Author Archives: Natalie

The Red Bus Tour of Jozi

Posted on by
Reply

IMG_4597

“In the inner city there is no excuse for loneliness and this is in welcome contrast to suburban life where so many live behind high walls and commute by car.” (Spaces & Places Johannesburg by Gerald Garner, by p. 75)

For Sandtonites who have never worked in Jozi’s CBD, the idea of venturing into “town” can be daunting, especially if one never has to. Back in the day, I recall trying to get from Parktown, through Braamfontein, to one of the Absa towers in the south east of town. I’d driven the route with my boss before and it seemed simple enough, yet I managed to get lost, driving up and down one-way streets, for up to an hour, every time I tried to go through town. Not even Africa’s tallest building, The Carlton Centre, helped as a landmark. I found it just blended into its surroundings, flanked by fellow tall buildings and shabby yet vibrant streets. After one or two experiences like that, I resorted to taking the freeway to my client, where I could more easily memorise the few one-way turns I had to make in order to locate the relevant Absa parkade.

I also found that even though I may have grown comfortable over the years with making my way from Jozi north to one particular pocket of town, I still had no idea how these pockets connected to others in the CBD. As a result, “town” simply remained a scary mystery.

Until last Sunday, that is.

I heard about City Sightseeing’s Red City Tour of Jozi a few weeks ago and had been keen to check it out as a weekend outing with The Husband and The Princess.

Our outing started off in “European Vacation”  style as a comedy of errors (less funny at the time). But instead of acting like ditsy Americans unable to find their way out of the Arc de Triomphe’s maze, we acted like ditsy middle class South Africans who go everywhere by car and who can’t navigate public transport for love or money. I had an old Gautrain timetable (back when they still printed them) for the Pretoria to Park Station line, but it dated back to the days before trains were even running to Park. At 10:43am, I realised that the next train from Sandton to Park Station was at 11am and that trains only ran every 30 minutes on weekends. With that realisation, we made a mad dash to drive the 1.1km to the Gautrain station, park the car, set up the pram, get The Princess in the pram, buy tickets and get the lifts to the platform. By some miracle, we actually made it onto the platform with a couple of minutes to spare. Just as I was thinking that it was odd that the train had not yet arrived, it dawned on me that I had led us to the northbound side of platform B8 where trains headed for Pretoria stopped, rather than the southbound side, to catch our train headed for town. And so we had 29 minutes to spare until the next train to Park Station at 11:30. A real rookie rail-user error. Grrr. Once we were on the correct platform and had caught the train, it was a mere 8 minute journey for the bargain price of 22 ZAR per adult (one way).

IMG_4627

When we arrived at the immaculate, brand new Park Station (I confess to being a HUGE Gautrain fan), a Gautrain employee told us to take the well-marked Wolmarans St exit (serviced by lifts and allowing us to avoid road crossings with The Princess in her pram) and to look out for a dude in a red jacket – a representative from City Sightseeing. Our lack of planning meant that we’d just missed the 11:38am bus and so had to wait for the next one at 12:20pm (they run every 40 minutes from 9am).

IMG_4626

Looking heavily laden with The Princess in her stroller, we were ushered onto the bus first and so got the best seats in the house – upstairs in the front row. We were able to leave her McLaren stroller downstairs in an open area with no seating (which I assume is intended for strollers and wheelchairs), secured by a special seat belt. Upstairs, The Princess insisted on having her own seat and the stewardess even brought her, her own pair of earphones so that she, too, could get connected for the tour’s commentary.

IMG_4568_2

With a toddler in tow, I wasn’t expecting to be able to take advantage of the individual plug-in earphones and audio guide but The Husband started listening right in the beginning and encouraged me to do the same. The Princess was naturally less fascinated by the commentary after a minute or two but she was excited by the prospect of being on a double decker bus and having a great view of the streets of Joburg. This meant that both The Husband and I were able to listen to most of the commentary.

I have to say, we were both absolutely fascinated.

My knowledge of the history of Joburg’s CBD before this tour was more or less limited to my memory of Eloff Street being prime real estate in Monopoly (and in real life before the mass business exodus and subsequent urban decay that set in, in the early nineties). So those who are more knowledgeable about the city’s history might already know all the basics the Red Bus tour has to offer, but for us it was the perfect amount of content to whet our appetite. Here’s a brief overview of the bus’ twelve stops, interspersed with some pictures:

1. GAUTRAIN PARK STATION

2. GANDHI SQUARE

Statue of Gandhi in the rejuvenated Gandhi Square

Statue of Gandhi in the rejuvenated Gandhi Square

3. CARLTON CENTRE

IMG_4588

4. SANTARAMA MINI-LAND

With a two year old, we decided that either Santarama or Gold Reef City would be our stop of choice, but we learnt that Santarama is currently undergoing refurbishment, so we decided to save it for next time. Not having grown up in Joburg, I had never heard of Santarama, but to The Husband, passing its entrance was like a blast from the past as he recalls going there as a young child.

5. JAMES HALL TRANSPORT MUSEUM

6. GOLD REEF CITY

Gold Reef City is exactly half way along the two hour round-trip bus tour and so it took us an hour to get there from the Gautrain Station at Park. En route, we entered Jozi’s southern suburbs and passed places I had only ever heard of by name like Turfontein Race Course and Wemmer Pan. The Husband has often spoken of his rowing training and racing at Wemmer Pan when he was a teen, so it was great to be able to place it geographically.

7. APARTHEID MUSEUM

Having visited the Apartheid Museum before, I personally wouldn’t choose to combine a visit there with the bus tour. The Apartheid Museum is brilliant but obviously harrowing given South Africa’s recent history. It is also very detailed and best absorbed if you do not have time constraints. In my view, if you have the option, rather go straight there by car or dedicate a few hours, or a morning, to the museum.

