My Year of Meaningful (2011)

aaahhgggg and yet another boogie down weekend is on my doorstep. Seriously, I need some down-time & I don't know when it's gonna materialise.

so last night (thurs) we had Jac & Mar up for dinner and poker and drinks and I lost my pants. For real. OK my game is pretty miserable having not played since I was a kid & my good-time cousins and I used to get sharked by our grandma on a regular basis and never really learned much from it... but still, I lost BAD last night. But it was fun. And after a long day of staring at scientific journals and editing the same damn, frickin, bite-my-ass chapter 55 times, it was just what the doctor ordered. I'm also starting to "tune into" Mar a little bit more and am pretty close to figuring out where her crazy button is so that I can mess with it and turn her into a Good Time Charlie so to speak. Jac, as usual was his spectacular, award-winning self who I just love to pieces without hesitation.

Tomorrow night is the annual GREEK NIGHT which we attended last year with a bunch of the hashers and had a lot of fun. This year we convinced Soo & Mx to go (the free babysitting makes it a no-brainer) and I'm glad we did because She (soo) obviously needs it - girl hasn't gone out for a fancy-pants party night for so long she's literally been stressing out to the point of sending me multiple text messages related to "what EXACTLY do I wear?" I'm like "dude, the dress code is on the tickets: 'blue, white, and bling!' how hard is that?" She's all "but what does it MEAN? I don't have any BLING!" I tell her *exactly * what I'm wearing, and what people were wearing last year. Does THAT help? NOOOO! Mx calls me up: "she's freaking out about the dress code." OMG! Come on! It's a freakin dinner & dance & plate smashin' at a hotel. It's G-city! It's not a Miss Universe pagent! Anyhoo, once she gets over the "dressing yourself" hump, I'm sure it'll be all good & we'll have a great time with them and all the other yokels we know who are going.

Then of course it's hashing and braaiing on sunday followed by mini-housewarming cum meet the visiting mother party for Doc & Mrs Doc on monday.... good lawd. All this partying nonsense and somehow I still have to lose 2kg! I'm really going to punish myself after I get this dissertation handed in because I have officially gained more weight over the past few months of stress than I have on any holiday that I've taken in the last 3 years. What is UP with that? I suppose it could be possible that I'm gaining muscle, since all my clothes still fit fine? And it's not like I've been pigging out or eating cake or anything. And I'm exercising at least 3x per week.... Something's gotta change in my routine I guess, in order for it to work. Perhaps that thing that has to change is "diet" whereby I go back to eating sticks and bark and drinking tomato juice for a week. fun times.

So this weekend was a hoot, but I'm paying the price for it all week long.
Tiiiired. Spacey. Listless.

Luckily I've been able to sleep like a rock every night since about a week ago, so that's a bonus.

Friday night dinner party at S&Ms was a good time, although I had been so busy all day I was remiss and did not adequately hydrate as I normally would before a night out on the sauce. AND I stupidly mixed my alcohols (gin, red, white) BUT in a heroic twist of fate, when we got home I was smart enough to slug a Berocca with a pint of water before going to bed, and lo and behold woke up feeling like a million bucks! Good enough, even, to face THE BEAST.... the bane of my existance, the one thing I hate more than anything in the world (well ok, not really, but dude...) driving to the mall and going....


wait for it....




CLOTHES SHOPPING.


Yeah basically after last summer I gave all my old clothes away because I realized something needed to be done to kick my ass into buying a new wardrobe, or at least components thereof. So my strategy was, ditch all my 3,4,5,6 year old hot-weather clothes during the winter, so that when hot weather comes around again, I'll be forced to go do THE DEAL. Which is exactly what happened saturday.

I picked this weekend to get it done because it's during "that time of the month". No, not when I experience "the process", but rather when the local BW inhabitants are totally streched out and broke because month-end/pay day is still another week or 2 away, and they've blown all their wad. So the shops aren't crazy and un-manageable, the shopkeepers are in good moods, cars are off the roads, parked in their driveways with empty fuel tanks, and I don't want to gun down every person I see who CAN'T READ THE SIGNS THAT SAY "only 5 items per fitting room only"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So I went and gave the ol' visa card a workout and in just under 2 hours was able to bring home about 5 shirts, a couple skirts, and 3 items of jewelry. I even bought a strapless blouse, I was feeling that optimistic. Got home just in time to grab a bunch of extra stuff we don't need in the house for Doc & Mrs Doc to borrow as they were moving in over the weekend, too. Into their empty house with their 2 suitcases of NUTTIN! We hung out at their empty palace in the trees for a wee while and pondered all the cool things we'll be able to do together once they're just a few hundred metres away, until they had to rush off and go set out the next day's Hash.

