I’ve realised that blogging and boredom co-exist in a happy little land of ‘I’m so bored, I’m starting to enjoy watching the metamorphosis from bread turning into toast – I’d rather blog’. The problem with this little realisation comes, when all of a sudden, you find yourself rather busy … living a life worthy of blogging … but unable to find time to even attempt to string a sentence together worthy of reading due to extreme tiredness of aforementioned life.

So … I decided today that I’d make time for a blog entry regardless. I hope you’re as impressed with my resolve as I am. Let’s give ourselves a moment here.

Christmas is literally around the corner and it’s crazy how different it all is when it’s about to be your first Christmas away from home, combined with the very first Christmas of you buying and preparing the Christmas meal. Turkey and Ham are both ridiculously expensive and I find myself veering rather spectaculourly to pizza and ginger ale. I have justified this little break in tradition with the thought that I could quite possibly cut the pizza into christmas tree shapes, thereby ensuring that it adheres to all strict Christmas specifications. I’m very tempted …

In order to ensure that life is not too depressing come Christmas Day, Nath and I have decided that we are going to host twins from the children’s home for a week from Christmas Eve to New Year’s Eve. We decided that this decision is a good one based on the fact that this week of mayhem would prove to remind us exactly of what Christmas is actually all about – not us!  Buying gifts for 4 year olds is ridiculously fun and we’re VERY excited … except for a minor problem that I have discovered.

I have a very real and ridiculously traumatic aversion to snot of any kind. When visiting the children’s home to see our Christmas guests, I got a request by a toddler to ‘uppie’; picking her up, I realised that she had a long (very!) sticky trail of snot running from her nose to her lip.  With it being my first time at the home, I wanted to ensure that the house mother’s deemed me sufficiently suitable to host the twins, and so tried VERY hard to not do anything embarrassing like ,  Oh I don’t know, throw up all over the floor. As she looked into my eyes and started to giggle, I could not quite work past the fact that a genuine green snot situation was about to occur, and the extreme whiteness of my t-shirt was about to be compromised. Rushing to get some toilet paper for an emergency ‘blow your nose’ session, the little person in my arms, began to excitedly slurp at the jelly-like substance dangling from her nose. With it literally swinging to and fro, I began to gag … and gag … and gag. Eyes watering, and gags occurring, I stood in the kitchen unable to communicate my request for a tissue. SO close to the solution, but unable to open my mouth, the house mother and I merely stared at each other, with me grinning crazily willing her with all of me to just grab me the tissue standing between us. Somehow, SOMEHOW, this is what happened as I nonchalantly, ever so coolly administered ‘The wipe’ – pretending fiercely to not be at all concerned by this little incident . I quickly learnt that where the jelly trail ended there was so much more to be found!

Nathan – who feels nothing for nasty substances secreted by toddlers- found all of this highly amusing as I couldn’t even EXPLAIN what had happened without painfully alarming gagging sounds accompanying my attempts. (I’m gagging now just thinking about it!)

But I actually DO know myself well enough to realise that toddler snot is WAY worse than 4-year-old snot, and when they’re in our flat, I’ll be so overcome with welcomeness and christmas-ey excitement that all will be forgotten as Santa comes to stay ….

This is at least what I’m hoping for — I’ll let you know how that all works out

It all began many weeks ago, when a particularly hideous e-mail circulated our office inbox. It recounted an incident between a restaurant owner and a customer, where the restaurant manager managed to tell the customer EXACTLY where to get off, with NO HOLDS BARRED. While we spent the better part of our 8 hour day, debating whether the aforementioned owner had overstepped the mark, I found myself intrigued, and resolved to myself that when such a character exists, one almost has to make it your life’s mission to meet the individual concerned. In a world where we are so often forced to suppress our individuality in favour of more ‘civil’ behaviour, it’s a necessity to enrich one’s imagination with the real life antics of another, slightly, braver soul. And so I have been asked to recommend a restaurant for 11 people (myself included) on Friday night, and I grabbed the opportunity to attend this particular one.

Throwing caution to the wind, I have already engaged in more than a handful of e-mail chats with the notorious owner, and I must be honest and say that I have found him most entertaining. When he called me directly to confirm the booking, the girls at work thought that I’d definitely lost the plot, and for a demi-second it felt as if I was on the phone to my principal … but I got over that feeling after a relatively weak joke cracked from both sides and now Friday night awaits! I’m slightly nervous that everyone will arrive, and will be silently holding my breath that everything goes okay … but at some point I’m sure I’ll actually manage to relax and enjoy the evening, content in the knowledge that at any given point Rachel or Ross could come waltzing through the front door, or that Joey could be thrown out by the scruff of his neck. We shall have to wait and see …

So if i have to be honest, I’d say that the last few weeks have been manic and it’s for this reason that the blog remains largely unupdated  … I started to feel really guilty though, because it seems that everywhere I turn, other more disciplined individuals are focused on updating journals or blogs and expressing mind-blowing concepts or general hilarity … I by stark contrast personify the definition of procrastination…

But here I am.

