about being out...

          (Note: if you want to hold kids attention on an outing, do NOT have them facing into the sun!)

Stay at home mothers volunteer for all kinds of shit.  Even if you’re a work-from-home-stay-at-home kind of mother, you still volunteer for all kinds of shit, mistakenly believing you can be in two places at once.  And so it was that I found myself giving lifts to a whole bunch of kids who were going on a school outing. 

This is my idea of hell.  Herding snails is easier than herding kids. Fortunately, I herded a car full of boys (no high pitched, screechy girls)  who are at the age when they try to make their voice sound deeper. There was mostly just a low murmur of dude this and dude that. 

What I discovered in the car ride, is that kids are a bit like old people.  They are able to have four completely independent conversations with four completely different topics.  It would seem that they’re not too bothered with appropriate responses or even giving the illusion that they are even listening to the other person. I want to be 10 again.

While we’re speaking of listening, it occurred to me that in order to get kids  to listen to you on an outing, you should ideally be, well, a bit entertaining.  The very nice gentleman from National Parks had a dry sense of humour, which sadly went right over all the kids’ heads.  He also had a little bit of what I call “outdoorsy snobbery”.  You know, like when he asked the group what kind of bird makes that ‘ka kaaa ka kaaa” noise and some poor child said ‘a dove’.  You just wait for that small snorting noise that the outdoorsy person does through their nose, which in outdoorsy speak means “As iiiffff”. 

I also had some insight as to why my kids keep saying that school is boring.  It is.  And quite frankly, the Cape Dune System can’t really compete in the interest stakes when compared with skateboarding or big wave surfing. It’s just the way it is. I realized that for kids, listening at school is like being stuck at a dinner party with the most boring person sitting next to you and demanding that you not only listen to them, but you also LOOK AT THEM while they’re talking.

The worst part is that the boring person doesn’t even realize that they’ve lost your attention.  They ignore the fidgeting and the whispering (if necessary, only to yourself) and pretty much carry on regardless.  Obviously, I hear you say, school isn’t entertainment, its education.  But so is the National Geographic channel and they manage to make the self-mating ritual of  and earthworm sound quite exciting.

Of course, Mr. Outdoorsy Pants didn’t really care if the kids were listening or not.  He passed grade 4 a long time ago.  He just wants to get through the outing unscathed and with his dunes intact. Not much hope of that I’m afraid, what with children unintentionally shedding things – jerseys, juice bottles, shoes. How can they not know that they have one shoe missing? Do you know how many one shoes I found? 

All I’m saying is that where kids and outings are concerned, you’d better have a plan of how you’re going to sound more exciting than what is in their lunchbox.

 Some parents went all healthy and packed liquid sustenance only...

Even though he was outdoorsy, the moms felt the french exchange student made the outing worthwhile...

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I do...naaat...

This past week had lots of highlights.  I should start with our Neighbourhood Watch update.

“… there is a very strong chance that the toads will be on the move tomorrow evening.  

A contingent of over 20 males moved (what kind of moves?  Hip hop? Jazz?) in the rain last Thursday, ….  Some males have been heard calling (yo baby, kssk ksssk, you lookin’ for a good time?) from the ponds on the Clovelly Country club.  It is highly likely that the females will be on the march (hup two three four, keep it up two three four?) tomorrow … in search of partners and ponds (you call that a pond?  I call it a puddle!)….If you see a Toad on the Road please stop (I was gonna do it while my vehicle was moving? )and move it to the grass verge in the direction in which it was going (what if it’s facing the road?). If you see a lot of Toad activity (Activity? Toad tennis? Toad skating? Toad jogging?) please call… “

We did actually find one in our road.  He looked very cocky.  I’ll bet he got lucky…

Another highlight was the discovery that someone has published a book that is close to my heart…

Irreverent parenting, you godda to love it!

  

Then yesterday, I was lucky enough to be told I had nice buns. By a very old, homeless man who was most certainly drunk.  I know I should take it as a compliment, but I’m just not sure what kind of standards a drunk, homeless person has. At least he didn’t say that I had a nice bakery. Ouch.

Speaking of buns, I heard on Gareth Cliff’s show that Kim Kardashian is getting married this weekend. Apparently the wedding is costing around $10 million. That’s not shameful in the least, right? What with the horn of Africa starving and all. Perhaps they’re flying all their guests there. One person per jet? E! Channel will be airing the wedding (which Kim says will be bigger than Will and Kate’s) in a two part series.  Dear God, I can only hope it’s more interesting than their TV show because I know patches of lawn that live more entertaining lives than the Kardashians.

