Month: June 2011

A weighty issue

This is a really hard post to write and it’s been sitting in my head for a while now.  So bear with me.

Last year a lot of my ‘interweb’ friends were writing love letters to their bodies.  I remember reading them at the time and thinking I would much rather be sticking pens in my eyes.  And then Tertia forwarded an email of a magazine looking to interview women that have rediscovered their sexuality after having children.  I literally snorted out loud.  Sexuality?  What sexuality?

I don’t think I’m ugly, but I look at my boobs after breastfeeding 3 children, my fat stomach and all my stretch marks and I shudder.   And I look at the number on the scale and want to run a mile.

Not that I don’t know what to eat.  I know why I am not losing weight (stress, lack of exercise, giving up smoking and using food as a crutch) and yet I do very little about it.  I avoid full length mirrors except for the most cursory glance at my outfit in the mornings.  I hardly buy clothes that aren’t a. black or b. hide the worst of my sins.  To be fair, I hardly buy clothes.  I am loathe to spend money on anything until “I lose the weight”. 

I would start an eating plan, lose 5 or 6 kgs, feel great, and then gain 10 kgs.  Self-sabotage much?  I have this whole “I’m so lazy and fat” thing going on in my head that’s just crazy and I know I am probably punishing myself for something that’s just ridiculous.

Yes, I know all the logical answers and I know there’s just no instant diet and the weight’s just never going to fall off me.  But I do miss that thinner version of me.  I fear that Etienne might wake up one day and realize that he is living with an unattractive fat person and head for the hills.  It impacts on my sex life in a big way.  In my mind I’m still that daring (and young!) person that absolutely loves sex when in reality I feel, well, decidedly un-sexy.  And he tries to help in his gentle kind way without making me feel even worse.  Which makes me feel even worse.  Because I keep thinking: who would want to love a body like this?

So I keep punishing myself.  Like an idiot.  I dread feeling restricted and hungry and miserable and deprived.  And yeeees, I know it’s a mindset.  But by dammit, I need to get into that mindset.

I know this about myself:  if I’m not constantly thinking about the goal of going to weigh myself with a 3rd person I suck at diets eating plans.  And I hate Weigh Less with an undying passion.  I did SureSlim and that worked brilliantly. 

Are there any other good eating plans out there?

If you have lost weight AND KEPT IT OFF what did you do?  What made the difference for you?

Work stuff

As a matter of principle I don’t blog about work, but the work I am doing now is so humbling that I have to share some of my thoughts.

I have had the honour of meeting a lot of people from disadvantaged backgrounds lately.

People that come from all over Cape Town and from varying degrees of challenging circumstances.

People that have used their last money to travel to our office to see us or have borrowed money for taxi-fare.

People that have been through untold horrors in their lives, some of which they share with us.

People that put on their very best clothes because they desperately need (and want!) a job.

People that often couldn’t finish school because they have had to work to support their families.

People that are incredibly bright and desperate to make a difference in life, but are limited by their circumstances.

People that have been judged and looked down upon because of where they are from.

And I think to myself:

I take SO much in my life for granted. I come home to a warm home at night. I have healthy children. I drive a car. I have access to 24/7 internet. I’m not in an abusive relationship. I finished school. I don’t live with 8 people in a small house, but a lovely big house with a garden. I get to spoon at night because I like it, not because I have to. I come home to a marvellously clean house and cooked meal every night. And I have a job and a wonderfully supportive and loving family.

So tonight, sitting in front of a lovely fire, on my couch, in front of the DSTV with my Husband snuggled right next to me I say Thank You for all I have.

That is all.

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(Isabel in all her cute glory tonight)

Dancing

Etienne was telling me about how the kids were dancing in the library yesterday and asked them to do a re-enactment. Which they graciously did. On the coffee table..

Pic share and catch-up

We had a weekend of such absolute cuteness, I just have to share some stories and pictures.

Before I start, just a reminder that you will find this week’s Meat-free Monday post here.

Daniel has started whispering in our ears. Mostly sweet nothings, but often “I’ll be your Bestestbestest friend if..” I have been waiting to see if/when this was going to happen and am handling it better than I thought I would. So cute to see him whisper to his sisters.

We went to a kiddy birthday party on Saturday and my friend Chloe always has the BEST parties. She’s one of those Moms who always has the most amazing ideas of stuff to do with kids, always has home-baked cookies and has a legendary spread at each party.

As you can see our children played very nicely with all the other kids..

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The girls watching the candles being blown out on the cake:

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The cupcakes my friend made:

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Watching tv:

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Taking the dogs for a walk, love the light in this picture, I didn’t filter this at all:

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Mignon playing with a branch against the tree:

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Etienne had them today and will have them tomorrow, Thursday and Friday. To be honest, I expected grimness and chaos when I got home and instead he told me how much fun they had today. I’m a little (read: a lot) jealous. And lucky. And blessed.

Meat-free Monday: Corn Chowder

In my quest to find a Meat-free recipe for this evening I ended up on Jamie Oliver’s site for a change.  I must say, I always come away from there with something and we still make some of the recipes out of his very first books!

