When I was just a little baby my sister would stare at me in my crib until I cried.
When I was three years old, and my sister was six, she gave me a haircut. She also gave my dolls haircuts.
We fought often: she always won. She fought dirty: biting, kicking, pulling hair and pinching, whatever would give her the upper hand.
We shared a room as children and she’d always insist on total darkness at bedtime, even though she knew I was afraid of the dark
When she learnt how to French plait hair, she would teach anyone else who asked except me.
We attended the same high school for 5 years. In that time she barely said 20 words to me. We never played or socialized together at all if we could help it.
Once when I accidentally bumped her and caused her to spill her cup of cocoa, she poured the whole cup on me.

I thought I’d always hate my sister as much as I did back then, which is why is still surprises me just how close we have become now. I’m sure I did and said things that hurt her too, but I wasn’t very good at seeing things from any perspective but my own back then.

As chance would have it, we ended up studying the same course at the same time when we started our tertiary studies. We drove together to save on petrol. Mutual introversion banded us together in the early days, and as a result we ended up in the same friend group. Convenience resulted in us doing our major projects together.

Six years later we work at the same company – Sis submitted my CV here when I was thoroughly fed up of my old job. We live in the same neighborhood: it fitted into the required price range and was suitably close to my parent’s house, as we both go there several times a week to ride our respective horses. These days we may even share a horse on occasion, my sister doing the dressage training and me the jumping training, something totally unheard of in the past.

We’re both quite private people (say I, broadcasting it to the world on a blog!) who don’t volunteer much about what’s affecting or upsetting us when the hurt is deep. You need to know us well before we’ll tell you what’s really going on, and even then, you need to know that what we might mention in passing is a huge hurt in our lives. So when my sister mentioned a few months ago a certain difficulty she’s been going through for a while, I knew it was no small thing.

I’m amazed at how much I feel for her in this time, there is nothing much that I can do but be there for her while she acts all strong, and it breaks me apart that I can’t do more for her. To my sis: who would have thought we’d ever become so close? I love you and I’m praying that everything works out for you, and soon.

Is it my left side with the droopy eyelid, or my right side with the sticky out ear? Actually, I’m referring to my competitive nature…

Back when we were cutesy and dating Hunny and I played some playstation games together: golf, worms: non-combat type things. I’d start out okay but then I’d quickly get frustrated at my inability to master the controllers, annoyed at loosing all the time. Hunny has been playing PC and playstation games for years, obviously he’ll be better at this than me (not even counting in that he’s naturally gifted at just about everything!), but after a hour or so I was so wound up and irritated that we’d stop playing.

I was naive enough to think that the Wii would be a leveler. New platform, different and more intuitive controllers, we’d be starting from the same base so perhaps my natural talents (haven’t found them yet!) would finally start to show themselves and I could win something for a change. Not so. I spent 4 hours on Tuesday honing my skills on my own, but two sets into our first game of Tennis later that evening and he’s thrashing me all over again. He hits harder, learns quicker, reacts faster and my poor little Mii is eating his Mii’s dust

That brings on my sulks all over again. This should be something we can do together, but I just don’t handle constantly loosing very well. What do I do? Make Hunny play left handed so I can win? There’s no victory in that either … *sigh* Any suggestions?

Still on the subject of the Wii, Hunny has our households first Wiinjury (Wii injury). His shoulder is “a bit funky” this morning, he thinks from playing baseball on the Wii. Actually, there might be an angle there. If he gets a few more injuries maybe I’ll get the upper hand

And still on the subject of my Hunny: Happy Wellingtons day my lovely husband. You’re still my best Wellington ever.

I think that’s a viable headline, don’t you?

The phones are driving me crazy today. It seems to me that half the people in my office are away from their desks at any given point in time today. Coincidentally it’s the same half of the people that are getting mutiple phone calls each during that time. Few things bug me more than incessantly ringing phones. It brings out a pathological rage in me that I can barely control, I think it’s a throwback to my days on the switchboard.

It doesn’t help that our phones here don’t have an automatic answering service on them, so if someone dialed in directly (ie, not through switchboard) they’ll ring forever. I try to ignore if for a bit, then just when my frustration reaches it’s peak (as my face starts turning crimson and moments before I throttle someone) I walk the full length of the office to answer the offending phone. Past several other people who are closer and could have answered that instrument of the devil, but just as I get there it gives me one final taunt by stopping ringing!

Or scenario two - nearly as bad: I get there in the nick of time, answer it almost begging the person to leave a message and the caller, thinking they are doing me a favour, says “Oh don’t worry, I’ll try her later”. I’m sure you will! And no doubt she won’t at her desk then either!

