One day I will be able to devote time every day to my blog. One day I will sit to write down all the crazy thoughts that go through my mind and every single amazing thing that my boy is teaching me about life and love, but for now I will have to make my very infrequent readers settle for a smattering of posts whenver I can steal time from another urgent assigment (or one that looks like it will be running late.. like this one).

I have accomplished one more step towards my day of salvation when I succeeded in getting a helping hand for domestic work.  For South Africa this is really normal, not a luxury at all, but for me well, I am not sure. For one thing,  it seems to me very rude to make someone clean up your bathroom, and at the same time it is also giving up privacy. This is perhaps why a day before Vee came to work for me I had a dream of a maid coming into the flat then walking into the bedroom on me while I was engaged in an intimate act with … ah well stupid me, the ex husband – who else.

Vee will be the first one to know if I ever have a boyfriend, but of course the likelihood of this happening is pretty remote. Unfortunately even my subconcious knows this as it only puts the ex in my bed.  In reality he would be there only if he were the last man alive on earth, and even then, maybe not, thank you very much.  In any case, the dream was about Vee, not about my love life (or the lack thereof). I am definetely giving a stranger an intimate picture of my life, the colour of my underwear, the leftovers in my fridge, the tatty furniture,  my son’s broken toys, and the coffee stains I am too lazy to scrub out of my mug.  Still, it is great that I do not have to spend my free time on collecting dust balls and do something else instead and for that I am grateful.

On the homefront we are alive and well. I am busy again, and busy is good, especially given my plans to stop working at the day job sometime in the near future. I have a deadline next Friday, and then another by the end of the month. So who knows when I will be writing here again, and if I do it is probably going to be a whimsical post like this one.

But I do have many things to talk about and to think about. I am taking notes, and I will fill in the gaps at a later stage.  Yes, I know I said that before.

Yesterday Mr. Handyman came to install my washing machine,  my stove and a security door. This last one is kind of mandatory in South Africa, although the house break-ins in our area are neither more nor less than the average place in the world, or so we like to think. I ended up paying the handyman too much, and I was the one who solved the problem of connecting the washing machine to my hand basin, by suggesting the correct fitting : a simple T junction. They wanted to sell me a new tap, that would have cost a fortune and would have probably ruined the handbasin, and I do not want to talk about the mishap with installing the security door either, which the apprentice screwed in the wrong way while the master handyman was busy making small talk.. Ah well, all in a day’s work in South Africa.

Since I ended up paying a fortune yesterday for the privilege of owning and using my appliances, I wanted to make use of them as soon as possible,  hence we made pan cakes for breakfast and for lunch we fried fish cakes and fish fingers, but the highlight of the day was inaugurating the washing machine; I think it is truly a mother’s best friend. The handyman thought the dishwasher was too, but I beg to differ, because there are disposable substitutes for dishes should one want, but they haven’t invented a socially acceptable form of disposable clothes.. In theory you can eat take out, from the pot, or from the container to minimize on dishes, nobody would notice unless you invite them to your home to watch this anti-social behavior, but everyone would surely notice if one chooses to minimize on clothing or go completely without… Therefore the washing machine is definitely non-negotiable.

Today it is two weeks since we moved here, and I am definetely not in a frenzy of ordering. Things are getting to their places in their own good time (or in mine). I  have been busy with a number of small jobs and I was keeping strange hours, such as sleeping at seven with my boy and then waking up after midnight to translate, review or proofread as the case may be.  Now I have a bigger job that will demand my attention for the next four week.. I am a very busy woman.. touch wood.

That said, things on the day-job front do not look that great. The atmosphere is getting increasingly stiffling there are more rule-writers and micro-managers than I can tolerate, and I keep wondering how long before I just throw in the towel and concentrate on spending my time in more rewarding activities, like making my flat feel like a home for example..

