Being a grown up…

Well, basically, it sucks sometimes.

But mostly, it’s …

Fuck.

I have blogger-block.

Be back soon.

On getting free shiz…

I think that one of my favourite things about having a blog as old as mine, is getting the PR companies contacting me often to send me free shit.

Most of the time the stuff is really relevant, and fits in with what I blog about (to a degree) but sometimes the deliveries I pick up from reception make me seriously contemplate how people got their jobs.

First of all, the names!  I’ve been called Mr. Shebegates, Mrs. Bee, Miss. Sheena Aquaonline, Ms. Shenagh Gats, Shebee Gates and even (and this is my personal favourite) Mr. Sheena Bloggatesbee (?).

The gifts are always interesting.  From beer, to milkshakes, to leather gloves, to weekend’s away, to braai kits to Jasmin & cigarette perfumed panties (?), to foot products, I’ve been sent a lot of really cool stuff, and also some really weird stuff that I’ve blushed about when opening the packages.

But last night, I was given something that I’ve wanted for ages – a wireless Logitech mouse.  With glittery decor on it, and it’s super small so it fits my tiny hands perfectly.  Excitement!  It’s part of the new Logitech Colour Collection, oh my – so pretty.

The launch event was pretty awesome, they got contortionists who twisted their bodies in ways that only a boyfriend would appreciate.  The girls were painted from head to toe in bright glittery paint.  They had a girl with very spiky hair string and ribbon herself up and down black fabric and a hoolahoop.  They set up a teenage girl’s bedroom in the corner and it had a picture of Twilight in a frame.  All of it in very bright colours, the effect was quite bold.  I went with other GirlGuides, the chicks I drink with at gadget club.  Yes, it’s like book club, but less gay.  And way more nerdy.

Have I told you about the GirlGuides website yet?  You should check it out, they’re having major competition giveaways, and there’s loads of information on just about any gadget you can think of, written for women, by women.

On another note, tonight, I will sit down on the couch and soak my foots in this new product that landed on my desk yesterday called Milky Foot – apparently it’ll make my feet into baby soft skin.  Rad.  Except I have the feet of an Amazonian cave woman, so I’m a bit skeptical.

This is what the press release says:

Applying Milky Foot is a simple process of slipping your feet into Milky Foot Intense Exfoliating plastic sleeves, soaking your soles for 60 minutes and then letting the product do the work for you. Your feet will instantly feel smoother and softer and will begin to peel within five to 10 days from first application. Within two to three weeks, your feet will be reborn (?????), looking silky smooth. And, armed with the latest nail colour and a pair of sexy strappy sandals, you can show of those feet with sheer confidence.

Hmmm.  Considering I hate my feet, and generally try and cover them up whenever possible, I’d be stoked if this actually works.  I’ll report back to you tomorrow, from my laptop which will have a wireless mouse NOT attached to it.

So there you have it.  This week’s free shit review:

• Logitech glittery awesome wireless mouse: I am pleased.
• Milky Foot de-uglyfier: remains to be seen.

WTF have I been up to?

This blog post is brought to you live from the Republic of Cape Town, a gorgeous country that I am slowly but surely becoming addicted to.  It’s strange, although I’ve considered living here before, I’ve never really been so drawn to one place in my life.  You Capetonians are right, the mowwwwntin certainly has something. It’s like an omnipresent Cape Flats tic dealer, wearing lipstick – there, noticeable, commanding attention.

It also makes me stupid.  Goose and I have been doing a bit of unplanned touring of Cape Town (read: we get lost.  A lot.) and I seem to have developed an uncontrollable habit lately: the minute I’m a car passenger, I become a full retard.  Last night on the way home, twenty five minutes into our latest unplanned tour, I couldn’t stop myself reading out the names of road signs, s l o w l y, with a voice of bewildered amazement that Cape Town dares to have road names that aren’t in a native African language, except for the few of them that managed to remain in that out-dated language known as Afrikaans:

1. Darling Road = d a r l i n g! Daaaar-ling! Da-rling? Darl-ing!
2. Flower Street = FLOUR! F L O U R! Fl-our. F-lour? Flo-ur!
3. Buitenkant = B u i t e n k a n t.   BUITEN- KANT? HAHAHHAA KANT! Kant, kant, kant! (At this point, Goose looks at me like I’ve just stripped off all my clothes and wrapped my body in loo-paper).

