Vaguely moist

Frak.
Frakkitey Frak Frak Frak!!
It's raining again!

Look I've nothing against rain, it's really quiet lovely, and it waters all the plants and makes pretty flowers and looks like silver diamonds falling from the sky onto a world wrapped in a gray cloth of mystery etc etc.
But come on already!

It's been raining continuously (with just small interruptions here and there to get my hopes up and then break them brutally) for the past heading on 3 weeks! It's like god put it up as his South African screen saver and then forgot to turn the monitor off!



I know our country often needs rain, we're famous for our droughts, step right up, best in the southern hemisphere! But see, I live in Johannesburg. We have tar roads. And sky scrapers. And too many jerks in jeeps who think it makes them look cool but really just helps you pick out who the jerks in jeeps are.
We don't need excess rain! It just makes pot holes, bumper bashings and Kelly next door's hair frizz!

A light sprinkling ever now and then? Sure thing!
A thunderstorm to make us appreciate nature and how we've over come and subjugated most of it? Okay sure, why not?
But this continuous down-pouring? Heck no!

Send it out to the Free State or Natal ... or... damn I can never remember all the provinces! Once it got past 4 I just stopped bothering.

But send the rain out to where it's wanted. Where there is corn waiting in need of water. Where there are grapes and watermelon and all those good things I want to eat! Send the rain to them, they'd be happy to have it. (Only not too much, because it's the little people, aka me, who suffer when crops get ruined!)

My poor walk shoes. They're disintegrating from all the rain. And I can't go getting a second pair because they'll end up copy catting the first pair! My feet have long forgotten what it means to be dry. Evolution is webbing my toes as we speak! And my umbrella is beginning to resemble a crushed, mutant spider. I didn't know prongs could bend that way?

I think I also just miss the sun. Sure it burns me and beats me into submission with excess heat and UV rays, but there is something very uplifting about a clear blue sky.

Well I guess there's not much I can do but accept it? Oooooooooh!!! Bring back sunny skies! All is forgiven!!!

Day tripping for fructose

Now I've always enjoyed going fruit shopping. For me it's a thrill that is only beaten by two things - eating the fruit after you buy it and something else I can't publish as kids read this blog as well.

I thought you might like to come with me to my favorite fruit shop and do a little shopping with me? Non-South Africans, you can do a quick calculation on some of the prices and let me know if you think they're good or not!

Shall we go then?

Fruit Lovers Market indeed! Just pulling up outside it gives you such a thrill of anticipation! You never know what's going to be available when it comes to fruit and vegetables, ooooh hope there's something we'll love!! Race you!!!

First order of business is to find a shopping trolley worthy of being the chariot that bares our bountiful goodness! Generally the trolleys here are well behaved. No rogue wheels sending you into the tomato display or anything, but you do get a lot that seem to twine about each other, giving you a fabulous arm workout as you try to separate one from the other. Pull damn you, pull!!

GASP! Look! Watermelons right outside and looking so wanton! Shall we adopt one and give it a home? The trick is to listen for the THUNK. Um really that's the best way I can explain it. People do look at you a little weird when you're putting your ear to the melon and tapping away, but so far my success rate has been pretty awesome! Please hold your applause.

As to the pumpkins right next to the melons, lets pass on those. I'm not keen on pumpkin myself and you don't look like the sort who could polish one off on your own.

Time to chose from all the fruit! There's loose stuff, bagged stuff, packaged stuff, bunched stuff, and stuffed stuff! It's like a small heaven on earth! (The 'having to pay for it all' bit keeps your feet on the ground, but only just!) What will you be having, litchis or plums? I think some litchis for me, they're looking so lovely today!

This fruit shop even has a section for you to buy some groceries if you need them. Like if you have a sudden craving for baked beans and watermelon, or sardines with sugar and apples!

Look at all the nuts! Holy smurf! How do you chose? Well I'm allergic to pretty much any nut that starts with a 'P' (Peanuts, pistachios and Pecans) but the raw cashews look good, and I think some almonds would go down a treat!
Oh! Where did you wander off to?

