The duck

A while ago I went into a toy shop with Di who is mad about plush toys. I think that they're nice but it's very seldom that I actually see a plush toy that I think "Oh wow! That is so beautiful/cute! I'd really love to have it and shove it at the top of my cupboard so that Fatty doesn't get it" but then I saw this duck. He was a big, fluffy duck with sad eyes and the cutest little fat stomach. He wasn't cheap though and I have more important priorities than buying myself a duck but I'd go back every time we went passed the shop and just go and look at the duck.

Last night, Al came home late from work. It turned out that he wasn't working late at all. When he came home, he handed me a big packet and inside the packet was the duck! Not just the duck but a very happy looking hippo too. So cute! He thought the hippo looked a little like Fatty and so he bought it :)

Fatty was so excited by the arrival of these giant teddies and I had to ensure that she knew that they were mine and not hers this time. I sternly said "Only kisses, Fatty! No biting!" and so she gave the duck a lick and very gently tried to pry it away from me. I had to go upstairs and find her own teddy and then she was happy.

Clarens - The jewel of the eastern Free State - pictures!! Oooh!!

After a conversation with a friend yesterday telling her how awesome Clarens in the Eastern Free State is, I decided to share my immense love of this place with everyone else as well as continue to tempt her to take a trip there to have some R&R.

If you're in Johannesburg, Clarens is a short 3 and a half hour pleasant drive away.

You'll know you're there when you see the rock formation below. This is called Titanic Rock. Doesn't it look just like the Titanic? So cool!!



The moment you get into the town of Clarens itself, you will notice how quaint and small it is. Unlike any place I've ever been to in South Africa (and I've been to quite a few places in SA), the effect of this totally different and sweet, little world is both calming and energising. It's like you've had a month's holiday after a weekend there.
The idea though is to appreciate Clarens for being so different in that you should find your accommodation, park your car and walk wherever you want to go and not use the car at all, even if it's raining.



What is there to do in this little town? Well, there are various things. The main attractions I suppose would be the amazing scenery, the art galleries and the food.

Being near the Lesotho border, the Maluti mountains are like...right there! If you're into taking hikes and walks or riding horses or taking pics of scenery...hang on, we've been called for pizza...and I'm back so anyway, if you're into the whole nature thing, this place is phenomenally beautiful!







Other than that, there are art galleries galore and restaurants that will have you dreaming of their food for years to come.

My personal recommendation is to go and have supper or lunch at Street Caffe (their burgers and fettucini alfredo are like no other that I've ever experienced) and then head to Clementines for dessert which should unmistakeably be their Lemon Meringue Ice-cream cake. It's R35 a slice (or was in December 2009) but is so worth it! Clementines also have a very good Ostrich Medallion dish! Yum! Yum!





The art galleries are not dreary and dull and you don't need to be one of those arty people to appreciate them. There's also a wine gallery if that appeals.


There are sports pubs and ice-cream shops that have decadent and interesting flavours and a few pancake shops too. Absolutely no chain stores when I was last there and I hope it stays that way.

If you're more into holidays with some sort of educational value, you can go and visit the Lesotho Highlands Water Project. It's very interesting and those pipes are so huge that it would take three of me (at 1.69 metres tall) on top of each other to touch the top of the pipe.



Clarens is the ideal place to get married if you're having under 50 guests and want somewhere beautiful and unique to have your special day.

One of the nicest wedding venues in Clarens is the Castle. It accommodates 20 guests for an intimate wedding and the decor is very 18th century and well, castle-ey.


If we didn't have so many people invited to our wedding, I'd have chosen to get married in Clarens in the one church in Main Road with food from Street Caffe and dessert from Clementines and then have the reception in the Castle.



Sigh! Clarens is my favourite place in the entire world thus far. I love everything about it. It's such an escape, the air is so clean and the water so sweet and the place filled with beauty and happiness and the chamomile tea better than any other in the country. If only there was a thriving job market there...

Man abuse and people in search of answers

I look at my stats now and then and I often see a pattern. The posts entitled "a hint of Madness" or "It's ok to talk to yourself..." and "Are the voices in my head bothering you" seem to be quite popular a lot of the time. This made me wonder if someone or lots of someones are either concerned about their own mental well-being and are looking for answers or if someone or lots of someones are concerned about my mental wellness and are looking for confessions.
If you're looking for answers, this is not the place to look. I am a first year psych student who reads a lot about people and how we think and what causes mental illness, etc but I am by no means any expert nor am I equipped to provide any sort of guidance yet. But be careful about what else you read out there, a lot of it is written by people who think they have all the answers. Always rely on an expert in the field for accurate information.

