What a lucky girl I am

So, yes, what've I done in the last two days? Bullet form today, because I am feeling super-organised, and I feel like splashing some little dotty bullets about the place:

• Visited Pop twice, once on Wednesday, once yesterday, and seen her turn from pale, horribly sore, unhappy, looking-so-small Pop into slightly rosier, less sore, still-looking-so-small Pop. I've just spoken to her and she's being discharged. This has made me dance a little jig of joy. Of course I want her to be quick-quick back to rosy, pain-free, back-to-normal-size (which is small, but in a different way) Pop, but she's on that road and I'm so glad. She was ever-so-brave and they found nothing 'untoward' in her lymph nodes which is wonderful news. Now she just needs to recover fully.
• I turned 36 years old, making my blogname even more ridiculous than, well, the day before the day before yesterday (otherwise known as Tuesday.)
• I breakfasted on said birthday with my parents and their best friends who have known me since I was born. It made me realise how incredibly lucky I am to have them all within walking distance of The House in the Middle of the Street. They gave me beautiful roses too.
• I suppered on said birthday with wonderful, old friends at a pavement restaurant in the City Beneath the Mountain. The concrete sizzled in the heat and the bins smelt rank from around the corner and down the alley in the furnace-like temperatures, as we all listened in on the internet date at the next table. The smell dissolved in the good company and the couple next door seemed well-suited. They must've breathed a sigh of relief when we left, with our twenty waggling ears between us.
• I stayed outside as a thunderstorm passed over causing steam to rise from my driveway after the even hotter heat of yesterday - 39 degrees celcius. Too hot to breathe. We don't often get thunderstorms (or rain) in Summer here on the tip of Africa, that happens always further North where I grew up. It was wonderful. The smell of rain on hot dust is indesrcibable, so I won't try.
• I got into bed, my hair filled with raindrops, my body cooled and lay in the air of the fan, contemplating what a very lucky girl I am to love and be loved as I am.

Hmm, not so sure about the bullet form... will go back to paragraphs next time, okay?

Absence due to jollification

Oh bugger, how did that happen? I’m trying to be a good blogger and write lots and lots. Not daily, mind, but often. Like in maybe everyday and then, all of a sardine, it’s been five days since my last post. Five? Surely not. That time flies thing? I think it might be true.

I’ve been busy you see. This entails not so many hours type-typing away on my computer and many more hours spent doing so many other more fun things. Like drinking cocktails full of crushed mint while the sun sets, turning the sky brilliant pink and The Mountain hazy purple, while seagulls fly above laughing at the ice cream lickers below.

And sitting in a garden that feels like a small oven in the Summer sunshine while a big boy cooks meat on the braai and a little one throws brightly coloured balls into his sandpit-without-sand and then into his pool-without-water. There’s no water in it because otherwise he will never get out. Ever. Not even at bedtime.

Or sitting amongst the warm happiness of a large family, celebrating birthdays in a hidden valley on a stoep next to a very much loved herb garden while the children zoom about, swinging, climbing, and the adults drink wine with lots of ice in it.

Then there’s the taking out of the Christmas lights, checking that they work and getting the box of decorations, old and new, from the top of the cupboard, and persuading my father that he really, really, does want to go and buy a tree from the guys next to the racecourse and put it up in my house. A smaller tree this year, though, not one which reaches the roof like he always gets me, which I love (despite my mother always telling him to get me a smaller one.) No, this year the tree must stand on a table, slightly above 16-month old twin boy height because… THEY’RE ARRIVING, next week, for Christmas! My beautiful nephews, and their mothers.

First though, tomorrow, is my annual Christmas Tree Decorating Party. When people pass through, some stay a half hour, others all night, with their children, their friends. There’ll be food and Christmas songs and everybody who walks through the door has to put at least one decoration on the tree, from the box.

See now, why I’m being a naughty blogger? I’m busy jollifying.

Busy busy on holiday

See what happens? I make these wild statements of finshing Thirty Days of Truth before the end of November and then, suddenly, it's the 19th and I've been busybusybusy (on holiday) going to wonderful galleries with high ceilings and white walls and beautiful photos; having lunch at a friend's hole-in-the-wall restaurant filled with happy people and healthy food and love; wandering around the city seeing the throb of life there; popping in to the Reserve Bank; walking the fan walk to my beloved stadium, a sea of yellow people, to watch Bafana Bafana against the USA (I saw the president!); being sad at the arrival of the period of a wanting-to-be-pregnant friend; celebrating the birthday of another friend in a Cuban bar full of people talking and laughing and smoking cigars.