8. MINING DISTRICT WALK

IMG_4592

9. NEWTOWN PRECINT

Balconies of flats in Newtown, replete with the essential Saffer accessory - a Weber braai

Balconies of flats in Newtown, replete with the essential Saffer accessory – a Weber braai

10. ORIGINS CENTRE AT WITS

Sunday worshipers near the Origins Centre, Braamfontein

Sunday worshipers near the Origins Centre, Braamfontein

11. BRAAMFONTEIN (THE GROVE)

Graffiti in Braamies

Graffiti in Braamies

12. CONSTITUTION HILL

Passing the entrance to Constitution Hill

Passing the entrance to Constitution Hill

and back to the GAUTRAIN @ PARK STATION

Although we hadlofty plans to leave the house by 9:30am on the morning of our bus tour, we actually left much later and then proceeded to miss our train, so by the time we got to our chosen stop, Gold Reef City, it was already nearly 1:30pm and The Princess was very much ready for her day sleep by then. We popped her in the pram and, after fatigue overcame her curiosity with her surroundings, she dutifully fell asleep. We then decided it was pointless to go into the theme park with a sleeping child and went in search of lunch instead. I had heard of the restaurant Back of the Moon many years ago, so when we happened upon it inside the Gold Reef City hotel and casino complex (right where the red bus stops), we decided to try it. The Princess happily slept through the live band while we enjoyed a romantic lunch – our day was working out perfectly :)

We then checked the timetable and hopped back onto a bus at 14:45. Although The Princess woke up when we wheeled her on-board, she knows that she is no longer allowed to keep her dummy once awake and so she feigned sleep every time we looked her way for the rest of the tour! We decided to play along and left her in her pram, secured by the bus’ special seat belt situated near the front of the downstairs area and settled in to enjoy the rest of the commentary. The one down-side was that one doesn’t get nearly as good a view of the sites from downstairs as one does from upstairs. Yet another reason, why we are keen to take the tour again.

All in all, I would highly recommend the experience. We were fortunate in that The Princess really played along and so we were able to absorb the historic and cultural experience. But even if this hadn’t been the case, it would have been just as fun to experience The Princess’ excitement at going for a ride on top of a big red, double decker bus.

http://www.citysightseeing.co.za/joburg.php

Mr Fix It

Posted on by
Reply

When it comes to DIY, I have long lived by an insight gained from my university digsmate, Olivia, when I was twenty.

Olivia’s watch had stopped working. In light of this, she mentioned that she’d be seeing her high school sweetheart, Andrew, at a family function that weekend and that she thought she might take along her watch for him to look at. I was slightly surprised since I’d help to set her up with her current boyfriend, David, just a few months earlier. With the vague notion that her actions may leave her new beau feeling somewhat emasculated, I said:

“Um, why don’t you just ask David to look at it?”

When she responded, she looked at me with the full weight of the two years’ seniority she had over me. It was as though she was trying to say that some day, I, too, would understand:

“Natalie,” she said, “David is intelligent.” She paused to allow the statement to sink in and then continued. “Andrew is Mr Fix It.”

When The Husband and I moved into our home six years ago, I began building up a network of handymen. Our gardener, Dezmond, is a machine with a drill and I look forward to Thursdays when Dez is at work and can tackle my list of chores.

Unfortunately, not all things can wait for a Thursday. Last Saturday, our neighbour and her 23 month old (The Princess’ BFF) arrived with the very generous gift of this car for her second birthday:

IMG_4271

Only, it came flat-packed. The Husband rose to the occasion beautifully with an audience consisting of the following women:

1. His two-year old daughter
2. Her best friend of 23 months
3. Her best friend’s mommy
4. His mother
5. His mother-in-law
6. His wife

I suspect that The Husband was probably most concerned with trying to impress numbers 1 and 2 on the above list and so he set to work at once. Baby/ toddler paraphernalia is never that simple to assemble but what made The Husband’s task that much more challenging is the fact that The Princess insisted on sitting inside her half-built car during its construction. Nonetheless, The Husband managed to attach the roof and sides of the car.

The only snag was that the “door frames” – which were supposed to attach to the base of the car and which, in turn, were attached to the roof – kept popping out. The Husband declared that the car must have been poorly designed to begin with as there seemed absolutely no way that they would ever fit securely. Not one to disappoint his two-year old daughter, however, he came up with an ingenious plan: superglue.

I ventured that although I couldn’t do a better job at assembling a toy car, I was certain that superglue wasn’t the solution. This comment met with a black look from The Husband who proceeded to pour superglue down the plastic cavities on all four sides of the car, before shoving the door frames into these cavities. But the door frames refused to stick.

This gave rise to Ingenious Plan No. 2:

1). Balance a 5kg decor piece in the form of a wooden hippopotamus on top of the car’s roof, together with a large bag filled with cycling kit.

2). Lean on said hippo and bag with the full weight of a grown man.

3). Try to be patient whilst waiting for superglue to stick (all the while allowing one’s two year old daughter to remain seated in her semi-assembled car.)

Once again, I gently ventured that perhaps when Dezmond came,  he could start from scratch. The Husband looked insulted and insisted that despite my lack of faith in his DIY abilities, he hadn’t “made any mistakes.”

Twenty minutes in to Ingenious Plan No. 2, The Husband made an unexpected discovery: holes for bolts where the door frames could be screwed in.

Who would have thought? (Not me, to be fair…)

We now had a car with a roof which no longer popped off. But the front wheels were having trouble advancing. Th Husband’s mechanical analysis of the problem involved him turning the car upside down for inspection. This resulted in the excess superglue spilling out of the cavities onto our wooden floors. During this time The Princess was running around barefoot. Chasing after her to pick her up and get her away from the glue patches seemed like a most amusing game to her. (Much scrubbing of feet went on later in the bath).

Only Turpentine would get rid of the glue on the floor, leaving the living area awash with a distinct chemical smell.

With The Princess’ best friend’s father overseas on business for another week, The Husband had offered to assemble her car too. By now it was early evening and bath time for The Princess. While The Husband was upstairs with her, I quietly packed away her near-complete car together with her BFF’s unbuilt car. On Monday evening, I asked Dezmond to come past after his day job, while The Husband was still at work. A few days later, The Husband saw the girls tearing around the complex in their vehicles and I had to confess that I’d outsourced his job.

The Husband: “How long did it take Dezmond to assemble the second car?”

Me: “Um… just over an hour.”

The Husband: “But it was obviously much easier for him because he could use the car I’d assembled as an example?”

Me: “Of course, Sweetheart.”

Adieu Le Dummy

Posted on by
Reply

Image

I will freely admitted that I’ve always loathed the sight of talking toddlers trying to form words whilst sucking madly on their dummies. As a brand new mom, I had no idea that the way to get a newborn to take a dummy was to shove it in the minute the little mite pops out of your womb (or pretty soon afterwards). I can’t recall when I was first alerted to the fact that a dummy might be a good idea. I think it may have been at least a couple of weeks after The Princess was born. But by this stage she was NOT interested in having a piece of plastic shoved into her little mouth – even one dipped in sugary gripe water.

When we said that The Princess didn’t take a dummy at her six week check-up, our very direct, Eastern European paediatrician took one look at The Mother Figure and I, and stated emphatically:

“Every baby takes a dummy.”

She proceeded to hoist The Princess over her one knee, performed some kind of magic, rhythmical foot tapping, shoved a dummy in The Princess’ mouth, held it there and had her in a trance after a couple of minutes. She then looked up at us pointedly as if to say:

“You see? This is how it’s done.”

Obviously, no amount of knee-tapping, chanting or dummy shoving ensured a successful repeat of the process at home and I accepted the fact that The Princess was one of those rare and exceptional babies who “don’t take a dummy”.