The Mr. and I got all dolled up for the big swedish party, dropped LJJ with the babysitter, and headed off for yet another night of drinking wine and bubbly and not quite enough water. DOH! I'm off my game, dammit! It was a really fun party - they had 2 lambs on a spit braai, gaspacho in styrofoam cups, live music, and probably the coolest dinner party atmosphere I've been to in BW yet..... over 80 people (!) dining at several long tables placed end-to-end on the longest 2nd-floor balcony you've ever seen (at a private residence). It was at Gustav's house and he has this wrap-around balcony that goes for miles and as I said, could sit 80 people! They did the right thing too - lots of people may not know this but DINNER PARTY IMPERATIVE, MANDATORY RULE NO. 1 is that if you have THAT many people at one sitting you HAVE to split up couples and mix up clicques. It is most certainly a deal breaker. You will go down in FLAMES if you don't. The logistics are just too much to handle that many splinter groups and shy lovebirds. So when everyone arrived at the shindig, they were all forced to draw a slip from an envelope. Girls drew African capital city names, and Boys drew African countries.

For the duration of the whore-dervs eating & mingling and bubbly-drinking, you had to seek out your geographical match. This gets the 2-birthday boys' posses to interact, which is important, not to mention brings the noise level up a notch and gets those unsocial types nervous enough that they start drinking a little bit more and losen up a notch. So we all had about an hour of meeting people, talking to people, using the "hey baby what's your country" line a little too much, etc., while all the guests trickled in. The birthday boys grabbed the microphone to tell the odd joke and throw out the odd party instruction ("yes! the soup is supposed to be cold! It's not because we're swedish!") and inform everyone that they wouldn't be allowed to go upstairs for the dinner until everyone had found their dinner companion. You could already start to catch the looks on certain people's faces ("dammit!" or "awesome!") once the pairs really started pairing off. The Mr. got a real dud for a lady - some swedish uptight doctor whose english was really bad (is that even possible??) AND I got Cattleprod, who I'm already really good mates from the Hash, and who is an absolute hoot! But the GOOD part about this whole party shenanigain is that while you may be sitting NEXT to this person, you're still going to have someone else on your other side, as well as a good 4 or 6 people opposite you during dinner, so even if you land a dud, it doesn't matter!!

Finally it was dinner time and all 80 partygoers stampeded upstairs through bedrooms and out onto the balcony where the country/city placecards were arranged so you knew where to sit, so it wasn't just a clusterf*ck WWE exhibition for chairs. My luck got even more awesome when I realized that on my OTHER side, was this funny, cute, flirty 50-year-old (but hot like a silver fox!) swedish nursery owner-guy that I vaguely know occupationally who was getting cuter as he got tipsier (or was that just me!?) and was quite happy to laugh and try to seduce me in a good-natured, non-threatening way. Cattleprod and I also had a good time sitting next to each other but this annoying american girly girl doctor was on his OTHER side, being all doe-eyed and "oooh I haven't watched TV in 14 years..... oooh I only drink top-shelf tequila" which is apparently enough to captivate SOME boys???? so I kinda lost him around the 2nd course. Oh well, we hang out enough every weekend anyway so no loss.

The wine flowed, the songs were sung (that's a real swedish party tradition, I've learned over the last few years of being friends with Sting), and sometime after midnight the dancing started. But downstairs of course (because no one wanted a 2-story balcony to come crashing down and result in the fateful deaths of 80 wine-swilling partiers). The Mr. and I both stayed up at the tables talking to our new friends for awhile but then decided to call it a night, mainly because he was on driving duty so wasn't even drinking anymore and also we had to be up early for the hash the next morning.

The next day was the hash followed by another braai, followed by a few short hours of resting up at home and then sundowners/mini-party on the veranda of Doc & Mrs Doc as kind of a pre-housewarming housewarming. Needless to say I was wrecked by the end of sunday night and monday was not easy to take.

Monday also saw my most recent comments from my thesis advisor awaiting me, first thing in the morning. DOOF! DOOF! that's the sound of the 1-2 punch that he landed in my gut, essentially pointing out a million things that I still have to completely overhaul in the next 4 weeks before D-day. uggghhhh, what a start to a week.

