Jacky D Ice-Cream!!

Tjoep-stil in her car seat next me (she fell asleep taking her papa to work), I am trying to get in as many words as I can before duty calls. (And believe you me, 'duty' is very vocal and shockingly eloquent for someone who can only say mama, woof, miaow and moo!) Craig's on a school trip for the next couple of days in some unnamed forest past Leicester - so while the mouse is away, the cat will play! lol! Having the car and all its exquisite freedoms means that during the day Layla and I can jol to our heart's content - and in the evening, I've got quiet little dinner parties planned. (Truth be told, I'm just exaggerating. There's nothing at all glam about the simple suppers I've organised, seeing as it's the end of an unusually frugal month - but the company will certainly be juicy! Wendy, Dinee and Adam: I'm talkin' about YOU! *wink*)

Somehow, my circumstances have always dictated that I be an absolute queen of the quandary: i.e. how can I turn my apparently half-empty cup into, not sommer a half-full cup, but one which overflows in magical, beautiful abundance? My example for today is the fact that my larder is all but bare - and I simply cannot journey through the night with my friends without the perfect ending of a fabulous pudding! So, lying far too wide awake for the hour last night thanks to the first cup of caffeinated coffee I've had in more than two years, I conjured up what I hope will be a concoction I can keep for the recipe book I'm writing. Right - here's how I'm going to make it:

1. In my pretty-pretty pink porcelain (1920s) bowl, I'll dribble a deep swig or two of Jack Daniels - and into it I'll add a generous handful of raisins and honey. (I'm not much of a believer in precise measurements of any kind, so play around with the amounts according to your specific predilection: i.e. boozy, fruity or super-duper sweet.) Allow the raisins to soak all day long... all the flavours mingling into a new deliciousness you've never tasted before.
2. Soften what's left of the vanilla ice-cream by leaving it to defrost a little without being tempted to eat any of it. (Okay, maybe just two wee spoonfuls?)
3. Fold the raisins and the whiskey/honey into the softened ice-cream. Return to the freezer until as soon as possible after dinner. (I have never been able to wait very long for dessert...)

Still in my cozy jarmies after yesterday's London adventure, I'm going to skip all the housework and other mundanities in favour of following up on the exciting contacts I made yesterday and, sjoe, getting as much writing done as I can! Sooooo many stories to tell...........................

A Lighter Shade of Pale {green...}

[This post originated at iMod.]

Trying to live in this murky limbo of packing up means that my house feels like just that: a house. A topsy-turvy shell which feels empty - bereft of the care and attention to detail that is my signature (and somewhat bohemian) style. Ag ja - 'bohemian' is such a cliche these days, but it perfectly defines everything about me with its connotations of nomadic romance... And actually, I'm going to ditch the original thing I was going to write about, and tell you instead about how I have come to find myself in all the colours of the rainbow where I once lost who I was in a depthless pool of black.

I hardly ever talk about it now, but like a jagged, keloided-over scar the remaining evidence of a previous violence, I was married before. Yip, I'm a remarried divorcee. My ex-husband has also recently remarried - but that, my friends, is another story I'll have to leave for another day... Anyway, before my 15 year old self met him, my personal style was already um, rather quirky. My mom indulged me endlessly, sewing up all my own sketched designs with that particular brand of joy that only mommies can feel as they watch their daughters becoming young women. One of these dresses, which so reflected my undying passion for the 1960s and '70s, was a black ankle-length, empire-line maxi-dress - with wide bell sleeves, all trimmed with flowery braid chosen from my mom's stash of vintage ribbons I could spend hours rummaging through - brain amok with fashion fantasies! (Don't even get me started on her chocolate box of sequins and beads... Ooh la la!) If only I could remember what shoes I wore with this dress... Another outfit combination I wore with happily rebellious pride and which made my poor dad visibly cringe when I was with him in public, was my knee-length floral skirt in a reddish granny print chiffon (also devotedly made by my mom as per my instructions), worn with a t-shirt, a cream cardigan I was very sentimentally attached to and which I tied round my hips thereby ruining it into overstretched oblivion forever, and on my feet: my mom's hyper-chunky, heavy-as-hell Italian hiking boots. (This was before I was bought those iconically grunge/punk boots: Doc Martens!) And then, ahem, there is the matter of my hair. My sweet mama let me dye it a ludicrously cheap red tinge - which I just loved for how it made me feel (no matter that it was completely the wrong tone for my skin!) Of course, let me not forget my ultimate style accessory I have never been able to live without since I was eleven: lip-gloss. Due to an unexplainable addiction and the fact that I lick my lips perpetually, especially when concentrating, I make VERY sure I have a variety of tubes in my immediate vicinity at all times: whether it's paddling down the Orange River, writing a particularly strenuous exam essay, or - more recently - giving birth! (While I was changing Layla's nappy this morning, I noticed her carefully watching me while she licked her lips back and forth -- and I realised she was copying me! Noooooo!!! Is my child doomed to inherit my lip issues?!)