Now it is almost home with a few touches missing here and there. There are many positivies to the new place : It is closer to Robert’s play school, so I normally walk with Robert there and back,  this dramatically reduces my travel time and transport expenses.  The down-side is that it is far away from my favourite food stores; I definitely need transport to do the shopping or I need a high degree of enthusiasm to walk back five kilometres or so with a heavy backpack. This is the only way to go though if I was going with Robert since it is too difficult to get him, his stroller and my shopping bag(s) onto a minibus, or even a bus – our city buses are horribly inaccessible with a half a dozen steep steps to the passenger deck and very narrow seats and aisles.  Still, I can do this. Shopping is not an everyday affair, unlike taking Robert to the day-care.

Robert himself seems to be heading towards a difficult time for me. He has developped an interest in the Micky (Music in our language) and asks for the radio the moment we step into the flat. One would like to think that he wants to listen to the songs, but no, not Robert. He wants to move the CD player about, plug it in, then out, then carry it to the floor, or put it on the table. Later he starts pushing buttons indiscriminately, and opening and closing the tape deck, taking out the CD and then putting it in again… drives me absolutely insane.

I tried to ask him to promise me to leave it alone, not play with it or move it. But his only concession to my demands was learning a new phrase :”promise mommy”. It is actually so cute when he stands in the lounge and asks me for the radio, then says to me “promise mommy, promise me” while slowly nodding his head in affirmation – makes me want to give in.. I am thinking of buying him a cheap tape recorder to break, and I will make tapes of his favorite songs so that he will stop scratching the CDs. Oh, the things that this boy is making me do, but I love him so much.

Yesterday I was contemplating the coming mounting expenses and thanking my stars that I had at least one outstanding payment arrive into my account. Yes, the exchange rate was horrible, but at least it will pay for the upcoming rent and appliances until I receive money from selling my own unwanted furniture and the deposit from this flat.

I went to the cash machine to withdraw money for the nanny, who is looking after Robert at Britt’s house, and at once I saw that I had more money than I should have, not a few hundred, but a few thousand more, and I did not have any more outstanding jobs that amount to a few thousand Rand.

I was so anxious I went to the bank to enquire, and lo and behold I actually got a refund from the receiver of revenue. I was so happy I almost cried, it couldn’t have come at a more crucial time !! I also got paid my regular salary on the same day, so I have all the money I need to get my through the terrible expenses of moving, I shouldn’t have worried.

Yes, I am lucky. Somebody out there is looking out for me and I am so grateful for everything I have.

I realize that every day when I look at my son, and when he snuggles against me at night, and says : Mummy I love..

I dropped off Robert at the day care, and because I had a few hours to kill I stopped with my laptop at a coffee shop that has a free wi-fi zone. I was totally out of place with the beautiful rich people, killing time and sipping coffee, but at least my laptop measured up. In my rush to pack up my laptop upon leaving home I forgot to equip my son’s schoolbag with nappies, everything comes at a price.

At eleven I had an appointment to look at the only flat I found in my price range AND in my area of interest. I Just wanted to reassure myself for a final time before I paid a deposit. As usual the place is not perfect but has some advantages over the one we live in right now. I went home and did the banking, paid a deposit then went for another appointment to view furniture being sold by a work colleague, I agreed to buy.

At about half past one I made my way under drizzling rain to pick up Robert from day care then onwards to the company garden where I had arranged to meet and spend an afternoon with my new friend D and her son, who is four years old.

We made a pretty picture, two women with similar colouring, two kids, one blond one with dark tightly curled hair, and no men in sight. D is also a divorcee so we had a few laughs comparing our situations.

The sun obliged and came out after we arrived at the gardens and the kids got to feed the squirrels and the pigeons. Robert mostly held on to the packet of peanuts and ate them himself until a cheeky little squirrel went up on its hind-legs and clambered up on his shirt trying to reach the little plastic bag held firmly in my boy’s fist. Robert was so surprised he dropped the packet and started howling… the image was worth a picture, but I was of course too surprised to capture the moment. D was quick to pick up Robert and comfort him, but his distress was mostly because he thought he lost the peanuts forever, and all was well when he reclaimed them. We made it as far as the museum, by way of statues of colonialists, bird cages and Koi ponds without Koi, and we ended the day at McGrease with two burgers, two happy meals and two very hyper kids, then D went with her son to catch the train while I half dragged half carried Robert to the minibus taxi stop.

