For years I used to travel by train to Cape Town and back - through marriage and divorce, births and deaths - I sat in the carriage of a train, on some days for way longer than the timetable prescribed. It wasn’t a bad mode of transport, had the advantage of allowing a person to either read or sleep for the 40 odd minutes it took to get from Fish Hoek to Cape Town - it did however make an already long day longer, so when my company obtained a select few free parking bays and asked for motivation from personnel requiring one… I put my fingers to keyboard and motivated my tooshie off. Evidently my motivation was compelling enough because I have had the luxury of a parking bay for several years now, that is till today. No the company didn’t take the bay away from me - hell I’ve been compellingly motivating my tooshie off for years to keep that bay… no my flippen car decided to lose a fan belt.

Picture this…. really, really hectic day at work (for some reason the company believes I’m the cure all for all their woes) - heart set on a bottle of bubbly and a long soak in the tub (albeit a sideways soak as the tub is still too big)…. I set off home… stop off at the one shop to see if they have printer cartridges, figure I’ll go to the other shop for the bubbly - get in my car, half way there… it suddenly feels like I landed in a huge tub of treacle - and having experienced this feeling before and been scolded for not stopping immediately - I pull into a bay and switch off.  Phone the man…. get told the man is busy with work stuff. Briefly contemplate taking a taxi home - look at the taxis, figure this is not a mode of transport I wish to experience so when all else fails.. I do what every girl does in a crisis…..

“Dad, can you please come rescue me?”

I wasn’t completely useless though - I did manage to get to a shop a minute before it closed and bought a new fan belt - evidently my vague description of what type of car I have …. “Opel Astra, blue with the fake wood pannelling” wasn’t enough to get the right fan belt as I was back on that carriage this morning, have to say I really don’t remember the truly awful smell.

I did get my bubbly though and rather than a long soak in the tub, I opted for an icy cold shower because it was flippen hot yesterday.

(Wouter is going to find the right fan belt and hopefully tomorrow I’ll be back in my compellingly motivated parking bay)

I really thought now that my kids are older I would no longer find myself with company whilst in the lavatory.  I was wrong… only this time my company insists on sitting on my lap whilst I’m, how shall I put this delicately, busy doing my thing. Bagheera (no great surprise here) has decided that joining me in the loo is the in thing to do, especially after a long nights sleep. She also purrs louder than a Harley Davidson and well.. it’s moderately off putting to say the least. We have come up with the solution to the early morning romps the two of them get up to….. as soon as they start their nonsense….. Gymmie gets ‘accidentally’ locked in the garage…. ah… silence… bliss.

I shan’t bore you with the details of yet another of my forays into the culinary world.. suffice to say - despite the recipe saying it was tomato soup - it came out as orange tasting gloop.

I have also decided to create a seperate blog for my scrapbooking - figure this way I can pontificate about cardstock/elements/brads/gadgets etc. without fear of losing my audience.

Giving the one you love a really kitsch valentines present

I defy anyone not to find her the cutest thing out there.

{My layout can be found on my scrapbook page}

‘Course Wouter’s gift to me wasn’t in the least bit kitsch, in fact it was absolutely gorgeous.

<——— spoilt

There we were….sitting in the lounge watching a programme on TV when I noticed Bagheera had brought in a ‘present’ for us.  I calmly say “Wouter, isn’t that a snake” at the same time as the chief character pulls a ruddy great big gun out of his car boot. No response from any of the three people closest to said snake.  I try again.. this time with a little more urgency in my voice “Isn’t that a snake”…. nothing.

Eventually….. Wouter decides to look down and this is what he found.

‘k so it isn’t exactly the biggest snake in the world…. but honestly - my family are evidently useless in a crises. Their excuse?  They thought I was talking about the ruddy great big gun being hauled out of the boot. I ask you!

Wouter reckoned if we put it back in the garden, the cats will just find it again so he stuck it in a glass jar and was going to release it somewhere this morning.

Growing up with a mother who is a neatfreak has its good and bad points. I’m pretty sure subconsciously I’m untidy as a way of rebelling against the stringent cleaning measures I was subjected to. They were tantamount to child abuse, I tell ya! It did however mean that I always had a tidy bedroom, which leads me to the desperate measures I resorted to yesterday to try and get Jessica to clean hers. We’re talking hell hole here….. (just did a google search for an appropriate cartoon image to accompany this - you know, her bedroom actually isn’t all that bad). To cut a long and many sms’s later story short - I moaned about her bedroom, she retaliated by asking what I was doing in her bedroom… upshot, I threated to ban the maid from cleaning her room for two weeks. Now Wouter is always harping on at me about threatening to do something and then not following through, so I figured I’d have to follow through on this one. I left a note for the maid …. “please do not clean Jessica’s bedroom”.  What happens?  The silly maid tidies up her bedroom and I then get it in the neck from Jessica for not following through on my threat. I just can’t win!

