Back by popular demand

I left you all with a cliff hanger post last week. Thank you for the feedback, wow. I had no idea my love life history was so interesting to you guys… Here’s the end of the original story:

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Jaun had proposed to me. He didn’t have a ring, but he was as serious as cancer. Me? I freaked out properly. Marriage wasn’t on my cards, it never had been. Up until this point I had never even wanted to get married. No one had ever made me feel like I wanted to spend the rest of my life with them, until now.

The problem was, I hated where he lived. I loved living on the coast too much. He loved the coast too, but would never be able to match the salary he was earning up there, down here. I refused to move to where he was. Too much crime, too much traffic, too much noise, and his mom was there. I hated her almost as much as she hated me. It just wasn’t possible for me to even consider moving there.

Let me tell you about one weekend with her:

After much nagging on his part, we spent one weekend at his moms place. He had decided that since it had been nearly a year, and he had met my entire family, it was only fair I met his. We had both been putting this off for various reasons. From what I had heard, his mom stood for everything I did not believe in:

• I was English, she was Afrikaans. To her, this seemed like a cardinal sin.
• she was a house wife, had never worked a day in her life. I had been self sufficient since I was 14 and plan to never be a kept woman.
• I had a baby at 18, enough said.
• When they had get togethers, the women were only allowed in the kitchen while the men took over the house. That weekend I sat outside drinking with the men.
• The minute I walked into the house, she said to Jaun in Afrikaans ‘I refuse to speak English. If she wants to be here, she can speak Afrikaans’ I understood every word, and replied to her in broken Afrikaans as sweetly as possible trying to disguise my disdain, that I would be happy to speak her language, provided she allow me to draw her pictures if I didn’t know the right words.

I was informed that ‘decent’ girls didn’t stay out of home until they got married, and she even asked me where Jaun slept when he stayed at my place. I wasn’t prepared to lie so I told her he stayed in my bed, with me. (Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Witch) She was horrified and turned around to Jaun and reprimanded him by saying that she hoped to god he used those condom things as she didn’t want a bastard from that engelse meisie (english girl).

As you can imagine, I couldn’t wait to leave and was so disappointed that a precious weekend with Jaun was spent trying to assure his Mother I wasn’t spawn from Satan. I don’t think it worked, to this day Jaun says she shudders when he talks about me. She would have been a MonsterInLaw. I would have never been part of their family, as much as Jaun thought it was possible.

The bottom line was that I knew in the long run things would go badly. We couldn’t have a long distant relationship if we were going to be married, jobwise nothing would have changed, and I felt that things were getting harder daily. And so I turned down his proposal and the next day, in our last moments of the holiday, we both cried as we said goodbye for the last time.

For a while we still called eachother every day, and SMSed constantly, but eventually we decided it was too painful and broke off all contact. One night I went out with mates and hooked up with a randome oke. The next morning I called Jaun to tell him how crap I felt about the dude not being him. We laughed about how terrible the situation was and fantasized about what our life could have been like if things had been different. A week later he phoned me to tell me how badly one girl he’d kissed slobbered all over him. She slobbered all over him, the stupid woman. Eventually we slipped into a comfortable routine of calling eachother when it felt right. Every call ended of with “I love you and miss you so much, but oh well”.

We both understood that it was easier to miss each other together than seperately. Three years down the line, things are the same. I have met others, but none like him. I’ve been in love, but not like it was with him.

Jaun has moved in with a lovely girl by the name of Jacqui. Speaking to her on the phone is always weird but pleasant enough, often I chat to Jacqui if he can’t answer straight away. Its a bittersweet situation, but at least it isn’t an ending. I still love him dearly, but he is happy, and that is all I could have asked for. I will find my Someone, eventually, when the time suits both of us.

The saying is true, ‘if you love someone, set them free. If they come back, its meant to be’. Jaun did come back to me, just in a different way, and you know what? Thats okay.

A poem on my body fluids

City lights at night are cool
Makes me want to sit at the pool
Not that we have one, mind you
Excuse me please, I need the loo

The beee-baaah around the street
intermittantly interrupts my sleep
I want to find a machine gun and
go marching down to them with a band

I have toilet tissue just near by
for when my nose decides to cry
it leaks and leaks and leaks and leaks
in between the times my bum squeaks

Have I mentioned I that I’m dying?

