I stumbled across a blog this week that got me thinking. The author (I’m not going to link to it - makes me feel a bit icky – but lets call her the other woman (TOW)) is a self confessed wrecker of homes. That sounds harsh but if her blog is an accurate reflection on her habits, she has no issues about having affairs with married men (with or without children) and seems to actively seek them out.

More alarming is the number of people she refers to in her tales that do the same. Men with multiple affairs going at the same time, women who date more than one married man at a time, and all with no show of shame.

And so much scorn for the wives of the cheating partners! What evil witches they are: trapping their husbands in lifeless, loveless, sexless marriages, getting fat and or pregnant, stupid if they don’t realise their husband is having an affair, spineless if they choose not to leave him for it.

TOW is a great writer and I’m oddly fascinated with reading her blog in the same way that people slow down for car wrecks, but at the same time it makes me queasy to read her content.

TOW and her commentors rarely consider the cheating wife with the loyal husband back home,  and she seems to think that all cheated woman have done something to cause their husbands to stray, which are two aspects that spoil her well worded arguments, but she did get me thinking.

Is the institution of marriage so unsacred these days that people actually view it with contempt? It’s mind boggling to me that something so precious to me might seem to others to be akin to our old Apartheid regime: Ill conceived and designed to trap innocent people into lives of misery.

I’m appealing to my readers (google analytics tells me that I do have some!) to let me know your thoughts on marriage / life-long monogamous relationships. Is this where you find true contentment with another person, or is this something so totally impossible that we should just bin the whole idea?

I found the song (and rather weird video) on youtube, I hope I manage to include it correctly here, otherwise you can check it out at this link

So I updated my facebook question today. I didn’t like their selections, so I thought I’d make one up myself. The first thing to pop into my head was “If you were a kitchen utensil, which utensil would you be?” I’ll give you some hints: Meat mallet – because I’m always beating on everybody; Spatula because I’m always the one trying to get the most out of a situation; Cleaver – I cause division everywhere I go. Yeah… not that great, so I went with the second candidate: What’s your favorite childhood memory?

Mine is of my dad swinging my sister and I around on his arms. My dad’s a builder (an honest one – they do exist) and when he got home in the evenings my sister & I used to run down to his workshop to greet him, he’d usually meet us halfway there. We’d each grab an arm and he’d spin us around in circles with our feet off the ground.

I remember thinking that I must have the strongest dad in the world.  I also remember being jealous of my sister if she got there first and got an extra swing, and I’m sure she felt the same if I beat her out the door. Silly really.

I suppose some folks would feel bad for my dad not having a son, and while he did and still does have a wealth of ‘boy’ knowledge to share, he never made us feel that we were any less than he could have wanted. He did however do his best to teach us some mechanics. Some of  that has stayed with me, I’m happy to admit.

He phoned me today to tell me that pending some blood test results on Thursday, he’s got the all clear from his doctor for the bladder cancer he was diagnosed with 2 years ago. Spare a prayer for us that the test results come back good …

Sorry about the grainy texture of the photos, they were taken at night with a cellphone camera. Not great quality, but you get the picture

The lime green room. The bedspread doesn’t really suit anymore, but what can you do?

Main bedroom complete with romantic lighting … Very caramel, but very sleepable.

Not painted recently, but this is the orange room, and still my favorite methinks. I like orange …

I tried to get snaps of the mud-paint pots, but it’s a bit dark out and they didn’t come out at all nice. Will try in daylight sometime …

Despite having precious little leave available to me I took Friday of work and had myself a nice long weekend. We were supposed to be taking a bike trip somewhere, but being as I don’t have my bike back … But that’s another story, most likely to be told on Tuesday when I do finally have my bike back. Hopefully.

Instead we stayed around home and did some home improvementy-type-stuff. It’s rewarding, the main bedroom and pots look great, and the garden looks a little better for the tidy-up, but I did learn that I’m not cut out for a job of manual labour. Not right now anyways.

We went back the the fabulous mega Mica to shop for lighting stuff, took the room apart, Hunny did the rewiring and partial installation of the new lights and I went horse-riding (two horses) on Thusday. Friday we masking taped and painted the walls (Hunny does the big roller stuff, I do the fiddly little edges) , and I started ripping stuff out of the flowerbeds and hacking dead stuff off the plants pruning. Hunny then went to buy more supplies and harass the mechanic about my bike while I went to ride 2 horses again. Finished the pruning when I got back, and heard the good news that my bike should be done by my birthday.

We’re having a rather large gathering around next Saturday in way of celebrating my birthday, and I will phone everyone up and cancel if the bike isn’t in the garage by next weekend. I’m not in the mood to hear 20 different folks ask me where my bike is, and if it’s back from the shop yet, but I digress again.

Saturday Hunny painted the ceiling while I set about washing and ironing curtains. This doesn’t sound like such a bad task until you have tried to iron these curtains. They never really release their creases. Takes roughly 45 minutes a curtain to get a semblance of smooth. I’m told it’d be easier if we tumble-dried them, but in Sunny SA we saw no need for a tumble drier, until the curtains that is.

