Month: October 2013

Of photos being taken of your children

Over the weekend we were having supper with friends and they mentioned in passing that another friend was upset because an (older male) staff member at one of the extra-mural activities was taking photos of the children during class.

The 5 year old, mostly female children.

In a class that our girls participate in.

We then went and stalked their Company Facebook feed and found not a single picture of a child that wasn’t either older or dressed in the clothes pertaining to this extramural sporty activity.

I have emailed them, but I’m really not happy about it.

It has taken me a couple of days to process why this upsets me as my darling husband kind of rolled his eyes at me, so here goes:

1. They didn’t ask/inform us or provide us with a valid reason why anyone that is not me or my husband or someone authorised by us could take photos of our children.

2. If there are existing, unauthorised photos of my children WHERE ARE THEY, because they sure aren’t on their Company Facebook page??

3. Yes. I know I put pictures of our children on the Internet and there’s even been an enterprising soul that decided to steal a beautiful photo Caz took of us recently and use it on a Autism website in the US without permission.  And yes, the Internet is a very small place.

I’m still awaiting a written reply from the company involved, so I won’t disclose who they are, but I will escalate this as far as need.

Or am I overreacting?

 

What would you call the style of your house decor?

I have a slight addiction to Houzz. This addiction is fuelled by the fact that we are starting some renovations in the next week or two, after which we shall eat cornflakes for the next 2 years and skip Christmas and birthdays.

I often look at the beautiful houses on Houzz and wonder what our interior decorating style is as they describe them so well. Nothing seems to fit. Maybe it is because our house is a mish-mash of secondhand furniture mostly found by my Mother. I could pretend that I’m all hipster and we only upcycle and recycle, but to be honest I’m not very good at decorating. I’m much better at buying paintings that make me happy.

Let me explain: my darling Mother is REALLY good at negotiating. She can spot a valuable piece of furniture a mile away and has the knack of making people feel eternally grateful that she will take it off their hands at minimal cost.

Point in case, my Mom found this beauty and I ended up paying a whopping R650 for it. Antique shops are selling them for R4500 and up!
Point in case, my Mom found this beauty and I ended up paying a whopping R650 for it. Antique shops are selling them for R4500 and up!

She is the only person I know that gets such joy from buying dilapidated furniture and crockery from unsuspecting little old ladies and makes money doing so. She’s also pretty damn good at it.

The only thing is that her house is now too small, which leaves my house. So we often have conversations like this:

My Mom would gleefully send a photo of a painting/chair/table/bed to my phone when I’m at work, inevitably in a meeting.
I would look at the photo and promise myself to call her later.
2 hours will go by.
My Mom would call me
Mom: Did you get the photo I sent you?
Me: Yes, it’s lovely, but I don’t need another table/chair/painting/bed. There’s already too much stuff in my house. And please don’t buy crockery from dead people, there is too much crap in my kitchen.
Mom: Aw, that’s too bad, because I’ve already dropped it off. No pressure, have a look at it and let me know.
Me: ‘sigh’ Thanks Mom

It’s lovely that she offers to take back the things she finds, only she finds really good stuff. Except for the odd murky-looking massive platter that must be 100 years old. (See point above about dead people’s crockery).

Sometimes I even make Etienne tell her to take the things away, I can’t bear being a disappointment.  He has been known to halt her at the gate and not allow things to darken our doorstep.

She is also rather sneaky. Every now and again I’ll open a cupboard to find a *new* teapot/platter/milk jug that doesn’t look familiar. And our domestic worker will tell me with a look of resignation on her face that my Mom arrived, washed it and put it in the cupboard.

This is why we need to renovate and add a room or two (to fit in a bed), we need more space for stuff I really didn’t have a desire to own, but now that I have it I’m not letting it go.

So. To cut a rather long story short, I have decided that our style is this:
Mostly Found by Mother Antique Slightly Scuffed But With Lots of Character and Bought with Love.

Take that Houzz.

On surviving infertility

Disclaimer: this is a small look into the mind of one infertile. It’s not pretty, but it’s honest. Go ahead, judge away, I don’t care.

A lovely someone was telling me recently that his wife is pregnant and it that happened in their very first month month of trying. He was a little gobsmacked and elated that it happened so quickly.

We chatted about babies and how it changes your life and I wanted to reach over the table and give him the biggest hug, I was THAT happy for him.