I will be moving by the end of next week, but until now I have not arranged a moving team or packed a single item.  But I arranged to spend the day tomorrow with another friend Jen, who will be bringing my boxes. I will also meet the owner of the furniture to give her a down payment. The money is going through my fingers like crazy, and I feel somewhat crazy myself.

We never gonna survive, unless we get a little crazy, and nobody says it better than my friend Alanis.

Wednesday was a hopeful day, and I thought I found our new flat and started planning my life -sort of- around it.

Today was a terrible day in contrast. I am stuck with a proofreading job, part of a translation that I already did last month and got paid for. It should only take one or two passes with an experienced layout artist but I am dealing with a rookie, and she is driving me around the bend. I have been trying to work with her for about two weeks now and there is very little progress, so I finally decided that perhaps it is good to try and do the job myself and embarked on a downloading half a dozen of trial software, using up my internet bandwidth and purchasing extra. I feel sick just thinking about the bill that I will get next month for my usage. This in addition to the upcoming bills of moving and admin related to rent.

Lastly when I called the property management company to enquire about the lease for the apartment I viewed, one of the workers there gave me lip and retorted that I was “not a good tennant” because I argued that they should please give me feedback soonest, I do not even know whether I will be getting the flat or not. Life is not easy when you are me.

My place looks like somebody just dumped a truckload of broken toys, dirty dishes and laundry haphazardly everywhere, I am demotivated to no end, and blogging about it to the whole world is not making me feel much better about myself.  Hopefully today is going to be a better day.

Poor Robert has to put up with a grumpy mother today. I feel sorry for the little boy, it is not his fault what is happening right now.

Another erratic week has passed, with rain and floods in the Cape. My life is no less flooded with news, worries and small irritations.

It started last week Monday when Robert had a fever again while at school. He was sleepy and lethargic, and appeared to have problems swallowing. The fever did not break on the next day and I was forced to phone work and simply tell the truth : My child is sick and I cannot take him to day care and therefore cannot come to work.  Before resorting to this I tried Robert’s father but obviously his work is much more important and critical than mine,  so I just have to take whatever management deals me for this since I have no sick days or family days left – or so I believed at the time.

Robert improved ever so slightly on the next day, mercifully an off day from work for me,  and I decided that we tough it out this time and do not run to the doctor, which proved to be the correct decision in this case since he was well enough for school on Thursday, although I took precaution and gave him a dose of fever medicine before school on the day.

My troubles for the week though were not over because last week I also received notice to vacate my flat, by latest August 31st. This came as unwelcome shock for me, even though I hate many things about my current place, mainly its dilapidated general state, filthy carpet, pealing paint and leaking plumbing, but I am the kind of person who puts up with a lot of inconvenience and I do not particularly care for major changes and upheavals in my life. No, I am not a mover and a shaker and I HATE moving with a passion. This will be the fifth time I move since I came to Cape Town in 2005, and that is too much for anyone.  It is even too much for me because I only moved a dozen times in my adult life.

Small consolation for me is that the whole block has been served notice, on the pretext of major renovation to the building. The place does look shabby even on the outside and there is no denying the need for a major facelift, and some serious maintenance, but the timing is very unfortunate, for me that is. For the landlord it is probably just right to get the whole place done up and ready to be rented out during the World Cup.

I am starting to think that this whole World Cup thing is a curse for us bottom feeders, and regular citizens.  Everyone with a little stake in this city thinks that the World Cup will be their chance to make a fortune.  Not only landlords are licking their lips, taxi drivers are also starting to flex their muscles, unhappy about the public transport system which will start running in 2010, since they expect that it will take a chunk out of their profits. Workers Unions are exploiting the opportunity as well, and pressurizing construction workers into a strike that has hampered the construction work at the Green Point Stadium. Of course the workers are normally unwilling participants in such actions, but do not dare to go against the unions and the threats from more belligerent members.