But I"m slugging it out in the trenches and in fairness, his comments are thoroughly helpful and totally constructive, so for that I'm grateful. It's just hard. I find myself refuting claims that I made which are the whole backbone of my research. Niiiiice. But I'm not going to get into that because I have interview candidates waiting here in the office for me. so I'll go take my frustrations out on them and put the fear of God into they little heads. you really wanna work here?

Ah, friday.

Tonight we go to Soo & Mx for dinner. Their little'un is turning 1 today and in an act that could've totally come out of my own repertoire, they be havin' a nice adult dinner party after the littley goes to bed to celebrate it, instead of some jacked up kiddie party (of the sort we just attended last sunday - ugh). Seriously, would a 1-year old even know? NO! Rather wine and dine your friends to toast to making it through a year without seriously harming the baby!

Then tomorrow night (Sat.) there is a big ol' fancy-pants co-birthday party for the two swedish boys - our swedish friend (I'll call him "Sting", since initials are beginning to bore me) and this other swedish guy who is a friend of Sting's who The Mr. sometimes plays tennis with. We'll call him Gustav. On the surface, said co-birthday party sounds like a real blast, even a fancy-pants dress code and sit-down dinner with like 60 people at Gustav & Mrs. Gustav's place, a mix of Sting & Gustav's friends all mixed together. Ok, granted, they run in a similar circle so the guests are likely to overlap the boundaries of "his" and "his" friends but still, I like mix & match parties (especially when it's going to be largely Swedes! They're largely funny!). Anyhoo, the problem is that The Mr. really REALLY DOES NOT LIKE Gustav and quite frankly I agree that he's an arrogant egomaniac with a condescending attitude who knows how good looking he is and makes sure he uses it as an excuse to be a Real Aloof Dick! (There should be a name for that syndrome. I'll just call it RAD syndrome for now.) But we're going for Sting, not for Gustav, so who cares! I think The Mr. is just worried that we get the babysitter, we get all dolled up, we drive way the hell up to the north side of the city, we get excited about a big par-tay and then after all that effort, it turns out that 3/4 of the people there are assholes and we don't get to hang out with Sting and Mrs. Sting or anyone else we know/like anyway, making the whole thing an overrated bust. It's not just a stroll down the hill like going to Jac & Mar's place or (the no-longer-with-us) K. & H.... when you conjure up that much effort for a damn party, you want it to be a good damn party!!!

But to hell with concerns of that variety! We gwine partyin!!

Now! In news from the AWESOME Department, the best thing EVER is happening to our social life.... Doc & Mrs. Doc are moving into K & H's old place!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Clearly it's going to take some explanation as to why this is so freaking GREAT, but it's kinda a long story. The jist of which is that Doc & Mrs Doc currently live out AT the hospital that they're contracted to here in BW for this year-long contract. Said hospital is the new fancy-pants private number out in the middle of nowhere about 30 minutes from the city. Sure, they get free digs there and are surrounded (literally - like in apartment blocks) by other like-minded 1st world doctors who are nice folk, up for a bit of adventure in the ol' dark continent, and into helping start up a new fancy-pants private hospital out of the goodness of their hearts. But living so close to work means they're constantly picking up other doctors' shifts and swapping days and saying "what the hell, I'll take an extra shift" and whatever. I mean why not? they're in a strange new country with nothing else to do and live 30seconds' walk from the job. -sigh- what a drag.

so anyway, when they came over to our little oasis of paradise for The Mr.'s birthday braai a few weeks ago they fell in love with our tranquil, rustic-y, neighbourhood and promptly called Herr Landlord to see if there were any other places available - it's not too far from the hospital (20min drive without traffic) and yet closer to the city to be able to feel like you're not ostrich-sized from civilization, and also there's US there, and Jac & Mar there (who they also met that day), and the best part: NO OTHER CO-WORKERS living on top of them! So we fully supported this decision, but when Herr Landlord said "there's only K&H's place and I want you to pay 9k per month for it" it was a bit touch and go. Mind you we only pay 6.5k for ours, which is a nicer place even! But this was a flat out case of extortion because the extorted party were clearly doctors and thus our money-grubbing landlord thought he could make a quick buck. Also, he uses the leverage that they will only be around for another 10 months, and he'd rather work in year-long-leases. AND he just got burned by K&H flying the coop so mysteriously.