The only thing worse than the two above scenarios is when I have just gotten back to my desk after missing / answering the phone and that person’s cellphone starts to ring, sitting pretty next to their portal to hell desk phone… Makes me want to fetch said cellphone, find its owner and beat their head in with it.

*deep breaths*

Okay, I admit I’m having a particularly raw day today. You know the kind of day when everything seems to get on your nerves? My skin itches from the inside, my legs feel like they are burning and even neighboring cubicle conversations rub on my exposed brain nerves.

Perhaps I should just go home and play some Wii… yeah, that’s the ticket

I have the best Hunny in the whole wide world!

We visited family who own a Wii on the weekend, (Hunny got his ass whipped by his 5 year old nephew and it was just the coolest thing ever. I played one game of tennis and I was hooked. It’s the most cheerful interface I’ve ever seen. You create you little Mii character, and he dances around and gets all happy when you win: too cute.

Anyways, yesterday afternoon Hunny went out and bought me one! I love this guy! Played for about 4 hours last night, and by an amazing stroke of luck I had leave booked for today anyways (get some of the things done that are queuing up on my to do list) so guess what I’ve been doing all morning? Love it love it love it! Not sure so much of that list is going to get done today, but I really do have to go and pick up my bank card: my old one expired at the end of January…

Oh, and on a side note, I got my Google Analytics stats this morning, I have 8 click-throughs from blogspace.mweb.co.za, but I don’t know whos blog it’s from. If you are one of the folks who has been referred from mweb blogs please leave a comment and let me know how you found me? Just curious is all, all traffic is good traffic

One more thing, I didn’t give link credit to my friend who took the bike-jacket photo’s on Friday, that was Black Macros. For some deep thinking and a side of humor go pay him a visit.

Gotta go do some wii-boxing now, cheers!
 

*Alex enters to drum rolls, thunderous applause and whistles*

I did it! I rode my bike to work! Ha ha, and you thought I was gonna say I’d completed my 30-in-30

Well, actually I’ve done both today, but lets start with the bike:

I have ridden my bike to work only once before, more than a year ago when I was young and naive. I hate hate hate town traffic. Cars all around me, traffic light and stop streets, it freaks me out. Almost as much as my fear of stalling my bike across an intersection. In fact, I think I’m more afraid of looking like an idiot on a bike than I am of someone actually driving onto me. Today vanity and pride won over those fears. I think I mentioned my new biking jacket? The one Hunny got me for Christmas that arrived end Jan. I just had to show it to the folks at work, but there was no ways I was going to drive it to work in my car, especially after all the flack I got last year for being the biker chick without a bike. So this morning I put on my new jacket and my big girl panties, hoped on my bike and rode to work (Safely accompanied by mother hen aka Hunny)

Whoohoo! This is big progress from me. A friend at work took these pics…

From the front: my butch pose

and from the back:

   
If you’ve been counting (I have!) today I officially complete my 30-in-30! There are 31 tags, but that’s because I posted twice in on day (can you imagine that?!) I promise not to disappear totally from the blogsphere just because I’m done with the challenge, but I am taking this weekend off.

Right back at the beginning of the challenge you might remember me saying that it’s hard for me to form habits. Well, I proved that to myself with this. At around 28 days I very nearly forgot to post. It slipped my mind for most of the day. If 27 days isn’t long enough to create a habit, then what is? Good thing I like my electric toothbrush so much or who knows what’d happen.

On a related note, I have found my next challenge: http://www.nanowrimo.org/

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Yeah, it’s more than 8 months away, but who’s going to do this with me? Common guys, it’ll be great! Go sign up! I always wanted to write a novel, this may actually get me started. I mean, if I can blog for 30 days straight, I’m halfway there, right?

 I came across this meme this morning, it’s quite fun.

Directions:
1. Put your iTunes, Windows Media Player, iPod etc. on shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. You MUST write THAT song name down no matter how silly it sounds (I’ve included the artists in brackets)

===================================================

1. IF SOMEONE SAYS “IS THIS OKAY?” YOU SAY? Clint Eastwood (Gorillaz)
2. HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOURSELF?  Take the Power Back (Rage against the machine)
3. WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?  Radio Nowhere (Bruce Springsteen)
4. HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?  Sugarman (Rodriguez)
5. WHAT IS YOUR LIFE’S PURPOSE?  What it’s like (Everlast)
6. WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?  I think I’m paranoid (Garbage)
7. WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?  Misery Business (Paramore)
8. WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?  Bonedriven (Bush)
9. WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?  Hanging with the clowns (Racoon)
10. WHAT IS 2 + 2?  The Art of Self Destruction (ATFN)
11. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR EX?  Put the needle on it (Danni Minogue)
12. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?  Almost easy (Avenged Sevenfold)
13. WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?  Gigantic (Pixies)
14. WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?  9 Crimes (Damien Rice)
15. WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?  Amerika (Rammstein)
16. WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?  Baby (Serj Tankian)
17. WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?  Erase/Replace (Foo Fighters)
18. WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST FEAR?  Flames go higher (Eagles of Death Metal)
19. WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?  Pure Morning (Placebo)
20. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?  Falling Away (Good Charlotte)

Now press “next” one more time and use it as your title.