Aaah I see you found the sweeties! There's a vast range to choose from, most are pretty much like the nut display only slathered in chocolate. But you're so sweet already, do you really need more?

Oh this sushi table gets me! You can sit down for a minute and chose what you'd like to eat from the little, brightly coloured sushi bowls that go past you on the conveyor track. I could use one of these to put different bits of fruit on and munch randomly from! Would you like some raw fish to nibble on?

If not then perhaps you'd like something fishy to cook at home? The shop comes with a meat section (I forgot to take a pic of their red meatiness, so lets skip that part) and a seafood section for you to chose what oceany denizen you want to fry up tonight. Calamari, squid, crab, mussels, oysters... you name it, they're there for the taking!

Seriusly any sort of seafood you could want! (Humph, that smear on the glass is ruining my squid viewing! Someone should get a rag on it!)

Mmmmh! Can you smell those spices? I love this part of the shop! The curry and coriander and allspice smell so fantastic! You want to take it all home and pour it all over your supper and just inhale!! (I used to over do it a lot so inhaling the scents was about all you could do, eating them was not an option.)
Want some cinnamon?

Ah baked goods. Cant eat them myself but I like the smell, it's a very warm and friendly one. Hey don't you think that assistant has cute buns? Okay okay it was a cheesy joke!
Speaking about cheese... There certainly is enough variety! Farm fresh or old, blue and moldy, a cartoon mouse would be in raptures! If it stinks to high heaven, here is where it's to be found!

And finally, after all that, why don't you pop on over to the dessert counter and get yourself something chocolately. for blood sugar of course!

Fruit shopping is never boring! It's far, far too entertaining! My eyes just can't get enough of these awesome goodies and I don't eat 90% of the stuff!! Alice can have wonderland, I've found my magical place!

Did you enjoy your trip to the fruit shop? Would you like to come again? Want to buy me something next time, I have a list...

A red letter day

Do you keep a diary?

This question is largely to anyone who isn’t a teenage girl, for whom diaries are almost an essential tool of emotional expression or items of blackmail by younger siblings often of the male variety.

For the last ten years I’ve been keeping diaries. The urge to write is so compelling in me that if it’s not a written diary then it’s letters or blogs or thoughts on the computer. There just always seems to be so much to comment on and not enough time to get it all down and tell the world so that they can experience it as well!

When I was unpacking I found 6 full, over 2kg each, diaries and 8 half, to 1/36^th, diaries, full of chatter and nonsense and cartoons and stuff that sometimes makes me wonder if I did drugs without me knowing? I seldom go back to read things I’ve written. I mean to, of course, but somehow everything from chores to staring blankly at the ceiling seems to come in the way. (My room has a very nice ceiling, it gives it a sense of space…)

So after my move, I decided to stop this habit. I had all these diaries full of things that in essence had become null and void. It was an odd sensation to look at these things I’d put all that time and effort and thought and creation into and thinking… “meh”.

So come a few days before New Years I decided, bugger it, let’s get down to some serious destruction! I sat on the bed, diaries on one side, big black garbage bag on the other and proceeded to tear up the old diaries with very satisfying ripping sounds. Even the hamster seemed to find it interesting, sitting in his wheel and probably wondering if he’d get any of it as nesting material. (I didn't give him any, he's too easily corruptible!)

In a way it was sort of fun. I got to see and relive a lot of old, fun memories. Photographs, old movie tickets, photos from Gold Reef City, enthusing about my FIRST EVER TATTOO!! Spewing affection for my ex, my long dead pets or places we used to stay. (And yes, fruit. What? Some things never change!)

Of course it was sad as well. But a good sad, not the ‘it's-slicing-up-my-soul-with-a-blunt-spatula-god-it-hurts’ sort.

