Summer storm

Walter and I went to Winex last night, lots of lovely wine to taste. If you're going I can thoroughly recommend a visit to the Port stand - the chap there really knows his stuff and he insisted we taste ALL the port (hic)
Also quite surprised to see Checkers has a stand where they sell Fairview cheese platters (R30, well worth it) and you get to taste their Odd Bins (try no 300 if you are partial to red wine)
I stocked up on beautiful olive oil from Tokara, love their little tasting bowls so you know which one you prefer.
After ordering a case of Diemersfontein chocolate wine (no I have no idea what it's called, I just know what I like) we wandered out onto the verandah and watched a storm approaching from the south.

Lovely. Johannesburg's summer storms have got to be the best in the world

Presents from the girls

This morning gym thing might be getting out of hand. With last night's wonderful rain continuing into this morning I didn't walk with my grandmother today, so I decided to swim.
Consider the Midmar training officially started then, although I'm not sure 20 lengths counts.
When I got back the dogs brought me presents - they are SO thoughtful!

Jess brought me the mangy old tennis ball

 Jazz brought me my morning paper

Of course these are much better than the presents I get from the cats. Whenever we go away they thoughtfully leave culturally significant gifts next to my bed where I can't miss them. Last time it was the heart, liver, jaw, tail and paws from a mouse of some sort. In a previous life they were obviously surgeons.

Now if I can just train Walter to bring me my coffee.

I have been in advertising FOREVER

In fact my first client was the snake, I wrote the copy for the (original) apple.

Yes, that one - not the computer/phone/mp3 player one. Image from blather.net

At no stage did I ever think of it as a potential career. To start with I got into it quite by mistake. Insulted by an increase offer of just R10 a month I resigned from my job at an insurance company (long since deceased) and arrived at my sister's office at the Rand Daily Mail (ditto) and announced I was unemployed.

 Image: David Krut publishing

She calmly picked up her phone, called HR (in those days we called it "Personnel") and got me a job in the advertising department.
And so the fun began.
This week I got to drive a car (courtesy of a client) that I absolutely would never have had a chance to drive if I didn't work in advertising. It's just so far out of my financial reach.
The client dropped me an email saying he thought I should drive it. To understand the brand. To live the experience.

You get the idea. And no, I wasn't actually driving a Maybach.

I've done this before - when I worked on a different motoring client. In that instance it was a sports car and I waited for months for the traffic fines to arrive. It seems I turn into a speed monster the second I have access to a car that can actually speed.

It wasn't this one, but it might as well have been

So what's the verdict? 

Awesome. Yes, to have an automatic in Johannesburg's traffic, to have all the bells and whistles, to arrive at Melrose Arch for a dinner is all wonderful. 


But it took me an hour to figure out how to turn on the headlights. It costs more than my house. And I was terrified of someone scratching it. Or worse. And it's 4.9m long - that's a big-ass car to park. 
And Walter took pictures of himself in it and sent them to all his friends who now think we've won the lottery so I'm expecting them to arrive en masse any day now. But it was awesome.

The problem with a vegetable garden....

Sam, the gardener with the extremely irritating voice (high-pitched and whiny) planted the rest of the vegetables yesterday. And by "the rest" I mean just a few of the seedlings that I've grown - it seems I put enough seeds into the little containers to feed an entire village

When I planted them into the seed trays I very carefully cut the labels off the seed packets, covered them in plastic (for obvious reasons) and poked them into the soil. This was so that I would know what I was growing in each little container.

 See the labels?

After many weekends of planning, levelling, filling in, fencing, path planning etc (and a near divorce caused by Walter's intentional misunderstanding of what a raised bed means) I finally bought the necessary bags of compost and potting soil on Tuesday morning so that Sam could plant out the seedlings on Wednesday

I gave him careful instructions before leaving for work yesterday and got home from work after sunset last night so this morning after gym I rushed out to see the results

And it really is starting to come together, I just need to find a place that sells bark chips for the paths.


Oh - and he threw away the labels so I have absolutely no idea which is Chinese cabbage and which is eggplant. Or which is celery and which is coriander.

Plus there are about 6 seedling trays still to be planted - so we're planning extensions. Sigh.

Don't wear yellow with purple

We have long established that I'm not visual. I find it incredibly difficult to visualise and when I say "snake" I don't see the picture in my head first; I see the word. Apparently this is not normal.

