c'est la vie

Ok so I finally decide that I want to be a bone marrow donor.  I felt really good about this decision.   And then I called the Sunflower Fund only to be told that at 47 I am 2 years too old to be considered as a donor.  Now I don't get this ....... they are begging for donors ....... they are short of donors ..... and when you are a donor they keep you on the registry until you are 60.  So if you can be used up to 60, then why can you not apply at 47?  No-one has been able to tell me that.  So as I am already a blood donor, and still need to find another outlet for my wish to have become a bone marrow donor, I am now going to the SANBS on Tuesday to enquire about platelet and plasma donors.  It takes 90 mins to 2 hours at a time I am told, but I know there is not an age restriction since my boss is a donor and is older than me.  Who knew it was this difficult to want to help.  And if anyone knows the answer to the why can I not be a b...

Ok ... let us talk about traffic fines.  And traffic fine givers.  And traffic fine receivers.  Now we all get them (those of you who don't are a bit weird I think).  En route to Umdloti in the first few days of January, I had the two Matric girls in my car, whilst Eug drove down with the two Gr 8 boys.  Sexist we are.  The whole way, 120 /123 km/h ... and vigilant, as the road to the coast was a myriad of traffic police and radar cameras.  I watched all the way.  Then here half way along the trip, is a loooooong downhill and the girls are telling me some "skinner" about school and I am glancing at them ..... how was I to know that during that glance I would not notice the speedo creep to 131km/h and how was I to know that the downhill was letting us go a tad faster?  Well I did know when Mr Traffic Officer jumped out in front of a road full of people driving fast, and flagged me down.  Damn.  He politely explained my predicament ...

Been thinking a lot lately about people and the choices we make and what we do and don't get told by them and what we can believe and what not.   Yesterday Father Chris had us totally engrossed in his homily about labels we give people and boxes we put them into.  It made me think on two levels .... Labels I give other people and labels people give me.  How easily we make a decision about someone and put them into a box with a label and then sadly, as Father Chris says,  we tend to never allow them to leave that box again, even if they change, sometimes for the better.  There is no-one that is not guilty of this labelling thing. If you are outgoing and full of beans some label it simply as being "loud".  Others however will label it as "exuberant".  If you are pleased with what you achieve at work then some may label it as "bragging" whereas others label it simply as "enthusiasm and passion" ... And so the "boxing" goes on.  Wha...

that says it all.  till next time c'est la vie xxx

So having read my friend Nick's very succinct go at Delta Airlines and their service, let me join the fray with my 6 month old Samsung S III.    Bought with an arrangement offered by FNB it is a joy as I can run several email addresses and have all the bells and whistles as along with my IPad it is my office.  Until the screen went lime green yesterday at 4pm ... Making my kids' photo on my home screen look as if they were about to vomit.  The blackness gradually started sliding in from the left leaving me only able to dial numbers with the digits 3, 6 and 9 in them and read only the right half of messages, leaving them way open to misinterpretation.  By 7pm nighttime had descended onto my phone ... It vibrated to tell me it was ringing or there was a message whilst I stared at the blackness trying to play some sort of read the Samsung mind game.  FNB have declared themselves the deal provider.  Samsung plonked it into Vodacom's lap as my service pro...

Due to me having appointments here, there and everywhere for my job, the NPO kindly bought me a TomTom.  Now aforementioned gadget has actually come in very handy over the past year and has safely taken me to many places all over including other provinces.  Let me rephrase ..... it has taken me to many places ....... 98 % of the time, correctly.  And then there is that other 2 %.  Shortly after getting it, I had to go and see a major mining group at their impressive head offices in Jhb city centre.  You can see their offices from far, not only because they take up several blocks, but because they are so beautiful.  That's great, but I am driving, not flying.  So I entered the address into the TomTom.  It told me it could not find it.  A street that has been a part of SA for about 3652 years.  So I had to drive by keeping my eye firmly on the target.  Not so easy in the city centre where every 2nd street is a one way and when I w...

