Enough Already.

This rain is putting a dampener on my spirits. This winter seems to have dragged on rather interminably, but for the most part is actually quite cheerful, with chilly days best spent under the covers with a DVD and hot chocolate*. It's nice to take hot showers and baths, although some idiot insisted on turning down my geyser because it was "too hot", so now the water is never hot enough. However, the current level of wetness puring from the sky, combined with thunder**, is quite misery-inducing. Being carless, I end up doing a lot of commuting during pissing-downs, and having wet feet for a considerable part of my day. I don't think that this is particularly healthy or hygenic***, and it's also uncomfortable.

Frankly, I'm bored. Nobody wants to go out and do anything, everyone is cocooning, and it's too wet, wild 'n windy to have much fun. I'm getting cabin fever, and my laundry won't dry. And I'm tired of wearing layers, and choosing interesting outfits that nobody sees under the piles of sweaters, scarves and jackets.

It would be nice if I could wash my hair and get it dry in under two hours, and if the humidity and rain didn't immediately bring on the supreme frizziness and weird hair angles of winter. I get super-annoyed when I spend 2 hours getting my hair ultra-straight and sleek and then 5 minutes outside gives me asylum-head****. I'd like to wear a dress, and sandals, or even-gasp- shorts.

But mostly I'd just like to have warm dry feet.

*Nestle, not Cadbury's, which is always watery no matter how much powder you add.
** eek! the little caveman in my head say "gods in sky go boom! verr' angry.ugh!"
*** I have an idea my feet are rotting. Okay, I know they're not but the idea persists throughout the day.
**** Like bedhead, but crazy. Trust me, I worked at Valkenberg, I know asylum-head.

...for want of a comedy the kingdom was lost.

I’ve started watching 7de Laan. Let me qualify that statement: it’s better than Isidingo, which is just unwatchable and might well start reincarnating people soon, the way it’s heading. M-net is no longer doing Open Time (although I'm assured Egoli is still doddering around like some sort of very conservative zombie), etv have some sort of ur-Backstage codswallop and sabc1 has B&B aka The Bold, a show which often makes me wonder if I’m high, because not one minute of that show has any semblance of reality.*

Now, firstly, what happened to this timeslot? It used to be prime time: comedy shows, the occasional good drama, a talk show here and there, and a little sport. Soaps came earlier, for the housewives**, I think was the general idea. They started around four and never extended past five thirty.

Obviously, things have changed. Apparently the masses like nothing better than to come home after a long day at work, and settle down to… a soap opera.

In any case, as soapies do, 7de Laan is shaking things up- Dezi is being a faithless wife (but she has such great hair though, really shiny) and the new-but-actually-returning guy is starting a Grand Romance with the cute boutique girl. He even showed her his pigeons. But something is brewing- he has the flu. Which means he’s going to die, or something. In the meantime, to ramp up the emotional content, we have to suffer through their hugely romantic dates.

Which are awful. It’s kind of icky to watch a real date in progress: PDA’s people, get a room! But being forced to watch the gooey cooing and canoodling of “lovebirds”*** merely to press home the point of how pure and vast their love is, so that the tragedy that’s sure to hit them is even more…well, tragic….it makes me want to drink many, many Alcohol.

In any case: I need to not have to watch 7de Laan any more A change needs to be made. I’d even settle for a game show. Although if it involves Fiona Coyne, I’m outta here.

*although Brooke’s “Pirate Booty” shirt was pretty funny.
**because once you decide to be a stay at home mom there’s nothing you like better than watching the impetuous behaviour of beautiful frivolous, wealthy loonies. It’s, like, a law!
*** the forced, unnatural romance of Mills&Boon novels. Which I have never read. Just heard about. Obviously.

Excuse me, Might I Drool Here Briefly?

I would just like to say that Orlando Bloom is as cute as a button. Or even, say, a flopsy-forward-eared bunny. I just want to pinch his little cheeks and make unintelligible "boogowoogobobumumu" noises. I can't help it: he was once my favourite elf. Did you see all that arrow-slinging? Top-notch. I want a little Orlando to keep in my handbag: I'd feed him nuts and popcorn and buy designer teensy outfits for him. But also I'd like a full-sized version too. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Woof!

My hormones are all raging today. Goodness.

A Horribly Traumatic Experience

Last night it rained, and this morning, it was damp. It was quite nice actually, there I was in my cute beret and chunky scarf, feeling very cosmopolitan and vaguely French*. The birds were all: "Hey tweet y'all" and the autumn leaves were falling, albeit damply. And I wasn't running late for work, which was a nice change. I was listening to the new NIN. I was finding it quite cheerful.**My morning walk through the Company gardens looked to be a pleasant one. Crazy-dog lady*** passed me by.

And then I looked down.

There it was, glistening pinkly, oozing itself across the pathway. An earthworm. They do this, you know, after the rains... Some bizarre instinct tells them to flee the muddy soil and head for the safety of...tarmac and concrete. Right. Not known for their intellectual capacity, they.

So, having narrowly missed mashing one long pink wormy with my right shoe, I became somewhat paralysed. Because there's never only one. I became obsessed with the idea that the path would be strewn with dozens upon dozens of earthworms, a veritable minefield of squoosh and subsequent guilt. it didn't help that entire sections of pathway were obscured by sticks and leaves, which can look very much like earthworms if you're having a bit of a Nutjob Moment.

So, it took me almost twice as long to traverse the distance to work. I almost had a panic attack. I felt very close to ralphing publicly.

I stood on an earthworm barefoot once. It wasn't very nice.