So before I met The Ex, I was radically exuberant in how I chose to express myself through colour and style. My Ex, however, came from a creepily conservative Rondebosch family, and I found myself toning things down by self-conscious degrees, so that by the end of the second year, I was a boring clone of all that is mediocre and 'normal'. A couple of years later, and I was suddenly swathed in black, black and more black. My excuse was that it fit my art student persona and my budget: i.e. everything matched! But looking back, I can see I'd lost the ability to be myself, and I was drowning, slowly and somehow defiantly, in this relationship - and black was the colour of my heart then: I couldn't see the light I craved through this pressing, suffocating thing I believed was love.
Here is another story about the way in which colour can so magically diagnose maladies of the heart. My sister, Mandy, had a particularly unique and vivacious relationship with colour - and bucked the trend, as she continues to do now, by replacing the predictable norm of blue skies, yellow sun and green grass with audacious choices of orange, purple and zingy pink! Until... she, out of the blue, replaced it all with harsh scribblings of black. Alarm bells rang for my mom who dashed off to the school to investigate. Turns out the teacher was exasperatedly trying to teach this left-handed child to be right-handed -- by smacking her errant left hand with a ruler!

My wearing black as a young woman continued unabated, broken only by the odd colourful garment. Even my paintings became drained of colour, and I chose only to work in graphite, black and shades of sepia. Even until about two years ago. One of the most notable things about colour choice, in my wardrobe and art, was that I never, ever used green. It was only once I managed to leave The Ex and return to Cape Town, that I suddenly started to add green to my life: from the sophisticatedly sombre tones of olive all the way through to the most fanatical of lime! I'd always been extremely aware of the fact that I'd never been a 'green' fan - but never quite grasped why... until I began incorporating it into my personal pallette. At the time, I was working (and playing!) as the art director for a nationwide fashion house and, in my trendforecasting analysis, discovered this intriguing snippet of enlightening info: people haunted by depression exclude the use of green in their personal expression, be it art, interiors or fashion. Wow! (to say the least.) It all made so much sense in retrospect, didn't it?

Needless to say, every inconceivable shade of green can be spotted in my life now - and that says a lot, hey? (*wink*)

What it means to a mother who writes!

What it means to a mother who writes!

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Write Yourself Sane/Happy/Free!!

Dark and grey, the clouds outside promise rain I wish I could parcel up to send back to South Africa - especially to Grahamstown where there have even been umbrella-email prayer requests for rain. (No pun on 'umbrella' intended...) Perhaps, and with frantic hope beating in my chest, spring might come early this year!

This week is going to see me writing the following:
1. My first article for iMod.
2. Setting up my new food blog (hmmm... going to keep you guessing!)
3. Writing my first magazine article for actual submission - which means, potentially, actual rejection. But I feel strong enough to understand this as an inevitable part of the process of writing/being published. And so, with all this fabulousness planned, let's just hope Lady Time will be kind to me!

Something I've learned about writing and blogging in the last two weeks has been this: it pays to be opinionated and brutally original. This I discovered after checking out all the winning blogs in various countries. And to be honest - some of them were quite, quite crap! But that's besides the point. The point is this: it is simply not worth your time and creative energy to be a nice fence-sitter. (Hours and hours pass, during which I cuddle, soothe and sing to HRM, tugging at her ears and yelping at random moments from what can only be teething pain...) Since I managed to jot down those last few words, I received the most fabulous surprise in my inbox: the production editor for The South African invited me to write an article for their Homecoming section! I was so flipping excited that I IMMEDIATELY forwarded the email to my mom and dad -- but refrained, this time, from slathering it all over my Facebook. But how absolutely fantastic is THAT?! (Maybe now even I can donate towards my own Netbook Fund!!