I did my speech at WTF Media Conference yesterday.  The good news is I didn’t fall flat on my space, or trip over my own feet, or even forget my own name on stage.  Awesome!  The bad news is that there were a few technical glitches.
Like, all of the issues that hadn’t happened at the conference, happened to me on the stage.  All at once.

The mic stopped working mid sentence.   Then the slide clicker fucking broke.  Then the video played before I was ready for it to play.  And it had no sound for the first 20 seconds.

Fuck. It was horrible.

Also, I trended on Twitter as the first female speaker, who sounded like a sailor because of all the f-bombs.  Unbelievable, really.  Me? Swear a lot?  Amazing.

Sigh.  But at least the audience laughed a lot, I wiggled my bum on stage, they loved Eggward from Pick n Pay, had loads of people afterwards asking me for my Aqua business card and have already received emails and tweets asking for info and insights.  So it probably wasn’t as horrible as I thought…

Went for the most amazing brekkie yesterday at The Atlantic restaurant inside the Table Bay Hotel.  Oh my goodness.  When presenting me with so much choice only makes me confused, insecure and overly-excited.  I decided to settle for the following and piled it onto one plate:

• Sushi
• Chocolate croissants
• Strawberries, melted chocolate, cream
• Pineapple ontop of french toast
• Scrambled eggs with creme freche’ and salmon
• Mince ball (or at least I think that’s what it was) on top of steamed tomato
• Crispy bacon
• Fatty bacon

Yep.  All of those things.  I ate it.  Well, I at least tasted some of everything, if not consumed it entirely.  I rolled out of there, it was ridiculous.

Then last night we were invited to the most awesome little Mexican place in Obs (which incidentally I thought was the name of the venue) called Punchos.  Strawberry & Lemon Margerita’s are evil.  I am half dead this morning.  My headache is killing me and all the sound in my ears seems personified.  It didn’t help that I met up with one of my long time favourite bloggers Shaun Oakes and he forced tequila down my throat.

Peace!

PS: I’m missing my Jew.  And Goose says I keep cuddling her.  But it’s her fault cos she steals the pillow I put in the middle to separate us.  Cape Town is cool, but it doesn’t have my boyfriend, and that minus a million points.

Maybe I am a little more freaked out than I thought…

Last night Jon and I had an enormous fight.  He screamed at me and I screamed at him.  I threw shoes at him and he laughed at me while I cried.

He broke the whole thing off.  Told me to move out of his house because I was too chaotic for him.  He then said he was keeping the kids, and all of our friends.  I screamed “YOU CAN HAVE THE FUCKING KIDS, BUT I’M KEEPING ANGLUG!”, he argued that geographically, because Angel and Neels live in Joburg, they are his friends now.  I replied “I live in Joburg too! And they were my friends first!” and he looked at me with an evil glint in his eye and replied,

“Not for long, I’ve organised that you move back to Durban.  Also, here’s your resignation letter, you’re quitting your job too”.

I was heartbroken.  I sat outside in the rain and my smokes kept getting wet.  I was barefoot and freezing and I looked at the outside furniture I always sit on and cried because I wasn’t allowed to sit there anymore.

And then, just as I was about to beg Jon to change his mind and love me again, I woke up.

Jesus!  I think I’m a bit more freaked out about moving in than I thought it was.

Subconscious insecurity much?!

Also, when telling Jon about the dream this morning over coffee, I giggled nervously and made a silent vow to never give up my kids in anger.  Even if it was for the awesomeness that is Anglug

Who wears the pants in your FourSquare?

On FourSquare Jon and I used to have a recurring competition when it came to checking into locations, primarily, his residence.  I was determined to be the Mayor of his house.  Everytime I’d check-in, I’d hear an emasculated sigh from across the room and I could swear I heard his eyes rolling into the back of his head too.