Which brings me to when Best-kisser and I surfed onto to E! Chanel (supposedly to entertain us), while we waited for our on-demand movie to load (blessed is the clever person who invented that). There was a True Hollywood Story on  - an oxymoron if ever there was. 

This particular THS was all about The Girls of the Playboy Mansion. HUH?!? A True Story about a reality show? I know, right.  Which one is lying? I thought the point behind a reality show was that it was real. Clearly not. 

After a whole 3 minutes of “true” story interviews, E! airs adverts of all the other reality shows that you can view there – sometimes INCLUDING the show that you are currently watching.  I have to wonder, is this for very stupid people who may have forgotten, in all of 5 seconds, which show they were watching? 

But hey, I’m all for some reality shows. Like Flying Wild Alaska.  Or the Deadliest Catch. Or Mark & Olly Living with the Tribes. You know, real people doing something useful with their lives.  Still, folk like Kimora Lee and the Kardashians do sometimes make us laugh.  Like when they say ‘I work really hard’. Um, at what exactly?

Shame on me, I shouldn’t mock the Kardashians. It’s hard to sound intelligent when you have a silver spoon dangling out of your mouth.

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tight spot...

It was with great excitement that I welcomed my little-big-sister to town a week ago.   For those who don’t know the family structure, she is 6 years my senior and for all that I am (um) big boned, tall and ungainly, she is petit, short and extremely agile.  So much so in fact, that I’ve actually seen her be in two places at once.  How we are from the same womb I will never know.

Bearing this in mind, I always make sure I’m feeling fit and have my game face on for some athletic type stuff when she’s around. It's fortuitous that I often mootch around in my gym stuff for the whole day - and so I was that I found myself scaling the mountain behind our house on the very afternoon that she arrived.

It was actually Mr. Professor-pants’ I idea so I sort of blame him and his recent fascination with Aron Ralstons’ story (a.k.a 127 Hours).  He initiated the adventure because naturally, when you see a movie about how someone survived being trapped in a canyon for 5 days, rehydrating on their own pee for the last three, you want to try it.   Despite the well-worn path to the beacon, the four of us decided to take the scenic route and boulder our way to the top.

I should point out that hiking with my kids is stressful.  Mr. Professor-pants has turned out to be a bit of a mountain goat and manages to get himself (alarmingly quickly) to heights that I couldn’t possibly rescue him from – not even if I had an IV of adrenalin attached to me.   Not only that, but Too-fast-too-furious has a nasty habit (still!) of finding random somethings en route to chew on. This could be a piece of plastic from a careless hiker’s drinking cap, a dead rock-climber’s old shoe, or a used band aid that has found renewed purpose in his mouth. Truly, I have given up on him giving up his oral fixation and plan on buying him cigars to chew on. George Burns at age 6.

I should also point out that my little-big-sister is a rock climber. A va-ery good one. One who has the ability to scale an entirely smooth surface like a hunted gecko. As we clamber away, she tries to assure me that I just need to get into the ‘zone’. WTF! What zone? The Zone Of Death? When I finally face the fact that my walrus attitude is not really working (apparently slithering is NOT very rock-climberish), I really put my back into finding this whole ‘zone’ thing.

At the time, I didn’t hear anything snap. There were no ripping noises and I didn’t accidentally break wind from physical strain. However, when I woke up the next morning, it was clear to me that I no longer had use of one of my legs. Which is a pity really, because I walk so much better with two. The pain emanated from my pubic bone (what? There’s a muscle there?) and stretched down to around my mid inner-thigh.  I quick self-diagnosis on the Internet (Doctors love it when we do that) revealed that I’d done something funny to my adductor muscle – most likely the adductor brevis or longus. Hard to tell really, because my thighs look absolutely nothing like those on the anatomical drawings.

Now what is an adductor brevis between legs, you might ask.  Well, you know how when you get into a car and require some enthusiastic muscle to bring the second leg in – that’s your adductors working. That and of course, it’s the muscle that helps you perform useful daily activities like split jumps, inline skating and just plain walking.

