any such woman with children to raise, educations to save for and debts to clear would consider it a pipe dream. Something that'll only ever happen if she's lucky enough to win the lottery. Or a competition whose First Prize is a R30K boob job.

Some women have posted on the Facebook page in question that the sponsors are supporting the objectification of women and suggesting that women have to have big breasts in order to be beautiful.

I call bullshit! Nowhere on the page does it say anything of the sort. What it does say is that they are providing  an opportunity for ladies who are not happy with their own bodies/breasts to try and win a boob job, which will help them to feel beautiful.

And as for the argument that this pevent promotes the objectification of women by suggesting that women with small breasts are not attractive, I call double bullshit!

How often don't we hear women complaining about their weight? How many times have we not moaned about how hideous we feel when our jeans are too tight and our skin breaks out? How many breast cancer survivors undergo reconstructive breast surgery to replace the breasts that should be there, that make up part of their womanhood? How is our unquestioning acceptance of these things any less an objectification of ourselves than a competition offering a boob job as first prize is?

I don't see anyone forcing anyone else to participate. I don't see any clause or terms and conditions stipulating that cancer survivors are excluded from entering. I don't know of any law that compels businesses to give to charitable causes. Certainly, giving to worthy causes is admirable and should be encouraged. But why shouldn't a company who sells a product for adults, with a sassy name and product image, present a cheeky, fun promotion in which an adult participant could win a chance at getting the sassy, sexy image she aspires to?

Like it or not, businesses exist and operate to make money and they promote their products using various means in order to do exactly that. This is the way our world works.

I'll be trying my luck along with all the other flat-chested ladies who'll be going to one of the four promotion venues next Saturday. Swing by if you're in the Fourways area and buy a shot or two. You might just help me win a pair of boobs.

Beyond Two Thousand (And Twelve)

Remember that TV show, Beyond 2000? Yeah?
Well, this post has absolutely fuckall to do with it. I just thought this title was a clever way of bringing where we're at, time-wise, into it. See what I did there?

Right.

So there are a million things to blog about but it's after 22:00 already and highly unlikely that I'm going to get it all covered in a single post, so we'll just see how this goes, mkay? Good.

When I last posted, I was looking forward to going on holiday. It was one of our most memorable holidays so far, not only because it was one of only two actual holidays we've had, but because at least half of it was something like watching (and at times being thrust into the middle of) a soap opera. Seriously.

On our previous holiday to Mossel Bay, we stayed in my parents in-law's house down there. The fact that they own said house is pretty much the only reason we can afford to go on holiday at all, so we're really grateful for the use of the house.

The thing about the house, though, is that the in-laws let it out every December in order to pay for its maintenance, levies, etc. In 2011, the people who usually rent the house for December left just after Christmas, so we were able to make use of the vacant house from then until work and school started again in the middle of January 2012.

In 2012, we weren't that lucky. The renters stayed until 2 January, and the school holiday was much shorter, so in order to give ourselves at least 2 weeks' holiday, we found somewhere else to rent on a seriously tight budget from the 28th of December til the 3rd of January, at which time we'd move to the house and stay until the 8th.

We had worked all of this out several months before the December holidays and had a spot booked pretty quickly. However, the owner's husband died in the meantime and she cancelled our booking just a couple of months before the December holidays. Since David's folks happened to be down there then, we asked them to look around for options. We learned from this exercise that pretty much everything down there gets booked up months before the December holidays.

They did find a place for us a little bit inland, though, at reasonable rates, and even went to take a look at it before making a booking for us.

The place is called U-Nic Adventure and Guest Farm and, from the folks' descriptions and information we found on the web, it looked like the ideal place for keeping the kids entertained. There were horses and quad bikes for the kids to ride, there was DSTV, a swimming pool and a petting zoo.

As is commonly the practice, we were asked to pay a 50% deposit upfront and, having been assured that the place was in fact there, that it looked good and the folks were there to receive a receipt for us, we didn't have any problems with that.

We had a quiet pre-Christmas get together with David's folks and sister, followed by a relaxed Christmas lunch at our house with my mom, sister, brother and my other sister in-law before embarking on a massive clean-up operation to coincide with our packing on the 26th and 27th.

We left for the airport on December 28th feeling good about leaving a clean and tidy house to come back to, in the capable hands of a reliable friend who would stay over at night to keep Magrat company and feed her.

It felt a bit strange arriving in George with all our kids in tow, just a couple of hours after having left home. I guess it didn't really feel like we'd gone on holiday because the journey there was so short. The little ones loved the flight, though, and I was so proud of how very well they all behaved on the plane.