Carry on, choke me

In bitter sweet news, my favourite cartoonist is shutting down one of his two comics, to introduce a new comic strip involving baby ellies, leopards and lions. Of course, I am speaking of Jeremy Nell, the delightful Capetonian of this era. If you are a follower of Urban Trash, or even not, I’d head over to his site or rush out and buy the latest Times edition to see what you’ll be missing. Bring on the 30th June the release date of the new strip, I can’t wait to see what he’s dished out for us.

For the last twelve hours I have been on the loo with my head in the basin. I have food poisoning. I know I should be happy because its one way of totally losing weight, but dude. I can’t keep anything down or in! Cath in her infinite wisdom decided we were going shopping this afternoon. Aside from her doing carry-on-choke-me* in the middle of the isles, me tripping on the escalator, us sitting on the stairs crying with laughter, and screaming for the waitron in mugg n bean and then asking everyone around us if he had, in fact, been concieved yet as he was taking so long to bring us our drinks, I actually felt better. For an hour. Also, she doesn’t care if we’re in Musgrave Centre and I’m in my Pj’s.

We got home and I had to run back to Marvin, our toilet. I think he missed me. I was all like, oh sweet lawd – this wall is so cold, I’m in heaven…

So. One piece of toast and half a glass of coke is what I’ve had today. The horlicks milkshake I ordered went untouched, practically and so I can only surmise that I am ready for the next fad, which will be eating lettuce leaves alone, then going to chunder it all out again, in manner of super models. I’ll stay away from carrots though. Apparently (snort) they make your vagina go orange. You don’t even want to know how I heard about this.

But, please can it be said, that I have the best flat mate in the world. I have been loved, fed rehydrat and looked after. I love her. Even without a penoos. And NO, damnit – I’m still not gay.

* Karaoke

You’re so vain, you probably think this post is about you

• apparently i am clingy. well, fuck. maybe you just don’t get me.
• apparently i am bitter. yeah, i suppose i would agree with that – i sure as hell have reason to be
• apparently i am jaded. i really don’t think i am, i’d rather you use ‘doubtful’.
• apparently i am unclassy. i think you’re a classist.

• apparently i am funny. no – i’ve just been fortunate enough to tell a good story, the funnies happen either way.
• apparently i am too open – oh, i’m sorry – would you like to NOT know me, then?
• apparently i drag others down with me – only the people who deserve to not stay up
• apparently i am insulting – i think you’re over sensitive.

• apparently i am infamous – well damn, who wants to die anonymous?
• apparently i am too loud – at least i have a voice and choice and opinions
• apparently i am wrong – i say there are three sides to every story – yours, mine and the truth
• apparently i am hurt – you know what i say?

APPARENTLY YOU’RE A JACK ASS! Why don’t you crawl up your own asshole?

In other news, I have three jobs at the moment and I’m looking into a third. Wanna swap lives for a day?

Yes, I do realize that I’ve been very cryptic lately.  Its a phase okay, bite me.

A note to you, you and you

Things you’ll never know:

· the amount of times you’ve tried to erase him in life will never erase him out my heart

· how i’ve sat and stared into space tapping my foot in an attempt to keep my grip

· how often i laugh. at you, about you and because of you

· the fight you caused with Her and I, in a misunderstanding

· that day i cried and doubted myself because of everything you’d said

· although you might have made it inconvenient for me, i’ve learnt a lot from this situation

· i will move on to bigger and greater people than you, who actually like me as I am

· you don’t understand, do you? i don’t care what you think. so stop telling me

· that since then i have been bruised, but not broken and its all circumstancial

Things I want you to know:

· nothing you do could ever fix this. nothing.

· i still don’t have a plan for what i want

· it has nothing to do with you, it never did

· you aren’t important enough for me to even try explain

· you don’t get me, you never did and you never will.

· you can’t cope with them, and thats your biggest downfall

· its your loss, not mine

· i might not know who i am this minute, but at least im trying to learn

· you missed out, she was so fulfilling

Things I already know:

· i was so wrong, i made a huge mistake. i’m sorry Me.

· the best decision i made was getting out of that situation

· i wasted my time and energy on something that wasn’t worthy

· i am no devil, i am no angel, i’m just me.

· the eyes are a window into someone’s soul – your windows were broken, shattered and burglar barred up.

· i should have listened to my gut the instant it kicked me in my teeth

Calling all Durban Bloggers!