Okay, so that was fun. I think my current playlist was way to broad to give an accurate reflection of my tastes. One song in there I don’t even know. I usually refine my playlists more to my mood, but I’ve been lazy recently, and just dumped my whole collection in there. SO while that probably is a reflection of my tastes, it’s not a reflection of my favorites

I love my music, most of my life is conducted to a soundtrack. I wish I was more skilled / creative in that regard, but the only tune I’ve ever been able to ‘play’ is “mary had a little lamb” on a telephone keypad. I remember crank calling when I was a teenager with a friend of mine. We came across an answering machine at one number. We phoned around 15 times in succession and played “mary had a little lamb” to the answering machine. Such rebels we were.

If you were wondering, you need a tone phone, and use the keys as follows
3-2-1-2-3-3-3  2-2-2  3-3-3. 3-2-1-2-3-3-3 3-2-3-2-1. Try it.

I was in standard 8 (around 16) when my mom suggested I dye my hair. Well actually she said “Your hair colour is rather boring, there is half a tube of hair dye in the bathroom cabinet, why don’t you use it?” The tube was an auburn that ended up a bit pinkish, but even some of my teachers said it looked great, so my mom was probably right.
 
That started my lifelong hair dying experience. I don’t think I’ve kept my natural colour form more than a couple of months since then. It ended up getting me into plenty of trouble at school. Funny that SA teachers don’t like purple hair on their students. How was I to know that cheap raven black dye comes out a kind of gentian violet purple?

Red’s, Oranges, purples and blacks were my colours of choice. I have relatively dark hair so dying it lighter was always a problem. I did try to go blonde once. I spent 3 hours of torture under one of those drier thingies with peroxide eating away at my scalp, only to end up a vivid orange.

I’m 28 now. I have seen my natural colour only twice since I was 16. Both times I near-shaved my head to find that natural colour. Both times I discovered that it hadn’t changed much *a dirty looking mouse brown* and both times I dyed it again shortly after. Thankfully my hair is incredibly resilient. 12 years of dye and I still looks and feels very healthy.

The thing about dying your hair though is that’s so expensive and it requires constant upkeep to keep those roots hidden. I have a lovely hairdresser, she’s not pushy about getting you to buy expensive products to use on your newly coloured hair, and she doesn’t charge a fortune. Still, I have recently found a shelf brand that gives me just about the same effect as going to the hairdresser at a third of the price. It’s a dark red with pale orange highlights I’ve gotten quite handy at dying my own hair, so the two-step highlighting process is no hassle for me.

I’ve had so many complements on my hair colour recently that I’m seriously considering taking Hunny’s advice to stop telling the complementing folks that it’s a cheap home box-job and just saying “Thanks”.

This is all good stuff, but I still need to get it cut… Which requires a trip to my kind hairdresser, and I feel guilty about that. I’m doing her out of business. My hair is now more than a month overdue for a cut. I’ve had both my sister and Hunny trim my ends to keep it from looking too ratty, but it really needs a proper cut now.

So what do I do? Find another hairdresser because I feel too bad about showing up at my usual hairdressers with my home job? Thereby doing her out of my business entirely? I really like Bronwen. Most hairdresser freak me out because they are too pushy, too chatty or oh so sensitive if you don’t like what they’ve just done to your hair. Bronwen is not like that. She listens to me and does what I ask. Hard to find in a hairdresser. I’ve been googling, but I don’t find much advice on how to let your hairdresser down easy. “Lets just be friends do cuts from now on?”

*sigh*

Triumph in the face of adversity

Two summers ago I planted some of these little seedlings in some pots near my front door. They only last a season but they seed enough to grow fresh ones the following year. I haven’t planted any more since that first year and I cleaned out the pots over that winter, but two years later these little things still sprout up between the cracks of the paving.

What a way to start my week

Set the scene: My car is parked in the garage, Hunnys car sleeps in our visitors parking bay because the bikes take up the other spot in the garage. Our garage has a switch which disables the remotes from working on the electric doors. Not what you want in the daytime because you wouldn’t be able to open the doors from the outside, but it locks the garage up nice and tight at night. We also have a door leading into the kitchen from the garage.