The drive out to U-Nic Adventure and Guest Farm was hot and a little bit longer than we'd anticipated, but we found it without any trouble.

Upon our arrival, we were informed that there had been a dispute with Eskom and that the electricity had been disconnected but that electricity was supplied by a generator, which would be switched on from 8:00 to 13:00 and 18:00 to 01:00 daily.

Oh, and the tap water wasn't drinkable, but there was a filter in the main kitchen (in the main recreation area) from which we could fill bottles for drinking water when we needed it.

Oh, and the swimming pool pump had packed up but they were getting it fixed.

It didn't occur to me until later that I hadn't seen any quad bikes. And between the two horses on the property, one had just recently had a foal and the other was just about to have one. And the petting zoo consisted of some free roaming chickens, a slightly bewildered pig and some very hissy geese.

Oh, and there was no TV signal at all even during those times when the promised electricity sporadically worked, because some fool had blown all the televisions when he'd wired up the generator incorrectly when he first got it.

I told myself it was going to be okay. We could buy bottled water to drink, take a drive to the beach to keep the kids entertained in the afternoons while the electricity was out and we hadn't been planning to spend the holiday watching TV anyway.

I told myself that I could plan our meals and activities around what was available and everything would be okay.

And so we spent Day 1 unpacking, checking out the facilities and waiting for the electricity to come on so we could cook something to eat and see what's on TV - Oh, shit, the TV's not working - we'll get it sorted out tomorrow, right?

And then we went to bed. And it was at this point that my resolve crumbled and I knew we were in for one hell of a ride that week. I could literally feel the mattress beneath me crawling with bugs. And they bit me everywhere. I barely slept the whole night and got up the next morning looking like one of those kids whose teenage years are so very fraught with the worst kind of acne you can imagine, but instead of pimples, I was covered in flea bites and instead of only having them all over my face, they were all over my entire body.

Naturally, my first order of business was to complain and demand that the mattress and bedding on my bed be replaced. A ragged old man, just skin and bones, brought the replacement mattress himself, but apparently there wasn't any fresh linen available. So we swapped the mattress and folded up the bug-ridden linen and left it on a bench on the front patio of our chalet.

But of course, our hosts had failed to mention that the replacement mattress had been stored along with all the other spare mattresses in the old barn. So we discovered to our delight on night 2 that this mattress was also infested with all sorts of creepy crawlies. And of course we arose as bug-bitten as ever on Day 3. By which time I was frantically calling around to find out whether there was anywhere else we could go.

In the meantime, between braving cold showers due to the lack of reliable electricity, having our food go off in a fridge rendered useless by the constantly interrupted electricity supply we become involuntarily acquainted with the owner's poor, neglected and mangy dogs.

By Day 4, David and one of the other guests started fixing the swimming pool pump themselves, and we had learned a bit more about the set-up at U-Nic.

It turns out that the owner, Nic (I know, how original, right?) had a lovely wife not too long ago and that she was the driving creative force behind what anyone from the area will tell you used to be a really nice place. You can see the woman's touch in the decor or the chalets, the bathrooms and the main kitchen. It's clear that this used to be a top notch establishment.

But then the dude apparently started screwing around with the waitress who worked for them, and the wife left. And it turns out that said waitress murdered her husband not so long ago. In fact, we were shown the newspaper article announcing that she had been found guilty of his murder in court just a few days before we arrived at the place. Apparently, she's due back in court to receive her sentence in March. (I started referring to her as Daisy when this was discovered.)

Anyway, so we made do as best we could under the circumstances and having had no luck finding anywhere else to stay. We became a bit better acquainted with the couple in the chalet next door over the course of the six days and learned that they were permanent guests at Unic, and that things are, in fact, much worse there outside of the holidays than during. Apparently Nic walks around with a gun on his hip all the time when there aren't any holiday guests and has a nasty temper...

On Day 4, my mom and I cornered the old man (who, it turns out, is Nic's father!) about laundry facilities as we were by now running low on clean clothes. He showed us where they were and we got to work washing all of our clothes (8 people's laundry) from the past 3 days for as long as the electricity lasted. We managed to wash almost everything by the time the power was turned off at 13:00. When it came back on again after 18:00, we put the towels on to wash, which really pissed Daisy off when she and Nic got back from wherever they'd been all day. We were told that there were additional charges for the use of the laundry facilities and they were not for our use. Fortunately, we'd managed to wash all of our stuff by this time and only needed to hang up all our towels to dry. Bitch.

