Here's to 2013...

I'm sitting at the beginning of 2013 with a sense of some trepidation, and not a small amount of relief that 2012 is over. 

The last two months of 2012 were particularly sucky, with with my mom being diagnosed with a return of cancer that we all thought was 10 years banished, Daniel chopping his toe off in a freak accident at a birthday party on my mom-in-law's birthday, and Brett having to go into surgery for a kidney stone between Christmas and New Year. Yes, Universe, I think my character is built quite enough for now, thank you very much.

So, here's looking forward to 2013. Here are a few things I wish for, a few things I'm excited about, and a few things I've got planned. These are not New Year Resolutions - because those always fall by the wayside, no matter how honorable your intentions...

• I wish for a complete recovery for my mom. She's been incredible since her diagnosis, her usual practical, pragmatic, quietly determined self, focused on getting through the radiation and chemo with dignity and grace. 
• I wish for Daniel's toe to be properly attached, and this particularly detour on his journey to be over soon. We're seeing Dr Mia again this afternoon, and will find out more. 
• I wish for Brett's health to be restored quickly, once the next part of the kidney stone episode is over in the next week or so, with as little pain and discomfort as possible. 
• I'm excited for the beginning of the Littlest Haggard's St David's journey - he starts Grade 00 on 16 January, and is SO ready to be a Big School Boy.
• I'm looking forward to the four of us going back to that fabulous cottage on the North Coast in April. Last year's family time - just the four of us - was incredibly important to me. 
• I'm looking forward to going to Glastonbury in June. I'm not a festival person so much, but thanks to a very special friend, we'll be doing Glastonbury in a little more comfort and style than the rest of the sticky muddy masses... 
• I'm looking forward to seeing my brotherfriend while we're in the UK for Glastonbury. I was lucky enough to have two visits with him last year, after not seeing him for several years, but there are some people who will always be exactly the right ones to sit and catch up over fine coffee and cheesecake. 
• I'm planning to spend time differently this year. I need to disconnect from social media more - taking a social media sabbatical over the holidays was very insightful. I want to spend more time on myself, doing things that I want to do. Like go back to yoga, and read. 
• I love what we've done with our house over the holidays - cleaning, tidying, painting, moving rooms around. I'm hoping it will give us the space we need, and more functionality to our home. 
• I'm looking forward to nurturing and cherishing some special friendships that have grown over the last couple of years - ladies who Get me. 
• I'm looking forward to exploring a couple of ideas I've had for blogs and websites - all around the day job, of course. That's for the copious free time I have, you know, all - what - 15 minutes once a week? ;-) Refer back to the ones about spending my time differently this year, in the different spaces we've created. 

What have you got lined up for 2013? 

A child, in two parts

Now that I've had a couple of days to calm down and gain perspective, here's the tale of my son losing a toe... and what I've learned from the whole experience...

Last Saturday, Daniel fell off an aluminium ladder at a party... and lost a toe in the process. Apparently it's a common thing for people to lose digits and toes when aluminium ladders are involved - but getting a phone call to say that your child is in two parts at a party was something that I hope will not become a common feature of our world. The short version is that the toe has been reattached, and at the time of writing, we've yet to find out if the surgery worked - the off(ending) toe has to spend 10 days wrapped up, lifted and immobile, and we'll find out on Monday or Tuesday next week if it stays, or if it'll fall off. Yes, really.

So. In the interests of making lists (because everyone loves to read lists, don't they?), here's my list of Lessons from the Ladder.
 

