Let them eat cake

I have always, since my boys started at pre-school, spent some serious dedicated hours baking and decorating some kind of sweet treat for my boys to take to school and share with their class on their birthday.  I am used to supplying up to 60 cupcakes, chocolate brownies or decorated biscuits.  Even when we started a new business that ate up mountains of my time, I managed to get the task done.  Although...... I should admit that the one year I ran out of time and thus cheated by purchasing a box each of marshmallow easter eggs for Max and Connor to share out.  It's at a moment such as this that you rather appreciate the retail trade getting stock onto the shelves 3 months in advance!

This year, since the boys have started at High School, I have been constantly reminded by them, that they are grown-ups now and none of this junior stuff' like PDA's and photography especially, will be allowed in public.  Yip, they're teenagers, that's for sure.  Along with the new rules and regulations set out by my sons, I assumed that this also meant no baking for the class - hooray!  But....you know what they say, to assume makes an ass out of you and me (ass-u-me)!  Anyhoo, late yesterday afternoon my darlings pose the question "So mom what are you making for school tomorrow?  My teacher is really hoping it's cake, he likes cake" Well knock me down with a feather and call me a doctor because I'm about to have a panic attack!

 Breathing deeply into the paperbag, I gather my thoughts and think, no problem!  We'll just rehash the Easter egg cheat of 2010.  Hey, it's not cake but who doesn't love chocolate? I fly down to our little KwikSPAR only to find that there are NO boxes of marshmallow eggs on the shelves yet.  Seriously, not one, not even from last years left overs!  I want to scream at someone, to shake them and yell hysterically "What is wrong with you people?  How can you not have Easter eggs out yet?  Do you not know it’s February already?"  When my heart slows to a reasonable pace and oxygen returns to my brain, I move towards the cake table and start to peruse its wares.  

Okay so R32.99 for 9 dinky iced cup-cakes *gulp*.  I need 7 packs and look, there are only 4 – freaking out here!  Think woman, think!  The Swiss Roll is too small and there are only two of those anyway…..  How I hadn’t noticed them in the first place is quite ridiculous, but there they were, my saving grace!  At least 12 packets of un-iced Queen cakes with 10 in a packet for R16.99 .  I grabbed 6 packets, a bag of icing sugar and a tub of coloured sprinkles and headed home.

I gave the boys a quick lesson on how to sieve icing sugar and add water, thus producing a very simple but deliciously sweet Glace’ topping.  Together, we dolloped a generous white coat onto each little queen, sprinkled her in colour and added a sparkle of bling using edible gold glitter I found lurking in the grocery cupboard. Wow! good enough to eat and no one was ever going to suspect those little beauties were shop bought!  Happy Days, my Domestic Goddess and Supermom status remains untarnished and the boys’ teachers can have their cake and eat it!

Happy Valentines Day

This exact day 13 years ago, my hubby John wrote "only 8 more days" on my Valentines Card!  Later that same evening I was hanging out at Westville hospital excitedly awaiting the early arrival of my best Valentines Day gifts ever!  They were duly presented to me, unwrapped at 19H40 and 19H43. The gifts of love that just keep on giving. 

Happy 13th Birthday my precious Connor and Max.  May your teenage years be happy and healthy ones. 

Lead a horse to water

Driving along the Esplanade this morning after having run an errand in Durban, I had the opportunity to observe my surroundings since I joyously managed to catch every red robot.....and boy are there rather a few along that stretch! As is par for the course, these beggar stations were well occupied so I automatically adopted the standard bobblehead pose - shake your head "no" vigorously and avert your eyes if the pleading persists! As a zoned out young man with over bronzed leathery skin and shoulder length straggly hair made a beeline for my window, after being rejected by the car infront, an unusual sight grabbed my attention. 

Across the road, on the island in the middle, was a group of municipal workers in their tidy blue overalls with grass cutters propped over their shoulders. What stood out for me was that among them stood a young fresh faced caucasian female with a bright pink bandana adorning her head. She was laughing and chatting easily with her fellow collegues and appeared to be enjoying the outdoors immensely. Rushing around with a weedeater all day is no walk in the park, so surely this must be a girl who really isn't going to let life do her in no matter what it takes? 