When I first started writing, I wouldn't even have called it that. Writing seemed like such a lofty, elite pursuit - whilst all I did was scrawl out my angst in longhand, recording everything from ideas for paintings to grocery lists. Behind this tedious but magical daily act is the idea, explained by Julia Cameron in The Artist's Way, that these 'Morning Pages' (three A4 pages written out in longhand each morning) help us show ourselves the way when we're feeling lost. They also help us resolve inner and outer conflicts. They suggest solutions to all sorts of problems, whether practical or metaphysical. For me, one of the most miraculous benefits was that it helped me to find myself. To hear my truest voice above all the din and racket of my 'critics' (i.e. I'd allowed all sorts people to inhabit my head/heart-space: from my aggressively petty high-school art teacher to critical (jealous) friends.) Writing also helped me to survive an abusive marriage - and, in the end, escape! Louise de Salvo has gathered together an enormous amount of data proving the thesis that writing heals - and not merely psychologically, but physically as well. De Salvo, mind you, postulates that it is a certain kind of writing that has this effect. Merely bitching about your cranky mother-in-law day after day is not the kind of writing that heals!! Whilst describing the facts of a negative/destructive moment, one needs to tell it with a strongly narrative logic, as well as attaching your emotions to the facts. Anyway, I'm blathering - and it took me three days to write this post (!!) so I am going to take a bit of a breather and treat myself to another Julia Cameron trick: an Artist Date - to fill up the gaping morass from which I pour forth myself into my writing (oh, so dramatic!) and firstly, have a two-hour, lazy midday nap with LaylaRose, and then read some Ted Hughes poetry inbetween entertaining HRM with nursery rhymes and kisses!

Aphro*dizzy*ac!

Ooh la la! I'm a lucky girl -- with VERY generous friends, it seems! My Netbook Fund has risen dramatically in the last few days, as you can see on the thermometor chart on the right ;) How fabulously exciting!! (And may I say a gracious and delighted 'thank you' to Melanie Charlton and Anne Herbert for their kindess and endless encouragement!) And because I get such incredible support (and sometimes the odd kick-up-the-jack!) my writing has grown from a very meek little blog to an actual career! As yet, I am still unpaid as a writer - but at least I have been published in four separate places in the last two weeks.

1. The MyZA editor discovered my Soutpiel blog - and featured me in his editorial!
2. Homecoming Revolution thought my blog was juicy enough to make me one of their 11 official bloggers!
3. SA Blog Award-winning Cape Town blog, iMod, has just made me one of their writers where I'll be submitting an article every Monday - writing about my own brand of what it means to be a mother, sprinkled with sexy recipes (more about that just now) and the odd book review.
4. South Africa The Good News has featured my blog this week on their front page!

But before I launch into something so glaringly trivial as 'sexy recipes', I must just tell you that my heart is still leaden, paralysed ... the shock and confusion and despair of my friend's baby that died on Saturday... wondering, at each moment of my day, what my dear friend must be going through. Suddenly, Layla waking through night for feeding is a pathetically petty problem. Rephrase: It is no longer a problem. It is a blessing. (I don't want to cheapen her pain by writing any more about it...)

So - something happily trivial to distract us: Sexy Food. What is Sexy Food? Sexy Food is nourishment, not just for the hungers of the body - but for those particular cravings of the soul. In short, it is about desire.
An example would be the smoked salmon linguine I made for us on Friday night. Hmmm... Part of what made it 'Sexy Food' for me was the tumbling of passion memories as I read through the ingredients-list and remembered sharing a smoked salmon pizza, at the bare end of the month, with Craig - when we still lived in Blouberg. The late summer sun, sumptuously gold as it poured softly through the restaurant, and the red wine we sipped like mirrors of each other... I'd never had smoked salmon before, but Craig magicked me into an adventurer - and the carnal coming together (no pun intended) of the salmon flesh, the creamy creme fraishe and the slow burn of the spring onion felt like I was eating sex. (Mommy, for the sake of my writing career, I hope you are not blushing for shame?! lol) But anyway - remembering all those gorgeous textures and feelings made reading the salmon pasta recipe rather like accidently finding the most deliciously aphrodisiac erotica - in my kitchen! It's a perfect pairing, if you think about it: food and sex. All your appetites satisfied in one go! And really, eating together is the perfect foreplay for us as women: our minds and our senses are tantalised over a couple of luxurious hours (instead of a few roughshod minutes having our nipples twiddled like radio dials!) Even gathering the ingredients together on the kitchen counter, and setting the butter to melt in the pan was like ... well, do you really want to know? It was like laying out, for after your steamy, steamy bath, that favourite black lace bra, to go with that outrageously naughty thong you hide at the back of your drawer... Hmmm... Anyway - I am going to write my recipe book about this Sexy Food - though I need to conjure up a more beautiful name - as 'Sexy Food' reminds me too much of Borat/Bruno and his 'sexy-time'...

