What is it about new years, new beginnings and the reflection that goes along with it? I am not one for making New Year’s resolutions, but this year as luck would have it I decided to do some things differently in the New Year.  Not resolutions, just slight tweaks to my life and lifestyle for the better, I hope.  For starters, I just went and bought myself a brand new pair of running shoes, bright orange so that people will see me and not run me over.  I decided that this is my year, I am turning forty and I want to be fabulous when that happens.  Also, Gerhard finally agreed to take me to New York this year and I want to be in good shape when that happens!  I want to be able to walk, ok, maybe trot from one glorious store to the next in my pursuit of the perfect pair of shoes.  Who am I kidding, PAIRS OF SHOES.   Gerhard and I went for a bicycle ride in the estate yesterday, we left the kids alone and unsupervised for about half...

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...