If your concern is for my mental health, I can assure you that I am quite normal :)

The man abuse is also not on a serious note so if you're a man being abused, get help, this is just nonsense and won't help you at all.

Last night I went to Al and said "I want to try this salsa turn I saw on Youtube with you slowly just to see if it would work without you breaking my arm accidentally". Now firstly, Alan is a lot taller than me and very strong and he often breaks things by accident because he just grabs the item or bends it too much or whatever and so this turn required that he put my right arm behind my back whilst facing me and then lean it and grab my right hand with his left hand and gently pull which would, in essence, unwind me.

So we tried very slowly and it was great. So he wanted to try a lot faster. So we did and as he started pulling I felt my shoulder strain and my elbow click and it started to hurt. I tried to frantically untwist myself before I was hurt and in the process, I elbowed his right eyeball! Needless to say, the veins were all inflamed and bleeding a little and it looked a little like what Arnold Schwarzenegger looked like in Terminator 1 when he took his eye out. O.k, not that bad but it was red. I felt so guilty! He was hoping the socket bone would bruise so that he could go to work and tell everyone that I beat him but much to his disappointment, it didn't.

So now his eye isn't so red and looks quite normal but it's still sore for him and his plea for sympathy from the ladies at his office will be met with doubtful looks :) Poor Al! All that pain and nobody to feel sorry for him. Except me. But that doesn't count because I was the instigator of the pain that should warrant sympathy. Poor Bunny :)

Spring - My favourite Spring poem

The Budding Bronx - Anonymous

Der spring is sprung
Der grass is riz
I wonder where dem boidies is?

Der little boids is on der wing,
Ain't dat absoid?
Der little wings is on de boid!

My dogs are so cute!

Yesterday afternoon, whilst lying in bed feeling ill, I started eating a punnet of cherry tomatoes. My dog, Fatty, who is completely food obsessed, decided that she'd like to try one. So I gave her one. She threw it up in the air and chased after it and threw it again and chased after it until eventually, in her eagerness to catch her tomato, she bit into it and decided that it tasted really good. So she came back for another and another and another. It was so cute!

My other dog, Gubs, had no interest in tomatoes but instead wanted the baby carrots I was also eating. Fats didn't like the carrots.

It was so nice to be home with them yesterday. I was sick and stayed in bed all day barring getting up to get some juice or water and the doggies slept all day with me, barring when we ate the tomatoes and carrots.

That's all. It's just a post about how cute my dogs are :)

What should I do with my hair, dol?

No, it's not like a vain post where I want to know how I should style my hair for my shopping for Alan's wedding shoes tomorrow thing, it's what happened this morning.

I am anal about my hair. Yes, you may look at it and think "You are?!" and well, o.k, I was. I'm not so much anymore because I just couldn't be as bothered because you know what, it's hair, it's on my head and it's a nice colour and it doesn't resemble clown hair too much and I can sort of kind of control the frizz and so it's fine. Whatever. But I used to be anal about my hair.
I would pull my hair elastic out of my near-perfect plait that my sister had just spent 20 minutes doing because there were "bumps" and it had to be bump-free. Eventually, she taught me how to do the various plaits myself and told me to do it myself. I did. It was fine. Bump-free!
But anyway, that is not the story. In fact, it's not even part of the story. In fact, I don't even know why I told you that. I now look like a prissy cow who demanded bump-free perfection every day and subjected her poor sister to her rantings. Ja, ok, it was like that but then I once ended up with pink hair, way too short hair, hair falling out and you kind of just get over your hair in time, I suppose. But ANYWAY, on with my story:

So last night I washed my hair and could not find my hairdryer anywhere! I don't sleep with wet hair generally as I get cold and don't sleep well but I decided to crank the heater up and just do it because I was too tired to look for my hairdryer after investigating Alan's wrinkles on his face for half an hour. It's most fascinating to look at someone's wrinkles really close-up. I'm straying again. Ahem.

