Surprise me! Oh wait... rather don't.

I love surprises, just don’t spring them on me. Basically, I like a little forewarning before all hell breaks loose. So, for example if there is an off-chance that when driving into my home on a rare morning after the school run to hand-over a sick child to a doting grandparent, that there might be a large truck in a driveway, just mention it in a off-hand maybe kind of way.

I was greeted this morning after a hellish hour in traffic trying to get back home by said large truck taking up all of my driveway and inhabited by four surly men demanding payment. Here is the thing: Morning traffic and me are not a good couple. I listen to Eminem loudly in an effort to channel my aggression into learning how to rap like a white gangsta. My patience is thin, I haven’t had my requisite caffeine or cigarettes and my fuse is turned to Human Torch. Yeah, so I blew it.

“Who the hell are you?”
“We’re delivering sand and you owe us R700 COD?”
“You’ve got the wrong house,” says I blithely assuming that someone would surely have told me that the next chapter in the book called “The horrors of home renovation” was due.
“No, we spoke to someone who is coming here to pay us.”
Who? Not me? Not my husband who is far far away in another country and time zone.
I called my mother-in-law.
“Hi,” she says brightly, “How are you? Is everything okay?”
“Hi,” I say drily, “I am fine and everything is not okay. I have four angry men and a truck in my driveway who apparently expect me to pay them.”
“Oh,” says she, “They were supposed to come tomorrow.”

Fine. I just live here. Whatever. I went to the ATM and settled up with the angry truck driver who by now had dumped an entire load of sand directly in front of the garage. Just bloody brilliant. Not my problem either. I reversed up the driveway turned up the radio and went to work where I at least get a brief before the proverbial poo hits the fan.

Just as I was calming down I received an SMS from Man Abroad reading, “Don’t give me grief.” Don’t give me grief? I ask you! In the last 12 hours I have dealt with rats, sick children, a freezing cold bed the size of North America and four irate truck people! HAH!


I was going to write about the silly little things that make you happy like the motorcyclist who gives me a wheelie in the morning and stuff like that, but I am too cold and annoyed so that little ray of sunshine will have to wait.