I’m a light sleeper, so tend to wake up whenever I hear a noise  Last night was no exception, W went to the bathroom which woke me up and when he came back to bed I heard this rustling noise.  Now normally W sleeps through the noises I hear, I’m slightly paranoid about nocturnal sounds, having been broken into twice (the first time when I was in the house, fortunately that night Jessica and Tamsyn had stayed over at my Mom’s - long story really but did end up with me chasing them out the house).  So hearing the noise immediately made me suspect that someone had somehow got into the house. W went to investigate, have to say any self respecting thief might be somewhat put off by being confronted with a tall skinny naked dude.  Turns out there wasn’t anyone in the house.  Settling back down, with a heart still racing, I hear the noises start up again - only this time there is more than just rustling, now there are bottles tinkling and tins scraping. The sounds definitely were coming from J’s bedroom.  So I sent W off again to investigate, and I peered out the window to see if I could see anything.  Nothing.  It is now 1:10 in the morning and having checked twice there is no-one else in the house other than W and I, I then lay awake for what seemed like ages listening to the various rustling, tinkling and scraping noises till I eventually fell asleep.  We did postulate that perhaps some animal was getting into the rubbish. This morning I went to investigate the potential mess and found one black bag with some of its contents spilt onto the carport floor.  Didn’t seem too bad, the significance of there being only one black bag didn’t register until W looked under the house.  Whatever animal it was had managed to drag a full black bag under the house!  We’re talking a BIG black bag full of a week’s worth of wine bottles (erhum), rubbish and the dregs of suppers gone by.

To say I’m freaked out is somewhat of an understatement.  Seriously what kind of an animal drags a black bag under a house! To put it in perspective, I live in a park home which has been added on to, the addition has a gap of about a ruler’s length between the ground and the underside of the ‘house’. 

We’re semi-convinced it might be a porcupine.  A few years back I saw one walking up my parent’s street, they live in the older part of Kommetjie.  The lady next door to me also mentioned awhile back that she thought porcupines were tucking into her vegetable garden. It definitely wasn’t a cat or dog, they don’t do that.  I’ve come to the conclusion living in Africa is fraught with danger. (*straight face*) I’m also happy to say we’re not sleeping at home tonight (plans already made before the monster under the house appeared), not sure I could survive another night of noises knowing that whatever it is, is not only big enough to drag a black bag under the house, but is right underneath me!!!

Damn freaky.

With the kids being away, we’re able to spend more time in the evening during the week, at the house.  We’ve started seriously to work on our bedroom and bathroom and last night W put up the wall between the shower and the bedroom.

Frank has all but finished tiling T’s bathroom, however I noticed that he’d managed to tile the border on the one wall upside down, so he will have to re-do that.

What you may be wondering am I doing in the evenings whilst W is sawing, banging, drilling and putting up walls….. what every good wife should do …..

…… staying out the way!

It is either a reflection on the type of ‘relationship’ my ex and I share, or it just illustrates the new levels of gittishness he can sink to (I have a whole dictionary devoted to terms I call him - I’m sure many people out there have similiar tomes, for *their* ex’s….  such an ambiguous statement!)  I had to go onto facebook to see whether my children  had arrived in England safely - “is now with relatives!!” allowed me to stop listening to the radio in case *any* aeroplane had fallen out the sky.  Having nagged for weeks I finally received an email (after they’d left) of their itinerary whilst overseas.  A global ‘let me send this to everyone I know, might have known or just met yesterday and feel a connection to’ type email. Not a single bit of useful information in it, like their flight details, or a landline number in case of emergencies.  The best line in it was “The children will go back to their mother in the forenoon of Sunday 20 Jul ready for school on the Monday!! ”.  Gosh, that’s me!  How wonderful that everyone learnt this nugget of information at the same time.  Issues?  Heck no.

Having got that off my chest let me update some house news.

T’s bathroom tiling is coming along, always hard to really guage how nice it will look until the grouting has been put on.

She and I call it her ’sophlistikated’ (it’s a hard word to say, even for a nine year old) bathroom.  I love the tiles but I’m starting to think it is looking a little dull, perhaps a bit too grey.  Shall have to jazz it up a bit with a complimentary colour for accessories, like towels, bubble bath and the like.

We also bought my bathroom light (see W’s blog for a picture) - Yay! I have a thing for bathrooms and kitchens (go figure about kitchens considering how adept I am in them), and I feel a bathroom should be a place where you can retreat into a feeling of luxuriousness, a place where you can soak the stresses of life away.  That light does it for me, just looking at it makes me feel wonderful.  Now all we have to do, is model the bathroom around it

W has made a start, we have the makings of a frame for the wall between our bathroom and bedroom, which is going to be one of the walls of the shower.

and I can’t remember if I posted a picture of the door that will be leading from our bathroom to the outside jacuzzi.

It’s a bloody heavy door, but really very pretty.  W has this wild notion I can decorate the plain glass with glass paint.  We’re in negotiations over that one. (the silhouette is just bad photography, it is not my first attempt at glass painting!).

