My Year of Meaningful (2011)

In an effort to combat the "laid back and settled-in" lifestyle that Botswana forces upon anyone who lives here, we decided to start a new tradition for our fridays-after-work.

The local game reserve about 2 km from our house has an awesome bar under a gorgeous huge thatched lapa where you can sit in the fringe of the bush and watch the sunset as well as some wildlife (boks, monkeys, etc), and enjoy a cool refreshing sundowner in the surroundings of Mokolodi.

So we're gonna have sundowners there every friday after work.

Photos of the maiden voyage of said "new tradition"....

In other photo-worthy news, the birthday actually came good in the end. Well, not that I ever thought that it was going to be terrible or anything (I have to withdraw my grievance from the complaint department regarding the Mr. taking an hour and a half in the morning to remember what day it was - he had a big job interview that morning and only had room for ONE element of stress in his poor old man-brain). He had one of his always lovely and heart-felt cards for me at work (hidden in my laptop) and I scored a sweet slim-line Play Station 2 from him as well. Plus we went out for lunch AND dinner, amidst complete and utter work-related chaos that kept us highly stressing at work until 8pm (DOH!) and was only completed and rectified on Friday afternoon -barely making deadlines by the skin of our teeth.

So yeah anyway I simply *have* to remind myself to not become obsessive about these birthday things. I was jolted back into reality by hearing of my brother's last round with our mother re: him forgetting her birthday and not getting her a present. A gift! She's more worried about getting a gift than she is him remembering the day. The mind boggles. He ended up with a 10-pg email about how he was going to hell with his yellow teeth and earth-stopping ability to be a complete failure.

Well obviously I know where I get my desperation to be spoilt from. EEeeesh. I am disgusted with myself. And in my case, the Husbanator didnt even forget the DAY, he just forgot what DAY IT WAS for the first hour and a half of Thursday. Then for much LONGER than an hour and a half, I couldn't get out of the funk. I know the boy has a heart of gold and would never forget the day. I just really get high-maintenence and freaked out about these things and

IT HAS TO STOP!

I ruined my own damn 31st because I dwelled on a technicality and nonsense for EVER. The worst thing is about how bad I made the Mr. feel, for nearly a whole day. When he feels guilty, I feel guilty. Because I know he shouldn't be feeling so guilty!

But I digress! The place we went for dinner was ace. Lovely pastas, cocktails, and salads and really groovy ambience. Despite being in a totally American-style Shopping Mall, it's one of my new favorite haunts in Gabz-city. Couches and all. I thrive on any establishment with couches.

;-) They make a damn fine Mojito, they have a damn fine red wine (Vergelegen Mill Race, I believe it was), and my baby got his first ever strawberry daquiri which he thought was definitely a winner.