So Close

A few pics (not v handsome ones)

This morning Adam woke up in a particularly foul mood. Nothing was good enough. So eventually Marko put the Tubbies on for them while I fed them breakfast. Notice how washed out I look (had a v v bad night with the babes). Also notice how they are looking past me to see the TV screen. Aren’t we lucky we bought that big screen TV!

 

 

Marko got carried away and tried to take a photo of my cleavage.  Unfortunately for him not only are my boobs too small for cleavage shots, but I don’t have two seconds to sit still enough to pose for a good cleavage shot. Sorry Marko.

 

Every morning, after breakfast, the babes go for a walk outside in the pram. They love it and it keeps them happy. Happy babies, happy mommy / nanny. I take them on the weekends and Rose takes them during the week. This morning it was raining, a soft, humid drizzle. I couldn’t risk incurring Adam’s wrath by skipping the morning walk so Marko and I made a plan.  One golf umbrella later we were ready to hit the road. Don’t I look handsome!!!

 

Lucky things cleared up, both in terms of weather and in terms of mood and we were able to hang out and have fun.

 

If you don’t meant to be an asshole, does that mean your asshole’ish behaviour is excusable?

I have a question.

 

But first I have a warning: 1.5 glasses of wine have been drunk in the making of this post. The writer is not responsible for grammatical accuracy, spelling or logical flow. No animals (besides my husband) were hurt in the process of making this entry.

 

I had a very interesting chat with someone close to me on Friday night/.

 

Hold on. need more wine. Be right back.

 

Back. Damn. Bottle finished. Don’t worry, didn’t drink entire bottle, opened it last night. So one bottle over two nights – not too bad. AND didn’t open second bottle even though REALLY feel like another little sip. Am model of restraint. Halo shining brightly.

 

Focus Tertia!

 

Back to the point of my post. 

 

As I was saying, had a v interesting chat with a friend of mine on Friday night. And it got me thinking. Tell me what you think.

 

Let’s say you are good friends with some one who is quite self-absorbed, not horrible or nasty, but just very wrapped up in their own life. Someone who is often neglectful of the relationship, or often does not-so-nice things. 

 

Now, you know this person is not doing these things intentionally, or to be mean, this is just how the person is. Which is all fine, except that it is hurtful / annoying / a pain for you, not massively so, but annoying none the less. What do you do? Do you confront the person and risk hurting them by pointing out what they are doing wrong (because they really don’t have a clue they are being so selfish)? Or do you accept that this is just the way they are and that they don’t do it intentionally?

 

Is it ok to be an asshole if you don’t do it intentionally, and if you are recipient of unintentional asshole’ish behaviour, should you make a thing of it or do you just let it go?

 

Does this make sense?  

 

Damn, really feel like another small, very small I promise, glass of wine. But that means opening another bottle. Should I or shouldn’t I….What’s the time now? 8pm.  I have an hour to blog/drink/fartass around before shower and bed.  Ok, ONE more half a glass and that is IT. Yay!

 

BTW, I know I owe a few of you return emails, plus I have some outstanding admin issues.  I am going to get to it soon, promise. I have a deadline for my manuscript for two week’s time and then I should have a small window in which I have a bit more free time.  Smooches to all of you for your patience.  

 

Literary Mama: Reading for the maternally inclined.

I am not sure whether it is because I am a new mother, or because I am a new writer, but mothers writing about motherhood has become a particular passion of mine. It is a new world to me and I am revelling in the richness of the work that is out there.

 

As you know, I absolutely adored Andi Buchanan’s Mother Shock, I only wish I had read it earlier. I also loved “It’s a boy”. Literary Mama is Andi’s new book. I am participating in her virtual book tour for the book, and I am in excellent company along side a long list of wonderful women bloggers who are doing the same.

 

Literary Mama is an anthology of work, stories, poems and short pieces, written by women writers, both professional and part time writers. It is a collection of the best pieces of work that has been published on the Literary Mama site over the last two years, and it is excellent.

 

Here is an overview of the book, have a look

 

I loved every part of the book but a few contributions really stood out of me. The one was a piece called ‘Johnny’ written by a woman called Heidi Raykeil. It blew me away. It was my story, Ben’s story, written by a woman who had a Ben called Johnny. Such a powerful piece of work. I wept.

 

Strangely enough, it was the pieces on parenting your parents that were particularly poignant to me, they were so beautifully written. Actually, the whole book is stunning. I’ve already passed it on to my mother who loved it too.

 

This is a fabulous book, a thought provoking book and a celebratory book. I thoroughly enjoyed and I highly recommend it to all of you.

