Fond Farewell

All my life I have been a lover of chocolate and ice-cream - and now I have to let that love die. Lent is a good time for it to happen, and an even better time for it to be a permanent death. I have officially entered the ranks of the Diabetes Type 2 community, so these sugar treats can no longer be treats for me. So the challenge is to wait and see what is resurrected from this death!! The diabetic products are, to my tastebuds, disgusting - so it is better to let go altogether and see what new thing pops up.
Fare thee well lunch-bars, smarties, top deck, bar one, and ps bars. Good-bye blueberry cheese cake, vanilla, KFC avalanche, Milky Lane, and Royal Danish Ice-Cream Parlour. Long have I loved thee, but now it is time for you to survive without me. I urge you with deep passion: continue to be faithful to your customers.
Sighhhhh.

It's only Tuesday!

Its only Tuesday and I feel like I won't make it through another day, let alone the week. Being a two day working week, bracketed by public holidays and extra public holidays, doesn't stop the work of a full week having to be done. I have just finished preparing for a bi-lingual funeral tomorrow morning; have tried to find time to pray for an intense counsellling session coming up mid-day tomorrow; am juggling the hours available in the day to be able to visit one of our members in a psychiatric clinic; as well as prepare for a bible study. Add to that making bookings for our trip to England and Mexico later in the year, and final arrangements and tasks for Ian's wedding on Saturday, it really feels as if the sky is falling down.
Praise God that I have a hard head!
Where's the Panado??

Satisfied Customer

After a couple of years our very cheap DVD player, purchased at a well-known store, developed an irreparable problem. I didn't know it was irreparable when I returned the thing for possible fixing. After a month, during which I was assured by sms every week that they would get round to having a look at my unit, I finally received an sms to say that the unit was irreparable and could I please go and fetch it. Which I duly did today - planning to drop it off at hospice so that the metal etc could be sent for recycling or whatever they do with the stuff. To my amazement, I was offered an upgrade to the current model, just paying the difference between my old model and the new one. That amounted to R140 - for a brand new DVD. The further amazing thing is that I connected it to our TV and it works with a clear picture!!

I am one satisfied customer because the old unit was outside any warranty period.
I feel blessed!

Back-to-Work

There's a tangible energy in the house when people spend a large part of their days there. The sounds of guitar picking and strumming behind a closed door; a band practising in the garage; the hum of a computer; the grolaungh of the washing machine and sloosh of water pumped out; heat on the growing grass; senile dog thinking she should have a bit of a bark; rain - sometimes soft, sometimes heavy; the depth of thought in solving an electronic challenge; hum and clatter of the pool cleaner; sneezing of the hayfever sufferer; contentment of companionship; security and awareness of who's coming in and out and the satisfaction of life lived fully and significantly. But today there's silence. Almost like a vacuum, in spite of the noises of Monday chores. The energy is dispersed to other places - medical campus, main campus, vacation work... And it leaves the house (and me) feeling deserted. I'd have thought I'd be used to it by now - Mondays being my sabbath - but I'm not - don't know if I ever will be. The shrinking energy levels are just so noticeable - especially with my first two sons out of the house and living elsewhere. But the peace is still there. I suppose that's what getting older is all about - letting go of that which energized in the past and seeking new directions for energy .

Techno-time-gnawers

Technology generally, as I understand it, is meant to save time and increase efficiency. But it can also do the opposite - often and repeatedly - as our experience with homeDSL proves. We had this ADSL installed so that internet could be available more readily to our student sons (and the rest of us!) who need to download lectures, materials, etc etc. And it all works fine until the line doesn't work. For the past month the DSL light has been flashing (perhaps I should more politely say winking), which means that the internet is interrupted or not available when most needed. Phone calls to Telkom made no difference - until today a technician pitched up, fiddled on the line, and then said it was the surge protector that gives problems. So the line is connected directly to the modem and no longer through the surge protector. But has this helped? Not really! The line is still being interrupted, and the light blinks at me, and the internet goes off - and then it comes on again but too late to remain on the same page/ link and one has to do manipulations to continue what one was busy with. It's not just the internet that gets interrupted - when busy with a phone call that too gets cut/ interrupted and one has to dial again. This really irritates me - but I must say that I will continue to persevere. I hate writing and even this time-waster way of doing things is better than putting pen/ pencil to paper and sending things snail-mail. I guess I am just another sucker for punishment!

Scary Stuff!

• having a caesar under general anaesthetic, then waiting in a semi-comatose state to hear if the baby was born alive
• driving through the Transkei in the evening, returning from a shopping trip to a town 11/2 hours away, and having your toddlers jump up and down on the back seat singing 'bumpy road, bumpy road, bumpy road' – before there were such things as safety belts for kids
• watching your 6 year old, who has been petrified of heights since birth, doing gymnastic manoeuvers on the high bar during a competition
• watching blood pour from wounds under the chin and over the eye-brow of your young children after various playground accidents
• having someone else's parents bring your child home early from a hockey match because he has fallen on his shoulder and snapped his collar-bone – this before cell-phones were the norm
• seeing a tackle from the wrong side end up with a hockey stick in your son's face, blood pouring all over the field, and the first-aider on duty yelling at you not to touch the injury because of the possibility of HIV, and you're not wearing rubber gloves
• letting your teenager take the car out on his own immediately after passing his driver's license
• having a blow out in the rear left tyre on the freeway when your 20year old is driving the 'combi' with seven people on board - and the car didn't roll but was brought to a smooth halt!
  
• hearing that your Intern son has had a needle-stick while sewing up an HIV patient
• saying 'bye' to your son who is driving down to the Eastern Cape on his own in a car stuffed full of his life's possessions
• driving over Van Reenen's pass in torrential rain, at night, with lots of trucks on the road – less scary if you yourself are driving and not someone else
• having your son drive in parking-lot type traffic with others taking chances in changing lanes – and have his father make comments, suggestions and warnings from the back seat, increasing the levels of irritation
• driving down the very steep, rocky road, hairpin bends at the top of the Sani Pass, and not be very au fait with how to co-operate with the ABS, TCS etc systems of your 4x4 vehicle when you get into a slide

There are many more of these, but the bottom line is that the level of scariness is directly proportional to one's ability to be in control of all factors. I guess that makes me a control freak?