My Year of Meaningful (2011)

Random funny sign photos:

Vultures Rugby game photos:


We picked up Terry from the Block on the road on our way into town for the big Botswana vs. Mauritius game this saturesy. We asked him if he likes rugby and if he'd like to go with us. His eyes lit up like it was Christmas and he said yes, he would go. I said "do I have to ask your mom if you can go?" He said "no. she's out." I said "are you SURE?" he said "yep." (I have no idea how these things work. All I know is that if 2 childless 30yr olds that I never met before scooped up me when I was 12 and I didn't ask my mom's permission, there would've been murders and mayhem) and against my better responsibilty-judgement we went off and spent the day at the stadium with T from the B, and our main man Eric.

He was so delighted, he even described his day out with us as "wonderful". And naturally thanked us profusely for every coke and hotdog that we bought him. The boy is just plain adoreable.

Oh look. Speaking of my boy Eric. Single. Hot Motswana property up for grabs. I give my blessing to the highest bidder, ladies:













Now for a piece of history: the first digital photo Terry from the Block ever took (he apologizes for the blurry effect). He had never seen a digital camera before and was mezmerised for hours. I let him take photos of everything. Eventually he got the blurry-thing down:

....as you can see by this amazing photo he took of his favorite subject: the Botswana Police Force Marching Band:

















and our rugby heroes themselves: The Vultures.

...that the world hates the monkey:

I was checking out This website and got a good chuckle. Nice logo at the bottom of the page, there. I was just looking for a place to stay, and ended up getting a sweet dose of that political crap I try ever so hard to distance myself from. Oh well, it's not anything I wouldn't put up on my own website!!

On second thought, damn, don't they realize republicans are also rich platinum-credit-card-toting tourists??? HAHA!

let's have fun with spontaneous bullet points!
I'll see how many I can get in before MY BOSS (ahem!) kicks my ass and/or fires me.

• I need to drink MORE rooibos tea and LESS coffee. My 1-cup-per-day strategy lasted 2 days. Only bumped up to 2, but still, I dont like failing in my health regime.
• Speed dating has hit Gaborone. My friends are organizing it and I have not one single candidate that I can send on my behalf to donate to the ever-dried up dating pool of Gabz-city! Eric is too poor to buy a ticket (& will be in F'town anyway), Petra won't have any of it, and my yoga teacher is already going!
• 1 week til Alan-time!
• My husband is a slave driver, as a boss. As a husband he's such a sweet muffin.
• Speaking of muffins, I made lemon curd the other day. It was sensational. I am now officially the lemon curd queen. We put it in the batch of muffins that he made and it was a taste explosion!! Lemon curd muffins with vanilla yogurt on top. AAGHHH!!
• I'm now going to experiment with making LIME CURD. Maybe even then ORANGE CURD??!? WHAT WILL SHE THINK OF NEXT!?!??!
• I am just an outstanding cook when it comes to asian food and just making shit up. Honestly. I made an award-winning thai THING off the top of my head the other night and it wasn't the first time that's just happened out of nowhere. Really, I could be a prodigy.
• If I could do it all over again, I'd start up a cooking show, starring myself, and it would be called "Cooking for culinarily-challenged MEN". I got this idea from Mma Makutsi and her "Kalahari Typing School for Men" idea. Target a certain sex with your title and BOOM it's successful! It would be on the BBC Food channel, or Food Network or whatever. I would wear athletic gear, so as to make sure they were paying attention to technique and not boobs (as if i have boobs), and I would instruct them how to cook stuff.... very.... slowly. I would give good quality tips on general cooking shit, like what order to throw things into a wok (i.e. garlic/onion/chili first, THEN your meat and veg), basic principals you know? Rather than just race through a whole ginormous deluxe culinary feat in 20 minutes. I mean, get a clue, Food TV, guys can't keep up with that beef wellington you're making there in 15 minutes. "here's one i prepared earlier" my ass. Nigella and all her cleavage I mean COMA ON how are they supposed to pay attention to simple tricks like turning the heat off if your garlic is starting to stick to the pan, or prep all your chopped ingrediants BEFORE you turn on the heat?!?!?
• We took Terry from the block to a Botswana Vultures (national rugby team game). it was sensational.

