End of year madness

It was the last week of September. I was standing in MerryPak. That's when it struck me: this year-end is going to be crazy. How did I know that? Quite simply, because as I was waiting in the queue, gazing around me, I realised that the MerryPak staff had ALREADY put out their Christmas stock. Yup - it wasn't even the end of Sep and the new Christmas trees were out.

Our year-end is crazy anyway. In the space of 41 days we have: my birthday, Nellie's birthday, Graeme's birthday, my mother's birthday, my mother-in-law's birthday, my step-father's birthday, and two of Graeme's uncles' birthdays. Oh yes, and a little celebration called Christmas. Christmas is complicated as well because we have 3 families to split ourselves between because my folks are divorced.

To pay for all this, I do matric marking, to try to make a little bit of extra money. So for me work only finishes about 10 days after school closes, so there is less time available to plan for Christmas.

Before most of these events take place, I still have a manic term at school to get through - exam setting, exam marking, planning for the next year (sorting out the sets for each grade, planning schemes of work, sorting out the server files, etc, etc), organising reports, etc. Plus, since I'll be doing matric marking, I'll have to leave school a day or two before it closes, so all my work will have to be done early.

Sigh.

Sigh sigh.

Still, at the end of the madness there are going to be some AWESOME parties, and CHRISTMAS! Yay!! And this year my little-big brother and his family will be home for a visit from the UK. Double Yay!!

It's going to be madness, but the end is already in sight. After all, MerryPak's Christmas stuff has been out for several weeks now.

It's time...

For the longest time now I've been toying with losing weight. (See my last post.) This past week, I've actually decided to do something about it. Yup, I've finally got off my fat ass and got active.

I'm trying to be realistic about it all. I recognise that I'm addicted to sweet things (particularly chocolate) and that going cold turkey is not going to happen. I also recognise that I simply don't have the time to make 2 callinetics classes a week, much as I would love to.

So... new strategy:

1. make one callinetics class a week
2. get up early on three mornings a week to do exercise on the Wii
3. cut down to one chocolate/ sweet thing per day, preferably none during the week
4. have a pig out day on the weekend to boost metabolism
5. get back to walking the dog at least once every 3 days, preferably every day

So far, so good. But of course, everything is easy in the beginning. It's whether or not you have the willpower to stick with it that counts.

Ke nako. It's time.

How fat is fat?

I'm overweight. I hate it. I hate having a tyre around my middle. I've had one since shortly after leaving school. While I know that exercise will help, I also know that my genes are against me on this one. If I could afford plastic surgery, I would have a tummy tuck. Definitely. Especially since I'm not having any further kids.

However, the real problem is that I seem to be a sugar addict. I don't say that in jest. I find it impossible to resist anything sweet - chocolates, cakes, sweets. (I also find it impossible to resist chips, and biltong.)

A few days back I made a private agreement with myself to consider myself to be on a sweet-things fast, in an effort to break the habit. Every day since then I've failed. I've made some progress though - tonight when I was about to take a chocolate brownie from the plate (at a church event), I got as far as thinking about the fact that I did not need it, and that I would hate myself for it later.... Then I popped it into my mouth and gorged.

And I hate myself for it now. I feel even more fat and disgusting.

But, I will pick myself up and try again tomorrow. What else can I do? I have to try, because I have to lose some more weight. I've got 3 pregnancies' worth of preggie fat to lose, and until I do, I won't be happy with myself.

So if you see me eating something I shouldn't - please help me by moving the plate away from me, or me away from the plate. Don't say anything as I might hate you for it, but gentle action is called for methinks, since I clearly lack the willpower.

Lead SA

KfM 94.5 have a campaign running called LeadSA. It's designed to encourage average, ordinary citizens to do the right thing at all times. One of their current drives is to get people to drive with their lights on, whether it's daytime or nighttime. Another is not to use your cell phone while driving.

While I really support this movement, I've also been caught short by it. Like tonight. Driving home from a mom's event, I decided to drive a slightly longer route past a particular set of robots (traffic lights) as it's a simpler route with fewer turns. I was driving behind two other cars. The robot changed, and one slipped through. The other chose to stop. I nearly ran into the back of them - not because I was too close, but because I was so tired that it took me a while to realise they'd actually stopped and were not going to run the lights (as so many Saffas do ... as I'd been planning to do).

For a moment I felt myself get really angry that this person was inconveniencing me by stopping. There was no traffic from the other direction. No accidents would have occurred. How annoyed I was that they had forced me to stop and spend an extra minute or so on my journey.

And then it hit me that, really, they were doing the right thing. They were choosing to LeadSA by obeying the law, even if there was no cop, and even if there was no traffic. I felt shamed.

So a few blocks on I stopped at the stop street I normally only yield at. I don't know what I'll do tomorrow, or the day after, but for tonight at least, that person led SA by leading by example and shaming me into obeying the law.

School holidays... we miss you!

Unlike most other teachers, I didn't have a holiday, or not really. The past 3 weeks or so have been so stressful. Initially it was just school related - end of term exam marking and report writing.

Then things escalated at home as our nanny went off sick for several days. I won't bore you with the details, suffice to say that she was told she'd had a stroke (at age 35!) and was suffering from high blood pressure. Fortunately, further tests revealed that she hadn't had a stroke, but she does have high bp.

This all transpired at the same time that Nathan went for emergency surgery to have grommets put in and his adenoids removed. (The surgeon said his adenoids were the size of plums....) I had to deal with most of this on my own, as Graeme was away with a school group doing a trail in the Umfolozi Game Reserve.