It makes you realize how life can change and change so damn fast! (Even when the signs are all there that change is coming, it’s still a shock when it shows up and tells you to move your ass out!) Things like this always make me marvel. It’s so awesome it’s hard to comprehend. Both beautiful and scary somehow.

Oh that’s nifty, I should put that in a diary!

The person I was then, is not the person I am now, and it was hard for the person I am now not to feel a mix of tenderest sympathy, and absolute scorn, for the younger me. I mean holy cheese, if you’d asked me 1, 5, 10 years ago what I saw for my future, this would not have been it. (For starters I thought I’d own more cats…)

But in the end I had a nice pile of recycle-able shredded paper and a deep sense of satisfaction. At that moment I realized I’d probably never keep another written diary again.

So of course I have a brand new one and will just have to write about this irony in it as soon as possible!

Sandton Exploration 2010!

Thursday was such an adventure day!

It started out looking very bleak, It was the third day of solid rain here and the third day of me having no walk at all, which meant that I was three ways to totally and utterly loony from lack of exercise. I was… yes, I’m afraid this does happen…grumpy!!!

So Rob, my esteemed housemate, suggested we go to Sandton mall for a walk. It’s nice and covered and large enough to get the kinks out of twitchy, twitchy legs. Needless to say I was in the car so fast we were half way there before the engine even started!

[So many BMW's! this was taken at the petrol station before the mall! Sheeple car of choice ne? ^_^]

Sandton is another world. One of which I must say makes me a tad nervous. The area is all full of funky looking statues and clean lawns and unnecessarily tiled buildings. I always get the feeling someone is going to stop me there and tell me to go home.
[The view from the parking section! Look at those buildings!!]

And what a mall!! Oh my word! It’s freaking huge!! I had no idea! And the shops! They sell all those ghastly, hideous, tummy churning stuff only rich people want to buy! "Why yes we must have the 100 year old, gold plated yak poop for the guest wing bathroom dah’ling!"

It’s also fully decorated for Christmas in the usual garish way that only a mall can pull off without being burned to the ground by right thinking citizens.
[I donno, somehow, if you don't think about it too much, it works!]

The highlight was definitely the Checkers there. Usually a somewhat dodgy store, this one was Fruit Mecca!!! Seriously and no jokes, by the end of it I was so utterly hyped that I was trying to keep tears back behind my eyes! So many goodies! If civilization is ever subjected to chaos or zombies or anything that in anyway requires rioting and looting, I’m so going back there!!
[OH!!!]

There were also two huge book shops – Oh my! And a giant music and video shop, and, and, and!! You really can find anything there! (That Yak poop will be mine dammit!)
[Jo making new friends!]

Still it was also awfully overwhelming! People, noises, smells, shoves, sticky dead things in the middle of the walk way, small elevators… < - - Jo’s hate elevators and only use them under duress, but I was transporting a watermelon and for that…
(Rob once ‘joked’ that I should have the classic 2.5 kids and train them up to walk with me to the fruit shop and carry watermelons. The 0.5 kid can carry one on his wagon…)

In the end, it was fun to visit but I don’t think I’d want to live there. It’s too much, and me in my jeans and hoody with excess paint splotches on it, well, we’re not too keen on socializing with the tie and heels crowd.

Still… wow.

Sister's with Blisters walk 27 November 2010

Saturday finally dawned, as days often do. But this was a Saturday that had been eagerly anticipated since well near the beginning of the month! (You know the sort, where it seems to take 3 months to get here!) It was time for - The sisters with blisters charity walk 2010! Hooray!! (Anything that requires walking, meeting friends and bright pink free goody bags will always get my two thumbs up!)

I was dead impatient to go, up! It seemed like Rob, my housemate, was taking for ages! When he finally said he was ready I burst out that door so fast it took the speed of light hours to catch up!