 

Mommy love

A few weeks ago my sister asked me to get in touch a woman she had met through a friend of a friend. This person is dealing with infertility issues and my sister thought I could help her. 

 

We exchanged a few emails and agreed to meet for lunch (and wine) yesterday.

 

It was nice meeting her, we had a great chat about all sorts of infertility ‘things’, about how hard it was to be infertile in a fertile world, about having to deal with pregnant friends, baby showers, biological clocks and decisions around the correct path to follow.

 

She hasn’t done any high tech stuff, and wanted to meet me to discuss what she should do, the next steps she should take. She wanted to know my story. 

 

I am always wary to tell my people my story, because although my story does have a happy ending, the stuff I went through must be terrifying to hear to someone just starting out on the high tech road. I always hasten to tell people that what happened to me is the exception rather than the norm! I told her my story.

 

Inevitably the question came up, ‘so, was it worth it?’ And as I have said before, there is no easy answer to that. Yes and no. Yes my kids are worth every thing I went through and more. I would die for them. Were the losses, Ben’s death, worth the sacrifice? No, never ever.

 

But I understood what she was asking. She was asking me to tell her that all of this is worth it. All the treatments, the money, the pain, the disappointments, that all of it is worth it in the end. Because you do doubt yourself when you are in the midst of all of it. You wonder if you really do want children, you start doubting yourself, you start trying to convince yourself that your life is actually so much better without all of this, perhaps having a child is not really THAT wonderful, not really that worth it. The sleepless nights, the disruption to your life, the sacrifices you will have to make. All these things go through your mind. It is a self-protective mechanism. I think many infertile people go through it at one stage or another, the doubts. The wondering if all of it is worth it. So I knew what she was really asking, whether the prize at the end is worth all of the pain.

 

And it is. It is so worth it. I realized yesterday as I was talking that it is more than just about having a child, or even being a mother. It is about the mommy love. Mommy love is the love that I feel when I hold my sleepy child on my lap with his head on my shoulder, it is the love I feel when I look down at my sleeping child in her cot when doing my final ‘just before bed’ check, the love I feel when my sick baby melts into my arms. Mommy love is the love I feel when I see my child’s face light up when I pick her up out of her cot first thing in the morning, when he throws his arms around me and giggles in my neck. It is the mommy love that makes all the pain and all the hardship worth it. 

 

Mommy love is a love I have never experienced before, it is a love like no other. It is not a better love than other loves; it is not a love that every one might need or even want. It is however, the most intense love I have ever felt in my life. It is all consuming, it is all powerful, it makes me weak and it makes me strong, it is the most beautiful, powerful, fulfilling thing I have ever experienced in my life. 

 

Mommy love and the opportunity to feel it and experience it every single day of my life is what made the journey so very worth it. Mommy love is the reason why I did this. And mommy love is the reason why I told this woman to try for as long as she could bare it. To carry on trying, to stick with it. Mommy love is what makes it worthwhile.

 

My wish is that every single person who wants it, gets a chance to experience the magical, wondrous thing that is mommy love.

 

And finally I get to answer my own question, the question I asked when I was overwhelmed with Mothershock and the shock of dealing with newborn twins:   Why do we decide to have children? The answer:  Mommy love.

Some facts and stats about South Africa

While one quarter of high income earners (defined as earning more than R6,000 / $1,000 per month) were black in 2001, almost one third of high income earners were black in 2004

In 2004, almost 1.5 million South Africans earned more than R6,000 / $1,000 per month. This segment has grown by 14% p.a. since 2001

Almost 60% of workers in the formal sector have pension or retirement funds that are contributed to by employers. Less than 10% of domestic workers have retirement benefits

Almost 30% of all workers are members of a trade union. Mining is the most unionised industry, at 79%

There are over 13 million learners in the country attending school. 7% of children aged 5 to 14 are not attending school.

There are 4.7 million people aged 5 to 24 who left school early. 35% of them did so because they could not afford the fees. 10% of the 2.5 million females who left school early did so because of pregnancy.

There are around 135 000 school teaching professionals in the country. 60% of them earn less than R8,000 / $1,300 per month (gross).

Almost 40% of learners (5.3 million people) get free food at school.

The total population of South Africa at September 2004 was 46.5 million (up from 44.8 million in 2001). 36.8 million are black, 4.4 million white, 4.12 million coloured and 1.2 million Indian/Asian

There are 3.5 million illiterate people in South Africa aged 15 or more.