In these tough economic times, surely a job is a job and if you are willing and able, why should you feel it's your right to burden others who too have their own issues? Having just witnessed that, it was ever so easy to brush away the few natural pangs of guilt I felt not really wanting to share some of my hard earned change with the young man with the drunken eyes.

Tire Fever

The contractors faithfully ding donged just after 8am this morning to collect their imphathla still residing in our yard. I drove out the gate a little while later, a relatively simple act, which today nearly resulted in me having to change my shorts. 

I was so busy contemplating why the two fellows lounging on the bank under a big shady tree already required some shut-eye having just started work; that I nearly beheaded the chap snoozing in the road. I kid you not! There he was catching some serious zzz's, shirt off, stretched out and extremely well camouflaged against the dark background of the tar, his body covering most of the left hand-side of the road. 

Granted that side of the road is still fairly well littered with debris yet to be scooped into a wheelbarrow, but my hat...... it doesn't take a genius to realise that having a little dudu in the road is a pretty good way to commit attempted suicide! I hooted harshly as I swerved past his head and left him staring after me, dazed and confused and possibly wondering what all the fuss was about! Can I get an E I S H

Woza Weekend

I dub thee "Frustrating Friday". It began at 4am when the cat decided he would meuw us awake for an early breakfast. Rise peasant staff, rise from ye cosy bed, his majesty would like to dine forthwith!! Thankfully my hubby is naturally an early riser so followed the moaning chunky monkey to the kitchen to oblige him his demands. Had his royal highness not encountered such a willing participant, little does he realise that he may have given flying squirrels a run for their money on furtherest distance achieved in a single leap (read throw). Needless to say, tearing my eyes open when the alarm went off just before 6am, was indeed a task. I used the cats name in vein several times! 

Then from just after 8am, the doorbell has been constantly ding donging with people coming in and out. The sappy wop that I am, has been allowing the previously knighted "useless contractors" to store (rent free) all their wheelbarrows, tar squashing machine, picks, spades and other paraphanalia in our garden at night. This because their boss will apparently not collect it daily and I am assuming, has told them that if anything goes astray, it's their necks on the line. 

The rule is for them to ring the doorbell when they are collecting stuff, then to ring it again when I should close the gate. Great system, except today we seem to be collecting things in drips and drabs. I feel rather like a doorman manning the entrance to a block of apartments! 

 Best they get it together as I shall shortly be vacating the premisis to attend the waiting game that is the post office; followed by 3 to 4 trips back and forth to the school due to various compulsory activities taking place. Woza weekend! 

PS Garfield Naidoo, you get to warm the bricks tonight and breakfast will be served on my schedule tomorrow morning - capisce!

My Lads - Connor & Max

It appears I attended an exceptionally long gala!  Not only did it take 3 years before I returned to my newly started blog, but in the meantime my twin boys successfully completed Senior Primary School and entered their first year of High School. My how time flies.

My facebook buddies have finally worn me down and convinced me that my daily thoughts and random ramblings (usually involving electrical appliances) are considered by popular vote it appears, to be entertaining enough to hold water as a blog.....so here goes - it may or may not blow your hat off!

It's comforting to know that I'm not the only person who has completely random thoughts that makes a seemingly sane person wonder where on earth they came from. 

 

While checking out the box of moving pictures last night, my husband paused on a frame depicting these beautiful magestic mountains covered in greenery with the sea crashing into their base on the rocks below. He annonced that it had just occured to him, that it must have initially taken an incredible amount of natural violence upon the earth's surface to create such a picturesque scene. 

 

After first thinking that my man had finally shot his bolt, I considered his seemingly bizarre thought and found a lesson that I feel nature affords us all, if we take a quiet moment to ponder further. We all find some innate beauty in the world around us, yet few of us stop to really think on how much struggle it may have indeed involved to achieve it in the first place. In essence, something achieved with little to no effort, may infact not turn out to be anything too spectacular at all in the end me thinks :)