Despite this, over the first four months of her life, eight different caregivers tried their hand at getting her to take a dummy: myself, The Husband, her two grannies, her two nannies and two different night nurses working different shifts. Then, we hired Margie, whom I’ve written about before here. What Margie lacked in tact and social awareness around adults, she more than made up for in terms of her expertise with babies. She officially got The Princess to take a dummy at four months old.

From then on, The Princess was a fairly big fan of the wretched piece of plastic, but for the most part, when she was awake, if there was no dummy in sight, she would manage quite well.

Everything changed when she started to talk. At about 15 months she had a repertoire of about 20 words. By about 17 months, this repertoire included the word “gummy” for “dummy”. From then on it was tickets. This kid was well and truly hooked. Any vague experience of distress, fatigue, irritation, frustration and a very vocal demand for her “gummy” could be heard. It’s alot more difficult to ignore a toddler’s demands when they’re being so specific about what they want and I often found myself giving in.

Things went from bad to worse when we were out one afternoon and she had a small playground accident. Naturally, she was desperate for the dummy then but I hadn’t brought one along, in an attempt to reduce her dependence on the thing. A group of mothers at the next table kindly produced a sterilised one and donated it to us, but not before basically saying that going out without a dummy is a very, very stupid move.

“Keep one in your car next time,” they had instructed me. I had been useless in the moment of crisis, going into full panic mode when I saw a bit of blood and screaming that I thought The Princess had lost some teeth when nothing of the sort had occurred. So, from then on, I decided I had better heed the advice of these obviously more experienced women.

Everywhere we went, the dummy came along.

But the longer and more beautiful The Princess’ golden locks grew and the more she spoke, the more I grew to loathe the sight of the dummy obscuring her beautiful face.

I was toying with the idea of getting rid of it about a month ago when The Princess was about 22 months old, but then we were going away and then she wasn’t sleeping well and then… well, there always seemed to be a reason why the timing wasn’t right. The Husband also still recalls that fateful day when his security blanket was wrenched from him and deposited in the trash and he was loathe to put his daughter through the same type of trauma… So we put off the dealing with the dummy issue some more…

But then suddenly The Princess’ neighbour and BFF (three weeks younger) gave up the dummy (not of her own volition, of course). Apparently a nurse told her mother that letting a 22 month old suck a dummy outside of of sleep times was “borderline abuse” and that was that – the dummy was gone the next day, except for sleeping. And The Princess’ BFF coped brilliantly.

I knew The Princess’ case was a little more severe, however, and that she wasn’t going to give up her dummy without a huge fight. I hatched elaborate plans, based on ideas from other moms, to mark her farewell to the dummy.

First, we went along to Frankie & Fred’s toy shop in the Blubrid Centre where I told her that she could choose a toy if she was willing to pay for it with her dummy. At first she was uncertain, but the sight of an enticing, wooden, Melissa & Doug’s cup-cake set managed to convince her somewhat. Still, the moment when she had to hand over her dummy to the very patient salesladies, was tough. She hesitated for quite some time, but she clearly understood that this was the only way she was going to get her lovely toy. Eventually, she relented, plucked the dummy from her mouth and “bought” her cup-cake set.

I thought we were on a roll and produced a second dummy, with which another toy could be purchased. After firmly sticking that dummy into her little mouth, she eagerly chose another toy. However, when the time came to choose between the new toy and the dummy, she literally abandoned the toy in the middle of the shop floor and sucked madly on her precious dummy. She didn’t even argue when I reminded her that we’d therefore have to leave the shop sans the second toy of her choice.

Mission only partly accomplished.

The next part of the operation was a pre-planned “farewell to the dummy” mass playdate. We invited four fellow toddlers around to watch her dummies sail away into the heavens, attached to helium balloons. Science has never been my forte, though, and The Husband (who’d especially come home early from work for the proceedings) quickly pointed out that the eight over-sized helium balloons I’d collected were not going to hold the weight of her remaining nine dummies (over and above the stash of dummies I had hidden in the cupboard for sleep times). And so, Plan B was hatched whereby two of the nine dummies were symbolically attached to the ballloons’ ribbons. The other seven dummies I sealed in plastic, and, with fear in my heart, deposited the package into the kitchen dustbin… The end of an era…

Despite the impressive spectacle of her dummies being carried away into the clouds, it didn’t take The Princess much more than 40 minutes after her friends had left to start crying for her dummy. She knew she hadn’t witnessed the ascension of her entire stash.

IMG_4089_2

To make matters more confusing, we now had to start chanting our new motto from “the balloons carried your dummies away!” to “when you’re a big girl, dummies are only for… SLEEPING!”

By this stage it was about 6pm and sleep time was around the corner anyway. Not the best timing, I’ll admit. When The Princess climbed into bed at 7pm and was presented with her dummy for the night, she couldn’t have been more elated.

It’s now been a whole eight days since we bade farwell to the dummy during all waking hours. On Day 2, we had a full-on meltdown the likes of which I have only very rarely experienced with The Princess. In hindsight, it only lasted 35 minutes but it felt more like three hours. We’re not completely out of the woods yet, but after the first three or four tough days when tears were shed more regularly for the dummy, things started getting easier. Now, The Princess usually only asks for a dummy if she sees another child sucking one or if she’s tired. It’s so great not to have this giant piece of plastic obscuring her beautiful face anymore. Also, I no longer have to wrestle with myself when she cries for the dummy and wonder whether I should be strong and try to withhold it or whether I should simply give in. Now, giving in is not an option, unless we want to start again from Square One and I definitely don’t have the strength for that…

The Scary Sandton Hairdresser

Posted on by
2

I love myself a great blowdry. I really do. If there was a mobile service in Jozi that you could call last minute to come to your house to blowdry your hair, I’d be their best customer. But since Janine from Jeauval in Hyde Park left the hairdressing profession nearly eight years ago, I just haven’t found that perfect combination of hairdressing skills and personality coupled with a fabulous salon experience, to be a regular salon goer. I’m also fortunate in that I actually like my natural hair colour and so, because I don’t have root issues and because I don’t have a hairdresser and a salon I love, I hardly ever get my hair done.

But on Tuesday night I had a function and the thought of squeezing my bulging belly into a nice outfit for it was more than I could bear. So I figured that at least if my hair was fabulous, I’d feel better about having nothing to wear.