So this morning I woke up and my usually wavy hair was a mass of mad spiralling curls that were all standing straight up in the air! Now my hair is half way down my back in length so it was hectic! I looked like Medusa! No, no, this could not happen and tying my hair up was out as I had a whopping sinus headache to boot. So I reached for my straightener whilst still in bed and when it had heated up to my desired temperature, I started the fixing process.

Now when you don't see very well, your other senses develope to compensate. My sense of touch is very good and I often rely on it a lot at night when trying to unlock doors, etc. So, I decided that I couldn't see the detail from so far away and so i would rely on my sense of touch as I usually do when straightening my hair because you can feel the waves, or mad curls in this instance.

Unfortunately, my sense of touch failed me. In patches. I ended up with one side of my head having wavy hair at the top and straight at the bottom and the other side having a patch of mad curls and straight around them and well, it just looked like I just couldn't decide what I wanted to do with my hair today so I did a bit of everything.

I have since taken headache tablets and tied my hair up. I may not be anal anymore about my hair but I'm not attention-seeking either!

Change

Last night Di and I were joking about not stopping dead at the stop street. I did this the other day and was spotted doing so and got my first traffic fine in 4 years. I was most grumpy about it but it was my own doing so I couldn't complain really.

So we were joking that I could just tell the traffic officer that I didn't believe in stopping dead because nothing ever truly stops and stays stagnant, it's constantly moving. We went on and on for about 20 minutes with an elaboration on our insane theory that could get someone out of a traffic fine for not stopping and we were giggling away (we're so good at talking rubbish) and then today I thought of it again but differently. Not about trying to convince traffic officers of why they should not fine me but rather about things moving all the time.

My psych book said that there are theories of what shapes us as people, our genes or our experiences. Are we born with certain traits and we react a certain way to experiences or do we experience things and these experiences help to form part of who we are? I'd like to think a bit of both.

I am one of those people who can embrace change as long as it is good change. I don't like it when people change though, which I suppose is silly because they too cannot stay stagnant. Should I say, I don't like it when people let experience change them for the worse. Those that are strong in character seldom seem to fall prey to this but those who sort of flutter along and go with whoever says whatever generally do and it's very sad. I call them "wishy-washy people" because there's no stability, no true sense of self. It bugs me. I want to take them by the shoulders and shake them and say "Wake up! Who are you? Just decide already!" but they would probably think me most strange.

It was just irritating me lately as I've recently had an experience with a wishy-washy person who has surrounded themselves with nasty people of negative influence and they have thus absorbed this attitude as their own. Pity. They could have swayed the other way just as easily. Moving on...

Cape Town, here we come!

Yay!!! Di and I are heading off to Cape Town this evening to spend the weekend with her family and our friends. I absolutely cannot wait!

I have packed everything from my textbooks for Tam to my Spongebob T-Shirt to 32 gourmet cupcakes (yum yum!) and every single jersey I own. La la la la la la la.

We're leaving work in an hour. Well, actually in 56 minutes :) 55 minutes...

Last night, Fatty's plight continued with her uncovering me while I slept using the blanket to make a bed for her "puppies." I eventually just pulled her to the top of the bed, adjusted the blanket and rubbed her tummy until she fell asleep, head on my arm. It was so sweet and heavy :) I am going to miss her so much this weekend with her little squishy face and purple tongue and thinking she's a kitty.

The dance shop didn't order the "dodgy" stockings in time but phoned me now, when I didn't bring my car in, to tell me that they have arrived. The lady will hide them in the drawer for me until next week :D

The Phantom Puppies

My dog, Fats, is going through her second phantom pregnancy. It is awful and really hard on her. We thought we'd just let her have a litter of puppies this time around to let her experience having the pups and then sterilise her but alas, the sausage dog just couldn't, well, um, figure it out. He just didn't know what to do. He had a rough idea but well, it just never happened and I don't intervene in, um, intimate relations between any species at all and so fat Fats failed to fall pregnant.

Unfortunately, she has started lactating and spends hours every night trying to make a bed for her imaginary puppies on Al and my bed, always involving the pillow my head is on. As a result, we are both exhausted every day and I never get the full use of my pillow.

The last time we bought her a teddy in the hopes that she would treat it like a puppy but alas, she's had a teddy since she was tiny and she knows that they're just there to play with and so she slowly pulled poor teddy to pieces.