WELL! Lucky for us, our new mates are the type that put "quality of life" in front of "saving money in africa" and took the offer anyway!!! After a tense week of failed attempts at negotiating with the Herr, and wavering back and forth. I like to think it's the presence of myself and The Mr. and LJJ a quick 2-minute walk (or 5 minute drunken stumble) up the hill that really sucked 'em in. Plus Jac loves to play poker and so does Doc so there is also a new opportunity for non-hospital related quality of life for Doc & Mrs Doc. It's gonna be stellar! McCartney even! Perhaps I must also decide to learn this "poker" they speak of.

File this one under the catagory of "secret babies" - So basically, our golden boy at the office, Leto, is going to be a dad. Now. How do we know this? Simple, actually: You drive 10 hours out into the Kalahari to GHZ-town, for a slew of public meetings and field work for a project. You go to the only ATM in town and take out some money. You hear someone behind you say "Hi, there.... how are you? How's LJJ?" and you turn around and see (of all friggin people in all the gin joints in the world) Leto's girlfriend TT (of 12 years and essentially common-law wife although currently geographically seperated due only to her job) standing behind you.... with a rather rotund midsection. You think "hmmm, she's put on a bit of weight... must be all that "being posted as a nurse out in the middle of nowhere 100km away from GHZ-town for the last year and eating nothing but goat and starch". UNTIL, 2 of her acquaintences (obviously) come running up to her squaking over her "baby belly" and rubbing her tum-tum and grilling her about how many months away until "the baby comes"!!!! WHOOOPSIEDAISIES!!

Fast forward back to the office. Two weeks ago. That would be one week since "the incident". Still no word from Leto. Well now, this is mysterious, isn't it? Does he not KNOW? Did she not TELL HIM? Surely by now the word has spread from TT to L. that the "cat" is out of the "bag" and said when I say "cat" I mean "Leto's lil' soldiers" and when I say "bag" I mean "and into TT's belly"!! Apparently that is NOT the case, we find out. How do we find out? Well OBVIOUSLY..... through Ed! Who, upon seeing L. after our GHZ-trip gives him the heads up that "TT's been spotted carrying your spawn!! Dude! The "cat" is out of the "bag".... whereby this time when I say "cat" I mean "news" and when I say "bag" I mean "loudspeakers that are your girlfriends' friends' mouths!" (which of course he already knew, as TT had called him immediately upon "the great ATM incident of 2010" taking place) But obviously we're not going to say anything until we're told PERSONALLY by our favourite employee and uncle to our own little pine nut. That would just be WRONG wouldn't it..... "Hey buddy, thanks for not telling us you knocked up your gf and are gonna be a pops soon and will probably be expecting time off and a big lunch out and all our baby hand-me-downs and the like!!!" So we wait. For the news. To come to him. So we can get this damn elephant out of the damn reception area.

And thus the game of psychological chicken begins. 3 weeks pass. Stories about babies are told around the coffee table. Hints are dropped by Me & The Mr. about how nice it would be to see TT again next time she comes to town. Leading questions are asked. He stonewalls us. DOH! BASTARD! Something's gotta give. I JUST CANT TAKE ANY MORE! And neither can The Mr. ..... who cracked. Finally. Cracked. Had L. in the office by himself the other day and gave him the "so, is there anything you'd like to tell me?" speech.... which broke the dam and the whole 9 came out.

Basically, he was given an ultimatum by TT and it was "baby now or i'm out" so they bred the thing on purpose, even though HE wanted to wait til she was done with her post out in the middle of nowhere and they could get married etc. So I'm kinda disappointed in her because the whole decision making process was very one-sided and largely manipulated and pushed by her family (it's a cultural thing.... you gotta make the babies and lots of 'em, early too) and left no say whatsoever to the future dad. He was afraid we would grill him and give him the reprimands and judgements and alllll that stuff. Which is what HIS family did when he told THEM. So for the past 5 months (yes, she is OVER 5months in the oven now) he's been sitting on this and it's been festering in his belly and he's been losing sleep over not telling us and what what what, but just couldn't bring himself to do it. Especially knowing that we have this crazy notion in our heads that if you plan on raising a kid with your life partner, it's probably better for the kid if you're not half a country away from each other.

The kicker though, is that he STILL hasn't told me. Which means, after his conv. with The Mr. he KNOWS that I know, and I know that HE knows that I know... but still not a word has been uttered. This is just getting ridiculous but I will still maintain my silence until he's ready to talk about it, because I dont want to be this pushy boss who gets involved in his personal life if he doesn't want me to. But still. Damn! Get it out already! I got free stuff for you if you do, dude!!!

