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The Blurred Line
It's the thin line between reality and fantasy. It's the thin line between sanity and madness. It's the crazy things that make us think, laugh and scream in the dark.
Friday, March 16, 2012
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Imperfect or I'm Perfect?
Men and women will only be equal when a woman can walk down
the street scratch her crotch, burp, fart and still think she is the sexiest
thing on two legs.
So says my husband, who should know.
The truth is that if a woman exists who thinks she is
perfect I haven’t met her. I doubt anyone has. I’m sure Kate Moss has issues. Body dysmorphia isn't an anomaly, we all have it to some extent. Maybe it goes with oestrogen.
Thin women want to be thinner with more curves.
Old women want to be young.
Young women want to look more mature.
If you have brown hair you want blonde.
If you’re blonde you want to be a red head.
I want my daughter’s curls.
She wants straight hair like me.
All of which is why gyms, Estee Lauder, plastic surgeons,
hair salons and Jimmy Choo make so much money.
This is also why I am about to be a part of the Imperfect Project.
It is all about realizing the perfection in imperfection. In
seeing your body as representing who you are, where you’ve come from and the
strength it took to get this far.
The Imperfect Project takes woman of all shapes and sizes,
with scars and stretch marks and orange peel thighs. Real women like us. Women who
have given birth, lost their boobs to cancer or gravity. Women who live, love
and need to celebrate the woman within.
Every woman, she is
beautiful in her own way.
Quite often we forget to see the beauty in the curve
of our hips and instead see that we can’t wiggle into a pair of skinny jeans.
Or we focus on unsightly stretch marks and cringe, instead of seeing them as
marks of motherhood and fertility.
What the Imperfect Project aims to do is strip off all the
artifice and help a woman find her courage, acknowledge it and worship it.
One woman has just come out of an abusive marriage. One
after years of marriage had never been naked in front of her husband. One as
lost her breasts to cancer.
All of them used the project as a way to reclaim themselves,
to see themselves as heroes, to see the beauty in who they are.
Does the thought of stripping off for the camera with no
protection, no armour to hide behind scare me? Absolutely. It scares me silly.
But it also fills me with excitement. And an urgent need to go the spa get
preened, plucked and manicured.
By the time I arrived at the Rosebank Life Day Spa for an
emergency massage my head was spinning with the implications.
For many women
going to the spa is traumatic. Taking off their clothes and allowing another
person, a stranger, to touch them can do the exact opposite of relaxing them
and instead drive them head on into a panic attack.
I love going to this spa. I love that they have thought
about this and made sure that there is a curtained change room so you don’t
have to strip off in front everyone else. I love they don’t see the
imperfections and I never feel judged and found wanting. I feel like a goddess.
From the time I walked in the door on Friday afternoon I
began to shed all the stress and tension I was carrying around like Atlas. So I
shrugged it all off and wandered into the change rooms.
I eased my aching feet
out of the killer (but very sexy) heels and cuddled into an enormous toweling dressing
gown. On me it was voluminous, but as I ambled up the stairs I passed a very
tall man on whom it was a micro-mini. One size almost fits all.
I looked down at the heated pool with ill disguised desire
and popped my head into the steam room and sauna and promised myself next time.
Lerato was busy with a client and so Ivy ushered me into the room of tranquility.
I had warm oil massaged into my hair, strong hands sweep away my worries and
wondered how anyone could deny themselves this because of fear.
We need to be touched. Have our hair brushed by someone
else. Feel human contact. That is part of the healing of massage.
The simple
touch of someone else who cares enough to try and help you through the stress
of everyday life.
You feel as perfect as the Venus de Milo rising on
a shell surrounded by men worshipping your beauty.
You don’t need to burn your La Senza lingerie to feel
empowered.
Just go get a massage.
I work. Sue me.
I am a working mother of three. Please don’t judge me. Don’t
look down your nose at me when I wear exhaustion like a cloak, when my children
are asleep on the floor of my office, when I didn’t manage to complete all
their homework on time.
There is a reason the Hindu goddess Durga is always shown as
having multiple arms. It is because she was a working mother too. It also why
she had such a short temper.