He matched my check-in’s with a resentful and mighty ferocity of his own check-in’s such that it took me as long as three months to eventually give up.  He was determined, more so than I, it seemed, to remain Mayor of his own house.  I laughed it off as a silly little game and chalked it off as a ‘boy’s thing’.  It was quite obvious that Jon felt the need to remain the head of his virtual household, and I was absolutely okay with that.  So I totally became the Mayor of his mother’s house instead.  Hah!

The point of this post?  Clearly Jon is better at FourSquare than I am. He has a hard time bringing this ‘leadership’ through to his real home.

Jon feels being head of a table is old fashioned, it makes him slightly uncomfortable, but sits there because I pretty much force him to by placing his setting there.  He says that he’s my equal and that there should be no ‘head’ place for him.  Everybody go ‘Awww’.

Most nights, we enjoy cooking together in the kitchen, followed by dinner at a set table.  Call us old fashioned and traditional, I don’t care.  It’s something we both enjoy, and it gives us a proper opportunity to ‘talk’.  About work, life, family, bullshit, sex.  Whatever.  We talk a lot, it’s how we roll.

My outlook on the matter is that the seeds we sow now, will be the kids we grow tomorrow*.  Or something.  Basically, I want to start traditions now that we might follow if we were to ever expand and start a family.  In that family, Jon will be seen as the head.  Right? Or am I hopelessly misguided and should get with the times?

Seriously, lets discuss this very important and pressing matter, I’m curious to see what you think…

* Totally just made that up right now.  I’m super clever.

PS: Am leaving for Cape Town tomorrow for a week – so exciting!  Goose and I are sharing a room and everything.  Watch out, WTF Conference, The Bee & The Goose are in town!!!

To anti-biotic or to not anti-biotic?

I’m not a bunny-loving tree-hugger in general… wait, okay I am, but one thing I’d like to highlight is that I always shave my legs and I fully believe in deoderant.  But besides that, I’ve never really been big on anti-biotics.  I know that they have their uses, sure, kills bugs and sorts your shit out blah blah blah, but for me personally?  Not a fan.  Before Kiera was born and I had to have a c-section, I hadn’t been on anti-biotics in years.  Since then it took literally SEVEN YEARS for me to go on anti-biotics again, and only because I was a miserable bitch and in more amounts of pain that three live births put together, when I had the first kidney infection and kidney stones got stuck on the way down mah bohdi [Bheki Cele accent, thank you very much].

Fast forward like, three months, and I got another kidney infection.  So off I go last week to the doctor and he glances at me, tells me to calm the fuck down with my stress levels and writes out another script for anti-biotics.  Twice! In one year! After I’ve had NONE in many more years!

Now, one week later, I’m fucking sick again!  I am so full of teh flu, I don’t know why I even bothered getting out of bed this morning.  Seriously, where does snot come from?  It’s like magic, but waaaay less awesome.

My point being – I am now a walking, talking, flu parasite.  Do I go back to the doctor again?  I know he’ll just prescribe even more fucking anti-biotics.  Is it even worth it to try and fight off this thing with vitamins and lots of orange juice?  The thing is, I’m going to Cape Town next week to speak at the WTF Conference* and will be staying for nearly a week, so I actually cannot afford to let myself get any worse.  My people will be waiting with bated breath to hang on every word I say, see, and I cannot let those words be dripping in flu and germs and snot.  Also, there are way more important and influential people speaking that I really, really, really want to hear.  And right now I can’t hear a thing because the midget inside my head is too busy banging on my brain with a jack hammer and stuffing all the holes with cotton wool.

Help me decide.  To anti-biotic or to not… anti-biotic?

Yours in sniffling misery,

Sheena

*Yay!!!!  Come join us at the conference!  Details are here.

Cat Rescuer to the Rescue!