Nice.

Having enjoyed time with visitors, Nathan and I have welcomed the opportunity to momentarily forget what an incredibly taxing year we have had, trading anxious tummy tightness for the best kind of silliness A tourist in our own city, we have chowed down at Eastern Bazaar, endured the wrath of the seagull at Kalk Bay, made a chocolate cake that would rival even  Martha Stewart and received a DINING ROOM table from a friend – “yeah so I got you a little something. Oh yeah really, what? Um …a dining room table, two leather chairs and a leather bench. All brand new”  Um what do you say to that???? Blown away! – we pigged out on Snoek, and overdosed on Pizza. We have walked the city, driven the city and loved the city.

During this time, our year has fallen into perspective. When surrounded my friends and family that love and encourage you in all the right ways, you momentarily catch a glimpse of God’s greatness and in that instant, every trial, every midnight meltdown, every seed of doubt, fades away into a rock solid certainty that for now this is what we are meant to be doing.

Nathan and I have had it cemented in our hearts that living in a world coloured seductively in bright shades of distracting secularism, we have to be aware that life is not to be lived centred on self, and that at some point as human beings we have to believe in more than the concept of ‘me.’ Defying human logic and even at times practicality, we have chosen to stay focused on the promise made by a loving Father that He will never leave us or forsake us ,proactively grabbing onto this statement, guarding it zealously as we go out focused on our desire that all is not as it should be and that we have no choice but to instill change. It can be no other way.  

Words so seldom elude me, and re-reading this entry I feel quite disappointed at my inability to fully express what I’m trying to say. I suppose that if I were to attempt to borrow someone else’s words, it would have to be Lucy’s from ‘The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe’ :

“Aslan,” said Lucy, “you’re bigger.”
“That is because you are older, little one,” answered he.
“Not because you are?”
“I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger.”
Prince Caspian – Chapter 10

Now that starts to make sense. In this year, we have grown and as a result He is bigger

So details of our last wonderful weekend filled with special people, tons of sushi, budding romances and hand fed seagulls, is guaranteed to follow in the next little bit

This includes writing the blog. For now. Cos normally i love it. Just not this week. *sigh*

But we ARE alive and excited for our wedding anniversary on the 4th October Can’t believe it’s been a year — wow!!!

Will be blogging as soon as my brain returns to its owner (its highly debatable WHEN exactly that will be, or if in fact it will ever happen, but here’s holding thumbs )

Lots of love x

Well this is ridiculous. If you had to ask me what was going on in our lives at the moment  I’d give you a blank stare and respond with an enlightening “Um …  Uh … nothing?” And the crazy thing is, I’d be telling you the truth

Well except that we have successfully managed to memorise almost every episode of ‘How I Met Your Mother’ – not that I’m convinced that that even qualifies as life-changing ( although that one is clearly wiiiiide open for debate:))

Seems that at random intervals, things kind of just slow down a little which is fabulous for us, because very soon we are going to have an endless stream of visitors til January. This is exciting, because it means that we will be engaging in conversation with people that we aren’t actually married to, for an extended period of time. The plus side to this is that you get to see different faces, listen to the lives of others, and then just generally realise that all those people you speak to on the phone are actually real and not just an extended figment of your imagination… (very helpful!)

It should be duly noted that now is a GREAT time to visit because we have very attractive couches. We’re still in that intoxicating phase of our relationship with them, where their flaws have not yet become visible to us, and so we catch ourselves stopping mid-sentence to just stare at them and wonder what we did right in life to score something so clearly out of our league. They are so beautiful that if we wanted to charge admission for aforementioned visitors to view them, we totally could and would consequently be thanked for blessing our guests with the curvaceous beauty of our L-shaped bombshells…

Did my heart love till now?
Forswear it sight,
For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.
~  Romeo and Juliet.~

Chatting to people, I have come to the realisation that 2009 has been quite a year for many people. Lots of highs, and even more lows. I took some time to reflect on the year that Nath and I have had, and have come to realise that for us, 2009 will forever be the year in which we became adults.

When I was younger I always used to wonder when you know that you’re really grown up. Yeah sure leaving school behind has a lot to do with it, or being able to drive alone,  or starting (or ending) University. But, personally, when all of these things happened, although I felt all  grown up, I never did feel like an adult.

