Archives for June 2014

Facebook is literally messing with your mind

My son sent me this video the other day – he sent it via email with the subject heading “inspiration”.

I am not at all sure what point he was trying to make when he called it that but I really hope that he watched and understood it before he sent it to me. It’s something I try and drum through his head all the time so maybe he thought that this clip was my inspiration.

It certainly could have been.
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Thank God my mother never had Facebook

no facebookWhen I was a little girl I was apparently prone to a tantrum or two and there are a fair few photos of me mid total melt down. I guess being third child my parents thought it funny and tried to capture my ridiculous cuteness on film rather than give me that damn toy I wanted, but I digress.  One such photo exists of me naked and screaming in the backyard. It was printed of course because I am old and there was no digital imaging when I was in my prime tantrum years (although my husband might disagree).  I hated that photo.

I didn’t hate the fact that I was nude so much as I hated what I looked like, how sad and angry I seemed, how no one was listening to me but they were photographing me and how isolated I looked in that frame.  Clearly I have childhood issues which I bring to the photo but don’t we all?
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Getting close to building date.

The building project we are about to embark on is thisclose to happening. Every day we hear that the complying development certificate that we need to start will be ready the next day. We have amassed a following of people to nag the certifier including the draftsman and the builder and if we haven’t nagged them into submission it should be ready tomorrow. Or Monday. Or Tuesday. But it was meant to be ready last Wednesday.

I think that the council with all its red tape, bureaucracy and numbered forms actually help would be renovators and builders prepare for their projects by adjusting them, very quickly, to the fact that everything takes a long time and there will be endless days of absolutely no progress.
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The 14 emails I hate most

 

The other day during on of our more scintillating conversations (where more means less) my very close friend Kerri Sackville and I were discussing the relative sizes of our inboxes (where inboxes means the boxes where our email arrive – sorry to disappoint).

Kerri won that conversation because her box was bigger than mine (where box still means email depository) but I got a highly commended because of the contents of my email.  (By the way Kerri was, until the point that she read this post, completely unaware we were having a competition – she probably doesn’t even realise we are competing for best text messages either yet).

My inbox in not huge because I am fastidious and anal and keep it small and manageable and very good looking.  Also because I mostly communicate via Twitter, Facebook and Skype

But in order to keep this tiny, neat little box I have had to institute a hierarchy of emails so that I know how to deal with them as the come in.  They are (in very strict order)

  1. Your parcel has been dispatched
  2. Anything friendly or personal
  3. The meeting has been cancelled
  4. Thank you for submitting that piece we adore it
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  6. You have been paid
  7. Your order has been processed
  8. Something to do with the building process we are about to embark on. I never understand them but I am quite happy to receive them I believe somewhat erroneously that  it takes me that much closer to the process being over
  9. School emails – usually about a billion a week alerting me to anything from lice to menu changes at the canteen
  10. Group activity email – usually sent by one of my son’s friends parents who want to attend an event en masse. I wanted to put this at number 11 but in the interest of my son having a good social life I didn’t
  11. Everything I have ever subscribed to – still not sure why I do that
  12. Nigerians and Russians proposing to me
  13. Nigerians offering me money
  14. PR companies being paid to promote a product asking me to promote it on my blog or on Facebook/Twitter for free.
  15. Please pay this bill

I actually delete most of them but I file everything related to number 7 because my husband is more fastidious than I am and he might one day ask me what the builder said about the structural beam on the 6 June 2014.   I will find that filed in it’s own special folder titled “stuff I hate  – renovations”.

 

I remember

Tomorrow is my birthday, I am fast approaching very old in years but not maturity. This whole ageing thing has led to a lot of thinking and reflecting on past birthdays.

Turns out that my memory is not that great because I can’t even remember what I did on last year’s birthday. I am sure there was cake involved. There wont be cake this year *sobs about diabetes diagnosis and the sudden dearth of cake in my life*

I remember a few birthdays from my past – notably the one where I was around 8 and a magician came to our home and made a bunny appear out of a hat which was an incredible trick. Until the family dog ate the bunny. That was not as much fun. And to be honest that could have been one of my sister’s birthdays – they all seem to blend.

I remember the cake my mother made me one year for my pre-school party. It was a house with a roof made out of flakes and I swear there was smoke coming from the chimney. There were windows made of foil and lollies everywhere and now I am grown up I have diabetes. No, I am not bitter.

