How finite is your dinner table?

As everybody knows, it was Earth Hour on Saturday. So The Pond and I decided to invite a couple of people over for a braai. Then Saturday morning dawned, grey and rainy. So we changed the braai to soup. But this post is not about the food (although, knowing me, I'll mention it again). It's about the fact that The Pond and I do not have the ability to have a small dinner party. We just don't.

Now we do share many friends in common and, when we initially thought of our little Earth Hour shindig, we came up with a nice, short, list of about eight. Perfect to sit around the table in the kitchen. However, as the week expanded, so did the list. The thing is, you see, that both of us find it impossible not to invite anybody who phones us, or we bump into miscellaneously in the Spar etc, during the week leading up to any kind of 'intimate' dinner party. I fear that, in fact, were we not aware of the fact that the house is of finite size, we'd probably invite the lady she chatted to in the queue at the Post Office and the guy I met while reading the notice board at work... you get the picture. Sometimes the finity of the house alludes us.

Despite all this, and with three people cancelling last minute, and two people not pitching, we dragged the outside table into the lounge, moved the kitchen table in too, and had a (very) cosy, candlelit, Earth Hour soup dinner, with twenty of our closest friends. And it was great. An ecelectic mix of people, lots of chitter-chatter, laughter, wine and yummy soup, bread and cheese. So some people had to sit on the heirloom pear wood coffee table which was charading as a bench (my granny would've loved that actually), and a couple of people had to eat their soup with the measuring spoons, but nobody complained. And my nasty neighbour even turned off his lights at 8:30. He is now my not-so-nasty neighbour.

I do like the fact, though, that the dinner table in my brightly-coloured house, seems infinite.

I wonder if I'll ever have something I can refer to as an intimate dinner?

Would you mind unzipping me, please?

I'm feeling uncomfortable in my skin.

I was just thinking and wondering (as I do), whether it'd be unsuitable to unzip it, let it fall to the floor, and sit here, in the office in just my skeleton and flesh?

I suppose not.

But who gets to make up the rules of what's suitable or unsuitable in the office anyway?

Mantras and desires

Sometime during last year I watched my friend Oprah on the television. She had some friends around to chat about visualisation and intent and affiirmation and all that airy-fairy stuff. They had some people on the show who had big pieces of cardboard onto which they'd stuck cut out magazine pictures of things they wanted to happen in their lives and they looked at them alot. And got them. Or something like that. I'm not very good at paying attention and tend to lose concentration and chat through TV shows, or so I'm told (and that above description of the show seems to correlate).

Now, to me, the point of the show was to get people to pull out their scissors and glue and cut up old magazines to make pretty collages, thus taking them back to nursery school days, and possibly the simple joys in life. I could be wrong though. Perhaps there was more to it.

Okay, okay, obviously there was more. Like Oprah would ever just do a show on cutting and pasting. The whole thing was about positive affirmation so, despite my feelings on self-help books, I decided to try it. Dedicatedly. Because, after all, Oprah is never wrong.

I created my own little mantra, to be said in my head each morning on waking, sometimes even twice. I thought long and hard about this (admittedly while half-watching TV. It was a programme on lizard reproduction and how they're cross-breeding with lemurs. Hmm, maybe I wasn't concentrating on that either. Anyway, back to the point) and came up with a sweet little ditty to say to myself each morning, while thinking positively.

I must be honest though, I have not always found it easy to muster up the positivity in the early hours of the morning. Some things are too difficult, even for Oprah. But I did my best. And I did say it (nearly) each morning.

It's been over six months now and, each morning, I mantra myself while grinning (possibly slightly maniacally) in bed, then slowly open my eyes to see if my desires have been fulfilled, as Oprah promised. I tend to open one eye at a time, not to overwhelm myself on the day it happens, because it will, of course.

And yet, each morning since I started, after going through this whole process (and, no, it is not just an excuse to get an extra five minutes in bed), I open my eyes to find that my house has not been magically converted into the one in my mantra - the bricks are not made of chocolate cake, the roof is not wafers, the door handles in the kitchen aren't Jelly Tots, and the chocolate spring flowing into a meandering stream through my garden is just not there (there is more, but I'll stop there, I'm sure you get the picture). It's disappointing.

Then I turn around to check if my last little mantra-request has been granted... No, still no wings. Sigh.

I wonder if I'm doing something wrong?

Trafficking it

I feel like I'm trying too hard to write, rather than just writing, so I'm going to stop that. I wake in the night and think of things to write about and then I sleep and forget, like dreams that flutter out of my window. Moths flying into the dead of night, up and away.