And writing, writing, for my course. But now, I am going to write, write for me. This weekend will be filled with TDoT's - truth spouting left, right and centre. Because I want to be back with writing about what's going on in my life. The people I saw, the conversations I had. But first, let me get through the self-inflicted therapy of TDoT.

Degrees of perspective

My lovely friend, Pop, as any of you who read regularly know, was diagnosed two weeks ago with breast cancer and told, at that stage, she’d probably have to have a mastectomy, radiation and chemotherapy. She was devastated, as we all were. It was like somebody had dropped me onto the ground from a huge height and winded me, when she told me.

She had lots of tests, they took out the offensive lump, and found another. More worry, more scariness. And then, more tests, and waiting, while this ‘thing’ hung around in the air, flapping its dark wings annoyingly. The tests came back, with results that made us all (wierdly, considering) whoop with joy. It’s the slow-growing kind – she will need a mastectomy, can choose if she wants both, and, possibly (she sees the oncologist today) choose whether or not to have chemotherapy or hormone therapy.

Two weeks ago, that would never have made me whoop with joy. Strange how one’s perspective changes so quickly. Obviously, now is the really difficult time – these are huge decisions she has to make, all with pro’s and con’s. It’d be so much easier if the doctors just said ‘You have to do this’, which, obviously, they can’t. Hopefully things will be a little clearer after her visit today!

In the meantime, she turned 37 yesterday and we all celebrated with a delicious meal at a little Greek place down the road – lovely food, good company and a chocolate cake with flowers on it that my mother kindly made for her. She decorated it with some beautiful camellias which came with gratis tiny snail who looked bewildered to be in a greek restaurant, poor poppet.

Let’s all hold thumbs for an easier decision road for her, shall we?

The beginning

I am punctual.

Let me start right at the beginning, to explain. The beginning of me. Well, not right at the beginning, of course, nobody likes to think of their parents having done the deed to create them, do they? I know mine, for certain, only did 'that' twice. One time for my sister, one time for me. Of course.

Anyway, back to the point. As the story goes (I can't absolutely verify it, even though I was there), I was due on the second of February. That morning my mother went into labour and trundled off to the local hospital in that dusty Free State town and read her historical novel until I showed up, just after the ward staff delivered lunch. 1pm on my due date.

My father ate her lunch while she had me, it being before the hands-on-daddy days.

See? I told you I was punctual.

Birthdays and history

It is 20 years today since the ANC were unbanned in a monumentously historic announcement by then-president, FW de Klerk. It was my 15th birthday. I remember being incredibly proud that it happened on my birthday, and have to admit, that I still feel a little shudder of pride about it. Even better was when, 9 days later, on my mother's birthday, Mandela was released. In my up-your-own-arse teenage mind, I was directly involved in these wonderful moments.

Which, of course, leads us to the fact that I am 35 today. Middle aged. I'm not actually all that perturbed by age. It seems a silly thing to be hung up on because, really, what are you going to do about it? Stop time? A friend of my mother's has never told anyone her age. Bizarre. I plan to grow old gracefully (well, ok, I'm not exactly the most graceful creature* but you know what I mean) and be brazenly honest about my age.

Unfortunately, regardless of my Birthday Girl status, I have to be at Real Work, but I am not being particularly productive and am answering lovely birthday calls instead. I just got one from Aisha, my personal banker. Hmm... Funny thing is: I didn't even know I had a personal banker. I was going to say: "Thank you, but it might be better for you to spend more time improving the service at your bank, and less time phoning people to say Happy Birthday", but then I thought that'd be ungracious. Then I felt a little bad about not knowing when HER birthday is, to return the favour. Luckily another friend phoned, so my guilt flitted away like confetti on the breeze. Shows you what a solid character I am - focused is the word I like to use.

So, happy birthday to me. Who could ask for more than to wake up on one's birthday, loved, and be able to look forward to a lovely meal, al fresco, with delicious friends and delightful food, later?

