Muddy Metaphors -- and Weddings on the Wild Side

How long has it been since I last found time to write? Well, so long that my unpractised, clumsy fingers dodge the letters I mean to type! Spare time evades me like the plague, but tonight I have found myself in luck: the drought is over (and I’m mixing my metaphors!)
Port Elizabeth, and the hot, dry ‘winter’ has been broken by a sudden storm; the wet, black sky torn apart by ragged lightning, rending thunder. Apparently, this is the worst winter drought experienced by the Eastern Cape in 70 years. (And we’re not missing much with regards the English summer: ‘grey’ and ‘miserable’ are two words that crop up again and again in emails from my English friends in the last weeks. And as one South African expat succinctly said: ‘Two weeks of sunshine and then it goes and #@&%s off for the rest of the year!!’) Hoping this blissfully summery weather will last another two weeks, we’ve arranged our wedding to take place along the banks of the lazy Sunday River in Addo next Saturday!





Originally, our wedding was set (and booked!) for December 2008 – at the citrus and rose farm, Avoca (where we’re still going to have our wedding.) Craig had taken me there for an exciting, sexy, fun, exotic and dangerous (‘angry bull elephant vs Citi Golf’ story – to be told at a later stage) weekend away. After a day of swimming in the dark, cold river inbetween roasting dry in the sun with only ice-cold beers to keep us company, we sat around the doringboom fire in the darkening pink of night and dreamed of how perfect it would be for a wedding. Unspoken thoughts of marriage stained our every word, as though they were blushing – we daren’t mention the word for fear of jinxing this perfect new love we’d accidentally bumped into again almost two whole decades after that first kiss.
Eleven years old, Standard Four. In the music room nogal! I remember scratching my name, coupled with Craig’s surname, on my wooden desktop. And they talk about self-fulfilling prophecies?! After a whirlwind romance of silly little love-letters and stolen kisses, high school separated us and we never saw each other again. Until that fateful ‘friend request’ on Facebook when we were both a year shy of 30.
“Are you the same Lisa Roberts I went to school with?”

And that was that. (Not really, but I could literally write a book were I to try bring you up to speed on what happened between then and now! Another time, maybe…)
So now, back to the wedding. Both of us are fairly relaxed when it comes to organising things, euphemistically speaking - and so, our wedding is a true reflection of our style of doing things: unpretentious, whimsical, laid-back, flexible, casual. We really only decided last night (!!) that we’d actually have a proper wedding in lieu of the court thing. For a whole host of reasons, we’re having an incredibly tiny little do – only 20 people or so. Finances are one of them, but that’s probably not the main reason. I think we’re really using our minimalist-style savings as an excuse to have this wedding as preciously intimate and meaningful as possible! If we didn’t have this fiscal reason to back us up, I have a funny feeling we’d have felt obligated to invite The World. Instead, only 20 guests are invited, and even then, there are one or two we are forced to invite only through sheer familial duty – but on the whole, each person means The World to us! (Craig and I are big on meaningfulness --- sentimental ol’ suckers!)
Oops! I’ve just realised what I’ve so unsubtly intimated: that you yourself do not mean The World to me and are hence not invited. Eish… How do I untangle myself from this faux pas?! I guess what I mean to say is that with Layla in our lives, we just can’t afford the time or money to have a huge bash. And that running around during the reception dinner, trying frantically to spend a few micro-milliseconds with each guest, is just not something we are capable of with a constantly hungry baby (i.e. still being breastfed meaning no-one can really look after her except me… Hence, why I suppose one gets married BEFORE one has a baby!!!) Anyway, the fact of the matter is that the only people invited are family members. Because if we didn’t invite them, then there’d be hell to pay!! (Now if you are a family member and you have been invited, then you’ll have noticed I’ve shot myself in the other foot now!! OK – so I can’t win. So let me just blame it on our blatant shortage of funds. Is that better? It’s too late now, because here I sit with both my feet in my mouth, having shot myself in both of them – not a pretty picture, huh?)

Treasure Hunt!

At last! A moment to indulge my almost forgotten passion!! Layla's asleep next to me in her pram - who knows for how long?! So while the sun shines, I shall make hay!