Finding the walk spot was pretty easy. We just followed the tons and tons of people dressed in garish pink and holding bright pink helium balloons. < - - some envy was felt at this point as I never did get one…

We managed, more purely by chance then anything else, to locate my sister and her husband. We stayed together as a close knit school of fishies because the whole place was one big sardine can tightly compressed with eager walkers of every kind imaginable! You could just relax your eyes and feast on the odd, weird, clever, painfully bright and oh my word, costumes that people had on! (I think I was the only one with long sleeves on though, score 1 for me!) [I forget was this a charity walk or gay pride parade? sometimes it was hard to tell. Doesn't he have a nice.... feather?]

We then joined up with more friends (many who’d done the earlier 8km walk – more envy) and prepped to go do our weenie but invigorating 4km walk.

[If you look far off into the distance you can see the white balloon of the starting line, there were that many people that this was the closest we could get!]

It was lovely having a walk about the Bryanston campus on the arm of a nun in fishnets and facial hair. (Isn’t that a dream we all share?)
[And so it was that Jovvi found religion]

[Spot the Jo]


[Some costumes were just 'huh' inducing. This fellow, covered in black shoe polish, walked around behind his lady friend carrying an umbrella over her head. The reason? who knows?]

There were even places for people to cool their dogs down along the way, and bottles of water especially for the canine friends. (Which of course make you wonder how it’s different from human water? Next time I’ll get one and you can taste it and tell me!)
[It was hot enough that pushing the pooch out the way and clambering into the bath didn't seem like such a bad idea!]

At the end of the walk we even got a little medal to feel like the brave champions we were! (The ribbon of course being a nice neon pink to go with the general décor. I don’t think my eyes can handle any more electric pink for a few months to come.
[But we're all winners in the end, teehee *waves like Miss South Africa*]

We had to huddle under an umbrella afterwards in a desperate need for shade, it was buggerdamn HOT! There was a prize giving, but none of us won anything which goes to show it was rigged!

Later I got to have my first swim in over a year. Followed by the blessing of my first sunburn in over a year. My shoulders are the kind of red you usually only see in over the top slasher movies! *Delicately touches shoulder and tries not to howl in pure, animalistic agony.*

And just to add the finishing touches to a dang nifty day, we had Rob’s second best friend (Well okay maybe best friend but I will fight for that title dammit!) come over and talk explosions and anime! *BLISS*

Does life get any better then that? (That’s a rhetorical question; obviously we could have added monkeys.)

Slightly bugged?

I love bugs. I find them utterly fascinating. Even the ones that freak me out and left me rocking in a corner whimpering, “Why would it do that? Why? Why?!”

I’ve been fascinated by the critters since I was a wee whipper-snapper, collecting them in jars and keeping them all about my room, much to the distress of the maid and the horror of my dad. (My brothers were in turn fascinated or revolted as the mood hit them.)

Below is a list of my top 5 favorite bugs, in random order (No favoritism here folks!). I’m leaving spiders out because they’ve already had their own blog and need to learn to let others have their time to shine!

1. Praying Mantis’s - They have a grace and beauty that just hides their gruesome nature. Most noticeably their tendency to catch prey, hold it firmly and begin chomping on them while they’re still alive. If the bug is lucky it starts with their head. (Mind if he's really lucky then the praying mantis is munching his pal while he makes a quick get away!)

2. Lady bugs – They’re so cute! In Afrikaans they’re known as Boom-skilpadjie – Tree turtles. I used to spend my time in the pool, moving slowly around the edges, saving half drowned ladybirds. Sometimes there were so many that most of my swim was basically ‘search and rescue’.

3. Grasshoppers – I will admit that the majority of grasshoppers I caught were then feed to the Praying mantises, which is mercenary but hey, a bug's gotta eat! They used to get me back by leaping when least expected and making me shriek like the little girl I was. To me they seem a very judgmental insect.

4. Butterflies – Yes because they are so pretty. If it makes you feel any better I used to feed the odd one to the Mantis as well. Oh now don’t look at me like that!