*Understatement of the year

Middle ages approach

I am turning 35. Tomorrow. Which makes the name of my blog even sillier than before. I knew that'd happen when I started it. I think I even wrote a post about how silly it was. Naturally, though, as I am wanton to do, I ignored my sensical side and went with the nonsensical side. Even though I'm turning 35, as I just said, nonsensical Shiny seems to win most arguments still. I am beginning to accept that I may never grow up and become sensical.

So, in this vain, I had a little birthday party on Friday, in the garage, with music, and a mirror ball. There was champagne and lovely friends and fairy lights in the trees and I got spoilt with beautiful presents and the only difference between my youthful garage birthday parties and this new era of middle-aged garage birthday parties (because the garage parties are traditional at this point... I get complaints when I miss a year) was that everyone left by 12. Like in Cinderella.

Tonight I will dine out (look, I'm using phrases like 'dine out' now that I'm almost middle-aged) with my parents and their best friends who have known me, well, since I was 0, and my love, and then tomorrow night I shall go out with a little group of friends, to the same place I celebrated my birthday last year because it was just so fabulous. In that post I couldn't say what the newses were, but the first was that K was pregnant, with my now-Goddaughter, the beautiful Ava, and the second was that my sister was having not one, but two babies. Who now look like this (Allie, especially for you):

I may be an over-zealous, biased Aunt, but aren't they just too sweet?

Sun and sticky fingers

I attended the first birthday party of friends of mine's child yesterday. It was at their house and, in the garden, they'd erected a jumping castle. There was a pink cake in the shape of a number one and chocolate cupcakes with hundreds and thousands on.

I sat on the stoep with the adults, watching as their children (about fourteen of them, ranging from 3 weeks to 10 years old) bounced themselves silly. Ok, the 3 week old one didn't, neither did the 1 year old birthday girl, but the others did. They ate enormous amounts of bright pink cake, orange chips and chased that all down with vast quantities of fruit juice out of boxes with Barney the big purple dinosaur on them. And then bounced. And bounced. I, personally, chose to stay far back from said very full, very bounced children. It just seemed wise.

I went with my lovely friends D and B and their daughter (one of my favourite people), M, who is two-and-a-half. She joined the jumping throng happily, after announcing that the boys must get off to make way for the girls. I completely agreed with her - the boys were much bigger and playing rough. She, however, then played the hooligan, perfecting the 'head first off the edge' manouvre in three quick tries. Then she, obviously (being a clever cookie) decided staying on the bouncy bit was preferable to having ones head in the sand on the edge. It was at this point she also decided (to her mother's mortification) that it was a far more fun activity in the nude. So there she was, pants-less amongst the other assorted little girls in their princess outfits (the birthday girl's sister) and baby designer oufits, giggling with glee.

So I had a sun-drenched, kiddy-giggle-filled, sticky-fingered, cupcake scattered afternoon. Who could ask for more?

Birthday balloons and another letter

So, it's my friend, C's, birthday today. She lives around the corner from me. Well, to be precise - down the road, around the corner, past the kid's school with the animals painted kiddilly on the wall (I love the lion - rowr!), around another corner, some more steps, then another corner, over the stop street, and you're there, at her front door. Important information, that.

Not that that has anything to do with my story, it’s just setting the scene really. The point is, it’s her birthday and she gets a bit stressy about birthdays. Winnie the Pooh once said, very wisely: “Nobody can be uncheered with a balloon.”

And it is for that, exact reason (I am a Winnie-the-Poohist), that I found myself in the car watching the neighbours peer through their window, watching me watch them, in the dark at 6:10am this morning, while a balloon got tied to her gate. Keep in mind that this is South Africa, and there tends to be a certain amount of suspicion due to a slightly worrying crime rate. I decided it deserved a letter.

Dear C’s Neighbour (the boy one, not the girl one),

While I can completely understand that possibly a strange car parked outside your house at 6am in the morning when the stars are still bright, may elicit a startled response in you, can I make one small suggestion? Two words: dressing gown.

There are some really nice dressing gowns, at a number of stores at The Big Shopping Mall down the road (I saw them while baby-shopping for my sister last week - she's having twins - I'll be a double aunty! Let me not stray from the point, though). Alternatively, there are even cheaper ones at the factory shops in the other direction – I can completely understand not wanting to waste well-earned cash on such frivolities. But do get one. Your girlfriend/wife/girl-you-brought-home-last-night’s two piece pyjama set is really sweet, but your outfit of ill-fitting shorts and NOTHING ELSE was a little too much for me at 6am.

