It is school holidays again, thankfully the last day as I can really see that Liam and Luka are bored.  We asked Liam how his day was yesterday and he promptly informed us that he had not had a good day.  Some friends in the park were nasty to him and his sister irritated him when he had a friend over for the afternoon.   Last night as Liam goes off to bed we tell him to try and sleep late, we tell him tales of our own youth (like old people do) of how we used to sleep until almost noon.  Liam being an early riser tells us that he prefers to wake at 5am! This morning Gerhard and I chat about this sleeping late phenomenon and we realise that it is only once you reach your teenage years that sleeping late becomes a thing as you end up watching bad television until the early hours of the morning.  So Liam will probably carry on waking up at the crack of dawn for some time to come seeing as we send the poor kid off to bed at around 8pm without fail.  ...

This past weekend I had the pleasure of attending my first Francois van Coke show. I think most people my age were still listening to Koos Kombuis, Johannes Kerkorrel and maybe some Karen Zoid as our mainstream alternative Afrikaans music not believing that anyone else had anything real to add to the struggle.  So imagine my surprise when I dragged Gerhard along to this show, and Francois van Coke and his two man band managed to rock in Afrikaans. People could never quite manage that and always sounded like they were chocking on broccoli when attempting to rock in Afrikaans. I was blown away. What struck me even more is that it seemed as if Francois van Coke in some of his many guises managed to attract diverse crowds, not bad for an Afrikaans guy right. We missed the rise of Fokofpolisiekar, probably because we were so consumed with raising our two rockers at home, and probably because Liam and Luka were at a particularly impressionable age where we did not want to even whisp...

I have previously written about my love of gadgets.  I am a proud wearer of a Fitbit and nothing makes me happier than having the device vibrate on my wrist telling me that I nailed my step goal of 10 000 steps for the day.  This was of course exasperated even further when my medical aid started giving me free smoothies for achieving weekly fitness goals.  I tell you the things that I would do for a free smoothie… So, if you ever see me and Gerhard frantically walking our dogs, not waiving, not smiling, with a Flash Gordon left arm going up and down up and down at the speed of light, you know that we are still behind on the steps.  If you see us going up and down our own staircase with the Flash arm going up and down up and down, you know we need the steps.  If you come for coffee and we stand walking on the spot whilst you are sipping on your latte, you know that we are still a tad short on the steps.  If you see me in my (heaven f...

This morning was my turn to drop Luka at school.  Liam, the self-sufficient one is still on his bicycle happily cycling to school at the crack of dawn wearing his school bomber jacket that he will hopefully grow into before going to Grade 5.  I was a little upset the day that I bought said bomber jacket, I was a tad tired and stressed about the amount of money that I spent at the little shop of horrors, also known as the Uniform Shop.  So stressed that I got a bit carried away when trying to show the shop assistant how tall Liam was and we now have a bomber jacket for a seven year old that would fit me.  The Uniform Shop.  They make it sound so innocent, but once you walk through those glass doors your credit card starts quivering and sweat gathers on your brow, because for the price of a pair of Christian Louboutin shoes you can get one bomber jacket and a single pair of grey socks. The first time I entered the shop of horrors, I almost feint...

Can one person be so excited about a prospect? We have been living in the same house for a couple of years.  After moving back from Australia I had only a handful of shoes.  OK, I tell a lie, 30 odd pairs that I held in my hands and after carefully weighing up, deemed worthy of sending across the waters at the cost of an average lung in the Ukraine.  I had some basic clothes, same story, stuff that I could fit into a couple of suitcases.  The cupboard space in the master bedroom seemed more than ample to house my (ever) growing wardrobe, a top here, and a pair of shoes there.  The couriers from the online shops here in SA mostly know me by name.  My super power is the ability to know exactly what something from an online store would look like on me, what I can pair it with, whether it would fit, a rare skill, I admit, but this took years of returns to the online stores, collected by my same courier friends.  I have a list in my head of...

One of the perks of my job is that I am able to work from home once in a blue moon, this of course means the world to Liam and Luka as I can pick them up from school and they don't have to walk the entire 600 meters home.   Today is again a work from home day, I was supposed to accompany the chairman on a lunch meeting.  I had a leisurely housewife start to the day by going to Crossfit at 6am instead of the normal 5am and after dropping Luka at her school's holiday programme, I spent a couple of hours working in my gym clothes, then had a bath, washed and blow dried my hair, put on make up, a suit, and as I was about to leave the house my meeting was cancelled.  So here I am sitting in my study all alone, all dressed up with nowhere to go, anyhow, I digress.  Liam is always the kid that goes to movies and out for pizza with other kids and their moms, I love these people, yesterday was no exception and a good friend took Liam along to movies an...

Advice to working mothers is always a set of stock standard old fashioned suggestions on how to still maintain calm at home despite not being there.  These suggestions though well meant, always makes us feel rather incompetent and off balance somehow as we all try and juggle work, home, and play.  We are told to be more organised despite the fact that we already spend endless hours making lists, checking them twice, not really at that stage giving a damn whether someone has been naughty or nice, we just need to ensure that everyone gets to where they need to be almost on time with the required kit.  We are told to be present, whether at work or at home despite the fact that the last time I was fully present doing only one thing at any given time was probably when I was seventeen years old and desperately trying to do algebra.  Every single mom I know is doing at least four things at once.  Case in point, I was attending a very important meeting...

So as the mother who is hardly ever there for anything, I missed (most of) the swimming galas, I missed countless athletic trials, auditions, hugs and cuddles and kisses whilst traveling, I recon we are all right and we will be all right.  Liam is now almost eight and in Grade 2.  He is a happy well-adjusted independent little boy who can get himself from point A to B with his own transport.  He rides his bike to and from school and in the event that he forgot something at home, he just cycles back and gets it! I think we may have even passed our speech, imagine my shock and horror when I found out that some mothers pay professional speech writers R500 a pop to write an innovative on point speech, really? These are kids, speeching in front of their mates and teachers.  This is not the Oscars or the keynote address at the opening of the world economic forum in Davos. I always wonder where this will end, will Liam really be better off for not being mot...

I was crying all the way to work again today, a local radio station was busy with a water collection drive for thousands of people in the Free State who have been without water for days.  The generosity of some corporates, small companies and individuals really got to me this morning.  A transport company will assist in getting all these bottles of water to the Free State and I wanted to cry. My own Liam went to school with a five litre bottle of water today as the locals schools are also participating in the water drive.  My seven year old boy buckled under the weight of the bottle as well as his heavy school bag and his tog bag with his stuff for the swimming gala later today.  And that is the part that gets to me, in one bit of the country we are able to have swimming gala’s, kids can splash around to their hearts content and in the other parts people and animals are dying because of the worst drought that the country has seen in many years. The bit that ...