Take one culinary challenged wife, one recipe taken off husband’s website and the rash statement ’shall I start supper?’ and you get….. a curry to die for, literally.  Alright, so not literally, no-one died, except perhaps a few taste buds here and there, and who really needs all their tastebuds these days?  The thing is, I follow recipes to the letter.  If it says a teaspoon of oil, I’ll measure a teaspoon of oil.  Recipes that have ‘a dash of’ or ‘a pinch of’ or ‘to taste’ floor me completely.  So when one says ‘I lean towards using Cayenne Pepper’ - I leant, actually W reckons I dove right in.  Well what does ‘lean towards’ mean anyway when cooking, and another prize direction… cook till brown.  Which is where he found me when he got home.  Staring into the pot wondering if brown meant, light brown, or perhaps medium brown or that ‘this is almost black’ brown.  Turns out I put a smidge too much cayenne pepper on the chicken, made for an interesting ‘gonna need a gallon of milk with this’ supper.

You know the noise a dentist’s drill makes when he sadistically drills holes in your teeth? Well that was the noise W made when he angle grinded (ground?) our tiles into a straight line only ten times worse, drove me outside the house.

Frank seems to be having a few problems with angles, particularly with the edges of tiles so W had to do a bit of fixing up over the weekend.

As you can see in the photo - Frank hasn’t managed to cut the tile around the edge very neatly so W redid it, a whole heap better.

I must say, the tiles are looking good and have really lightened up the entrance way and kitchen. With the spots in it is going to look awesome.

We spent much of Sunday morning checking on the plumbing, tightening the bits that were leaking and soldering the copper bits, not having much to do whilst W was doing this I amused myself by taking a few up close and personal pictures. Getting in touch with the makro setting of my camera.

Cool, huh? (I love the colours)

We also bought several Dovyalis caffra Kei apple trees to use as a hedge for the back garden. The existing vibracrete isn’t high enough, and although there are some wooden posts in the ground which could be used to raise it, we’ve heard that the Kei Apple tree makes a good fence (has some really nasty thorns on them too) and one can make jam or chutney from the fruit. That is if we can get to them before the birds do!

We also have a lime tree, W mentioned awhile back that he’d like to have one so I bought him one as an early housewarming present. He read that the best way to plant them is in a pot with one third soil and the rest bark. Who knows maybe one of these days we’ll be eating Kei Apple jam and lime marmelade.

from the in-laws (having invited ourselves to lunch) I played with the camera a little and took this shot of the sunset.  Pretty, huh? 

 

[btw lunch was damn fine too, I've never had waterblommetjie bredie before. That's what happens when you take an English gal and an Afrikaans boy and merge... you get to taste food you've never heard of before, let alone can pronounce ]

This time in Paarl, hosted by the Wynland Gym Club. It included the two top gymnastics clubs in the Western Cape, ACS and Wynland.  Let me tell you, those girls are *good*, seriously good. The Judges were merciless with their marking, I guess they’re trying to prepare the gymnasts for the Western Province try outs, coming soon in August. Despite all of this Tamsyn still managed to place 6th overall, which puts her in the top 10 in the Western Province.  She came 4th in floor (her best ‘apparatus’), 5th in bar - which considering the coach hadn’t been teaching them entirely the right routine, is pretty good. Beam and Vault weren’t so great, still she got a gold medal. We’re very proud of her. I’m also rather proud of myself, I drove all the way there and didn’t get lost, ok on the way back I kind of took a detour and found my way onto the N1 via Klapmuts. Driving routes I’ve never been before and in the dark is always interesting for me.

(my pictures aren’t really very good this time, always difficult to get a good shot when you’re far away from the subject and the lighting isn’t great).

Was Frank’s comment when I gently chided him about using the outside paint to paint the inside lounge walls.  Wasn’t much point in me coming down on him from a dizzy height, Wouter had done that already. From what I can understand, it was raining and they didn’t have anything else to do so they showed initiative, unfortunately the wrong kind of initiative!

Doesn’t look too bad in the picture, but trust me it is way too dark.  We went on Sunday to choose more paint and I’ve gone with a rather light cream (Chantilly Lace, I think it’s called) not sure how well it is going to react to being put on a darker colour, can only hope it turns out alright.

The outside painting is coming along quite nicely, I’m still in two minds as to whether the paint is a touch dark, will have to see how it looks once the red is added.

I’ve only got one complaint so far about Frank and  his team, they are the messiest painters I have ever seen.  We have splodges of paint all over the show including an enormous splodge outside the garage door. (you can see it on the left of the picture)

They’re going to find themselves having to clean up - as in seriously clean up!

We also went tile shopping again, well actually we went to see if the extra spots for the kitchen had come in and ended up finding a really pretty border tile for our bathroom, on sale nogal! Paid R100 for 20 tiles which would have ordinarily cost us over R500, now that is what I call a bargain.  We’re hoping we have enough because they were the last in the range - not really knowing how many we need does make life a little difficult, still at the end of the day if we don’t have enough it won’t be an expensive exercise, sure hope there are though ’cos I really like them.