Tanya's Blog

On Sunday we had the pleasure of going to a jazz festival held at the Maynardville Open Air Theatre.

 

Little did we know when we said we’d go that Sunday was going to be one of the hottest days Cape Town can remember for a very long time.

Tamsyn had the right idea, it was the only way she could keep cool – she was literally soaked from head to foot by the time she’d finished.

Of course my brother-in-law had a much better idea on how to keep cool.

The music however made up for the heat – it was wonderful. Amanda Tiffin is an extraordinarily talented artist and based on what she and the other performers did on Sunday, we should be damn proud of our local talent.

And I for one am looking forward to seeing the amazing acappella group Not the Midnight Mass again, they were thoroughly entertaining and even in the soaring heat they had the audience laughing and singing along.

The show ended with UCT jazz music students singing a few numbers, by this stage the worst of the heat had passed and everyone was ready for more. Sadly a number of the musicians had other gigs to perform. All in all it was a wonderful afternoon and one I’d recommend to anyone – you don’t even need to be a jazz lover to enjoy it.

Would you look at that sexy beast, isn’t she cute?

Just shows you how excited I was about getting another car (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it – I will deny any allegations made regarding my inability to shake my blonde roots) I dropped Wouter off at his work this morning as we’d arranged for the chap selling us the car to drop it off there. I arrived at his work this afternoon eager as a beaver to drive my car home. Never dawned on me that I could just as well have driven his car home and he mine. I was excited… demmit.  I drove it home – and it didn’t suddenly develop some weird mechanical or electrical fault…. I think I have a winner!

An Opel Meriva 1.6 Enjoy….. here’s to many years of driving bliss.

(For once the bubbly is serving its true purpose – the celebration of a wonderous event)

As an aside – I phoned my insurance company because I haven’t heard from them since the last call where they discovered I couldn’t actually lay claim to a five years no claim bonus, but rather just the three I’d been with them. How was I supposed to know some idiot there decided I’d obviously been insured before and have never claimed and was therefore entitled to the reduced premium.  Anyway, they’re writing some report which they’ll send to me and within that report they’ll tell me how much they are paying out. In the meantime I have had no less than 4 sms’s asking me to rate their service. Excuse me?  You haven’t given me any friggen service ‘cos I’m still waiting for the outcome. Nits!

Late this afternoon I was driving along the M3 listening to Cape Talk when I smelt an odd smell, did a bit more sniffing and the vague thought struck me that it smelt electrical. A few minutes later smoke was coming out the dashboard. Even a complete mechanical idiot like me realised this can’t be right. I put my hazards on and moved across the road to park on the shoulder, a lot more smoke was now coming out. I had visions of the car blowing up around me so I grabbed my handbag and bailed.

Conversation to Wouter went like this:

Me: I think my car is on fire.

Wouter: Oh dear, why?

Me: Smoke’s coming out the dashboard.

So I stood on the side of the road, in the shade of a tree, waiting for Wouter to arrive and watched the smoke fill the car. It’s a bit of a depressing sight really – watching your car deteriorate before your eyes. When Wouter arrived I popped the hood for him to see what was going on, in opening the door the oxygen caused the fire to accelerate, so now we had flames as well as smoke. A quick phonecall to 10111 and the fire brigade were on their way.

Whilst waiting for the fire brigade a friendly good samaritan stopped and gave us his fire extinguisher – Wouter used that but by then it was too late.

A tow truck guy arrived, friendly chap. A volunteer fire fighter arrived, also a friendly chap. Fire medical rescue chaps arrived, again friendly. Eventually the fire engine pitched up (they’d got a little lost… miss-communication) quite a few chaps and a couple of gals, all very friendly.

I stood and watched my car being drowned in water, the dashboard pulled apart and more drowning (see Wouter’s blog for pictures).

*sigh*

R.I.P

P.S. I don’t have any nice pics of the car but thought this one was cute.

Tomorrow is phone the insurance company day.