As it stands, my grand scheme for a future 2 posts "of well-thought-out content" started today. I put like, a few sentences into a draft. Which means in the interim I can still write stream-of-consciousness CRAP until at least one of them is finished. Whew. It's going to be as random a collection of crap as humanly possible. Starting with........

....I called one of my best friends in the world, #1, on the phone yesterday for her bday. Our maid of honour in my wedding, my Wyoming sanity... the one that was always mistaken as my sister (except that would have made our "mother" retarded given that we have the same name. Derrrrrrrrr)

The freaky thing is that: for the first time since we met, we've let A YEAR AND A HALF slip between phone calls, letters, emails, all communications whatsoever. DOH! It wasnt due to a falling out or any weird vibe between us or anything like that. But the year before we left ireland she had her first baby and that kept her attention (as always) and I was planning a major life move and we're both just genuinely scatterbrained, busy people who aren't really that much into phone calls during a good year, yet alone an overly busy one. Regardless, we usually manage to squeeze in at least 5 or 6 solid hour-long talks on the phone per year. Just not the last one.

The good thing is that: as usual, it's like no time has passed between our last conversation. That'll be the way it is between us forever. That's why your best friends are who they are, blah blah blah, etc. etc. etc. I have a lot of friends like that and I consider myself blessed for this reason.

The F*CKING BIZARRE THING IS: In that down time between our last communication, she went and had an entire pregnancy and damn well had a whole 'nother baby!!!! I'm not freaked out about the baby part, as I always knew she wanted another one, but the fact that it's HER and it's not just that she's pregnant but she's actually HAD said baby and baby is over a month old... well that's just crazy!!

However, while I'm sure it would cause some people to question the depth of the actual friendship, to be honest that never even crossed my mind. I'm just mind boggled because I can't believe where 9 months of the gestation period has gone! Have we been "dark" for that long? Really? I know our friendship is what it is and time zones (Wyoming being probably THE MOST inconvenient time zone to try and do phone calls from Botswana with) just make normal friendship maintenance-thing a wee bit more complicated. That and the fact that #1 isn't a computer person (she's a working mother teacher) so there's no IM or emails or blogs to follow, for that matter. Our "thing" since we got separated by distance was always the phone. And she didn't even have my number here. And I got distracted. It just all got a little crazy there for about 18 months.

In other baby-related mumbo-jumbo (DAMMIT! i wanted this to be RANDOM!), I read an article that I really enjoyed today on msn as usual. I'm always an advocate for the childless woman, so of course I had to read this. OK it shares a lot of my own personal feelings, especially here in BW where culture dictates that if you don't have a kid or 2 by age 25 you're actually considered "irresponsible" and "destructive to society". But it wasn't THAT part of it that I really enjoyed (I'm actually quite enjoying the baby twins next door at the moment, so I'm not at the peak of my typical anti-babyness believe it or not). It was reading the PSYCHO comments at the end of the article where baby people vs. anti-baby-people go head to head dissing each other and slinging all kinds of personal attacks at one another about life choices, like sheer dickheads!! It was downright comical how mothers and non-mothers can actually just act like complete savages (dare I say "children") on this particular platform (article comments), each trying to defend themselves (why??!), as if this article was written about THEM, PERSONALLY, by lashing out at each other like total eejots!! DISCLAIMER: your own personal blogs are for unbridled lashing out. Not MSN article comments. IMHO. That's why we blog, isnt it. I mean, I really enjoy discussing this topic with level-headed mommy friends of mine on a normal day... I think it's a subject that gets tiptoed around all too easily, and dialogue is important (is that diplomacy I hear?) but this.... THIS is just madness! At first I was shocked, then I just laughed. Do people not have anything else to do???
(says the girl with the blog.... HAHA)