We give her lots and lots of attention usually but even more so when she's going through this. I let her sit on my lap while I watch TV and rub her tummy and talk to her in a soft tone and I play catch with her every weekend and run around the garden with her and spend ages just rubbing her tummy and feeding her biscuits or other doggy treats to distract her, but this time she seems quite adamant that she's having puppies.

So I was wondering if we should get her to foster some puppies who don't have a mom for whatever reason or if, when they had to be given back or re homed, she would pine even more.

Does anyone have an answer to this? She is such a sweet and loving doggy and seeing her so sad and depressed is really upsetting because I can't say to her "It's just your hormones, Fatness, you'll be ok" and so the poor doggy is left thinking she's having pups and then later that she's had them and that they're missing. It's awful.

"Do we sell stockings?! No, we're a respectable shop!"

This past weekend, Di and I ran around everywhere looking for stockings. You would think that they'd be the easiest things in the world to find but nobody had any! O.k, I'm not being completely honest, we weren't just looking for stockings, we were looking for thigh high white stockings that weren't fishnets and didn't have a little red cross at the top like those dodgy nurses outfits. You know, just plain white thigh high stockings. They are not easy to come by, let me tell you!

We started off running around into Woolies and Edgars and then into some underwear shops where we soon discovered that asking for thigh high stockings was like asking where we could register to be prostitutes; We got all sorts of filthy looks and found our search for these stockings leading us to more and more dodgy shops.

Have people not heard of dress-up? I don't mean a weird sort of dress-up, I mean like innocent dress-up. Like your outfit would look so cute complete with the thigh high white stockings for a particular occasion, not just general walking around the house or the mall.

I finally phoned a dance wear shop, as per Tam's suggestion, and they will have them in for me this week, before we head off for Cape Town.
The lady at the shop did pause for a full 20 seconds though when I asked "Hi, do you sell thigh high white stockings that aren't fishnets?" Maybe I'll wear a disguise when I buy them seeing as it's such a "filthy thing" to buy. Um, lady , you're selling them to begin with :D

Various interpretations for "I see things that other people don't"

One of my friends told me that a guy had told her that he sees things that other people don't. I asked her what he meant and she said that she didn't know. We then started to delve, like most women do, into reasonable explanations for this. These were some of the most likely explanations for what he could possibly mean:

1. He sees creatures or dead people or invisible rainbows or beings from a distant land.

Perhaps he's trying to reach out for help. Or perhaps he just feels that he can trust her immensely and is confiding in her. At least he realises that something needs to be said if nobody else can see these things.
He's rather touchy so if we're wrong here, asking him if these things he sees communicate with him and tell him to do or say or eat things might be a bad idea.

He also might be on drugs and he might be reaching out for help to get into rehab, in which case, she should offer to go with him to be checked in.
It also might be some sort of religious experience where, well, you have to just nod and say "O.k, you see things that nobody else can see" and hope that it all just works out.

2. He sees events that other people don't get to see.

He does a fair bit of travelling and so maybe he meets people or sees weird things that other people don't get to see. Either they are troubling him or he is bragging.

3. He experiences a situation in a way that other people don't experience it.

Perhaps he feels very unique in the way he experiences things or people and assumes that nobody else could possibly experience what he does.

4. He has a very rare and unusual eye condition

He sees everything in an obscure way because there are green dots/pink elephants/giant daggers across/next to/in everything he sees. This could be most unsettling I suppose but in time, he'd probably get used to it and even switch off to it.

Those really seem like the only possible explanations for his statement and i'm guessing that it's most likely the first one. The poor guy!

More random ramblings - rock buns, freaking out and invites

A few years ago there was a baking accident. It wasn't my baking accident but I was witness to it. I think they were some sort of cheese scones or something similar and so they were dubbed "Rock buns" and the baker was advised to donate them to the traffic department as roadworks barriers. I only thought about this today because I was wondering why we needed nerves in our teeth besides to prevent damage. I'd rather have a tiny alarm in my teeth instead of nerves to be honest.

I can't remember the recipe that was used to make these memorable rock buns but should you wish to duplicate this, I think just halve your liquid amount, increase your flour amount by about a third and bake for an extra 20 minutes.

Another thing related to baked goods that were used for other purposes was Christmas cake. I can't remember why exactly it wasn't eaten but it fell on the floor or it was stale or something was wrong. I think it was very dry. Anyway, so on a hot evening when some rowdy students were being extra rowdy, a friend and I wet this Christmas cake and took chunks of it and rolled it into soggy balls to throw at the noise makers who were keeping everyone awake at all hours.

