New Beginnings (Again)

The years do seem to roll around rather fast these days, don't they? I remember when Christmas was a golden jewel, as inaccessible as China, and the joyful anticipation which began to build up from the end of November. School helped, of course, with Carol Services and Prizegivings and that great week after the exams were finished where we pretty much did what we wanted and got ready for the school to be opened up to parents on the last day... Then there was the trip away to the coast, to my grandparents (I grew up in Johannesburg, 12 hours drive away from where I was born in Port Elizabeth), the excitement of meeting up with cousins perhaps not seen for a year, the waking up on Christmas morning to presents and family and food food food. The holiday at Natures Valley afterwards, with sea and sun and sand and the New Year's party on the beach...

Now I'm an adult, the season seems to sneak up on me rather abruptly. I rush about getting presents, and before I know it, it's almost Twelfth Night, and time for the tree to come down. Jamie did have a concert at play school this year, which brought the season into focus. Of course, he refused to sing, but then he is only three. And we have had a marvellous Christmas break, with suprise visits from my sister and her husband (based in the UK) and a few wonderful days up the North Coast with family.

Soooo, this is not a complaining post, at all at all. I'm just thinking about the nature of new beginnings, and how we break our time into meaningful parts. Somehow, although I'm 36 years old, this time of year always feels as though it should be accompanied by the smell of new pencils and crisp paper. I crave textbooks and diaries, and new shoes. I want to hear stories of holidays away, of conquests made, resolutions undertaken and already broken. 2008 has ticked over into 2009, and twelve new months stretch ahead. And now that I no longer have a context around me which changes, now that I need to make the changes for myself, well, somewhere, I need to tap a well of willpower and corral the muse and make the changes.

It's shaping up to be a momentous year all round. 2008 was one of those years where you watch in bemusement as edifices crumble and fall and, in the rubble, new bricks and blocks arise, heralding new orders, new shapes to the ordered universe, new paradigms shifting into view. 2009 may just be the year where many of those blocks settle into place, and there we are - somewhere new. I'm afraid of change (isn't everybody? Really?) but I see this happening on both a personal level and, spreading outwards, within South Africa and the wider world. When 2009 rolls over into 2010, the view from where we stand may be quite different, and I'd like to be ready for the change.

Because if one thing is certain, it is that the years go by faster and faster, and that if you don't grab them by the scruff and live them, you won't get them back. So, Happy 2009, and here's to positive change and open minds and all those good things. It's going to be a rollercoaster.

I have just spent the last hour wading through yards of information on Masters Degrees, on various university websites. My brain is a little boggled. Since I did my Honours (in 1994) a vast amount has changed out there, up to and including the way a university degree is structured. All I want is a clear statement telling me what is offered and how to apply. Would be good if it said how I could tell if I was eligible too...

I am finally at a point in my life where I think I could go back to study again. I would so love to actually have a professional qualification and be able to do something constructive with my life and time. Don't get me wrong; being a mother is a very constructive job and it sure takes up a lot of time, but as we don't plan on having any more children, pretty soon I'm going to need to be something more. I'd like that to be somehow connected with my degree, which was in Psychology. (And in Journalism, but I never went to any of the lectures. Shame on me). I finally feel old enough and weathered enough to be able to carry out the role of psychologist (hmm. Does that immediately disqualify me from being one?? Interesting thought) and if I could just figure out what exactly I'm applying for, and how to do it, well, I'll be on my way.

Wish me luck.

Ding Dong, the Muse is Dead

Oh dear. I have been overcome by the mundaneity of everyday life, and cannot think of a single interesting thing to say to anyone. Life feels like an endless round of rushing about lately!

I am looking forward to Christmas (which is tomorrow!) and then after that I need to get my brain into New Year mode. I don't believe in resolutions as such, but I find my mind re-evaluating everything at this time of the year, and I don't think this year will be any different.

Hopefully that will kickstart the muses!

Festive Sevens

Ohhh, Mud tagged me about a week ago, and it's taken me this long to do... I've been adding bits as and when, but I'm afraid this reveals what a boring person I am! Oh dear. Well, here goes..

7 Things I Must Do Before My Parents Arrive

We'll be going to them... but the principle holds true, I think.