Over the weekend Wouter pointed Jessica and me to lolcats which has pictures of cats and other animals with funny captions. A real feel good site. Here are my first attempts… (not brave enough to submit them for all the world to see).

Most of it was pleasant anyway, poor Bagheera kept me up most of Saturday night - turns out she has ear mites, no wonder she wasn’t happy. She has now spent the majority of Sunday passed out on Tamsyn’s bed. Do hope that doesn’t mean she’s going to play all night.

I spent most of the weekend scrapping, hence it being a good weekend. It isn’t often I get to devote large portions of time to my hobby and I’m most chuffed with myself. AND, I found the scary scrapbook monster that was eating my paper… bloody ugly looking slug. In the dead of night my thought processes don’t work very well - I figured I’d throw it in the kitchen bin because if I threw it outside it’d eat the plants. It isn’t in the bin any more - so erm, we have a slug loose in the kitchen somewhere.

More detailed images are on my scrapbook page.

Wouter and Jessica made sushi for supper last night - they’re getting quite professional at it.

Two cats (3 years/3 months) - tabbys, oodles of personality, okay one might have a slight brain malfunction every now and then - but the other one’s cuteness makes up for it tenfold. Guaranteed to give you hours of fun and excitement.

They come completely house trained - able to use a catflap (albeit only one way); have boundless energy (think of the weight you could lose chasing playing with them) and are very affectionate (those scratches on my arms… they’re love bites).

Please……I’ll pay you!!!

One thing… you can only have them daily between the hours of 02:00am and 05:00am - the rest of the time I want them back.

Anyone that scrapbooks is hyper aware of using acid free paper, acid free glues, making sure the photographs don’t come into contact with anything that might contain acid. So when you discover that something - which I might add only seems to be active at night and seems intent on eating its way through your paper is living in your scrapbook room - you tend to get a little bit freaked out.

I have no idea what it might be - I did do a bit of research this morning on paper eating bugs but I’m not sure if my monster in the scrapbook room is one of them. All we can think is that whatever it is, is coming from what used to be the kitchen cupboards. My major concern is of course my scrapbook pages and paper - with the amount of paper I have in my room, these paper eating insects could turn into something like this and take over the house!

And people wonder why I’m scared of mantis’s.. do a ‘giant scary insect’ google image search…. predominant insect…. THE PRAYING MANTIS!!!!  *shudder*

If anyone who reads this has an idea of what it might be and how I can get rid of it, please let me know - our lives depend on it! ‘k so that is a bit dramatic, lets just say my life and scrapbooks depend on it. I’m going to buy a doom fogger and fog the bastards out…. just hope that works.

(As an aside, my in-laws gently chided [aka full on nagged] me for shirking my blog responsibilities - so I thought I’d best put finger to keyboard and write something. The fact that they already know everything I’m about to write is tough - they can read it all again)

Saturday night Gymmie decided he was tired of having 7 lives left, and figured he’d take a walk on the wild side and lose another one. We live on a very busy road with cars hurtling down at break neck speed most of the time. We’d decided to invite a few friends round for a braai and were happily chatting, quaffing and generally ejoying ourselves when there was a screech of brakes and a very loud thud. Next moment a cat streaks across the garden almost at the speed of light and disappears. We all thought the car  had either hit another car or a pedestrian, it was only when the woman from across the road came over to ask if I’d seen my cat that it dawned on me the thud we’d heard was Gymmie. ‘Course we couldn’t find him, which then led to much snot and trane on my part. Eventually he surfaced, limping slightly and looking decidedly sorry for himself. There doesn’t seem to be any obvious damage and the fact that he was once more chasing after Bagheera at 5 this morning must mean something. Fool of a cat.

As for the other one, well she’s had a few adventures of her own, ranging from trying to drown herself in the bath… to deciding our bedroom needed a little bit of additional decorating.

One has to love her though, ‘cos she is so damn cuuuuuuuuuuuute.

And even though they’d like us to believe they hate each other…..

  

They really don’t.