The next day, I got to see Nic's temper in full swing as he stood shouting at his old man about a water leak (river water, not drinking water) that the old man was somehow supposed to have miraculously known about and fixed.

On our second last day, David and the other guy who'd been helping him with the swimming pool pump finally got it working but Nic and co. switched off the generator early because they didn't want the swimming pool pump using up generator fuel all night. So we sat around in the dark while the pool remained as filthy as ever.

On our last night, we joined with the other family there (whose dad person had been helping David with the pool pump) for a braai, during which we learned that they had been there the entire month and had seen and heard pretty much all of how it all worked at Unic.

We learned that Nic has a disabled brother living in their house on the premises, who was frequently left in his wheelchair in front of the television (with no electricity) completely unable to do anything for himself, while Nic and co. disappeared to whereever they went every day. (On this particular day, Nic, Daisy and Daisy's family went to Knysna for the day, leaving the disabled brother on his own and Nic's aged father running his legs off to try to keep the place running.)

We learned that several of the farm's animals had died from neglect shortly before we had arrived and that the old man, and his frail old wife, like the disabled brother, were often left to fend for themselves and without a scrap to eat in the house, while Nic and Daisy entertain Daisy's family and friends.

So we sent some of our food up to the house for the two old folks, since Nic, Daisy and co. had gone off for their own entertainment once again.

We learned that the guest book had been removed because the guests had begun to write their complaints in the book and Nic and Daisy didn't like what the guests had to say.

Needless to stay, moving into my in-laws' house after all of that was like checking into the Ritz, and I could not have been happier to get out of there!
 
About a week after we got back to Gauteng, my mom called to tell me that our neighbours had been evicted from Unic despite having paid for the month of February in advance, for having consorted with us during our stay there...

I guess you could say that the "Adventure" part of the place's name wasn't all that far off the mark. But we certainly weren't made to feel like guests.

Song Sung, Pre-Holiday Hump... And Some Other Stuff

Some of you know that I sang in a talent contest with a friend this weekend, for which the first prize was a Caribbean cruise. We didn't win and, while the ones who did were truly, incredibly good and totally deserved it, I am crushed, devastated, broken and mortally mortified. And that's all I have to say about that. :P

There definitely were photographs taken, I just haven't seen any of them yet. I'll update this post with at least one pic if I can ever get my hands on one.

On the work front, things are kind of coasting along at the moment. I am learning things about myself that, as my employer, I'm not impressed with and, as myself, I really don't want the boss to find out!! This will need to be urgently addressed - a prospect I don't particularly relish because all I really want to do at the moment is curl up with my iPad and read free Kindle books all day. I generally find this last stretch of the year especially draining, so it's hard to motivate myself to do much at all. But that said, I relish the idea of heading into a new year completely unprepared and with unfinished cycles of action left over from the previous year even less. So I'm looking forward to the quiet period over December and the time that this will hopefully afford me (and us) to straighten out some administrative issues and organising stuff for optimum production when we hit the ground running in the new year...

Luckily, we'll have a chance to enjoy a bit of a break before we ambush 2013 like a pair of guerrilla fighters, courtesy of Kulula.com and my in-laws' lovely holiday house in Mossel Bay.

I totally meant to blog about this MONTHS ago, but like everything else, I just haven't gotten around to it...
When we went on holiday last year for the first time in our almost 11 year history, David drove down with Megan, Michael and Jack, while James and I flew. This was largely due to the fact that there was no way that the 6 of us would have survived the 2 day drive in a 5 seater car and, at the time, we calculated that it would cost less for me to fly down to George with James (who was not yet 2 at the time) than it would for us to take both cars. The fuel and overnight accommodation and meals would wipe out our food budget for the month, and I had managed to find an unbelievably good deal on Kulula.

Long story short, I received a phone call on 4 April this year from Kulula, notifying me of the fact that I had won 12 FREE RETURN TICKETS on ANY domestic Kulula flights of my choice for use ANYTIME in 2012.

At first I thought it was a scam, because I hadn't entered any competition for anything from Kulula, but when they explained that simply by flying in December of 2011 I had automatically been entered, and then confirming the details of my flights to and from George with James, I realised that it wasn't bullshit. How friggin' AWESOME is that?

It's no secret that I'm a competition slut and I enter just about everything I can. Over the years, I've won some pretty amazing stuff but this has been my single biggest win to date and it is thanks to Kulula that my family and I will be able to enjoy yet another much needed holiday, this time without either myself or David having to drive anywhere.