I am grateful that they didn’t have to go through the drama of trying and trying and waiting, of unsuccessfully peeing on sticks, laparoscopies, being poked and prodded, the removal of dodgy Fallopian tubes and the roller-coaster of IVFs. That their marriage wouldn’t be tested and no bitter tears would be shed when everyone you hold dear fall pregnant at the drop of a hat. (And we were luckier than most people battling with infertility.)

I wasn’t a happy person when we couldn’t have babies, looking back at that time there was a lot of mere existing going on. It felt like my life was mocking my inability to conceive and it was hard to be happy for my dearest friends having the beautiful, beautiful babies that I could not.

But for the first time I realised after chatting with that very lucky guy (who is going to be a GREAT Dad by the way) that the hurt is gone. I am genuinely, 100% happy that it worked first time for them.

It was the most liberating feeling to know that I’ve let all that hurt and anger go and that in its place there is only these things: joy, gratitude and love.

Buckets and buckets of love.

My take on Russell Brand’s politics

Far be it from me to comment on politics as (1) it’s not something I like to talk about for fear of looking stupid and (2) my Mom and Tannie Emsie told me it was bad manners to discuss politics in good company.

I’ve seen this clip of Russell Brand floating around the web the last few days and only now got around to watch it, but I’m pretty glad I did.

 

Here’s my take: yes, he’s a little loopy, but he makes some very valid points. He is also a very clever man, which could be why he is so loopy. I think I love him a little.

Firstly: I choose to vote. My opinion is that you cannot complain about the wrong party if you don’t vote for another party even tough you may not agree 100% with what they stand for. I’ve clung to the Starfish story for very long and plan to explain to my children that way. But I hear what he’s saying.

Secondly: All politicians are pathological liars. I have firsthand knowledge of this as the erstwhile (spectacularly publicly and humiliatingly) dumpee of a wannabe politician. They are manipulators of the worst kind.

Thirdly: I like what he says about tacit complicity. We all complain about the state of the earth, the state of education in this country. Crime. Inequality. Gender and Race bias. But what difference are we each making in our own way? I’m not saying we should all join Greenpeace and burn our bras, but what are we teaching our children about taking care of the earth? What is the use of teaching our children about questioning everything and being different if we teach them about being complicit in voting (or not voting) for who holds the future of their own children in their hands?

Lastly: the biggest problem I see with his proposed revolution is this: critical mass. We are programmed to hate politicians and whine about the state of our countries, with the only possible exception of the Scandinavian countries who seem to have the best governments in the world (but even that is probably biased)

No, I didn’t start drinking early today, I’m just thinking about what he said and that a lot of it resonates with me.

And that he can say “fuck” on public television and get away with it.

What do you think?

About Bianca

One of my favorite things about having dinner together as a family is the random conversations we have.

Take tonight for example:

The girls are in separate ballet classes and it is concert week, so everything ballet-related is very much front of mind.

Mignon: Mom, Bianca from my ballet class is really nice.
Isabel: Yes, Bianca has gold bangles.
Me: Who is Bianca?
Isabel: She is in Mignon’s ballet class (with a look of disdain on her face that I clearly didn’t get the memo about exactly who Bianca is)

Etienne and I had a good chuckle and left it for a few minutes.

Me: Girls, who is Bianca?
Girls: Bianca has Barbie bangles. And a Hello Kitty necklace. Can we have a Hello Kitty necklace pleeeeeaase?

So, there you have it folks. Bianca has gold bangles and Barbie bangles and a Hello Kitty necklace and she’s in Mignon’s ballet class.

Consider yourself informed.

Ps I seem to have volunteered myself to help at the concert tomorrow night along. Hold me?

The day we bought a bed

bedFor a while now it’s been hard to fit the 5 of us into our trusty old Queen bed without all having to spoon in the same direction, so we started talking about about buying a King.

One day I was messing around on Gumtree, ogling cats my husband won’t let me have, and came across an advert with the picture you see here. I fell in love on the spot and sent it on to Etienne, who also fell in love.  So, off I went to have a look at it, all the way to Hout Bay. I met a lovely American couple that retired early (by SA standards) from the US Navy and decided to make Cape Town home. They have just renovated their house and had no space for this beauty. The bed is called a Thomasville Ernest Hemingway Kilimanjaro King Size bed. Yes, it’s a long-ass name for a bed!

You know when you see something you love so much you can’t stop touching it? (and I don’t just mean my husband) That is how I felt about this bed.

I measured and measured and was told it is a King Size bed, and at home Etienne and I measured and measured and checked our bank accounts and declared the bed is destined to be ours. As if we were going to let anyone else have it anyway.