I managed to get a last minute appointment at the salon closest to me. I’d tried them before. The hairdresser I’d been to was a genuinely lovely person but we couldn’t have been more different. I realised this when I caught him eyeing my Woolworths water bottle. He said something which I interpreted to be critical of people who drink exclusively bottled water. I quickly assured him that this was not the case and that I refilled my bottles with tap water and only replaced them a couple of times a week. Apparently, it was the issue of replacing the bottles that concerned him. He wanted to know why I didn’t use a permanent sports bottle which didn’t need replacing…

He was also an avid cyclist. At first I thought that he did this for sport, rather than with the sole purpose of saving the planet. He told me that he did all his grocery shopping by bike, but this did have some limitations, especially when it came to items in “unnecessarily large packaging” such a as boxes of cereal. Still not really understanding I said:

“But why don’t you just take the car when you need to stock up on cereal?”

“Oh no,” he said, “I sold my car years ago. I really don’t want to leave any footprint at all.”

Ooooooooh! I suddenly got it. He was what the Mother Figure calls a “greenie beanie”.

That was just over four months ago. This time, with my last minute booking, I was given a new guy in the salon: Benji. Benji introduced himself, took one look at the tufts of pregnancy hair growing vertically from the edge of my forehead, raised an eyebrow and said in a camp Joburg, drawl:

“Oh my GAWD! What ARE we going to do with THOSE?”

Me: “Um… Hide them?”

I explained that they were from pregnancy and that they’d disappeared a few months after my last pregnancy so he shouldn’t be too shocked etc, etc. Still, he looked mildly horrified.

Once my hair had been washed, I asked the lady not to brush or comb it while it was wet as I had a problem with split ends. I then explained this to Benji.

Benji: “This is a special salon brush. The bristles are springy and they bounce off the strands of hair so they can’t split them. But these ends look like they need a really good cut.”

Me: “Yes, yes, I know, this was just last minute and I have a scan in an hour from now so I’ll make a plan to come back when I have more time.”

A pregnant (excuse the pun) pause ensued…

Benji: “By the way… exactly when last did a pair of scissors go near these ends?”

I begin counting the months in my head as I prepare to answer but Benji is quicker:

“1642?” he suggests and promptly cracks up at his own joke.

Hahahahahahahahahaha!

Me: (squirming in my chair) “Um, about four months ago, actually.”

The truth is closer to five months but I decided to round down…

But Benji has more in store for my ailing self esteem:

Benji: “Maybe your ends are in such bad condition because of this bad dye job?”

Me: (spluttering decaff salon cappuccino in shock). “Actually, this is my natural colour. The last time I dyed my hair was in 2006.”

Benji: (with a raised eyebrow which seems to be his specialty) “Really?”

He then takes my split, obviously lighter, probably somewhat sun-damaged ends and places them against my roots to demonstrate the difference in shade.

“You see how much lighter your ends are compared to your roots?” Benji looks at me smugly like a detective presenting a criminal with damning, hard evidence.

Dude, why don’t you just cut to the chase, call your new client a liar and tell her she has crap hair?

But it gets better.

“Or, is it possible, that these ends still have dye on them from 2006?” Benji looks as though he truly believes he may be onto something.

Despite dear, sweet Benji I do walk out of there with a beautiful blow dry, although my pregnancy tufts are threatening to start standing up any minute with the spontaneous downpour that begins just as I step out of the salon’s door…

Who needs a shrink to sort out your self-esteem sh** when you can just get some tough love from a scary hairdresser?

Pregnancy and its Perks

Posted on by
1

Dr M down was my gynae during my first pregnancy. Despite coining preposterous terms such as “psychological epidurals”, I loved her. She understood The Husband and my neuroses, our need to have absolute clarity on absolutely everything as well as The Husband’s need to have all risks laid out in statistical terms. She got us. She even gave herself away a little when she told us that our names had come up when she’d  been talking shop with her professional neighbour who was our newly appointed paediatrician:

“They’re very nice,” she claimed that she’d told the paed. “They ask ALOT of questions but they’re very nice.”

The Husband also loved her – partly because she is an avid cyclist. She’d give us information and advice about the developmental progress of our baby in utero and The Husband would give her information and advice on the best bike to buy. Honestly. This included e-mails of 500 words in length, with advice on things like: frames, component sets (including brakes, gear shifters and cranks); wheels (including “clinchers” and “tubbies” or “deep section”, “non-deep section” and “semi-deep section) and, finally, advice on cleats. Here’s an extract from an e-mail on the latter, just to illustrate the attention to detail:

…The next decision is whether you get mountain biking or road biking cleats. Mountain biking cleats are much easier to walk in at the coffee shop but have the disadvantage of not distributing your power in as perfect a manner as road biking cleats. I would recommend mountain biking cleats and then up-grading to road biking cleats at a later stage.

What can I say? Just an everyday e-mail exchange between two specialists in their fields…

Unfortunately, Dr M decided to give up obstetrics just as I was thinking about falling pregnant for a second time. Highly inconvenient. I have actually overheard The Husband telling our friends that she made this professional decision in order to free up more time for cycling. I think he honestly believes it to be the case.

The point is, when I found out I was pregnant late last year, I had to find a new gynae. Normally, you can’t get an appointment with a gynae for love or money in this town, but fortunately you are afforded a form of priority status when you’re preggers, so I managed to get in at my gynae of choice.

The Husband was in Russia for business at my eight week check-up so I went alone. All was going well until Dr C told me to please “step on the scale”. Now, since I’d found I’d I was pregnant four weeks earlier, I gone into a high-fat feeding frenzy. I knew I should not be obliterating 15 months of dieting in favour of yellow cheese, butter, pasta, crisps and chocolate but I simple had no desire to be logical at this point.

Dr C: I need to weigh you.

Me: Thanks, but I’d rather not.

Dr C: Perhaps. Still, I must.

Me: No, really. I really don’t want to get on that scale. Can I tell you what I weighed before I fell pregnant and then you can just weigh me right at the end and if things look like they’re going pear-shaped in between, then you can say something… but don’t be too harsh…

Dr C: (looking ever so slightly irritable). That’s not going to work. I need to monitor your weight on a continuous basis.

Me: Really? Why? Isn’t this the time when all women balloon? I’ll lose it afterwards, I promise.

Dr C: You need to get on the scale now. Don’t look – I’ll take down your weight.

Other perks of pregnancy which I seem to enjoy every time include the grow of new tufts of hair on the edge of my hairline, just above my forehead. I suspect it’s that purple box full of ridiculously expensive Preg Omega vitamin tablets that seem to have cornered the pregnancy vitamin market. I wouldn’t mind more hair, but of course that depends entirely where… I don’t feel that tufts growing heavenward from my temples frame my face in quite the manner I’d like them to. On the plus side, these vitamins seem to turn my usually paper-thin nails into super strong talons and I can easily live with that.