I often see complaints tweeted about delayed Kulula flights or crappy service from the cabin crew but I've got to tell you, I LOVE Kulula and have only ever had a warm reception and friendly service from both their ground and cabin crew. And since every flight I've been on so far this year has been for free and MAHALA, I'm not about to bitch about the odd delay. I'd much rather be delayed by 2 hours and fly to my destination than have to drive for 20!

Speaking of which, I have one last return ticket that needs to be used before the end of 2012. (The return flight can be in 2013, but the booking has to be made and the first flight must be in 2012.)
So I need suggestions. Where do you think I should fly with my last remaining Kulula freebie?

So far, it's a toss up for me between Durban & Cape Town. Although I've flown to Cape Town 5 times already, 4 of those have been business trips, so I've not seen much of the Mother City yet. But I haven't been to Durban at all yet and there are a few people I'd like to see/meet over there. I don't know whether they would be interested, though - haven't thought to ask...

I also don't really want to go and spend the time wherever I'm going all by myself. I'd like to meet up with people and socialise and have drinks and talk crap into the early hours... I'm thinking I need to go someplace where I could spend at least a couple of days, preferably over a weekend, so that people can join me on my explorations and stuff.

Where would you go and who would you see if you had a free ticket to anywhere in SA? And if you're in Durbs or Cape Town, would you like for me to visit you? (In other words, do you have a couch I could crash on one weekend?)

Super Trouper Beams Are Gonna Blind Me.... But I Won't Feel Blue...

Yesterday I completed my second ParkRun. I signed up a couple of months ago already and if I'm honest, my motivation to get up early on a Saturday morning to go running hasn't been particularly high. But I find that it is getting easier. When Jack came to wake us up and demand to be entertained just after 7:00 yesterday morning, David asked me whether I was going to go running and my first response was that it was too late and I wouldn't make it in time. But after half snoozing for another 10 minutes I realised that if I didn't get up and go, then I would probably find another excuse to back out again the next weekend and the one after that and before I knew it, the whole running thing would be just another one of the gazillion things I start and never finish. So I threw off my duvet, pulled on my only pair of shorts (which are going to have to go because they're too big now and keep falling down when I run) and a t-shirt, grabbed a banana on my way out the door and made it to Delta Park with several minutes to spare.  I'm glad I did, because it was Delta ParkRun's first anniversary yesterday and the vibe was cool & relaxed and the volunteers had brought chocolate brownies for the runners to enjoy afterwards. I didn't have any because I can't fucking eat these days but they looked delicious and I'm sure everyone else loved them.

I'm going to have to make a plan and get my Walkman's earphones fixed or replaced, because I find myself feeling a bit lonely when I run or otherwise I get distracted by other runners who are chatting with their running partners and I lose focus and get tired. I felt that the run was tough yesterday and was having a hard time about halfway through. I guess I'm going to have to figure out how to handle my blood sugar levels and lack of appetite so this doesn't happen again. I thought I had improved on my run time but having just had another look at my stats it turns out that I was actually a good 2 minutes slower yesterday than on my last run. But hey - now I have another reason to haul my arse out of bed on a Saturday morning. 

When I got home from my run, we spent a couple of hours just hanging out at home until lunch time, before packing the kids' swimming gear and towels and heading north  so I could meet up with a friend of mine and learn & practice the lyrics to ABBA's Super Trouper, which we were going to sing   at a fundraiser in the evening. 

The idea is to have people perform an act/sing/dance/magic trick/whatever and then to have the audience vote for their favourite acts.  Each vote costs R100 and all of the money goes toward the renovation of our church building.  There were 9 acts altogether last night and between us we managed to raise just over R400 000, which I think is absolutely astounding. 

Considering that the last time I sang in public, I was so bad that the DJ turned up the backing track to drown me out, this was a big deal for me and although everything went really well while we practiced, my nerves got the better of me when we did our sound checks at the venue and I went blank. The performance itself went off without a hitch, though, and my friend and I took second place overall in the number of votes received - surprised the hell out of me!

I'll try to find out whether I can get a photo & I'll update this post with a pic if I can...

Right now, I'm about to sit down and draw up my Battle Plan for the week ahead and see if I can get started on some of it so long.  Given the way things have been going at work lately, it looks as though I simply don't have a choice any longer as to whether or not I'm going to run my life by a schedule and the thought of it frightens me almost senseless. Not so much because I can't stand the rigidness  as because I'm afraid that I will fail as dismally at being organised this time around as I have every other time.  And yet I know that if I don't force myself to give it another go I'm doomed to failure anyway, because there's just too much going on for me to keep track of without having some kind of system in place. So maybe I just haven't found a system that works for me yet, or something?