So in only the 2nd time over the past week that I've actually had to go to the gym, this afternoon, I was finally able to get a minute or two to THINK, as I climbed "the stairway to nowhere" on level 12 for about 4 hours (or was it 15 minutes?). Good gravy. It felt like it was the first time I'd actually processed any thoughts in a month. My brain has been firing at top speeds for weeks now, but unfortunately it's been pretty thesis-centric and even though I can feel it (the brain) literally GROWING IN MY SKULL, it's not really all that spiritually fulfilling, I've gotta admit.

Anyway, I came to the realisation that if I had to count them out seperately, it seems that I'm living a life these days in which there are five distinct "labours of love" that I just can't seem to balance in any sort of quality fashion anymore (and hold down a more-than-full-time-job and raise a kid). They're things that really make me who I am, that I genuinely love, that I wouldn't be able to live a fulfilled life without, but at the same time that REQUIRE A SHITLOAD OF MY TIME, and are not EASY, and need to be WORKED at and given GENUINE ATTENTION. Which therefore make them labourous an not exactly the kind of walk-in-the-park, get-up-in-the-morning-and-it's-already-done-for-you kinda life-mojo. That list would be made up of:
(in absolutely no order whatsoever)
- fitness
- love
- academia
- music
- friends

(the Offspring not included since she's a wee human baby and has got to be looked after regardless of what I WANT to prioritize-- she also appears to be turning out just fine in her brain-hole and the baby doctor says there aint nothin wrong with her health so I must be doing SOMETHING right)

It's like whenever I am throwing myself into any one of those labours in order to eke some quality out of it (akin to what's been going on lately in the category "academia" where I have had to crank out a 15,000 word (that's 80 pages so far) draft for review which basically all my research over the last year and a half has gone into over the last 4 short weeks), everything else just has to STOP. And Suffer. My one-track mind doesn't have room for niceties anymore, thus love and friends suffer. My schedule doesnt have time anymore, thus music and fitness suffer. Or, alternatively, during the spells of my life when I really feel like I'm NAILING the whole friendship-maintenence thing... I'm answering all the damn blinky-blinky windows popping up on my computer screen, I'm uploading photos and frickin facebooking and blogging and checking other people's blogging and emailing and texting and phone-calling.... WHOOPSIEDAISIES, there goes that whole window I had set up for researching and going to the gym at lunch! And LOVE! Love! Jeeeeeez I can't even remember the last time that I was actually devoting as much effort into showing The Mr. how much I truly bluely eternally love him as I currently am trying to scramble to get FIVE MINUTES of banjo playing in between my morning pushups and my freakin' eternal struggle with Sherlock Holmesing down literature for my dissertation that (over the last few weeks I've learned) JUST AINT THERE.

UGH.

It's not even worth it trying to be the Jack of All Trades Master of None that I used to be, because all those damn trades still require TIME that I DONT HAVE, even to get to the mediocre, just-enough-to-get-by level that I always seemed to end up at.

I realized the only way I can stop feeling like I'm eternally letting myself down (which is how I feel EVERY time I look at my banjo, viola, piano, running shoes, weight, bookshelf, shelf of CDs, inbox of unanswered emails, dumbbells, unorganized photos, etc) is by just giving in and letting go of some goals. Which is a tactic that is just totally uncomfortable for me on so many levels! I would NEVER recommend to any of my friends "hey, just give up!". I would NEVER condone my daughter coming home and saying "eh, perservering with my life aims and objectives just ain't worth it". But I've really, depressingly just come to the conclusions that:

now is NOT the time that i'm going to form botswana's first & only bluegrass band
now is NOT the time that i'm going to start writing my autobiography
now is NOT the time that I'm going to commence training for my first half-marathon
now is NOT the time that I'm going to finish all those half-written songs building up over the last 5 years
now is NOT the time that I'm going to make a photo album of LJJ's first year and a half
now is NOT the time that I'm going to force my employees to take my self-penned technical writing clinic
now is NOT the time that I'm going to re-learn all the classical music I once played on the piano from memory
now is NOT the time that I'm going to go out and buy a whole new wardrobe for myself and start putting some effort into how I look
now is NOT the tmie that I'm going to try and salvage something out of the pathetic excuse of a relationship that I have with my sibling

Anyway, not one to condone any sort of "OH POOR ME" Blog, I better move on before this becomes a pity party.