It’s just that I think you’d look very fetching in a lovely dressing gown. I’d even be happy to come with you to pick one out. You know, just in case somebody parks outside your house in the dark at 6am to tie a red balloon to one of your neighbour’s gates again and you wish to pull back your curtain to peer out. These things do happen, apparently.

With much neighbourhood love,
Shiny.

So, yes. I was very glad to be up so early though, as The Weatherman provided a spectacular breakfast show this morning – lightening and thunder, served up with the most beautiful, brilliant pink sky and clouds as the sun rose over the mountains on the other side across Cape Town which I got to see from my perch up here on the fifth floor. Incredible.

And then I have a fabulous, Mexican, birthday celebration to look forward to, to celebrate with C this evening. Life is good when one has the prospect of frozen margarita's and lots of friends celebrating a birthday after work.

Should dressing gowns be made law I wonder?

The birthday and the behaviour

It's my mother's birthday today. Due to cuircumstances, she is currently staying at my house (short-term). She normally lives, with my father, at their house, which just happens to be about ten blocks down the road which is perfect. But she's helping me out so has kindly come to stay, hopefully just for this week.

Don't get me wrong... I adore my mother, am eternally grateful for all the things she and my father still do for me and even more grateful to them for how they brought us up. We were lucky to grow up in a love-filled environment being taught to have limitless imaginations, huge dreams and fierce independence. Helplessness is not a Shiny family trait. And we had fairies in the garden. And a treehouse. And a foofy slide - you get the picture.

However, in one's thirties, I think parents are best served after breakfast. Contrary to her misguided thoughts, I can actually work out whether or not to take a jersey to work. Her excuse, of course, is that she's my mother and always will be. True, but why do I find it SO hard not to revert back to my stroppy 15-year old self when she does these things?

As we know though, the moon is still full, I still have my period (overshare, again... I'm just being honest and open) so I am suffering under a pall of not-enough-sleep which, as we know too, results in Grumpy-Shiny-with-No-Sense-of-Humour. It's not pretty, and is no fun for anyone. Especially before breakfast.

I did try to be better this morning. It's her birthday for heaven's sake. And she's my very beloved mother. I'm not sure how well I did though. So I've organised a big bunch of lillies from us all for a birthday delivery. And we're going for dinner at a fabulously decadent place (can't claim that as mine though, it was my dad).

Do lillies cancel out unnecessary silly-teen-behaviour, I wonder?

The luckiest girl in the world

Some days are just good. And, the older (and more twisted I guess, or is a better word for it 'experienced?) I get, the less time I seem to have to dwell on those good days. I'm going to change that now and dwell away.

It was my birthday you see, and I got fabulous news from one of my best friends on my Birthday Eve and then more fabulous news on my birthday. And beside all the newses, I have fantastic friends and I got spoilt and just felt, well, wrapped in so much love. I know, it's gooey, it's mushy. It's true. I might be the luckiest girl alive.

My friends D and B, and their amazing 2-year old M moved back to this wild land last year. I haven't lived in the same place as D since varsity. It is fabulous to have her back and she's brought an even fabulouser husband back with her and a doubly fabulous daughter, M. It couldn't be better. So they were at my birthday dinner. Old friends, comfortable, like your favourite t-shirt.

And my dinner was filled with other friends too, ones from long ago who have seen me through my worst (and best) times and newer ones who feel like I've known them forever (and a couple who, if I believed in reincarnation - my jury is still out on it, I'd swear I'd known for lifetimes). It was that kind of dinner, just "The Core" people. Fuzzy-feeling-inducing. Only slight sadness was the missing few, those ones flung across the globe who you try and try, and close your eyes and wish as hard as you can to be there, but they're just not.

And then, the fact that it is summer and we could sit outside and I could look up and see the beautiful half-moon growing fatter and, and, and... let me stop gushing because that's what I seem to be doing! And I should work. I guess. Bleergh.

So, can one ever be too grateful I wonder?

Birthdays

As children, birthdays were big. As a result, they still are but, as I get older, they seem to lose a bit of the sparkle... I remember looking forward to my birthday for weeks, probably months actually. On our birthdays, we were allowed to choose what the meals would be for the whole day... Year after year my parents and sister were subjected to Wimpy burgers for lunch and spagetti bolognaise for dinner on my birthday. If I still had that, what would I choose?