Things

I have thought of many, many things to blog about in the past week but alas, between work and the wedding in 7 weeks, I have been keeping most busy.

This week has been full of deadlines, appointments for wedding stuff or making appointments for other people's wedding stuff, dancing ideas, dancing practice, sleep deprivation and playing with the dogs.

Last night Al and I went outside and were practicing some of our salsa moves, not yet putting them into a definite sequence, when a Parktown prawn... hang on, unless you're from Joburg, you won't know what I'm talking about. Let me show you a pic of one:



So this disgusting creature, who spews out black liquid at you when it feels threatened, can either jump or fly and it did so onto my hip. I flicked it off and it's evil face hurt my fingers! Then we carried on and it hopped onto Alan's calf and he too flicked it off. The dogs then came running and the sausage dog gently picked it up and carried it around in his mouth as if it was his pet. Very strange.

This after a HUGE spider hid under our microwave and it took 3 of us to get it out. Diana trapped it under the bowl, Alan slid the bowl onto a giant book, Diana took it outside and screamed as she was about to release it but didn't, Alan took the bowl and threw it into the neighboring complex. Yes, that was 2 people and I did say it took all 3 of us; I cheered them on. See? 3 of us!

A guy at work left his spilled oats to ferment in the microwave and I didn't notice it until I started heating up my food. The food tasted fine but later on, I had the taste of fermented oats in my mouth and it was causing me to burp fermented oats burps. I was not happy. The man at the chemist told me that it was in my head but I insisted that it was in my stomach. It did go over eventually and I was most relieved not to feel so gross anymore.

I also had a very funny memory of my dad and I watching a movie but it sort of warrants a post on it's own which will have to wait for Tuesday as the deadlines are not over yet.

Have a fantastic weekend! Sleep in for me, will you? I just don't have the time!

Pieface

Today was a frustrating day for Pieface. Oh firstly, Pieface is an affectionate name for her, I'm not saying her face looks like a pie nor should it be covered in pie. O.k, so today was a bad day for Pieface. She swore a lot. I mean, a LOT.

She was trying to dial a number in Kenya to confirm flight times for some freelancers and she kept dialling the wrong number. She'd slam the phone down, swear and then try again. Unfortunately the phone rang while she was trying to do this and so she slammed the phone down, picked it up again and thought she'd hung up on the caller and swore really loudly into the phone. She was met by silence. Luckily it was a co-worker from the Cape Town branch who started laughing at her.

Yesterday I pulled grey hairs out of of Piefaces's head. I think it all gets a bit much for her sometimes. I think she might go postal. She was threatening to shoot her computer earlier today, where she'd get a gun, I do not know. She also suggested we physically pick up our other co-worker and throw him out of the window because he can be so annoying. I'm not entirely anti that but he looks kind of sickly and who knows if it's contagious.

Tomorrow Pieface is going to swear at me because she thinks she only has to wake up at 1pm but alas, she has to wake up to go out at 9am. I will wear a bullet proof vest and a helmet and maybe a parachute too when I tell her.

Have a good weekend.

"Has anyone ever told you that you're odd?"

I was asked this question the other day and yes, of course I've been told that I'm odd. I wasn't doing anything particularly odd at the time, just having a normal conversation but I suppose on occasion I do respond in an odd way to ensure that I'm understood correctly. There's nothing like email or sms or chat to add confusion to the conversation should you say something sort of different or ambiguous.

Are most of us not odd though in our own way? Those who roll their eyes and stare blankly or scorn when somebody does or says something vaguely different to what they deem as normal are more odd to me than the people they tend to find odd.

I'm finding that more and more people I know are becoming odd. Or should I say "odd." Odd seems to be the new normal and so it should be. I don't mean wildly odd like drooling all over your co-workers and eating all your stationery, although if you're really hungry, you could be excused. I just mean not being afraid to be who you are and express your ideas even if they're met with rolled eyes by some ignorant chop.

I'll never forget the day that my friend Melissa (the Mel post being about her) and Al and I were standing outside her house when somebody walked past her house and her dogs ran up to the gate and barked at him and ran up and down jumping up against the wall and pushing themselves off of it. I decided that it looked like immense fun and so I decided to join them. I even barked at the passer-by just to experience the full effect. Poor Alan looked horrified and so embarrassed while Mel was in hysterics. Now it is far more likely that Alan would be the one jumping and barking at people. Oddness rubs off and it's a good thing.

Why not let your oddness out of the bag today and rub it off on someone else? Your life will be much more fulfilling! :)

Half a litre of pudding

I'm gonna eat it and finish it. Why? Because I want it and feel like it and it's here and then maybe I won't feel like it anymore and it will stop torturing me.

I am also very tired after a double salsa class last night which had my heart pounding so hard that I had to sit down because of my flu. I am hoping that the pudding will put some bounce into me.

Pudding is good for you. Don't find reasons to argue, just accept it and eat it, it will make you happy and that's exactly why pudding is good for you! Afraid it'll go to your bum? It won't. Pudding will make you look gorgeous! Why? Because it makes you happy and happy people are gorgeous and therefore pudding is good for you.

Long live pudding.

Jumping on the consumerism bandwagon. Sort of.

Yesterday I started a blog about my experiences thus far planning my wedding. Why? Because there are millions of women out there who will google something to do with planning their wedding and if you read everything there is out there, you too might start to find it overwhelming and even depressing at what is suggested to make a wedding day supposedly perfect.