Buy presents for them

Buy last presents for kids. Jamie has two and Nicky, so far, only one. My Virgo soul rebels at the unfairness of it, although I doubt Nicky will notice.

Buy a present for my husband! Only he won't tell me anything he wants and as his birthday is at the end of October, I feel like I already got him everything. Besides, the stuff I'd like to get him would necessitate mortgaging the house.

Wrap the presents. This is not as easy as it sounds as I have a three year
old and an 18 month old trying to get in on the action. They LURVE sellotape.

Make sure I remember to open all the doors on the Advent Calendar,
preferably day by day rather than 10 days in a row. Too much chocolate.

(Too much chocolate for a three year old and an 18 month old, that is. There is no such thing as too much chocolate when you're a 36 year old Mommy. Trust me on this.)

Go to the dentist. Convulsive shiver. Do not admit to ANY chocolate eating while there.

Host a braai for my husbands computer group. Oh, and remember to actually send out invites to it so that people show up.

7 Things I've been Doing Instead Of Preparing For Christmas

Having new pool pump installed

Having new buit in cupboards built in our bedroom. Oh, I love my new cupboards!! I feel so grown up all of a sudden!

Having a new loo put into the guest bathroom after the old one Stopped Working.
Capitals deserved.

Having new satellite installation thingie installed over the granny flat

Settling new tenants into the granny flat

Frantically arranging playdates for three year old bored out of his mind now
playschool has finished.

Watching Stargate Sg-1 Season 8, 9 and 10 on DVD. Tee hee.

7 Things I Can't Do This Christmas

Go for a walk wrapped up in a coat and scarf

Pick holly from the garden

Eat turkey and/or goose

Go to Midnight Mass and the preceding Carol Service (2330 with toddlers?? Are
you nuts??)

Sleep in!!!

Spend it with everyone I'd like to. Thank heavens for email, Facebook and VOIP phones, hey?

7 Christmas Wishes

For my little family to be safe, secure, happy and healthy for the year to
come.

Less political intimidation and violence than expected in the run up to our
elections here

For my very special sister in law to have the baby she so desperately wants

For the economic situation across the world to stabilize

And, purely selfishly, for Nicky to be out of nappies by next Christmas!

That's only five. I find wishing difficult.

7 Things I Say As Christmas Approaches

What? Only TEN days to go??

No, I have no idea what I want :-(

I MUST get a Christmas tree...

Heavens, we've forgotten to open the last five days on the Advent Calendars!

Christmas is when Jesus was born, so Father Christmas brings us presents to
celebrate. (Well, I'm not Catholic and no-one has ever given me a manual on
raising Catholic children. I'm making it up as I go along!!!)

No, Nicky's dashboard is for Christmas - he can't have it now! Share yours!!

Good Lord, I'm tired...

I must must must get to the shops and buy presents for you all...

PLEASE try and think of just one thing you'd like???

7 Celebrities I'd Invite For Christmas Dinner

Hugh Jackman. Self explanatory

The entire cast of SG-1. I've just finished watching the box set. Besides, they look like fun people :-)

Richard Dean Anderson on his own, if the rest of the cast couldn't make it. Again, self explanatory. Can I keep him??? Please????

I've been racking my brain to think of a political type person to invite, but actually, I don't want any of them. I don't feel like fighting at Christmas time. I just want fun conversation and eye candy. Beside, if the whole cast comes, that's my seven.


7 Favourite Festive Foods


Hmmm. I have favourite Southern and favourite Northern festive foods. An amalgam, then...

Mince pies (Northern. Too hot in SA)

My Mom's ham (Southern)

Goose (Northern)

Marinated Mushrooms (very Southern)

Three Bean Salad (ditto)

Trifle (North and South)

Ginger Wine !!! Does it count as a food?

7 Other Bloggers Who Can Play Festive Seven (if they have the time)!

Oooh, I don't have seven - I think everybody has been tagged already. BUT possibly

Zinkwazi Reflections

Cat-a-tonic

Mutable Time

Time seems to be such an elastic thing. I've been reading about it for years now, fiction and non-fiction, and trying to understand the various theories surrounding it. It seems as though it may, on a quantum level, be mutable enough that some travel within it may be possible. Of course, the quantum level and our level are very different, but sometimes, I've felt I might have managed it, might have had a glimpse of the past.

