10 Hours of Sleep and other Tales of Exhaustion
0 Comments Published by Oh Wayward One on 05 November 2007 at 11/05/2007 08:34:00 am.
So it's monday morning and after I've gotten the 100000 emails cleared out I realize it's actually not all bad. There's only a couple little easy jobs I have to do here (nice for a monday) plus my yoga class was cancelled today which means we can go running after work (which will make me feel better about getting back on the road to fitness), plus it's not bad to start a monday after getting...
10 hours of sleep last night!!!!!!!!!
That's just unheard of. On a school night. At my house.
What happened was we got back from a great time out in the bush with S&M, J, A and the lions. And when I say the lions I mean they were back again, keeping people awake at night with their carrying's on. Notwithstanding this, copious amounts of booze had been drunk by all (well, except for Alan of course) and naturally that makes for sleepy heads at 7 in the a.m. when the blazing hot central Kalahari sun boils you out of your tent. The concluding thought of this paragraph is that we were damn tired. And dirty.
Right, so the electricity was out when we arrived back home with the posse. This situation wasn't all that welcome after a long drive through the corrugated sand traps of the Kweneng District, bouncing our brains out and shouting at the top of our lungs over the general noise of 4x4 + trailer + A/C + all that noise from some foreign iPod. ha! Basically spirits were somewhat disheveled and the general sentiment seemed to be "I just want to be clean" and "someone please just feed me some vegetables and fibre". But alas, no electricity + the fact that everyone (except for the Mr. and I) needed to quick-quick-quick get back to Joburg ASAP because Jéan had an 8:30pm flight. So there really was no time for electricity anyway now was there.
At any rate, we managed to get the BPC out (on a sunday afternoon, not bad, guys) to investigate and unfortunately it appears that the house electricity cable has a fault in it, which was causing the main box to trip. Unfortunately they couldn't help us, but they threw the main breaker anyway and we had power (for awhile) long enough to take baths (WOO HOO!) and do a few things around the house before it tripped again. I really couldn't have cared less though. The bathing got done and that was all that mattered. aaaaaahhhhhh!
The bonus was that without electricity all night, it meant that we were in the perfect position to read our books by candlelight and fall asleep at (get this) 9:15!!!!!!! couldnt believe it. I don't even know if I've gone to bed at 9:15 without being sick as a dog. Also, thankfully the evening wasn't too hot so we slept with the windows open and didn't die of heat stroke given that the A/C and or ceiling fan would've needed electricity to run!
I made potato and carrot korma on the gas (cooking doesn't stop for electricity failure!) for dinner because even me, the queen of the carne, was all meat-ed out after a weekend of braai-ing. And I have about 200 carrots in my garden that need to find something to do with themselves because actually I'm not even that carrot-y of a person so I don't have a whole hell of a lot in my repertoire for the long orange stick... so I'm trying new things. Having the kind-hearted vega-ma-tarian here has inspired me to learn more veggie-centric recipes.
George the super-electrician is in Francistown. Naturally. So we called in his No. 2. According to Mary that guy (named "Killa", by the by) showed up drunk and totally clueless. So we sent him packing. George's No. 3 guy is on his way now, reportedly. Whew.
Anyway, if all goes well, the electricity should be back on this evening. Sure that means the whole freezer will be defrosted by then. Isn't it bad to freeze meat and then let it defrost and freeze it again? Or is that all just one big fat old wives' tale? Either way, it's just one of those situations where I have to decide to bring in my old mantra of "if there's nothing you can do, then do nothing" and get on with life. And so it is thus.
Being refreshed is definitely good for a monday. I even note that the Mr. is seeming awfully relaxed and is juggling his rush-job coursework with coming back to the office quite well. Also you're always nicer to each other when you're not exhausted, which is a perk on both our sides.
I'm soooooooooo stoked that we got to see Wild Dogs in Khutse this weekend. Haven't seen them for nearly 8 years now AND that they were so big and healthy and seemed totally happy (I think we saw around 6 or 7 of them) and totally un-bothered by the truck.
We also saw Eland (also rare) and lion and the old stand-bys i.e. heaps of giraffe, oryx, steenbok, springbok, vultures, jackal (or was it a fox? the jury's still out) and kudu. There was a magnificent lightning storm (with no rain - woo hoo!) just behind the pan where we camped the 2nd night which livened things up there for the photographer in our group. I'm really looking forward to seeing the results of that in photographic form.... AHEM! Steve...
(wild dogs pictured above.)
(Steve, the man of many photos but very few of him, being a leopard)
The truck's first ever time with 6 passengers in it, and as the resident rider of the back-back seat, I can say it actually went pretty damn well and the trailer was a good idea. We were all comfy and happy as far as I could tell.
(view from the back-back, pictured here)
So alas, here we go with our latest case of empty nest syndrome ("it just seems so quiet..." "do you think they're getting on ok in cape town...?" "So that bastard J is actually moving..." and so on) but at least I'm looking forward to the next month of nazi-like exercise and healthy eating, before C&S get here at xmas and we fatten ourselves up into oblivion all over again!!!