One of my friend's neighbours complained about the same thing and so we walked over to their apartment and offered them some soggy Christmas cake balls to throw at the passing students. The neighbours didn't throw the cake balls, instead they ate them! They ate the soggy cake balls that had been rolled with dirty hands and they said that they were delicious! We couldn't bare to tell them why we would never have eaten them. It was terrible but funny at the same time.

My one bridesmaid is totally freaking out at her plans for my bachelorette party. I'm not sure why, it's most peculiar, but she's wound herself up so tightly about it that I think we might need to tranquilize her on the night with a tranq. gun.

I have my sample wedding invite here with me today and I can't stop looking at it. Sigh! So stunning! This was done by my other bridesmaid, Melissa. Mel is so super artistic and creative and she came up with most of the idea for the invite and she's cutting and gluing and designing all sorts for them and I've basically just said "Over the weekend, you just tell us what to stick or cut where and we'll do it." It is most exciting and once again, I'm very lucky to have such a talented friend!

That's all. This post isn't really anything mind blowing but it is my random ramblings and occasionally I need to live up to the blogs name and do just that, ramble randomly. :)

Working at the Wild Coast Sun - A life changing experience

In 1996, a group of 9 teenagers, ages 15-19, headed off from Gauteng to the Wild Coast Sun for a working Christmas Holiday. I was one of these 9.

We first had to go for 3 days of customer service and job-orientated training where we had to learn to deal with difficult customers, promote the games in the newly built games stalls (yes, you people who frequent the wild coast sun, we were the very first to stand in those stalls and get people to play) and how the prize system worked.

The idea was that we would stand in these stalls and encourage people to play the games and demonstrate how to play them and hand out various plush toys as prizes.

Part of our training was to get to know each other and so we all had to tell the person on our left what our biggest dream was and then they would tell everyone about that person's biggest dream. I didn't realise how seriously everyone would take it and so I told my friend, let's call him Frank ,that my biggest dream was to bite into a slab of chocolate. It was all fine until we heard everyone Else's serious and inspiring stories (saving lives, flying planes, changing the world, etc). Mine was, typically, last and so Frank managed to get it out amongst his frantic laughing at realising how ridiculous mine sounded amidst everyone Else's. It was awkward and I was met with very peculiar stares but it was most funny and even now, I can't help laughing!

Another part of our training was role playing. My friend Frank and I teamed up for this, me being the difficult customer and him being the Games Stall attendant. I was a very difficult customer indeed and complained that my toy's head had just come off. This was, of course, ridiculous because there was no chance it's head would ever come off but it was all good fun and Frank was between very flustered and very giggly and we were super excited to get there and try our training out for real.


Upon arrival at our accommodation, we discovered that all 9 of us were sharing a 3 bedroom-ed apartment with a kitchenette with one bathroom. It didn't matter! We would sleep on the bathroom floor because we were on a wonderful working holiday! Yay!

The next day, we met our bosses. They took away all our off days so that we worked 7 days a week in shifts. These shifts were long and tiring and we all ended up getting very sick and living off dry two minute noodles because we didn't have the energy to cook them, plus they almost taste better dry!

On Christmas day, however, we summoned up the energy to cook a full Christmas Dinner and we spent all day preparing the meal. That evening, one of the guys stole one of my sister's roast potatoes and so she got up and proceeded to chase him around the entire complex screaming at him to give her potato back. Yes, it was that bad.

But it was not all bad, we had a lot of fun and it is mostly that that we all talk about.

There were a few of us who were more mischievous than others and myself and one of the guys, let's name him, Samantha, decided to go and toothpaste, let's call him, Petunia, while he was sleeping. We put a small blob of toothpaste on top of Petunia's head and ran away.
Moments later, Petunia stormed into the lounge announcing in the Queen's English that he had woken up with a burning sensation on his head and it was not pleasant. He later admitted that he was confused at first when he woke up and thought that he had somehow managed to get a giant humbug sweet on his head and that it was melting. The poor guy!

One of the funniest moments for me was my very first difficult customer who came to my stall when Frank and I were standing together. His complaint was that the toy's head was coming off. Frank and I took one look at each other and burst out laughing, all customer service training forgotten. The man was nice though and said that he'd just sew it back on.