Like my ghosts, my glimpses have tended to be audio. I stood under an archway of the London Wall, at Tower Hill, and I heard the tramp tramp tramp of feet above me, and the clatter of something metal on stone. Only for a moment, but it was very clear.

I stood on a flat square patch of tarmac on part of Clapham Common, without any idea of why I suddenly heard planes overhead. Some three weeks later an elderly lady I met on my walk from the Tube told me that the tarmac covered the old air raid shelters, which had been filled in some years previously. She remembered being rushed out of her house by her father, and carried down into them. She remembered the noise of the planes.

When I was a child, we stopped once on a trip from Johannesburg to Durban at the wall where Piet Retief's daughter wrote his name on an overhanging rock while she and his party of trekkers waited for him to return from the meeting with Dingaan. He never did return. As I stood there I clearly heard the snorting and blowing of horses, and the rattle of their bridles. But when I climbed over the rocks looking for them, there were none there.

So perhaps the quantum bleeds into the reality we live in every now and then. At an old racetrack in Surrey, near Woking, I was struck with this thought; what if those people from the Roaring Twenties, racing round their track on glorious Spring days and Summer mornings, glanced up and saw, not the Surrey countryside gleaming before them, but the Services, stretching over acres of space, full of cars and people and tarmac and trucks. Would they have driven off the track, thrown completely by the brief vision of that space occupied by its future time?

Perhaps, though, they would only have heard it. Like me.

Cathedral Peak, Drakensberg

Pure magic!

Philosophy

There seems to have been some gloom around the last few weeks. I keep reading beautifully written blog posts all over the bloggersphere dealing with sadness. Someone suggested it was Mercury retrograde... could be.

It certainly seems to be universal. I've been hanging on wanting to come back here with a jolly, funny post about something jolly and funny, and two weeks have passed. Mind you, in my defence, I've been ill. Viral laryngitis followed by a week of cluster migraine which got so severe Jon had to come back from work and take me to the doctor to be made a pincushion of. Gah. I loathe, hate and detest migraines, and now that they're ba-ack I'm back to only just glancing at computer screens, not looking at faces for too long, not using mirrors, wearing sunglasses inside, keeping curtains drawn... anything to avoid triggering another aura.

I'm doing some other stuff too. I'm trying to relax, trying to lose some weight and get a bit more exercise, and I am NEVER EVER EVER again eating hard cheeses of any description. I know it triggers the migraines, but I got complacent, and ate cheddar. Boy, did I regret that.

So I have been a bit of a pale shade of blue lately. Just a delicate one. I used up my letting-off-steam coffee morning with Kerryn in bitching about politics, about which I am aware I know far too little to really be commenting on. I'm also guiltily aware that the other woman there has met me in a social setting precisely twice, and both times I've gone off pop about the same thing. I feel like I owe her an apology, and cherish a small, probably vain hope that she won't be saying to other moms she meets "Well, she's nice enough, but she NEVER stops moaning..." I don't usually worry too much about what other people think about me, unless I think I behaved badly, and, well, I do a bit.

Sometimes I envy these smug types*, with their certainty that the universe has a personal interest in them, wants the best for them, and can be pushed, prodded and prayed into a favourable position. My universe is far more independent, far less personal. I'm part of it, and a valued part, but I'm not the most important thing in it. When I was younger, this was enough. To be a part of a greater whole, individual yet joined together. I didn't need more than that. I had so so much less to lose.

I have a memory, of being 17 and of being in a combi being driven from somewhere to somewhere, and the driver going faster and faster. There were two of us standing on the seats with our heads out the sunroof, and we were whooping and laughing and loving every second. The feel of my hair (blonde then, much longer) whipping against my cheeks is very vivid. I miss that sense of power so immensely much sometimes, but it's gone. Absolutely gone. I am far more respectful, bordering on suspicious at times, of the universe now.

I know there is more in heaven and earth, Horatio, and I've had glimpses, but what, exactly, is it? And how do I stop being so afraid?