(Rather a lot of catching up actually…. )

Tamsyn had her cast off on 19 January and seems to be coming along nicely – of course the poor child was scared to death when her doctor came at her with a small electric saw – sometimes my father’s sense of humour gets the better of him. He’d told her awhile back about some horror story (made up of course) involving a doctor, a cast and several missing digits, so naturally this was upmost in her mind.

I must commend her though – having a cast on for six weeks is bad enough, having to have one on in the middle of summer – must have been torture. I’m not sure who was more pleased it came off, her or me.

(If you’re moderately squeamish – avert your eyes)

She says it feels better – but the real test will be when she starts to play sport again. Sadly she won’t be going back to competitive gymnastics, but she has said she’d like to do what we call fun gymnastics on a Friday afternoon.  She’s just delighted she can swim again. :-)

Of course the start of a new school year means the start of projects again – this one proved to be quite fun. Jessica had to make a 3d representation of an animal and plant cell. Based on a suggestion by her teacher she decided to make it out of cake – I suspect the idea of being able to have one’s cake and eat it too, appealed to her. (I know, lame)

 

 

It was quite funny the next day when Tamsyn and I were walking around the local Spar – a mother had a cake mix and several packets of sweeties in her hand and her daughter was going “We shouldn’t need too much licorice”.  We know what you’re about to do. Turns out a lot of pupils figured the easiest way to do this project was to go the cake route.

I have to show you this picture – I figure if ever a teacher asks for proof when one says ‘But Miss, the cat ate my homework’ this would be perfect.

 

For the record – the bottle of OB’s just happened to be on the table, it was not used in any way as a coping mechanism for having to cover 498* books. *hic*

The bubbly glass in my hand is also not the reason why I’m nodding off whilst Wouter is talking…I had a cold and was tired!!

* Alright so I might have exaggerated slightly – sure felt like 498.

I have *once again* been called to task over my abysmal blogging. The lack thereof, that is, not the actual content.  The content (in my opinion of course) tends to be full of humour, anecdotal in nature and has the feel good factor. This entry shall be no different. However this entry also comes with two (yes you read right TWO) endorsements to my writing abilities.

Let’s start with the anecdotal bit…. Yesterday I arrived at work to be greeted with one of those ‘lemme forward this to everyone I know ‘cos I think it’s hysterical and I’m pretty sure they will too’ emails from my ever caring brother-in-law, along with this comment:

“This is my 4th mail to Tanya this year without a response to the first three; Does this e-mail address still work or am I taking my 40th birthday song from Tanya, “You drive me crazy”, a bit too far?”

You know it came as a real surprise to me to realize my brother-in-law was so needy.  Feeling rather sorry for him I decided to reply to his ‘‘lemme forward this to everyone I know ‘cos I think it’s hysterical and I’m pretty sure they will too’ email.

“Dear Brother-in-law

 

(Please read this reply 4 times – saves me having to send it 4 times

– your co-operation is much appreciated)

 

hehehehe to all the joke emails you have forwarded onto me. I have read them all, giggled internally and otherwise have thoroughly enjoyed them. The cartoons (I’m pretty sure there were cartoons in there somewhere) were hysterical and I was seriously tempted to print them out, enlarge them to A3 and paste them on my walls. The cute animal pictures (I’m almost 80 % sure there were animal pictures in there somewhere) were adorable and I was *this* close to using my photograph paper at home to print some out and scrapbook them.

 

I apologise from the depths of my being for not replying each time one came through – I must have missed the email etiquette lesson where it stated it was just common decency to reply to the joke emails that get shunted around cyberspace – I have googled ’email etiquette’ and am mortified to have to admit I am indeed in the wrong.

 

I hang my head in shame and resolve (amongst all the other resolutions I made this year) to do better in the future and have set a reminder on my outlook express to periodically pop-up to remind me to reply to my brother-in-law when he emails cute animal pictures, entertaining jokes and snort out loud cartoons.

