doors

This is the hottest item in the house at the moment. A rather beat-up BMW. Not quite the latest model, but Squirt doesn't care much about these things. My parents' neighbours were moving and offloaded some toys. This one took the cake. Its doors actually open!

The previous owner of the vehicle - not quite that fabled dear old lady, as you can see - got the cutest high five in return :)

orange

A mere 45 minutes left before the Dutch soccer team meets the Japanese in Durban. So I've got a little time left to show you some orange.

This is what happens in neighbourhoods all over this little country when a Cup of Importance is played. We go orange. We go crazy. 45 minutes left and I can already hear the vuvuzelas down the street. Even Squirt knows, 'vu-elas' make noise!

Seeing that Man hails from South Africa, we had options. But we're both realistic enough to know that SA is a lot of things, both good & bad; soccer-skilled they are not, over there. So we're backing the Dutch.

Orange, though? Not so much. As a colour, I've sort of come to terms with it. But as far as national mayhem is concerned, I still go for peer pressure-in-reverse. If everyone else is doing it, I'm not, basically. I think it's a remnant from my days as a sort-of-goth - a bit of subversion, the defiant little girl I wrote about before.

These are my only concessions this year. A little flowering grass - seeing that there is, inevitably, grass involved when it comes to soccer - tied with a Dutch flag ribbon, and a bracelet of plastic beads that I got for free with my toothpaste (sic!) last week. There is all manner of free, soccer-related stuff available - every single supermarket (to start with) has their own brand of give-away molded plastic. I usually say 'no, thank you' while Squirt is still too young to appreciate it - I'm grateful & well aware it won't last... - but this trinket I kept, and I'm wearing it today. Really. I am.

So, no orange madness in this house, as such. But we'll be watching telly for sure! 5 minutes till start!


Update: a 1-0 win, but definitely not a great match. Quite boring to watch: so boring in fact, that both me and Man fell asleep on the couch! In the middle of the afternoon! We have no stamina! How embarrassing ;)

tiny

a rather random collection of small life

*photos taken in the backgarden*

It felt really good to do something art-ish-tic again - I've been too busy living in my brain lately... I know I should make more time for creative undertakings - of any kind - but I also know I won't when there is so much on my mind.

Still, I got my arty fix this weekend :) Took my mind off all the change ahead - for a while, anyway. I'm ready to face mortgage-related calculations again! And - if I really have to - another real estate agent or two... ;)

umpire

Speaking of complementing colours - and the soccer World Cup of course - Squirt has mastered the art of blowing a whistle!
And me? I feel like a pendulum, swinging madly. As a human being, I'm not sure I'm amused. At all. But as a mother? I don't think I could be prouder if I tried!
It's in the small things, isn't it? I think it is. Small thing, a whistle. But oh so loud ;)

update

She's doing well. Her head's still on. And the strawberries are coming along nicely, too.
Also, we're fine here, all of us. We're house-hunting and have some tough decisions to make, so - apparently - I haven't got a lot of headspace for much of anything else. I don't seem to notice the little and big things in quite as much colour as I normally do. Life keeps throwing me quirky balls and other mostly inanimate objects - of course - but I'm catching them and putting them away with Squirt's toys before bed at the moment.

This 'moment' won't last forever - I'll be back from this holiday-of-sorts soon enough. I really, really appreciate that there are still people out there popping in to see if anything new is up in this here corner! And I'm really sorry I haven't got much to show for myself... If only I could take snapshot pictures of the mayhem & chaos in my head! But then again - I'm not sure that would really entertain anyone but me (sort of. I'm sort of entertained. But mostly I'm basically going slightly mad, trying just to BE...) right here and now... ;)

Hope you're enjoying a beautiful Summer, wherever you are! I'm reading all the blogs for a vicarious holiday; a little time off, out of my head :)

headless

Not an ancient site in Rome. Just a garden-variety mishap. Quite literally. The back garden in fact. Poor little plaster(?) lady who'd been hanging out on our garden table long enough to gather mossy bits... When it happened, I almost cried!

But wait - I can sort of explain that. Really. A few days before this incident, a little rose quartz heart I had been carrying around in my pocket for luck (quite obsessively), fell on my toe when I forgot to take it out before taking off my jeans. Ouch!