The average monthly household income of white households at R12,390 / $2,041 is roughly four times as high that of black, coloured and Asian households (R3,120 / $514). However, household income of black households has grown at 11% per annum since 1996 compared to 5% for white households

According to a 2005 study 41% of adults in South Africa use a cell phone. On average, people spend 3% of their incomes on cell phones

AIDS is the most commonly cited concern for South Africans - 85% of adult South Africans say they are concerned about AIDS. Other top concerns are crime (79%) followed by unemployment (78%)

According to Stats SAs mid-year population estimates 9.8% of the population is HIV positive. Surveys typically understate HIV-prevalence significantly - according to the 2004 General Household Survey only 1% of the population say they are HIV-positive.

What do you call yours?

As the babes are growing up and will (hopefully) start speaking soon, we are getting to the stage where we have to think about what we are going to be calling our / their bits. Their private bits.

 

Up until recently, I didn’t give it much thought. I was 100% sure what we would do. In my newly created family we would refer to them as I always have done, the same way I was brought up. A boy has a winky and a girl has a fanny. (Here in SA, and I think in the

UK

, a fanny is a vagina, I think in the States a fanny is a bum?)

 

Fannies and winkies. Boobs and bums. That was until a blog reader commented on my abuse post from a while ago, imploring me to refer to the private bits by their proper name, i.e. penis and vagina. As she said “As a former prosecutor of child abuse cases, my best advice (that you haven't gotten yet) is that you teach your children the proper names for the private parts rather than nicknames. It is much stronger if the child ever has to tell what happened to them.” This left quite an impression on me.

 

Now I am not so sure what I should do. Using penis and vagina seems so removed, so clinical. It has  connotations of cold, clinical, hidden, distance, unnatural, to me at least. I would prefer for my children to think of their private bits as part of who they are, private, but natural.

 

I obviously want to do what is best for them, but I also don’t want to parent for the exception, for the 1% possibility of something bad happening. It is the same thinking I have towards nudity and your nude body. It is private, it is yours only, but it is also natural, beautiful and nothing you need to be ashamed about.

 

I am interested in hearing your views, your experiences. How do you refer to your private bits? What naming conventions do you use in your family and is it different to how you were brought up?

 

More meme's

Got this idea from a fellow SA blogger.  Am being total attention / blog whore,  I know.  Just love these quiz things. I'll stop soon, I promise! Do one for yourself and tell me what your result is.

You scored as Psychology. You should be a Psychology major! Psychology 100% Sociology 92% Anthropology 83% Biology 83% English 67% Journalism 58% Engineering 58% Philosophy 50% Theater 50% Mathematics 50% Chemistry 42% Linguistics 42% Art 25% Dance 25% What is your Perfect Major? (PLEASE RATE ME!!<3) created with QuizFarm.com

Can’t cook / Wont cook

**warning – this is a ‘2 and a half glasses of wine’ post, so there will be some swearing and not much logical flow. Sorry.  **

I need to elaborate a bit more on the cooking thing.  Or lack of cooking thing.  As I said, I don’t cook.  I can’t cook.  In fact, I hate cooking.  I really do.

Deciding what we are all going to have for supper at night is the bane of my fucking life. I hate it, with a passion. I HATE that I am the one who is responsible for supper.  When I was single, it was sandwiches or take out or wine nothing.

Before the babes, I used to cook v occasionally.  Always two meals because Marko doesn’t eat what I eat (too ‘rabbit food’ / stinky / weird), and I don’t eat what he eats (too bland / boring / fattening / Afrikaans).  I used to make myself a salad or some pasta and I would either make something simple like meat and potatoes, or get a ‘heat and eat’ meal for him.

I hate cooking because I can’t cook. I suck at it, I really do.  But besides that, I am completely NOT at all interested in cooking.  For a few reasons:

1.    I am not very good at cooking.  Some people can taste a dish they are cooking and say ‘oh, it needs a little more of this, or a tad more of that’. I can’t do that.  I have no fucking clue what the dish needs.  This is not a complete deal breaker as I know I could, if I wanted to, follow a recipe and this issue would be solved.  However, ….

2.    I have no ingredients in my house.  I don’t even have staple things like, um, what is a staple thing anyway?  Like um, staple cooking things.  Herbs.  Flour. Whatever.  I don’t have those things.  Every few months I decide that I HAVE to do something about the cooking thing and I go out and buy a whole lot of staple ingredients like spices and butter and stuff.  I then cook for approximately 2.5 days after which I am so irritated / despondent / annoyed that I don’t cook again for months.  The ingredients go off and I have to throw them away.  I recently baked something (I can actually bake, funnily enough) and I found baking powder that had expired two years ago.  I used it any way.  The cookies came out fine.  However, even if I did have all the ingredients, I don’t think I would cook because……

3.    I work.  And the last thing I feel like when I get home from work is standing in front of a hot stove, the very LAST thing.  But of course millions of women do, and that is no excuse so I have to admit that the truth is…..