Despite what you think, I don’t work because I am selfish
(or as my 6 year old says “Shellfish”). I work because like most mothers I have
to. Of course I’d like to stay home, watch every cricket match (okay maybe not
the cricket, but soccer for sure), go to karate and spend 2 hours every day
revising homework. I’d love to go to the gym, meet some friends for lunch and
maybe do some filing. But, in case you hadn’t noticed we are in a recession.
If I could, I would help in the tuckshop, cover books in the
library and chaperone the school disco. The truth is I don’t put my career in
front of my family. If I did, I’d still be working in South Africa’s top ad agency,
coming home after 12 and have a string of awards to my name. I work because I
put them first. Because without it, they couldn’t go to your school.
My school, back in the day, had an hour of supervised prep every day, so that our parents could get on with parenting.
My experience so far has been that teachers expect me to get home at 6pm, feed them, bath them, read to them, do an hour of homework and have tem in bed at 7:30.
I am not Hermione Granger and I don't have a fancy little eggtimer.
That was how my Friday started, with me apologizing that I
hadn’t managed to do all my seven year old’s spelling and promising we’d do it over
the weekend. Coming on the heels of a work week from hell, it pushed me over
the edge of the abyss. I went to work almost in tears. And then I bought a
Lotto ticket.
I was weighed down by all the things I couldn’t do, like a
visit a friend who really needed me by her side, or be the kind of mother
teachers used as an example of perfect parenting.
Hah! There is no perfect
parent.
We all muddle along the best we can and hope our kids don’t hate us
for it later.
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Monday, March 5, 2012
Say Cheese Shoot
Blindfolded and giggling...
That was how the day started as we collected Lexi's Best Friend Forever for a professional photoshoot with Vanessa Lewis at Nina Say Cheese.
As birthday surprises went it took the cake.
Although the shoes didn't last long and nothing could hide that glint in their eyes.
After a bit of a stiff start the girls relaxed into having fun and being the center of attention. The balloon was irresistible. As balloons are.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
This entitles the bearer...
Passports
are funny things. Just little books of paper and stamps. Yet for some odd
reason they represent part of our very being, embody our nationality, our
character and in some way define us. They give us somewhere to belong, a sense
of pride, even a homecoming.
When I painstakingly
completed the forms to renew my passport and that of my son, I did it with the
complete certainty that we belonged and it would merely be a bureaucratic
inanity to give us new ones. I was wrong.
First of
all, the forms themselves are about as long as War and Peace, only even less
accessible. I tracked down a person allowed to ratify my photographs, one I
actually knew and that was a stroke of dumb luck. Then I set off to the nearest
Postnet and couriered the whole lot to the Embassy in Pretoria.
Boy, was I
in for a shock.
“I’m sorry,
but there is a discrepancy.”
“A what?”
“Well... it
appears you shouldn’t have been granted a passport in the first place.”
“Hang on. I’ve
had it for 20 odd years. I’ve renewed numerous times. Why now?”
“Ah well,
we pick up these things all the time. Forty, fifty years on.”
About now me and my cool, calm, collected demeanour parted ways. I felt a bit like I was being accused of obtaining a
passport through nefarious means, although how I would have accomplished that at
the age of 9 was quite beyond me.
I felt absurdly hurt and abandoned. Combined
with my local Home Affairs losing my son’s foreign birth application, one phone
call made him a stateless entity.
By the time
I calmed down a bit and managed to sift through the detritus of the internet to
find a direct line back to the embassy I was stricken, confused and faced with
the implication that we didn't belong.
I found a
care call line that would have cost me the better part of the month’s salary for
each minute I spoke, but through trial and error managed to find someone, who
managed to find someone I could talk to.
He was very British, very polite and
terribly apologetic.
Apparently my file said that I did not react well to the
news. No, I didn’t. I felt like Wile E Coyote must have whenever he got hit with
a falling anvil.
I was told
to find a registration certificate that I would have been issued back in the
mid-eighties. There was a sad tone to his voice, a sort of pitying ring that
said he didn’t think I had one of these treasured pieces of paper. Of course,
there was also the repeated use of the word “if" that eroded my confidence into a little heap of dust.