I am fortunately (mostly) over the very hormonal moodiness of the first trimester when I was irrationally angry with the world and all its inhabitants. Hormones are scary things. At least the neurotic Anglophone world hasn’t yet completely banned pregnant women from eating chocolate, else I don’t know how I would have coped. When one thinks that our mothers smoked and drank during pregnancy. And now, a mere thirty-something years on, we are not supposed to let smoked salmon, beef carpaccio or camembert pass our lips… I already feel sorry for the Princess’ generation… imagine how long the list of food and drinks to avoid will be then.

Which reminds me. We’ve been in Franschhoek for the past five days for a cycle race. Franschhoek is a village that Woolworths Foods has evidently not yet discovered, meaning that I’ve had to forego my Chuckles fix for nearly a week. Luckily, we are now back in Jozi and I’m off to indulge in the last few remaining permissible indulgences for pregnant women…

Jennilynn’s Amazing 20kg Transformation

Posted on by
Reply

As regular readers of this blog can attest, I’ve sometimes used this platform to vent about my dieting triumphs and tribulations. Because I feel that dieting is such a quintessential part of my blog (and my life), I’ve created a special page for it: On Diets & Other Disasters which lists all dieting-related posts.

I spent over a year shaking off 8kg of pregnancy and post-pregnancy pig-outs, followed by a further 4-6kg of post-married travel indulgences which I’d been carrying around for four years before falling pregnant. It was a long, hard slog, filled with cheating, going off the rails, getting back on the bike, trying new diets, taking up running again, personal training, you name it… I tried most things. Unfortunately, before I fell pregnant for the second time, I was still around 4 – 7kg and plenty of toning away from my goal weight and my dream body. I sometimes look wistfully at the bottle of Veuve Cliquot in the back of the drinks cupboard that I have vowed to myself I won’t touch until I reach my ultimate goal weight one day… and wonder if I should just pop the damn thing already…

But in December last year I saw a picture of an acquaintance and Facebook friend, on Facebook, that completely blew my mind. Jennilynn Barnard announced proudly to her friends that since April 2012, she had shed 20kg. When I saw a picture of Jen sporting her new, smoking hot body, I changed my goal: I will not crack open that bottle of Veuve until I look like Jennilynn. Here’s what Jen looked like before her transformation at 76kg (she is 1.62m tall):

Jennilynn: 76kg, April 2012

Jennilynn: 76kg, April 2012

And here’s what she looks like now:

Jennilynn, 55kg, December 2012

Jennilynn, 55kg, December 2012

Pretty impressive, huh? And this is a REAL person whom I actually know.

I’ve always been a sucker for a good, inspirational weight loss story, but to see someone that I know make such a transformation got me so excited that I asked Jen if I could “interview” her for my blog. This is her story in a nutshell:

I met Jen in Stellenbosch in November 2010 when we were both bridesmaids at a mutual friend’s wedding. At the time, she probably weighed somewhere between 65kg and 67kg and she looked pretty good. As the talk between four bridesmaids and a bride invariably would, it turned to the topic of weight. Over the few days I spent in Jen’s company, she often referred to times when she was much skinnier and I could sense that although she did not look particularly overweight, her weight really bothered her. She also told us that she had gained around 10kg in recent years, mostly the result of losing her beloved dog, Holly, and also as a result of hormone treatment she needed to take whilst she was an egg donor (which she hastens to add was an incredibly rewarding experience despite the negative aspect of weight gain).

But when I interviewed Jen this year, she told me that she has struggled with her weight since she was 18 (she turns 31 this month), she’s always been an emotional eater, she has tried every quick-fix diet known to man, she has lost weight, picked it all up again and then some more when going off the diet… and has just generally had an unhealthy relationship with food. After Jen got married in 2011, she gained a fair amount of weight (eventually getting her to 76kg in 2012) through her and her husband’s love affair with take aways – they’d apparently work hard all day and get take-aways at least five times a week.

One morning, Jen and her husband, Ashley, were watching SABC 3′s magazine show, Expresso. The show was calling for entrants into the USN Body Makeover Challenge. Ashley turned to her and said what no man in his right mind should EVER say to the love of his life:

“You should try that, honey!”

Jen was understandably livid, wanting to know if he thought she was fat, if he thought her body needed a makeover, etc, etc. Still fuming a few days later, she relayed this experience to a friend. I can only assume that this friend of Jen’s is either practically a sister or had recently experienced a severe blow to the head, because, instead of making Jen feel better about her body, she proceeded to show her a recent photograph, declaring:

“See how much weight you’ve put on since you got married, my friend?”

Fortunately, this didn’t cause Jen to knock her friend to the floor. Instead, she bravely absorbed this girl’s words and decided to go straight to USN’s web-site to download their twelve week diet and exercise plan. Over a five month period from April to September 2012, Jen lost around 10kg – a great, steady, but intense weight loss achievement, if you ask me. She says there were times when she wasn’t all that strict, particularly during a two-week overseas trip near the beginning of her diet when she went off the rails and regained most of the starting weight that she had lost. But when she returned home to Somerset West, she got back on track and achieved her 10kg weight loss. During this time, Jen mostly followed the eating plan on USN’s site. She also religiously followed their gym programme – going from someone who loathed doing resistance training to absolutely loving it – and she finally had the confidence to take up dancing again which she’d given up at the age of 20. (She now does weight training three to four times a week and cardio three times a week.)

Then came Expresso and USN’s call for Cape Town entrants for their annual challenge. From September to November, Jen went into competition mode, not drinking one drop of alcohol, as one example and she lost an incredible 10.5kg in only three months – the greatest loss of all the Cape Town contestants.

That was when Jen started mentioning her amazing transformation on Facebook and posting pictures of her shoot as one of the competition finalists, looking absolutely fabulous in a bikini on Camps Bay Beach. Despite being married to Ashley, a total beach junkie, Jen hated the beach because she never wanted to be seen in a bikini. Only eight months later, she was being interviewed in her bikini on national TV! And she looked phenomenal. In the lead-up to the announcement of the winner, I followed all Jen’s posts on Facebook, watched all her interviews on You Tube, voted for her and eagerly awaited the announcement of the winner on the Expresso show one Friday morning in December. I was so excited when she won, I was practically in tears. Of course I was biased because I know her, but I really felt like she had made the most impressive transformation and therefore wholly deserved to win.

Well done on your win, Jen, and, most importantly, on your amazing new body! And thank you for sharing your story with me… Here is a video clip of Jen describing (in her bikini, of course) how she and her dog, Seba, both trimmed down:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkMjTOLF8QI

Jennilynn on beach

Jennilynn strapless bikini

Home Pregnancy Tests Are Not For the Faint-Hearted

Posted on by
4

Home pregnancy tests and I got off to a bad start at the beginning of last year. As I explained in great detail in my post A New Level Of Ditsyness I had an unplanned pregnancy scare when The Princess was ten months old – all because I’d kept the positive test from when I fell pregnant with her and re-used it, twenty months later, without realising that it wasn’t a fresh test. Gross. And dumb. But it was my first test and I was excited.

