Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Dreams for my Mother

My parents divorced just before my ninth birthday.
I immediately took on the role of Husband Finder for my mother.
There were not many men I felt were suitable. In fact, I stopped the hunt immediately after deciding that my best friend's divorced father was The One.
Of course, this wasn't just decided on a whim - there were positive points as to why I thought he would make a suitable husband.
  • He was the manager of a national sweet & chocolate factory. This meant that we would have sweets and chocolates on a regular basis, which was more than the once a month we were getting at home. It wasn't Cadbury's, but it would do.
  • A pool. Running through the sprinkler on scorching hot summer days would be replaced by jumping into a wonderfully clean, clear pool.
  • He owned a decent car. Not an orange two-door beetle like my mother. His was a normal, beige Audi. It had four doors.
That was about it. More than enough reasons, I felt.

I had it all worked out: My mother would sell the rambling house we lived in and we would all happily move to the northern suburbs to our new house with the pool.

There were other factors that weren't so convenient - that I chose to ignore - like the fact that my mother had never expressed any attraction to the man, that he was a smoker (he gave up later, but that didn't seem to make any difference to my mom), that between the 2 of them there would now be 7 kids living in the house which would mean the house-with-the-pool-in-the-northern-suburbs would not be big enough for all of us.

Of course, none of this came to pass and when I admitted to my mother that every night I prayed for her to find a husband, her response was, "Good heavens, child! Stop that at once!"

So I did.

But, it didn't stop me often fantasising that she would meet some one that was interesting. A reader, a lover of history. I imagined a learned man, caring, with a good sense of humour.

I found him, dear reader, I did!
Okay, he's married and he probably has the entire ladies OAP population after him, but I can still dream...




Monday, August 20, 2012

How Many Blogs Do YOU Have?

I don't even want to tell you how many I have. It's embarrassing.
Of course, it wouldn't be embarrassing if they were all well-read, often-read, interesting, up-and-coming-for-blog-awards type of blogs.
No. Right now they're more like unblogged blogs.
I always have good intentions. Probably identical to the ones the road to hell is paved with.
Any good blogger out there (and believe me there are many - alas I am not one!) will tell you - the key to good blogging (besides having something half decent to blog about) is to BE CONSISTENT.

Therein lies the true challenge for me, because I am nothing if not INconsistent.

Actually I blog every day. In my head. Of course that's no use to anyone, as wish as I may, people still can't read my mind!
And every day I say, "Today I'm going to blog." But I don't. I go to work (although I must confess that's not every day), I come home, I do washing, I shout at the kids, make food, lie on the couch, dream of sleeping, kiss the kids goodnight and come upstairs to my beloved laptop, where I start trying to translate random thoughts and sentences scribbled at the back of receipts into something that someone should find worth reading one day. I keep thinking I must blog, but then I get sidetracked looking for flights for Mr Husband who will be going to Our Island again soon and I wander off looking at prices for tickets to Prague and Alaska and Turkey and Rome... places I dream of visiting.

I'm not making promises. Beloftes maak skuld. Which means promises cause debt.  I certainly do hope to be back soon, and I can assure you (notice I didn't say promise?) I will make a real effort to become more consistent. Let's see what happens.

I was going to add a photo of a beautiful sunset we had last night, but blogger won't let me.
Sigh.