Anyway, back on the subject of my health, my energy levels seem to be improving along with a few other things I hadn't really noticed were off until they started getting better. My skin is generally looking clearer and fresher, too, except on my hands - they're dry and sensitive as hell. But apart from the lack of appetite and weight loss (I'm now down to 48kg again, which was what I weighed before I had Jack & James...) it seems the meds are working. I'm not unthrilled about having lost the weight as I can once again fit into some stuff I had thought I would never be able to wear again. But I have also gone back to having the chest of a 12 year old, which means that a plan will have to be made for that boob job to happen soon.

That's it from me for now. How was your weekend?

Howloween Disaster and Other Stories

I don't think I've had as busy a Saturday as this last one in a while!

I was supposed to get up early and go to Delta Park for a run but couldn't muster the energy to get out of bed on time. Bad me! - Yes, I know. *hangs head in shame*

I still had to get out of bed, though, and get everyone sorted with breakfast (which of course they didn't eat), dressed and out the door so we could go to the costume hire place where we'd pre-booked halloween costumes for the kids, since we were supposed to go to Howloween at the Joburg Zoo that evening.

So we drove to the Meadowdale shopping centre to collect the costumes at which point everyone complained that they were starving, so we stopped at the Wimpy for breakfast while we were there.

We then had to rush off to the Bedford Centre to do some shopping and attend the draw at 12:00 for 5 more finalists into the Grand Draw for the trip for 4 to New York in February.Sadly, my name wasn't among those drawn. Hopefully next month...

Disappointed, we made our way home to unpack and feed everyone lunch before I had to dash off to Mandi's baby shower, for which I was an hour late and which I then had to leave after barely sitting down for half an hour as I had to get home in time for my mom and sister and one of Michael's friends' arrival, since they would be joining us for Howloween.

Upon arrival at home, preparations began in earnest for Howloween as the clouds began to gather in the sky. I should have known that those black clouds were an omen....

Meanwhile, the kids all looked super cute in their costumes and excitement mounted as the time for departure drew nearer. And because David's the one who normally takes the photos, I assumed that he was doing just that, while he figured I would do it - or that we'd take lots of photos at the Zoo, we only have a few not so great ones....

Vampire Pirates

Fiendish Ghouls, Vampire Pirates & Winnie the Pooh

We left the house with great fanfare and anticipation, 7 excited children, a cooler bag full of eats, angels' wings and witches' hats and a pram in tow.

Upon arrival at the Zoo, we quickly found that parking anywhere in the vicinity of the entrance was so not going to happen. But we managed to find a spot just a couple of blocks away and more or less organised ourselves for the trek to the Zoo entrance just as a light drizzle began to fall.

Halfway between the car and the Zoo entrance, the rain stopped pretending and started pissing down full force.  By the time we reached the gate, we were all completely drenched and squeezing uncomfortably past the mass exodus of people bailing due to the nasty weather. Lots of others stood in the line to the entrance though, intent on braving it out.  We decided to pack it in and find some other form of entertainment for the evening, and David went back to fetch the car and pick us all up. While we waited, another car vacated a parking space right outside the Zoo's gate and my mom and I stood in that space, holding it for David. He parked and we all got inside, handed out hotdogs all round and waited to see whether the weather would improve. We were all totally frozen, though, and the rain continued to pelt down, so we left.

David went to a lot of effort to rescue the evening, though, and went out to buy take-aways, a horde of sweets, some Strawberry Daiquiri mix for the grown-ups and rented some movies for the kids, all of which went a long way toward tempering the kids' enormous disappointment. Having spent a fortune renting costumes, and after months of hearing how much the kids were looking forward to Halloween, though, it felt much like the consolation prize that it was.

I've learned a lot from this year's experience and will definitely be better prepared for next year's Halloween. And we certainly won't be hiring any costumes again!

Meanwhile, exam season is upon us again and I have yet to start preparing. Fortunately, I only have two exams and am not terribly worried about either.

Although the end of the year is approaching fast, there's still a LOT going on, especially on the work front. There's a hell of a lot of work to be done and I find myself feeling a bit overwhelmed sometimes. But I'm learning how to let go and accept help - even to ASK for it - every now and then, which helps.

How was your Halloween? How's the remainder of 2012 shaping up for you?