Hunny left for work before me yesterday morning, as most mornings, so when I realized that I couldn’t find my keys he was already at his desk and starting his day. I turned the house upside down searching for my keys, everywhere that I could look which was the whole house except for the garage. My kitchen-garage door key is on the missing set of keys, and because Hunnys car doesn’t sleep in the garage, he doesn’t go in there in the mornings, so that door was still locked. The only place the keys could be was inside the garage, and I couldn’t get in there for that exact reason!

I sheepishly emailed my manager and asked if I could work from home, as I suspected I had locked my keys in the garage so it was holding my car hostage. Doh!

My guess was right though. When Hunny got home in the afternoon and I got into the garage with his keys, this is where I found them.

(Yeah, hanging onto the keyhole, out the way of Hunny locking up the house with his keys last night! Sneaky buggers)

By the way, I was going to post this yesterday, but I couldn’t because I’d left my phone-to-pc cable at work over the weekend – the one I need to get the pics off  – and of course I didn’t go in to work yesterday!

I think I’m reading too many crime novels. Last night I dreamt that I solved the murder of two young newly weds. It was a very sad tale how they were drowned in a drainage damn. Hunny and I were traveling in the area, and as we passed the damn I had a vision of their murder. I was then able to tell this to the cops and they arrested the teenage murderer. That’s me, dreams and visions

I do think it’s related to the 7 crime novels I have read over the last 2 months. The problem is that I’m so determined for instant entertainment these days that I can’t take the time to get into something a little more intricate and slower moving. I have chopped most of my entertainment down into bite size chucks. I have this vague feeling that 1 full hour TV show is to much time to dedicate to one story. Give me two half hour stories instead, then I can fill my head with twice as much junk in the same amount of time.

It seems I’m winding my whole life up to this pace. Everything must happen quicker. Dinner at a restaurant takes half an hour these days, home cooking is chosen at the fastest to prepare option and I’ve even taking to showering instead of a relaxing bath. What happened? I really need to slow down a bit before I totally ruin out of energy. I’m quite sure I’m not producing that at a faster rate.

And it’s already February! What’s going on here? Did God flick the fast forward switch?!

He does something to completely redeem himself. If you haven’t read my last two posts about my horse, Dartmoor, you should. It gives some perspective to this post.

I’m been pulling my hair about my horse for the last week. Over the course of 5 days he went from his usual state of partially freaked out into total freak-out overdrive mode. He was almost unworkable, I had to spend 70% of our sessions just trying to get him to calm down enough so we could continue with what we were actually supposed to be doing. I was close to the end of my tether, contemplating giving him 6 months off just so I could have a break from him.

Then today I took him to a three-phase event. It’s not his forte: he’s usually two tense for the dressage phase and the cross country really rattles his brain cell. He’s a definite ‘look-before-you-leap type, and cross country requires a brave horse that’s willing to do things like plunge into water without knowing how deep it might be or jump off a bank without being able to see the landing until the last stride.

Once a year I take him to one of these events because all the galloping across the countryside does make him a little braver when he gets to his usual competition style: show jumping. I also have a theory that it makes him grateful for the bigger but less scary looking jumps in the show-jumping ring.

Well today he totally outdid himself. We arrived late and unprepared: I’d left my boots at home. Hunny raced back home to fetch them for me while I completed a very hurried warm up. Hunny arrived back just in time for me to put my boots on and trot into the dressage arena. He stayed calm *very unusual for him* and did his best dressage test ever. The judge wrote on out comment sheet “What an obedient and willing horse” – that’s a first!

We went out into the country a penalty score of 43.6, lying in second place behind someone with a penalty score of 38, and with two score of 44 right behind me. We had a great cross country round, he started out good and just got better. He trotted straight into the two water complexes on the course, stayed focused and obedient into the skinny (narrow) jumps and really opened out his stride across the long distances between jumps. When I pulled up at the finish I know I was clear for jumping, but I didn’t know if I’d incurred any time penalties.

The third phase is show jumping – his forte – so I was pretty convinced he’d do okay at that, especially considering it was about half the height he normally jumps in dedicated show-jumping competitions. I learnt just before the show-jumping started that after the cross country points had been tallied we were in first place. We were inside the ideal time, so we got no time penalties, and the person who was beating me had a couple of stops in the country, incurring extra penalties.

After finding this out I was so nervous I could hardly bring myself to warm up! No worries, Dartmoor did his job and gave a lovely clear round. It was only afterwards that I learnt that the guy I had beaten into second was only 0.4 penalties behind me! But we won! Amazing! My timid little show-jumper won a three-phase event and totally redeemed himself.

I suppose the highs are as high as the lows are low. That’s my boy!

*okay, I’ll stop blogging about my horse now*