Flying is fucking irritating

I’m at Durban international airport and so far my attempts to make my wait pleasant have been foiled. I hate flying.

I went to the BA counter instead of SAA (I hate SAA, but that’s another story) I went to the toilet, and some young woman thought it was cool to put her little laptop bag on a baggage trolley and then wheel it about with her like … if fuck, I don’t know, a stupid person.

She parked her trolley in front of the cubicle she was in – effectively blocking anyone from going into the cubicle opposite. I wait, glaring at the idiot-laptop-trolley woman. Then when I get a cubicle I have to flatten myself against the wall, spreading my legs over the toilet so that the door can be closed. Granted, I have a back pack on (with my laptop in it, far more practical than a whole baggage trolley).

Then I must remove all my stuff – bag over shoulder, laptop backpack off back, bag off shoulder. Then I must find a place to put these things in a cubicle the size of a floor tile, with no hook on the back of the door.

Then, the most most annoying thing of all time, is that toilet dustbins are placed so that they touch the toilet seat….. for fucks sake, who decided that would be a good idea? I know I have a large bottom, but still, women with normal size bottoms must have to sit a little sideways to avoid touching the dustbin with one cheek.

So, I must hover to pee, then, still hovering, try to “press lever to release toilet roll” ha ha…. My thighs got a good workout.

I went to buy books to make up for my jelly thighs– Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine (which I will like, but struggle through) appealed and a book by the same person who wrote The Kite Runner. I pay with my debit card, but they are having problems, try it three times (they have been having problems all day, I’m not sure why they think my card will have the magical ability to get through… maybe because banks love me?) and the stupid laptop-trolley-woman tries to get around, catches my heel. I want to kill her. She clip-clops away on her heels and I really want to kill her.

So now I’m sitting on the metal chairs, surrounded by middle aged French people listening to canned muzak thinking: I hate flying, it should only be done if you are rich and can wait in business class lounges, and never fly to small/poor places where they don’t have business class lounges.

ten four over and out.

It’s gone, overs ka-dovers

Okay, it’s done, finished and klaar and with the fund. I hope we are successful. I hope that i managed to get across the fabulous work we do in the dry, formal official format.

sigh, now i feel a bit lost…..

There’s a rat in the office….

Eunice is our office manager, she is Kenyan, and very dignified. I have never heard Eunice raise her voice. Though she did threaten to “smack” the telkom man (“Itumeleng, I could just smack you!” thats how mild mannered Eunice is – i was threatening to remove his fingernails if we didn’t get connectivity after four months)

But the other day an unholy yell issued from her office (which I call the tropical north because she hates the cold and heats her office so you could bake bread in it) “YEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWoooooo”!!! A rat had run past her. She had said that I should expect to hear her scream. The rat poison a man had come to put in our offices 2 weeks ago, and it had moved. And it was nibbled.

I saw the rat – it’s more like a mouse. And i was sure it would be on it’s last legs if the story about the rat poison being nibbled was true. I know when it’s spotted sauntering around the office because Tansy screeches and Lerato tries to make sure no part of her body is anywhere near the floor, Eva stands on her chair and Keba laughs at them all.

So, what does one do about mice? I dont want to kill it. (and it seems immune anyway) But I feel compelled to do something (at least to save my ears from Tansy’s screech)

Okay, enough…. I must finish this proposal tonight because Alana has promised to print it out in duplicate and send it (because i was too late for the courier, of course)

writing about procrastination

my first blog post. hopefully this wont go the way of the millions of blogs that die daily..

I’m trying to finish a proposal but i am procrastinating. I even wrote a poem about procrastination, that’s how bad it is. I’m a bit frozen, i think… fear of failure and all that. Really silly considering all the things i do without any evidence that i can actually do them. I could make a fool of myself all the time… I have no idea why i’m so leaden when it comes to this one thing. I’d shake myself… but it only works if someone else does it.

The Spider Who Met It’s (and my) End

The last couple of nights, in our new house, I have felt something creep across my face. Once i woke up and i thought it was the cat, the other time i just hoped it was. Then, i had a bite – on my ear lobe and on my back… icky bites. So, the other night, reading while robert was working in the other room, frying my lard on my electric blanket (that I LOVE) … i get up to get into my jammies, and there where my bottom was, was a squished spider that looked like a scorpion. It was a horrible looking thing. I think i might have suffocated it.. under my bottom. And for days robert made comments about it, like he was impressed. Anyway, the point of this story was that i was procrastinating by looking for the spider on the internet (and getting creeped out by the pictures, so i stopped)

Ge-Snuif-ery

Robert says i sniff. And it’s possibly the only thing that really annoys him about me. I try not to sniff, I even started to keep tissues in my sleeve like my gran does (She also keeps them in her bra, so that when she gets out of her clothes at night, old tissues rain down in a pile around her). Anyway i was also trying to provoke Robert into paying attention to me by sniffing, so that i could procrastinate by playing the victim of his aversion for ge-snuif-ery.

Mothersday

I went to breakfast at my mother’s for mothers day. It was nice, sitting in the sun on the veranda, chatting. I think my family like robert better than me – they kept glancing at the empty setting at the table sorrowfully. My gran surreptitiously tried to introduce the idea of a straightening tong to me, by telling my mother about them. Beryl was responsible for a missing vase (last week she took the cord for an old kettle) and my gran confessed that she had suspect beryl of talking tots of her whisky. She sneakily marked the bottle, and true enough, it had a missing 2cm. But Richard confessed to the crime, he had used it for a stew. My gran said she felt bad about suspecting Beryl, but there’s a blanket she cant find….

I ran a bath – it was too hot, i waited for it to cool down (I can’t bring myself to just let the water out – im from the drought generation of South African’s, when we shared dirty 2 cm deep baths and then watered the garden with it) and now it’s probably too cold.

Eish… i really must get this dam thing done…. ugh…. im going to bath…. and then, no doubt, it will be too late………..

ARRGH!