Suitably humbled, it turns out that fear isn’t enough of a motivating factor to give you instant climbing abilities. And just so you know, should you get grievous with your brevis, I can guarantee that having an ice pack on your pubic bone will not be the highlight of your year. 

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very fitting...

Wow, such a myriad of blogging topics this week to decide on. I could tell you about the article I read which was headed “Planking fad won’t last” (nooooo, who would have said?)  Or, I could go on about the sure evidence (poop, gnawed on hanky, more poop) that we found regarding the invasion of mice in our house (apologies to my niece who was sure she heard scuttling – I didn’t mean to not believe you.)

I also considered the topic of how our washing machine became a fireworks display, forcing us to purchase a new one. The new washing machine came with an instruction pamphlet, which said under DRY: “When you are not remove a loaf (surely not? a loaf?) of clothes from the dryer as soon as it stops, wrinkles (on me?) can form”. I dearly, dearly hope that this is a bad typo because I can’t afford any more unwanted wrinkles.  Perhaps they meant the clothes.

However, the winning topic this week just had to be TA DAAAA… light fittings. Because we all know how very exciting light fittings are.

There comes a time in every renovators life when you are called upon to choose light fittings. It’s like a calling from Satan.  Warning:  Do NOT take any kids with you to make your selection.  They will deliberately try and break things just to hurry you out of the shop. This is almost kind of them -  in a twisted, expensive way - when you consider the fittings that you have to choose from.

When I was still in the fabric industry (they are called fabrics, dahlink, materials are something you build with) we were coached on a particular saying - incase we thought our clients didn’t like our new range.  We had to tell these offending clients that “there are some people who just don’t UNDERSTAND our range.”  (In other words …“you are a total peasant if you think our new range sucks.)  

Lighting sales people do not have the gaul to have such a cheeky saying, because no one understands their fittings.  They should hand you a pamphlet titled  “To Zeff or not To Zeff” to help you make your selection – just so you can be sure what kind of zeffness you are.

To make matters worse, our house is a complete mixture of styles.  Part country, part contemporary, part pirate-ship messy (a far cry from the Caribbean ship-lap style I’d hoped for - not to mention the Caribbean lifestyle).  Artsy people call it eclectic, which is a fancy way of saying we couldn’t stick to a theme.

So whereas our country, slanted ceilings call for farmhouse chandeliers, the contemporary lowness of the ceilings means that chandeliers are a no go – especially if you for instance value your head. I’m kind of relieved actually, because if we could make it country, Best Kisser might insist on a wagon wheel table and one of those antler chandeliers (they really exist, trust me). Sorry, but we all know that straight men are big on cowboy-type décor. And things with blue in them.

So basically, my question this week is who exactly, buys those seriously shiny light fittings with loads of bling on them?  I mean I get the whole “ it looks great when the lights are turned on thing”  but I’m struggling to UNDERSTAND those kind of fittings. I can’t picture the kind of home that would match all that chrome and diamante trim. Could Russians own it?  Or perhaps it’s made for a specific kind of entertainment?

And BTW, I’ll only know in 10 years time whether the ones we chose are classic or zeff.  Damn.

(p.s. I had to post proof... See, they do exist)

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big hair day...

This week was my second installment of Project get-your-game-face-on.  Quite frankly, I had to take the hint. I was receiving an unreasonable amount of mail (not spam mind you, from people who actually know me) regarding Brazilian Hair Treatments.  So, despite my fear (and part-loathing) of hairdressers, I went to Moments in Time.

I should start by saying that any Salon called Moments in Time is a little bit of a euphemism.  A block of chocolate is a moment in time, a glimpse of a good-looking bloke is a moment in time, hell, even taking a pee is a moment in time.  The salon should be called “Lifetime Commitment”, because that is roughly the amount of time that one needs to spend in there, in order for it to make a difference.  That and of course, it’s also roughly the amount of money that one needs to spend.

Sigh. What can I say; I was seduced by the words “Brazilian” and “Special”.  I have a special affinity (a.k.a weakness) for all things Brazilian. It started when my best friend and I travelled there in our 20’s. You can only imagine my utter joy when I discovered that Brazilian men love buxom butts.  Hooray, that would make it a whole ONE COUNTRY that digs chicks with generous butts – making Brazil, my own personal Mecca.  

We thought we’d totally blend in (me with said buxom butt plus ethno-curly hair, her generally gorgeous with olive skin).  We didn’t.  We stuck out like sore thumbs, which was actually a good thing in the end because we were broke and we needed all the favours that the locals could provide to unwitting foreigners. 