Just liked I’d planned falling pregnant with the Princess down to a T, I wanted to plan and be mentally prepared for a second pregnancy. After countless cocktails on my solo trip to New York when The Princess was fourteen months old, I downloaded the Period Tracker app, went off the pill and tried to imagine life with more than one little monster.

After several months and no missed periods, I started toying with the idea of giving up wine for that unknown time of the month when you might be pregnant but you don’t know it. I also heard a theory that some (not all) women should avoid caffeine when trying to fall pregnant. No coffee, no wine, a certain amount of sex on certain days… this was starting to get more complicated than I had realised…

And then, all of a sudden, deep in earnest conversation with the BFF visiting from Cape Town, my I-phone started playing an unrecognisable jingle, flashing lights, vibrating and scaring the living daylights out of me. It was a message from Period Tracker:

ONE DAY OVERDUE!

After my false alarm seven months earlier, I decided not to rush off to Lancet Laboratories for a blood test. The number of days between my cycle hadn’t been exactly consistent, according to Period Tracker, so I figured that one day overdue was no reason to plan the nursery yet.

Because I’d heard that it’s most ideal to do home pregnancy tests in the morning (something about your HCG hormone levels being highest then), I waited until the next day to dig into my stash of home pregnancy tests. And yes, I made sure that the tests were sealed in foil this time. To this day, I don’t understand how the designers of these tests expect a full bladder to be emptied onto a tiny plastic stick that’s about 1cm wide and 2cm long (I’m talking about the surface area you’re supposed to pee on). You then have this critical “no pee” zone that you need to avoid at all costs, else your test is inconclusive. Here’s what my test looked like:

If you ask me, this test looks sort of positive – I say “sort of” because the colour of the test (“T”) line is so much lighter than the colour of the control (“C”). I therefore wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be “sort of” happy to be “sort of” pregnant or if I was supposed to “sort of” not really get my hopes up. Maybe seasoned pregnancy test users would have better luck interpreting this crap excuse for a test but I had no idea what to make of it.

Naturally, I only had one of these useless instruments in the cupboard. The logical thing to do would have been to head to a pharmacy when the shops opened at 9am or to send The Husband. The Husband, however, was out cycling all morning and The Princess and I had breakfast plans at 9am and anyway, if I was indeed pregnant, I figured that the fetus would be in need of food, as was I.

Breakfast turned into brunch and then it was time to hightail it home for The Princess’ day sleep. By now, The Husband was home and it would have been the perfect opportunity for one of us to go to a pharmacy… HOWEVER… I’d been promising The Husband that I would get my butt onto a bicycle for several months now and that very day was the day that this event was due to take place. I’d even been to his cycling store during the week to “get fitted” by the experts who’d near- mutilated his bike in an attempt to make it comfortable for me. The Husband was bursting with excitement and it was just one of those things I could not pull out of.

But I devised a plan in which I wouldn’t have to pull out of the ride AND we could buy some pregnancy tests. We’d cycle past Dischem at the Blubird centre and pick one up there. Simple.

Not so simple. We pulled up outside Dischem only to discover that on Sundays, it closed at 1pm. Next stop: Clicks at Melrose Arch. Also closed on a Sunday afternoon. Surprise! The pharmacy at Melrose Arch: closed down when Clicks opened its pharmacy. I was sure there had been a pharmacy in the Evermed centre near the corner of Corlett Drive and Atholl Oaklands: also closed down, (no doubt when Dischem moved in over the road). And so we chugged home from our urban cycling adventure sans pregnancy test.

We then rushed to make our afternoon plans in Westcliff. On our way home, I thought we’d stop at Clicks in the Rosebank Mall which was part of a heaving centre so it was sure to be open. Not at 17:10 on a Sunday, however. And then it was supper, bath and bed-time for The Princess during which time The Husband drove to The Wedge in Morningside (which appears to house the only late night pharmacy in Sandton and surrounds).

Finally, he came home armed with three pregnancy tests. These tests weren’t comparable to the R25 Dischem tests I’d been using. These tests looked like they meant business:

Although it was now 8pm and not apparently the ideal time of day to be taking a pregnancy test, I went off to pee and see.

It was negative. The first Clearblue test’s key showed that two dark blue lines in the shape of a cross (similar to the cross on the Swiss flag) meant that you were pregnant and one horizontal, dark blue line meant that you were not pregnant. My “negative” line was more of a sky blue than a dark blue but there was absolutely no second line crossing this line so it looked pretty much negative, rather than “sort of” negative.

Thus far, I had one sort of positive test and one pretty negative test. I assumed that meant that I wasn’t pregnant. I decided that this caused for a sympathy glass of wine. It looked as though I wasn’t pregnant after all. I had lost interest in the stash of expensive tests The Husband driven north to procure.

Until my bladder began to fill up, that is. Then I decided that if I had to pee, I may as well pee on one more stupid Clearblue stick.

At first I didn’t notice anything different about the second Clearblue stick, but when I had to wait the requisite few minutes for the test to show a result, I couldn’t help but sneak a peak, even though a watched pot never boils… And then I saw a digital screen with a little flashing egg timer. So this was the Rolls Royce of pregnancy tests… (If you look carefully at the picture of the two Clearblue boxes in the picture above, you can easily notice the difference between the two tests but at a glance, it’s like trying to quickly distinguish between chunky and smooth cottage cheese – the packaging is so annoyingly similar…).

After the Rolls Royce had finished thinking, it flashed its result in actual, legible English language words:

PREGNANT 1-2 WEEKS

Finally! A test going out on a limb with a declarative result! And so, in the space of a day, I went from being possibly but inconclusively pregnant, to most probably not pregnant, to probably pregnant. The Husband and I were partially elated and partially unsure that we should be, even after the fourth and final Clearblue digital test announced, once more, that I was 1-2 weeks pregnant.

First thing the next morning I called my new gynae to say that I’d had two positive pregnancy tests out of four and so I thought I was pregnant. His receptionist told me to go and get blood tests done which I dutifully did within the hour. I was to call his rooms a few hours later to confirm the test results.

When I called, stating that I wanted to know what the blood tests had revealed, the receptionist sounded both bored and skeptical. Not a good sign. These were her words:

“Um… Let’s see here… Ja… Okay…Yes…So it says you’re only just pregnant.”

OH      MY       GOODNESS! I understand the risks inherent in early pregnancy and Period Tracker tells me exactly when the first day of my last period was so I know exactly how pregnant I am. ! I just want to know if I should currently be thinking of myself as a pregnant person or not!

Needless to say it took me a day or so to get my head around the notion and a full two weeks before the nausea set in.