Adulthood for me has been:  Moving away to a foreign city. Missing family and good friends so much that you can feel it in your stomach. Learning that no matter what they say, people just can’t always be trusted. Learning to depend on my new (hot!) husband and being dependable for him. Starting work at 5:30am and working harder than I ever thought I would. Driving to work in the pouring rain. Learning to be content with what I have, and not to compare. Understanding that God can, and does say No. Watching people I love, hurt. Not knowing what to say to make things better. Learning to cook. Learning to clean. Doing washing . Paying bills. Getting settled, and then told to uproot in a week. Looking longterm. Learning that I can’t change people, and that some people just suck. Attempting the challenge of grace. Feeling alone. Dealing with change. Dealing with responsibilty. Dealing with dreams. And dealing with failure. Dealing with feeling like a child, but being an adult and learning to smile through it all.

So although, Nath and I will never be able to pretend that 2009 was easy, at least we will always know that we faced it as a team. That together we attempted each challenge, and that we remained  united through it all. New Years Eve 2009 is going to be a GREAT night, one we can’t wait to get to. I’m just thankful that it’s already September … nearly there:)

And while I’m mentioning that phenomenon, I’d like to just vent for a quick second and ask WHY people feel that they have the RIGHT to pick the fastest moving lane, enjoy its benefits and then choose the very last minute to flick on their indicator, and plead with you to allow them to duck quickly ahead of you. Initially, in my naive Traffic Virgin days, I would smile politely and let them in, sighing inwardly at the injustice of it all. 11 months later, and I have learnt a thing or two. No! I vow and spend the next few minutes doing everything I can to stop you from emerging victorious from your selfish ambitions. I mean, SERIOUSLY? Do we really need to have this conversation?

So that was today’s reality. And miraculously I did eventually arrive at work, almost on time, and without maiming any fellow drivers. Looks like today is going to be a good day

As I mentioned in my previous post, Doug is visiting, which is great for Nath (and me ofcos, but mainly Nath) I got home yesterday to discover that they had made paper planes, first out of paper before graduating onto cardboard. The major achievemnet for the day was the fact that the one paper plane managed to make it all the way to the end of the street. And trust me, it’s a looooooooooong street. Being a typical girl i made sure that for every plane flown, they would promise to pick up a piece of litter. It’s sad how my brain managed to get to that place, but it did and I feel that in that very moment, the world silently thanked me. Either that, or it mentally slapped me across the back of the head for not spending longer being impressed by the whole ‘down the street’ victory party, reminding me that the impact one little paper plane makes on one little street is nothing compared to the exhaust fumes that I contribute towards the earth’s atmosphere, in my little ‘get to work on the freeway attempts’ on a daily basis. you can’t win can you?

  SO that’s this week in a nutshell … and yes, my dreams are still centred around solid food  

 No, I don’t take soup.  You can’t build a meal on a lake.  ~Elsie de Wolfe (Lady Mendl) 

At this point in time I am so drugged up it’s quite concerning and so the quality of this blog entry is going to be highly questionable to say the least. A mixture of sewn up jaw, pain killers and lack of solids, has rapidly detracted from my ability to form coherent sentences.  But I’ll have to share the joy of yesterday with you all,  so that you know where we’re at …

Rushing home from work to get to my dentist appointment, I noticed that my car had decided to take empathy for its owner to the next level, by actually acting out how I was feeling. It started letting off steam, forcing me to stop dead on the side of the road. Hmmm. Interesting parralel of moods. Luckily Nath saved the day and managed to get me to the dentist in the nick of time

*Thanks Tom for distracting my husband with the awesomeness of you, coupled with Bliss Hazlenut Praline – YUM!*

Walking in, surrounded by a haze of nerves and ‘gum infection causing ear infection causing balance issues’ I tripped rather spectacularly UP the flight of stairs, tangled in my own limbs. I consequently had severe issues getting up again and kinda awkwardly looked around to see if there were any witnesses present. Spotting one, I immediately gave her permission to laugh, and we both just took a minute to get over the unfortunate scene that I had created.

Within minutes I was in the specialist’s chair, awaiting an operation that would basically mean him lifting the gum away, and drilling away half my jaw. Not pleasant. So in a nutshell: Highs - The hotness of the dentist, the radness of his assistant and the extreme numbness on the left side of my face.  Lows -  The sound of jaw been scraped away, the dentist telling the assistant to make sure she had sucked up all the soft tissue with that sucky thing they have, and lastly, my inability to open my jaw wide enough to insert a spoon. Big up to Yogisip, Chicken Soup (which should’ve been through a straw) and aforementioned Bliss Double Cream Yoghurt. YUM!

SO that was our Friday, I then slept while Nath and Tom ate popcorn (I know, right, THE INJUSTICE OF IT ALL!) and watched Alpha Dogs.  Rivetting stuff

Tmrw is the photo shoot for the websit so verrrry excited about that and will keep y’all posted xx