I remember very little of my teenage birthdays.  Probably better that way, my teenage years were a bloody miserable debacle.

But trying to go back in time without getting too deep has unearthed so many other “trivial” memories of my youth. Memories that could possible be imagined as a montage of my childhood without too much of the grit – I will spare you that for another time (read: never)

  • I remember the days before hair conditioner was invented and we sprayed our hair with No More Tangles before picking the knots apart by hand at great pain
  • I remember cutting tin foil shapes to burn into our skin in the sun after we had lathered ourselves with pure coconut oil. There was no SPF when I was growing up
  • I remember when my father first got a computer at his office and it had its own room which was set to a perfect temperature rather like a wine fridge. This room was just to the left of the telex machine
  • I remember the days before seat belts
  • I remember my father listening to the stock exchange prices over the radio
  • I remember getting my change at the corner store in chewing gum (Chappies for the South African readers playing along at home)
  • I remember wearing leg warmers without any attempt at being ironic
  • I remember my father crying when my parents got divorced
  • I remember when you could buy candles that weren’t scented
  • I remember drive-in movies and being secreted away in the boot of the car just before we drove in because you paid per person and I can only guess that my parents were trying to save money
  • I remember the emptiness of Sunday nights
  • I remember reading Beano and Beezer annuals
  • I remember being scared of the playground at school
  • I remember recording songs onto a tape cassette from the radio to make my own mixed tapes or even my own radio station complete with ads narrated by my sister and me
  • I remember believing in fairies
  • I remember playing with the chord of the home phone and winding it around my fingers, I remember the engaged signal and waiting at home for an important call
  • I remember being scared the Russians had stolen my mother and replaced her with someone who hated me
  • I remember eating sherbet out of matchbox with teeny tiny little spoons
  • I remember lying on the slastow next to the pool
  • I remember walking back home from the shop one day. One specific day that won’t leave my head
  • I remember when TV was introduced to South Africa where I grew up. Am hour in English and an hour in Afrikaans. And the test pattern the rest of the day
  • I remember getting my first doona. It was a huge novelty. My dad came home with one and we each got a turn to try it, it was like a cloud of softness.
  • I remember playing elastics
  • I remember my first day of primary school
  • I remember being scared that I would die before I got to year 6
  • I remember learning running writing
  • I remember the smell of new dolls at the toy shop
  • I remember that my mother got remarried although when I look at the photos of the wedding I don’t remember being there
  • I remember trying to black out the teenage years. It worked.
  • I remember the garden at my grandparent’s apartment was full of cats
  • I remember the best fudge in the world
  • I remember silly putty

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Hopefully I will remember all this and more as I grow older.

Hopefully I will forget all that I omitted to include this time.

I no longer have pre-diabetes

 

Today I went to the specialist again. The specialist was in fact an endocrinologist, because as much as I like trying to kid myself I go to the specialist because I’m special, I’m actually seeing an endocrinologist because my endocrine system is special. Although I just made that bit up.

I actually really wanted to see the Consultant guy below but my GP hadn’t written me a referral.

anti-ageing

Anyway I had been to the endocrinologist sometime back and he had sent me to have my entire blood supply syphoned by the pathology department. I also had to donate a LOT of wee to those pathologists. But that’s getting into specifics you probably don’t want to know about

Today I sat down across from the endocrinologist (whose parents must be my age )and I thought I heard good news

“You are no longer pre diabetic” he said.

“Yay me!” I thought fantasising about celebrating this win with a huge packet of fruit chews. And a jar of Nutella. And some marshmallows.

“You have diabetes” he said.

I still clung to my confectionery fantasy because I bloody love lollies and I thought I was going to need them to get through this diagnosis

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He gave me “gifts” of medication and books and glucose meters and a nifty set of needles and strips and asked me if I wanted to see a diabetes educator as well as a dietitian.

I  asked him if I was going to die. He didn’t answer no immediately. I think he sad something like “you have diabetes”.

I cried a little bit – because I cry whenever I hear any news.

He told me that I had diabetes.

And I walked out with a shopping bag full of stuff, a referral to a dietitian (who I will find it hard to listen to)  and a diagnosis of diabetes.

Nice. *sobs over lost opportunity to eat all the lollies*

lollies