Archive for category Hubby

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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Elisabeth Kubler-Ross had it right

Feb 4

Posted by ness in Family Drama, Hubby, family | 10 Comments

If you have not lost a parent then you have not sat by their bedside looking at them, just skeletons with skin. You have not experienced the godawful smell that accompanies that, that I cant get out of my nose right now.

To sit there and hear there words of denial as they try to convince themselves and you that they’re ‘fine now’ and ‘gosh, what a scare I thought I was a gonner for awhile’ and to know that THEY ARE just DAYS from the inevitable.

To sit and wonder if you should tell them they’re going to be fine or to keep quiet and then to silently obsess about the fact that your silence might speak volumes to them.

To wonder if you should cry and wail and tell them a million times over how much you love them no matter what they might have done in their lives, and as much as you may have written them off, because it might make them feel able to leave this world, and then to not do it because you realise that they don’t even know they’re that ill and doing that would make them panic about the fate that awaits them.

To sit at the fence between life and death and wish for it to just happen already so that you can go on with your life, and then to wish it away just as quickly because, well because it’s an awful thought and you shouldn’t have thought it in the first place.

To sit there and question every action in your own life knowing that one day this will be you, and are you making every second count?

If your spouse still has both parents then they are totally unable to comprehend what you are going through.

Which makes it even harder.

So when you overreact about the fact that, No, you haven’t done the dishes, and SO WHAT that when they respond with equal annoyance, that you simply have to forgive them that counter-reaction because they don’t know any better.

You know that one day when your spouses parents begin their demise that you will be the pinnacle of love and understanding because you’ve been here, and it all feels grossly unfair that you are drawing the short straw, and doing this first.

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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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Fried Chicken, No Follow and Photos

Jan 10

Posted by ness in Alexa, Flipper, Google Page Rank, Hubby, Photography, SEO Consulting, Skippy, Technology, The Pioneer Woman, Web Stuff | 13 Comments

Well there’s a varied headline for you.

Okay, first things first. Fried Chicken.

I once made the Pioneer Womans Fried chicken strips. All three of the males living in my household were over the moon with it. (It kicks KFC’s ass royally and is really worth trying)

Since that first time I made it, it has been requested nearly every weekend since.

Yeah, my jeans are really pissed about *that* but moving on.

I have played around with the recipe somewhat, and added my own concoction of spices to the buttermilk and the flour that you use, and the last batch I made, my husband pronounced as ‘ohmuhgoshzisispuhfect‘ whilst burning himself in his eagerness to eat one right out of the pan.

Since I have this dodgy thyroid, I’m really *very* careful with how I prepare foods and most nights it’s strictly low fat grilling that goes on, but I make the exception with the chicken, well, because it *is* delicious and it’s the only food that I ‘fry’ as such.

So yesterday being Saturday, the request for fried chicken was yet again made, and I set about making the buttermilk and soaking the chicken in it.  I pottered on, letting Skip stir the flour while I added salt and cayenne pepper and cumin etc and then as I started dipping (in fact yesterday’s version involved double dipping) I suddenly realised that I didn’t have enough cooking oil to be able to be able to finish the dish.

I had barely uttered the words “Honey, I need more cooking oil” when there was a vague tinkle of car keys, shortly followed by the screeching of car tyres in the driveway. About 5.6 seconds later I had two brand new bottles in front of me courtesy of our corner shop.

My mouth literally fell open.

Had I say, needed, I dunno, lettuce, or tomato, or even butter at this stage, it would have been met with a ‘oh well, do without’ comment or something like that. (I must admit, when the PMS is strong with me, the hubby has the same reaction about fetching me chocolate. After 10 years together he’s learned to pick his battles I suppose).

Now I’m just trying to figure out what I can leverage as a bargaining chip *next* time. Honey, if I make you fried chicken will you rub my back for an hour?

Okay, onto some internet stuff.

Remember a long long time ago, I talked about Google Page Rank and Alexa? You can read it again at that link. Anyway, after I wrote that, google did this huge swoop on blogs and cut the page rankings of any blogs that appeared to be doing sponsored posting. One of the side effects of this swoop, was that blogging platforms built into their commenting sections, a little tag called ‘no-follow’. What this meant is that when google ‘crawls’ a site to check for new content that it’s little spider bots completely ignored any links with the no-follow tag, grossly reducing the ‘respect’ of the website.