My drive to work in the mornings takes me past a number of schools, one of them being a Very Expensive Boy's School (that breeds a Certain Type of Priviledge-expecting Boy). All of the children being dropped at this, and the other three schools on my route, seem to be dropped individually by their doting mommies and daddies. What happened to lift clubs, the school bus, and walking to school? While that may all be a sign of the times and probably a topic for large social debate, it's not my point. My point is that it makes traffic. And this makes my trip long. And, no, it's not about the state of the world and the fact that our kids can't safely walk to school anymore. It's about me. Of course.

So, you guessed it... I drafted another letter:

Dear Headmaster of Very Expensive Boy's School (that breeds a Certain Type of Priviledge-expecting Boy),

I drive past your school each morning on the way to work (nice new pool you've built there, by the way). And, while I like to see healthy young lads being dropped by their loving parents, and feel all warm and fuzzy about the fact that their heads will be filled with highly-educating facts for the day, followed by some healthy exercise, I'd actually be happier to miss out on this. The traffic just makes my trip too long and, honestly, a little irritated.

So, I was thinking that the easiest way around this, would be for you to change your school starting time. To 6:30am or 9am - you pick which one, I don't mind either way. It's completely up to you.

Thank you ever so much.

Yours sincerely,
Shiny.

P.S. While I have your attention, just one more thing: could you perhaps have a word with said doting parents about their environmental impact, please? I really don't think it's necessary for them to drive around the city in those gas-guzzling 4x4s... Some of which have seen a dust road about as often as I've seen the inside of a gym (that would be: none times).

Maybe if I took out the sentence between the brackets in the greeting line I might have a better response?

My uncluttered view

From my fifth floor window I can see across the city suburbs to the mountains way on the other side. Well, sort of. You see some bright spark in the 1970's decided to build another building in front of ours (not that I was here then. Had I been, I would most definitely have put a stop to it - by standing in the way of the foundation-digging bulldozers. Or something). And, to make matters worse, not only did they build it to block my view a bit, but they built the ugliest building too. It's pebble-dashed. Need I say more?

So I've drafted a letter to the maintenance guy:

Dear Maintenance Guy,

While I realise this might be a slightly bigger request than you normally handle, it would make my working days so much nicer, so I hope you consider it carefully, and say yes. I'm sure you will, as it is perfectly reasonable, as requests go.

Could you please remove the top two floors of the new building, and the funny tower things on top (I presume they're something to do with ventilation). They're blocking my view. The only problem I could see with the whole idea would be the wind sock on top which, I'm pretty sure would work just as well if you placed it two floors lower.

Thank you so much. I look forward to your agreement, and my uncluttered view.

Yours sincerely,
Shiny.

P.S. Just a thought - when you do it, please make sure you do it as dust-free as possible, I tend to suffer from hayfever from building dust. Again, thank you.

I wonder if it'll work?

Storms and procrastinaton

My body is so filled with it that I fear my skin might split, straight through the middle of me, allowing it all to gush out and splash onto the hot concrete, evaporating into the clear air, recondensing into fat, grey clouds on a summer afternoon, the electricity of my emotions slamming together as lightening bolts, crashes of thunder, and then the downpour.

Oh, look, it's Sunday. And I'm struggling to make myself work on the stuff I neglected on Friday, and yesterday. Like a naughty schoolgirl avoiding homework. I feel the same rebellious, kicking-dust-with-my-school-shoes feeling.

Is that my cool bed and book I hear, calling my name, ever-so-clearly?

Silly hat and ridiculous comments

Somebody needs to take the silly hat off that Pope guy. His brain needs to be given some breathing space because it's obviously not functioning properly. While I realise he's just the frontman for a whole bunch of other old guys, I'm just clutching at straws as to what, possibly, could be the cause of the thinking behind the condom comment. Other than the tight, silly, hat, of course. But I'm pretty sure they don't all sit around the big table in The Vatican boardroom, sipping tea, chewing the fat, all wearing those hats, making stupid decisions on what public statements to make en route to the continent that is suffering worst under that crippling disease.

Now I realise religion is a touchy subject, I guess especially on a Sunday, but this post isn't really about religion, more about humanity. I work in the field of HIV and ludicrous remarks such as these make my blood boil. And as far as I can remember (admittedly it's been a long time since I went to Sunday School) one of the points of Christianity/religion is tolerance and love. And, surely, reality?

While abstinence before marriage, monogamy etc are all brilliant anti-HIV tactics, the truth of the matter is that it doesn't really happen all that often. We all have sex. Shock, horror... who would've thought? Most of us before marriage. Some of us don't get married, or wait longer to get married. And, therefore, we generally all have more than one partner, as do our partners. (And this is beside different cultural beliefs, whch, surely, should be respected too). This does not make us bad people, it makes us humans. Humans who should be encouraged from any, and every, aspect to protect ourselves from AIDS.

So any comment regarding not using condoms, especially from a 'world leader' is blatantly irresponsible and completely unacceptable. When will that antiquated system wake up, look around, embrace humanity, as we are now, and protect the very people it supposedly 'looks after'?