4.    I hate cooking. It takes time, it makes you hot, it makes the kitchen messy.  Cooking to me is a chore, a PITA.  I don’t get any enjoyment out of it, although I can see how other people would. I just don’t enjoy it.  And even if I did enjoy it, I don’t think I would cook elaborate meals because…..

5.    Marko doesn’t particularly like food.  Both Marko and I would quite happily swallow a pill instead of having to eat a meal.  He doesn’t even really like take outs.  Food does nothing for him.  So there is absolutely no motivation for me to cook for him, because he really doesn’t enjoy eating.  I can, and have, offered to buy/make him whatever meal he wanted and he really couldn’t be bothered.  He eats because he has to.  And I feel the same, although, I will be honest and say…

6.    I have a particularly unhealthy attitude towards food.  I see food as a necessary evil, simply as fuel to keep going, rather than something to be enjoyed.  Plus I have the whole ‘will it make me fat’ thing.  And while I *know* this is all wrong / unhealthy / fucking stupid, and I will do my utmost to make sure I don’t carry this seriously unhealthy attitude towards food over to my kids, the urge to cook an elaborate meal for myself is just not there.  But I know it is not about me, and I have Rose and the babies to think of, but it is still not an urgent thing for me because …

7.    There is good, wholesome ‘homemade’ food available for me to buy for Rose and the babies.  And for the moment, it is easier to feed my family this way.

So you see, not only do I hate cooking, not only do I suck at cooking, but I have all these other reasons making me NOT want to go there.  My poor mother despairs of me.  People get so irritated with me.  They try and make me love cooking, and although I understand how therapeutic it can be, how lovely it can be etc etc, I still really really do not enjoy cooking.  I don’t think I will ever ‘love’ it, I really don’t.  I know it has become a ‘thing’ in my life, almost a phobia, but I really hate it.  And I really think I suck at it.  I have been known to fuck up a fried egg.  That is how bad I am.  Ask Marko!  He’ll tell you.*

But of course I need to make a plan for my kids.  And I will. I can’t feed them jarred food to the babies forever (can I??), so I will have to make a plan.  Rose is more keen on the cooking thing than I am, and perhaps between the two of us we can work out some kind of plan. 

I really do hate cooking.  Sorry, but I do.  And don’t try and persuade me otherwise.  I do not like cooking and nothing you say will make me feel otherwise.  What a stupid idea, this whole cooking thing.  Bane of my fucking life.

*Today Marko sent me a message asking whether he had to pick something up on the way home.  I told him that he and Rose were having mash and schnitzels for supper. He asked who was making the mash and when I said ‘Rose’ he replied ‘oh good’.  Bugger! 

(Wrote this post on Saturday night.  Sunday night I made spaghetti bolognaise as an experiment, to see if the kids would eat it.  Adam loved it!  Yay.  Kate not so much but there is hope.  SOMEONE liked my cooking!)

Blog admin

I've added the counter thingy back onto my blog.  Please let me know if my blog is loading unbearably slowly again, or whether you can live with it. I love the counter thingy, makes me feel all global village’ish, so am v keen to keep it but not if it is going to make this blog load slower than an Ibex pulling a sled across the African veld.

 

Then, how fond are you of the polls? I kind of liked them, and I can get an ad free / pop up free poll but it costs money, of course. Trying to decide whether to spend my hard earned $$$ on the ad free version.

The lesser spotted Tertia

When I was pregnant with the babes I got some pigmentation marks on my forehead, just above my eyebrows. Speckledy marks. I could see it quite clearly but when I pointed it out to Marko he said he couldn’t see any thing. He was probably just trying to placate me, or get me to shut up so that he could watch TV. Asshole.

 

I know that pigmentation marks are common in pregnancy, but mine got worse from about 6-8 months AFTER the babies were born?? And it seems to have spread. I am not sure whether it is because I am going in the sun more (probably) but the marks seem much more obvious lately. I am not on any bcp’s, so it is not from that. 

 

The flash of the catmera and the fact that I took this photo myself at 6am this morning makes things looks worse on these photos than it does in real life. It is not THAT bad; no one has (yet) pointed and laughed. However, because I either wear little make up, or no make up, the marks are quite visible.  

 

Do you think it will get worse? Or will they go away by themselves? How do I get rid of them? Any suggestions?