1. No adult or child should ever climb on or fall off an aluminium ladder if they don't have shoes on. I'm beginning to think that safety gloves are a good idea too. If a finger or a toe is severed from your body, you have six hours to get it back on. Sooner is better, but six hours is the outside, according to the lovely Dr Mia.
2. The Linksfield Clinic can't deal with paed plastics emergencies.
3. The Linksfield Clinic also can't bandage a foot with a severed toe. They can however chuck a bundle of bandages in the general direction of the offending foot, and send you off to the Milpark.
4. The Milpark Clinic has no paeds facilities. At all. They only treat over 10s and gorillas.
5. The Milpark Clinic is great at bandaging a foot with a severed toe. They're also great at phoning around for you to find the right place to go to with your child in two parts, and making sure that a great plastic surgeon is waiting for you when you get there.
6. We've all heard of people being turned away at the door of Casualty because they couldn't pay a deposit or provide proof of medical aid membership. The teams at Linksfield and Milpark didn't even ask our names before they started attending to our son - and they didn't make us fill out any paperwork when we dashed out of their facilities. So - they were healthcare professionals doing what healthcare professionals do - addressing the needs of the patient, when he needed it the most, and without getting stuck on admin.
7. The male paeds nurses at the Sandton Clinic are much better at their jobs than the female paed nurses. Thank you, Peter and Chico - you were rockstars. To your female colleagues who didn't respond to my repeated request for pain meds for my son for over an hour - you're not rockstars. Rocks, maybe, but not rockstars.
8. While kudos has to go to the Sandton Clinic for having sleeper couches in the paed ward so that you can stay with your sick or injured child overnight, the person who designed those sleeper couches (and the person who bought them in bulk) deserves a bitchslap, and a night of sleeping on one of them as punishment.
9. It's very funny to watch and listen to your son when he's completely whacked on opiates.
10. It's a great idea to have a wheelchair in the family. We're using one that belonged to my dad's first wife. Ja. We have an exteeeeeeeeended family.
11. Little boys are great at making fun out of stuff. I've been amazed at how quickly Daniel has mastered the wheelchair, maneuvring himself around the house, through doors, turning corners etc.
12. Even boys get man flu. He hasn't needed pain meds for four days now, but every now and then, when he remembers, he reminds me that his foot might be a little bit sore. But it's clearly not.
13. The Twitterverse is amazing. Of course, Brett and I being twittaddicts of a sort, we both passed comments about what had happened. People who have never met our child have kept on asking how he's doing. The world can be a caring place - thank you to all of you.
14. We all bitch about Discovery. However, they have picked up every bill that's been created around this drama (as far as I know). And I am inordinately grateful that we had access to private healthcare that was quick and responsive, and that gave us a fighting chance to save that toe.

Here's what's wrong with SA

Advance warning: this post is a ranting one.

Around 80% of the time, I'm a glass-half-full-of-awesome-sauce about South Africa. I love our country, it's beautiful, it's fill with amazing people who are poised to do astounding things. But then, for that other 20% of the time, I really do have to sit back and wonder.

So. Picture the scene. Saturday. A room full of cancer patients are waiting for their radiation treatments, that they've had to go for on a Saturday because the radiation facility's equipment was broken on Thursday and Friday - both days on which they kept the patients waiting for their dose of hope for six hours and more, without very much information or care.

Back to Saturday. There's a beverage station in the waiting room. Nice. Only every single cup is dirty, and the ones that were clean have been dirtied by what is obviously a spill - so the cups that were rim-down on the tray, are all dirty too. There's no milk. The water cooler is empty.

I asked one of the ladies if there's a dishwasher (meaning a machine) that can be loaded so that the people waiting for treatment (and the people waiting with them) can have something to drink out of a clean cup.

"No," she says. " There are only two of us here today, and there's no maid to wash the dishes."
 
That, on top of a very interesting and pretty hardcore day at the Daily Maverick's Gathering 2.0 on Friday, brought it home.

People just don't care. They don't care enough to do the little things that could ease someone's day - so why should they begin to care about the big things? How are we going to get anywhere, if we don't start taking care of the small details - simple caring actions that will make someone smile, give someone hope, change someone's perceptions about a stereotype?

Well, all I could do at the time was wash dishes. So I did. I washed the cups and saucers, dried them, cleaned the tray, and loaded the milk jug. All in the time it took for one five minute radiation treatment. Not exactly hard labour, and not exactly time consuming.

Next time someone asks you for a (metaphorical) clean cup - what are you going to do?

One Month of Gratitude - join me?

Last year, every day in November, I put a post up on Facebook about something that I was grateful for, at the suggestion of Melanie Minnaar. I blogged the results here, if you want to go back and have a look, but I've decided to do it again this year.

 As South Africans, we tend to navel-gaze a lot, we tend to scream off in anger or terror or consternation (or a combination of all three, and more) at the slightest thing. To be fair, we do live in a pretty hardcore society (and we - you and me, in our leafy suburbs are insulated from the worst of it). It's not surprising that we react so dramatically to the bad - because there's a lot of it around.

There's also truckloads of good stuff around though - and I think we forget to stop and ponder it, give it a hug, and tell people about it.

Last year's postings had a pretty profound effect on me. I was angry about a few things, and I was rushing around from one panic station to the next, obsessing on details that turned out to be not very relevant at all. December dawned, and I felt lighter, happier, and I smiled more - at my family and friends, and at total strangers too.

So. Here's my challenge: join me in making November a month where you stop for two minutes each day, and think about the things that you're grateful for. You can blog them, Facebook them, tweet them or write them down an old-fashioned notebook, using a writing stick. Or, just think about them over your morning cup of coffee.

But do it every day, just for 30 days.

And tell me how you feel about life afterwards...

Meme time again

I found this over on The Only Cin, and quite liked it. So, here goes: 

I am: a wife, mother, and daughter

I have: enough. Aren’t I lucky?