Alan, wicked fire starter:
(view of the 8 yr old hand-me-down tent that has served us so well and just won't die!)
10 hours of sleep last night!!!!!!!!!
That's just unheard of. On a school night. At my house.
What happened was we got back from a great time out in the bush with S&M, J, A and the lions. And when I say the lions I mean they were back again, keeping people awake at night with their carrying's on. Notwithstanding this, copious amounts of booze had been drunk by all (well, except for Alan of course) and naturally that makes for sleepy heads at 7 in the a.m. when the blazing hot central Kalahari sun boils you out of your tent. The concluding thought of this paragraph is that we were damn tired. And dirty.
Right, so the electricity was out when we arrived back home with the posse. This situation wasn't all that welcome after a long drive through the corrugated sand traps of the Kweneng District, bouncing our brains out and shouting at the top of our lungs over the general noise of 4x4 + trailer + A/C + all that noise from some foreign iPod. ha! Basically spirits were somewhat disheveled and the general sentiment seemed to be "I just want to be clean" and "someone please just feed me some vegetables and fibre". But alas, no electricity + the fact that everyone (except for the Mr. and I) needed to quick-quick-quick get back to Joburg ASAP because Jéan had an 8:30pm flight. So there really was no time for electricity anyway now was there.
At any rate, we managed to get the BPC out (on a sunday afternoon, not bad, guys) to investigate and unfortunately it appears that the house electricity cable has a fault in it, which was causing the main box to trip. Unfortunately they couldn't help us, but they threw the main breaker anyway and we had power (for awhile) long enough to take baths (WOO HOO!) and do a few things around the house before it tripped again. I really couldn't have cared less though. The bathing got done and that was all that mattered. aaaaaahhhhhh!
The bonus was that without electricity all night, it meant that we were in the perfect position to read our books by candlelight and fall asleep at (get this) 9:15!!!!!!! couldnt believe it. I don't even know if I've gone to bed at 9:15 without being sick as a dog. Also, thankfully the evening wasn't too hot so we slept with the windows open and didn't die of heat stroke given that the A/C and or ceiling fan would've needed electricity to run!
I made potato and carrot korma on the gas (cooking doesn't stop for electricity failure!) for dinner because even me, the queen of the carne, was all meat-ed out after a weekend of braai-ing. And I have about 200 carrots in my garden that need to find something to do with themselves because actually I'm not even that carrot-y of a person so I don't have a whole hell of a lot in my repertoire for the long orange stick... so I'm trying new things. Having the kind-hearted vega-ma-tarian here has inspired me to learn more veggie-centric recipes.
George the super-electrician is in Francistown. Naturally. So we called in his No. 2. According to Mary that guy (named "Killa", by the by) showed up drunk and totally clueless. So we sent him packing. George's No. 3 guy is on his way now, reportedly. Whew.
Anyway, if all goes well, the electricity should be back on this evening. Sure that means the whole freezer will be defrosted by then. Isn't it bad to freeze meat and then let it defrost and freeze it again? Or is that all just one big fat old wives' tale? Either way, it's just one of those situations where I have to decide to bring in my old mantra of "if there's nothing you can do, then do nothing" and get on with life. And so it is thus.
Being refreshed is definitely good for a monday. I even note that the Mr. is seeming awfully relaxed and is juggling his rush-job coursework with coming back to the office quite well. Also you're always nicer to each other when you're not exhausted, which is a perk on both our sides.
I'm soooooooooo stoked that we got to see Wild Dogs in Khutse this weekend. Haven't seen them for nearly 8 years now AND that they were so big and healthy and seemed totally happy (I think we saw around 6 or 7 of them) and totally un-bothered by the truck.
We also saw Eland (also rare) and lion and the old stand-bys i.e. heaps of giraffe, oryx, steenbok, springbok, vultures, jackal (or was it a fox? the jury's still out) and kudu. There was a magnificent lightning storm (with no rain - woo hoo!) just behind the pan where we camped the 2nd night which livened things up there for the photographer in our group. I'm really looking forward to seeing the results of that in photographic form.... AHEM! Steve...(wild dogs pictured above.)
(Steve, the man of many photos but very few of him, being a leopard)
The truck's first ever time with 6 passengers in it, and as the resident rider of the back-back seat, I can say it actually went pretty damn well and the trailer was a good idea. We were all comfy and happy as far as I could tell.
(view from the back-back, pictured here)
So alas, here we go with our latest case of empty nest syndrome ("it just seems so quiet..." "do you think they're getting on ok in cape town...?" "So that bastard J is actually moving..." and so on) but at least I'm looking forward to the next month of nazi-like exercise and healthy eating, before C&S get here at xmas and we fatten ourselves up into oblivion all over again!!!
Alan, wicked fire starter:
(view of the 8 yr old hand-me-down tent that has served us so well and just won't die!)
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