Windy and only very slightly chilly, the carboot sale in Holcot (the next little village along from us) was jampacked with carbooters and treasure-hunters on the forage for all that glitters. (Perhaps not all of them are magpies like me?!) Craig tends to whip along ahead of me, weaving inbetween the doddering, dithering masses, his eyes fanatically fine-tuned to pick out Stephen King novels from among all the rest of the books stuffed into crates on the muddy grass, or lined up higgledy-piggledy on wonky trestle tables. (He already owns 95% of Stephen King's novels - so his pickings on Saturday rendered nothing at all...)
I, on the other hand, discovered a bounty of deliciousness! But with only a few coins jangling hopefully in my pocket, CHOICE had to overrule my usually spontaneous shopping methodology. Also, haggling with an Englishman is not so different to bartering with other sorts of tribes - and I managed to get all sorts of little goodies thrown in for free or half-price. (It helps to plead poverty while holding out your 'only' pound coin, of course.)
Lounging in their rusty, forlon cars, haggard, semi-toothless women stare into the lonely space between milling customers, a drooping fag trailing smoke, caught on the moist part of the lower lip as though glued. Old men, busy busy busy, their crates of fish hooks, lures and reels of gut proudly displayed -- my eye drawn to the wooden boxes shimmering with the rainbows of finely twined feathers of fishing flies, protected behind glass, like rare butterflies caught in the depths of a jungle. Down-and-out couples selling off their old, dusty TV, their children's greying, stained baby clothes - and arbitrary knick-knacks I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy! And then, there are the prim, middle-aged ladies, their wares arranged artfully along tables carefully lain with starched white cotton tablecloths. Here you can find little Murano glass bowls, 1920s paste jewellery, marquesite brooches and jewellery boxes that make you wonder who their owner was, what was she like?
My discoveries included: a 1950s Bakelite 'black' doll, and an empty sweet tin - also circa 1950s. Four blood-red perspex hearts the size of dinner plates. Two boxes of chocolate incense. A collection of the most divine plates, tea cups and a bowl - possibly 1920s: the sweetest candy pink, handpainted embellishments in white, gold and turquoise. GORGEOUS!!! Another 1950s find: a silver-plated and red glass sugar bowl and spoon. PERFECT for my tea parties!

Our little Petal/Daffodil/Pepperpot (Craig's nicknames for Layla) will be 11 weeks on Thursday! And she weighs a healthy 10lb 2oz (4.6kg, I think.) She is constantly ravenous - and prefers to snack all day long, instead of gorging on a few large meals. This means a bit more work for me - but at least her reflux is under control this way! Anyone got any advice??

Exhausted, exhausted...

HRM (Her Royal Majesty A.K.A my baby girl) is still blessedly asleep, though as she swims to the surface of her sleep, she's grunting and sighing - causing my mothering hormones to flood my body, and I know it'll be a matter of mere minutes before I have to sign off, log out etc etc. But at least I am here on the page!
My second day all alone at home with this new little person who is 150% dependent on me has been fraught with anxious tears and sobbings of failure. (Oh, the drama, the drama!) But, after an emergency visit from the housewife, a few phonecalls to other mom-friends, I discover all of this is... NORMAL. Bugger. Yes, it does sort of help to know I am not an utterly useless mother -- but at the same time, I wish I could somehow leapfrog over this physicaland emotional exhaustion to a place where brushing my teeth is par for the course and not a massive accomplishment managed somewhere after lunch! (Out the window, I spy the Sainsbury's home delivery van: EUREKA! How much easier and simpler this will make my life!!)

I'm going to say ciao before my bambino awakes -- setting aside my beloved, but now quite extraneaous, writing for the greater good of a functioning household! (For any ideas or good old-fashioned encouragement, please use the COMMENTS section at the bottom of this posting!)

Love,
Lisa

My New Life! (said with definite irony and ... JOY!!)

My fingers have forgotten the feel of these clicking letters and punctuation marks beneath my fingers after seven weeks of My New Life. Layla Rose arrived two and a half weeks ahead of schedule - though blessedly so, for many reasons I won't bore you with right now - but which will probably pop up some time in the future... Right now, my daughter lies in her navy blue Graco pram, being pushed to and fro by my leg/foot made tireless by my need to have her fall asleep! Mind you, it's not so I can have time to myself - it's ... I'm lying. It IS to have some time to myself!! I need to change from these clothes that smell like her curdled reflux after she projectile burped all over me in a hot, frantic splurge earlier this morning... I wish I could sit down with a cup of hot, sweet tea in the armchair where the sun is now that soft gold of late afternoon and merely contemplate my navel...