 

Signed

 

Your repentant sister-in-law”

Sometimes… I amaze even myself. :-)

The unfortunate downside to my feeling sorry for my brother-in-law – he keeps sending me ‘lemme forward this to everyone I know ‘cos I think it’s hysterical and I’m pretty sure they will too’ emails!!!

Note to self – Stop being such a patsy!

Evidently I need to check my blog more often – just had to wade through 152 spam messages – whoever decided to initiate the ‘have you heard this joke’ or ‘here’s a good joke for you’ way of spamming a person should be forced to listen to the self same lame jokes over and over for an indefinite period of time, after which I’ll set my father on them (38 years of hearing the same jokes could be a reason why I dislike jokes so much). Speaking of Dad – he turned 70 on 7 January – happy belated birthday Dad! They’re in Australia visiting my brother and family – from all accounts having a wonderful time.

As for my new year’s resolutions… yes I’m the type that makes wonderful promises* to myself – each and every year – only to have them fall by the way side round about 5 days into the new year, they haven’t quite fallen yet – probably because I haven’t started them yet either.  I did however resolve 2010 was going to be the year of zero tolerance towards traffic fines and excessive medical bills. Twelve days into the year – relax, I haven’t done anything medically stupid (falling out a landrover and breaking one’s wrist is a once off event – *frantic tapping of wood*) – I received a speeding fine yesterday – bastard caught me doing 115 km/h in a 100 km/h zone. I have reavaluated my resolves and 2010 is the year of 1 traffic fine and zero tolerance towards stupid medical emergencies.

Oh yes, and I have also resolved to be more organised this year – so far that isn’t quite working out for me either.

And finally I have decided to devote today to researching how a way too light for her own good sleeper and a starting to snore way too much these days bloke can have an harmonious night life together.

*These promises are the same every year (give up red bull and lose weight) – have to give me 100 % for consistency and nothing for achievement.

There was a time when I was on top of current affairs – I could hold my own in a conversation – be it Magabe, Malema or Manto related. Then I was able to tell you the number one hit on the top 10, 20 or 40 hit parade. The former courtesy of a car aerial and Cape Talk the latter Five FM – aerial thieving bastard. These days I’m left to my own thoughts and listening to the voices in my head (who by the way are tone deaf and cannot carry a tune)… it would appear the radio is dead.

Tamsyn had her foot operation yesterday. For the last three years she’s been having problems with her left foot, so much so that she had to give up all physical activity for the last year and a half. We’d tried everything, physiotherapy – resting the foot – and even went so far as to try specially designed inner soles, to no avail. Fortunately Mom had a discussion with her hip specialist and he recommended another specialist – hot footing it (I know, lame pun) to Dr Hastings – he pin pointed the problem immediately and recommended surgery.  Fast forward a few months and here we are……

She has to keep the cast on for six weeks and Dr Hastings seems confident she’ll be back to sport by the 2nd term next year. Of course once the cast is off, the real work starts – physiotherapy. She’s been really good about the whole thing and although the prospect of being on crutches for six weeks is daunting – I’m pretty sure the goal at the end is keeping her going.

Of course we couldn’t have done any of this without the help of my folks – Mom has been wonderful and stayed by Tamsyn’s side the whole day yesterday – through several ward changes (long story), a mouthful of anaesthetic (what is one to do when the anaesthetist says to you – kiss your granddaughter goodbye…. you bend down to kiss her – and end up gulping down anaethetic) and numerous bedpans (but we’re not allowed to talk about those).

The fact that there’s a Grade 9 boy in the bed next to Tamsyn - I’m sure has nothing to do with the whispering amongst sisters – or the many surreptitious glances in the mirror by Jessica.

Naturally all her friends had to hear about the op. Aren’t cellphones wonderful :)

 

As the youngest member of the family is due to be out of action for six weeks, we figured we’d trim the Christmas tree early this year. Armed with a xmas cd, the box of decorations and the tree – we got stuck in.

Turned out the second set of xmas lights were beyond repair.

 

Even got the “I’m really too old for this”  teenager to put on a baubel – literally just one!