I also cleaned and mud-painted 3 plant pots we had been given (they were an awful shade of green). Mud paint is one of the coolest inventions, and the results are a huge improvement. I’ll post pics once I’ve planted something in them.

We finally got the curtains re-hung at around 7PM and we were so dead tired by then. Put the room back together and slept in the comfy bed again. The spare room bed is a little like sleeping on concrete. With it’s pretty brushed stainless steel recessed down lights, toffee colour walls and matching ceiling (only a few shades lighter) and white cornices it looks very pretty. Not exceptionally exciting, but like a good place to sleep. Oh! and Hunny installed a dimmer switch, very romantic Photo’s tomorrow, I promise!

On Sunday we rested, as far as gyming for Hunny and horse-riding for me constitutes rest.  I also finished reading “Spud – The Madness Continues…” by John van de Ruit. A fitting sequel to “Spud” and so much funnier because it’s about a South African school experience, and you feel privy to an experience that only a South African can fully grasp. Great stuff!

Gonna go and soak some Gauteng dust from my weary self, have a great week all!

Apparently you can.

I first noticed my left eye didn’t see as well as my right in high school. Std 8 Science, copying down transparencies from the back row. It didn’t bother me much, and it was several years later before I decided to do something about it and get some glasses. I enjoyed having glasses at first. But the more I used them and the more dependant I became on them, the less I liked the idea that I’d be doing so for the rest of my life.

I am short sighted with mild astigmatism in my left eye. Or so I thought. A few years back I began contemplating LASIK surgery. It was out of my reach financially at that time, but I thought I’d get it done one day …

A few months back when my Hubby & I were discussing finances he suggested that it was about time I found out if I was a suitable candidate, and I duly made a booking (more than a month in advance) for this morning. I tried ever so hard not to get my hopes up, but so many of my friends had told me what great successes their operations were and how happy they were that they’d had it done. I found myself imagining what it would be like to read the DTSV blurb from the couch without my glasses and other small things.

This morning I discovered that my corneas are too thin for LASIK  surgery, and worse. I don’t have a mild astigmatism, I have this. Sorry if the pictures are a bit grim. Eye pictures usually are aren’t they? I’m not a severe case, but the fact remains that you can’t fix it. In fact, it’s quite likely to get worse.

Deep down I probably always believed that my eyes could be fixed. Surely they could, they’re not even that bad to start with. Now I sit here with pupils that are dilated from the drops they put in them, and my head hurts from the dilated pupils in an office full of computer screens and florescent lighting, and my hope is gone.

Yes I have glasses and contacts, but I will never wake up in the morning with 20/20 vision, and I will never go to bed with it.

Excuse me while I sulk about that.

Seems the good habits are really easy to break. If I skip a couple of days blogging it’s easy to miss whole weeks. Getting my google analytics report in those weeks is a bit sad.

So what’s been up in the world of Alex? Well, my car broke. I have probably the worst car Karma of anyone I know. Don’t ever lend me your car, I’ll break it. But hey, it’s all fixed now, so we shall move on and pretend like that didn’t happen.

I rode a bull. I haven’t told my horse in case he gets jealous. Each month the new recruits at my place of work have to throw some sort of party for the company to introduce themselves. The last bunch were pretty creative with a cowboy theme complete with Mechanical bull. Figuring that an opportunity like that doesn’t coma around too often I just had to try it, and it was great fun. It’s surrounded by an inflated jumping castle type thingy, so you can’t hurt yourself falling off, which was pretty cool.

There was no official time limit and no competition, and the dude operating the controls was quite sweet about starting you off slowly. If you showed any talent at actually staying on, he cranked it up a bit. That said, I think I faired pretty well. On my second attempt I stayed on for a full minute and 6 seconds! Whooohoo! and did the most graceful dismount of the evening, landing on my feet.

There are photo’s which I may or may not publish. Haven’t decided yet.

Hunny & I made a pretty cool discovery yesterday. Cedar Square shopping center. If you live around Fourways this probably won’t be news to you. More to the point, the Mica superstore there is the coolest one ever. It has a similar range to Builders Warehouse (complete with fairly large gardening section) but about double the floorspace of your average Builders. Way cool, could have wandering around there for ages if the mucus in my sinuses was weighing me down (Yeah, friggin sick again – first time ever I think I’ve had two colds in one winter and it really sucks, or blows. Except it doesn’t actually blow, it just sits there going green and refusing to be blown out).

We got some cool lime green paint for the spare bedroom, and some more sedate “Labrador sands 3″ – it’s a stone colour – for the main bedroom. Did the spare room today, looks really great. Will do the main bedroom this weekend and them we’ll be sorted. No more white walls in the house. We like colour, every room will be a different colour. Mushroom kitchen, Avo green Family room & half dining area, Pale Yellow passage, Orange Study and Lime spare room so far. The passage used to look pretty bright until you saw it leading into the lime green room. Now it looks pretty pale. All the colour will probably detract future buyers, but we’re not looking to sell anytime soon, so I’m not bothered.

Cheers all, and (all SA readers) have a great Woman’s day on Thursday.