That's all I have time for - I have a grunting, moaning, squeaking bundle of joy who is soon going to let forth a great howl of hunger (or unashamed irritation at her poo nappy!)

She arrived!

Wow. How my life has changed.

Email, my blogs, my life in general actually, fell completely by the wayside for the last 4 and half weeks............ but here I am, sort-of back in action! My last blog entry is dated 12 days before Layla Rose arrived, somewhat prematurely, on the scene - and forever to turn my life magically and beautifully upside down! (I marvel with worshipful-like awe at my two fellow bloggers, Andrea and Caroline, who miraculously manage to find time and grey matter to write like they do: WOW, WOW, WOW!)

Until I find some time again,
signing off...
New Mommy Lisa

The Sheer Glamour of Birth

With the weather warming up, the snow is now nothing more than melted squelchiness - though still, I am sure, there will be children who'll head to the farm slopes just beyond with their homemade sleds! As my due date gets nearer and nearer, the danger of icy roads recedes into the past as a thankfully distant memory and exists no longer as an possibility!
All that needs to be done in Layla Rose's nursery is for Craig and Gary to put up the blind - a lilac, thermal, black-out blind.(After months of confused pottering, I've at last discovered how to add a hyperlink - so if you see text that is blue and underlined, it means you can click on it and it'll take you to photos or something else to juice up the story!) Otherwise, my TO DO LIST has only my hospital bag to shop for and then pack. (Sleep eludes me as I chase down all these niggling things I still need to do... Even my dreams are saturated with obsessions relating to birth, bodily fluids, crying babies...) Unfortunately, going shopping for the contents of The Hospital Bag, is not a glamorous affair -- and you will know this only if you are a)a midwife, b)a mommy or c)someone with rather sick, sad interests! From ultrathick maternity pads to those see-through gauze disposable knicker-things. Blech. Perhaps it's a shopping expedition best accomplished in solitude? I don't think Craig will ever look at me the same way EVER again...

Wishes DO come true.

Alone all day long with just my belly
to talk to, the days can be treacherously long - and I find myself counting down the hours and then minutes until Craig arrives home. Fact: men need to speak less than women do - and by the time Craig gets home from work, he's all talked out and ready to just chill out. But then like a tourist at a zoo, I poke him verbally as though he were a sleepy wombat to perform. Ya. Poor guy. I know. But hey - I get lonely!

THANKFULLY, I made a couple of very special friends when I taught at that little school in Kettering. The one is Tamara - another South African- who came over to the UK with her husband in August last year. She has been a Godsend - and has visited me twice on her way home from work even though she has an hour long schlep home to Peterborough from here... And then there's Wendy.
From the very moment I met Wendy, I hoped we would be friends - beyong the confines of colleagues' politeness and school hours. She just has this incredible warmth - like a glowing hearth-fire I craved to warm myself before. She was an absolute Godsend at work, literally being able to help with any situation or answer any, however random, question. (Personally, I think she should move her talented behind outta there and start her own company! She is DYNAMIC!)
Last Wednesday, in the pitch blackness of 4pm, Wendy arrived at the front door to what must surely have been an avalanche of far too many words - but bravely, she took it all in her stride (lol!) Hanging up her coat, she managed to get a sentence out inbetween all of mine: "Oh, and here's a little something for you."

She handed me a camera.

What?

A camera. I didn't know what to say. I didn't understand. Was she loaning it to me till I could get one of my own? Eventually, I understood the depth of it all: Wendy was actually giving us this camera - and it was gleamingly brand new, stocked up with the very best rechargeable batteries and a 4GB memory card!!! Gobsmacked. Flabbergasted. Completely and utterly blown away. I felt like a bit of a fool - inadequacy of verbiage for once paralysing me into silence. I could hope I appeared as grateful as I felt...
We had a couple of cups of tea, a few nasty little sugary biscuits I discovered in Craig's corner of the tea/coffee cupboard -- and altogether the most wonderful conversation I've been treated to in simply ages! (Craig looked grateful seeing someone else have to absorb my daily quota of words.)

I guess what I'm really trying to say is THANK YOU, darling Wendy, for the most incredible gift - a gift with long-reaching meaning: Layla will have her childhood lovingly archived because of YOU.

(To showcase all my latest photographs, I got us set up with Google's Picasa! Here is the link to my 'Nursery in Progress' album. As usual, I would LOVE comments!)