It’s been a bit of a hectic few days.  On Friday morning my mom called me and decided she was missing me and considering flying in for a weekend.  An hour and a bit later, she called me again.  From the airport.  Fast forward to a few hours later and I was lost in Sandton, screaming blue bloody murder at my GPS who was telling me to make a left turn, MAKE A LEFT TURN, MAKE. A. LEFT. TURN. where there was no fucking left to turn to!

We came home, got dressed to the nines like Sandton kugels in leopard print and pleather for Jacqui’s Over The Top birthday dinner at The Blues Room:

We didn’t want to have a too late night because I was quite excited for the next day, it was a charity thingum with 1600 orphans from Soweto.  We arrived just after 7am and packed about a millionty seven burgers for these kids and when they finally arrived after ten thirty, my mom and I made our way through to fetch our group of about 200 kids.

Immediately my heart melted.  All these beautiful little children playing, singing, dancing and clammoring for attention.  All of them so full of life.  All of them with more sadness in their history than most adults.  All of them unwanted by their parents.  I caught myself getting a bit emotional, how can so many people be so irresponsible with their own children?  It’s so unbelievably sad.

Within no time my mom and I managed to be adopted by a few little girls.

Precious little things, they clung onto us the whole day.  And when the entertainment started that afternoon, they were so little that my mom and I held them in our arms so they could see.  ALL BLOODY DAY! I can barely feel my arms as I type this. One of the girls (next photo) fell asleep on my moms shoulder:

Then, today, we were on our way to have lunch with Anglug and right in the middle of Witkoppen road was a terrified little ball of fluff, wimpering and cowering away from all the traffic.  My mom and I were in my car, Jon in his in front, all of us slammed on breaks and pulled over.  I was the closest one to the kitten, and she ran across the road and under my car, and then climbed up right into my engine. Crap.

By now there was a backed up line of cars with pissed off drivers, a few spectators and a baby cat all over and up in my engine.  We jacked the car up, nothing.  We called the kitten, nothing.  It was stuck up in there.  Eventually one awesome dude on the road called Vusi climbed right under the car and managed to grab onto the baby’s tail and pull her out.  It took about 45 minutes and a lot of Jon’s determination to save the kitty, but eventually she was safe in my moms arms.

We arrived at Anglug’s eventually and planned to take the kitten to a haven but Angel fell in love and not surprisingly, they’ve decided to adopt here.  Read more about her here, with pics.  They need help choosing a name for her, I voted Ginny.  I think you should too :p

Bucket List

Heidi Goose did a blog post on her Bucket List.  I’m being a copycat and doing the same.  Only, I can’t promise I’ll get to 25 so let’s see how far I get…

1. Go to the Disney Castle and dress like a Disney princess
2. Have a proper conversation with a real life midget and not freak the fuck out and get shy (also, if the midget would not hump my leg, that would be rad too)
3. Be a mother to a child who asks me random questions that make me both awkward and proud
4. Go to a freak show aquarium that has giant fish (I know, I’m totally morbidly curious and weird)
5. Get drunk in Vegas, forget what time it is, dance with a fake Elvis
6. Go on a cruise to a country I’ve never heard of before
7. Buy illegal and pirated products and knock-off’s at a Chinese market, in China
8. See myself at my own book publishing (it’s about time I finish the book I started 3 years ago, damnit!)
9. Get a drivers license.  For real.
10. Find that ever elusive but perfect grey nail polish
11. Be self employed without financial burden
12. Have an all-girls international trip
13. Be sponsored by a whole buncha cool brands like Blackberry, Apple and the like
14. Be asked to, and turn down, appear on talk shows
15. Float in the dead sea
16. Celebrate the New Year in NYC, watching the ball drop at midnight

Ok I’m done.

Odd number! Hurrah!  Gluggie will be so proud.  Naaaat.

I need help with my assaulted Kindle

So does anyone know where I can get it fixed?  I knelt on it.  The screen isn’t cracked, but the ink looks like the Kindle decided to transform itself into an etchy sketch.  And funnily enough, when I shake it, it doesn’t clear, contrary to popular belief.

Sob.  Help, please?