Thank the
Lord my mother is a pack horse and my father more organised than I. Tucked away
in an old steel box was this tenuous link to my citizenship. To say I fell on
it glee would not understate my reaction.
The embassy
was astonished, but ludicrously happy for me. They even let me scan it in and
email it.
Accompanying it was an affidavit explaining that my passport had
suffered some water damage. Basically I was not about to sign an affidavit
saying I stupid enough to stick it in the washing machine.
I was
warned that the passports would take four weeks, but everyone was extremely
nice to me. I felt that I had misjudged them, and so I had.
For precisely 8
days later a young man in a DHL truck pulled up at the gate and handed over our
shiny new passports. I am terrified to let them out of my sight.
I never
knew this one thing could unsettle me so much or leave feeling quite so bereft.
To belong to a country again feels good, really really good.
And next
month we will be jetting off for two weeks in the English countryside.
So, British
Consulate Pretoria thank you for your patience and courtesy in dealing with an
irate and tearful woman, but most of all thank you for coming through with
shining colours in my hour of need.
I can’t
give you knighthoods, but you totally deserve them.
PS: I have
put certified copies of that registration certificate in every safe south of
the Equator.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Life and the Day Spa
Joie de
vivre. Sometimes the stress and strain of everyday living can erode that joy to
live until you feel like the walking dead. I can’t really speak for you, but
that’s how I felt this afternoon.
Around me
all day chaos and drama erupted like Mount Etna with indigestion. The CEO went
on the rampage, dishing our warning letters like poisoned Smarties. One poor
chap got two in the space of about 3 hours. A designer left in tears after a
supplier yelled at her for non-payment, not that she could have anything about
it.
The creative director, a Buddhist, tried to inject some rationale Zen into
the proceeding, but that didn’t last. His Buddhist principles got chucked out
the fourth floor window as I heard him yelling, “Are you out of your ever
loving mind!” at the CEO.
Basically,
it was the day from the deep depths of a fiery hell.
By the time
I escaped, I had a raging migraine and a bone deep exhaustion at facing the
traffic on the way home.
At the
intersection ahead of me appeared a sign. It was like a light on a dark night
illuminating the path. It read “Life
Day Spa. Just opened.”
I would be
very inconsiderate to have ignored such a blatantly god given sign. You can’t
ask for more overt messaging in a time of need. Never one to disobey my instincts
and with the desperation only working in advertising can bring, I drove right
in and pleaded for a massage.
I was soon
enrobed in a soft warm dressing gown and slippers, sipping a cold glass of ice
tea and being treated gently, like you might treat someone on the verge of a
nervous breakdown. It was very soothing.
Lerato
ushered me into the Room of Tranquillity and set about removing me from all
earthly matters with an Indian Head Massage. 30 minutes later I felt like I had
died and gone to heaven. My headache was a faint memory and I think she managed
to get rid of knots in my neck I’ve carried for the last decade.
Indian Head
Massages started out in India, imagine that? Seriously, women used to do it on
each other to encourage their hair to grow. Narendra Metha brought to the West
and extolled its virtues based on Ayurvedic techniques working on the upper
back, shoulders, neck, scalp and face. It can help alleviate the symptoms of
stress, help you lose weight (not sure about this one), migraines, sinus pain
and hair loss! Physically it helps with lymphatic drainage, blood circulation and
muscle tension. Psychologically it helps balance the upper three chakras using
acupressure points or marmas.
All of
which is all very well, but I’ve had some awful Indian Head Massages in the
past. Whatever Lerato did in between rubbing heated oil over my back and releasing
eon’s worth of tension it was nothing but pure magic. I was able to slip into
that beautiful somnambulant state of sheer bliss.
I didn’t
have to make small talk and most importantly I didn’t have to listen to bloody
Enya. I hate Enya. I have walked out of spas that played Enya. She is not
remotely relaxing for me, she is irredeemably annoying, like Dido.
I’ve been
to the Life Day Spa in Fourways and I have to say Rosebank is nicer. It is
warmer for one thing and more intimate. They also have an amazing floatation
pool, which I plan to try out post haste. Apparently, 30 minutes in that and
you feel like you’ve slept for 4 hours. Perhaps I should install one in my
home. If you can’t beat insomnia you can at least work around it.
