A certain melancholy

Today I feel the hamster in the wheel so acutely. Running and running in circles. Living a life of…what? Futility? Being alive because I am not dead?

Maybe I just worked too hard this week. Maybe it was the Women in Mining Conference. Facing the hard facts again of the inherent risks associated with mining, men and women working underground in very harsh conditions. Both sexes preferring that to the alternative. However, women are literally carving a way into this environment because it is better than subjecting themselves to their traditional roles in the villages.

Or maybe it is none of that and it is the insecurity and fear of building a business and a brand in this industry. Becoming more and more visible whilst I would really prefer to hide somewhere on a beach, ride a horse and have somebody else take care of the world.

Or maybe it is just that we are walking such a fine line every day. Between happy and sad, alive and dead, fulfilled and frustrated, confident and scared, loved and rejected, successful and forgotten

It must be PMS

You can cut it

My nerves are finished! on Wednesday we should know whether we will call this place home
I know it does not look like too much right now, but it is all about position, position, position and not to forget about the endless open spaces that will surround us

Oh the headrush

I am giddy with success!
My to do list is done

Oh the relief, I have not felt it in months

Boiling over

The Love Child saga in South Africa has to make one stop and think about the state of affairs in our fair country. A country that generally tries very hard to achieve some form of legitimacy as a world player and in doing so convince the developed world that we are not just the most southern part of a large crime ridden and dark continent.

The hope given to our rainbow nation by Madiba - viewed as the father of peace by many, are being trodden to pieces by JZ, the father of many. It still irks me that a president can be voted in by just over 4000 people in a country with a population of over 48 million. How will democracy ever be realised here? How will we ever hold our government responsible for their actions if they are only concerned with keeping their electorate happy? An electorate constituting of poverty stricken rural people that still view the ANC as their redemption and refer to their president as 'father?' There is no sense anywhere that interest and focus should go to some form of true leadership and development of the country - not economically, politically or even in terms of education, infrastructure, health, the list can continue ad infinitum.

I wonder how much longer it will take the current government to reward all their freedom fighters and whether it is possible that, when that is done, somebody will have the guts to stand up and say - Enough of this, fatcats, lets get our hands dirty and build this country up, from the soil, one brick at a time, regardless of whether we will personally benefit from it or not.

Curious kid

My kid's questions drive me around the bend. Much as I enjoy the conversations with him and am fascinated with the kind of things he asks about, I just don't have any answers for him. Half the time I feel like telling him, baby mommy really dont know, and I dont even know if anyone can tell us more. Some of the latest questions

Mom, how did the first person get born, before there where anybody to birth them? (Now I know there are a whole lot of thoughts out there on how this happened, but do we really know?)

What is space? I know it is where the stars and the planets are, but what is it?

If the wind had to blow you where there is no gravity, will you blow away? (And I am wondering if there can even be wind where there is no gravity?)

His latest favourite thing in the house is the Oxford dictionary - oh how he loves the sound of words and what they mean, we can read the dictionary and tell stories about the words we find until we roll on the floor laughing. Invariably his stories will be full of potty humour and fantastic super feats but it is hillarious what he can do to serious words like - necessary and deportee

Big school

We are nearly to the first mid term break and now only do I post the pictures I took of Elrich's books we had to cover for Grade R. Marking his entry into slightly more formalised schooling.

He is a die hard Bakugan fan


Can I say that I cried to think my little baby is so grown up, that time flies so quickly? Nope, I am afraid, those were not the sentimental thoughts that occupied my mind as I struggled with the paper and the cellotape. Not at all. I was thinking about the long hard slog ahead of my kid, the many many more books we are going to have to cover in the years to come. I remembered the conversations I had with my mom as she covered my books - in a very demure, brown paperbag kind of way.

My kid got bored with the task at hand long before I was done and I had to fight my way through with sticky cellotape fingers, book covers pulling in opposite directions and that tricky bits where you tried to flatten the paper with one finger, whilst holding the back of the book up with your chin and sticking the proper bits down with your pinky. In the end, the job got done and E could be send of to school with halfway cool books to help him on his way in this quest for knowledge