And in yet another incredible feat of non-randomness, I have to segue into something I've been thinking about ever since mi bella A. wrote a wee paragraph in one of her blogs last week about this whole Angelina Jolie-empathy-thing. Sometimes I give myself too much credit for thinking that I've considered things from all angles. Everyone knows I don't plan on having a kid until I'm good and ready (if that's even an option). So I purposefully try to troubleshoot the world of baby-havin' as thoroughly as possible. The concept of Empathy in child-rearing is something I never even considered. And how could I have not? I live in a country where 99% of children think that a "toy" is bits and pieces of wire and discarded aluminum cans fashioned together to make a "car" that they drag around by a piece of twine. There's no shelves, cupboards, etc to keep toys neatly stacked away in a bedroom... b/c there's no bedroom... hell, in most houses there is just... "room"! Nearly every child I will pass in public on a day to day basis will grow up thinking that a "dinner" means cornmeal-based porridge EVERY NIGHT and (if they're lucky) some sort of goat or other un-refrigerated meat. They're happy, smiling, positive, lovely children who go to BW public schools (one room, 75 kids, often no desks or chairs) and will get good educations from said BW public schools and have no more or less of a life than any of us privileged types. If anything I think they're happier and have the most amazing imaginations ever.

That said, I think of the OCEANS of empathy that people POUR out of their souls for our western kids and "hardships" that range from "oh but the poor thing doesnt LIKE broccoli" to "he'd just be devastated if I had to put him in time-out again".

I realize that the last paragraph is boarderline-mixing "empathy" and "sympathy"-- but I do know what it means (Not to be confused with compassion)... Actually, in one of Angelina's famous comments (cuz I googled it) she used the phrase "feel for"... whatever kid vs. whatever kid. So yeah, Empathy. It's all of a sudden turned into a very curious word for me. I even had this discussion with S-H next door (while holding one of the babies, naturally) and we ruminated over it for a long time (I dont think she ever considered it either). Side note: of course I got the whole "oh hell, at the end of the day you'll understand when....." DOH! I said "ok, maybe you're right... but will I EMPATHIZE!!!??? that is the question!!" heh heh heh

as usual, this post has gotten WAY too long.

The thing about blogging is that sometimes you come up with something you want to commit to writing, but then as soon as you log on it's like.... ehhhhh, too hard.

In fact there's a few topics that I wanted to beat out in words but just never get around to it. I've decided therefore, to try and make that "save draft" thingy work for me, and write them over time.

Now, just to force myself to do it (because when this wayward child puts something in writing, she damn well follows through with it), I will drop the following titles into print:

1. What it's like to work with your spouse, and
2. Why I feel African kids are so well behaved & turn out so sweet (in general).

TA DAAAAAAAAA!

It may be a month, it may be a week, I have no idea. But I feel like I've just given myself 2 assignments in my 12th grade Writing for Publication class!! DOH!

Let the drafting begin....

In the meantime I shall continue to spew piles of meaningless dribble onto these pages of my written life. About things such as.......

....Alan is coming!!!

The lovely lean muscle machine better known as fast Alan L. is nearly en route (2 wks) to his new life in Joburg. Having him 3 hours away from us is going to KICK ASS and I like the idea of having a little piece of my old Irish life come to live here in Africa with us. Although all my friends back in Cork are currently giving me a pain in my ass what with their "ooohhh! H. is going to have a full time job cleaning up your drool now!!!", and the like. Ah well it's all in good fun, they all know I could never seriously have the "real hots" for anyone outside of the Mr. It's not my fault that I have svelte professional athlete friends. HA!