I paid the lovely lady, arranged for someone to collect our precious bed and waited for days and days for the rain to clear up. I also shopped around for mattress prices and ended up buying a King mattress from Tafelberg after I haggled and haggled about the price, all on-line without having to darken the doorstep of a single furniture store.

We also bought King bedding, everything from fitted sheets, mattress protectors, duvet inners and a duvet cover. By this time I was starting to flinch a little.

On the day our bed and mattress arrived I was at work and Etienne was home with the kids as it was school holidays. He set about dismantling our old bed and assembling our new bed in preparation for the mattress to arrive.

Which it did, with great fanfare.  Only, as it turns out, we bought an American Super King Size bed and the mattress was 20cm too narrow and 25cm too short. And yes, I can see you trying to measure how much 20cm is with your hands, more than you thought isn’t it?

To give you an idea: a King size mattress in SA is 183cm wide and 188cm long, a Super King 183cm wide and 2m long.  The mattress we had to get had to be 2m x 2m to comfortably fit into our bed.

So, I did what any self-respecting consumer would do: I called Tafelberg with my hat in my hand and asked if they could supply me with a 2m x 2m mattress pretty please. I then had to drink several glasses of wine to recover from the shock of the difference in price as the mattress has to be made specially.

But, in for a penny, in for a whole lot of pounds and off we went.

As a side note: at this point we had a bed, but no mattress except for our old Queen and no-where to put the old mattress except for in the lounge, which we promptly did, to the absolute delight of our children.

The next thing I had to worry about was the bedding and I promptly started searching for fitted sheets and a mattress cover. Nothing. No-one pre-makes and sells fitted sheets/mattress covers in this size in SA that I can find. I ended up having some sheets made by Ginger Cat Linen in Johannesburg (thank you twitter!) and they were great. They even sent their lady to personally drop off the sheets with me when I was in Gauteng.

By this stage, more than a week later, we were still sleeping in the lounge as Tafelberg hadn’t managed to get our mattress yet, but thankfully it arrived while I was away, which meant that I could sleep on a brand new mattress and our beautiful bed when I arrived home from 4 lovely days in Gauteng. (more about that some other time)

So, if you happened to see my questions on twitter and Facebook about beds and mattresses and bedding, that’s what it was all about.

Lesson learnt:  you can never measure something too many times!

Also:  no, I can’t show you a pic of what the bed looks like in our bedroom because I can’t get far away enough to take a photo of it. We are about to start our next set of renovations and part of the plan is to (hopefully!!) make our bedroom bigger, in which case I may be able to show you a proper pic in about 2 months’ time. Ironically, the extra money we ended up spending on the bed may actually hamper our ability to make our bedroom bigger.

Lastly: I wasn’t very happy with the service we received from Tafelberg this time around. In a nutshell: if you end up looking for a bed or mattress, do not under ANY circumstances speak to Robert at the Bellville branch, but Nico is very helpful and will actually take the time to let you know what is potting. Robert operates under the illusion that providing basic customer service and doing someone a favour is one and the same thing. And no, I haven’t written them a letter of complaint, I don’t have the energy after finally writing this post.

A moment of clarity

This evening I was taking the girls to their swimming lessons and, as we got into the car, I reminded them that they can now clip their own safety belts and that we cannot leave until they’re strapped in safely.

I then realised with a shock that this is probably one of the few remaining basic things that the girls still needed to master. I remember when they were babies and we had 3 kids in nappies. I won’t lie: it was damn hard doing pretty much everything for them. We didn’t mind at all, but some days it was tough going being outnumbered by 2 babies and a toddler.

I thought of all those basic things like feeding them, changing nappies, wiping poo bums, then getting them off night nappies, being able to dress themselves, pour their own juice and take their plates from the table. And tie their own shoelaces.*

We celebrated all the little milestones that they achieved because it made them independent and gave them confidence, but also because it meant that there was one less thing we had to for them, but tonight I feel a little sad.

We have these three beautiful children that still need us, but they don’t *need* us anymore. They are bright and funny and independent and courageous and affectionate.

And I just want to hold them each close and whisper ‘Remember, Mommy and Daddy will always be here if you need us’.

‘Except to wipe your bum, we’re very much over that.’

* after (mostly Etienne) trying since last year trying to get Daniel to tie his own shoelaces I eventually lost my marbles yesterday and banned him from any and all electronic devices until he decided to knuckle down and get it done. It took a whopping 2 hours for him to master it and the look of sheer joy and victory on his face made it 100% worth being the baddy.