My Year of Meaningful (2011)

Listen up foiks, (as if there's any "folks" doing any "listening"!) I can officially hereby announce to cyberspace that I have officially taken the last final exam of my life.

And that is definite.  I know they always say things like "never say never" and all that malarkey but I'm thinking it's a pretty safe thing to say... I mean what the hell, am I gonna do... decide to go and get a 3rd MSc?  Um no.  And a PhD is out of the question, so I can catagorically say it again:


Now all I have to do is write my thesis next year and I'm done with that bitch.

Assuming my proposal, which I also handed in yesterday, is acceptable by a completely different bitch.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Podgey Pie, the best friend a girl could ever have, for waking me up yesterday with a "good luck on your exams" text... I mean now there's a guy who remembers what day his friends are going to be under severe stress, and sends a wee pickmeup from across the globe.  They broke the mold when they made that boy, they sure did.  I am grateful & lucky indeed!

So now I have time to do stuff again, sort of.  Work is still out of control and ridiculous (I'm going to be spending the next WEEK up north on the Zambia bridge project - not my idea of relaxing after finishing my last official semester of grad school) and GO FIGURE the *day before* my finals, Frau Meister (part of the geriatric string quartet) sends me an email DEMANDING that I come practice with them on Saturday and by the way can I also pay P100 for these sessions so that she can rely on us practicing in our spare time so that she's not wasting her time guiding us....

AGH!!!!

I DO NOT WANT TO BE A VIOLA PLAYER!!!!

So back into the deep end of "How to Say NO 101".  And so of course I agreed to be there on Saturday. Do you even THINK I've even taken that Dvorak piece out of my folder since the last time we played (pre-Namibia)???  She can beat my ass, I dont care.  Honestly, I dont.  I want to get back to picking the banjo and watching my vegetables grow.  Seriously.  I am not in the mood for this crap.  Just because she's loaned me her viola, I feel endebtted though.  My folks are coming over in March, and I'll have them bring my own instrument with them so I can solve THAT problem though.  I mean yeah, I don't want to lose my classical chops but hell I really don't have time for getting rapped on the knuckles for not practicing some damn Dvorak string quartet, as a friggin 33 year old scientist/mother/business owner/fitness freak/running club member/recreational banjo player/dog walker/outdoor enthusiast.

Anyway, in the last few months of hell it's been my Mindfulness course and the Hash that has been keeping me sane.  I allowed myself those 2 days per week (Thurs - mindfulness, Mondays - Hash... which kinda sucks because it means no Monday Yoga until the Hash goes back to Sundays after summer).  The Hash Xmas party was this past Saturday at the dodgey BullnBush bar, and I reprised my role as Semi-slutty Mrs Claws along with the Long Tall Swede as Santa, and we killed it.  We led Christmas carolling in a round and everything, and made our grand exit with me slung across his shoulder. I let all the guys sit on my lap and gave them all a big wet kiss. Pretty exciting stuff for an old married bird like me! 

The babymonster was really good at the Hash Xmas party, she is definitely turning out to be the darling of the running club, which is great because she doesn't freak out when other people want to take her and hang with her. That night she even went right to sleep spot on her bedtime at 8:30, in her car seat, under the table.  That is until her pops & I accidently woke her up by pulling a big Christmas cracker which went "bang" right next to her.  Oops.  But she remained cool and stayed awake til she started to expire around 11pm, which is when I reckon we needed to leave anyway since I had to get up and slave away on my deadline the whole of the next day (paying the price for going out and partying on Saturday).

In other Xmas news it looks like our plans to make plans are coming together.... and even though it won't be 1/20th of the Xmas that we had last year, it should amount to something.  As I said, I have to be up north on the BW/ZAM border for the week before xmas... luckily the Mr. and the youngling are coming too... we are going to try and make SOMETHING atmospheric out of it by staying in a nice lodge amongst the hippos, and eating nice food, etc.  Then when we get back Alan will be here waiting for us, at which point the 5 days of eating, drinking, and lying by the pool will commence.  On xmas eve we're going to (one of) the Swedes' places (A&L's) for thier traditional big Swedish Xmas Eve thing with other Swedish friends (Long Tall & Mrs. Long Tall) and I'm looking forward to that party.  Then xmas day, we'll do the traditional Xmas thing at our place and Long Tall & Mrs Long Tall and their 2 wee chirren will come over for that.  Then the 26th, Me, The Mr., The Joo, and the Alan will load up the new camping trailer and head out to the bush for Baby's First Camping Extravaganza.  I'm thinking the Rhino Sanctuary for a night or 2 and then K-Island out in the Kalahari/Pans for a couple.  Should be interesting to see how cloth diapers and sterelizing bottles goes in the bush!  HA!  Good times ahead, good times.  (Quite frankly I think "sterelizing" is going to end up being "ah hell, blow on her a little and she'll be right"!)

