Archive for category Headcase

The Silver Lining

Feb 17

Posted by ness in Big Dreams, Family Drama, Flickr, Graphic Design, Headcase, Hubby, children | 5 Comments

See? I’m feeling slightly upbeat again.

Photo by Tipiro on Flickr Under a Creative Commons Licence

Maybe pretending to be planning to run away yesterday did the trick for me.

Or maybe it’s the deluge of graphic design work that is FALLING OUT OF THE SKIES for me right now.

It might as well be raining money (hands up those of you picturing me doing a nekkid rain dance, with sticks, or wait… better not tell me).

As facetious as that sounds to say that it might as well be raining money, (yes I have no idea how to spell that so I’m going with the wordpress spell checkers version of it) it is MOST welcome.

Yessirree, very welcome.

It’s quite bizarro really, because even some of my old photography clients are emailing me and asking me if I do websites, etc and while the two fields do go hand in hand a lot, it’s kind of like ringing up your doctor and asking them if they do homeopathy. Like I said, not entirely out of left field, but still suprising. Breeeng eeeet on universe!

So it is the joy of design, and the related work that is pulling me out of my funk.

How many people are blessed enough to say that their WORK is keeping them going? I realise how grateful I am to have this stay-at-home-job, given that Skip has been off school since Monday, but the fact that it is the thing that is lifting me up and giving me the will to not just live, but to succeed and reach for my dreams again, is…well, really cool.

My husband has been stellar. The kids have been, well, themselves, except that now, when they reach out for me spontaneously, or Skip turns as he’s leaving the room and says, “I love you SO much Mommy.” it lifts me so  much more than before.

So while the search is always on for a miracle weight loss product, at least my spirits are beginning to lift.

Oh and I still have to share the story with you, of how I’ve seen my dad twice since his death.

But I’m going to make you wait some more.

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The Exhaustion is Overwhelming

Feb 16

Posted by ness in Headcase, Health & Beauty | 5 Comments

I hate to be what I call a ‘negative ninny’.

I loathe people who are consistently negative in their outlook on life, and aside from the occasional rant, for the most part, I post positive things.

Things that make me smile, that I want to share, things that are exciting and out of the ordinary.

Or hot guys. Because hey, everybody likes a hottie.

But right now I am struggling.

I wish that somehow this emotional rollercoaster was a surefire pathway to quick weight loss, but alas no.

I have forced the emotional rollercoaster to stop.

I have stopped communicating with my brother.

The last decade has been hard, I try to reinitiate some kind of communication, and well, he bites the hand that feeds the communication.

So I am done.

I am an only child.

But, I did find a sister, another sister and a brother. We share a father, and for what it’s worth, we get along fine. So I’m not really an only child, even though I am.

The other positive to have come out of this is that I am measurably closer to my cousins and my aunt in Holland.

They lost their father to cancer two years ago, and since I contacted them two weeks ago when the proverbial poo hit the fan, they, particularly the elder cousin who is 5 years older than me, has been a tower of emotional support. Several facebook messages, sms and emails ensued. Always there. Always supportive, always encouraging.

Trying to get on with daily life on the other hand is proving, problematic.

I do not feel like I am in mourning, but a line has been crossed somewhere a ‘before I lost a parent’ and an ‘after I lost a parent’ line has been drawn in the invisible sand, and I have crossed it.

I am older than I have ever been in my life.

The thought of that makes my limbs feel like lead.

Every breath that I take is an effort.

Trying to work, is hard. It has to be done, but it’s hard.

I should be putting good body fuel into my body.

Fresh fruit, vegetables, crisp healthy things.

But I can’t be arsed to cook. I make sure that the kids are fed, throw something together for the hubby and then proceed to stuff my face with the most unsuitable rubbish imaginable. It doesn’t help, I know this and yet I don’t seem to care.

Free Pictures | acobox.com

This morning, in between doing some work, I was surfing for apartments in Leiden, Holland.

1 bedroom apartments to be exact.

What exactly am I doing?

I don’t exactly know, but the desire to run away from my life, with nothing but my camera and a laptop has become very, very attractive.

I suppose I imagine I’m running away, to reconnect with family.

But hello! I already have one that needs me here.

Which leaves me, in the words of Hugh Grant, in Notting Hill…

“Well…buggered.”

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Digest…

Jan 29

Posted by ness in Headcase, Random Blatherings | 1 Comment

Friday Afternoon Bullets:

(Because I’m short on time before the afternoon school run hits).