Anyway Alan is chomping at the bit ready to get down here. He's sick of the rain and cold of the ol' Irish "summer", and I keep torturing him with photographs of blue skies and african landscapes. (Even though he'll be residing in THE BIG SMOKE) The crazy part is that not only has A. never been to africa, I don't even reckon he's ever even been out of Ireland! Talk about baptism by fire! Hey at least before I ever set foot on the dark continent back in 2000, I'd been in the southern hemisphere before, and grown up in a country where there were at least more than 3 black guys... This kid is gonna get a serious culture shock, like no other.

Which is why I'm glad he's going to come up and stay with us for the first 3wks or month or so before his permit is finalized and he has to start work. It'll be fun introducing someone to "africa", and knowing that their "initiation period" is something every visitor to this place keeps with them for EVER. Even to this day, I can still remember like it was yesterday (3 Jan 2000): being picked up at the big JHB airport by Leith (Pa), sitting in the back of his car with my jaw on the ground as he and Chris drove me up to Pretoria where the chaos and africa-ness of the place just quietly gobsmacked me.... him dropping me back to their house & rushing off to work again (not before sitting me up on a bar stool in their lounge & making me drink my first Castle Lager), bumping into their maid in the hallway after I took my first shower, not being able to communicate with her, feeling the thick carpets and cold tiles & smell of their house underneath my bare feet, spending my first afternoon in South Africa, sitting out in their amazing yard by myself in the sun while everyone was out listening to the tropical birds shrieking like crazy and thinking "holy shit. what have I done????? where the HELL am I!?!?" It was actually that very same day, that when Ma P. came home in the late afternoon, and we spent some time sitting outside in the garden surrounded by her finches and lovebirds, chatting and getting to know each other, that I thought for the first time "I'm going to really like this lady. She is actually really, really cool."

Those first days are an experience that will definitely root themselves in your memory for life, which is not the same if you're just coming here on vacation... as you don't look at each day and say "This is where I LIVE now. This is the real deal." And I'm excited that we're going to get to be the P's for one of our friends who's going to show up here and be just as bamboozled as I was, 8 years ago.

But I'm really looking forward to having another long-term houseguest, in some strange way. We've always had a revolving-door policy at our place, and I don't see that ever changing. "The W's Home for Wayward Children"... has a nice ring. Heck we've lived through being that halfway house for much more high-maintenance friends than Alan, for years now. We had the "5 months of Anel" period, the "3 months of Maarten" period (not once, TWICE!), the "6 weeks of T&L" period, the "2 months of PW" period and of course several random intermittent periods of . . . Maarten again. Unless some serious mooching becomes involved (which it rarely does), it doesn't bother us, we just carry on with our normal lives and thrive off the fact there's someone else to raise hell with on the weekends. (Not that Alan is a hell raiser... cuz he isnt) But most importantly, my karma owes so many favors to friends of mine who've been there for me when I was slumming it, that I could probably give up a spare room for the rest of my life and never be caught up! At least in this house we have the rondavel that we can "upgrade" (banish) them to if the guest room gets to be too "close quarters"-ish! But that's not even an issue when it's the Lynch man.

Eesh, the Mr. just came back with Hungry Lion for lunch so now I gotta go get greasy. But he also came bearing the parcel that Beth sent us from DC like, weeks ago, which means I get to fill my long holiday weekend with all the dirty goodness from like, 20 outdated back issues of Us & Entertainment Weekly WAHHOOO!! I can - not - WAIT!!! :D
(THANKS SHEOFDC!!! YOU ROCK!!)

Some photos from the weekend...

...of stuff

Well I neglected to bring my camera into work, so I have no photos. And I don't like to have posts that aren't in harmony with other posts that contain the photos that belong to the initial post. So why bother reporting in here anyway? Well, so I can remember what I wanted to say when I finally do get around to it.

Basically having J. here was great. Taking him into the bush was even greater. Getting all that work done (finally!) and creating some breathing space for myself was nearly even greater than that!