In addition to all that is my current academic madness of the present (noteworthy fact: It will be over in Mid-november, halleluja) somehow I managed to socialize over the past 2 weeks. Beginning with The Mr's birthday, which was actually one of the days we were out in GHZ-town for work (but i spoiled him on that day nonetheless - there was wine and HIMYM marathons and a nice dinner etc), a couple weeks ago. We came back and straight away I threw together a braai (myself and my sous chef, Uncle A. who ended up staying with us for 2 weeks before FINALLY leaving for his trek up to wherever, found ourselves slaving away in the kitchen into the wee hours of saturday night - the same day I drove 8 hours across the desert at breakneck speeds to get back and COOK) for sunday. We had 7 friends around aside from me & The Mr. and it was a nice, semi-relaxing day. Semi-relaxing as being the hostess with the mostess is never THOROUGHLY relaxing. We set up the table out on the garden terrace and wined and dined as the sun went down and laughed and had an all around good time.

Our new friends from the Hash (we'll call 'em Doc and Mrs. Doc) who are an american couple our age that we really enjoy and have a lot of belly laughs with, invited us to go camping the next weekend which just happened to have 2 public holidays in it. We agreed and so did Uncle A. (one of the reasons he still didn't leave yet!!!) and so Thursday - Saturday found us all out in the Kalahari desert (again!) with no running water and 5,000 degrees and me slaving over a scorching fire. However, it was worth it because camping is one of those favorite pastimes of mine that I NEVER get to do anymore and it's also important to me that The Kid learn to rough it as early as possible so it was a must-have reason to not be sitting in front of my laptop writing. Didn't see much in the way of wild animals this time.... I reckoned it was because it was a public holiday weekend and all the beasts were in G-city driving around in cars looking at people. But we did see a few oryx, some springbok, a giraffe or two, blah blah.

The camping trip was actually not just us and Doc & Mrs Doc and Uncle A. Doc and Mrs. Doc's collegues + their significant others (2 other yankee couples and a canadian girl) also came along and they were all good fun. Me and The Mr. really enjoyed it and had a great time. Uncle A., the boy of two personalities, was in his cynnical depressive negative "space" (nerves about his trip to nowhere? angst over being single for over a year now? I dont know!) so as usual (well, more often than not anyway) everyone was stupid, everyone was lame, no one was funny, couples were resented, americans were mocked, the 17-month-old who just so happened to be cutting molars was "too whiny"..... UGH!!!! I really wanted to feed him to the lions, honestly. But I'm so stupid... I mean what did I THINK he would act like in that situation? Have I learned NOTHING from his earlier performances whenever we involve him in our socialising. The fact is, the child is a 26-year-old judgemental, anti-social, begrudging, sarcastic, unconfident presence of negativity and if the Lord God Almighty walked into the same bar as him, he'd find something cynnical and demeaning to say about Him.

Anyhoo, myself and The Mr. and LJJ and everyone else enjoyed ourselves, and I think Uncle A. probably did too, whatever that means for him. It was good to stretch our camping gear and flex our roughing-it muscles around these 1st-worlders and their need for "showers" and "changes of clothes" and "shade", etc. I showed them how to do pancakes on the fire and make my famous 7-hour lamb neck stew on the coals. Everyone enjoyed. S'mores were eaten. The days were roasting hot but the nights were still cool so sleeping in the canvas tent was fine. LJJ slept in the back of the truck and passed out cold both nights after wicked long days of having 8 new people falling over themselves to entertain her.

Last night we went down the hill to Jac & Mar's house for dinner. I was pleasantly surprised at Mar's pleasantness. She wasnt being as complainy and grating as the last time we had dinner with them. Which is good since now they're officially our neighbours and I really like Jac a lot... He's a good guy... definitely excellent marriage (not for me! just sayin'!) and friendship material She still doesn't drink or let it hang out or know anything about sex drugs rock n roll and belly laughs, but they're good neighbours to have and we will work on her. It was a subdued yet enjoyable weeknight evening spent drinking a few beers and dining beneath the stars and the giant marula tree in their yard.

Well, I am all out of steam. But parting bullet points that I would've written about had I had an extra hour:

- I would love to have enough time to rip some cds for my itunes.
- My kid says "Reilly" flawlessly but still insists on calling Billy "Dada"... whats up with that?
- Our fun Belgian friends from down the hill (K & H) have mysteriously flown the coop, and no one knows what happened/where the went/why they left... the landlord, his boss, US...?? An empty house and no note is all that remains! So mysteriousical!
- I dont know what else, I'm outta here.