  • I am selling my piano. I can hardly believe it myself. Had it since 1983. It’s time for it to go. The boys are interested in it, but they don’t respect it. For me, it just hurts to look at it, so it must go.
  • I am still smiling from ear to ear about all the great graphic design work in my life right now. Yes please universe, I would love even more.
  • This whole phoning for home insurance quotes stuff *every* month is quite tiresome, yes, but necessary. Insurance is something we don’t need until we need it so better to have it. Plus if you phone around often enough you can usually lower your monthly cost. We’ve basically halved our costs in about 8 months by doing this.
  • I finally finished Breaking Dawn. Wow. Love it. Best book I have read in years.
  • I am getting by at night on about 5 hours sleep. Both my boys are sleeping through the night now (or at least they have been for the past week – touch wood) so the only thing keeping me up is me. I’m up till around 00h30 usually working, or god forbid having some fun on facebook/blogging/catching up on my rss reader then I sleep till around 5h30 then start all over again. As long as I have a cup of coffee in the morning, it’s going okay. If I can keep this up, I will be the most productive person ever. Heh.
  • We have applied for a new rental, but are still waiting to hear about the house. It’s walking distance from my sons school which is *perfect* fingers crossed we get it. I am *so* sick of the place we’re living in right now you  have no idea. The new house is in a secure complex as well – which frankly would feel like a huge weight off my shoulders.
  • Anyhoo, must go and fetch one of the offspring now…toodles peeps.

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Mars and Venus: The Eternal Debate

Jan 14

Posted by ness in Art History, Education, Headcase, Hubby, Humour, weight loss | 7 Comments

Women are very quick to jump on the ‘Objectification bandwagon’.

Don’t you think?

We are so ready to jump on the ‘that magazine cover is fake’ show and grab our microphone and say that ‘real women don’t look like that’ etc.

I have a friend who is skinny. I mean really skinny. Like it doesn’t matter what she puts into her mouth, she remains resolutely, and absolutely skinny.

Yeah. Love to *hate* her for that.

But still she’s a friend.

A lucky, lucky, LUCKY friend, who gets ridiculed and snickered about behind her back, with people assuming that she has an eating disorder…but I digress…

Back to my point. Chicks. Wenches. Womenfolk.

So ready to fly the feminism flag.

Liberté, Sororité, Egalité and all that.

Yeah, great iconic painting guys let’s fight for freedom and equality, and don’t forget to have the hot chick carrying the flags’ bewbs fall out just to make sure we catch peoples attention okay?*

liberty leading the people

You see?

YOU SEE??

Were you getting as fired up as me there?

*Art history majors, relax, I too am a student of the arts and I understand that she is a mythical interpretation of the spirit of freedom that was urging the people on toward equality, and they indicated this exactly because of the exposed bits. Or at least Eugene Delacroix was a naughty naughty French Romantic and has been poking fun at us for 150 years.

Anyhoo, has anyone ever considered the flip side of this spiky coin?

What about when we objectify men?

Is that okay?

Is it a case of tit for tat?

How does your average male feel about us perving on hot male celebrities? Do their fragile ego’s take it on the chin? Do they run to the nearest pharmacy for their very own supply of fat burners for men and spend hours obsessing how their butts look in these pants?

Probably not.

Or if they do, we complain that our men are turning into women.

So then. What the hell do we actually want????

…and more importantly

WHAT EXACTLY IS THE POINT THAT I WAS TRYING TO MAKE!??

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The Grindstone Beckons

Jan 4

Posted by ness in Africa, Headcase, Hubby, South Africa, children | 7 Comments

Today the husband has gone back to work after a short holiday break. Flipper is back at school on the 13th, and Skippy on the 19th. Which means 1 week with two kids (and trying to work) and then 1 week with 1 kid, who got a new bike for Christmas and thinks that being indoors is for the criminally insane.

He can’t be outdoors practicing on his bicycle without me, so, well I’m sure you’re feeling me rejoice for the two weeks ahead of me.  (sheesh Kristi, I was just going through my feed reader and saw your post – the opening theme is the same – I swear I wasn’t copying you!)

He’s taken to the bicycle really well, getting him to understand pedaling took some huge encouragement and a truckload of patience, but once he figured out to keep his feet drawing circles (instead of going up and down – because he has ‘back-pedal’ breaks) he’s now a pro at it.

Any excuse to ride his bike (in the house!) from his bedroom to the lounge, and no matter how many times we threaten that Santa will see him doing it and take the bike away

Since I’m a stickler for fairness with my boys, here is an equally cute one of Flipper, and yes, I *love* him in that shirt.