5. The Grotties – For me this is a subsection that contains all those bugs that do things that just put you right off your feed and which you still end up reading about cause it’s fascinating in a “Please tell me someone made this up kind of way…” But I’m nice, so I won’t tell you about Japanese hornets or Americanized bees that will sting you to death in swarms, or the Bot fly and how it’s maggots eat through your skin, or even the fun of bedbugs sucking blood from your face while you sleep, because I’m nice like that.

Ah but bugs are fun! (When not frightening, annoying or off putting). Live and let live I say! (Unless you’re feeding it to a Praying Mantis), and hey, you can always get revenge on bugs the old fashion way…

It's off to 'who knows where' I go!

So Saturday come around and it was time to move my furniture to my new dwelling! (A bit sooner then expected but I roll with the punches!)

I’d been packing willy-nilly for the past week, this basically entailed:

1. Pick up random item
2. Wonder if it’s mine or someone else’s. If someone else’s, put back and go back to step 1.
3. If mine, did I really, really need it?
4. Ignore step 3 and decide do I want it?
5. Doff it in the box anyway.

I’m never enthusiastic about moving. I’ve done it entirely too much in my life and always with the knowledge that sooner or later, I’ll move yet again. (What can I say, I have nesting instincts dammit! And they get royally buggered around when forced to relocate!)

*sits and feels hard done by for a few satisfying minutes – then gets on with it*

We went to my soon-to-be housemate’s dad’s work, where I got to meet a fantastic 80 year old gentleman who was, of all things, also a Vegan! Yay! He was a lively individual whom I’m told often clambers about the factory roofs and does a lot of physical hard labour. Again he is 80 years old!! Viva Vegans!!

This most kindly individual lent us a nice, ginormous truck to transport my goods in. And Oh my gosh, I had to all but take a flying leap to get into the, what would you call it, Cockpit? Cab? Shuttle Control Centre? of the truck, it was so high! It felt jolly strange!

[Your carriage madam.]

But oh! Oh Oh Oh!! Was it fun!! I had such a ball riding in that truck! I must have taken a zillion and one photos of everything! (Which later turned out to look like just regular shots taken from a car. You had to be there…)

[I took photos of everything! Hey, it was interesting!!]

It’s, well not like flying really, but like... I donno, can’t explain it. You’re in this huge cab, with giant windows that let you see more then a car ever could! And every vehicle that passes you looks like a dinky toy you almost expect to feel apologetic as it passes you by. And when you see other truck drivers you feel yourself puff up with fraternal love as though, “Hey brother! It’s us against them and aren’t we the lucky ones?!”

[Sooooooooooo fun!!]

The moving was pretty quick and efficient. I madly packed the last of my stuff and the two guys who came with heaved and ho’ed and got everything packed so fast I basked in the sonic backlash. We got the bed in, the fridge in, my clothes in, and my niece out! (She was sneaking onboard with a, “Take me with you!!” plea!)

[Aaw, how can I say no to that face? It was surprisingly easy! Hehe :P]

Another ride, this time to the my new place *Beams with the joy of remembering it*, and we started to unpack the truck. Well sort of “we”. As the one guy was putting out a table to be carried, I leapt forward with hopefully optimistic arms to take it. He gave me the once over, reached in for a small packet of paints and said, “Here, you take this”.

(I was a little miffed at that because lately I’ve been building some actual, genuine muscle and feeling rather buff! Later I tried picking the table up to prove the error of his ways and found I couldn’t do more then budge it! I still think he was at fault though, just cause).

Now I’m moved into my room! It’s rather small, so I think of it as sort of a monk’s cell, but with more fat, fluffy stuffed toys then is the current rage at religious institutions. I’m slowly but surely packing things away as the mood hits. Isn’t it funny how you forget you own things till you open a box and, “Oh my gosh Vern! It’s that lamp Aunty Ida gave us!!”

Well I am settling in. and I sort of hope I don’t have to move again too, too soon. But I guess life is an adventure and you can never ever take anything for granted ‘cause you never know what other rabbit it’s going to pull out of the hat at the last moment!

“Vern! Where’d this rabbit come from?”