I briefly considered making a spinach souffle, but the feeling passed very quickly when I realised how little time I had tonight.  And I’m just plainly too scared to go there…

Here then Jamie’s Corn Chowder recipe and below my version:

ingredients

• 1 celery stalk
• 1 medium onion
• 1 ½ tablespoons butter
• ½ teaspoon dried thyme
• 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
• 3 cups 1% milk
• 1 medium potato, peeled and cut into little cubes
• 1/3 cup chopped cashews
• 2 cups frozen corn
• ¼ cup chopped fresh chives and/or parsley (optional)

Method:
1. Pull the leaves from the celery stalks and set them aside. Chop your celery and onion.2. Heat the butter in a medium saucepan over a medium heat. Add the celery (not the leaves), onion, and thyme. Stir until the vegetables start to brown.3. Sprinkle the flour over the veggies and stir for a few more minutes. Pour in the milk, add the potato and bring to a boil, stirring the whole time so the soup doesn’t stick to the pot. Cook until the potatoes are tender, but not mushy – this will take around 10 minutes.

4. Meanwhile, chop the celery leaves. When the potatoes are tender, stir in the corn, cashews and celery leaves and bring to the boil.  Stir in parsley and serve.

ps.  The cashews were good, but I think toasted pine nuts would have been better.  And maybe blending the mix before adding the corn. And maybe replacing half of the milk with coconut milk.

Ok.  I’ll stop now 🙂

To host or not to host

So.  I’m in the market for a new ADSL and Hosting supplier.

My current supplier is, at best, shocking.  Sure, they’re cheap and cheerful, but I’m unable to reach them when I need them.  I have been battling for more than a month now with a simple connectivity problem.

Here are my needs:

  • about 4 GB of data per month
  • 2 sites to be hosted
  • Reliability i.e. always on internet
  • I don’t need a lot of email addresses, I only use 2 on the one site and none on the other site as it happens to be this blog.  So please don’t tell me I can have loads of email addresses!
  • A Hosting Contact Centre that is available After Hours.  Do NOT tell me that your hosting department closes at 17h00.  Ionly blog at night (usually) and if there is a problem at 21h00 I have to be able to speak to a human being, not a know-it-all-condescending little snotface in your ADSL support Contact Centre.
  • A supplier that will remind me when my domain needs to be renewed.
  • A supplier that actually enjoys speaking to their customers.
  • A supplier that will not lock me into a complicated contract.  I need the flexibility to upgrade or downgrade my account at short notice.
  • At a push someone that knows a little about WordPress and can help me out in a fix. 
  • And lastly: a supplier that won’t pass the buck to Telkom and make me call around like a fool.

Who do you use?  Are you passionate about them?

Things that drive me batty

Maybe it’s just me, but there are just some things in life that can turn me from sweet innocent smiling happy person to rabid snarling dog mad in 5 seconds flat. PMS or no PMS. I mostly keep quiet, grind my teeth and picture a serence scene, but every once in a while I just snap.

It might have something to do with the fact that I have this stupid concept of fairness, honesty and directness that often lands me I’m hot water. But I don’t really care.

Here’s my list:

  • Kids in cars that aren’t strapped in. By far my biggest pet hate.
  • People smoking in cars.
  • People smoking in cars that also happen to have children in them.
  • People smoking in cars that also happen to have children in them that aren’t strapped in. These are the people I motion to wind windows down at robots and then ask them if I shouldn’t rather just take a gun and shoot their child on the spot to get the job out the way. Much to Etienne’s dismay. Once again: I don’t care.
  • Standing in line at the grocery store and the arsehole in front of you dumps their trolley, blocking your way to get to the pay point. I mean, how hard can it be to pull your trolley with you as you proceed through the till point? You packed the stuff in there and unpacked it. Surely it’s not that hard to dispose of the trolley?
  • People that expect their groceries to be packed for them. What? You have no hands? I often let the cashier finish the transaction whilst I pack the groceries if there isn’t a packer available. It’s not that hard people.
  • People that park across 2 parking bays on a Saturday morning when the shops are packed. I really have no words.
  • People that aren’t old, with child or disabled that park in these appointed parking bays. Douchebags, the whole lot of you.
  • When people complain about something but do NOTHING about it. Go on, make that call, send that email, but for crying out loud: if it bugs you SAY something to the right people. If you say nothing things will always stay the same.

Whch makes me wonder why I always end up being the biatch putting my hand up? Or should I rather just quietly stand by and tolerate stuff that could have an impact on people close to me?

Rant over.

The End.

What bugs you in life?