The camping trip with J. was full of laughs, lots of drinking, loads of fabulous cooking, and hilarity on the last night when he (we'll call him "Princess" for the remainder of this post) was kept awake all night shaking yet paralyzed with terror in his sleeping bag because the lions were carrying on all night roaring their asses off and basically kept coming closer and closer to where we had our tents up... he was so petrified he only got about 2 hours of sleep and in the morning told us he couldn't stop thinking about what strategy the Botswana Government would choose to cover up our deaths in an attempt to make sure it didn't have an adverse impact on tourism. He had even contemplated exactly HOW the lions would rip his appendages off (in which order, arms first because they would be waving around in fear) and how much it would hurt, or if he would die of a heart attack before the first chomp. He had even envisaged exactly how they would find our remains, and exactly how long that would take. HAHAHA. The Mr. and I slept like babies anyway of course.

Tired!

Cranky!

Irritable!

ROOOAAAARRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!

OK so it's 1 in the a.m. and there I was all sleeping somewhat soundly, that kind of sleep where you're aware of what's going on around you (in the bedroom??) but you kind of work it into your dreams and aren't really alert or anything, still sleeping. And as usual I can hear the cow bells somewhere off in the distance and after what felt like hours of sleeping away happily I think to myself "damn, those are some freakin loud bells! It's like they're nearly.... here...!?" And with that I bolt upright and nearly fall out of bed trying to get to the window where I peek out the curtains and lo and behold by the light of the full feckin' moon, here comes goddamn Grandma Bessie and what appeared to be 135 of her closest relatives headed up my way from the swimming pool, straight for me! All CLANG CLANG CLANG-ing and within no time at all her big fat cow eyeballs are in my bedrdoom window and all her goddamn neices and nephews are spread out all over my lawn DONG DONG DONG friggin DONG-ADEE-DONG DONGing and Moooooing freaking and thumping their feet, starting to run around all confused and shit.

I was like SHIT! and I'm screaming the Mr. awake all "DAMMIT BABY DID YOU LEAVE THE GATE OPEN?!!?!" and he's all bleary eyed and totally confused as to WTF is going on, hasn't realized there's like, a heard of cattle storming around our garden because they've somehow gotten into our plot and can't figure out how to get out. Bastards!! Of course I'm freaking about the lawn, there's like, a shitload of cattle tearing it up and the feckers won't stop pooping... we're talking poop bombs that you most definitely can't scoop up with a mere pooper scooper... AAAAGGHGHH! And I'm so confused and half-asleep that all I can do is stand plastered up against the window in my barefeet and pajamas carrying on about WHO T F LEFT THE DAMN GATE OPEN?!?? Because if I want to go out and start running around screaming at cattle and swatting big fat cow asses, I'm gonna have to disarm the alarm, unlock the stubborn gate that takes me 5 minutes to get open on a good day at the back door, somehow manage to keep the cow-obsessed puppies from running out and eating themselves a few hundred servings of prime rib, and somehow find an escape hatch for these damn cattle in the middle of the bloody night!

Way too complicated. Far better to just stand in the window and go nuts.

So I figure I just file it in the "Too Hard" basket and get back in bed. . . CLANGITY CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG!!!! It's even louder now than before. So I get BACK up to go check out WTF is the reason for THAT, and lo and frickin behold there's now about 4 of them who've managed to GET INTO REGGIE'S PEN!!! This is like, a little corral that we keep him in during the day while we're at work now, that spans the entire length of the bedroom side of my house and I'll be damned if it's not now full of trapped calves!! F*** THIS!!! This means they could literally not possibly be closer to my ears if they were in my own kitchen!!! Again I'm freaking, and again I decide to stop carrying on like a crazy woman and go back to bed.

Ugh. The Mr. can sleep through anything, of course. Apparently that includes the sound of stampeding hooves on my newly manicured lawn, 50000 decible cow bells en masse, and the most talkative cows ever bred in Botswana (moo moo-ma0moo moo moo) having some type of freaking intellectual discussion about cud, less than 1 metre from our HEADS.
Meanwhile I have the worst night of sleep in ages and have a whole day of stress and rushing and deadlines at work to face.