A cat-keeping, knitting, librarian spinster
A trendy account
A motorbike riding widow
A vet
A physiotherapist
Dead.

The librarian thing was taken in part from some movie I saw as a kid and part from the fact that I loved and still love libraries and books. I figured as a librarian I’d have access to all the books I could ever want, and what more would I need other than some cute kitties that play with balls of wool. I hate knitting though.

As a teenager I had a horse-riding instructor who was also an accountant. She was in her early twenties, and the accountant thing seemed to support her horse-riding perfectly. She was also trendy and drove my favorite car. Then she gave up the accountant drill to go full time into riding, training and instructing, and her finances never recovered. We parted company rather unpleasantly: I was a melodramatic teenager and she eventually gave up on my moodiness. Still, for the longest while I wanted to be just like her – in her accountant days. In essence I am: I have a mundane but lucrative day job that supports my horse-riding hobby, and I wonder sometimes if I should can the day-job and do some fulltime horsing, but I’ve seen how that can play out …

Not sure why or when the black widow thing came about, but I liked to picture myself in my late thirties – the widow aspect added an air of tragedy – with a killer bod, a black motorbike and lots of leather clothing … This one could still happen, but I really hope it doesn’t!!

Whenever I said I wanted to be a vet people would always assume I meant an equine vet. To the contrary, I’ve seen how a horse – hurt or not – can throw a grown male veterinarian around a stable, so I wanted to be a small animal vet with my own practice. Veterinary sciences (in fact all medical sciences, but especially veterinary) are difficult to get into to study here in SA, so I compromised and thought I’d become a physiotherapist instead.

My final matric results weren’t great though, so I was going to do a booster course before applying for physiotherapy, when a career guidance counselor sent me to an industrial psychologist who said I also had an aptitude for computers. That was news to me: all I’d done with a PC to that point was play solitaire. But I saw the gap to earning a good enough salary with flexible enough hours to support my horsing, so I took it and here I am today a programmer…

As for the dead thing: at a very young an impressionable age I heard a woman describing hell, as she had been there (don’t laugh! Like I said, I was young an impressionable) and she said that there was nobody in hell under the age of 21. “Great!” I thought, “I’ve found a sure-fire way into heaven!” I just need to make sure I die before I turn 21. That was a dilemma in itself, because I firmly believed that life only got good after age 21, but I was willing to make the sacrifice. Of course I know this is all hogwash now. If my addiction to the crime and investigation channel has proved anything to me it’s that evil shows itself at all ages, races and gender…

Here ends the brief insight into my warped mind.

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 …