The next day, I knocked the bottle of rose water my mother gave me when Squirt was born (yeah. I know. But never mind that now) off the ledge where it - granted, precariously - had stood ever since I'd come home from hospital.

And then, this happened. Decapitation no less...

I saw signs. And they weren't good. I caught myself, standing puzzled, wondering what it all meant. Feeling I was surely headed for some great disaster...

But before you start to worry about my sanity - here it comes: the anti-climax. The soppy bit - the wisdom in the center of the bowl of oatmeal. I straightened my shoulders and took a deep breath. And I decided that - if it meant anything at all, it would be that I should stop looking for signs in the weird little accidents happening around me - to stuff. Stuff I was holding onto, holding dear, for no other reason than the idea that it all meant something. I decided then and there, that I should trust myself much more than the stuff I've been holding on to.

Paradoxically, I wouldn't be me if I didn't think that is exactly what these signs meant ;)

So I took the dear lady & her head, and glued them back together. They're inseparable for now - for as long as the weather lets the glue hold. Just hanging out on the table again.

I've made a mental note, though: if this chick loses her head again, it's more to do with the quality of the glue than with any sort of misery looming. Not sure similar guarantees apply to this here chick losing sense of perspective again - that happens on & off... I'm getting over myself though; one garden-variety mishap at the time!

Anyone else out there, putting too much stock in signs? I totally understand if you don't feel comfortable facing up to it all here - I only wrote this post so you know you're not alone ;)

quite

This might make no sense, but you know...

There are days I so hate having to be the responsible adult that I'm really not! There is a very defiant little girl inside of me. At times I'm surprised no one can actually hear her scream - or see her standing there, fingers firmly in her ears, singing lalaLALALAAAA! Which probably is a good thing.

All a propos of nothing in particular - not right now, anyhow. Playing around with cookies - as a petulant child must - this was what came out. Mysterious minds & their meanderings...

Just wondering; am I the only one who feels so completely out of depth in the 'grown-up world' at times?

verb

From the morning pages I wrote today:

"A lesson reinforced: you can't just expect Happy & Fun to miraculously make a run-of-the-mill day perfect. It happens, of course, more than occasionally, but when you specifically want Special - it might need some encouragement, some planning.
Like 'Future' needs planning. It won't magically appear on your doorstep all pretty & tied up with ribbons and pearls. Rather, it will happen right outside your window (under your nose). While you're cutting the dead flowers out of your geraniums, wondering when the sun will come out. Or something. The metaphor might not help, but I get my drift. Basically - happy is, at times, a verb."

submarine

the faucet & the blonde

Have you ever wondered - if you'd sit on the drain in the shower, would that turn the bathroom into a swimming pool?
It does. If you don't have much of a threshold and you sit there long enough, you can actually turn the whole second floor into a pool! Great for getting dust out of those hard-to-reach corners!
It would have been amazing to see the indoor waterfall I could have created, but I inadvertently got up, shortly before that would have happened.
I'm leaving that to other courageous explorers... Let me know if it works?

P.S. for privacy reasons, the faucet photographed is not the tap involved in the actual incident. As for the blonde? Well, yeah - that's her.

Oh, and edit: the duck is an innocent bystander. It has no idea what the fuss is about ;)

einstein

I really did think my boy was a genius! For one short week, at 17 months, he knew four colours (red, white, green and blue) and every animal sound, including a peacock and a donkey.

I'm back with my feet firmly on the ground. These days, all cars are red. Even when they're not, really. And everything from mouse to 'omamant' (elephant) - and not limited to, but including mamma, pappa and 'tantitit' (my sister) - says 'hihi-ie-ie-ie', which is as horses do...

Maybe he's just testing me? To see if I buy this baby-crap?
I'm such an optimist ;)

Edited: I made a conscious decision not to change the way I write down what I think just because I might be misunderstood - but at the same time, being misunderstood is a Great Fear of mine. So... I sort of felt I had to come back here to tell you that Squirt is a verbal mastermind, who constructs sentences of up to 5 words at the age of 18 months! He's my absolute favourite brand of Special. I LOVE his 'baby-crap' & hope he'll keep it up much longer than he actually will. Just so you know!