There were other funny moments that involved my male cousin, heavily medicated from being ill, sitting on the pavement outside the Magic Company, waiting for the bus and asking an imaginary barman in the sky for a drink or everyone getting their clothes muddled up and that same male cousin ending up trying my sister's panties on and looking down at the very tight panties wondering what could've gone wrong with his underwear.

Other funny moments involved games of truth, dare and command where Samantha pounced on Frank as he climbed through the window (yes, we didn't use the door much for some odd reason) and kissed him, much to Frank's surprise! Or Samantha snuggling up to Frank in his sleep. Frank was left quite confused by all of it.

All in all, it was life changing for most of us because it was our first taste of Independence, difficulty and learning to adapt to challenging circumstances.

Even though the working conditions were far from ideal, the living arrangements crowded and getting sick unpleasant, I don't regret doing it because it dispelled my shyness. I could hardly say two words to strangers before the experience and now I'm quite comfortable speaking to anyone.

Nostalgia

I'm having one of those nostalgic days. It's bad to live in the past apparently and I don't usually but perhaps it is Liam's classical piano music playing in the office next door that is bringing it on.

Music is a very strong reminder of things for me. Classical music is always a reminder of my childhood and ballet, which I love watching and used to love doing, and of certain people I met in my adult life.

In my nostalgic mood, I did a search in my emails for some of these people and read the emails we'd sent back and forth with that sad little feeling that creeps in after the "that was so awesome" feeling.

I have, at times, reached out to those people for the sake of what was before but often, people move, people change, you lose contact and the friendship frizzles out and is seldom reignited to be what it was before. It is sad but it is normal I suppose. It is this that drives me to maintain contact with important people so that the friendship doesn't ever frizzle out.

The piano music is amazing though and so I hope he doesn't stop playing it. A few hours of nostalgia never killed anyone and sometimes, I think it's good not to live in the past, but to remember those we've left behind.

Winter Waddling

By the time the warm weather actually reappears, I am so tired of feeling heavy and walking super slowly with the tiniest steps imaginable. Why would winter make me feel heavy and walk slowly? Well, because of the many, many layers that I need to wear to, not keep warm, but be warm enough to function properly.

I've always been someone who gets cold very easily due to not having "much insulation", as it's been put, and so, you have to do what you have to do to add on the insulation!

If you're also prone to freezing your bum off more than most, perhaps you have a better suggestion to keep warm than mine? These are the extremes I go to:

- I wear multiple pairs of pants (today I'm wearing two pairs) and multiple tops and multiple jerseys and then one or two jackets. Sometimes I even wear two pairs of socks. All of this all at once.

- I get dressed over my Pj's. This is multiple layers too I suppose except they're already warm from being on you and being in your warm bed.

- I sit on my hands for every moment that they're not in use. This results in lots of pins and needles and redness but in the end, my hands warm up and my bum cheeks get quite toastey too.

- I do the actions for "twinkle twinkle little star". This doesn't do much except hurt the daylights out of my fingers. It is a good gauge, however, to see how cold you actually are. I'll call it the "twinkle twinkle little star frozen finger gauge." So original.

- I carry a dog upstairs and then lie in bed and force the dog to snuggle. This has worked previously but it really does depend on the dog's mood, what it's eaten and how cold the dog is. The sausage dog usually is more than willing to snuggle. All you have to do is dodge having your face licked and keep your mouth closed at all times.

I am now going to have scones and strawberry jam and cream and so that will be the end of this post. Ta-dah! The end!

Staying awake for a long, long time

I have done 2 exams and have 2 more to go. One of them is this coming Monday and requires a significant amount of studying and memorising the info. It's a parrot-fashion learning kinda module and well, I'm feeling more like a tired person than a wide-awake parrot lately.

Now, I work every weekday and get up at 05:30 every morning and sometimes manage to get half an hour or an hour of study in before work, depending on traffic and then later in the evening, I manage 2 to 3 hours before I flop into bed and as a result, I am exhausted.

We are also currently only living on take-out as I don't have time to cook and then study and well, nobody else is prepared to cook and I suppose that you can take all the vitamins that you want, living on margherita pizza and ostrich piquante global wrapps will not make you any more healthy and will not really contribute to a feeling of overall "awake-ness."

This leads me to my two points:
1. I am running out of time. Criminology isn't difficult, it's easy but it's a LOT of easy!
2. I need to study through Friday night. Right through, yes. And then through Saturday day too. But how?