Even including the flasher on the beach (who does that kind of shit?) it was one of the best weeks of my life.  Lets also not forget about Brazil nuts and Brazilian soccer teams – just to re-enforce the love affair.

But back to Moments in Time.    After the inevitable “you’ve recently done your colour” question (emphasis on the YOU - Oh the SHAME!), the utterly adorable hairdresser sits down next to me to explain the procedure.  Procedure, I think to myself, that doesn’t sound very quick.  He goes between sounding boastful (as in, yeah baby, look at the schiz we accomplish here) and apologetic (as in, you fool, you didn’t really know what was entailed, did you?) 

First, he says, we wash your hair twice. (it looks that dirty, I wonder)? Then, we rough dry it. I warn him how frightening my hair is when rough dried (think Cameron Diaz’s hair in the movie “Being John Malkovich”). Then, he says, we apply the mixture.  What’s in it, I say hopefully, Brazil nuts?

It’s at this point that things get a bit vague.  There’s a bit of mumbling about how the “mixture” doesn’t contain formaldehyde anymore (oh yay), just a derivative thereof (um, riiiight). When they apply it, I notice that they’re not going right down to the scalp (where the offending frizz is born).  Why? I ask.  Again with the vagueness.  “It’s just not good for you.  And it reaches the root anyway when the heat is applied.”

Ah, the dreaded heat.  How hot? I ask.  Well, it has to be set at two thousand degrees Celsius (OK, that part is an exaggeration. But hot, like in the 200’s).  After they painted the stuff on, painstakingly section by section, I am put under the climatizer  which is very sci-fi and not Brazilian looking at all. I can’t help but feel that some Brazilian music at this point might be helpful. You know, to complete the illusion of this being a fun activity.  And finally, it has to be flat-ironed seven, yes only SEVEN, times.

What can I say?  Hairdressers are Extremely Patient, Extremely Dexterous, Extremely Entertaining and Extremely Good at getting us to enjoy what is technically, another barbaric treatment. 

I’m so having a word with Cleopatra when I get to wherever she’s gone.  What’s up with all this near death experience shit all in the name smooth hair and skin? Next week I’ll let you know how the whole bathing in milk thing went.

P.S.  It really is a fabulous salon!

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sting deep...

I avoid beauticians and hairdressers at all costs. They’re always so snooty. And brutal.  Hairdressers normally wave scissors about in my face (think wand like movements) and say things like “I may be a fairy but I don’t work magic you know”. As if it’s my fault I was born with perpetual frizz. My aversion to hairdressers has an underpinning logic. You see once you start getting all precious about your hair, you know you are getting  really old.  True story. When I was little I remember asking my mom on a blistering hot day why she didn’t join us in the swimming pool and she said ‘because I’ve just had my hair done’.  Yip, worry too much about your hair and you can be sure that you’ve crossed over to the other side.

Then we get to beauticians. Their first question to me is always, "so what are we using on our skin”.  I normally try and make Lux sound like L’ Uxe to fox them, but what I really want to say is “WE are not using anything on OUR face because WE do not have access to lotions and potions at cost price like the OTHER WE does and because WE have to pay full retail price for hammed up Nivea that WE have worked out is close in cost to the GDP of a small country and that is why WE use Lux”. (BTW, Lux worked for Victoria Principal and Jaclyn Smith, right?)

After the predictable eye rolling I get, they get working on my face with medieval sounding things - steam, lances and tweezers.  It’s a vicious business and I don’t see the point because I end up walking out looking twice as bad as when I walked in.

Anyhow, I blame my most recent run in with ‘beauty people’ on my dermatologist, who recommended some treatments when I explained how it’s very rude that I’ve got wrinkles and pimples in the same year.  ‘Go for a course of 6 glycolic acid peels’, she says to me, ‘and rub on this cream every night.’ It’s called Differin cream. I assume they’re trying to get their point across that it’s differin to the rest? What she didn’t tell me (I finally googled it) is that along with this differin business comes an IB (Initial Breakout). I feel that words like ‘initial breakout’ shouldn’t come with any cream.  And if it does, the manufacturers should call it something more accurate like “Initial Breakout Cream that Eventually Leads To Marginal Improvement”.