When I was in high school, during the early Pleistocene, we were taught that women could not be colour blind. We were assured that it was a genetically inherited disorder on the Y chromosome and thus only affected the males of the species.
Given that I have a really annoying ability to retain arbitrary pieces of information which are entirely useless for day-to-day survival I approached the colour-blindness test at cabin crew flight training with great confidence. This was a test I absolutely couldn't fail. I didn't even have to study (bonus, since that's not one of my strong points)
I failed.

Fortunately it wasn't a critical test for cabin crew to pass, so I ignored it (obviously they were wrong) and carried on with my life.
I have even stated this "fact" at various dinner parties and gatherings of friends and raised it again yesterday at lunch with Scientist no 2 (Yes, we are strange and yes, we do have strange conversations at the table)

He got a gleam in his eye - "Not true" and proceed to prove it to me via a long complicated equation

Being innumerate I fold the minute I see letters and numbers in brackets - surefire way of winning an argument with me.

So this morning I Googled it and found the Ishihara Test for Color Blindness - the same test I took all those years ago. Once again I managed 2, the others are totally invisible to me.

I can see this one - the different colours are visible as a number

I can't see this one - it's a jumble of spots with no discernable pattern

This one looks exactly like the previous one to me. I checked it had a different name. Twice.

I can see this one. Not as clearly as the first one, but I can see it. 

Nope. Nothing.

Zip. Nada. Pretty spots. No number.

I am Red-Green colour blind. According to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute only .4% of women are colour blind so I guess I would have found out earlier if I hadn't had the balance issues meaning I couldn't finish my flying training. Pilots have to be able to distinguish; it's what allows you to line up your approach at the right angle for safe landings. The clever engineering people designed the lights to show green when your angle is right, red when it's wrong. Maybe they weren't so clever, maybe they should have chosen colours that everyone can see.

I'm wondering if I can approach the extremely exclusive, expensive school I attended and ask for a refund of the fees. Might be useful to pay off the lights and water bill.

Fortunately Walter's not colour blind, I shall ask Scientist no 2 to do the sums to work out his chances. Or he can just do the test.

Take the test here

The cost of speeding....

Scientist no 2 is of the opinion that he can drive at whatever speed suits him, rather than the speed limit. This has resulted in a few fines as well as a couple of other consequences. One of those is garden duty. When he's working in the garden we call him "Spade" just so that he understands his place...

Vegetable garden has a little way to go still. Nevermind. From what I can see there are another 2 fines to pay for and work off. Mwahahaha.

We're a little accident-prone (Warning: graphic picture)

I got one of those calls from Scientist no 1 yesterday morning "Now, you're not to worry, but" which probably puts most mothers into a flat spin straight away.
Realising I had no handy paper packet to breathe into (thus removing hyperventilation as a possible option) I went into deep detective mode: "Are you alright?" "What happened?" "Is there blood?" and so on. (Side note: both of my children fully understand the serious consequences of letting blood out of their bodies; I used to ground them immediately)

She had visited the daughter-from-another-mother BFF the night before for dinner and slept over. I should mention that the BFF is currently an intern so well-qualified to deal with any medical emergencies, and that single fact kept me from going into a flat panic while I waited to hear how bad it was.
Apparently she'd decided to start the clean-up early and had even been to the shops to buy breakfast ingredients. On her return she'd picked up an expensive bottle of wine (to move it, I'm assuming/hoping) and dropped it. A piece of the broken glass had sliced her forearm to the bone. Exactly where your arm rests next to the mouse if you're right-handed.

I warned you it was graphic - the BFF doctor took this, I was lurking in the waiting room

May I just say that the last time something like this happened I was innocently working in the study. She was downstairs tidying up her room when I heard a little plaintive "Mom? I dropped my scalpel on my foot"
Not sure of what had happened, but absolutely sure that I had no intention of investigating I assured her that Walter would be home soon. Silence. I carried on working, putting it out of my mind. A few minutes later: "Um, I don't think I can wait. The scalpel's got old fish guts on it and I'm a little worried about infection" I calmly repeated "Dad will be home soon, he's observed bypass surgery, he's good with that stuff"
Eventually I agreed to take her, she wrapped her foot and off we went to the rooms. The GP was ridiculously excited, she'd sliced right through a tendon which required some careful stitching. She also couldn't drive for a good few weeks so needed ferrying around.
Fortunately this accident didn't involve tendons, there seems to be some minor nerve damage which will hopefully recover.

 You fix my arm I'll fix your hair. Scientist no 1 and BFF working out the payment for emergency treatment of sliced arm.


Oh and she bought me dark chocolate to apologise (and prevent being grounded)