I have had various recommendations, none of which I'm terribly keen to try, and so I was hoping for some miraculous insight from some wonderfully clever or experienced person out there!

Just a few guidelines:

1. I don't do drugs. They are bad and permanent or even semi-permanent brain damage is not an option.
2. I do not stand on my head. By itself, attached to my body, with my feet or just as is attached by itself. Read it carefully, it does make sense. I mean, I don't hang upside down resting upon my head and nothing else. It gives me a sinus headache and makes me look like I'm terribly embarrassed.
3. I don't drink much coffee. two cups is more than enough and more than that will irritate my stomach, pack on the cellulite and just stress me out even more.
4. I do not handle large amounts of sugar or tartrazine well. I get hyper and bounce around like a 5 year old and then I get VERY cranky.
5. I live with two other people so I can't scream or play loud music or anything else.

O.k, those are the guideline. Any help would be great. Ready and go...

It sounded like a duck

So I have a pile of papers here on my desk that I need to sort out or file or throw out of the window or whatever and as I was signing in, these here papers were pushing down on the shift key and caused my pc to make a sort of quacking sound. It was weird.

Anyway, the rest of this has nothing to do with the quacking but perhaps much to do with "Quacks" and also with weddings.

I have been eating, sleeping and breathing my psychology material and applying every bit of it to my everyday life and it's starting to feel more ingrained, which is the whole idea.

Alan laughs at me when I tell him this is why so-and-so behaves the way they do and what could be done to help or improve the situation. I can't wait to get into it on a deeper level next year. It's lovely too how people are a whole lot more transparent now or at least, that a name and a reason can be assigned to their behaviour.

With regards to the wedding stuff, there are too many people on our wedding list and we now sit at a point where we don't know who to cut. I've cut off all of the people we're not close to or don't affiliate with much or just outright don't like and the problem is that now we genuinely want every single person on our list to be in attendance.

So we're on a budget and we have to keep our numbers to what is within the budget. The problem is, how do we decide who to boot and who to keep? Do we put names in a hat? Do we get all the guests to undergo a gruelling task? "You must run through our garden and around the washingline 4 times without being jumped on once by the big dog and licked once by the little dog" That would be a rather difficult task indeed and we may end up with nobody there! :)

I am getting more and more excited by the day and have even created an email address for when I am married :) So silly but so much fun :)

The "50 pointless questions" assignment

UNISA have compulsory assignments that you have to submit before certain dates in order for you to gain admission to write the exams. They count for 10% of your final mark.

All the modules I've taken always have 2 compulsory assignments and a few non-compulsory self-check exercises. Psychology, however, had 3 compulsory assignments, the last being due today. It was a 50 question compulsory assignment on how much you liked or disliked the module.

Unfortunately, there was no room for commentary, which most of us would've liked as the questions were rather obscure and the grammar was awful making their English rather difficult to understand. I suspect that having no space for commentary was to avoid having to read through many, many, many disgruntled student's spelling corrections and swearing and insults, etc.

We had 50 multiple choice questions and each number represented an answer. So 1 was "Strongly disagree" 2 was "Disagree", etc up to 5 which was "Strongly agree"
My answers formed a perfect zigzag pattern! Maybe it was all a trick and it was like those tutor systems where you have to get the answers right and then it forms a picture or pattern! You have no clue what a tutor system is, do you? Um, it's a little thingie of blocks and one side has an answer on it and the other has a colour. So you select the correct answer and put it in it's correct space and when you're done, you flip it over and the colour blocks form a picture or pattern. Magic!

Why do they waste our time like this? If they wanted us to draw zigzags for them, why not just say so?

UNISA Psych department, if you're really not sure if you did a good job presenting the module, maybe that in itself is a good indication; And ask the English department to help you out next time. Yes, yes, I make typos, I know but they're typos, not confusion or ignorance.

We have all since received the "results" of our 3rd assignment along with a copy of the "correct" answers. Most of us, myself included, failed the assignment dismally. I got 33%. Why? Because the "correct" answers were all "Super easy!". There was a huge uproar on the UNISA discussion forum regarding this assignment as we were penalised for our opinions. We weren't really, it didn't count for anything, but it was very funny at how their method of marking was totally contradictory to the way they were trying to get us to think in.