I know: that I am loved

I think: not nearly deeply enough or often enough

I don’t think: that you can ever have too many macarons or cupcakes

I want: to play my piano more often

I like: chocolate, coffee and afternoon naps.

I dislike: whinging and whining

I hate: liars

I dream: of a chef’s kitchen. And time to put it to good use.

I fear: losing my family

I am annoyed: by inconsiderate people.

I crave: to do something Different

I search: for love.

I hide: if I told you, they wouldn’t be hidden any more!

I wonder: what happened to an ex or two

I just can’t help: procrastinating

I regret: not spending more time with my dad before he died.

I love: lying on my bed reading

I can’t live without: my family

I try to: do the right thing

I enjoy: baking

I don’t care: about what people think of me, as much as I used to

I never want to: be at a loss for words

I believe: in trusting people, until they give you reason not to

I dance: a bit weirdly. But I have fun when I do.

I sing: in my head. Nobody wants to hear me out loud.

I argue: poorly, mostly because I cry when I get angry

I win: not nearly often enough

I lose: my hard drive, with all my photos on it, with alarming regularity

I wish: that the government would sort its sh*t out.

I listen: to what my husband mockingly calls “adult contemporary music”. And a bunch of other stuff.

I don’t understand: people who are cruel to children or animals

I forget: if I remembered, I’d be able to tell you.

I am happy: Yes, I am. 

Spooked by Hallowe'en

This is an updated version of a blog post I did for www.jozikids.co.za a few years ago - refreshed for 2012.

When I was growing up, Hallowe’en was a thing we saw on American movies – it was never a big deal in South Africa, probably because our parents were concerned about the security of children wandering around the streets after dark, and because dressing up in black to have fun was probably against some apartheid law or other.

While I think most parents still have security concerns, the advent of security estates and boomed off areas has created safe pockets for trick or treating – and then of course there’s the business opportunity for everyone from Pick n Pay and Woolworths to China City to make extra income from costumes and themed sweets.

Playschools, crèches, primary schools and communities have Hallowe’en themed parties across the suburbs now, commemorating a Celtic festival (or a selection of festivals, depending on your choice of origin (Halloween background) that they have little knowledge or insight about. Children whose parents have spent a small (or large) amount of money on costumes compete to see who is dressed the best, and who can liberate the largest haul of sweets from willing neighbours.

So why am I particularly ‘omgekrap’ about an extended fancy dress party?

Hallowe’en is not a part of my culture, just as Makar Sankranti, Purim and Hola Mahalla are not part of my culture – and interesting though they are, I don’t celebrate them. Hallowe’en may have been a part of the culture of my Celtic ancestors, but it has never part of my culture as a Christian-raised South African.

I totally get that Hallowe’en is an opportunity for kids to dress up and have fun – but why do we need to wait for a festival that has nothing to do with our history or culture to do that? Why do we not make a bigger deal of our own Heritage Day, for example, and invest more time in celebrating that with fancy dress and local food (because let’s face it, there is more to South African food than braaiing!).

So what do I do about Hallowe’en, without making my children feel like they’re the only ones not going to a city-wide party? I’m happy for them to dress up for parties, at friends’ houses or at school, but I draw the line at letting them beg for sweets on the streets when there are others not so far out there who don’t even have food for one meal a day, never mind three.

Talk about a juggling act… but when was parenting ever anything but?

Beetle off to Baron's, why don't you?

Melanie Minnaar is an in-computer friend, and a real life fellow mom at St David's. She's also somewhat of a dynamo - and when she puts her mind to something, you know it's going to happen. If you haven't heard of Melanie's Twitter Blanket Drive, I would have to ask what rock you've been hiding under for the past three years...

She's taken on the cause of The Tomorrow Trust, and is using social media to help them raise R2million before the end of the year. Sounds like a lot of money, yes? But she's broken it down into chunks - and is challenging 1000 people to raise R2000 each for the Trust. That old thing about how do you eat an elephant - one bite at a time? She's got that down to a fine art - so please contact her if you're keen to host a tea, have a lunch, do a raffle, or just do your bit to help her raise funds to help school going orphans or vulnerable children bridge the gaps in their education, so that they really do stand a chance out there in the big wide world.

If you're not up for raising the money, you can still help - and have some fun while you're at it, with the help of Baron's Woodmead.

They're launching the new Beetle on Saturday 20 October 2012, and you're invited to the event. Your entrance fee? Some books for the Trust to hand over to the children, or a teddy bear or soft toy, to offer some comfort.  

So...beetle along to Baron's Woodmead, books and bears in hand, between 08h00 and 13h00 next Saturday, to have a look at the next edition of one of the world's favourite cars.

Disclaimer: This post was not sponsored.