First Blog-oversary!

I thought I missed my blog-oversary so looked back on my posts - and its today!

My first post was a year ago and it feels like yesterday that I first took the plunge of committing thoughts to the written word.

It hasn't been as easy as I thought it might be. Sometimes words and ideas don't flow so smoothly. You experience something during the day that you think would make a good post and then when you come to write, you can't remember what the heck it was you wanted to write about! Or all of a sudden you feel very boring and can't write at all. Eventually you come to see that people are mostly the same the world over. We all have confidence issues at some time, we sometimes feel stupid or boring. But someone somewhere is interested in what we have to say and that really builds self-confidence. Over the past year and more especially fairly recently, I have come to appreciate the release that writing gives me, the freedom to express myself in a written form. When I keep all my thoughts inside my head, I actually find it difficult to process my thoughts and I forget words - my mind becomes a muddy backwater.

So thank you friends and followers and Internet for giving me this platform for freedom of expression and for showing interest in the happenings of my life and my mind! May our relationship continue for many more years to come.

Teenage boy blush!

I embarrassed Bradley this morning! Not on purpose...I'm not so mean. Just by being a mommy.

We arrived at his school and I noticed a group of grade seven girls, obviously prefects, standing by the entrance to the playground from the parking lot. They were giggling and not taking any notice whatsoever of the arriving students.

Bradley was still zipping up his bag and I spotted yesterday's empty lunchbox still inside his bag, together with today's full lunchbox, just taking up space. I made a grab for the empty lunchbox and came out with the full one instead. He made a grab for the lunchbox and stuffed it back inside his bag, his cheeks flushing pink with embarrassment. "Mom leave it! There's girls watching!"

"But they're not even watching you. They're talking to each other."

"They're always watching....", he closed the door with an arrogant kick and stalked off without a backwards glance.

I overstepped my mark as the taxi driver. Bad mom!

(P.S. Thats why I won't change my old jalopy until all are through the moody teenage phase!)

The calm after the storm!

Bradley was a bit sad and quiet for a day after the family left but has since perked up since he realised he's not being given instructions by older brother and can watch whatever he likes on tv. He's coming into his own already. We are getting into a quiet evening routine and best of all the house is still tidy when we get home. Bradley has been going to my mom in the afternoons as he doesn't want to go home at the moment with nobody there. I can see that changing shortly though because he already texted me today "Mom come early to fetch me". My mom likes things done in a particular way and I can see he will be deciding to go straight home from school in the near future.

Yesterday morning, when Brad got into the car his hair was wet and on glancing at him I noticed some specks of white almost like dandruff in his hair except that the specks weren't budging. Now he had been complaining that his hair was itchy but with my bad eyes I can't usually see anything small hidden away in hair and I used to rely on the older two to spot things like that. These specks I could see. I knew just what to get and last night we started on our remedial treatment of *lice*.

First a (much) shorter haircut. Brad doesn't like his hair too short as he likes to style it in a 'cool' style for school etc. He bit the bullet though and didn't argue because he wanted his problem sorted out. Then a nice bath and hairwash after which I dried his hair with the drier and then applied the ointment to his hair, rubbing it into the scalp. He had to sleep with the ointment on his hair and we rinsed it off this morning followed by another bath and hairwash. I will change all the bed linens tonight and wash them well. In a few days time we will repeat the whole ointment process again. I texted the Gauteng bunch to check the hair of the two little girls and their mom, Trish who had visited cousin R's house during the weekend reported that she had seen lice ointment in their bathroom. Now he was also visiting during the weekend and at one stage had such itchy hair that he had to go and shampoo his hair for relief. Share and share alike but there will be no more visiting until this is all cleared up to my satisfaction.

The office is irritating at the moment. Its year end so auditors and other strangers are wandering around. I have been dealing with irritating and irritated rental agents, purchasers, tenants. Everybody has a problem and time is running out. It seems as the year gets shorter everybody starts running around manically trying to get things finished before year end closedown.

Weather is unpredictable too. Its hot when I leave for work but where I work, just 8kms from home but at a slightly higher altitude, the weather is changeable and every afternoon brings clouds and cooler temperatures. Its difficult to know what to wear. I have taken to bringing a pair of track pants to change into because I never just go straight home and by the end of the day, I am freezing in my Summer outfit.

I haven't spoken much to Dael but I believe he is working hard and I'm sure he is excited to make the trip down to Cape Town with his dad to fetch his sister, as he hasn't been to Cape Town before. Definitely beats sitting at my place with nothing to do!

Expecting the unexpected.

I had planned to take the boys out this weekend past because I was anticipating Dael leaving for Gauteng as soon as his father was given the go-ahead to come down to KZN to finish a job.

It was still raining on Friday night but the boys cousin, R had been dropped off to stay over and had brought a stock of crackers with him, much to my irritation. They barely waited for night to fall before dashing out and letting some off. The cats were a little concerned but the dogs reacted immediately cowering below the couch and every now and again trying to get up. R kept on running in and out of the house to the bedroom and when I eventually went into the bedroom, I saw that the carpet was just absolutely full of mud! I saw red and that was the end of the cracker session. We had burgers for supper and I went to sleep because the boys were using the tv for playstation games. I woke up again at about 1am and the boys were still awake. Dael was making coffee when a vehicle pulled up the driveway.

It was the kids dad come down without notifying us and he had the whole family - Trish, Kaleigh and Rachael and his helper, Ishmael. So all systems go sorting out beds for the extras and making coffee and we all went to sleep. I think it was almost 4am before the littlest one stopped chirping.

The weekend was supremely busy and I had a full house the whole weekend. Luckily most of Dael's clothes had been washed and it was just a case of packing and making sure nothing important got left behind. On Saturday night, Dael and friend C wanted to have a last memorable outing to club 54. Well it was memorable for Dael and quite ironic for me. I had been out earlier in the evening and texted Dael jokingly, asking him what he had prepared for supper. He texted back 'My foot' with a pic of his foot. I jumped to the wrong conclusion and thought that something was wrong with his foot. At club 54 later, he and friend C had been descending a metal staircase with full bottles of beer. It had been raining heavily and Dael slipped on the stairs and fell down about 10 remaining stairs, landing heavily on his hip. That was the end of his evening and I got a call at midnight (early for them) to fetch them. C had slipped as well behind Dael but managed to land on his feet. I told Dael he took the fall for his friend and prevented him from injury but to add insult to injury, the bottle of beer also broke and cut Dael's hand though not badly thank goodness. I said to him that I must have had a premonition from the pic earlier that we would have a foot injury. He had a painful roasty and a big bump on his hip and Sunday saw him limping in agony.

Sunday went by in a blur. I spent as much time as possible with Dael and the family left for Gauteng at 6.40pm after visiting ouma (grandma) on route, only arriving at their destination at 3am on Monday morning.

Bradley spent the evening very blue and upset because suddenly now he is an only child with only his mom for company. He was also very tired and soon fell asleep. I think its going to be a few days before he gets used to the new arrangement.