I do not generally support consumerism. I'll say if I believe something is great and that I think people should know about it and I suppose yesterday I felt a little like a hypocrite with my new blog. I mean, I tried to keep it as close to personal experience and not just churn out whatever rubbish some wedding site told me to but it's hard not getting sucked into it sometimes. Real is always better than fake, experience better than theory and throwing some humour into something that has driven many women to turn into crazy tyrants is essential.

So, here is an open invite: If you're planning or have planned your own wedding and feel that you have some invaluable advice that you can share, mail me and I'll put it in the blog with your name on it. In the end, it's not about outdoing anyone else or keeping your wedding secrets to yourself, it's about helping your fellow human being who might be on a tight budget or be completely in the dark or not have helpful family or friends. I am so greatful for all the helpful advice and insight that I received from others who were willing to share tips with me that the least I can do is to pass it on to others.
Just if you're going to regurgitate something from some wedding website, don't bother, please.

The same thing for ages

I'm a follower of this one blog, not any of the ladies, and man alive, I want to pull my hair out. It's a really funny blog and I really enjoy reading it but it's hardly ever updated. I've read about dogs and horses and complications and country songs about cats for ages now.

I used to be friends with this guy. In fact, he was a very good friend for ages but we lost touch and he became angry about stuff and now I follow his blog to sort of keep up to speed with how he is but it doesn't help when the posts are few and far between.

C'mon you person who blogs! Write summing else. I can't be the only person who goes to your blog to read your hilarious posts! Give us something new!

Mel

Hello Mel!! This is a post all about Mel. Mel is a person very Mel-like. Not typical of others who go by that name but of the true way Mels should be.

Mel wakes up every morning and teaches her ducks and chickens a new aerobics routine so that they never get fat enough for anyone to want to eat for Christmas dinner.

Mel has long, browney-blondey-red-ey hair which she uses to keep people in line. It's very long and very thick and makes for quite a potent keeping-in-line tool.

One day Mel was driving home and thought that she saw her friend being beaten up on the pavement. So she jumped out of her car and ran towards the perpetrators with the pitchfork she kept on her front seat, and then she saw that it wasn't her friend at all but complete strangers and so she looked at them and said "Carry on." She used the pitchfork because she'd just been to the hairdresser.

K, bye Mel.

Adventures on a pink bicycle

I used to have a pink Mountain Bike when I was 18. I loved my pink Mountain Bike. I would ride it to College and I would ride it home and I would ride it to the mall and it was my form of transport.

One place I rode it to was the dentist. Now being the person i am, I had to take someone along obviously for moral support. The most obvious person for this job, at that time, was my cousin, Melanie. The problem was, we only had one bicycle. This didn't stop us though and so Melanie would hop onto my handle bars (an idea we got from our parents from their days of sharing a bicycle between 5 of them) and off we'd go to wherever we had to go.

One day whilst on a downhill on the pavement, Melanie on the handlebars, me pedaling and steering, Melanie decided that it was just too bumpy and was hurting her bum. Without any warning, she jumped off and unable to get her balance she fell and rolled on the ground. It was so unexpected and I was going so fast that I didn't have time to stop and so I did the only thing I could...I rode over her. She was in such fits of giggles that all she managed was "hee hee hee hee OW! hee hee OW! Hee hee hee hee!"
I stopped the bicycle after riding over her legs slowed me down and we glanced around to make sure that nobody from our College class was around to see. There was nobody. Phew!
The next day, we walked past another class on our way to our own and a guy announced very loudly "I saw those two yesterday on a pink bike. That one was on the handlebars and this one was pedalling. Suddenly that one jumped off and this one just rode over her!" So much for that.

In my defence, it was an accident and I did only ride over her legs and she was fine. It was so funny though! I can't even remember if we made it to the dentist!

Blindly listening

A while ago I heard some vicious rumours about a friend of mine. Now I know this person and I know what sorts of things they do and do not do and so I dispelled it as people causing trouble and as nonsense. If I needed to consider it, I would've approached my friend first to see if it was true first before jumping to conclusions.

What worried me though was how many people didn't bother to think about the accusations or ask her about what was said, they all just blindly jumped to the wrong conclusions because it was what everybody else was doing. Well, everybody else was wrong. It wasn't fair and it wasn't right but these things continue to happen.

If you're one of those people who starts the vicious rumours, what are you gaining by causing trouble? Does it make you look better? Not really, no, if anything it probably makes you look worse. Does it have any benefit for anyone? Probably not.

And if you're one of those who listen to the vicious rumours and then believe them blindly without thinking or questioning the validity of what's been said, put yourself in the shoes of the person you're believing bad things of and imagine how you'd feel if nobody bothered to ask you if it was true. It's not always easy to go against the grain and it isn't always the answer but when it is, I hope that people will use their heads and stand up and not be afraid to go against the grain if it is the right thing to do.

Jelly Beans

I am one of those people who cannot bear the taste of fake cherries or raspberries or almonds and when I stumble across one of these flavours, I cringe and generally spit it out because I cannot handle the awful-ness that is these flavours.

So I bought a bag of Jelly Beans this morning and I know that there's one of them that I hate but I can't remember which one and so I am going through them very carefully to establish which ones are awful so that I can get rid of them and eat the rest of them knowing that I will not have to be subjected to a foul surprise.

Now I feel obligated to write more even though I have no more to say. I am tired. I am hoping that the Jelly Beans fill me with sugar and have me bouncing off the walls because I don't feel very bouncey today. In fact, I feel a little deflated from a nasty bout of flu that I'm mainly over, barring the coughing and the general tiredness that lingers after the aches and pains have gone.

So, ja, there, that's all. Have a nice day.