Matric dance dresses.  Yes I know that it is now only March.  Yes I know the dance is in September.  However if you have a daughter in Matric then you know that 6 months is going to pass in a flash and when you start that long awaited (code for take alcohol along when you finally start looking for dresses) shopping ...... you should at least have SOME idea I have learnt.  And trust me, my BFF has had 2 daughters matriculate from the same school as Jess, this dress finding thing is not for sissies.  It is not just the long or short and which colour choice ... there follows also a plethera of other "stuff" ..... beading, slits, gathers, finishing, crossover, cowl neck, open back, closed back ..... etc etc ..... my Ipad and our home computer have a file for Matric dance dress photos ....... it would rival the size of the current Guinness Book of Records' thickness.  She had a definite idea by January .... she has been looking since Gr 1 after all.  So...

Now sport at school & club level always involves bad language.  It just does.  The level of it is determined by the sport itself.  As the amount of sporting equipment in my house will rival a branch of Sportsman's Warehouse, with Nic playing 7 days a week and Jess 5, I see a lot of matches.   Let's start with swimming galas....this seems to be a very refined sport.  In the 10 odd years that Jess has swam on the school team I have yet, either home or against another school, to hear bad language.  The swimmer who comes 3rd does not lean over to the winner and bust loose in some description of her, her life, her family or anything else.  Ever.   Then we have hockey.  This is not as refined I have discovered over the past 10 years.  Amazingly girls hockey seems to be the bigger problem here.  I see Nic play many schools and naturally there are the jibes and less polite comments but when the girls play ?  Sjoe!!  Now my...

Today it has been a bit like the Gautrain station in my office.  I am not in office every day, trying to schedule all my out of office appointments on the same day, but when I do get here, one of the joys of working where I do, at a residential home for mentally disabled adult ladies as well as ladies and men who attend on a daily basis,  is that the residents and day workers greet me with something akin to a major celebrity arriving.  They are always so glad to see the staff and very often to them yesterday feels as long as a month ago.  First a gaggle of ladies arrived in dribs and drabs in my office.  Each one wants a hug, each one wants me to tell them how much I missed them ... now when I arrive you will hear me shouting "hello all my aunties" as I pass them and I have varying terms of endearment from sweetheart to my love for each one of them.  One lady wanted to tell me about her sore finger, several wanted to remind me they love me.  A coupl...

Ok well I am definitely sure what defines Karin.  This week I received 3 mails from readers in New Zealand, Canada and Germany .... All coincidently asking the same question .... We read your blog faithfully and know so much about your life (I initially wrote for Sarie magazine blog page and then for Women24 blog page, hence the title of my blog ... Which basically means That's Life and tells everyday tales that many readers relate and respond to) but we want to know more about you ... The person behind the blog.  So here are some pretty simple facts about me (my friends would have been able to draw up this list and Elm would have written exactly what is below) ....... I am a cappuccino-holic and probably drink 60% of the coffee in SA.  The school Headmaster says he has never seen anyone with such a capacity for coffee. I am also a perfume and heels kinda girl ..... My colleagues can never understand how I walk 12 hours a day in the heels and I have a tin in which I...

So yesterday Nic turned 14.  We literally celebrated for the full 24 hours ... he and I were watching a movie when midnight came around so I could wish him in the first minute, and when I went into his room just before midnight last night to check that he had plugged his phone in, he mumbled "thanks for a wonderful birthday mom", so we really used every second.   Now we did all the singing early in the morning with us all jumping on his bed with presents and dogs .... the whole enchilada .... then dashed off to have brekki at Wimpy with 7 friends and family ..... all the usual stuff ..... mixed in with 3 hours of soccer @ CBC with his dad and 4 other friends .... heaven for Nic.  Now all that was fine.  His BBM messages came in thick and fast for his birthday ... at one stage he had several dozen waiting to be read.  Great.  Then the 5 doz Facebook messages kicked in ..... and I perused the page as many of my friends and our family wrote on there. ...

OK, so every now and then I come across a few ridiculous - add no value to your life - facts .......  A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out A shrimp's heart is in its head  A pregnant goldfish is called a twit (I called someone at work a twit last week) Horses cannot vomit Like fingerprints, everyone's tongue print is different (how often have you been asked to give a tongue print?) Turtles can breathe through their butts  No word in the English language rhymes with MONTH (ok I don't feel like sitting here and testing this one .... if you find a word put it in my comment box pls) The longest word in the English language, recognized by Oxford, is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis  (try saying that after a few cocktails) The letters KGB stand for  Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti Some lions mate over 50 times a day (not sure whether that is enviable or not) and on a personal note My son still does not understand after 14 ...