What this meant is that when you left a comment on a popular blog it no longer gave your website a boost.  Remember, when a site with a higher page rank than yours links to you, it counts in your favour with google, bringing you bigger traffic and in blogworld traffic=money. So here is me, Ness page rank 2 on my graphic design blog, going to say, a page rank 6 blog and leaving a comment, and baddabing, google looks at me with a bit more respect. (It’s a bit more complicated than that, but then they went and changed things).

So as a result a lot of people stopped commenting on blogs. A lot of blogs that had been popular lost google ranking, and with it, a lot of opportunities to produce content for remuneration disappeared, and I still can’t believe that they axed things the way that they did, but there is some good news!

An enterprising group of people have written some plugins which removes the ‘no-follow’ tag from the comments boxes on websites.

You may have noticed this little graphic now in my sidebar:

What this means is that I have removed the no-follow tags from my comments page, and that if you leave a comment on my blog, it will count towards improving your rank in google. I have done the same for my graphic design blog, my photography blog, and for my magazine blog. So leaving comments on any of those three blogs will count in your favour.  I’m just sayin’. If you would like some help removing your own (wordpress) no follow tags, I can help you out with that, it’s the simple installation of a plugin, and then activating it.

A word on linking.

Linking in the blog world is a polite thing to do. It’s proper netiquette, if you talk about someone, say I want to mention something about bathtubjunkie, or Lisanne, or Kristi, or Mel or other Mel, then the correct thing to do, is to pass on the link juice by linking to those blogs. Otherwise it’s like gossiping about someone behind their back. Trust me, it’s appreciated. That goes for re-tweeting things too! You don’t have to retweet everything verbatim, just the things that you like.

In the same vein, if you read something you like, and the blog offers a ’share this’ button, with links to things like stumbleupon, digg, facebook etc, then if you feel like you enjoyed the post, then share it. Remember, some of us make a living from blogging and any extra traffic is appreciated whole-heartedly! (Feel free to share anything on any of my OTHER blogs, just don’t mention *this* one on facebook please!).

If you’re interested in more stuff about Technorati Tags: (search engine optimisation) or Technorati Tags: (Social Media Marketing) then you might want to subscribe to nessworld, because I’ll be talking about that a lot there in the coming weeks.

Okay, now onto the photos.

skippy

We drove a bit to find a nice quiet spot today where Skip could practice riding his new bicycle, and we could push Flip (who is currently awake at 11pm and refusing to go back to sleep I might add…) in his new tricycle.  We ended up going to a local cricket clubs sports fields, it was quiet (but not too quiet..that’s never a good sign) but we spotted another dad pushing his son along on his bicycle too, and another guy hitting golf balls, plus the ever faithful ADT security guys patrolling so we felt safe enough to let the kids run wild for a bit.

We made sure that the boys stayed outside the cricket oval ropes, so no grounds keepers would be annoyed by the bike tracks (not that we saw any).

flilpper

Many of you overseas folks probably think I’m nuts talking about security like that, but in order to survive here (mentally and physically!), you need to be realistic, and alert, and not do anything stupid. So I’d rather be cautious and be aware of who or what is in my surroundings rather than just throwing caution to the wind and saying c’est la vie.

It turns out the local cricket field had a bit of a play area too.

slide

It was such a glorious day, and we even had some running races. I was actually surprised by the sensation of running again. The weather was just right, the temperature perfect, and we were running anti-clockwise around the pitch (the same direction as an Technorati Tags: track) and I had the most vivid flashbacks of training, and competing (gosh is it really 13 years ago already?).

cricket pitch

Now before you all think I’m a slow poke and this far behind, I kept running back and forth like a complete nicompoop taking photos and then jogging to catch up again.

bike

…and lastly…

little dude

This little dude.

Boy, oh boy. He melts my heart daily.  My older boy, is at an age now, where he melts my heart, periodically, and has me tearing out clumps of my own hair inbetween. Right now, the little dude is at an all time high in terms of cuteness factor. He is talking, a LOT. But only about 20 percent of it makes any sense.  Physically he is very big for 20mths, so people sometimes wonder why he isn’t more vocal, but he’s really still technically a very little dude.  So today when I said to the husband, “I wonder if he wants a yoghurt.” Through all the baby talk I heard, “Yah, I wanna yah-yah.” Then he went to the fridge and pointed at the yoghurt, followed by going to the cutlery drawer and helping himself to a teaspoon.  We were *so* impressed! Of course, I’m sure your kids were all doing higher mathematics at this age, but my boy? Gosh I couldn’t be prouder!

Hey, Lotus just announced the prizes for her Weekly Winners of 2009!

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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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