Now I am about 15 weeks and am sporting what I would call a seriously distended belly. This is the one time I actually would like friends and strangers alike to inquire as to whether or not I’m pregnant but since my stomach popped just post the Christmas holidays, people are understandably wary of putting their foot in it.

The Strong-Willed Child

Posted on by
Reply

Long before I felt ready for children, I recall my sister-in-law mentioning a book called The Strong-Willed Child. I’ve just found it on Amazon:

She was offered the book by her sister when her first two children were around two and four years old. She laughed and declined the offer to borrow it, declaring that the term “strong-willed” did NOT apply to her two boys. Then her third son came along. He is now five years old and I’ve heard her say that if he hadn’t come along, she’d think parenting was a breeze and would have found it difficult to empathize with parents who thought otherwise.

I’ve had a suspicion for a while now that The Princess might perhaps be a little more willful than the average child, but at the same time I’ve witnessed that most babies and toddlers have minds of their own and want what they want when they want it. With that in mind, I’ve been reluctant to explain every tantrum and act of stubbornness with the lame, veiled apology of “What can I say? She’s just very strong-willed, everybody!”

In terms of discipline, based on how upset I feel when I am around unruly and, especially, cheeky, children, I thought I’d be a really strict parent. But somehow, on an hourly and daily basis, implementing the intention to be strict is so much more exhausting than I could ever have imagined. And therefore, so far, I suppose I haven’t been particularly strict with The Princess. Sometimes I think that this is not such a big deal and other times, I get the sense that I’m only creating problems for myself later. The handful of times I’ve spoken sternly to her and really meant what I said, she has completely and utterly ignored me – or screamed her head off if it involves taking something away from her or taking her away from a situation. I thought that perhaps she’d take The Husband seriously. So far, however, stern words from him yield no better response than the same words from me.

I used to think that she was too young to really understand being reprimanded or too young to understand what she done wrong, but I’m currently ready ​French Children Don’t Throw Food​ and this book has totally changed my view on what The Princess can and can’t understand.

The book is a “study” (though much of it is anecdotal) of the differences between child-rearing approaches in France (where the American author is raising her young children) and in Anglophone countries (notably Britain and America). The book points out a series of notable differences between the generally more neurotic, overzealous, competitive parenting amongst Anglophones and the more ​relaxed, less child-centric approach (which still includes firm boundaries and a large framework of rules and social norms) apparently ingrained in French society. I firmly and wholeheartedly relate to most of the attributes the author conveys upon Anglophones – herself included. One key difference that Druckerman notes is that the French (or Parisians, as her experience is limited to the middle- and upper-class arrondissements of Paris) assume that their babies can/ soon will, understand basic instructions. She gives an example that really hit home for me, in this respect:

…when Bean (the author’s child) is about ten months old…she begins pulling herself up in front of a bookcase in our living room, and pulling down all the books she can reach. This is irritating, of course. But I don’t think I can stop her. Often I just pick up the books and put them back. But one morning, Simon’s French friend, Lara, is visiting. When Lara sees Bean pulling the books down, she immediately kneels next to Bean and explains, patiently but firmly, “We don’t do that.” Then she shows Bean how to put the books back on the shelf, and tells her to leave them there. Lara keeps using the word doucement – gently… I’m shocked when Bean listens and obeys.

I read this about ten days ago and I really believe that I’ve spent far too long assuming that there is still so much The Princess is too young to understand. If she had happened to develop a penchant for pulling books off a low bookshelf, I certainly would have assumed at ten months old – and probably alot beyond that age – that she wouldn’t really and truly grasp that “we don’t do that”. Now I find myself saying “we don’t do that” to her all the time… I feel like it’s sinking in for all manner of minor transgressions so far… It’s empowering :) Small things amuse full-time mothers…

Last night, however, The Husband was in our hotel bathroom and he heard an unusual sound: the sound of me speaking very seriously and very firmly to The Princess who’d just willfully destroyed a puzzle piece. He came out to witness this unusual interaction. When he realised what had happened, he also spoke sternly to her. She simply looked at us as though we were stark raving mad or – if she understood her transgression (which I’m pretty sure she did) – she looked at me as though she couldn’t give a rat’s arse that I disapproved of what she’d done. I got the distinct impression that she’d done it because it was fun for her and that she’d do it again in a heartbeat if she felt so inclined. Our interpretation of her reaction sent The Husband into a neurotic Anglophone-style panic with respect to our unsuccessful attempts at disciplining our child. He wanted us to take this discipline thing WAY more seriously…

This morning I was presented with the perfect opportunity. I was fresh from as decent a night’s sleep as one can be when one sleeps in the same room as one’s toddler. The Princess and I were almost ready to leave our hotel room to go down for breakfast when she made to empty a Ziploc bag with about 120 fairly small, puzzle pieces onto the bathroom floor. I told her she was welcome to continue, but that she’d need to put them all back.

I feel exhausted even attempting to write about what ensued. In short, it was a 45 minute battle of wills between myself and my 21 month old toddler. No matter how many times I explained that we would only exit the bathroom once she’d put the puzzle pieces back into their packet, she willfully and flatly refused to do so. I remained calm throughout and never raised my voice. All through numerous tantrums and crying fits, I patiently sat and waited for her to do as I asked. The Husband supported my trying to discipline our child and confirmed that she understood perfectly what was required – she simply refused to co-operate because that would be giving in. But after 45 minutes he felt that we’d made our point and called the battle a “draw”. The actual results were as follows:

Six love to The Princess in: the First Epic Battle of Wills.

I think I may need to download The Strong-Willed Child for the next few days of beach reading…

Reflections on “Rookie Parent” Holidays

Posted on by
1

Last December, The Husband and I made some colossal “rookie parent” holiday mistakes with our nine month old. These were the major errors, which we try to remind ourselves of, before planning holidays with kids:

1) We went to three destinations:

We went to Cape Town for five nights; Hermanus for 17 nights; returned home for two nights; went to The Seychelles for six nights. Total packing and unpacking time: an estimated 40 hours or the equivalent of exactly one normal work week (outside of France). And those 40 hours exclude shopping for the holidays…

2). We stayed in a five star hotel

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for luxury accommodation. The problem was that the establishment we chose only altered its “no children under 12 policy” a few months before we arrived and it soon became clear that this was an economic decision to increase occupancy levels during the recession – strangely enough, they weren’t longing for screaming kids to adorn their secluded swimming pool area. Not only were there obviously absolutely zero facilities for babies or children, there were also naturally no family rooms on offer. Booking a second five-star room for The Princess and her night nurse was not an option, so we waved goodbye to our then, full-time nurse and said hello to 17 virtually sleepless nights with an unsettled child and her clueless parents in our lovely five star suite, overlooking the ocean.