So last week, I finally took my aging arse to a ‘beauty’ person.  Well, not my arse exactly (heaven’s no, I’d never subject anyone to that – except Dr. Oodit and BTW, sorry Dr Oodit for seeing my bum) and it was actually an Aesthetic Medicine Clinic not a ‘beauty person’ (Note to self, get lingo right).

The lady looked so nice.  How was I to know she was into torture? After lulling me into a fake sense of friendliness, she proceeded to put this acid on my face. Hoooooley shit!  I felt my heart rate shoot through the roof and I wanted to reach for a sharp object to stab her in the leg with. She tells me that this type of treatment has been around since ancient Egypt and I fell better as I imagine some granny  Egyptian passing on home beauty remedies. Untill she adds that some died of cardiac arrest because they ‘hadn’t quite refined the dose yet’.  Ah, bingo for the heart rate thing I think. She must have seen the panic-slash-hate in my eyes because she started fanning me with a fanning thing. This stopped the stinging momentarily but I was convinced that by this stage my face had melted off and we were now down to bone. I diplomatically explained that tattoos were far less painful – which was a big hint that she needs to look into some kind of effective pain-management for her clients.  Something like morphine or crack might do the trick.

When she finally finished (after applying a myriad of cooling gels and other weird smelling stuff), I went through to the paying area.  This should be a separate area. An area where no other people are.  Unaware that my face was now very shiny and very flushed, I chat happily to other clients who I only afterwards (upon catching a visual of myself in my rearview mirror) realised were thinking ‘Oh God, that poor woman’.

And to think, I actually pay people for this service.

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stuck on you...

I have a friend who I go swimming with from time to time.  Fortunately, we both have the ability to talk the hind leg off a donkey, which is good, because it keeps the focus away from the visual of me in Lycra. For someone like me, who has, how shall I say it, a complicated relationship with clingy clothes, I seem to spend an awful lot of time in Lycra.  This may be in part because I hope to portray the ‘sporty-girl’ look – as if split jumps or 100m sprint records are imminent.

I havn’t quite caught on (clearly stuck in some kind of 80’s twilight zone)  that ‘sporty-girl’ sportswear has progressed beyond Lycra, to cotton-lycra and weirdly stitched leggings called compression garments.  Hopelessly left behind as I am, I still cannot compete with  my swimming friend, Shorne*, who just this week was lamenting the fact that he needs to finally replace is nylon – yes NYLON – Speedo and that (who knew?) nylon Speedo’s aren’t available anymore.

After I’d finished rolling around laughing ,we both thought it only fair (to nylon manufactures) to compare these wonderfully synthetic fabrics. I feel at this point that I should first explain the design of Shorne’s Speedo.  I fell in love once (in 1984) with a lifeguard that wore one that was exactly the same.  White with navy stripes. A classic I’d say. I’m pretty sure if I pressed Shorne for details, he’d confess that his Speedo is also, in truth, from 1984.

I digress. Upon closer investigation, we decided that Lycra in fact, is just not to be trusted.  In his words, at least nylon doesn’t get that “just took a dump in my cozzie” look when it is all worn  out.  One point to nylon.  I added that (sexy as see-through lingerie is) I prefer my cozzie to stay thick and sturdy – especially around the bum and boob area. Why does Lycra go all thin in the places you need the most support? Two points to nylon.

What about the little bits of “rubber dandruff” that come of the cozzie, Shorne says, when the rubber starts separating from the other lycra fibres? Three points to nylon.  And lets not forget, I suddenly remember, how after the winter season you take your cozzie out and the stretchy bits that are supposed to grip your buttocks, have gone all un- stretchy. Instead of nice grippy bum elastic, you are left with a frilly edge, which doesn’t grip your buttocks at all but instead fans out like Joan Collins’ peplum jackets in Dynasty. Four points to nylon.

I chose not to mention how nylon leotards nearly chaffed me nipple-less when I was I kid (nipples are so over-rated, really), but did point out that no one has ever asked for my second hand nylon leggings. And for this, I think nylon wins points five, six and seven.

Just FYI, go feel up some of those “shark-skin” type cozzies that the Olympic swimmers wear. Very un-elastic. Very shark-skin-like but much, much thinner.  I also wouldn’t bend down to dive off the starting blocks wearing that – I’m just saying is all.

*Names have been protected for the sake of those that still wear nylon Speedo’s.

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