Lovely Blog award

Hi All,

I’m really grateful to Nicki for nominating me for the Lovely Blog award, thanks so much!  Now we just need to meet In Real Life 🙂

The conditions of receiving this award are:

  • Thank the person who gave you the award (done!)
  • Reveal 7 random facts about yourself
  • Choose 5 other people who you believe deserve the award and pass it on

7 Random things about myself.  I don’t even think there’s 7 things people don’t know about me by now..

  1. I’m a closet wannabe home-maker-type-person.  I have several books on crocheting and making quilts etc, but I don’t have the time or the patience to deal with it right now. And I’m besotted with Pinterest. It’s a very baaaad thing.
  2. I can’t wait for my girls to start playing with dolls so that we can build houses and make clothes and stuff.
  3. I’m happy as a lark if I’m huddled on the couch, electronic device (that connects to the internet) in hand and talking to my friends on the interwebs.  I’m a terrible communicator and I suspect Etienne knows much more about my feelings from reading my blog and my twitter stream than he ever will from having an actual conversation with me.  Sad but true. (this statement excludes the die hard really important stuff)
  4. I am completely haunted by a friendship that ended badly a few months ago.  I know I need to move on and let it go but I have a stinking suspicion that I won’t be able to let it rest before there is some kind of confrontation.  Which I really dread.
  5. I have secretly started another blog.  Purely because I want to split up the writing and food stuff and I want to keep all my recipes in one place.  It’s still a work in progress so I’ll keep it really simple and just post links from here.  It’s like my own special little play place..
  6. I have a really really good sense of smell.  Which is great to pick out perfume, but a curse when you have to deal with poo, vomit and cat pee.
  7. I love having a hectic house.  I wish I had a huge big old house on a massive plot with loads of dogs and cats and children running around. I absolutely love having a house full of life.

I nominate the following fellow bloggers for this award:

Debbie.  She juggles 3 kids, a house and runs a business with her husband.

Candice or Dr Candice to the world.  She rocks. 

Sally who is the type of Mom I wish I could be.

Camilla who is one of the most creative and inspirational women I’ve ever met.

I have so many blogs that I read and love, I’m almost nervous to mention someone here..

MFM – Fried rice with a twist

Seeing as how Etienne was away on his boys trip thing from Wednesday to yesterday he asked if he could eat anything other than meat.  This coming from a man that calls chicken a vegetable.

I felt like making a fried rice thingy, so I found this recipe on the web.  I’m not overly fond of bean curd (cue small shudder), so I replaced the bean curd with cashew nuts.  To be honest, I replaced most of the recipe, so here’s my version.

  • 1.5 cup brown basmati rice, uncooked.
  • 3 eggs, whisked
  • small punnet of baby corn
  • small punnet of snap peas
  • a huge red pepper, sliced
  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 2 cloves of garlic, crushed and chopped
  • 1 tbsp ground ginger
  • handful of mushrooms, shredded by hand
  • 1/2 cup cashews

Cook the rice and cool.  Fry the eggs in a little butter in a wok, chop up into pieces and tip into a dish.  Next fry the onion for a minute then add the garlic and ginger and fry for a further couple of minutes.  Tip the corn, peas, pepper and mushrooms and fry until the veg is still crispy, but nicely warmed up.  Then add the rice, eggs and cashews, heat up and serve.

Splash some balsamic reduction over and tuck in!

 

 

 

I survived!!

The weekend was unmitigated chaos and I just didn’t have the time or energy to do a blog post.  But I survived.

My Friday evening started off with Daniel having a croup attack and a 39.5 fever. He then proceeded to spend Friday and Saturday night in bed with me.  Which meant that I spent Friday and Saturday night listening to his breathing.

On Saturday morning my folks went collect our new girl from Animal Anti Cruelty League and bring her home.  We were instructed to not let her into our property immediately, but to take her and Jack for a long walk until they calm down and get used to each other.  It took a 45 minute walk and much whining and growling from Jack to get him to settle down to a mild panic, but we finally managed it.  We then let Jack in the gate first and left my Dad to keep an eye on them whilst my Mom and I took the kids off to the shops.

The lovely people at AACL requested that I keep the dogs outside and away from the kids for at least 2 days as they were scared that Jack would get aggressive if the kids got too excited. They also gave some really helpful tips about dogs fighting and dog pecking orders.  For example: if 2 dogs are fighting, lift their back legs up to break it up.

On Saturday night after the kids had gone to sleep I wanted to let the dogs in to see how they would do and it went very well, so I kept them inside for a while.  I left them outside on Sunday morning, but when we came back from Fathers Day lunch at my folks I instructed the kids to be calm to see if we could let the doggies into the house.  They all behaved extremely well so we all had a bit of a chill in the lounge.

Well, I was trying to have a nap on the couch, but the girls had other ideas:

Mommy, please take a photo!!

 And here are the doggies having a chat:

Gimme some Luuuurve!

Etienne was meant to be home at 6pm, but they were running late and by 6h30pm I could stand the juggling of bathing and feeding and whining no longer and sent one of those”if you don’t come home RIGHT NOW…” messages and poured myself a glass of wine.  Not my proudest moment, but there is only so much I can deal with for 5 days.

So, as at this morning we aren’t 100% sure what our little lady will be called, but we are leaning toward Lily.  She’s a real little lady!

Here they are last night, amazing how much space they take up.  And how much they fart..

Peace and Love.

And lastly, when our friends were over for lunch on Thursday, I took this pic of Daniel and their little girl.  He went up to her and gave her the biggest hug and cuddle.  I love my boy, he is so gentle and sweet, but how could you not want to cuddle that sweet little face?!

Daniel and A.

ps: the cat’s gone missing.  I’m wondering if he’s fired us?