All I Want for Christmas (in July!!) Is.....

Layla's molar-teething calmed in the night to allow us both a decent night's sleep - and today I have found a little bit of time to gather my thoughts after two weeks' worth of insanity. As I type, Layla sleeps upstairs, cocooned in a blanket our neighbour gave us when she was born. She is, physically, a petite little thing - still wearing 0 - 6 month clothes! What is NOT petite, however, is her personality - or her appetite for my undivided attention... When she's not teething, she can happily entertain herself for 30 minutes at a time - and then all she needs is a quick cuddle, some milk or a snack. But when she's teething? Oh dear... even putting her down on the ground amidst her mountains of toys automatically pushes her yelp/wail/screech button!

(Hours pass - and my irritability levels rise with no respite from the ceaseless demands of HRM.)

Craig arrived home at 8pm (19 minutes ago) and even though he's had a despicably long day at work, I beg him to please take our child off to bed so I can find a few moments to gather myself - and what remains of my sanity. (So if nothing makes sense, that's why!) On my last Soutpiel post, I received a tongue-lashing for writing such a short post - so here goes: let's hope I have enough time to write something worth sinking your teeth into ;)

Having recently read Julie & Julia, I've been inspired to do four things:
1. Write, write and write some more!
2. Get stuck into that recipe book that's been begging to be set free since I first annoyed my sister's high school Home Economics ethics with my butternut, feta and calamata olives idea!
3. Do as Julie Powell did by adding a 'donate' button to her blog/ (More about that in a moment.)
4. Recommend that you watch the film - but maybe skip the book. The deeper I got into the book, the more I disliked Julie Powell. With a toddleresque penchant for tantrums and something I can't quite put my finger on (selfishness? her revolting, cat-hairy housekeeping habits? the way she treats her devoted husband?) I almost wish I hadn't read the book at all... but the redeeming factors were that I found it a fabulous boost as a writer ("if she can do it, so can I") and also that I discovered Julia Child! Her memoirs about her life in Paris is definitely a book I'm putting on my birthday wish list - though perhaps not so her recipe books filled with too many recipes calling for boiling calves hooves down into aspic. (Blech!)

Anyway, to get back to Point #3. What with trying to launch myself into a freelance writing career, parallel to being Layla's adoring mommy, I haven't got a spare moment to earn the 250GBP I need to buy myself a netbook. Other thoughts I had were to take on a Saturday or a Sunday job, but Craig has to often work on one or both days of the weekend. So apart from having added Google ads to my blog, which earns me 1p a click, it seems impossible for me to get that kind of money together before we fly home to South Africa. (Once we're home, there will be no extra cash at all while we set up home all over again - and laptops are muchos expensive back home.) So... I am hoping that even if little amounts of even 50p get donated, that by the time June rolls around, I might be able to afford the new little laptop I need to keep my writing career flourishing! The laptop I'm currently writing on is beginning to show the feebleness of old-age... It is four years old - a relic from my divorce where all I got was my diamond ring: a nicely massive rock of champagne diamond ovalness, held in a platinum setting of little leaves and other pretty antique-style detailing -- all of my own design, and much lusted after by many a wandering woman's eye! Though it was valued at R42 000, my hunger to be free of the controlling mania of my ex-husband, I asked my dad to sell it for me on the Land Cuiser forum! Ha! Vengeance is mine, saith Lisa. The long and the short of it is that I got just enough money for it to buy myself a laptop. This laptop. It has been a lifesaver in so many ways... I was able to write myself out of a very dark, frightening depression. And while we've been living so far away from our families, it meant that we have been able to 'see' our moms and dads whenever we felt like it. And, most preciously, it meant that Layla and her late Granny Sally could meet - if only via the slightly murky magic of Skype. But the two of them shared a miraculous bond... to see the two of them talking to each, sunny with smiles and laughter, is a memory I take out every so often and shine with care and love.

Craig is back downstairs and it's time for me to be his wife, his friend, his Lisa, for awhile - so let me bid you the sweetest goodnight. Adieu, adieu, adieu, my friends!

PS. I found Julie Powell's original blog dating from 2002 - here is the link: http://blogs.salon.com/0001399/