I was euphoric many years ago when South Africa won the bid for hosting this World Cup, but now I am beginning to think that the best thing that can happen to me personally is for this spectacle to move elsewhere.  The properties will be selling like crazy, rents will be cheap, transport will not increase in price and my city will be my own again. Now I feel like I am being squeezed out for some wealthy foreigner who will take my apartment, and maybe even sleep in my bed when I am on the streets. Yes, this is over-dramatizing the situation, but I am a wee bit paranoid about being homeless.

Ah well, tomorrow I am going on my first -probably of many- flat-viewing errands, I hope that this time Robert and I will get to stay in the same place for two years at least. I want to move as soon as possible and will not wait until the end of next month if I can help it, because I do not want Robert to spend another birthday in the chaos of moving.

On a happier note, today is Bastille Day, my father’s birthday : Happy Birthday Dad, and thank you for being a great father and role model. I am trying to emulate you as best as I can.

I found out today that a friend of mine has lost her husband in a freak accident on the weekend. He fell off a cliff in a nature reserve near Cape Town. Within seconds, a young healthy man, father of three and loving husband was reduced to a tragic statistic.

Was it only last week Sunday when I met the whole family by chance at the mall? We talked briefly and my friend told me that she was traveling with the kids to visit her family in Italy on Tuesday. Now they are all on their way back to say last goodbyes. I am guilty of anger, of thinking why him? Why, when there are so many deadbeat fathers,  good-for-nothing boyfriends and abusive husbands? The short answer- there are no reasons. Those with strong faith may console themselves with saying that the Lord chooses the good people early, and perhaps this is a comforting thought. But death has no discriminatory taste; it takes the young and the old, the good and the bad, the rich and the poor, the ugly and the beautiful. It is nature’s cruel way of reminding us that we are all equal, that health, happiness and the presence of our loved ones are never to be taken for granted.

If I live long enough to see my next birthday, I will be grateful that I am living to see 40, like I am grateful to have seen 39, some people aren’t so lucky. If  I do not live long enough to see my child at high school, then I should feel fortunate to have witnessed his first word, his first step and received his first hug. I am not immortal, nobody is, and fearfully I also acknowledge the mortality of my own child. I can only hope that he will outlive me. In the meantime I want to lie down to sleep next to him, and breathe his warmth and feel grateful that we are both alive.

But before that I will light a candle tonight, for a friend who is traveling through the darkness of night and the darkness of grief, to face a  reality straight out of a worst nightmare. I am praying that a mother will find strength and courage to carry her children safely through it. I am praying that she will find comfort in their love as they will in hers. I am praying that one day they will all smile at the memory of a husband and a father, rather than cry at his loss.

I do not know what to say… Life is so cruel sometimes.

Stubbornness is rearing its ugly head and my sweet little toddler is sometimes not so sweet when he insists on doing things his way.

The pattern of returning home from the day care is getting more challenging for mom as I try different trick to convince, cajole or even force Robert to head in the direction of home.. Of course he needs to show me many things along the way, the signs of the security company, where he points out the zeros and some letters he is starting to recognize (namely X and E ). Sometimes he just gets frustrated with something and throws himself on the ground which makes my patience and nerves fray.

Once we reach our gate he also has to take the keys from me and find the key himself to put in the lock.  He normally takes his time, especially when I have a heavy load of groceries or when I am in a hurry to get to the bathroom.  At least he learned now not to linger too long at the gate of our building because I always remind him that there is another key to turn at our front door. I have to think up new tricks and keep him interested and moving in the correct direction.

I am still learning to deal with this new toddler stage, and it is difficult sometimes to control my anger at my son’s unruliness.  When he is frustrated, he sometimes gets into fits of anger, or looks me straight in the eye as he does exactly what I warned him not to. It gets hard sometimes not to respond with my own fit of temper, even when common sense tells me that it must be real tough dealing with the world from his perspective.