So, yesterday was the first Jhb Bloggirls meet and I have to admit that I am super jealous I wasn’t there.  Apparently Sweets and Angel did some verbal advertising for some of us and I’ve had a few emails and one comment from newbies.  Hi!

Cath and I have taken it upon ourselves to organise the Durban version.  Now is the time to de-lurk, girls – who are you and where is your blog??  At this point, I actually only know of one other fembot in durban who stupidly bravely puts it all out there like Cath and I do.  There must be more of us?

Please let me know here or via email and we’ll send through details.

Meeting a stranger

Today is the fourth anniversary of the best phone call I have ever received. So many things have changed since that day so long ago. It happened at a time in my life where I was confused about alot of things, and going through a major change in lifestyle. I had just moved out of home, sharing a flat with the roomate from hell, a life time friendship that eventually went waywardly wrong. I was living out of boxes as I hadn’t unpacked anything but curtains for the new place, and was adjusting to doing my own laundry, cooking and trying to ignore my flatmate as best I could. I had broken up with a jerk few weeks previously, for the last time, and I had sworn off him and every other male on the planet.

Four years ago my phone rang one Saturday afternoon and I answered just as I was getting out the bath, tripping over the mat, hopping around as I tried to save the towel from landing on the floor and answering breathlessly before the call got cut (I used to hate missing calls, probably because I hated listening to my voicemail even more). A deep male Afrikaans voice comes through looking for a Schalk. I explained that I knew no Schalk and he most certainly wasn’t with me. The voice apologises and says that if I do perhaps get to know a Schalk at any point, please could I ask him to ring Jaun back. I promise solemnly to do so.

Expecting the call to end, I was quite surprised when he said ‘So if your name is not in fact Schalk, what is it?’ I told him my name was top secret and that I was very important in my part of the country. Lame, I know, but shit man, I couldn’t think of anything else! He laughed and said it was a coincidence because he was too and then asked why I was echoing. In a very deep, husky and sexy voice I divulged that I’d jumped out the bath to answer and that I was actually in my bathroom, naked. This set the conversation in a totally different direction, and we eventually end the call twenty minutes later laughing our heads off.

I have to admit that it wasn’t often I spent my afternoons naked in my bathroom chatting into my phone to random guys from Johannesburg that I’d never met before, especially not about my naked state or that I was about to search in boxes to find underwear that I hadn’t unpacked yet. But hey, what can I say, I’m an out going girl and find it easy to talk to most people. What I didn’t expect was an SMS two hours later from Jaun the Afrikaaner; ‘Trust you eventually found some underwear. Thanks for the chat. I haven’t stopped thinking about you since we ended the call.’ Naturally I replied (it would be rude if I hadn’t) ‘yes, thanks, I did scrounge some up. Feel free to dial the wrong number some time soon again. Girl with the top secret name.’

That was the beginning of a beautiful friendship, folks. The smses didn’t stop from there on in, he called me twice a day. I eventually told him my name a week later, after he convinced me that it wasn’t fair he knew so many other things about my personal life but not my name. We’d also fallen into a habit of updating eachother whenever anything interesting happened. Well, even the uninteresting things like ‘I just kicked my toe open, poor me huh?’ and he would reply with ‘ag* thats nothing, I just hit my thumb with a hammer, toughen up’. About three weeks later, Jaun called me one night and asked me to send him a picture. I said I would most certainly not, that was even more top secret, and he said as soon as the call ended, he was sending me one whether I wanted it or not. When my phone beeped, my heart fell to my left foot and I felt all fluttery inside as I gazed at the most gorgeous Afrikaans looking face I had ever seen. Seriously, he was hot! I sent him one back and he called me immediately, making me swear that it was me and not some random photo I had copied. I had to prove it by sending him another one, with my finger up my left nostril. He had to do the same for me, but crossing his eyes and sticking his tongue out. Yes, I know, it was gorgeous wasn’t it, this relationship we had struck up?