3) We thought we’d survive sans nanny and sans changing station for 18 days

After three days of carrying a nine month old and solo nappy changing on a hotel bed, I felt about a hundred years old, possibly older. I thought I had somehow cracked a rib or pulled one of my intercostal muscles in my sleep. I struggled to breathe if I tried to walk even slightly quickly – that included walking around town with a pram, so I was honestly not attempting to walk particularly quickly at all. I couldn’t laugh because it hurt too much. By around 9am every morning I had lower back pain which only abated after lying on my back for the night, but then it would start up again the next morning. I honestly thought I had somehow sustained a severe rib-cage injury. It took me several days to figure out what was wrong. The Husband then tried to take over carrying The Princess as much as possible when he wasn’t cycling. A few days later he was complaining of severe pain in his left arm… Basically, we made a great, full-time, parenting duo.

4). We took a five hour flight to the Seychelles leaving at 1 in the morning

Even at nine months old, The Princess was not one to miss out on action. We arrived at the airport at around 8pm, believing that she would shortly fall asleep in her pram. No such event ensued. Instead, she reveled in all the action around her and got progressively more and more excited during the long wait in the check-in queue. At about 11pm, after approximately 90 minutes of queuing and many more minutes getting through security and passport control, we arrived at the lounge where our friends and travel companions’ 11 month old had been sound asleep in his pram since 8pm. She finally allowed herself to be pushed to sleep in her pram for 30 minutes before we had to board the flight. This cat nap was precisely the second wind The Princess needed. During the five hour flight to Mahe, The Princess and I pretty much enjoyed an all-nighter.

The return journey from the Seychelles equally eventful. Our pick-up for the airport was at 6am. As though sensing that we had an early wake-up ahead of us, The Princess decided to pre-empt things, and woke up – for the day – at 2:30 in the morning. When it became obvious that she wasn’t going to go back to sleep, The Great Pack began, lasting approximately three hours, until nearly 5:30am – close to perfect timing for our pick up. Then, just to liven things up a bit, The Princess had started to show signs of gastro-like symptoms towards the end (fortunately) of our holiday. She had one enormous vomit (could have been way worse, of course) and developed diarrhea. Subsequent laboratory tests revealed that she had contracted not just salmonella, but also some type of ecoli. (In defence of the beautiful Seychelles, these two lurgies can apparently be contracted anytime, anywhere…)

We did, however, get one thing very, very right during last summer’s holiday. We took a nanny with us to the Seychelles. At the end of the holiday, The Husband turned to me and said, “We should never have wasted money taking a nanny with us.”

Me: “You’re joking, right?”

The Husband: “Of course not! The cost of booking a separate room, the flight, all of that…”

I was incredulous. I thought it was the best money ever spent. To this day, I would forgo new clothes, new shoes, manis, pedis, holidays and hairdressers for three years if I had to choose between these things and holidaying with a nanny. I wasn’t too sure how to get this across to The Husband, so I tried a different tack:

“Taking a nanny on holiday with a baby is value for money. Owning seven bicycles – ​that ​is a waste of money”.

(I think he secretly agrees – not about the bikes, of course).

My Heart Bleeds Lumpy Prawn Cocktail for Lady Gaga

Posted on by
Reply

I normally take my packet of tissues to concerts in case they run out of bogroll in the toilets. Who knew I’d need my stash of Kleenex at Lady Gaga on Friday night to dry my eyes instead?

This poor, poor woman. I can scarcely hold back the tears right now at the thought of all she’s been through. All of which she was kind enough to share with us, her devoted audience, in great, intricate, painstaking detail – first in words and then through three moving ballads. I wished those ballads would never, ever end, but eventually, they did. The Husband said it was because our Lady was getting chilly sitting at her piano but he just doesn’t understand her like I do. I mean, this poor girl was sent to a private school in New York’s Upper East Side (I hear that’s a really kak area) and she told us that while she was there, the “pretty, skinny girls with straight hair” were mean to her. (Aren’t straight-haired girls just THE WORST?) They bullied her, she said. Wikipedia has the audacity to quote acquaintances from her youth who have tried to discredit her horrific high school experience, claiming she was actually popular and totally fitted in, (although they say that her dress sense smacked a little more of Jersey Shore than of Manhattan’s Upper East Side. So OBVIOUSLY not true!) Clearly, they’re just jealous. During her performance on Friday night, she told us that she’d always vowed to herself that she’d “show those witches”. Not that it was “about revenge” or anything, she hastened to add. ‘Course not. Who would’ve thought it was? At the ripe old age of 26, Lady Gaga has clearly worked through her issues, put her high school hang-ups firmly behind her and moved WAY beyond petty vengefulness.

I felt so sorry for The Husband. He had a really urgent call of nature right when Gaga started opening up to us and just quit singing altogether for a while to really engage with us. Shame, the FNB Stadium is so huge that it took him AGES to get back to the show (he later confessed that he stopped off for a beer and a boerewors roll – he was obviously very hungry after all Gaga’s emotional talk). I was so sad for him that he’d missed connecting with Gaga but he said he that the sound in the stadium was so good, he’d actually heard every word, despite a desperate attempt to dunk his head in the toilet to drown out the sound of her voice. Men!

So, thank goodness, he did hear her revealing how she’d left her family home in Manhattan’s Upper West Side (also a really kak area, I believe) and set sail for an NYU dorm room many, many moons away on 11th street in Manhattan: “I left my family at the age of seventeen!” she confided. She wanted to make it on her own, she told us. Somehow, Wikipedia says, her Dad managed to track her down and paid her rent for a year when she dropped out of her musical theatre programme at 19 (apparently on condition that she’d go back if she didn’t become a star). What a chop! She told him she wanted to go it alone! Parents just never listen when their teens clearly know best…

I’m just so glad that, finally a star has come to South Africa who is able to to stop her show and preach to 100,000 of us misunderstood, misfits. I mean, here we were, thinking we were going to a pop concert and instead Lady Gaga literally stopped her singing and gave us a therapy session based on her own, traumatic humbling experience in New York’s slums. So, so grateful. My life will never be the same again. I’m going to end off with my favourite quote of the evening:

Don’t give a f*ck about what people think or say about you. It doesn’t matter if your parents don’t have a seat for you at the dinner table, because they can’t accept you for who you are. You will always have a seat at my table. We are family!

Sniff… I just felt so alone before I knew I was related to Gaga. I can’t believe that Die Antwoord refused to become part of the Lady Gaga family and turned down her offer of opening the concert for her. And then they made this mean video clip of her birthing a prawn – seriously, people? – and being mauled by a lion. Shame, some people have some serious issues. Here’s the clip. Not for sensitive Little Monster fans.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...