By the time
I got into my car I felt renewed, revived and ready to face tomorrow’s journey
into our nation’s capital. I can’t quite communicate the dread I was carrying
for this task, which involves a complicated train journey and hike through city
streets wide enough to accommodate two ox wagons. Simply put, I distrust
meetings at any place that start with “The Department of...”
But right
now, I feel like a limp noodle, I smell like a garden of roses and I plan to
sleep like the dead. I deal with tomorrow, tomorrow.
Monday, February 20, 2012
Say Cheese
On 20 February 2006 the world changed forever.
Maybe you
didn’t notice, but the world as I knew it shifted slightly to the right.
Alexandra Isabella was born at 06:50 and promptly altered
the state of the universe to suit herself.
You may scoff, but I have been to parties where the mother
has broken down into hot tears of hysteria because the kids didn’t want to pin
the tail on the donkey.
I have spent sleepless nights baking elaborate birthday
cakes in the shape of the Sword of Omens and a robot. I have iced 100 small
pink cupcakes and stuffed party packs full of toys and candy from China Mall.
Each year there is a not-so-subtle parental competition – one which
usually ends with you substantially poorer. You can easily end up spending as
much on a birthday party than you did on your own wedding – only Daddy doesn’t
pick up this bill.
I have been to a party where one of South Africa’s premier
soccer teams played ball with a bunch of 7 year olds. Former State President
Nelson Mandela made an appearance at one.
I don’t bother even trying. I sent the boys to bootcamp to
wallow in the mud and be yelled at by ex-Navy Seals. They go hone happy,
exhausted and covered in mud. Most the time they are happy with a water pistol
and a jumping castle.
Girls are harder.
This year as I was lamenting the impending day with gloom,
the power of social networking led me to a review by Shelli Nurcombe-Thorne who
knows more about Johannesburg than anyone I have ever met.
Largely because she writes a Joburg blog about it. She had just reviewed a
kids’ photo studio and promptly sent me the details of Nina Say Cheese.
Lexi and her best friend were duly collected on Saturday
afternoon and chauffeur driven (by me) to the studio of Nina Say Cheese in
Fourways.
Vanessa Lewis is a professional food photographer, but was inspired
to start a children’s studio after the birth of her daughter, Nina.
She offers
four magical sets, an aeroplane hanger, a circus, a forest and a tea party.
She
also provides delicious cookies and macaroons from a real pastry-chef.
The girls put on identical pink ruffled skirts, pretty tops
and sparkly shoes. Suddenly these two scruffy little tomboys blossomed into the
most beautiful and ladylike little girls. They posed, they played and they
laughed and laughed and laughed.
I haven’t got the pictures yet, but I know they will be
beautiful.
So all-in-all it was a good way to celebrate without having
to entertain 25 small girls and their 50 associated parents.
Social networking again helped me out on the birthday
present front. Having expressed interest in a Barbie Bride at a friend’s house,
her mom called to tell me about the best place to buy Barbie clothing.
Hint: It is not Toys R Us.
The Rosebank Market on a Sunday is home to a remarkable stall. A elderly man painstakingly designs and makes
exquisite furniture for baby dolls and Barbie Dolls. His wife equally
painstakingly designs and sews tiny clothes, sleeping bags, duvets and other
necessities for small girls and their dolls.
For R300 I bought a wardrobe and 6 perfectly made little
outfits, including a wedding dress. Unlike the cheap and nasty Toys R Us
clothes, they don’t fall apart as soon as Barbie is dressed up and they cost a
damn sight less.
I highly recommend him to every mother of a small child who
balks at the idea of buying yet another Barbie. Lexi unwrapped her gifts this
morning in total rapture.
I also got out of baking a million cupcakes by strolling
into Mother Hubbard’s in the mall and purchasing for R70 a Happy Birthday cake
for her school birthday ring.
Far less stressful.
This afternoon I will pick up little karate kid and take her
out for ice-cream with sprinkles on.
Heaven.
And when we get home Lexi can model the pretty clothes
purchased on her shopping experience with my mom – from Zara no less!
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