UNISA, you teach us to see past our biases, pre-conceived ideas and to open our minds, take things in context and acknowledge that ideas and opinions form for reasons and then you take our opinions, which you asked us for, and mark them all as wrong because they did not reflect what your biases did. You did not take our opinions in context nor did you acknowledge the reasoning behind the opinions. Your "argument" therefore was invalid. FAIL!

Life lessons, interesting chats and ridiculous concerns

I think about a lot a lot. It helps to write it down so that I can either find the answer or to stop thinking about it. I hate obsessing over rubbish but I often don't remember what I was obsessing about when I'm ready to write it down until I have nowhere to write it down and then I remember. So, this post could change over time.

Concerns - What if I get so freaked out walking down the aisle with everyone staring at me that I vomit? Worse yet, what if I vomit on someone? Even worse, what if I vomit on someone importantly important? Ja, I know, so silly. No doubt about whether or not I'm marrying the right person (I know I am marrying the right person), it's all about vomiting. Lovely.

Life lesson - Pigs battle to climb up and down stairs as their trotters are like high heels and so if they need to pee, they may go on the stairs. This does not mean that women, or anyone wearing heels for that matter, should ever pee on the stairs.

Interesting chats - Someone I know mailed me yesterday to say how happy he is to have remembered who he is. I suppose we all forget sometimes. Some because they got lost in the humdrum of everyday life and some because they took drugs and took the wrong train and got hit on the head.

Concern - What if I suck more doing "the sprinkler" than Al would doing Salsa? I'm not very good with my elbows, they haven't been used in many of my dance moves.

Life lesson - Eating a secret stash of sweeties where you keep your scissors is going to get you caught when other people ask to borrow them and then kindly just put them back once they're done.

Interesting chats - I had a chat to someone recently about positive self-reinforcement. They need a CD where someone tells them how awesome they are. Applicants with a deeper female voice are preferable. This could be a fun CD to make and I would but my voice is high pitched and squeaky.

Concern - What if person sitting over there never actually goes on the date with person sitting over there there? He is rather peculiar and she is rather sensitive which may not be the best combo but he's said something now so...

Life lesson - Don't leave a pig and the domestic worker alone together when the pig is on heat. The pig will chase the domestic worker all over the garden while she runs screaming in terror.

Interesting chats - O.k, well, more stuff I read about. I love to read about stuff and then tell people about it. Nobody actually listens but I tell them anyway. So I read stuff about how people's bodies synthesize alcohol and about what happens when your fiance becomes a Dutch citizen before you get married and tutorials on taking photos with a decent camera and about how people complain about UNISA's modules.

Life lessons - Mosquitoes are attracted to feet. If there is a colony of mosquitoes living in your sock drawer, you need to question whether or not your socks are actually being washed or just shoved back in.

Interesting chats - I had a chat with someone about lucid dreaming and certain theories that it is possible to manipulate your dreams while in this state. Very interesting but a bit "out there". It turned out that neither of us know enough to really explore the topic and so we gave up fumbling around in the dark together.

Life lessons - People are scared of pigs. I'm scared someone will eat the piggy if we give it to the wrong person.

Interesting chats - After telling everyone that we are having a naked wedding (not really), our MC mailed me and was all for it and asked if he could assess the guests beforehand in lingerie. I agreed. So far, nobody has offered any pics. Strange that ;) What's even more strange is that nobody has even objected to attending a wedding in the buff! A little worrying actually...

My hypocritical poem for vegetarians

I am not vegetarian. There are certain things that I don't eat and I understand the benefits of cutting meat out but I also understand the detriments and so, while I don't eat meat every night, I will never give it up completely. I also admit to licking my lips in delight when passing the ostriches near home. Num num num...

So this poem is sort of like promoting vegetarianism and was written to put a little smile onto a vegetarians face should they ever feel the urge to eat everything in MacDonalds. Oh, I cannot take credit for the first line, it's taken from a group on FB called "No dog should be beaten" but it is what inspired the rhyming:

No dog should be beaten
No chick should be eaten
No piggy put into a stew;
No fish should be quartered
No lamb should be slaughtered
Don't eat anything that said "moo"

For meat makes you fart
And is bad for you heart
and will cause you to die very young;
But veg make you stronger
and help you live longer
That said with no cheek in tongue

And tofu is great
'long with veg on your plate
It will make you all the more thinner;
If you cut out all meat
and watch what you eat
You will start to feel more like a winner