It’s the one we bought for Skippy in Australia when we were there in 2007, and it fits Flip perfectly now. Plus it keeps my manifestations at a high level. Yes we still want to go there, things are in the pipeline, more on this later.

Incidentally Flip also got a bike of sorts for Christmas, more like a tricycle, with a handle at the back for whichever poor sucker has to push him in the direction his cute little index points, and of whom he demands, “THERE!” ever 10 seconds.

We didn’t go ‘away’ as such over the holiday period. We just stayed at home and did a few good day trips here and there.

Would you believe that I forgot my camera, like every single time? Shocking. I know.

So I had to rely on my cellphone for pictures.

We visited a wine farm that we’d not been to before, after finding a rather incredible map, on the local municipality website, which showed all the wine farms and other attractions that are family friendly.

A visit to the croc farm, butterfly sanctuary and giraffe house are on the cards for a few weekend drives while the weather is still good.

Speaking of which, the weather has been really odd. I can count on one hand the number of days we’ve had, which were ’sweltering’. Normally we melt for at least a week on the trot. I  am a huge fan of the swimming pool, but have only been in it once.

Planet? Are you listening? Please don’t kill us all with climate change just yet ? Kai thanx bai.

I think Skippy is blowing a kiss at his girlfriend or something!

Delvera Wine Estate, and in fact yesterday, we met up with an old friend (from Australia) at Eaglevlei, which was even nicer than Delvera (in terms of child friendliness), where I neglected to take any photos at all!

So for the time being, we’re all ‘wine-farmed-out’.  I mean really, how many times in one week can you sit and have a nice meal, watch your kids play, and throw back some crisp Chenin blanc? Really such a hardship.

The photo of me with the kids was taken at Delvera, along with this one of the play area peeking out amongst all the big ferns and trees.

On New Years Eve (during the day) we drove up the west coast for a change of scenery.

It’s sparse, and flat out there with lots of bush scrub and cobras (great!) but we were headed for one little turquoise jewel out there, and stopped off at Langebaan Lagoon.

Now the beachfront and lagoon area are very nice.

There are two restaurants where you sit on a terrace, just metres from the sandy beach. Being New Years Eve, of course, they were absolutely packed, and we had no intention of going there.

We rather just wanted to spend some time on the beach.

There are some quite swish housing estates that have sprung up, a golf estate near the exit from the highway, and another estate nearer the large shopping mall.

But the rest of the town, I’m afraid to say, well frankly, it’s a dump.

But the beach made up for the rest of the town, and we had a great time letting the kids splash around for awhile in the waves. If we go back again, we’ll probably stay overnight at Club Mykonos, so that the kids can spend a few hours there and have some fun with their buckets and spades etc.

I’m quite impressed with my blackberry actually, it only has a little 2mp camera, but it’s handy enough to take pics, and then shove back in my pocket. I would have been a little more precious with my DSLR on the beach, and worry about the sand and water getting in.

We decided to take a route home, which turned out to be a bit of an adventure. At one stage, we were in what can only be described accurately as MOFO GANSTALAND.

I think I held my breath the entire time, and had to resist to hide my kids under the seats lest they get caught by a stray bullet or something. We were getting some very strange looks from some of the people on the sidewalk, as if they couldn’t believe these dumb folks were taking a drive through their hood. Frightening.

Anyway, we made it through, and then the road became absolutely beautiful. Aside from the pockmarked tar, which had last been resurfaced circa 1982, this is what it looked like.

Yes, a road, overhung with my beloved gum trees that I can never seem to get enough of. Mere midgets in comparison to the ones we saw in the Dandenongs (which burned down on Black Saturday) but still gum trees, and still beautiful.

Hello, my idea of heaven.

Farm land, gum trees. (faints). If not for the whole gangstanland thing going on less than 3km away from here, then it could have been a nice place to stop. Perhaps it used to be, a long time ago.

We went and saw Avatar on the 2nd of Jan. If you follow that link, it will take you to the review of the movie that I did on NessWorld. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, you are missing out.

For now it’s back to the mundane everyday, new year, new budgets, new monthly auto insurance quotes to keep our costs low, I swear they know my voice by now!

Time to feed the kiddos and get them involved in some kind of meaningful activity for the next few hours so that I can get some work done.

Hi Ho Silver.

Oh and did I mention that the husband sadistically turned off our satellite TV connection again (now that he’s back at work), now I rarely watch *any* TV anymore, but on the 18th of January Greys Anatomy Season VI is starting AND I have these two weeks to get through juggling kids…time to rely on the ‘educational dvd’s I suppose if I want to get anything productive done.

Strength and Honour.

Strength and Honour.

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