Graeme was back for 2 days (during which we both had some work to do on one day), then I headed off to Pretoria with the Cape Town Eskom Expo group. That means I had 3 days in a row of early mornings, late nights, stress and lots of time on my feet while I was judging and marking and doing other bits and pieces.

Today I had the kids for the morning, as G was at band practice, and then we had a braai with Nathan's friends' parents that we've been trying to organise for ages. While it was lovely to spend time with them, it was, never the less, an energy-consuming day. (Although, it probably only felt like that because I'm so tired.) And now, as I sit and contemplate tomorrow (and have just worked through about 2/3rds of my school inbox), I realise that I'm not prepared yet for tomorrow, or this week.

I feel like I've aged 5-10 years over the past few weeks. Sadly, the stress won't relent until the 16th Dec. So, somehow I've got to plow on till then. What I have gained through this time though, is a new-found respect for single parents who have more than one child. I think I could have coped a lot better if I only had just the one, but two has been.... trying.

Still, there has been a lot of joy and good in these weeks too. Nathan is feeling better, and so is sleeping MUCH better during the day (night time habits die hard, it seems), and is responding to instructions much better. Today he said a new word - bye bye. Nellie has decided (mostly) that she gets more attention if she's a helpful big sister than a whining pain, so has started to be truly helpful, loving and sweet towards her brother - long may that last!! Our nanny's bp is back down to normal (with a little help from medication) and she seems to be on the mend. G had a fabulous trip away with some close encounters with rhino and buffalo. The Cape Town Expo group got 9 bronze, 4 silver and 5 gold medals (out of 25 projects), as well as winning 2 best-in-category prizes, 3 special awards and having 4 people nominated for the international expos.

But I think that, for my birthday, I'd like a weekend away without the kids - just me and G. I'd like some time out to just walk, read, sleep and eat, without having any other demands on my energy or time. I think that I really need the time out if I'm going to avoid burn out. Anyone offering babysitting for a weekend in November?

Inception

Talk about a mind-f#ck! Oh. My. Word. What an awesome movie.

I know it's been on circuit for a while now, but with the #pinkmilkshake crew around, we seldom have time for ourselves. We took a day out during the school hols to go and see this movie, and it was well worth the money, IMHO.

This one is definitely best seen on the big screen, so catch it while it's still out.

The underlying theme of the movie is a question about what reality is. One of the recurring comments is that the worst parasite is an idea - for once an idea really takes root in your brain, there is no stopping its growth, multiplication or outworking.

Nearly a week later, I'm still pondering and reflecting on the questions raised by the main theme - about the nature of how the brain perceives reality, about how that might be used against one. It's a very powerful movie, for those willing to enter whole-heartedly into the story.

Swallowed and spat out

Here comes the stuck record... can you believe it's been nearly A MONTH since I last blogged. Actually, I can. I don't really want to rehash the last month, but it has been incredibly stressful and busy.

Between the regional Expo, matric exams, TONS (I swear, I must have been at least a ton) of other marking, reports, budgets to prepare, matric testimonials, and random other admin type of things, Nathan has had yet MORE antibiotics for his ongoing ear infection, my mother moved house, our nanny had another death in the family (so took a trip off to the E. Cape again), both G and I have been ill, and there were 100 other things on the go.

Quite honestly, I am whacked. I'm falling asleep during assemblies and when I'm meant to be praying with Janel. Because I'm tired, I'm turning into a horrible person who yells a lot, and I'm having to think REALLY hard before I say or type anything because there's very little internal moderation occurring between what I really think and what I'm saying - which is getting me into trouble - like when I nearly swore at my matrics today. (That's another story. Those ungrateful little .... breathe. breathe. breathe.)

Sadly, I'm not going to be able to rest much during the holidays, because I'm single parenting while G is away for the first bit, then I'm away on a school trip for the last bit. What I'm craving more than anything at the moment is a few days away in the bush, or at the beach, or up the mountain, with no phones, no children and no responsibilities, but with lots of books, silence and walks in nature - I am craving solitude.

Until Nathan's ears are fixed though, and until he's sleeping through the night, I don't feel I can offload both him AND Nellie on anyone. So somehow I'm going to have to create minute spaces of solitude for myself over the next little while or I will seriously burn out before the end of the year.

The update on Nathan is that we're seeing the ENT next week to discuss grommets. I'm sure that he has permanent scarring from the pretty much constant ear infection he's had since May, but we'll see what the specialist says.

The update on Nellie is that we've taken her for further evaluation. She doesn't have low muscle tone, which is good news. She does, however, have balance issues which we're going to investigate further. And she's definitely a low stimulus child (which we already knew). So now we have a new regime to help her - daily trampolining and a return to frequent body brushing, as well as semi-regular bouts of OT to help develop her vestibular apparatus and proprioreceptors. All this is relatively good news, because it's stuff that we can do something about with resorting to chemicals.

But, again, I must confess that I have been left feeling swallowed by life, and then spat out again. I know that part of it is just the usual end of term symptoms, and that things are going to get easier any day now, that I'm just emotionally strung out. None of that changes the fact though that I feel utterly, utterly worn out.

It was with great relief that I found myself laughing this evening. If I can still laugh at life, then things can't be all that bad, right? So what made me chuckle? This joke:

What's the oldest profession?

Traffic cop. In Genesis 3:4 it says "and there was an evil spirit lurking behind the bush".