Exactly one month to the day of the random wrong number call, he booked a flight to come and meet me. I was a nervous wreck. I spent two days vomiting out my lungs, liver and spleen. He caught a cab from the airport to the coffee shop we had agreed on to officially meet. We decided we’d do that as it was nearby the bus stop just in case he needed to leave immediately if it turned out as badly as we expected it to (such positive people we were). Two hours after his arrival, we’d hugged and touched each other like long lost and reunited friends. I decided the first thing we had to do was get him to the beach since he was a vaalie and didn’t live anywhere near the ocean. The BnB he had booked into was right around the corner too. Jeans and all, we kicked off our shoes, threw off jackets and ran down to the shoreline. Three hours later, we went to my place (I had decided by then that he wasn’t the psychopath or serial killer he promised he was) and ordered in some pizza. We stayed there for two days. He didn’t even get to see the BnB! Every time I got up to go anywhere, he’d grab me by my arm and pull me down back to the make shift bed we’d made in order to watch dvd’s. For the entire weekend, we had not, literally, been more than a metre away from eachother.

It was like a holiday romance, all squished into three days. I was completely in love, hooked with line and sinker included, as was he. On the Monday when he had to fly back I cried buckets, and he sort of sat there like an idiot hugging me not letting me see his eyes were misted over. Three weeks later he came down again, two weeks later I flew up to him, four weeks later we met in the middle of nowhere for a weekend away and sort of (snigger at this word) “consumated” our relationship. We both plumeted every spare cent we had into the next possible weekend we could have together. I was more broke than I had ever been in my life, yet I lived on love alone, and spent every spare moment I had, on the phone with Jaun. I was never more miserable or happy.

Roughly a year later Jaun and I co-ordinated our annual leave together, and he came down for three weeks. We decided that this would probably be the end of us as we had never had so much time together before and this would surely be the time where we’d find out eachothers ugly side and bad habits and he would most likely end up flying back home sooner, deleting my number the same time I would delete his. Ha! Fifteen nights later, we sat on the beach just as the sun was setting, drinking cheap rose wine, and as I lay with my head in his lap, Jaun proposed to me while I was gazing up his left nostril. I nearly choked to death on the amount of spit that had suddenly arrived in my mouth. Of all the things, I had never expected this. We hadn’t even discussed marriage! I had always presumed we’d have great sex while being together, keep in touch in between and eventually the whole thing would fizzle out as we moved on with our respective lives. I thought he was in the same place of thought as I was. But you know what thought did, right? Thought planted a feather in the sand and thought a chicken would grow…

To Be Continued.

Online businesses, is it all a scheme?

I’ve been doing a little research lately. Only because, you know, having two jobs already isn’t enough for me…

So far, I’ve investigated one “scheme” and other than not knowing what exactly its for, it seems to be a sure way of making a bit of pocket money. This is how (to my understanding) it works:

1. See an online ad, sent inquiry to the address provided.
2. Receive a reply from someone live. Pay a fee of R250 once off to get training manual.
3. You now place online adverts everywhere you can, inviting other people to join, at a low cost of a once off fee at R250.
4. They deposit the money into your account, you keep it as your commission, and they do the exact same thing.

Now, this is where you guys come in. I’ve done the above, and my questions are as follows:

• There is no official website to flip through. Only the person who placed the ad can be used as a source for further information.
• It seems like the idea is to gather as many applicants as possible, and get them to find more applicants.
• There is no “product” selling whatsoever, you place and ad and the people enquire with you.
• Aside from time consuming replies to queries, and advertising for free online, there’s not much work to be done, from what I can see.
• Do you find this intruiging?
• Is there anything you think I should be aware of going in?
• What is the point to this whole idea?
• Do they want to gather email addresses for a database?
• If so, what for?
• What is the point, and what do the beings above get out of this other than a bunch of people advertising to get other people to advertise?
• Most importantly, is this legal? Am I going to get into trouble?

Bridget Jones has nothing on me

I had a phone call, well- numerous calls, from a friend last night. In the midst of being told I was a bitch, whore, slut and divine, I was dropping off a collegue and promptly reversed my car into the side of a pole. It took a chunk of paint out of my right back door, and made a noise something terrible. I literally had to unstick my poor little blue boeng from the pole.

I then come home to my crazy housemate and we have hysterics on the couch til roughly 2am.

When I finally get into bed, I hoist myself so far up, I knock my head crash bang into the wall. This being after I nearly wee all over the toilet seat as I thought it was up. Clearly, it wasn’t. Moose (flatmates bf) clearly has manners by remembering to keep the lid down, but I’m clearly uncultured and am way too used to living with men that I don’t expect it.

The shit has hit the fan in Shath land. I don’t know how we’ll make it through the next thirty days alive, but I promise you we will.

I’m exhausted, stressed to FUCK and yet, still hopeful. Cross your thumbs for me please.