c'est la vie

Today I went to buy my son 5 items of school clothing / bag.  I left the store having parted with R1100. For this I had 2 thin navy blue golf shirts with a simple gold badge on, 2 plain navy sports shorts with a drawstring and a sports bag.  The sports bag literally was the cheapest item ..... because golf shirts with badges cost R236.  Each. I was left reeling.  We were fortunate enough to have family who helped buy all the other items that were badly needed for school this year. But as I left the shop I was wondering and worrying about all those people who cannot afford this, who maybe don't have someone to help them buy the clothing.  White shirts and grey pants are still ok, but the branded school items like jerseys, sports kit, caps, socks, blazers and on and on .... are across the board ..... expensive for all schools.  I still battle to understand how a navy blue golf shirt becomes R200+ because of a badge. The school supplier was very busy a...

It has been an interesting past 7 days for a number of reasons.   I came back to work ..... to my office which I love .... my very very hot office and to my great friends who work along the passage adjacent to my office.   My daughter finally seems to be settling down a bit in her 5 month stay in CT and is getting used to the crazy hours of her training there.  My son seems to be growing taller before my eyes and I am already wondering if the new blazer my parents so generously bought is going to cover his wrists until the end of Gr 11 ..... which is the plan.  I have also spent some real quality time with him both on Friday and Sunday night and he never ceases to amaze me with his depth of knowledge and maturity.  And we share a crazy sense of humour.   I then made an appointment with a friend for a chat on Friday.  A knowledgeable friend, a religious friend and one with a depth of conversation that brought me close to tears.  Sometim...

I love this time of day in my office.  By 630 pm the sun is just just peeping at us before it sinks below the horizon, the intolerable heat of the past few days .... in fact past month, has subsided to something more manageable, it is already necessary to put on my office light, but sometimes the absolute quiet and serenity of my office at this time draws me to simply be present here. Today someone came past and lent me something to read.  In a free moment I was glancing through it when my eye caught something ..... so tonight my blog comes courtesy of Oriah Mountain Dreamer's wisdom, taken from a section of her book "The Dance" entitled "Out of Step": "In my humanness I forget that who I am IS enough, especially when I am hurt or afraid of being unloved by someone.  Immersed in the pain and fear that are part of this forgetting, I sometimes hurt another.  Yet even this failure, for which I am responsible, calls me to hold myself within my innately comp...

Today the Matric results were released.  All over 1000's of either eager or seriously worried teenagers could be found queueing outside newspaper offices or hunched over newspapers at street sellers at the crack of dawn .... hunting for their number. I wondered what would happen if you opened the newspaper today and realised that this year the results in there were published under each school's name .... with the results reflecting only the matriculants' exam number and their results.  What a bugger up if you had already forgotten your number ....  Facebook was soon flooded with hundreds of messages of congratulations and photos of excited kids, kids & parents or just verses and such.  You can feel their joy.  And then again there are the photos of those who have really excelled and roped in distinctions .... up to 10 (yo .... did they never go out?).  At the school were my kids go/went .... there is a girl with 8 .... a bright, friendly, lovely gir...

We spent New Year's Eve at home.  Something I cannot ever remember having done.  In shorts, with my hubby, my son and his friend, we lounged around and had the most low-key, quiet evening that the 31st has ever produced.  I reminded the 15 year olds that no-one ever said that you cannot eat your cake before dinner, especially on New Year, so I made a red velvet cake with butter icing and decorated with jelly gummy bears (my chef daughter must be cringing) and we tucked into that at about 730 pm.  It got good feedback.   We then decided that we would, like good law abiding citizens, go and light some of our sky lanterns in a nearby open park, to be safe.  We got as far as the driveway.  The amount of lightning convinced us that we do not want to be in the park, having lightning bounce off the merry-go-round and frazzle us .... especially since without our beloved Beci, and the constant rain, our laundry is a tad in arrears .... did not want to end u...