*in a Paris Fashion Week ; rather than an arrogant un-deodorised; sense.
**I find Year Zero quite poppy, for NIN.
***the dog is crazy, not the lady. His legs are too short for his body, his eyes are all googly and his fur is tufty. It's adorable.

Self-esteem Issues, Illness, Self-pity and Carrie Bradshaw

I had one of those Sex And The City girls' nights on Saturday night*, the kind where you have one of those awesome, frank, uncensored discussions about sex and relationships, and realise that a) you are not as ridiculously jaded as you though you were, b) you actually feel quite upbeat and positive about relationships and men in general c) women are for the most part pretty pervy, but in a fun and wholesome way, and d) Ryan Gosling, we'd like us some of that, please.

Then came Sunday, and the Amazonian Death Flu**, and with it, the fall of my poor little self-image. Now, I'd like to assert that I have a normal, mostly healthy self-esteem. Yes, there are things about myself I'm not overly fond of***, but I've reached a stage where it doesn't bother me that much, and kind of love myself, and think I'm rad**** (especially my bottom, which is pert, oh yea) but throw in a cocktail of exhaustion and viral agents and suddenly I feel like excrement on the shoe of the universe.

Probably being all feverish and delirious and having slightly greasy hair and an untidy apartment doesn't help. Also, being stuck in bed all day is boring. And when I'm bored I think too much, and also eat Cheetos, which equals Bad Idea. I get to thinking I'm going to die childless alone and be eaten by my rottweiler, which is ridiculous because I'm going to buy a whole bunch of pygmy bunnies and they'll be in cages, so... but you get the idea. Also, I'm not really good with other people for extended periods and the idea of marriage and children has been know to give me the grille, so my paranoia about the abovementioned dying alone scenario is a little confusing.

Dying dressed in a polyester housecoat and ugly orthopaedic shoes: now that's truly terrifying.

...perhaps writing a post when feverish is not the best idea. My posts suck. I suck! The world is a vale of tears and sucktion! Life is Sucky! Poo.

*in the brief hiatus of feeling healthy that fell somewhere between the Bubonic Plague and the Amazonian Death Flu
** Oh, my kidneys, joints and glands will ache? Sweet, I like to multitask. And I hate my lungs anyway, so let's cough those biggers right out, shall we?
*** nose, ankles, could be taller, fall over too often, socially inept and shy, talk too much
**** BTW I'm bringing back the word rad back. Go out and use it.

sick, like the doggie*

Suspiciously, the symptoms started about an hour-and-a-half after the flu injection my doctor tricked me into (with his wily doctor skills). This was shortly before he made me pee into a bowl. Mind you, it was easier than peeing into one of those little plastic cups, it's just that he actually refers to it as "making a weewee into the little bakkie". It makes me feel about four years old.

Anyway, peeing over and done with, blue-cheese-and-avo burger devoured, book bought**, I started feeling awful. Muzzy head, fever, coughing. Luckily I was on leave for two days. And after that it was only a half-day's work until the weekend. Because I used it all on being sick.

Then I came back to work, and between bringing the destruction of everything in existence***, running around looking for things, trying to educate 15-year-olds, wrangling the website designer, and carrying things, I got sick again. I had a day off yesterday but got called four times (once, annoyingly, to be asked where a remote control was), and was asked nicely to pleeeeease come in today.

Now I feel like the undead, truly feverish and nauseous and gurky***. So, Zombie undead, not cool Anne Rice vampire undead. So, thanks, job. You reward me in so many ways.

* wait, where does that expression even come from? Dogs don't get flu or colds, as far as I know... and I'm not into eating my own poop, so...
** so I finally read Scar Tissue by Anthony Kiedis (took eight hours): okay, dude, enough about your girlfriends and heroin. yes, they were all awesome in bed. Yes, you took a lot of heroin. let's not belabour that point.
*** or something like that: apparently now we've reached the point where nothing can be done without me, but everything that goes wrong is also my fault.
**** screw you it's a word.

Cold and Dark.

Winter in Cape Town is mostly fantastic, especially after the Siberian post-apocalyptic snows of Hokkaido*. The chilly grey days and squalling rains are refreshing, and lead to much dvd-and-hot-chocolate snugglification under down duvets**. Or splashing about in your Raincoat and wellies, which is much fun for one's inner child. Jumping in squishy mud is nice too.

The cold, bright sunny days break the monotony, and always seems to smell delicious, like mouldering leaves, or soil, or sea mist. Those days are good for going for a long walk, and then having a toasted cheese and ham*** to reward yourself at the end.

There's one element of winter I object to strenuously though. And with Vigour. I hate waking up in the dark. In summer, you wake up, the sun is shining, you feel like this is a natural progression, you go pee. In winter, the alarm goes off, and it's the middle of the freakin' night! The alarm is the shrill noise of a banshee, and it confuses you, because surely you didn't set the alarm for 3 in the morning and who calls this early anyway?

So you go back to sleep and the conversation you've been having with Rutger Hauer, only to be rudely interrupted by... well you get the idea. So, shivering, you eventually drag yourself to the bathroom and opt for the hottest shower you can get. This takes a while, because you can't remember how the controls work, or how to remove your clothing without falling down.

After you shower, you dress as fast as you can, and then jump back into bed, for a last bit of hamstering****, but it's never the same. And then, at the last minute, to work.

That's no way to live.

* after six months snowbound in the minus twenties, you lose your right to complain about a little rain.
** Note to self: buy new pillows.
*** sometimes it's a toasted cheese-and egg, with runny yolk. You have to know when it's the right time.
**** Hamstering: the act of rolling yourself in a blanket or duvet much like a hamster does with shredded newspaper and old poop.