Today was another beautiful day in Cape Town, a welcome change after all the storms and rains.  I wanted to take Robert for a walk and perhaps to the park, but we never really made it as far as the park. Once we arrived at the promenade he insisted on getting out of the stroller and pushing it.  We did not make much progress because he would refuse my help in steering and then end up hitting the roadside or the garbage bins.  Later he started collecting small rocks and pepples from the sidewalk and depositing them in the stroller, and of course this was the most interesting activity, and no amount of encouragement would convince him to  move forward towards the playground.  At sunset I took matters into my own hands and we headed back. I still needed some things from the shops and it normally gets cold once the sun sets.

Real shopping was done quite late because I made the mistake of going past the bookshop which had its winter sale, which meant that we arrived at home late and had to fast forward to bedtime routine.

I ran into a friend yesterday as I was going back from a walk along a very cold beachfront.  She said she found this blog by chance and she liked it. This is the first time I get independent feedback on my writing in this corner, and I am really pleased.  She wondered -among other things- what happened after the cream cupcakes and why I have been away from this blog for so long.

The short answer is that I have been overwhelmed with so many things.  I figured out this month that while I juggle so many committements and responsibilities it is impossible not to drop one ball or the other at any given time.  It is challenging enough when things are running their normal course, but when things start to go wrong it is plain awful.

It all started in the middle of last month when I was called at work to get my son from school because he had pink eye. I haven’t blogged about it at the time, but this turned out to be the first of a chain of ailments. He later had diarrhea which lasted almost a week. The week after that he developed a cough, which turned out to be a pneumonia, we spent two days in the hospital for that.. soon after that he had another ailment a combination of stomach bug and sore throat with temperature.

Between the middle of May and today I visited the GP at least five times for Robert and once for myself, it has been rough. In the middle of all that I had two demanding freelance projects to work on and on some days I had to go to my day job… It was just too much.

At times like these, and I am merely human, things start to drop or come close to unraveling.  I needed leave from my daytime job to attend to my son in hospital, and I had to extend both my translation and proofreading assignments. The level of care I took at the household level went to near zero. The chores that did not relate directly or indirectly to the well-being of my son were postponed indefinitely. My clothes lay in a pile,  I wore the same thing two days in a row, and I ate whatever was left on Robert’s plate.  I know it sounds desperate but sometimes you do what you have to do. The worst though was the lack of sleep. I survived on four to five hours of sleep a day and worked every free minute that I had..

Even within my own set of priorities things started to suffer. My son had to put up with a preoccupied mother,  I arrived frequently late at my day job,  I had to phone sick once, and had to leave early at least twice because of my son falling ill at school. It is small wonder under the circumstances, that I neglected this blog.

During this difficult time I also came to realize that the way I am doing things is not working. Sooner or later something is going to give, and I do not want to breakdown or loose my health. I need to be here for Robert.  Some of my responsibilities and commitments need to be rethought, delegated or let go off completely. Maybe then I will have more time to devote to things that give me pleasure like blogging, knitting and reading. Amen.

We certainly have a stomach bug, and I mean both of us. Yesterday Rob’s condition did not improve and I had to phone work to tell them I am not coming. Later we took the trip to the doctor again who prescribed re-hydration fluid, anti-cramp medicine and some pro-biotic.

The trip exhausted us both because among others we had very little sleep last night, and I crashed next to Rob on the bed. Later I got up to do some work and had to rush back to his bedside at the sound of retching. My poor boy threw up what little breakfast he ate all over himself, the pillow, the duvet and the mattress. It was a scramble to get everyone and everything in shape again.

Today my stomach also feels queasy and I have a terrible sore at the roof of my mouth -something I remember having often as a kid accompanying a sore stomach. I am trying to relieve my ailments by drinking green tea for breakfast.

Robert just woke up and I have to go through the routine of giving him breakfast and trying to force some medicine on him. Pharmaceuticals really have a weird sense of humor. The medicine against stomach cramps -which is clearly for little ones judging by the dosage information and the picture of a smiling infant- is so bitter, I think I would have trouble if I had to give it to myself, let alone a squirming toddler who needs convincing even when the (medimed) sweetly tastes of strawberry.