I seriously need to lose a kilogram before party week starts though - there will be no gym up north for me next week, not to mention delicious lodge food - so not sure how that's going to work out, but I'll make it work through my mastery of portion control and possibly the dreaded pushup/situp workout, if I have to. It's been almost a year now since I lost those 3 kg over Christmas 2008 and quite frankly I am not about to let it come back just because I'm depressed about being stuck in Botswana for Christmas and end up having a field day of eating & drinking to make it all better.  I've already accidentally put 1kg on over the last few hell-weeks of studying/working but that's mainly because I only get about one gym workout per week because of this insane schedule.  That should change now.  In fact I'm starting by leaving work early to do just that, today.

Did I mention that we seem to officially have sorted out the Offspring's passport debacle?  I can't remember. Well at any rate after much sweating, stressing, praying, begging, hoping, finger-crossing, yelling, worrying, not-sleeping, etc etc, her country of origin has finally come through.  In fact I even heard from our contact there, that it was printed on last Friday.  That means the only thing they have to do is get it here to the High Comm.  Where we can then pick it up.  OK that in and of itself is a mission alone what with all the red tape it takes to release a gov't document from one department to another, just for posting.  But hey.. it EXISTS!  The only bummer is that they used her original application's photo which was taken when she was a little lost 3-month-old with blubbery cheeks.  Looks absolutely NOTHING like her now.  But hey if that's the biggest of our worries....   All I know is that this has taught me many things.  Namely the following:

1) Suck it up, Cupcake:  Complaining gets you nowhere and makes you sound like a whiny dick. Let's be honest, if someone would've come to us in March of last year and said "ok you can adopt a beautiful baby girl in July and take her home in August, but you'll have to wait a minimum of 5 months to get her passport or even potentially a maximum of 2 years if that option doesnt work out, before you can take her overseas"... would we have done it?  Absolutely.  In a heartbeat.  Some people wait 3 years just to get on a freakin LIST.

2) When do you want something THE MOST in life?:  When they tell you you can't have it, of course! Good Lord, I have to wonder if I've EVER wanted something so bad, as I have wanted to go OUT of this country over the last few months.  It's unbelievable.  Just a quick trip down to Jozi... maybe an xmas vacation back to the motherland... even (-gasp-) a brief gallavant off to the INLAWS in the north of the north. I have been DYING.  And I know it's all psychological.  Why?  Because NOW that we've got that issue sorted out, I see all the things that we can do with that new camping trailer right here inside these borders.  Naturally.

However, the breakthrough on the kid's identity has put my mind at ease a lot more now.  Now we can make that trip to the Cape that we rescheduled twice (once on the day I booked it... the day the S/W called and said "so, are you interested in a 3 month old girl child?").  Now we can go to Aus over easter.  Now we can go to Mauritius in July with Soo and Mx.  Now we can talk about our next jaunt to the Motherland in SUMMERTIME 2010!!  Oh the places we'll go!

I have to plan that last one with brilliance though.  There are so many factors to consider.  One being a fambly reunion in early July and a wedding of a friend, and the other being Favourite Cousin's wedding in August, and one being Memphis in May/Beale Street Blues Festival.  I don't really know how I will choose between them because obviously a 3-month trip is out of the question.  But my bare minimum requirements include the following elements:

1. A family gathering of sorts - preferably the larger the better e.g. wedding/reunion (cuts down on the amount of trips we have to make to "show the kid".
2. A large music festival of my liking or alternatively just one really amazing concert of someone I am dying to see play live.
3. A trip to see His Podgeyness, be that where it may, i.e. Vancouver or in between, since by then it will have been officially 3 years since we last saw each other. 

As this trip will be one of the NON-East coast variety, since we've been there too much in the last 9 years, I am hoping that some of my Easty friends will have the motivation to come inland for *Moi* this time, because I'm worried that there's no way I'm going to be able to talk the Mr. into making a ginormous 4-week vacation this time around, being that it won't be xmas holidays and all, so obviously we can't comb the whole country like everyone always expects us to do!!  I keep thinking maybe it's time for me to explore California....

Anyway.... time's up.  Back to the salt mills....